“Everything okay?” I ask. “You’ve been frowning at that thing for the past ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry. Just texting with my dad.”
This makes my eyes go wide. “I’m sorry. You’re texting with your father?”
He chuckles, looking up from his phone. “I guess that does sound a bit bizarre. Yes, my father texts occasionally. The King knows how to text.”
“I heard you on the phone with your mum before—the day you met Libby. You seemed tense. I mean, even before the whole photographer thing.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. There’s a lot of family stuff going on right now.”
I look at him expectantly, but he doesn’t say any more.
Three Colvin girls from the third floor—Sara, Henrietta, and Violet—walk into the common room. “Hey, Charlotte. Oh! Edward! Hi!” says Henrietta.
“Hi,” he says, smiling. He clicks off his phone, sliding it into his pocket. “You ready for Gogglebox?”
Violet stands in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. “Um, we can go watch it in Trinity Hall, if you want.”
Edward opens his mouth, but I beat him to it. “It’s fine! We’re leaving soon anyway.”
“We are?” Edward asks.
“India texted me. She’s at Snog Point with Georgie, Oliver, David, and Tarquin. We can go after the advert.” I’ll go upstairs before leaving and force Libby to join us. Twenty minutes of fun won’t kill her.
“I don’t know,” he says. In the corner, Henrietta puts a bag of popcorn in the microwave, the smell wafting through the common room as the kernels pop. “That popcorn smells good.”
“You can have some!” she says, looking elated.
“But they’ve got snacks, too—Georgie’s mum sent her a care package with homemade cookies. Plus, India has a bottle of wine.”
“It’s cold outside.” He puts his arms around me, pulling me closer to him. “I’d rather stay inside with you.”
I know I should find this sweet, but it only makes me feel grumpy. My idea of the perfect Friday night is hanging out with all our friends and sneaking off for kisses, not sitting on a stained sofa with three girls I barely know.
“Fine,” I say, deciding I’ll try to make the best of it. “Hey, Henrietta—mind if I have a little of that popcorn?”
Two campus shuttles take students to and from London twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Libby’s second Saturday at Sussex Park, we plan to catch the morning shuttle into London for a girls’ day out, but I’m so knackered from a week of early field hockey practices that I skip breakfast in favor of more sleep. I wake to find Libby standing over my head, asking when we’re leaving.
I look at the time on my phone. “Damn it! The bus left three minutes ago.”
“It’s okay,” Libby says. “Aren’t there a bunch of shops and restaurants in town?”
“Yeah, but the ones in London are better.”
“Why? A Topshop is a Topshop. A café is a café. We’ll be fine.”
I roll over, burrowing under the covers. “Okay. Wake me in another hour.”
“Come on, Charlotte. You’re the one who suggested it!”
“And now I have a new suggestion: sleep.”
She flings the covers off me as I shriek in response to the blast of cold air on my legs. “You have half an hour! I’m going to go upstairs and do some homework in the meantime.”
I pull the covers back on top of me, yawning. “How about forty-five minutes?”
She smiles at me. “Fine. But I’m coming back for you in exactly forty-five minutes—and you’d better be ready.”
“Whatever you say, Mum,” I say, rolling over to sneak in a few extra minutes of sleep.
It’s an easy ten-minute walk to the far end of the high street, where all the chain clothing stores are. We hit up Topshop first, me pulling clothes off the racks and handing shirts, dresses, jumpers, and trousers to a shop assistant who finds us a changing room.
I’ve decided that Libby needs better clothes. I know what she wants: loose and low-key. But she needs to look like she belongs with India’s crowd, not like she’s a refugee from the 1990s. The wrong clothing will immediately mark you as an outsider.
When I was younger, it’s not like I spent time thinking about the clothing choices of upper-class girls. In the town we grew up in, discount clothing from Marks & Spencer was the norm—fashion wasn’t even a little on my radar until we suddenly had money and I realized I needed to fit in. But if I had thought about it earlier, I would have assumed posh girls wore tweed and riding boots and tailored red jackets: really serious, horsey stuff. India and the rest of the girls occasionally wear stuff like that, but more often than not they’re dressed in jeans, cable-knit jumpers, and scruffy trainers, like regular teenagers. I’ve spent years studying every little detail of how they dress, and luckily I have a sharp enough eye to pull it off. If I’m being charitable, it’s not really that different from how Libby dresses, except she wears the same few clothes over and over again. She prefers to divert her monthly allowance into a savings account.
Me, I spend mine. Life is short, and it’s made for actually living, right?
“What is that?” Libby asks, pointing to a sparkly blue skirt.
“A skirt. I thought it would be good for nights when we go into London.”
“Why would we go into London?”
“You’ll need something to wear dancing.”
“Won’t we get in trouble? How will we get there? Won’t the clubs turn us out for being too young?”
“Oh my God, relax! I’ve got it covered.”
“It looks like a headband,” she says, taking the skirt from me and holding it gingerly, like it might explode.
“Your style is all over the place. Clothes like that”—I point to her oversized flannel shirt and boot-cut jeans—“mean you’ll still be a virgin when you’re forty. Why are you wearing those jeans anyway? I lent you a ton of clothes. There were some J Brands in there.”
“I love these jeans. And they weren’t cheap. I got them at Selfridges.”
“They look like mum jeans.”
“They’re comfy. I can wear my favorite boots with them.”
“Nowadays, in the future, we humans wear skinny jeans, and we wear our boots over the jeans,” I say slowly, exaggerating my words as if Libby is an alien.
“Skinny jeans look weird on me.”
“Then you just haven’t found the right pair.”
“I’m not comfortable showing off my body like you are.”
“I don’t know why—your body is sick. Keep your nineties jeans, if you insist. But there has to be a middle ground between miniskirts and muumuus.”
She laughs. “Fine. I’ll try on a pair. Dress me, fashion Yoda. I’ll help you with your homework in return.”
“Ew. Pass.”
“I’ll bake you white chocolate chip cookies?”
“Now you’re talking!”
I grab another dress, sending Libby into the changing room.
The minutes tick by. Finally, I go in. “Well? What’s the holdup?”
She pokes her head out from behind the door. “I look silly.”
“Out with it. Let me see.”