Midnight Girls by Lulu Taylor Page B

other’s company. Theirs looked like the kind of friendship where you would never be bored. She’d never had any hope that she would be allowed to join in, but with the ice broken, Allegra had asked Romily if she wanted to sit with them in the refectory and, slowly, they’d accepted her as one of them.
    Now, she was almost impossible to tell apart from the other girls in the school, except for a certain polish she couldn’t help retaining: her clothes and shoes were so much more expensive than everybody else’s. While they were looking for copies of things they saw in
Vogue
at Camden Market and Top Shop, Romily was ordering the real thing, and all the girls came to sigh and ‘Aah’ when a box arrived for her from Harrods. An audience would gather – even sixth-formers came to look – when she unwrapped the wonderful tissue-covered goodies: real Chanel sunglasses; Vivienne Westwood jeans; T-shirts from Miu Miu, Chloé and Comme des Garçons.
    She loved her clothes but she was generous with them: she let Allegra and Imogen borrow whatever they liked.
    Other boxes arrived from Paris, direct from Romily’s mother. They were full of skincare products, some specially blended for her by expert dermatologists, and supplements to ensure her perfect health.
    ‘Mama is a hypochondriac,’ Romily explained, emptying out all the bottles and packets. ‘She organises most of her life around all this stuff.’
    The other two found it fascinating if rather crazy and she didn’t try to explain to them. From her earliest childhood, Romily had listened to her mother’s maxims. Madame de Lisle had one mantra:
elegance
. A woman must be elegant in all ways: in her mind, her manners, and, of course, her person. Romily had already learned lessons in self-presentation from her. At six, she was going to bed wearing little white cotton gloves, her hands inside slathered with cream, in imitation of her mother who never went to sleep without lashings of expensive moisturiser wherever expensive moisturiser could be put.
    ‘Protect your skin!’ her mother advised her solemnly. ‘It must last your entire life. Look after it as though it were your most precious possession.’
    Romily had taken the lessons to heart. She wore hats and shunned the sun. She took her supplements and drank her water. She fed her young skin with the richest creams her mother would allow her (‘Your skin is still adolescent – nothing too rich, it will overpower you and clog your pores. Light, oil-free and not on your T-zone!’) and exfoliated religiously, all over, every day. She was blessed with a light olive complexion that appeared smooth and almost poreless, and was never marked with a blemish – unlike Imogen and Allegra, with their pale Scottish skins that seemed to change like the weather, veering between pink and healthy or grey and heavy. Then there were the spots that were the bane of their lives, which they hid under great dollops of pink concealer. Romily had never experienced more than one or two spots in her life, and secretly she was convinced it was because of her dedication to vitamin pills, and her strict regime of face masks, moisturiser and sunscreens.
    ‘What’s this?’ Imogen held up a gold tube with a pinkish brush at one end.
    ‘That’s Touche Eclat,’ Romily said.
    Imogen brushed the tube across her hand but nothing came out. ‘It’s not working. What is it?’
    ‘Look.’ Romily took it from her, clicked the top and smeared a line of pale pink creamy liquid along the back of Imogen’s hand. ‘You use it under your eyes to hide the bags.’
    Imogen looked up at her dubiously. ‘Bags? You don’t have bags under your eyes.’
    ‘It’s not just a concealer, it’s a highlighter too. It reflects light and makes you look fresher and younger.’
    ‘I don’t want to look younger,’ Allegra said with a laugh. ‘I’m trying to look older. Any younger and they’ll be moving me back down a year.’
    ‘You know what I mean.’