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  Sashaying along Stagmount’s drive, a few metres in front of the car, were three visions of identical blonde loveliness. She could hardly blame him for staring—indeed, she had passed many happy hours in assembly and chapel doing exactly that herself. The girls were so stunning, and such complete carbon copies of each other, it would have been nigh on impossible for man, woman, or beast to ignore them.

  “Those, Dad,” said Jinx with a knowing smirk, “are Stagmount’s very own and very infamous Russian triplets: Olga, Masha, and Irina. You must have seen them before—they’re in the year above me and Liberty and everyone, and they’ve been here as long as I have. Don’t you remember George falling practically flat on his face when he saw them at speech day last year?”

  “No I don’t,” Martin said as he parked the car. “All I remember from speech day last year was the interminable length of it all. I must have dozed through most of it—or tried to anyway. So who are they? I must say they certainly look a lot,” Martin faltered before continuing, “older than you and your friends.”

  Jinx flipped the rearview mirror over to her side in order to spy on the sisters without having to turn around.

  It was impossible to tell them apart unless they were standing in front of you and you had been watching them covertly for three and a half years, as Jinx and her friends had, monitoring every difference. Despite their unceasing surveillance, Jinx still had no idea which was which from this distance—or any, come to think of it—but they were all so beautiful and perfect she supposed it didn’t actually matter.

  What Jinx and the others didn’t know was that each could be easily, instantly recognized by the differently coloured large stones set in the center of the gold rings that each wore on the third finger of her right hand. Given to them by their oligarch father before they left Moscow for Stagmount four years earlier, Olga’s was a blue diamond, Masha’s a green one, and Irina’s pink. Despite sharing literally everything else, the triplets never swapped these over.

  Five feet, nine inches, and perfect size sixes, all three had expertly highlighted honey-blonde hair that fell to just above their elbows in graceful waves. All of them were wearing pale-blue skinny ksubi jeans tucked into tie-up black Ugg boots. The one in the middle was wearing a black silk Prada bomber jacket; the triplet on the left was wearing a Stella McCartney beige trench coat over a charcoal grey polo neck; and the girl on the right was swathed in an oversized Nicole Farhi cashmere throw in berry-red.

  Jinx considered their undulating progress of perfection in silence for a few seconds before turning back to a decidedly dazed Martin. If Jinx didn’t know better she’d have sworn she heard a groan escape her dad’s lips as the girls drew alongside the car and, with exact synchronicity, waved cheerily at Jinx before walking through Tanner House’s front door.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” muttered Jinx, who was also watching them go in. “They were in the upper sixth last term so I’ve got no idea what they’re doing in Tanner. Either they’ve been moved down—which wouldn’t surprise me given what I know about their so-called work ethic—or they’re dropping something off. And I can’t see it being the latter. They’re lovely girls, but I don’t know them that well and I’ve never once seen any of them run a single errand. We always say that people are too afraid to ask them to do normal things because they’re so beautiful.”

  “Well,” said Martin, flinging the driver’s door open and dashing round to the boot with what looked to Jinx like unseemly haste to get in the door before the girls disappeared, “since we’re finally here, let’s get you in and sorted.”

  “Jinx Slater!” Brian Morris, Jinx’s housemaster and a very good egg, stood alone in the small reception area. There was no sign of the Russians anywhere. Mr. M. clutched a clipboard to his chest as he threw an arm around Jinx’s shoulders before clasping Martin’s hand in a firm handshake. “Has anyone ever told you you’re like a bad penny? Always turning up! How are you both? Good hols I trust?”

  “Lovely, sir,” said Jinx, conveniently forgetting that she’d spent most of her time at home mooching about in the most almighty sulk, delighted to see her favourite teacher back in such high spirits after all the traumas at the end of last term. “And isn’t it fanTASTIC news about Liberty! Do you know when she’s coming?”

  “Yes it is and yes I do,” smiled Mr. Morris, winking at his favourite pupil. Jinx had saved him from being fired—and probably worse—when the dreaded Stella Fox had falsely accused him of sexual harassment at the end of last term, thus earning herself a special place in his heart forever. “We’ve been told to expect her first thing in the morning, definitely in time for assembly. She’s flying straight to Heathrow from Washington and coming directly here from the airport. I imagine she’s in the air right now, so don’t worry—you won’t have too long to wait.”

