LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to provide this opportunity for him.

      ‘Lord, Behold us in Thy presence once again assembled here …’ I look around the whitewashed hall, filled with boys, parents and teachers; this is what we have sacrificed so much for.

      We file out of the hall, in a crush of expensive scents and clothing. ‘I’ll see if I can pre-empt the bursar …’ Guy says, looking uneasy. He leaves my side and I can see him trying to make his way to Mr Cullen.

      I spot a forbidding clutch of Griffin mums. My stomach churns and my ears ring with the contemptuous comment about my roots that I overheard at Mario’s. As usual, my efforts to fit in with my new Whistles skirt, bought on sale last month for £25, have come to naught: cycling has wrinkled the skirt, and Rufus’s pleading pawing as I walked out of our front door has given my smart white cardigan two black smears, right under my breasts.

      Real Griffin mums fall into two categories – and both are always sure of a soft landing. The McKinsey mums run hedge funds or a chain of glamorous florists, and look as if they can crush the life out of any difficulty. The Boden belles married money and look as if life gets no worse than a milk spill on their Cath Kidston tablecloth. Neither group has any experience of the unsettling sensation of sliding further and further down the property and career ladders, irrevocably pinned down by the combined forces of school fees, mortgage payments, taxes, credit-card demands and bills. They worry about whether their children will get into the right school. We worry about their getting there – and our having to pull them out because we can’t afford the fees.

      Stage fright fills me as I approach the group of mothers. I feel as if I am back at school, a plump swot trying to fit in with the popular girls. But without a boyfriend, C-cup breasts, or expensive clothes, I didn’t stand a chance.

      Now, some twenty years later, I make a vain effort to smooth out my skirt and shake my hair into place as I approach another terrifying clique.

      ‘Hullo, Alex’s mum!’ A pretty blonde waves to me. Perhaps I needn’t worry, this is one day when every woman is only someone’s mummy, after all. Alex’s popularity makes up for my unglamorous wardrobe and borderline size-14 figure. ‘Julian was so disappointed that Alex didn’t come and stay.’

      I recognize her now: Julian Foster-Blunt is one of Alex’s best friends, and invited him to stay with his family in Sardinia. Only £59 return on Ryanair, but there were also water-skiing lessons: Julian had one every morning, he told Alex, at £80 a time. ‘Outrageous!’ Guy had exploded. ‘A day’s safari in Botswana costs less than that!’

      ‘Maybe next summer?’ Julian’s mum smiles benevolently at me. ‘Xan and the children love the villa so much, we’re buying it.’

      Before I can reply, another mother, in a Chanel suit, has jumped in. ‘Thank God it’s all over! It’s been non-stop sea-sickness, sunburn, hay fever, and even the youngest knows how to text now. You should see the mobile phone bill I’ve been landed with!’ I identify the Chanel wearer as a McKinsey mum, and she immediately proves my hunch was correct. ‘That’s it, that’s all I’m going to get from Goldman’s for holidays this year.’

      ‘American banks don’t do vacations, do they?’ Laura Semley, school governor, steps in. Laura used to run her own PR company, but has given that up to run her sons’ school, in the same fashion. ‘Well, another year begins.’ Laura waves a regal hand to encompass the school, boys and teachers. ‘I just hope –’ she lowers her voice conspiratorially ‘– that Merritt is as good at running a prep school as old Jellicoe was.’

      ‘Oh, he seems steely enough.’ Julian’s mother looks relaxed. ‘And the teachers are fab. Worth every penny, really.’ I doubt, somehow, she counts her pennies; but there is something so sunny about her, with her golden highlights, carefully screened tan and tasteful chains, that it is difficult to resent her the good fortune she obviously enjoys.

      ‘Hmph!’ Laura Semley eyes up McKinsey Mum as a kindred spirit. ‘Actually, it’s been under-performing for five years now. The results look OK, but they are tweaking it. When you drill down, those scholarship figures include all sorts of bogus “all-rounder” awards at places like Wellington College.’ She sniffs in disgust. ‘We used always to have at least one Queen’s scholar at Westminster, plus two at Winchester, and one at the other top-notch schools. But they’ve got the scholarship set all wrong. They are confusing stocks and flows: the point is not to make the most of what they’ve got, but to constantly select the cleverest ones and ditch the under-performers. We’ve got a governing body academic sub-committee open meeting on this. Maybe you should sign up for it?’ She is addressing herself exclusively now to McKinsey Mum. She can tell that Julian’s mother and I wouldn’t know a balance sheet from a duvet, and couldn’t drill down through data if you put the apparatus into our trembling hands.

      ‘With boys like these, Common Entrance results should certainly be better too,’ chimes in McKinsey Mum. Her mobile interrupts her. ‘Yes? No. Of course I will. Absolutely. Just getting petrol now, will be there within the hour.’ She switches off and frowns. ‘Can’t afford to remind them that I’ve got children, let alone that I sometimes drop them off at school.’ She looks suddenly deflated: her shoulders stoop, her chin drops, even the pearl buttons on her blue Chanel suit seem to have lost their sheen. ‘I’d better go. Max! Max!’ she shouts, and waves at a boy running past us. She sets off after him.

      ‘Oh, look at that – Molly Boyntree!’ Julian’s mother points, excited, at a tall brunette in a boxy trouser suit. ‘She writes for the Sentinel, doesn’t she? We never get it at home because Ollie says it’s too lefty, but I’ve seen her on the telly.’

      ‘Oh yes, I recognize her.’ I turn to take in the well-known journalist. ‘She was on Question Time last Thursday.’

      Laura Semley snorts her derision. ‘She earns a hundred grand a year attacking the establishment and then sends her children here; the oldest is at Eton. The hypocrisy!’

      ‘Arabella?!’ Julian’s mother peers at an Amazonian blonde nearby. I recognize Leo Beaton-Wallace’s mum, the one who had me down as a tiger. I roar, silently, at her.

      Laura Semley raises an eyebrow. ‘What are you doing, Harriet?’

      ‘Nothing,’ I whisper back.

      ‘Arabella Roslyn! My goodness, I think I’ve just seen someone I was at Heathfield with!’ Julian’s mum rushes off, and I watch as the two women hug enthusiastically.

      ‘It’s extraordinary, really, how many of us discover connections with this school.’ Laura Semley beams benevolently at the reunion. ‘Either I was at school with someone’s mum, or my husband works with the dad, or we’re neighbours in the country, or our families were. It really is a small world.’

      I say nothing, but hear a scream of laughter as the Heathfield old girls obviously share some fond memory: caught smoking on the roof? Carpeted for staying out too late with an Etonian boyfriend? I try to imagine what boarding school life was like among girls of this kind.

      ‘Don’t you think?’ Laura is asking me. I don’t know if she’s still referring to the cosy little circle of Griffin parents, but I do know I want to escape.

      ‘Ah, Guy has found Mr Cullen. Better go. Bye bye!’ I make my way quickly towards Guy. He is standing in one of the building’s side entrances, talking under an ivy-covered archway with the bursar.

      Unfortunately, the conversation I join is even more awkward than the one I’ve left behind.

      ‘Well, it’s simply that …’ Guy looks flustered beneath the bespectacled gaze of Mr Cullen. ‘I don’t think we … will be able to pay the full amount at this point …’ Guy shifts his weight from foot to foot while Mr Cullen fixes him with a glacial stare; he has spotted the torn trouser leg, and his eyes sweep from my husband’s face to his knees and back again. ‘I’m expecting to come up with the whole lot by the end of this month.’

      ‘I’m afraid I shall have to apply the penalty charge, Mr Carew.’ Cullen shakes his

Скачать книгу