The Finishing Touches

by Hester Browne

  I was over by his chair in an instant. His desk was clear, apart from the red tulips and some unopened post in the letter tray. Mark obviously wasn’t the sort to leave an in-box unfiled, but maybe, if he was anything like me, he sometimes dumped the unsorted work into his top drawer if he ran out of time.

  I couldn’t believe I was rooting through the drawers, yet I was. And there was the green file. Phillimore Memorial—Bills and Admin.

  Bingo.

  I shuffled through the pages of notes and letters until I found what I was looking for: the list of guests, neatly ticked for invites and ticked off again for RSVPs by Miss McGregor. She was right in the middle: Eleanor Howard, Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, and three phone numbers—two mobiles, one home.

  I jotted them down with one ear cocked toward the door for footsteps, then slid the file back in the drawer. My heart was thumping with nerves, and I felt weirdly elated. Twenty years of deliberately not thinking about how easy or hard it would be to trace my mother, and here I was, taking the first tiny steps.

  Toward what? It was like applying for a Proper Job. I might actually find out what I was—definitively. I’d be set in stone, at last. My days of tragic ballerinas and TV detectives might soon be coming to an end, and there was no guarantee that I’d like what I found. What if Hector had skedaddled because my mother’s father had come after him with a shotgun? What if she turned out to be a silly, selfish Sloane Ranger who didn’t want any reminder of her youthful mistake? What then?

  My heart fluttered. Still holding the piece of paper, I rested on the edge of Mark’s desk and gazed out of the window at the street below. It was washed with rain, and the cars glistened.

  I’d forgotten how much I missed London and its many subtle shades of gray. The pigeons, the pavements, the stone façades, the tea—a whole palette of gray, livened up with bright red splashes of buses and postboxes. I had to admit I loved it. I’d tried to prefer Edinburgh and even persuaded myself that all that granite was more elegant, but there was something about London’s cheerful grime that I secretly loved more. It was home. Someone had chosen to make this particular, elegant street my home.

  My eye was drawn by a commotion unfolding on the opposite side of the street. A small figure in a huge fur coat with blond hair was arguing furiously with someone in a uniform, next to a silver Porsche. From the way the arms were windmilling and the traffic warden was taking nervous steps backward, it could only be Anastasia. Divinity was next to her, pointing everywhere—at the car, at Anastasia, at her own head, at the sky. Even though I couldn’t hear it, I knew the language would probably make Miss Thorne’s cashmere go rigid.

  Lesson Four: Diplomatic Situations and Their Solutions, I thought, reaching for my notebook. How to handle being arrested, being overdrawn, being in court, and generally being a lady under pressure.

  I heard feet and the sound of whistling on the stairs, and I bounced off the desk just in time for Mark Montgomery to push the door open.

  He was wearing his tweedy jacket again, but this time it was accessorized with a battered brown briefcase and neon-blue cycle helmet. His thick dark hair stuck through the spaces, and he was still pink with the effort of cycling in the freezing January air. He clearly wasn’t expecting to see me.

  “Oh, er, hello,” he said, yanking off the helmet, embarrassed. “Didn’t think anyone would be up here.”

  “Sorry, I needed some quiet. To make notes. About the Academy. And the lessons. I’ve been sitting in. Didn’t have you down for a cyclist!” I said cheerfully. “I thought City types like you roared round in Maseratis and damn the congestion charge. Are you one of those responsible car-free types?”

  “Just during the week,” he said, removing his jacket. It needed patching inside; clearly he could afford a new one, so it had to be an old favorite, I reckoned. I rather liked men who clung doggedly to their favorite jackets. “I’ve got a Jaguar, but it’s forty years old, covered in dents, and I race it on weekends, so it doesn’t score many points with the hedge-fund boys. What I save on the congestion charge goes straight into the petrol tank, along with pretty much every penny I earn. If you ask me, cars are even more expensive to run than Phillimore girls.” He ruffled his hair back up and looked over, as if he was waiting for a snappy comeback. “It doesn’t even have a passenger seat, so I’m afraid I can’t offer you a lift.”