  “Wow,” sighed Jinx, “I can’t wait to see her. We haven’t not spoken for this long since we first met, and I’ve really missed the bitch!”

  4 Welcome Back, Lower Sixth

  Jinx extracted another twenty pounds from her dad’s pocket without him noticing when he’d hugged her goodbye, and now she was sitting happily on her bed and contemplating her room. She leapt up with a huge grin and wrenched open her cupboard door. She peeled one of the myriad photos that adorned the inside of it from its blue-tacked fixing and lay back down on her bed holding it in front of her.

  A black-and-white Polaroid, taken by Jinx’s mum Caroline, who obsessively documented every single thing that ever happened to any member of the Slater family—including snapping dead pets in their shallow graves whilst the rest of the family sobbed at a respectful distance. The picture showed her and Liberty on the first day they’d met. It was three and a half years ago, but seemed like twenty. They both looked so small and afraid, tiny first years on the first day at school. Jinx loved that picture, and she loved Liberty even more. God, she was relieved they’d gotten away pretty much unscathed by last term’s upset.

  “Chas,” Jinx screamed, dropping the photo onto her bedside table and jumping up as Chastity Max-Ward pushed open the door and stood in the frame, looking impossibly glamorous in a Prada coat with skintight navy blue ksubi jeans tucked into the ubiquitous Ugg boots, clutching a bottle of red wine and sporting a gorgeous skiing tan. “How the hell are you? I’ve missed you!”

  Jinx flung herself towards her second-best friend without waiting for an answer, and they squealed with delight as they jumped up and down on the spot, deliriously happy to see each other after a month apart.

  Punctuated by the occasional ear-splitting squeal, they talked at high speed at each other for a good ten minutes without pausing for breath, until they both laughed and collapsed, exhausted, onto Jinx’s bed, belatedly realizing that in their excitement they hadn’t taken in a word of what the other was saying.

  “So,” Chastity said breathlessly, yanking off her boots and bundling her long blonde hair into a messy ponytail on the top of her head, “Lib’s back tomorrow?”

  “Yep,” said Jinx, grinning widely and bunching a pillow behind her back against the wall. “I can’t tell you how awful it was until she phoned.” She paused. “Well, how awful I was, if you want the truth. I couldn’t deal with it at all and the poor family got the brunt of it. We’re all the best of friends now of course, but I did behave fucking badly. I feel quite shady about it to be honest!”

  “Come off it, Jinx,” Chastity said, reaching across her for another pillow. “We all do it. Christ, I’m sure they’ve done it themselves. Look what a bitch I was to Mum and Ian all last term. And he’s such a nice bloke! He couldn’t have been any nicer when we were skiing and I really, really like him now. I wouldn’t worry about it any more if I were you.”

  Chastity was expertly uncorking the bottle of very expensive Pinot Noir the newly lovely Ian had given her as a going-back-to-school present when Jinx slapped her forehead and squealed again.

  “Oh my God,” she screamed, “in all the excitement I forgot to tel
l you! I can’t believe it!”

  “What?” Chastity demanded as Jinx jumped up and down. “What haven’t you told me? Come on, you can’t leave me in suspense like this!”

  “Only that the triplets are joining us in the lower sixth this term,” Jinx said triumphantly, very pleased to be the imparter of such great gossip. “They’re moving back into Tanner and everything.”

  “Really?” asked Chastity, emitting a long low whistle. “Olga, Irina, and Masha are in our year now?”

  “Yep,” Jinx said, opening her window, leaning out and lighting a cigarette. “Mr. M. tells me they fucked up their pre-final exams, so they’re being moved down. Mrs. B.’s obviously in a panic about her league tables.”

  “Wicked,” replied Chastity. “I’ve always been fascinated by them. How cool!”

  “Didn’t you do ballet or something with one of them in the second year, Chas?” Jinx asked, carefully stubbing out her cigarette and placing it on the windowsill with an eye to smoking the rest of it later.

