Falling in Love with English Boys Page 18

  Is that what happened? Did Mary die, and without her, Katherine couldn’t fight off her father and Lord Chilham? How could she have, really? Especially if Charles wasn’t around, either. I wanted to rush back to the flat to read the rest of the diary. At the same time I kinda never wanted to touch it again.

  “Hey. You okay?” I came out of my freaky funk to find Luke looking at me like I’d sprouted horns. “Can I . . . er . . . get you something? Tissue? Er . . .” He rattled his ice again. “Coke? This kind, I mean?”

  “No, thanks.” I realized I was crying. Okay, so I cry at Hallmark commercials, but it’s definitely been a rocky few days, emotions-wise. “Well, maybe a tissue.” I really should start carrying Kleenex, if I’m going to be leaking all over the place.

  The interview wrapped up soon after that. Mom stayed in the booth for a few minutes chatting with the interviewer. When she came out, she was all chipper and smiley. I caught Luke giving her the once-over. Horn dog. But she did look pretty great. Even I thought so.

  “C’mon.” She slung a arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go have a carb fest. Fish n’ chips?” I wrinkled my nose. “Chip n’ chips?”

  “Tea,” I said. She stopped walking and slapped her free hand to my forehead. “Very funny. I mean a real English Afternoon Tea. Sandwiches and scones and cakes.”

  “What a fabulous idea.” We headed out of the studio. I waved over my shoulder to Luke. He waved back, but his eyes were focused on my butt. Or Mom’s. I didn’t really wanna know. “By the way, Astrid gave me a few suggestions for your birthday dinner.”

  “Astrid?”

  “The woman who just interviewed me.” Mom rolled her eyes and sighed. “You didn’t listen to any of it, did you?”

  “I listened to most of it,” I informed her huffily. “It was sad. People are really named Astrid?” I thought of the hair, sweatshirt, and lack of any makeup whatsoever. “Lemme guess, Vegan Garbanzo Palace?”

  “Not even close. Apparently there’s a new Kashmiri restaurant in Bloomsbury that’s so hot they turned away Victoria Beckham last week. Astrid said to let her know if we were interested; she’d get us reservations.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right. How gullible are you, Ma?”

  “Nice, Catherine. Very nice. Do explain.”

  “First of all, no place in London would turn away Victoria Beckham. Tabloid suicide. Hole One in Astrid’s brief tale. Plus, Victoria Beckham doesn’t eat, hence no turning and Hole Two. Finally, no offense to Astrid—she seemed okay—but did you look at her, Mom? Astrid and ‘hot’ are totally oxymoronic.”

  Mom’s not a smirker, but she was definitely smirking as she waved for a taxi. The driver waved back in a very friendly and appreciative manner. As did the older man we hadn’t seen sitting in the back. “Not to blast your powers of insight or deduction, Sherlock, but it just so happens that Astrid is married to Russell Tarrant.”

  “No.”

  “Yup.”

  Russell Tarrant who won the Best Actor Oscar this year for playing Count Dracula. Russell Tarrant who you, Kell, called “smokin’ even if he is fifty.” Russell Tarrant who happens to be on the cover of British GQ this month. Wow.

  “Kashmiri sounds good,” I told her.

  “Smart girl.” An empty cab pulled up and we got in. “The Dorchester, please,” Mom told the driver, and off we went. “When Mary Percival was alive, there was a tea shop in Berkeley Square that was famous for its sweets—”

  “Gunther’s . . . Gunter’s?”

  She looked at me, stunned. “How . . . ?”

  “Katherine’s diary. Her mother took her there one day.” My turn to smirk. “I do pay attention.”

  Mom put her arm around me again. “I would have loved to have taken you.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That would’ve been cool.”

  12 June

  It seems we shall communicate through puzzles now. A wink, a brush of arm against arm, a riddle. This arrived not amid flowers in a florid hand, but in bold printing, tucked into a book, fresh from the binders. It is Mr. Scott’s Waverley, very fetchingly bound in red leather, with a tartan ribbon sewn in to mark my page. I never thought the gift of a book would make me so happy, but I have wanted to read this one, and the knowledge that Thomas, who so scorns novels, has given me one because I might like it, brings flutters to my core.

