The Goldens by Lauren Wilson

Author:Lauren Wilson [Wilson, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2025-05-26T17:00:00+00:00

Note: Girls who don’t abide by these rules will be asked to leave. xo

As I was reading, I felt a warm hand on my shoulder.

‘Look at this!’

I spun round. It was Clara, of course, flushed, her hair damp from a bath or shower. She thrust her phone in my face. I blinked, and it took me a moment to make sense of the blurred image, the spiky black text. I took the phone from her, waited for my eyes to adjust. It was a headline.

INSIDE: CLARA’S CULT FOLLOWING, the bold letters screamed.

Clara’s lip curled. ‘Can you believe it?’ she said disdainfully. ‘Listen to this.’

She took the phone back, scrolled down and began to read aloud. ‘Clara Holland’s parties run rife with rich-girl hedonism. But is there something more sinister underneath? ’ She glanced at me, maybe making sure that I was paying attention, before she continued. ‘On the surface, Holland’s parties are identical to any other gathering of eclectic young professionals. The guest list is a who’s who of bright young things, including prominent artists, singers, writers, models, activists, wannabes, and hangers-on of the common-and-garden variety. However, rumours have begun to fly in recent months – both among her hundreds of thousands of online followers and on the campus of the prestigious local university which she attends.’

‘Wow,’ I said, taken aback. ‘As if.’

‘I know!’ she said, her eyes flashing with righteous fury. ‘I can’t believe they’re accusing us of being a cult. Because why else would young women come together? What is this, a witch hunt?’

‘It’s not really surprising, though, is it? It’s the Daily Sun – they’re complete misogynists.’

‘True,’ Clara relented. ‘I just hate the idea that they’re seeing what we’re doing here and twisting our intentions, moulding them to suit their own toxic agenda.’

‘What are our intentions?’ I dared to ask.

I half expected Clara to refuse to answer me, to pout and sulk over the fact that I didn’t know, by heart, what it was that we’d chosen to stand for. But, frankly, we hadn’t chosen anything. It wasn’t like we’d held a focus group and come to the conclusion that a) we were going to invite other girls to live with us, and b) we were going to do it for these specific reasons. Everything that had happened had come from a single speech that Clara had made, the carefully incubated idea hers alone.

‘Our intention is to provide somewhere where young women, girls like us, can be free,’ Clara said. She spoke carefully, her tone measured, as if this particular phrase, too, was something that she’d rehearsed beforehand. Perhaps she had. ‘Somewhere they can be free to be who they are, and where they can shrug off all the expectations and the assumptions and the fucking mundanity of the patriarchal society that we live in.’ Clara was glowing, her eyes shining with fervent belief. ‘We’re cultivating the ultimate girl gang. We want to live life like the party it is, to live together like we’re having a permanent sleepover.

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