Lawrence Jinxed

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31729-5
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Jinx Slater returns for the most riotous school term yet! It's the end of the Christmas holidays and Jinx Slater is in a rare bad mood. Worried about the welfare of her best friend Liberty Latiffe, for the first time ever Jinx isn't looking forward to the start of the Spring term at Stagmount, England's most exclusive school for girls. When she does get back to Stagmount it's pretty clear that her beloved school is fast becoming a den of iniquity where you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Mrs Bennett loses her cool as the school becomes a shambles - and where the hell is the bloody bursar when you need him? Why on earth have the identical Russian triplets, followed everywhere by their inscrutable bodyguard Igor, been moved down into the lower sixth? What are they up to? Where do Liv and Charlie keep sneaking off to and what is causing their suspicious bruises? Finally, can Jinx get her man and save the school?

Sara Lawrence attended Rodean School, which was founded by her relatives. Following her MA she became a journalist, working as a staff writer at the Times and the Daily Mail. Jinxed is the sequel to High Jinx.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lawrence, Sara

Leseproben

*

Pelting down a very muddy track in one of the forest enclosures not far from home, Jinx stood up in her stirrups, folded herself forwards towards Pansy’s pricked ears and loosened her reins. The game old hunter belonged to her other brother, Damian (affectionately nicknamed Gaymian by his siblings on account of his sexual preferences). They were soon galloping so fast that Jinx’s eyes were streaming and the trees and bushes blurred into one big streak of green.

Feeling the horse beginning to slow underneath her, Jinx sat back in the saddle and peered over her shoulder to look for George. She laughed out loud as she spotted him way behind. His stirrups were so short his knees practically touched his ears and he was bouncing up and down like a huge, demented jockey. She pulled Pansy back into a gentle canter before they slowed to a jerky, high-stepping trot and then an ambling walk.

Jinx drew in great lungfuls of the fresh forest air and stretched her arms high above her head. Flexing her neck from side to side, she realised she hadn’t felt this physically or mentally sharp since the day she’d arrived home from Stagmount at the end of term. She’d managed to hold it together until the last day, but winced as she acknowledged the fact that she’d spent most of the Christmas holidays in a haze of tears. She had stubbornly refused to return any of her friends’ phone calls and had generally stomped about the place like a bear with a sore head, complaining bitterly about every family activity she’d not been able to get out of.

After about five minutes George pulled up alongside his sister and motioned for her to stop as he fumbled in the top pocket of his jacket for his cigarettes and lighter. He was breathing almost as heavily as Martin’s beautiful chestnut thoroughbred, Dillon, who evidently hadn’t had much exercise over the last couple of months.

‘Jesus,’ said Jinx, ‘I knew Dad had been busy tying up all his work stuff before Christmas, but I didn’t realise it had been bad.’ She laughed as she accepted a Marlboro Light from her still-too-breathless-to-speak brother. ‘I bet you wish you hadn’t insisted on having him today now.’ She leaned over to pat Dillon’s neck. ‘I can’t remember the last time I beat you in a race.’

She wiped her grimy, sweaty hand on her clean jeans and smiled with something approaching genuine happiness for the first time since Liberty had been flown away from Stagmount in the Harrods helicopter by her furious father.

‘I was going easy on you,’ said George with a sideways smirk, delighted to see his sister looking and acting more like her usual self. ‘I thought letting you win would cheer you up. I wouldn’t have bloody done it if I’d known you’d be this smug, though.’

‘Shut up, G,’ Jinx said, laughing so hard she had to clutch the front of her saddle for support. ‘I won that fair and square and you it. But if you’re still not sure’ – she gathered up her reins, narrowed her eyes and made as if to belt off across the huge green they were approaching – ‘why don’t we go again?’

George grabbed her left arm and shook his head. ‘I was just kidding,’ he said hastily. ‘You are the champion. El Champione! All hail, Jinx Slater, fastest woman in Hampshire!’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, making a mock bow to the left, the right and then in front of her. ‘I’m honoured to accept this award. I’d like to thank Pansy, this gorgeous horse right here between my legs, my brother Gaymian – without whose sterling work this horse would be as unfit as my dad’s – and last and least my brother George, for being so crap at riding he can’t even coax a gallop out of a seventeen-hand Irish thoroughbred.’

‘So,’ said George casually after they’d meandered along in companionable silence the entire way across the open green and were now approaching the home straight, ‘still no word from Lib then?’