  I have not yet solved the riddle. I will. I will not show it to Nicholas this time. He would comprehend it in a minute, and would goad me to try harder. Mama and Miss Cameron have always said that I am an intelligent girl, but that England is fortunate that it is not I who has the crucial task of decoding enemy communiqués. They are absolutely right.

  A Riddle for Miss Percival, by An Admirer

  My first is in the Lanes but not the Plants.

  My second is in the Song and in the Dance.

  My third you’ll find at Court but not at Home.

  My fourth comes when you Walk but do not Roam.

  My fifth is in the Skies and in the Rain.

  My six begins not Bliss, yet ends the Pain.

  My seventh is in Whole but not in Part.

  My eighth is in your Head but not your Heart.

  When joined together, you shall surely see

  Our lives have always been; So shall we be?

  I believe I shall take Waverley with me to the Quinns’ house party tomorrow. I do not think there will be much time for reading; we will be much occupied in celebrating Henrietta’s engagement, and there is to be quite a large crowd. Still, I wish Thomas to see that his unsigned gift has been met with delight.

  I must decide what to pack for my two days in Surrey. My pink dress with the roses, certainly. Any memories of its sole wearing, to Vauxhall, must be exorcised. The gold will do for the second night. Then I must take two white day dresses, my green walking dress, the yellow-sprigged muslin in case we have a garden party, two hats, and sufficient shoes to cover any occasion and weather. A spencer or perhaps two, should the days be cool, and my softest Kashmir shawl. Nights in the country are often chilly, and if Thomas and I can steal even one moonlight stroll, it shall be soft beneath his hands.

  July 29

  Lev Din Liv

  My last day to be sixteen. I don’t feel especially sweet.

  Will has been texting.

  HisText#1 (the Day After the Horror in the Park): Ur friend OK?

  HisText#2 (the day after that): U OK?

  HisText#3 (eight hours later): >∧. .∧< ?

  At that point, I figured I needed to respond. I mean, after all, I am not a sad sad girl who, feeling desperately sorry for herself, spent several days in orange pajamas on an orange sofa, drowning her sorrows in Club Orange, Eastenders, and Hello! (helloooo—no matter how bad things seem, there’s always Jennifer Aniston’s love life to make you feel better about yours; I mean if Jen is having a hard time finding It . . .) Nope, that’s not me. I am out and about, Girl About Town, happy as a clam.

  MyText: Sorry! Will call, Will. Crazy bizy x 2. :-)

  Did you know that if you drop potato chips into a glass of Club Orange, they dissolve in, like, a second? This stuff is the piranha of drinks.

  That London pigeons come in no less than seventeen color variations?

  Or, that if you stay in front of the telly long enough, you can actually plot the downward spiral of Friends?

  I fear I have regressed somewhat. I would hit Mom up for fifty quid and hit H&M, but I just don’t feel like shopping.

  Woo-ahhh, woo-ahhh.

  That’s the sound of an English ambulance. I seem to have fallen into a ridiculous funk, and I can’t get up.

  I haven’t seen the girls in a couple of days. Elizabeth has been crashing an EU conference on human rights. She knows one of the Slovenian aides from school. She says the food is great, but she hasn’t been able to get into any of the really interesting talks. Security’s too tight. She tried blending in with the Spaniards, but apparently their junior attendees all just want to party. Consuel
o is in Ireland; Bayard is doing a Bike-and-Pub around the Ring of Kerry. Imogen met a member of the Norwegian royal family the night of my meltdown (he’d just stepped in dog poop on his way to a party in her neighborhood; she gave him a roll of toilet paper . . . excuse me, loo roll, and a cup of tea) and is trying to decide whether she should abandon Oxford for Helsinki Tech.

  One of them has called me every day. Chocolate-Overdose-Watch in rota. Elizabeth will be back at the shop tomorrow. Consuelo gets back the next day. I’ve been looking up key phrases in Norwegian for Imogen. Just in case.

  Unnskyld meg, men jeg er en prinsesse. Excuse me, but I am a princess.

  Kommer dette i en størrelse §? Does this come in a size 6?

  Har du en bror for min Amerikansk venn her? Do you have a brother for my American friend here?

