St. Mallory's Forever!

31 ABBY: It's all they ever do.

Talk, that is. People. All they ever do is talk.

Sorry, I'm absolutely butchering a quote there. "Won't people talk?" "It's all they ever do." That's what I was trying to say. I guess I'm a little flustered and it's quite late at night, for me, and I wasn't going to blog today, but I felt like I ought to.

In my last post I mentioned that boy from the disco that Helen had befriended, and several of you have since asked for the juicy details.

Now as you know, I'm not one to gossip (Don't snigger — it's true!) but as no-one at St. Mall's even knows this blog exists I think I can live with my conscience and spill the beans.

I think Helen has a (drops voice to a loud, conspiratorial whisper) boyfriend. Yes, I know that you lot out in the real world won't find that desperately interesting, but this is a girl's boarding school, for goodness sake. We know what boys are, and we have friends. But not in the same sentence!

Okay, not strictly one hundred per cent true, as I shall relate shortly, but you get the picture.

Anyway, Tim Morrigan is his name. From Chester, originally. On a Drama Scholarship to Linbury Court. Or so he told me. But Helen seems to think it's an English Lit' scholarship. Not being rude, but what would she know?

Tim and Helen hit it off right away. Only Don Pedro was quicker off the mark in the grab-a-lad stakes, but the Don's got some sort of in-built homing device that identifies the fittest boys before they even walk through the door. Anyway, back to Helen.

I told Helen people would talk, but she seemed to think I was joking. It just shows how little she knows about St. Mallory's — put twenty teen girls in a room together and of course the gossip will get around faster than a virus on Instagram. And I sure felt bad when I saw the look on her face as she overheard a few snatches of caustic commentary in the corridors.

She confronted me over lunch. Pretty bluntly, too. No small-talk build up. Just bam! Straight out with it.

"What's everyone saying about me?" Helen demanded.

I cast about hoping to see one of the other girls for some moral support, but there's never a clique around when you need one. So I took a deep breath and plunged in.

"They say you're going out with Tim Morrigan from Linbury Court."

Helen gave out a long, painful groan like she'd just been stabbed in the back with a blunt, rusty dagger, and then hit me with an Et tu, Brute? look that made me ashamed to be a Mallory's Girl.

"You're like a bunch of primary school kids, the lot of you," Helen hissed, in a tone that was more pitying than angry. Which just made it all the worse to hear.

She wasn't angry with us. She pitied us! And just in case I hadn't got the message she added a final cruel (but much deserved) barb. "Sorry, prep school, or whatever you posh kids prefer to call it."

Ouch! Moi, posh? That hurt. But I knew Helen meant the girls in general, not me in particular. At least, I hoped not me in particular.

Leaning closer so no one else would hear, she said, "I am not going out with Tim, okay? We met once and though that might be enough here in this crazy convent of a school to make everyone assume I'm having his babies, it's not where I'm from, in the real world. Me and Tim are just friends. We are not going out."

She was very emphatic. I could almost hear the italics. I muttered a feeble defence. "I didn't actually say you were."

"You may as well have," Helen shot back. "Anyway, what's it got to do with you?"