The Little Lady Agency

by Hester Browne

  I came to a stunned halt, amazed at my own eloquence. Really, the words were tripping off my tongue. OK, so this was the reasoning I’d used to convince myself that Mrs McKinnon was a legitimate quasi-social worker for the lonely and unpartnered. Still, if I found it convincing, Roger ought to.

  ‘And what’s it called, this agency of yours?’ asked Nelson in an unnecessarily arch manner. ‘I forget.’

  I gave him my Grade One Death stare. But Roger was agog, so I couldn’t back down now.

  ‘Er . . .’ My eyes raced round the room in search of inspiration. The Rosebud Agency? My Girl Friday?

  On the bookshelf I spotted a picture of my parents at Allegra’s wedding. Daddy was looking suave in his morning suit, beaming broadly, and my mother was looking Mogadoned in pistachio chiffon – as well she might, having just organised dinner for four hundred and fifty. All Daddy did was write the cheque, and he still made the most outrageously arrogant speech saying how glad he was to have got one daughter off his hands; his little girl was now someone else’s little lady.

  ‘It’s called the Little Lady Agency,’ I said, noticing for the first time how bizarre my mother’s face looked: wrinkled in some areas and Botoxed-out in others. Like an aerial view of crop-rotation fields.

  I will never let a man take me for granted, I vowed to myself. If I’m going to be someone’s little lady, they can appreciate me properly, or bloody well pay for it.

  ‘Really? Fantastic,’ said Roger, and I could have sworn his face lit up for the first time ever.

  Nelson’s head swung round. ‘What?’ he said, caught off guard.

  ‘That’s the perfect solution!’ Roger stirred himself sufficiently to dig out a tiny dog-eared diary from his back pocket. ‘I don’t want the palaver of a girlfriend, for heaven’s sake. I’m quite happy as I am. But if it gets my mother off my case . . . It’s a fortnight on Saturday. Out in Hereford. Can you make it?’

  ‘I’ll have to check with the appointments book at work,’ I lied. Did I want to do this? It was all very well winding Roger up, but . . .

  ‘Melissa’s agency is terribly exclusive,’ said Nelson, helpfully. ‘And her consultancy fees are simply horrendous.’ He was using the Ghastly Fulham Voice he habitually adopted to take the piss out of my school friends. ‘You might not want to book her when you hear how much she costs.’ He glanced up at me to see if I’d spotted the lifeline he’d thrown me – very big of him, I didn’t think.

  But Roger looked so relieved I wasn’t sure I could bear to let him down. It would be helping him out, I argued to myself; if his mother got off his case, he might be less stressed all round, and that might make him more relaxed with girls.

  I didn’t believe the bit about not wanting a girlfriend. It sounded like justification to me. Like men who claim they wouldn’t give houseroom to a Picasso because the responsibility would be too dreadful and, besides, it wouldn’t match the decor.

  ‘God, the money doesn’t matter,’ he spluttered. ‘I don’t care what it costs.’

  Nelson raised his eyebrows at me. Roger wasn’t short of a bob or two, rented flat or not. His mother’s family were big in cider and, quite apart from anything else, he spent nothing whatsoever on entertaining, cars, girlfriends, personal-hygiene products, drinking or drugs. Maybe he enjoyed living in squalor. Maybe he had a secret life working as a socialist activist.

  They were both looking at me now.

  ‘So?’ asked Nelson in a funny voice. ‘How much does an evening with Melissa Romney-Jones cost?’

  I thought quickly. What would I charge to make a whole new outfit for someone?

  Three hundred quid. No, not enough. Roger’s personality was much harder work to alter and he was less conversational than my dress-making dummy.

  Five hundred quid? Or was that taking advantage?

  I was unpleasantly reminded of that Winston Churchill quote, the one about knowing what a woman was and just haggling over her price. Oh dear.

  I was sorely tempted to say I’d do it for nothing, just to salve my conscience. After all, Roger was a friend, and I’d spent the last few years trying to help the rest of Nelson’s mates to hone their social skills for free – editing their wardrobes, dragging them to proper hairdressers, explaining about PMT, and so on.

