Chapter 14 #2
Flora gasps and puts a hand on my arm. Her fingernails are perfect pale pink ovals, and she has the prettiest little thin gold bands on most of her fingers.
‘Oh my gosh, I have an idea. I’m going home next weekend to decompress—I know, I know, I don’t exactly have much to decompress from—and I’d love you to come with me!
Our driver could drive us both up on Friday morning.
Charlie. It would be so lovely to have you, and you could paint to your heart’s content!
There are so many beautiful spots. I’m useless at painting, sadly—I’m specialising in sculpture—but I’d love to see you at work, I’d just love it. ’
She’s so sweet, and so thoughtful, and so generous, and she’s grinning at me like it’s the best idea she’s ever concocted, and it is, obviously totally impossible.
Not only do I have the twins to look after and Dawn to visit, but Flora, in her decency, has failed to remember the elephant in the room: that I’m not the sort of girl anyone brings home to a place like that.
That her parents, the duke and duchess, would probably drop dead if they had to sit across a table from the likes of me, and that her eldest brother would be even more horrified than them.
At least his parents wouldn’t have to live with the fact that they kind of almost fucked a commoner.
‘That’s honestly so kind, but I can’t,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t want to impose on your family.’
Her eyes are huge and panicked, and she reminds me of the girls for a moment.
Teens feel everything so deeply, bless them.
‘But you just told me your dream, and I can make it happen next weekend! If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is!
Please? The place is huge, as you know. You could have your own space, if you just wanted to come up and paint.
And you could keep me company! Otherwise it’s always the boys together, and then Ma and Pa, and I’m on my own with nothing to do but ride horses and flirt with the under-gardeners. ’
That makes me laugh. ‘Are they hot?’
‘Some of them. They’re brawny, you know? It’s all terribly clichéd and Lady Chatterley, but I like having someone nice to stare at.’
‘Maybe you could sculpt one of them.’
‘God, that’s a good idea. There are a few fine specimens of the male form knocking about. It’s all that digging.’ She shimmies her shoulders. ‘Honestly, please look in your diary!’
I have a pang for a minute at the mere idea that I could ever be someone whose only constraints are the social events marked in my diary, whose responsibilities, obligations, could boil down to a clashing cocktail party or prearranged girls’ night out.
For a tiny, shameful moment, I even feel angry at this kind, wealthy girl who has no fucking clue that some of us can’t just drop sick stepmothers and exhausting sisters and much-needed work shifts to fanny around with a palette of oil paints by a pretty lake.
But I shrug it off, because it’s not her fault, not in the slightest, and she’s extending this invitation out of the goodness of her heart. It’s an attempt to make my life better, not worse, and nothing more.
To placate her, I go through the motions, pulling out my phone and getting my calendar app up.
I freeze.
Oh my Lord. Lily and Rose are off on a Silver Duke of Edinburgh trip next weekend. They’re going camping and canoeing for their sins—and the sins of the poor fuck of a teacher who’ll have to supervise them—and they’ll be gone Friday morning to Sunday night.
I’m not sure which ratchets up more—the racing of my heart or the spiralling of my thoughts.
We’ve finished our coffees and put the weekend at Belvedere into my calendar.
I don’t know what to think. I’ll have to warn Xavier, of course.
I’m feeling the weirdest mix of ridiculous excitement, and abject disbelief, and guilt that I won’t see Dawn that weekend, and terror that Xavier and Flora’s mum will take one look at me and forcibly eject me from the house, and a fuck-tonne of other stuff.
I’ve also begun to spiral over what on earth to wear to stay with some of the most senior aristocrats in the UK.
I am not known for my country house chic.
I imagine a slightly more modern take on Downton, with everyone dressing for dinner.
Flora has told me that it’s ‘all very relaxed’, which makes me feel not even a tiny bit better.
She’s also, very generously, said I can borrow some of her stuff if I like.
It’s mortifying, but I might be forced to.
I just hope I can stuff my tits into her tiny clothes.
The only thing that comforts me is that Flora and I really seem to be getting along well.
I thought I’d have nothing in common with a posh nineteen-year-old who’s probably never known a day of hardship or responsibility in her overprivileged life, but we’ve definitely bonded over both being arty-farty.
Our media may be massively different, but, as our chat on the Tube showed, we see the world in a similar way (even if the actual worlds we see are very different).
