The Finishing Touches (22 page)

Liv covered her face. “Oh, God, Jamie, don’t you listen to anything? Betsy’s trying to make this course look approachable, not some It Girl fantasy.”

“No,” I said slowly, “that’s a genius idea. People never stop being photographed these days—weren’t you moaning just the
other night about how someone put the New Year photos from Igor’s online and you look like—”

“The Ghost of Christmas Pissed, yes, yes.” She scowled. “You don’t know fashion critiques until you’ve worked in a bar full of theatrical gentlemen.”

“Well, then!” I smiled at Jamie, nervously at first, because he smiled back and the flash in his eyes put me off my stride. “Your driving license and your passport are just as important as a photo spread in
Hello!
And who better to coach the girls than the son of a top model and star of more party photographs than Sienna Miller?”

“Exactly,” Jamie began, then stopped, his face abruptly sober. “No, don’t you mean the owner and CEO of Party Animals, the highly regarded and very exclusive events management company?”

“That too,” I said.

“I want them to take me seriously as a teacher, you know,” he said, and I got the feeling that he was including me and Liv in that.

“Well, quite.” I must have sounded more brisk than I had meant, because he’d started loosening the top button of his shirt as he made himself comfortable in Liv’s huge white leather armchair. “I don’t want Miss Thorne thinking I’m just hitting up my friends and flatmates for replacement staff either. It’s not like
I’m
a qualified teacher.”

“I’m sure you’re teaching them more than you think,” he replied with another warm smile.

I opened my mouth to make some obvious retort about what he could teach them, fnar, fnar, but I couldn’t. My mind had gone annoyingly blank.

He
was
looking at me differently, I thought. That wasn’t his normal, friendly expression. There was something almost challenging in it.

Was that what Liv had meant? I wondered. Did he want me to take him more seriously?

Or was he seeing
me
differently, in this clinging dress, with Liv’s expert smoky eyes and my hair all over the place instead of neatly smoothed back?

A delicious tickle spread over the deep V of my little black dress. The bits that were covered in Liv’s dramatic jewelry, anyway.

“Olivia,” he said, without taking his gray eyes off me, “will you tell Betsy to stop ironing her hair flat and wear it like that more often? It’s much more the Betsy I remember.”

“Tell her yourself.” Liv held out her empty glass. “Are you going to pour that wine, or do we need to teach you some manners?”

Jamie got up, but he must have seen me blush, because as he went to retrieve the bottle from the chiller, he winked at me.

Thank God I wasn’t standing on anything, because I’d have fallen off it.

Between Liv’s How to Dress
lesson and Jamie’s Image Management tutorial, the new timetable was starting to come together even more quickly than I’d hoped, mainly thanks to the endless lists I was making, even in my sleep.

To be honest, it was leaping out of my notebooks, which were stuffed with surprisingly relevant advice. Most of Franny’s advice wasn’t etiquette but simple good manners—it was still important to be nice to shop assistants and not talk about your diet over dinner. I just had to tweak it for the world of emails and iPhones.

I began to fall in love a little with the new Academy I was creating, as it came to life in my mind’s eye. Every time I opened the thick, creamy pages of my notebooks, I could hear Franny’s voice, wise and kind, and I felt some of her elegance returning to the way I did things: I made more effort to stand
up straight and bought some postcards, ready for thank-you notes. But I was determined that my own life experience was going to be useful too, and I drew up lessons in two things I’d had to pick up the hard way: managing money and finding a job.

Just because Clemmy and the rest had lots of money didn’t mean they shouldn’t know how to look after it. The trick, I decided, was to present financial savvy as being as cool as knowing how to mix a good drink.

Mark—after some persuasion—agreed to teach a class in Credit Cards without Tears, to be followed by How to Live a Millionaire’s Life on a Credit Crunch Budget.

We sat upstairs in his office on Friday at lunchtime, almost out of earshot of Mrs. Angell’s rumbustious Literary Appreciation class, eating sandwiches and agreeing with each other about how important it was for smart women to understand money.

“Kathleen used to tell me that money was an umbrella. That it couldn’t stop a rainy day, but it kept your head dry,” I said, swinging on my chair. “And Franny used to say a clever girl kept enough cash secreted away for a one-way ticket to Rio. Not sure why Rio in particular.”

“And you do?”

“Of course I do,” I said proudly. “Rio and back. I always have done. I’ve worked every vacation since I was eighteen.”

“Why? I can’t imagine the Phillimores kept you short.” Mark raised an eyebrow as he fished the tomato out of his sandwich and dropped it in the bin.

I flushed. “They didn’t. I just liked…having my own money.”

I’d actually had a
very
generous allowance, which I’d put away every month. I preferred spending the money I’d earned,
and I supposed I had an irrational fear that one day, when my mother turned up to claim me, I might have to give it back.

Now, though, I was starting to think their generosity made sense, if it was really
Hector’s
allowance they’d been giving me…

“So, you were telling me about your flatmate,” said Mark, cutting into my thoughts. “The one whose life you’re overhauling? Do you make a habit of taking your work home with you?”

