The Finishing Touches

by Browne, Hester

  “The Eagle is landing!” yelled Paulette. “I said: The. Eagle. Has. Landed!” Unfortunately, she was standing by an open window, right above us, so not only did I hear her without answering the phone, but so did Imogen, arriving with Clemmy.

  Imogen was staring at the pram with a quizzical expression on her face, and I suddenly realized that I had to get this right, or else it would look very, very bad. It made perfect sense to me, because it was how I’d learned, but to an outsider…

  Eek.

  “Stay there,” I muttered to Divinity and Clemmy, parking the pram next to them.

  “Isn’t that taking retro glamour a bit far?” asked Imogen, getting her notebook out. “Preparing them for a life of looking glamorous while child rearing?”

  “No, they’re learning to walk in high heels,” I said confidently. “A useful skill that takes practice. Some people recommend using shopping trolleys in supermarkets, but that’s rather public, I think, whereas this not only balances you better but gives the biceps a workout too.”

  “But walking in high heels?” said Imogen, not sounding totally convinced. “Isn’t that just walking with a book on your head by any other name?”

  “Not really. Heels are a fact of life, but no one tells you that walking in them is a whole other skill. I think there are lots of skills that our generation isn’t taught anymore but we’re still expected to know somehow,” I said. “And when we don’t know how to walk in heels, or write a letter of condolence, we feel stupid, when all it takes is someone telling you how. It sums up what we’re trying to do here—filling in the blanks like a stylish godmother might. I had a very graceful, inspirational role model, growing up, and I’m really just trying to teach the girls what she taught me, starting with this very pram. There’s something about being able to carry off a pair of heels that makes men take you very seriously.”

  I had no idea where the words came from, but they streamed out effortlessly, and to my huge relief I saw Imogen nod.

  “That is so true,” she said. “I haven’t worn heels since I nearly broke my ankle at fifteen on a pair of wedges.”

  “It’s just balance, Imogen,” I said, then added mock-seriously, “Would you like a go on the Pram of Deportment?”

  She hesitated, with a longing look at my shiny ruby stilettos. “You’re saying it’s easy?”

  “Absolutely! Divinity, do you want to demonstrate?” I asked. Well, not asked, really.

  Dutifully, Divinity braced herself and lurched down the path.

  “Ohmigod, it’s getting away!” she shrieked. “I’m going to fall over—”

  “Head up!” I shouted. “Keep your weight back!”

  “Ooooooh!” Divinity’s legs were buckling like Bambi’s, but she kept going, gripping the handle for dear life. After a scary pause, Imogen let out a shriek of laughter and followed her up the path, roaring encouragement.

  “That’s amazing!” Divinity gasped. “I want to go again. But quicker!”

  “Give Clemmy a go,” I said in my best pretend-management-consultant voice, then turned to Imogen with a bright smile, trying to visualize exactly what I wanted to appear in the paper.

  Not just a glowing new Academy. I wanted my mother to see what a smart lady I’d turned into, with or without the Academy’s help.

  “And she ended up staying for tea,” I told Liv as we walked back from the supermarket, carrying the week’s shopping. “I took the high-heels class up the stairs, over the polished hall tiles, and off-road on the grass, so we covered all hazards. I put music on so we could dance. By the end we were like something out of a Girls Aloud video.”

  “Wow. Did you get a deposit check off of this Imogen bird?” said Liv.

  “No, but she’s coming along to the Open Day,” I said happily. “She wants to see your class on smartening up a guy on a date without him realizing.”

  Liv bent to scoop the mail off the mat, while I stepped past her into the kitchen.

  “I thought we could use Jamie and Mark as examples!” I yelled, getting the biscuits out. “You might have to desmarten Jamie a bit first.”

  There was no response from the hall.

  “Liv?” I paused. “Liv, if that’s a big bill, just open it right now, OK? Don’t try to hide it. It’s not going away.”

  Still nothing.

  I made the tea and went to see what was up.

