The Finishing Touches (18 page)

And I ought to do it before someone like Adele decided to winkle it out of him. She was the
last
person I wanted to hear anything like that from.

“We must get together and have a chat about Pelham,” she gushed. “I’m dying to give him a thank-you present to let him know what a special weekend I had, and I’m sure you can give me some wonderful hints as to what his secret weaknesses are. But I mustn’t keep you from your class! Toodles, darling!” With that, she pressed her fingertips against her lips, waved them at me, and shimmered off.

I blinked to recover myself, but I was trembling. I pulled my sleeves down and hoped Adele’s words hadn’t traveled. Stupid cow.

“I’m totally going to start saying ‘Toodles, darling,’” said Divinity admiringly as I walked in, and I knew they’d heard everything.

Igor’s, where Liv spent four
shifts a week uncorking wine and fending off proposals, was technically called the Soho Typesetters and Darkroom Association, but it had been years since anyone had actually called it that. The new crowd of edgy rich kids and media types who frequented its murky booths referred to it as Igor’s, and the old guard of artists and semiprofessional drunks who knew the full name were too addled to remember what order it went in anyway.

It was one of those bars that was always cropping up in 10 Places You’re Not Cool Enough to Know About lists, because you had to have been there before, sober, just to be able to find it. For a start, it wasn’t anywhere near Soho. Igor’s was practically in Westminster, down a side street near the Thames, and I walked past the plain black door at least twice every time. Inside wasn’t much better: like all good dives, it looked signifi
cantly better after half a bottle of wine at eight o’clock than it did during daylight hours, but Igor’s had a passionate following, and if you could get in, you were guaranteed a good time and at least three globs of juicy gossip.

Liv had got her bar job there because Igor was an old drinking buddy of Ken’s. Ken knew everyone, and so did Liv, which gave her the ideal lack of concern when shenanigans took place under her nose. As I kept telling her, Liv could easily have been running the place if she had wanted to: the other bar staff were gorgeously vacant Chelsea girls, and she was the only one who could understand what Igor was saying through his thick Glaswegian accent. The fact that she couldn’t summon up the energy to demand a promotion was down partly to her easygoing nature and partly to the pleasantly half-asleep atmosphere that pervaded the place like a mild anesthetic.

When I shoved open the door at half past five, Liv was behind the oak bar, drying glasses like a patient angel, while Igor himself waved his beringed hands around and gabbled in tongues.

“I know!” she was saying. “Oh dear. I know! Really?
Dame
Judi Dench? Wow. Betsy!” She made a weird pantomime of pointing into the furthest booth, the one usually reserved for VIPs and PRs cutting deals with one another.

I assumed she meant that Nell Howard had arrived and been whisked into the most private seat in the house. “Thanks!” I mouthed.

“Barg,” grunted Igor. “Snot tae scunner, barg, Olivia!”

“Mm,” she said, nodding meaningfully.

I swallowed and picked my way around the tables, trying to ignore the butterflies rising in my stomach.

I spotted Nell Howard before she spotted me, when the top of a feathery headpiece bounced over the wooden partition. I could see a petrol-blue patent-leather boot too, sticking out
as she crossed her legs, breaking about three Academy rules in one go. She obviously wasn’t one of the beige princesses, like Adele, and it made me warm to her even more.

She popped her head round the booth. It really did take a certain personality to turn a hair feather into daywear, I thought, impressed. She was wearing a long black sweater dress, with a big jeweled belt, and the boots were perfect.

“Darling!
Here
you
are
!” she cried conspiratorially. “What an extraordinary place—I love it! Love it! I had an old date who used to come here, passed out in those very lavatories, if I remember correctly, with the Secretary of State for Wales’s girlfriend…”

Most people had a story like that about Igor’s. Nell looked the type to have a few books’ full, though.

Liv appeared out of nowhere with a tray. “Gin and tonic for you, and one for you too. And nuts, courtesy of the management.” She set the huge tumblers in front of us. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Thank you, darling,” said Nell, flashing her a brilliant smile. “Perfect!”

I hadn’t actually ordered anything and was about to tell Liv that I really only wanted a cup of tea, then decided that when it came to drinks, she probably knew best. I needed some Dutch courage.

“Thanks,” I said, and she crossed her fingers at me and retreated to the nearest bit of the bar, where she started polishing more glasses in a too-casual fashion.

“So, without further ado, I found you this,” said Nell, reaching into her handbag. “Thought I should let you have it, after leaving you dangling like that at the memorial, with just half a tale told, then buggering off without a backward glance. It’s a piccy of that year above mine. It’s the only one I could find with everyone present.”