“God, no, she doesn’t need my advice about
shoes
; she’s a shopaholic,” I started, then remembered he meant was I troubleshooting Liv’s personal life in my Proper Job capacity. “Oh, um, no.” I felt flustered as he looked at me oddly. “No, I just helped her…isolate her parameters. And identify areas of operational weakness.”

Viz, I explained how to use the loo brush.

The phone rang on his desk, but for once Mark didn’t grab it. Instead, he nodded at me encouragingly.

“Go on,” he said. “I’d love to know how you’ve turned the housework into fun little seminars with magazine titles. Be a VIP of DIY, is it?”

He was teasing, I think. Mark had such a dry sense of humor that it was hard to tell when he was being funny.

We’d moved into non-Academy conversational waters. This was definitely a nonwork chat, and the phone was still ringing. He swung in his chair and looked at me over his glasses, and I was distinctly reminded of why I liked men in cashmere pullovers who made jokes about savings accounts. There was a comforting solidity about them.

“Maybe you should answer that,” I said. “Could be your secretary.”

“Or yours?” He raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think so,” I replied with some confidence.

He picked up the Bakelite phone but carried on looking
amused—straight at me. “Mark Montgomery,” he began in his office tone, and then suddenly sat up in his chair. “What? Now? But it’s in my diary for the end of next week. No, I’m
not
raising my voice.”

He caught my eye and pulled the pinchy, Persian-cat-licking-a-nettle face we’d mutually agreed was Miss Thorne.

“Yes, she’s here. I’ll let her know. Absolutely, ten minutes.” And he put down the receiver. “I mentioned the termly meeting between me, Miss Thorne, and Lord Phillimore?”

“Yes?” I said, hoping he was about to tell me it was canceled.

“Well, we’re having it right now. Lord Phillimore finds himself in London and thinks it would be a good time to discuss your ideas.”

The sandwich stuck in my throat, and I coughed. “But we can’t! We’ve barely started the new lessons! Miss Thorne will talk him out of it.”

Mark had put away his lunch and was sorting through papers on his desk, obviously used to emergency meetings. “Don’t panic. It’s better this way—she can hardly complain that it’s not working if she hasn’t tried.”

“But why’s he back so soon?” I wondered aloud. “He
hates
London.”

“Maybe he wants to see you.” Mark handed me some papers. “There are some projections I did. Wave those at her, and I’ll back you up.”

I hesitated. “Are you going to go in there with your real estate agency details for selling the house? You might at least tell me now.”

Mark drummed his fingers on the desk for a long moment and said, “Not this time. I think it’s only fair to give you a decent shot at making something of this place. And anyway”—he looked up, and his face was more relaxed than mine—“I’m
starting to be persuaded that it’s not such a bad business idea, after all.”

I felt a cheeky grin spread across my face. “It’s a gentleman’s prerogative to have his mind changed,” I said, and swept out to the bathroom to smarten myself up.

Once I’d established that my buttons, lipstick, and teeth were in sparkling order, I leaned over the top stair rails to the black-and-white hall two stories down and saw Lord P standing by the trailing ivy jardinière.

Excellent, I thought, and I rushed down the stairs, not quite as elegantly as Miss McGregor would have liked, eager to see him and to fill him in on what I’d started before Miss Thorne got there first.

As I got to the bottom, however, I realized I was too late: I could hear his familiar, deep voice patiently trying to get a word in edgewise between another female voice.

I hated myself for eavesdropping, but I couldn’t resist.

“It’s what Lady Frances would have wanted. You must have that break—I’ll come with you if you need some company. Of
course
you’re not too old for skiing! You’re still a young man, Pelham!” The girlish giggle gave it away.

Adele.

I wondered if Lord P knew that taking up sport with Adele was a risky business.

I listened, my hand tightening on the banister, as she went on. Her voice was dripping in sympathy and was pitched at a level that suggested she was standing
very
close to him.

“
Anything
I can do. I mean, if
anyone
understands what it means to lose a loved one suddenly, it’s me, Pelham…”

“You’re most kind…”

I marched down the rest of the stairs before I heard any more.

Lord P looked pleased to see me, but a brief flash of something crossed Adele’s face before she replaced it with delight. As I suspected, she was virtually leaning on him, with her arm through his where she’d been patting the sleeve of his dark cashmere overcoat. She didn’t remove the hand, though the patting had ceased.

“Here’s Betsy!” she cried. “Darling, that’s a very sweet little suit. I love the way you’re showing the girls how they can dress for the credit crunch. There are some
gems
on the high street.”

“The high street” for Adele was Sloane Street, going by the outfit she had on, but I refused to let her think she’d landed a blow.

“Thanks,” I said. “Franny always said that good shoes were the key to any outfit.”

“Then you obviously got your sense of style from her,” said Adele graciously, and then spoiled it by adding, “In a manner of speaking, of course.”

Lord P seemed oblivious to any barb and carried on smiling broadly.