  Liv was standing stock-still in the hallway. There were three opened letters on the table, but it was the postcard in her hand that seemed to be causing the problem. Tears were streaming down her lovely face, and when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. She did it twice, and just when I thought my hearing had gone, she managed a horrible sob, like a crow.

  “What is it?” I said, alarmed.

  “My subscriptions have all run out!” she howled. “Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Red—all on the same day! And the cable TV package has been cut off too!” She hiccupped in distress and pointed at the letter that I now saw Erin had forwarded from her new address. “I couldn’t work out why there were only five channels on the telly last night…And now, like I didn’t have enough on my plate, bloody Dad’s telling me not to worry. I wasn’t until he told me not to! Now I know he’s really in some kind of tro-hu-hu-ouble!”

  I grabbed the postcard out of her hands.

  It was from Ken. Just to say I’m thinking of you, princess, and not to worry about your old dad. Don’t tell your mother where I am, or the police. Jamie will give you anything you need. Love, Dad xx

  I turned it over. It had a flamenco dancer on it but no location, which I assumed was Ken’s cunning idea of not revealing his whereabouts to anyone who couldn’t read a postmark.

  “Liv, don’t,” I said. “He’ll roll up in a few months’ time, and it’ll turn out he’s bought a casino or something.” I rubbed her heaving shoulders. “You don’t need Sky TV, and you can read the magazines in the hairdresser. Come on, you’re coping fine on your own!”

  Liv’s reply was salty and lost in my hair. Then she pulled herself away and said, with her huge, wounded puppy eyes glistening with tears, “I hate men. They’re all thoughtless, selfish bastards. Did you know Finn was married? I found that out today—he came into Igor’s with his wife, and he wouldn’t even look at me! I felt so stupid! I wish I were more like you.” She hiccupped. “You don’t let yourself get taken for a ride by anyone. You always end up coping fine.”

  I held her at arm’s length. “Olivia. Look at me. You’re well out of it with Finn. And don’t worry about Ken—he’s more than capable of getting himself out of whatever fix he’s in. And you’re doing fine!”

  “Yeah, right…” She looked wobbly, and her eyes slid sideways to the phone and her massive address book. I knew what she was thinking, and it involved a lot of cocktails paid for by someone else.

  “Stop right there—we’re staying in tonight,” I said, getting into my Independent Woman stride. “We’ll put a film on, I’ll make a shepherd’s pie and a nice pot of tea, and we can do intensive pedicures with that mad cheese-grater thing you got in America.”

  Liv narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t some kind of test run for a lesson, is it?”

  “No! ’Course not!” I looked affronted. “It’s you and me time. No Academy, no budget lectures, no lecture about work—just lots of compliments about how great we both are. And chocolates. And a crap film with a happy ending that doesn’t involve getting married in any shape or form.”

  She sniffed. “Can we watch Titanic again? All the blokes drown in that.”

  “Good choice,” I said. “I’ll get the tea.”

  We were sitting on the sofa, halfway down the second bottle of wine and twenty minutes into Titanic, when Jamie let himself in.

  “Hang on, I think there must be a time shift going on here,” he said, and pretended to back out and in again.

  “What?” demanded Liv. She couldn’t turn her head all the way, thanks to her aspirin face mask.

  “You two. It’s like steppin
g back into our house ten years ago. Titanic, face packs, cheap wine…Anyway, I’m delighted you’re putting so much effort into our dinner date, Betsy, but you’ll have to hurry up. I’ve booked a table for eight, and I’d like a cocktail first.” He held up a hand. “No jokes, please. Thank you.”

  “What?” My heart sank. In the flurry of work, I’d forgotten all about agreeing to have dinner with Jamie. “Was that tonight? Did we actually make a date? In our diaries?”

  I knew I sounded as if I were talking about a business meeting, but I couldn’t stop myself. I turned to Liv as another thought dawned on me. “Were you supposed to be out this evening?”

  “No,” she said. “Oh, yes, I was going to do a shift. But then Igor had one of his strange turns this morning and decided he’d be holding his annual séance in the cellar, so we’re shut.”

  “It’s fine,” said Jamie. “Just wash off whatever you’ve got on your face, and we’ll go in ten.”