  Det er et reinsdyr i min sjokolade. There is a reindeer in my chocolate.

  Chocolate. As soon as Eastenders is over, I’m heading out for my daily fix. I’ve gone every day this week at this time. Yesterday, Mr. Sadiq called, “Hullo, Catherine!” as I walked in. Only notable when I mention that he was sorting tea boxes in the back and couldn’t see me. So I’m becoming predictable. So what.

  Today, I think . . . Curly Wurly. I’m in a caramel state of mind.

  (later)

  They were lying in wait for me.

  I got to the shop, exchanged my pleasantries with Mr. Sadiq, and was just heading for the candy shelf when they came tumbling out of the back: Elizabeth, Imogen, Consuelo, even Joanna and Sarah.

  “God, I thought you’d never get here!” Elizabeth complained. “Smells like feet back there!”

  “It’s Consuelo,” Imogen informed her.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Consuelo shot back, “but I have been traveling with a group of disgustingly sweaty boys, and you didn’t give me a chance to go home and have a bath.”

  She got up at five this morning in order to make it back from the west west of the west of Ireland for me. Imogen turned down an invitation to an England-Australia test match in Birmingham. Apparently Ragnar-Haakon Ludvig-Knute is a cricket fan. Elizabeth missed a luncheon for Eastern European delegates to which her Slovenian actually had tickets.

  “No big deal,” she told me with a shrug. “Really. The menu was going to be beet-heavy, anyway, and I can’t understand a word the Croats say.”

  “Honestly, Cat, as if I wanted to go to Birmingham,” Imogen drawled.

  “I smell like feet” was Consuelo’s addition. “Need I say more?”

  Joanna and Sarah hadn’t given anything up; they came because they didn’t have anything better to do.

  It was the best prebirthday party I’ve ever had.

  We improvised on the refreshments. Apparently the bakery where Imogen ordered the cake last week was a front for a counterfeiting operation and got raided by the police early this morning. Imogen said she could see the cake in the case. They’d baked it. But she couldn’t get the constable inside to open the door and give it to her. “I already paid for it!” she muttered. “It’s not like I was going to ask him to give me potential evidence as change for a fifty-pound note.”

  Fortunately, we were in the right place for improv. Everyone chose something from the shelves. I can’t say I loved the Roast-Beef-and-Mustard flavored crisps (Joanna), but I quite enjoyed the Cheese-and-Onion Hula Hoops (Consuelo). Elizabeth tried to stick candles in the Hobnobs (Imogen), but they kept breaking apart.

  I chose Curly Wurlys. In celebration, Mr. Sadiq gave one to everyone who came into the shop while we were there.

  There were presents, too. Elizabeth gave me a black tee with a sequined Union Jack across the front. “Don’t kid yourself,” she said affectionately. “Peace isn’t really your thing. Besides, you’re always going on about your boobs. This will make them look bigger.” I put it on. She was right. Something to do with the horizontal and diagonal stripe combo, I guess.

  Imogen gave me an all-in-one makeup kit from Space-NK Apothecary. It’s the size of a paperback and has everything—including sparkly eye shadow. Most cool.

  But I gotta say I liked Consuelo’s best. It’s a digital subscription to Hello! For the next year, all I gotta do is click a button every week, and I get the entire edition online. How perfect. The other two agreed (“Fab, Swell!”), although Elizabeth still thinks I should be reading the Guardian. I made sure to point out that Keira Knightley has been featured there, too.

  Mr. Sadiq gave me a CD (“What? You expected chocolate?”) of Iraqi hip-hop. He obviously was tickled by the idea. Sarah rolled her eyes. “I wanted to give you Lily Allen,” she told me.

  “Thanks,” I said to both of them. I really meant it.

  In the middle of it all, Will texted.

  HisText: Ur B-Day 2moro. 2 Bizy? Or canICU4 it?

  “Maybe you should try to forgive him,” Consuelo suggested quietly. “He’s certainly trying. Seems like he really wants to see you.”

  “Seems like he’s a complete tosser,” Imogen disagreed, “springing the girlfriend on Cat like he did.”

  I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I think maybe he’s just clueless. That maybe he had no freakin’ idea how much I liked him.

  “Rubbish!” Imogen snapped when I offered that possibility.