  But then I thought of the ten thousand pounds I owed Daddy. If I didn’t get that money paid back, he’d hold it over me for ever. And I didn’t want to be his little girl any more, I wanted to show him that you didn’t have to be brainless to be charming, and you didn’t have to be a blue-stocking to be smart.

  And I wanted to do it before Emery’s wedding, so I could march in there with my head held high.

  ‘The whole-day rate is six hundred pounds,’ I heard myself say. ‘And there’s usually a surcharge for weekends, plus travel expenses and so on.’

  Nelson’s face! He looked as if he was in a wind tunnel.

  Then I got a grip on myself. ‘But since it’s you, Roger, I’m sure I can arrange something around the eight-hundred-pound mark.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, sounding unusually brisk. ‘Just persuade my mother that I’m perfectly capable of finding my own bit of stuff, and it’s money well spent.’

  ‘And that is all that’s on offer, Roger,’ said Nelson, taking a Fair Trade Jaffa Cake to dunk in his tea. I could hear he was trying to be light, but there was a definite edge to his voice. He often used that tone when trying to explain pre-tax allowances to me. ‘Mel’s just going to pretend to be your girlfriend for that weekend.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, looking serious. ‘Any more dates and you’ll have to pay for them. Up to but not including our wedding.’

  Nelson almost choked on his Jaffa Cake.

  Roger was smiling, though. Roger Trumpet was smiling, and, what do you know, it kind of suited him.

  Mind you, I thought, it’ll suit him better once I’ve persuaded him to get his teeth scaled.

  8

  Roger Trumpet’s party went exceedingly well, if I say so myself. It didn’t take much doing either. Propriety reigned in the Trumpet manor house, devoted girlfriend or not, so I was spared the horrors of Roger’s morning toilette; I just had to remember to make my own bed very tightly in the morning so it looked as if I hadn’t slept in it, and leave a lipstick behind his dressing table.

  The funny thing was that once I was all dressed up in my Honey stockings and heels (which Roger liked a bit too much), a weird sort of objectivity took over. I was there to do a job, and seeing Roger through Honey’s eyes instead of Melissa’s made that easy. I surprised myself by spotting his good points – his dry wit, his broad shoulders – and he really did bloom when I told him about them in no uncertain terms. I got quite emphatic on the topic, in fact, since Roger was paying me for my expertise, and, more to the point, there was no way he could get the wrong idea.

  I was wrong about one thing, though: Roger really didn’t want a girlfriend. Which was rather unfortunate, as I’d succeeding in inflaming several other female guests over tea with judicious hints about his devilish charm, not to mention his considerable personal worth and the tragic hereditary disease that gave him such terrible breath.

  ‘I’m perfectly happy as I am, Melissa,’ he said to me while we were perched in a window seat during the birthday party, giving the impression, from a distance, that we were engaged in a romantic tête-à-tête. ‘I know it’s some kind of manic compulsion for you womenfolk to get everyone hooked up, but I like my own company. I just need someone to take to these shindigs once in a while, and I don’t think it’s fair to keep a girl hanging around for an annual Christmas dinner at home and the occasional wedding. It’d be like having a dog and only walking it on my birthday.’

  ‘What a delightful analogy,’ I replied, keeping my nose well down my champagne flute. Liberal applications of Acqua di Parma don’t disguise all aromas, alas. That said, Roger’s overnight transformation was pretty astonishing. Obviously the grooming and hygiene boot camp that I’d put the
man through beforehand helped, but there was a new confidence about him – the confidence, perhaps, of getting one over on his dragon of a mother at last, or of knowing he had a dry wit and broad shoulders.

  ‘Frankly, your agency is a genius idea,’ he continued. ‘Do you mind if I pass on your details to friends? I know of at least two who’d be most interested in renting a smart girlfriend. And they’re all perfect gentlemen, you know. There’d be no funny business.’

  ‘Er, fantastic,’ I said, stunned. To be honest, I hadn’t actually thought beyond the end of this date – a date I’d really only agreed to go on in order to wind up Nelson. Was this something I could actually do?