  “Shame,” I said. “I’m very good at getting out of sports cars. It’s something I learned here, you know.”

  “Again, you amaze me with this endlessly useful knowledge,” he said. “Learned anything else today?”

  “Oh, yes. Meringue swans and how easy they are to scorch if you’re not meticulous with your oven timer. Also, Anastasia has selected ‘Material Girl’ as her ringtone.”

  Mark half-smiled, half-frowned, his eyes creasing at the edges. He had what Liv called “dry” eyes—the sort that might or might not be joking, something that she found endlessly bewildering. “I never know whether they want me to laugh or not,” she would moan. I knew what she meant now. Mark had a tricky face to read, very guarded.

  “There you go; your education is complete,” he said, hanging the helmet on the back of his chair and opening his briefcase.

  “Not until I’ve added strawberry lily pads,” I said. “But that’s next week. I thought I might suggest a vodka jelly pond for the week after.”

  He snorted…with amusement? I hoped so.

  “I was going to ask you, actually,” he said, pausing to flick a silver letter opener through the first envelope. “Is there a firm of surveyors you could recommend? I suppose you must come across some, in your line of work.”

  “Sorry?” The only surveyor I’d met was the one who told me my flat had mildew and a strange smell in the bathroom that even he couldn’t explain.

  “A surveyor.” He looked at me more closely. “You know, for checking over business premises?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “No, no. Fiona deals with hiring people.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “And Fiona is?”

  Oops. Wrong job.

  “My assistant,” I fibbed quickly. “She sometimes…fills my shoes for me.”

  He seemed impressed.

  “What do you need a surveyor for?” I asked.

  “To get things moving on the house sale. Makes sense to get someone to look over it before the real estate agents come in; forewarned is forearmed and all that.” He carried on opening the envelope, and I spotted a familiar real estate agent’s logo on the back. My heart sank. He really did want to sell up.

  “Lord Phillimore’s away until the end of the month, as you know,” he went on, “but we have a regular meeting to discuss matters arising. I thought it would be less painful for him if I could put together various options, ready to go.”

  “But I thought we were going to try to come up with some ideas!” I blurted out, filling with panic. He couldn’t close the Academy yet. I hadn’t even found the missing year’s photograph, let alone any other details!

  “Betsy, apart from the fact that we just don’t have the money to carry on much longer, I’ve got to be honest with you—the whole finishing school concept…” Mark began, and I knew from the Guardian-reading expression on his face that he was going to start his “etiquette is worse than apartheid” routine again.

  I’d have preferred some time to think about this, maybe even write some key phrases on little management consultant cards, but I had no choice. I leaped in before he could get on his high horse.

  “I know! It’s out of date—but that’s the whole point. Let’s bring it up to date! I’ve been thinking about new lessons, new approaches. We really can make the Academy appeal to normal, everyday girls, as well as the usual upmarket clientele,” I said, my “confident” grin turned a bit manic round the edges. Fake it till you make it, I reminded myself. “I’ve had a brilliant idea to revolutionize it into the twenty-first century!”

  “After one day?” Mark abandoned the wryness and stared
at me with naked cynicism. “Either you really are the most genius business brain since the man who bottled water or you’re mad.”

  “No, I just know what I’d like to have been told at eighteen!” I insisted. “You’re right about social rules being outdated and snobbish—we should be tailoring everything to what girls need to know now. Take my best friend, for instance—Liv’s twenty-six, but she thinks cash machines print the money from inside and she can’t dump a man without getting engaged to him first, because she only knows how to break off an engagement, not call a halt after three dates. She’s desperate for someone to tell her how to deal with the small stuff. How to get an upgrade on a plane. How to get a date. How to play poker.”

  I could see from Mark’s dubious expression that I was losing him, so I played my financial trump card. “It’s got a much broader appeal, for a start. Think of all the girls out there who’d love to have their lives sorted out in ten easy lessons! We wouldn’t even need to hire new staff. And short courses mean higher turnover, quicker cash flow.”

  “Go on,” he said, folding his arms and looking at me expectantly.