  “Not bloody likely” was Elizabeth’s addition. Consuelo didn’t say anything.

  “We are frequently clueless, just so.” Mr. Sadiq stood behind the counter. He looked embarrassed. “I am sorry. You probably do not wish to hear anything from me on this matter.”

  Well, yes, actually, I would rather have discussed my love life with Bayard’s entire crew, the men fixing the street outside, and the tweedy old guy in frayed corduroys at the crisps display, before discussing it with a friend’s dad. But I couldn’t really say so, could I? I managed a weak smile.

  “He’s right, love,” the tweedy old guy said to me, bringing his salt-and-vinegars to the counter. He extracted a twenty-pound note from a wad in a shiny silver money clip. “Thick as bricks, we are, until you spell things out.”

  “But damned if we don’t feel like the king of the world when you finally do. Eh, lads?” This one had a shaved head, tattoos up his neck, and wanted a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. He and the old guy and Mr. Sadiq grinned at each other like complete idiots.

  Consuelo tugged on my ponytail. “So, Cat Cat, here’s one for you: Would you rather have him in your life as a friend, or not at all?”

  That’s a good one.

  “How would you answer if it were Bayard?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be daft. Bayard’s not my friend; he’s my lobster (“lobstah”—it is easy to occasionally forget how posh and clever Swell is, especially when she smells like socks or is dipping Pringles in chocolate syrup) and is complete crap in the Häagen-Dazs moments. You girls (“gels”) are my friends.”

  Hmm. Häagen-Dazs for thought.

  MyText: Bizy 2moro. Friday?

  HisText: Y. M glad.

  We always think that they know, right? That they know we’re making sure to be walking near their lockers right when they’re getting out of class. That they know we’re writing their names on the back of our notebooks, but without ink, so you have to look really closely to see the indentations in the cardboard. That they know, and are either being conceited or shy or are pretending not to know because they’re really just not that into us and would rather it be über-popular Francesca Newberg or Molly Perry hanging out by their lockers . . .

  I’m beginning to wonder.

  So here’s one for you, my Yank posse: Would you rather that every guy walked around with a cartoon thought balloon over his head, or a keyboard that allowed us to put the words in his mouth?

  July 30

  Happy Birthday

  Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee. Happy Birthday to Me. The H&M gift cert came through, O Goddesses of Friendship. I adore it. I adore you. I should shop. I will shop. When “upright” once again refers to both m
y morals and physical state.

  It’s nearly noon. I feel like I swallowed a cat. Well, maybe only a kitten now. It was Garfield when I woke up. Elizabeth and Imogen and Consuelo took me to a club last night. Of course, they’re over eighteen and are legal. I think Consuelo paid off the bouncer.

  The club was good. Really good. Loud, packed, hot as hell. Literally. And we danced so much that I single-bodily raised the temp at least another ten degrees (Celsius). I wore my new shirt and slap. I looked pretty great.

  There were boys. Of course, they were three-deep around Imogen, but the rest of us did just fine. I danced and danced and downed the faintly green drinks that seem to be the thang, then made one false-alarm rush to the ladies’, and danced some more.

  At one point, I found myself wedged between a table and a three-hundred-pound guy in a white-suit-black-shiny-shirt combo while his much smaller and slightly better dressed friend (no suit jacket anyway) told me about his SUV.

  “Brill,” he gushed. “Flippin’ brill. Come up fast behind those poncey little Smart Cars on the M1 and they get out of the way right sharpish!”

  He had long blond hair that he kept flippin’ around while he talked. I looked around for any sign of the Girls.

  “D’ya know ya look just like that bird in the American telly program?” he asked. “Ya know. The one with all the talking. What’s it called again?”

  “My So-Called Life? Claire Danes?”

  “Who? Nah, the one who’s married to that actor bloke. Tom Cruise.”

  Ah. Suddenly he seemed almost cute.

  “Katie Holmes. Dawson’s Creek.”

  “Right,” he said. “That’s it. Brill. Wanna go someplace private?”

  Oh. Suddenly Imogen and Elizabeth were there. Imogen steered me one way; Elizabeth and my new friend went the other. “All right, Cat, no more mojitos for you. What were you thinking?” Imogen demanded.