  Then I heard my voice say, ‘I’m, um, having some new cards made up, so can I send them on next week?’

  ‘Splendid!’ He was sufficiently emboldened to punch me matily on the arm.

  ‘Um, Roger,’ I added, struck by the sudden paralysing thought of what my father would say, should this ever get back to him, ‘if you speak to your friends, do you mind terribly if you don’t give them my name? It helps everyone all round if the Little Lady is anonymous.’

  ‘I see!’ he exclaimed, tapping his nose delightedly. ‘Don’t want to spot the same rental dog being walked by one’s mates, eh?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  Then the Hon. Danae Courtley-Knowles hove into view with a very determined look in her eye, and insisted on Roger giving her a guided tour of the knot garden; that was the last I saw of him for the evening, although I did meet some very interesting single young men – while maintaining a vague air of distress about my missing cher ami.

  Lady Trumpet was delighted by this dramatic turnaround in Roger’s romantic life, and by the time I made my farewells, we were quite chummy. I had to remember to keep biting my lip and casting worried glances behind her head, to sow the seeds for mine and Roger’s sorrowful parting, but I think that only increased her joy, knowing that her malodorous son was the cause of feminine turmoil.

  I don’t know how Roger coped with the subsequent onslaught of female attention, but, to be honest, that was overtime, and if he wanted me to sort it out, I’d have to invoice him.

  I thought about the feasibility of the Little Lady Agency all the way back to London, speeding down the M40 with an invigorating sense of purpose. And the more I stretched the idea around in my mind, the more reasonable it started to seem. It would be less an escort agency, more a bridging service for men without girlfriends in their lives to sort them out. I could offer a sort of spring-cleaning for men like Roger, who’d benefited immeasurably from a quick tidy-up.

  I’d have to set out on a very businesslike footing right from the start, though, I thought firmly. But if ridiculous airheads could start up businesses selling ethnic bags and hand-painted light bulbs on Northcote Road, there was absolutely no reason why I couldn’t make a success of a proper service. If the worst came to the worst, I could turn it into a temp agency.

  A very stringent one, mind you. Any temps would have to meet my standards.

  By the time I was crawling through the outskirts of London, I’d got it planned in my head, right down to the headed notepaper. But I reined in my wilder fantasies of offices and staff; it would be more prudent to start off very simply, and see how it went. All I’d need would be business cards, some stationery, a couple of small ads in the right sort of magazine, a new phone and – since working from home was out of the question – somewhere stylish and discreet to hold meetings. All this was still going to cost money, though.

  By the time I was parallel-parking outside the house, I was wrestling bravely with the dilemma of how I’d raise the capital to get started.

  I didn’t have any emergency money left – my savings had long gone on paying off my student loan, and the last few drops on my wig. I couldn’t borrow any money from my family, obviously, and didn’t want to get a loan from Nelson. If this project was going to be about earning back my independence, I couldn’t start with another loan, even from an old friend like him. So, with a very, very heavy heart I decided to put my Subaru in Autocar. In the end, it was harder to fix a price for it than it was to fix a price for myself.

  Fortunately, a man called Ed came round the very evening that it was in the small ads, and he snapped my hand off.

  God, how it hurt.

  I couldn’t watch as he drove off, but I knew it was going to a good home; Ed seemed to know Nelson from somewhere, and Nelson’s friends were all terribly nice. But even the promise that I could take cabs everywhere and bill them to my company didn’t ease the stab of loss I felt as my lovely green Subaru – and my independence – rounded the corner in a throaty roar and disappeared.

  ‘I’m going to make so much money I can track you down and buy you back,’ I muttered, my hands balled into fists. I couldn’t allow myself to contemplate the alternative.

  I think Nelson overheard me, but he said nothing and merely proffered a chocolate biscuit. He was already at the limits of his patience in humouring me about the agency in the first place. Actually selling my car to go ahead with it seemed to have stunned him into temporary silence.