  “Um…” Which was worse manners—blowing off an unconfirmed date or abandoning a distressed friend? Franny’s notebook probably wouldn’t help.

  I looked at Liv, who glared through her peeling aspirin mask and said, “Mates before men. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”

  I looked back at Jamie and thanked God that I’d let Liv do the face mask while I stuck to smearing my feet with olive oil and plastic wrap. He said nothing but raised an eyebrow, which made my stomach flip.

  “Well, the thing is, Jamie, I’d love to go out, but Liv’s had some…bad news, and I thought—”

  “I slipped your mind. Betsy, I’m hurt.”

  “Girls’ night in, wasn’t it?” demanded Liv, rapping the remote against the sofa. “We don’t need men to take us out for dinner, wasn’t it?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.” She reached out for the bottle and refilled her glass.

  “You can join us, Jamie?” I offered, feeling horribly torn. It was easy to say “no, I need to be with Liv,” but I felt a weird sense of disappointment—with myself. “I’ve made shepherd’s pie. With lots of tomato sauce and peas?”

  “No!” Liv turned up the television. “Not unless he’s going to put on a face pack and talk about how unreliable men are.”

  I tilted my head toward Jamie, who widened his eyes at his sister’s uncharacteristic bolshiness. She couldn’t see the private look going back and forth between us; it was making my skin scorch under my clothes.

  “No, sorry. I can’t watch Titanic; it’ll make my testosterone dry up,” said Jamie. “I’ll just have to find another dinner date. No big deal; I just thought you might be at a loose end.”

  He turned to go, and suddenly I found myself leaping to my feet and squelching across the room in my plastic wrap.

  “Hang on!” I gasped, and caught up with him by the door. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said under my breath. “I didn’t mean to blow you off, but this came today.” I showed him the postcard, which Liv had jammed angrily behind the telephone. “And it turns out that her last admirer has just got married to someone else. If he wasn’t married to her before.”

  Jamie’s face darkened as he read the card, and he looked as if he were about to say something, but then changed his mind.

  “Bloody Ken. I suppose I’ll just have to sort it out, like I always do,” he said. “’Course I don’t have a proper job, which makes it so much easier.” He tapped the card against his hand. “You’re sure you can’t just leave her to Leo and come out? She’d be happy enough.”

  “Mates before men,” I said apologetically. “Honor before thieves, et cetera.”

  “Are you ever going to come out for dinner with me?” he asked, crossing his arms. “I don’t want to know what your next excuse is going to be. A superhero secret identity? A hermaphrodite appendage?”

  I laughed. “No! No, I’m just…”

  Our eyes locked for a moment or two, and I almost told him the truth: that I was too scared of it going wrong.

  Jamie tipped his head inquiringly.

  “It’s the scene where she pretends to do Irish dancing!” roared Liv from the sitting room. “Come and see the pretend Irish people!”

  “What were you going to say there?” he said softly. “Go on.”

  I let his gray eyes search my face, but I couldn’t admit it. I almost preferred this tingling flirtation, imagining what it could be like, to actually being there and it maybe going wrong or falling short of my years of imagining. At least this way there would always be a dinner on offer.

  He’d be going back to Manhattan soon. I was going back to Edinburgh. It would fizzle out. He’d move on; I…wouldn’t.

  “Betsy?” he said, and pretended to check his watch. “My other dinner dates are stacking up like planes at Heathrow—are you coming out or not?”

  He was joking, I think, but it made me decide.

  “I have to get back to the ship,” I apologized.

  “Another night?” he said casually. “You’re here for a while now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, let’s do it another night.”

  We smiled nervously at each other.

  “Betsy!” yelled Liv. “I know you’re both talking about me, but I need you on this sofa now!”

  Jamie raised a finger. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said. “The dinner, not the sofa.”

  “OK,” I said, and felt a shiver run across my skin.

  Twenty-one

  Never ask a man his star sign, his salary, or his age.