She slid an old photograph across the table. I picked it up eagerly, and Nell sank her nose into the gin and tonic, watching my reactions over the top.

“Wow,” I said as my eyes scanned it greedily. It must have been taken before some formal party or other: there were thirteen, no, fourteen girls grouped around two couches, with Miss Vanderbilt in the center of one and Franny in the other, and the oil painting of the buxom first Lady Phillimore in the background. All the girls had mushroom clouds of curls and tight, practiced smiles, and they were sporting the sort of ball gowns that pinned the photograph firmly around 1980: off-the-shoulder flounces the size of valances, tiny pin-tuck ruffles, black velvet bodices over taffeta skirts in royal blue, magenta, and bright green.

Well, nearly all the girls were. Two had very nonregulation gowns. Leaning on the back of the sofa, where Miss Vanderbilt couldn’t see her sultry camera expression, was a stunning blonde in a full-length black jersey halter dress with a silver snake slithering up the side in multicolored sequins. Next to her, on the other side and equally out of eyeshot, was a mischievous brunette in shoestring straps with a tiger lily stuck in her bobbed hair.

“I mentioned that there were some wild girls in that year—well, that’s Coralie, for a start,” said Nell, pointing to the brunette. “She was
terrible
. We were always being told not to be like Coralie Hendricks, but we all had raging crushes on her. She had a bonkers dachshund called Mitzi that she trained to attack the art teacher’s hairpiece, and she smoked Marlboro reds out of the loo windows.” She sighed. “Of course the boys
loved
her.”

Was that like me? I wondered. Was I naughty? Was that the sort of thing that carried?

“And that’s Sophie. Sophie Townend,” Nell went on,
pointing at the blonde. “She was what we called a ten-pointer. Got herself a mini part in a Bond film, can’t remember which one, doing something mysterious and sexy with a deck of tarot cards—after she left here, of course. Not on old Vander’s curriculum, being shagged to death by a secret agent.”

“And Hector dated her?” I asked. She looked like the prize pick—the man-eating model in a garden of sweet nannies-to-be. I didn’t feel drawn to her much, but then—would I? Should I? My eye jumped from one face to another while I monitored myself for any telltale flashes of recognition.

“No, Hector went out with Emma-Jane.” Nell moved her red nail across to the girl sitting next to Franny, who sat with her hands folded on her pink taffeta lap and her eyes cast down beneath heavy blond bangs. “Don’t let that shy look fool you. Lady Frances had her sitting there for a reason.”

“Which was?”

“So she could keep an eye on her. Emma-Jane
never knew when to stop,
” said Nell darkly, and tapped the side of her nose.

I stared hard at Emma-Jane, searching for any vague familial resemblances, but couldn’t see any: she had a long nose, whereas mine was turned up, and she was a pink-and-white blonde, no sign of redhead genes at all. But if she was Hector’s girlfriend, she was my best bet—unless he’d had an away day with one of the others?

“Did Hector…just date Emma-Jane?” I asked carefully.

“More or less,” said Nell. She took another sip of her gin and tonic. “He didn’t like to show favoritism. I think everyone had a spin in his Bentley at some point, in a manner of speaking. But Emma-Jane was his favorite. He went seriously off the rails when she got engaged to Charlie Cato. Everyone thought that was what caused the Great Bunking Off to Argentina.”

“Emma-Jane got engaged to someone else, just before Hector left, which was just before I was born?” I felt like I should
be taking notes. All these names—would I have to google everyone in London over the age of fifty?

“Yes, I suppose that’s right. Her first of four. As I say, never knew when to stop…” Nell clucked and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Like I can talk. Three down, and still counting! Never let it be said that the Phillimore Academy didn’t prepare you for marriage!”

There were two redheads in the photograph, as far as I could see—one plump-shouldered strawberry blonde and one with long, Irish-red curls tumbling down her back.

“Who are these two?” I asked, though neither of them looked particularly inspiring.

“Caroline de la Grange and Bumps Fitzroy. Caroline’s married to Mr. Tin Foil, can’t remember his real name—Sir Tin Foil it might be by now, actually—and I think Bumps is a nun now. Convent education followed by Coralie Hendricks and her constant shenanigans can do that to a girl’s nerves.” Nell looked at me. “Is this helping, or am I just making it worse?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

A silence fell between us as I studied the photograph and Nell drank her gin and tonic. In the background I could hear Igor gargling at a customer while Liv translated—it was the available single malts list.