  That was about as far as I’d got with Liv the previous evening. I swallowed and tried to look as if I wasn’t just making it up as I went along. But there was something encouraging in Mark’s expression. His dark eyebrows weren’t quite as tightly clenched as they had been a moment ago. And, I reminded myself, he was a proper, qualified financial expert. If he bought this idea, he could sell it to Miss Thorne, and I wouldn’t risk making a fool of myself.

  “Well, I hadn’t got as far as planning lessons,” I admitted, “but it wouldn’t take us long to brainstorm a timetable. What have we got to lose? We could try it for a week or two, to see if it would work, then, when we have this meeting with Lord Phillimore, we can offer him this solution as well as the sale option. Come on, you’ve got to stay open until the end of this term, just to deliver what the girls have already paid for.”

  Two weeks. That ought to give me enough time to meet Nell and snoop around, I reckoned.

  Mark sat down at the desk and steepled his hands so he could rest his chin on them and stare at me. His brown eyes were sharp, even through his glasses. He didn’t mince his words. “And you think the girls won’t mind getting an entirely different set of lessons from the ones their parents signed them up for?”

  “Do they even know what they were signed up for?” I bluffed. “Is there anything in that prospectus that actually confirms lesson plans?”

  “No,” said Mark. “And you’re presupposing that they’ve read it.”

  We looked at each other, and I tried to make my face as hard to read as his. I don’t think I managed. I was too eager.

  “Come on. ‘The Secrets of Life, in Six Weeks: Everything a Smart Girl Needs to Know, from Toxic Exes to Spanx.’ How easy would that be to market?”

  “And you’re the woman to teach this brave new syllabus?” Mark tipped his head to one side. “Because I don’t see Miss McGregor teaching a Toxic Ex class. And I don’t even know what Spanx are.”

  I blushed. “Well, I’m not saying I know everything. But I’ve been independent since I left school, and I’ve learned some useful life lessons when it comes to relationships. And I can find experts for the rest. We can hire them by the hour, instead of keeping them on the payroll.”

  Mark pressed his lips together and nodded. “And, of course, you are a business owner,” he added. “You can maybe drill some sense into them about budgets and the boring side of life.”

  I blinked, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  Mark carried on looking at me, but now there was a sort of gleam beneath the stern banking expression.

  “Miss Thorne won’t like this,” he said, but he didn’t sound disappointed. Far from it, in fact.

  “The way we have to sell it is that it’s really not so far from what the Academy was meant to be about in the first place—preparing women for life. It’s just a different sort of life these days.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

  Mark stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it, thoughtfully. “Sounds like you’ve already written the press release. OK, I don’t see why you shouldn’t give this a go. It can’t be any more disastrous than what’s going on now. But”—he looked up and the guarded expression had slipped; I saw genuine concern in his eyes, though the rest of his rugged face was still stern—“the bottom line for me is that Pelham Phillimore is a decent chap who’s been good to me, and it’s my duty as bursar, even a very part-time one, to look out for his best interest. I know you’ve got experience in turning failing businesses around, so I’m happy to defer to you in that respect, but I’ve got to think of him.”

  “I know,” I said fervently. “Me too.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, like co-conspirators, and I was convinced he was going to say, “Fine! But let’s drop the consultant routine.” He didn’t, though. He just turned his letter knife round and round.

  “Why don’t you put something down on paper tonight, and we’ll go and see the Thorne tomorrow morning,” he suggested. “She can hardly say no, if we both suggest it’s in the Academy’s best interests. It’s only for a fortnight, after all.”

  I couldn’t stop myself grinning. “Brilliant. Thanks! But,” I added, “shouldn’t you be at work? Are you taking time off for all this?”

  “Annual leave,” he replied, going back to his post. “I’m going away this weekend. Racing the car.”

  “Oh, really?” I began, but then the phone on his desk rang, and he pulled a quick apologetic grimace and answered it.

  “Mark Montgomery,” he said in a brisk, businesslike tone quite different from the one he’d just been using. I pretended I wasn’t listening, but secretly I was ticking off another box. I liked a man with a businesslike phone manner.

