Maestra Read Free Page B

Knightsbridge. There was a lot of analysis of texts, their frequency and affection, but any emotional response was reserved for the possibility that the men were seeing other women or failing to provide sufficient gifts. Plots and counter plots – with elaborate iPhone ruses – ensued, there was talk of men with boats, men with planes even, but I never got the sense that any of this involved pleasure. Love was not a language any of us dealt in; fresh skins and tight thighs were our currency, only of value to those too old to take it for granted. Older men, it was generally agreed, were less bother on the whole, though they came in for a good deal of raucous shrieking about their physical deficiencies. Baldness and halitosis and the Viagra-grind was reality, though you would never have known that from the coquettish messaging that formed communication between the girls and their men. This was the way of their world, and they kept their contempt and their occasional tears for the rest of us.
    For the first time, in the Gstaad, I had what felt like girlfriends, and I was a bit ashamed of how happy it made me. I hadn’t had friends at school. I had had quite a few black eyes, an aggressively haughty attitude, a truanting issue and a healthy appreciation of the joy of sex, but friends I didn’t have time for. Beyond explaining that we had met up north, Leanne and I had an unspoken agreement that we had been teenage chums (if not actively taking part in holding someone’s face in the lavatory cistern could count as being chummy) and never referred to it. Apart from Frankie, the department secretary at the House, the only constant female presence in my life had been my flatmates, two earnest Korean girls studying medicine at Imperial. We had a cleaning rota pinned up in the bathroom which we all stuck to politely enough and beyond that there was barely any need for conversation. With the exception of the women I met at the particular kind of parties I liked to go to, I’d only ever expected to encounter hostility and scorn from my own sex. I’d never learned how to gossip, or advise, or listen to the endless rehashings of thwarted desire. But here, I found I could join in. On the Tube, I swapped reading the Burlington Magazine and The Economist for Heat and Closer , so that when the talk of men palled I too could fall back on the endless soap opera of film stars. I invented a broken heart (implications of an abortion) to explain my lack of dates. I was Not Ready, and I enjoyed being advised that it was time to Get Closure and Move On. My odd nocturnal excursion I kept strictly to myself. It suited me, I realised, this strange little concentrated universe, where the world outside felt far away, where nothing was quite real. It made me feel safe.
    *
    Leanne hadn’t lied about the money. Exaggerated, maybe, but it was still pretty extraordinary. Counting my percentage on the bottles as cab fare home, I was making about 600 a week clear in tips, crumpled twenties and fifties, sometimes more. A fortnight took care of my pathetic overdraft, and a few weeks later I took the Sunday train to an outlet centre near Oxford and made a few investments. A black Moschino skirt suit to replace the poor old Sandro, an achingly plain white Balenciaga cocktail dress, Lanvin flats, a DVF print day dress. I finally had my NHS teeth lasered in Harley Street, I made an appointment at Richard Ward and had my hair recut so that it looked subtly the same but five times as expensive. None of this was for the club. For that I got a few simple dresses from the high street and tarted them up with patent Loubie pumps. I cleared a shelf in my wardrobe and carefully placed most of my acquisitions there, wrapped in dry-cleaner’s tissue. I liked to look at them, count them through like a stage miser. When I was little I had devoured Enid Blyton’s boarding school books, St Clare’s and Whyteleafe and Malory Towers. The new clothes were my gymslip and my