“’Scuse the nosiness, but do you want to
find
your mother?” Nell asked, without warning. “Or just know who she was? I mean, what would you say to her if she walked in right now? Would you be thrilled? Or bloody furious?”

I opened my mouth but stopped before the usual answer could tumble out. I’d rehearsed various dramatic reunions over the years—weeping, tearing of clothes, curls of baby hair produced from matching lockets, etc.—yet, faced with someone who might actually have
known
my mother and might hazard
a good guess at where she’d be now, that all seemed a bit, well, fake. I wasn’t actually sure what I’d say.

“I’d say…hello.”

Nell squinted at me. “That it? I think I’d jolly well want to give her a piece of my mind.”

“No,” I said slowly. Somehow it was easier to be honest with this stranger. “I don’t think I’d be
angry
with her for leaving me, because I had a fantastic childhood with people who gave me everything I could ever want. But I’d want to know
why
she couldn’t keep me. If it was circumstances, or…” I hesitated. I hadn’t said this aloud to anyone before. “Or if I was a mistake that she couldn’t bear to see. If my father had been…you know, the wrong sort of man.” I took a gulp of my gin and tonic. “I’d want to know what mistakes she’d made, so I wouldn’t make them myself.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would be the case!” said Nell quickly.

“How do you know?” I replied. “I mean, we’re assuming she was rich, from a smart background—but it might not be any of these girls! It might have been one of the
cleaners
’ daughters! It doesn’t sound like Hector operated much of a door policy on his bedroom antics.”

“But there was the little bee in your box,” Nell pointed out. “That was a big craze that summer—all the Academy girls had them. They were from a little jeweler in Bond Street. We said that at the time, that it must be one of us.”

I fingered the bee on the gold chain round my neck and slowly brought it out from under my sweater. Nell’s face lit up as soon as she saw it, her eyes creasing up in delight.

“Gosh, that brings back memories! Oh, look, it’s one of the ones with diamond stripes—how swanky!”

“Do you recognize it?” I asked hopefully, but she shook her head.

“I couldn’t say whose it was, darling. We all had them. So
phie had five, all on a gold chain, from different chaps. Worker bees, she called them. But I do think it points to one of these girls.” She nodded toward the photograph again. “Not that it narrows it down much for you.”

I stared at the round-faced girls, and Franny in her special-occasion diamond necklace, and Miss Vanderbilt looking like someone had shoved a broom handle down the back of her dress, and naughty Coralie and vampish Sophie and Bumps the nun. My mother did not spring out at me as a tiny part of me had hoped she would. But surely she was there? One of them?

Franny must have known, I thought. She
must
have recognized the bee, and the handwriting, even though she had always batted my questions away by swearing she hadn’t. But then maybe she had just chosen not to ask: the art of never asking direct questions was an Academy specialty, after all.

“Well, did any of them go away? Suspiciously?”

“Hard to say,” sighed Nell. “We didn’t all do a year, you know. Some people had a term at the Phillimore, then a term at a Cordon Bleu school, then a term in Switzerland…People came and went. But I’ll dig out my diaries.”

I blinked in the low light. I felt much nearer and yet farther away from the truth, all at the same time.

“Can you write down the names, please?” I asked, offering her my lilac notebook.

“Of course. So, what’s your next move, if I might be so nosy?” Nell reached into her bag for a pen, then began scrawling a list in handwriting that rambled over the lines. “Are you still wanting to meet her?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. I mean, I couldn’t exactly ring these women up and ask them if they’d got any illegitimate children they might have left in Halfmoon Street, could I?

“There. That’s everyone who was at the Academy in the
autumn of 1980, which is when, if my math is still up to snuff, you were the twinkle in someone’s eye.” She passed my notebook back.

“’Course, she might not want to see me.” I hadn’t said that aloud before either, and it came out in quite a small voice.

“Oh, darling!” Nell seemed shocked. “I’m sure she’d love to see you now! What an extraordinary young woman you’ve turned out to be!”

“How do you know that?” I asked, and held her gaze. Nell didn’t look away.

“I just know,” she said simply. “Trust me on that.”

When I didn’t reply, she added, “Don’t be too hard on them. Coralie and Sophie might have been a bit silly, but we were all just babies, really, and totally romantic about everything—no one worried about ghastly diseases or mortgages. We didn’t know
anything,
we just spent all week planning the weekend and the dates and the castles we were going to marry into. Poor Lady Fran tried her best to knock some common sense into us, but we just wanted to meet our prince too, and be swept off in that carriage in a compleeetely enormous frock! Marriage junkies, the lot of us! That’s why we’ve racked up so many between us!”