  I leaned back on the desk again and watched him concentrate on the call, turning a pen round and round in his fingers. OK, so Mark wasn’t a conventional fox, like Jamie, but charm wasn’t all about sexy eyes and great clothes and flirty conversation and knowing where the hottest new restaurants were before they opened…

  Mark’s face collapsed and he squeezed his nose. “Paulette, you can’t possibly know that the caller is dodgy just from the way he pronounces his name. There are lots of reasons why he might be breathing heavily. Well, a cold, perhaps? Or a medical condition?”

  He scribbled something on the back of an envelope and shoved it across the desk at me.

  I noticed with some curiosity that Mark’s nails were much rougher than those of the City boys I knew, and he had oil under two cuticles.

  He’d written COURSE ON PHONE MANNERS in very neat capital letters, underlined twice, and as I read it, he widened his eyes and drew a spiral on the side of his head.

  I nodded, and wrote COFFEE? underneath it.

  Mark gave me the thumbs-up, and I went downstairs to find some, feeling about 100 percent more positive about everything.

  Ten

  Splash out on the secret details that make you feel glamorous inside—like beautiful lingerie and a great haircut.

  Liv texted me as I was cycling back across Chelsea Bridge: Don’t forget Jamie taking us out for dinner!!!!

  As if I could forget. I’d raced through my to-do list at the Academy—speak to Miss McGregor; teach Paulette to put a caller on hold, not share her frank observations in an impromptu conference call, etc.—so I could be back at Liv’s in time for a shower, two outfit changes, and a serious session with my hair dryer. Dinners with Jamie needed a lot of preparation in order to achieve that critical “this old thing?” effect.

  The front door was ajar as I walked in, and to my horror, I could hear the sounds of an O’Hare sibling squabble in full effect. There were people in the next postcode who could hear it.

  “Don’t need any help from you!” Liv was insisting at the top of her lungs. “Coming here, patronizing me like that! Betsy and I are managing fine…”r />
  Jamie retorted something I didn’t catch, to which Liv roared, “Jaaaaaamie, that is so out of order!”

  If Liv’s besotted older man fan club ever saw her rowing with Jamie, I thought, they’d wonder how the Face of the Upper East Side could have the Voice of EastEnders.

  While they were still bickering (about what? I couldn’t quite make it out even though my ears were twisting round like radar dishes), I pushed my cycle helmet off and stared frantically into the hall mirror, trying to do what damage control I could. My hair was flat on the top of my head and frizzy underneath—I knew from experience that my industrial-strength serum wore off in about five minutes, at which point I’d look like something from the more exotic Toy classes at the Crufts dog show. Added to that, my nose had gone red with cold and my freckles were showing through my end-of-the-day makeup.

  Oh, God, I thought. After my puffy face at the memorial service, I’d wanted to make a better impression this time round. I’d planned the perfect outfit and everything, and now he was going to think I’d turned into a troll.

  I yanked at my hair with a comb and wondered if I had time to sneak upstairs and down again before they reached the yelling stage, but before I could even get my red lipstick twisted up, the kitchen door flew open and Liv rushed out, followed by Jamie.

  “I will show you the bloody stupid bloody note he left me—oh, Bets, you’re back,” said Liv, pulling up short. Jamie pulled up behind her, nearly knocking her over. Together, they made a ridiculously attractive jumble of long legs and high cheekbones. Genetics, I thought, was all right for some.

  “Hey, Betsy!” said Jamie with a smile that lit up his handsome face. “Lovely to see you again so soon!”

  “Hargh,” I said, as my brain went blank.

  Jamie pushed Liv out of the way—he was the only man who didn’t treat her like a china doll—and opened his arms, clasping me in a big hug.

  “You did a great job at that memorial,” he went on as my nose went into his shoulder. “I didn’t have time to tell you properly.” Behind him, I could see Liv pulling a “yeah, yeah” face, but I wasn’t really concentrating. I was wallowing in Jamie’s sexy, expensive cologne—a sort of limey, fresh smell—and his soft green shirt and the skin on the side of his neck, of which I had a great view. I could see where he’d had his hair cut recently, because there was a tiny line of paler skin next to the winter tan.