“I understand we’ve got a meeting to go to,” I said to him.

“Marvelous, yes.” He nodded happily. “Good timing, as it turned out. Adele here needed a spot of advice about a painting she’d seen, so I popped into Christie’s with her and suddenly thought, better to make a day of it, see you, catch up with Montgomery junior, have a chinwag with Miss Thorne about how things are shaping up…”

He did sound cheery; I had to give Adele that.

Adele touched his arm. “Would you two excuse me? I must go and prepare a lesson.”

What? I thought.

“Marvelous,” said Lord P while I was still open-mouthed at Adele’s shamelessness. “
So
glad to see everyone pulling together in this hour of crisis.”

“I try!” she said, and waved her French-manicured fingertips at us. “Toodles, darlings!”

I almost raised my fingertips back but managed to stop myself in time. There was something awful but hypnotic about Adele.

The meeting, such as it was, took less than ten minutes.

I outlined my ideas, Mark backed them up, Miss Thorne made sad noises about “losing our precious exclusivity,” and Lord P told me to carry on the good work and see what happened after the Open Day.

And that was it.

“Do you have time for a cup of tea?” Lord P said as we got up to leave. “I’ve been going through some of Frances’s things—got one or two things for you at my club, thought you’d like them.”

“I’d love that!” I said eagerly, and we strolled across the bustle of Piccadilly down St. James’, into the serene hushed world of the gentlemen’s clubs, toward the Athenaeum, where Lord P now stayed when he came to London.

He settled me in a quiet corner of the morning room with a tray of tea, then disappeared and returned with a sequined clutch that I recognized as Franny’s vintage evening bag, the one her mother had gotten in India and that only came out on special occasions.

“Few things in there,” he said, and I took his sudden awkwardness to mean they were of sentimental value. “Thought you’d like them. Tea?”

He poured from the silver pot, taking his time as I un
packed the bag slowly, seeing fragments of childhood memories pile up in my lap. He’d jumbled everything together, like a man would: there was a pair of earrings I’d always coveted, very old ones with sapphire flowers, and Franny’s pearl necklace, the one she’d worn every single day—with tweeds, sweaters, sundresses, and swimsuits. A leather photo wallet with pictures of me on a pony, fat legs sticking out, while Franny held the reins and Nancy and Kathleen hovered behind in Barbour jackets. Another photograph, of Franny holding me, at about a year old, in front of the rosebushes at Halfmoon Street. I was wearing tiny knickerbockers.

Lord P’s voice cut in. “First photograph she ever took of you,” he said. “She was too worried someone would come and take you away before then.”

I looked up in surprise and sadness. “Really?” She’d never let that show. I had thought
I
was the one who worried about being taken away from
her
.

“Did she
know
who might come back for me?” I’d never asked that before. “She must have had some idea, deep down.”

Lord P passed me a teacup, and his face tightened. His natural reluctance to wade into the unknown waters of Emotion was battling with his equally natural instinct to do his duty. “Neither of us knew who had left you. We made inquiries, naturally, but…we were so happy to have you that it didn’t seem to matter.”

“But didn’t you have your suspicions?” I pressed on. “Didn’t Franny guess from the gold bee I had in the box?”

“The bee? Well, if she did, she never mentioned it to me,” he said, bewildered. “Is it relevant?”

“All the Academy girls had them,” I said. “I met someone at the memorial who recognized it immediately. She thought it was a sign that my mother was there, just before I was born. She thought she might have been one of the girls who went
around with the Bentley Boys. Surely Franny would have known that?”

Lord P looked absolutely horrified. “Who on earth said that to you?”

“Oh, an old girl,” I hedged, not wanting to drop Nell into it. Just yet, anyway.

“And what did she say about…” He looked a bit sick. “About the boys they were involved with?”

“Just that they were a gang of Hooray Henrys who hung around with some of the Academy girls. That they were rich and got drunk and partied for England.” I gazed with concern at Lord P. His face had gone the color of cold rice pudding. I almost didn’t like to add, “And that Hector was one of them,” but I had to.

I managed to stop myself adding,
So, was he my father? Was that why I was left with you?

The question seemed to be asking itself, from the way he closed his eyes and let out a long breath. “That wasn’t the Academy’s finest hour,” he said eventually. “Apart from your arrival, obviously. But I have no reason to believe that there’s any connection.”

It sounded like someone sticking their fingers in their ears and going “lalalala” to me. I wasn’t going to get anything more on that topic, I could tell.

“What was Hector like?” I asked instead. “I mean, what
is
he like?”

“He’s the sort of man who didn’t come back to his mother’s funeral, for a start,” said Lord P shortly.

“Why not?” I found that extraordinary. Women had flown from all over the world to Franny’s memorial service—and yet her only son had sent a pathetic circlet of white roses to the tiny family funeral. “He must have done something really bad not to be able to come back for that,” I went on. “I mean, just
what did he do? Was he
banned
from the funeral?” An awful thought struck me. “Is he in
prison?
”