‘So,’ I ask Flora as we stroll across to the correct building, ‘any hot guys at uni who might be more socially appropriate to fuck than the gardeners?’ She starts to cough, and I stop, amused. ‘Did I shock you? I’ve heard you lob a couple of F-bombs today.’
‘It’s okay,’ she rasps. ‘Sorry. I just don’t really use it as a verb.’
I try again and put on a stupid Margaret Thatcher voice. ‘Any eligible young men with whom you might consider being, er, intimate? Polishing their posh todgers?’
‘Ugh, stop, please!’
‘Seriously. You’re young and gorgeous. I’ve never been to uni, but I assume it’s a total fuck-fest. Please tell me you plan to get stuck in?’ I squint at her and she looks away, tucking her chin in as if embarrassed.
‘Um, I’d like to meet someone, obviously, but…’
‘I think you mean someones. But what?’
She risks a peek at me. ‘My brothers have kind of… warned me off.’
‘Warned you off what, exactly?’ I make my voice quiet and scary, because I don’t like the sound of this.
At all. Even if it shouldn’t surprise me that Xavier and Benedict have waded in where they have no fucking jurisdiction.
Xavier’s unsolicited, and unwelcome, views on her getting a lip job should have been a red flag.
She twists her hands together, her expression pleading. ‘It’s just that—they know how na?ve I am, and they think I’m really gullible. They’re worried someone will take advantage of me because of… who I am. That sounds so arrogant. But they said predators might prey on me.’
I’m quiet for a minute as I try to find the right way to respond, especially as she seems self-conscious about it.
‘They’re right, obviously, in that it’s technically possible.
But I assume, if you’re hanging out with other students, that most of your problems will just come down to drunken teenage dickheads who want an easy shag and not someone who’s trying to swindle you out of your inheritance. What do you think?’
She chews on her lip. We’ve reached her building, but she doesn’t seem in any hurry to go in. ‘I think they’re worried about that, too. I think they’re worried about everything.’
‘But there are lots of ways to protect yourself. We should have a chat about it. Not drinking too much, not hooking up with guys who’ve drunk too much, making deals with your friends before you go on a night out not to let each other go off with a guy until you’ve shared a photo of his ID…
lots of things. Yeah? It’s never risk-free, and some people just get really unlucky, at the end of the day, but there are ways to make it a bit safer. ’
She nods, looking horribly uncertain, and I feel a rush of sympathy for her.
I suppose being at uni in London is a bit of a baptism of fire for someone like Flora.
Maybe, on this front, I’m the lucky one.
Lucky to be streetwise. To be able to handle myself.
To have had my last few hundred fucks in a place as safe and heavily regulated as Alchemy.
‘Look. This is definitely something I can help you with. But, and it’s a big but, I really hope your brothers aren’t using scare tactics as a way to try to control your sex life, or your “purity”, or any other bullshit like that.
The idea that they think they have any jurisdiction over anything you choose to do with your body is not remotely okay. Got it?’
Especially because I know for a fact that her middle brother is even more of a slut than me.
She screws up her face. ‘They know I haven’t, er, slept with anyone before.’ She waves her hand around, embarrassed. ‘And Xav said that it would be a lot more special—and safe—if I waited until I was in a meaningful relationship with someone rather than just randomly hooking up with someone.’
I’m sorry.
I just cannot.
‘He said what now?’
My expression must look properly scary, because she rears back a little. ‘I know he means well. It’s because he loves me so much and, well, he’s a worrier.’
What he is is a patriarchal, uptight prick whose concept of women’s liberation seems to date back to Grosvenor times.
‘Let me say this very clearly. Sex needs to be safe. One hundred percent. You need to be happy, you need to feel comfortable, you need to know that the bloke respects you, and ideally you need to fancy the pants off him, yeah? You have to want to jump his bones. That’s it.
It doesn’t have to be “special”. It can be quick and dirty and spontaneous and fun and kinky and whatever the fuck else you want it to be.
That’s it. You don’t have to be in love.
He doesn’t have to be a bloody aristocrat—you don’t need to see his family tree before you shag him.
He just needs to be a decent guy who makes you horny and who you want to get naked with.
And for your brothers to suggest anything different is spectacularly uncool. Do I make myself clear?’
Her nod begins tentative and grows more confident. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.’
‘Look. I get that you guys are old-school and old-money, but that’s no excuse for anyone in your family to go all Victorian on you. Let your hair down, and flirt, and live a little.’
And when I get to Belvedere next weekend, I’m going to wring your uptight older brother’s neck for failing to respect your sexual and bodily rights.