  “Yes!” Chas slapped her own forehead, wincing as she misjudged it, leaving a red mark right in the middle of her eyebrows. “I did! I can’t believe I’d forgotten all about it. Irina was in my tap-dancing class. She was lovely—always smiling and very funny, actually—but I was always too mesmerized by her beauty to ever dare speak to her.”

  Chastity frowned and took a sip of her wine. “Although,” she continued, “we were never sure if it was Irina or one of her sisters. Some weeks she was amazing—so good the teacher would practically wet herself—and then other times she slouched and stomped and no one could understand it. We all thought it was hilarious of course, but the teacher would almost be crying with disappointment. Then the next week she’d be back to brilliant.”

  “Imagine,” said Jinx admiringly, “if you had an identical triplet—even a twin—the mind-blowing stunts you could pull! Wouldn’t you be pranking people all the time? I know I totally would. I wonder what the others are like—do you know anything about them?”

  “What others?” Liv and Charlie, who had been best friends since they’d stolen the gardener’s tractor two and a half years previously and tried to do hand-brake turns in it on the grass tennis court, yelled in unison as they pushed and shoved their way into the room and into each other before diving on top of Jinx and Chastity, screaming hellos and happy new years and spilling lots of red wine all over Jinx’s clean sheets in the process.

  “Fucking hell,” said Jinx, righting herself and staring up at Liv, whose shoulder length brown hair had been cropped to within an inch of its life and dyed so black it looked blue. “Your hair looks amazing. When did you do that?”

  “Well,” said Liv, self-consciously running a hand over her new ultra short and ultra fashionable do, “I’ve had the same-old, same-old hair since I was born, practically, so I thought, you know, new year, new term, new do. I did it last week in London. My mum’s still not speaking to me, but I love it!”

  “Jinx is right,” agreed Chastity. “You look freaking fantastic. So much older too…hey! Maybe I should get mine done?”

  The others fell silent as they contemplated Chastity. With her long blonde hair and jangling Tiffany bracelets, Chastity’s appearance was strictly fluffy, but once riled she was famous for throwing the most almighty hissy fits. As they looked at her, her friends were all wondering how to tell her that having her golden mane chopped off would surely be the worst personal style decision she could ever make.

  “But Chas,” Jinx exclaimed in a sudden fit of inspiration, remembering that Chastity adored her mother above all else, especially since her media-mogul father had fallen—missing, presumed dead—off the side of his yacht in the south of France when she was very young. “What would your mum say?”

  Charlie swiftly jumped in. “Jinx is right, Chas. Don’t you always say your mum loves your hair like that?”

  “That’s true,” Chastity said, fondly patting the huge ponytail she had bunched on top of her head. “She’d be gutted. I guess I’m stuck with it for the time being.”

  Liv and Jinx shared a secret relieved look. The fact is Chastity’s features were simply too strong to cope with a crop like that, although none of them fancied telling her. Far better for a peaceful start to the term to let her think she’d made the decision on her own.

  “Right,” said Jinx determinedly, standing up and surveying the filthy sheets she’d only put on her damn bed twenty minutes previously, “I can’t take this anymore. Look what you bastards have done to my bed!”

  “Sorry, Jin,” Charlie apologized, trying to brush off the worst of the wine but leaving an even worse stain in its place. “Why don’t we go sit in the common room? I’ll grab a few drinks and meet you in there.”

  Jinx, grumbling good-naturedly about the mess they’d made of her room, linked arms with Chastity on one side and Liv on the other and forced them to skip down her corridor towards their favourite common room complete with squashy sofas, giant bean bags and—best of all as far as the girls were concerned—a huge plasma-screen TV fully equipped with Sky Plus, DVD, and CD players.

  “Ooo,” Jinx said with a sly grin when Jamie and New Year’s Eve popped unbidden into her mind as they approached the door, “there’s something else I’ve got to tell you lot too. Remind me when Liberty gets back.”

  Completely ignoring her friends’ protestations that it would actually KILL them to wait a second longer for her gossip, Jinx pushed open the common room door.