Jinx scowled. She’d refused to discuss the possible whereabouts of her best friend since she’d told Caroline the whole story in the car on the way home from school, and the Slaters – knowing how upset she was – hadn’t pushed her. They preferred to let her talk about Liberty when she felt up to it, but Jinx had been so grumpy, miserable and downright rude a lot of the time over Christmas that George had decided to take matters into his own hands.

‘Come on, Jinx,’ he continued, refusing to take accept this uncharacteristic moody silence for an answer. ‘I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but I hate seeing you like this. To be honest, you’re being an absolute pain in the ass. It’s not fault Liberty’s gone and we all miss her too. Christmas just wasn’t the same without you two goons shrieking, shoving and laughing all over the place. Mum and Dad are really worried about you. It’s not fair.’

Jinx’s eyes filled with tears. She stared determinedly in front of her, torn between shouting at George to mind his own business before storming off in the most almighty huff and admitting that he was right. The first option was certainly easier, given her current mood, but she loved her family and she was aware that her behaviour was getting worse. Sod it, she thought, resigning herself to a spot of bridge building. It’s easier to phone your mother than not phone, yes?

‘You’re right, G,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m absolutely gutted about Lib. And I know I’ve been awful to you guys.’

George said nothing, but he nodded encouragingly at her.

‘It’s like’ – Jinx squirmed in her seat, for she had a real aversion to deep and meaningfuls – ‘when you you’re being a bitch even as you’re doing it. You don’t want to be behaving that way and you wish you could snap out of it, but your bad mood has been going on for so long it’s become almost a default setting. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I’m a guy, Jinx, remember?’ George said this with a small self-satisfied shrug of his shoulders. If he could have patted himself on the back at the same time he would have done so. ‘We don’t do that kind of shit.’

‘Shut , G,’ Jinx shouted, spinning round in her seat and giving him the finger. ‘That’s the biggest bunch of bollocks I’ve ever heard. What about your total hissy fit last time we went skiing? You locked yourself in the bathroom for because Mum said you looked stupid in those awful skinny jeans you bought. I would say like a little girl, only I don’t want to fuel your misogynistic fire. I’ve seen you strop out of various rooms more times than I can even remember. And what about Gaymian? Are you seriously trying to tell me that my moods are worse than his?’

‘Well,’ George said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose you’re right. Gaym the exception that proves the rule.’

‘Don’t make me laugh,’ Jinx snapped straight back. ‘Anyway, I thought we were supposed to be talking about me here. Do you want me to continue baring my soul or not?’

‘Of course I do. I’m just pleased,’ George said, looking at his watch and then winking slyly at his sister, ‘that it’s only taken you – ooo – about three minutes of chat with your second-biggest brother to revert to the self-obsessed narcissist we all know and love.’

He ducked as Jinx swung her riding crop at his head. The sudden movement surprised Dillon, who’d been moseying along in a very relaxed fashion with his nose practically touching the ground, and the horse jumped about a metre in the air without any warning whatsoever. Jinx winced and shut her eyes. When she opened them a second later a very disgruntled-looking George was sitting in a puddle, completely soaked through, with muddy streaks all over his face and neck. Dillon, meanwhile, had obviously decided he needed to get home as fast as equinely possible. Since he was quickly becoming a chestnut blur in the distance, he’d also evidently discovered a turn of speed that he’d been hiding earlier.

‘Shit, George!’ Trying desperately trying to hold back what she was sure would be an uncontrollable case of the giggles if she let them out, Jinx jumped off Pansy’s back and held out a hand to help George up. ‘I am so sorry. I seriously didn’t mean for that to happen.’

George shook his head and grabbed hold of Jinx’s hand as if he was going to let himself be helped out of his puddle.

‘Argh, you bastard!’ Jinx screamed when he yanked her towards him and she lost her footing. She toppled forward, then skidded on her knees in the deep mud until she was lying on her front, adjacent to her brother. ‘I can’t bloody believe,’ she said, lifting her head and mumbling through a mouthful of dirt, ‘I fell for that!’

‘Yeah, literally!’ George sprang to his feet and grabbed hold of Pansy, who was standing like a mule, staring half-heartedly after Dillon. ‘Well, sis, it looks like one of us will be walking back. And since it was you who started this little incident’ – George swung himself athletically on to Pansy’s back, gathered the reins together and flicked his sister the V – ‘it’s sure as hell not going to be me. Bye!’

Jinx sat in her puddle and glared angrily after her brother, whose maniacal bursts of laughter were carried back to her on the wind as he galloped home. Torn between crying and laughing, she chewed her lip and used her sleeve to try to wipe the worst of the mud off her face as she decided which emotion was going to win.

With a sigh, she stood up and ran her hands...