  I thought long and hard about how to phrase the small ad for the agency, so as not to attract the wrong sort of interest. Or, indeed, run over into a more expensive box size. In the end, it read: Gentlemen! No Little Lady in Your Life? Call the Little Lady Agency: everything organised, from your home to your wardrobe, your social life to you. No funny business or laundry’, followed by my new mobile phone number and an email address.

  I reckoned that said enough. I didn’t want to be too explicit, and I could always weed out time-wasters over the phone. Besides, I was still exploring the legal aspects of what I was doing.

  I decided to keep my Honey wig – and personality – for agency purposes. As far as I could see, the work would divide into two broad categories: organisation and freelance girlfriending. My own Melissa personality was fine for the organisation work, but I decided glumly that no one would pay to take Melissa out for dinner, so keeping Honey was best for everyone. I’d be able to salve my conscience by ‘being’ someone different, and the client would get a more flirty, better value companion who would have no qualms about setting her limits and sticking to them.

  So, in that sense, Mrs McKinnon had been right about some things. Not many things, mind you. Nelson insisted that I resign from the Charming Company over the phone, rather than put anything in writing – thank God I hadn’t had time to return my signed contract.

  It was not an easy conversation.

  ‘You astonish me,’ he said, as I put the phone down with a shaking hand, my ears still ringing with Mrs McKinnon’s acute froideur. ‘You never thought at any point that it might end up in the papers? “Rogue MP’s Daughter in Top Totty Escort Scandal”? Busty Melissa says, “I had him for dinner”?’

  I shook my head woefully. ‘No. God. It would have been horrible, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And you think that your new little venture won’t?’ he added.

  ‘There is nothing in my new little venture to be scandalous,’ I insisted. ‘Guide’s honour.’

  He snorted, but had the grace to leave it at that.

  In stark contrast, Gabi was wildly enthusiastic about my new career, but then she was a stalwart friend and didn’t know about the Mrs McKinnon fiasco. Nelson had agreed it should remain our never-to-be-mentioned-again secret.

  I told Gabi everything else, though. She was particularly interested in the wig and insisted on trying it on herself when she came round to pick up her T-shirt. It made her look like a very small drag queen. The wig, not the T-shirt, I hasten to add.

  ‘I hope this is going to make you realise what a fox you are,’ she said reprovingly, when I finally persuaded her to take it off.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Demonstrating your abilities and charm to a parade of appreciative, well-to-do men.’

  ‘Men who need help in the first place,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s hardly sex
y, is it?’

  ‘Aren’t all your boyfriends like that?’

  I ignored the barb, though it stung. ‘Anyway, I’m off romance for a while. It’s all going to be purely professional.’

  Gabi gave me a hard look. ‘Just don’t do your usual trick,’ she warned.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Smartening slobby men up to their full potential then letting some other cow run off with them.’ Obviously she could see from my abrupt blinking that she’d struck a nerve, because her expression softened and she asked quickly, ‘Are you going to be doing party-planning? Like this party you’ve done for Dean & Daniels? You’re so good at stuff like that. You could make a fortune.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, somewhat mollified. ‘I’ll do anything that comes up, really.’

  Nelson sniggered from the sofa.

  Gabi hid a smirk. ‘Well, I’ve been telling everyone in the office what a great job you did. I don’t want Carolyn passing off all that hard work as her own.’

  I tucked in the tissue paper round her T-shirt. ‘So what are they like?’ I asked. ‘Are you all-American now? Are there water coolers and stress counsellors everywhere?’

  Gabi pulled a face. ‘Something like that. They’ve sent over a new office manager and some American agents and their American assistants. I don’t even have a desk any more. They want us to work in podular mode for greater company cohesion.’

  I looked over at Nelson for clarification.

  He looked blankly back. ‘No idea.’

  ‘But are they nice people?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not really.’ Gabi’s final shreds of tact gave way under the full force of what I sensed was personal outrage. ‘Jonathan Riley’ – she hooked her fingers into bunny rabbit ears for greater emphasis – ‘or “Doctor No No No” as we like to call him, makes Quentin look like, like . . . Prince Charles. I’ve seen more compassionate traffic wardens. He’s the Executive Relocation Co-Ordinator.’