  “Bloody hell,” muttered Liv in hushed tones, stopping suddenly and causing a pileup behind her, “what’s he doing in here?”

  The sight that greeted them was unlike any other Jinx and the others had witnessed in that room, and they stood in the doorframe, speechless with shock and admiration.

  The Russian triplets were sitting near the window, around a card table none of them had ever seen before. It wasn’t the bottles of vodka so casually laid out on the green baize in front of them, or the gold-tipped black cigarettes smoldering so insouciantly in the ashtray, or even the huge piles of ten- and twenty-pound notes in the middle of the poker game they’d obviously been enjoying for some time that shocked the three in the doorway.

  No, it was the presence of a very moody-looking, tall, raven-haired man sitting there so cozily with the triplets, as if it was his God-given right to be in the strictly female-only lower-sixth-form common room that threw our girls into a spin. Man! The triplets obviously were as indifferent to school rules as people claimed they were. The dude, who must have been at least thirty-five, looked towards the door, gave Jinx, Liv, and Chastity a very obvious once-over and nonchalantly raised a hand in greeting.

  “Who the hell is that?” Charlie blurted out after dashing at high speed through the door and skidding to a halt in front of the mystery man the others had been studiously pretending to avoid.

  The triplets looked up from their intense study of their card hands at his movement, simultaneously waved, smiled, and chirruped “Hi, girls” at the three in the door, before turning back to the game, identical expressions of fierce concentration etched on each remarkable face.

  Fanny Ho, a boyish Chinese girl who had smuggled her girlfriend Maureen Mo from Hong Kong to Stagmount the previous term, keeping her hidden in her bedroom until she’d finally cracked under the pressure of harbouring an illegal immigrant and admitted all to a very sympathetic Jinx, breezed out of the adjoining bathroom and sat herself happily down at the poker table.

  Fanny had also been in the year above, but had to stay down in the lower sixth last term due to a nasty bout of glandular fever that had left her totally wiped out in bed for six months. None of them had realized it before, but she was clearly great pals with the triplets. Jinx was surprised. She really liked Fanny, and thought her escapade last term was one of the funniest things she’d ever seen. Jinx was only sorry she’d been sworn to secrecy. But she’d promised never to tell anyone and she fully intended to keep that promise until the day she died.

/>   The triplets and Fanny dissolved into conspiratorial laughter and it was left to the man to stand up and extend a courteous hand to a shocked Charlie.

  “My name is Igor,” he said self-importantly and in heavily accented English, “and I am the bodyguard of the Prozorov triplets. I will stay at Stagmount School and watch over the ladies until they complete their studies.”

  “Really?” asked Charlie, her face turning pink as he pumped her hand up and down with what looked like excessive force. “Well, I’m Charlie. It’s, um, lovely to meet you.”

  “We always see you girls around school,” said Irina, drawing their attention back to the card table, “and we think you look like the most fun from your year. Where is your friend?” She pointed at Jinx. “The pretty, dark-haired girl? You two are always laughing and joking together, and we always say you two are naughty sisters just like us.”

  Jinx, who was privately thinking that Fanny and Maureen had nothing on these girls when it came to pranking everyone into thinking they were the same person, was delighted that the stunning triplets so obviously wanted to make friends with them all. If nothing else, it looked like the vodka would be pretty much free-flowing for the rest of the school year.

  “That’s Liberty,” Jinx said with a smile, having quickly decided it would be just too much effort to explain the reasons for her late arrival back at school. “She’s flying in from the States. She’ll be here first thing tomorrow—she’ll be so excited that you three are in our year. She always talks about your amazing clothes!”

  “How kind,” said Masha, glowing warmly at Jinx and throwing a delighted smile at her sisters. “We always try to look our best. We love it when people notice our clothes!”

  “Come and have a vodka with us,” urged Olga, banging her glass on the table in invitation. “We are nearly finished with our game anyway.”

  “Don’t mind Igor,” added Irina, noticing the concerned looks Jinx and the others were directing at him. “Except for when we need a fourth at cards or something we treat him like he is invisible. He likes it,” she continued when the girls looked at each other in shock at such blatant rudeness right in front of his face. “He has to be alert for danger at all times.”