  Friday’s field trip was supposed to be the National Gallery, but instead we went to Selfridges with Miss O’Hare, personal style teacher, to investigate “classic but creative interview outfits.” I had to explain to Divinity that these were outfits for attending job interviews, as opposed to interviews you might conduct before acquiring a new swimming pool or nose.

  “It’s always best to shop with someone who doesn’t know you,” I explained as we marshaled them outside Halfmoon Street like ducklings in their big coats and shades. “They don’t have the same hang-ups as you do, and they’ll make you try new things.”

  “Absolutely,” said Liv, nodding. She’d dressed the part in a fashionable jumble of big necklaces and layers that I wouldn’t know where to start assembling. “Now remember, we’re looking for classic pieces—that perfect black skirt we talked about and the Versatile White Shirt—but with twists. So, you’ve all got to find a handbag that sums you up, just so they know you’re not a robot, OK? Prize for the best shoes under fifty quid.”

  I’d thought styling the girls would be a logical extension of Liv’s online shopping fix, with the bonus of actually drilling some useful fashion advice into them. Liv and Ken’s credit card had been on first-name terms with all the best in-store shoppers in London, and we were soon ensconced in the biggest personal shopping suite while Liv marched round the store, pulling various Jackie O suits and crisp pinafores off the rails and steering the girls away from glitz and toward investment tailoring. We then had to try on our finds while Liv stood on a chair and critiqued us, starting with me.

  She didn’t hold back.

  “Now do you see what I mean about how pretty Miss Cooper looks when she colors herself in?” Liv said when I pulled back the curtain in the clothes she’d picked out for my own “creative interview” Open Day outfit: viz, a silky Miu Miu skirt printed with huge blue cornflowers teamed with a bracelet-sleeved cardigan. “See how the blue makes her hair shine and her eyes pop?”

  “What do you mean, pop?” I demanded. “Like a fish?”

  Liv ignored me. “And see how we’ve emphasized her waist, with the patent-leather belt? Clemmy, put Anastasia’s belt over that jacket of yours—a thinner belt’s more flattering…There! You see? Gorgeous!”

  “Your waist’s really tiny,” said Clemmy with a covetous sigh. “Lucky you.”

  Liv had charmed Clemmy out of her usual grays and blacks, and now the transformed Clementine was sitting on a footstool in a tomato-red dress that made her
skin adorably creamy. Liv had twisted her dark hair up in a neat chignon to demonstrate necklines, and the result was a Clemmy-on-her-way-to-Ascot, not Glastonbury. She was sitting with her knees and ankles together, and Miss McGregor wasn’t even in sight.

  “Write this down,” said Liv. “Thin belts for thick waists, thick belts for thin ones. Betsy, stop looking for problems in that mirror—you look great.”

  “You don’t think this blue clashes with my hair?” I asked doubtfully. Black might have been boring, but at least it wasn’t competing with the riot of color that was my red hair and green eyes. My notebooks had always said three colors maximum per outfit, and red hair counts as one.

  “No,” said Liv.

  I twisted round. “You don’t think the belt just makes my bum look bigger?”

  “No,” said Liv. “Shut up.”

  I had to admit it, Liv knew what suited me better than I did. I would never have bought such a strikingly printed skirt—I mean, it didn’t go with a thing I owned—but she somehow produced the pointy-toed shoes and then fiddled with my hair until it was a whole outfit, and I looked so amazingly fresh and bright in the mirror that I hardly recognized myself. I wasn’t blending in, or looking discreet. I was me, but at the same time not.

  I tried to pinpoint what it was that was so weird, then it struck me: I looked like I used to imagine I would when as a little girl I daydreamed about being twenty-something. Elegant, grown up, with shoes that meant business.

  “Buy it,” urged Liv. “Buy it and wear it for the Open Day. Go on, you need a new outfit.”

  I started to protest that I didn’t need any new clothes, but something stopped me.

  I wanted to be this person—bright and colorful and confident.

  Maybe it was the gorgeous swish of the skirt. Maybe it was the growing camaraderie between me and the girls and the sense that maybe I could pull the Academy through into the twenty-first century after all. Maybe it was the something bubbling between me and Jamie.