Gabi looked at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘Freakish, more like. Why are you defending him? The man’s a mini-dictator! He’s banned trainers from the office – even for the PAs!’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘About time too.’
Nelson yawned. ‘Can you two save your chit-chat for tomorrow’s email? There’s a programme about naval archaeology I want to watch at half ten.’
‘I’m so sorry about him,’ I said, kissing Gabi goodnight.
‘Don’t be,’ she replied, extending her cheek in Nelson’s direction. ‘Goodnight and thank you for coming, Nelson.’
‘Oh, er, yes. Night, Gabi.’ He gave her a swift peck on the cheek that made her blush (totally uncharacteristically) under her blusher, then with one quick backward glance at Jonathan Riley, I was whisked away yet again by Nelson.
9
To be honest, I had expected to spend my first month or so hanging around the kitchen, praying for my new pink mobile phone to ring, but as it turned out, after the initial lull, which had my nails in tatters, the enquiries, then appointments began to trickle in.
The adverts generated a number of calls, not all of which were entirely appropriate, but even the seedy enquiries gave me excellent practice at pretending to be my own courteous but chilly PA. I put the word around my own school acquaintances as well as Nelson’s, and talked a friend of a friend into making an oblique reference to the ‘homme improvement’ skills of the Little Lady Agency in the grooming pages of her internet shopping guide. But my first clients were word-of-mouth – from the now really quite fragrant Roger Trumpet.
As soon as I had my cards ready, I posted one to Roger with a friendly note, and two days later he called to make an appointment. He wanted me to help sort him out with some new clothes, having finally moved into a new block of flats and hence no longer wishing to sport the ragged-trousered-cider-heir look. Our mission went so well that three more of his badly dressed friends called me soon after, to be nagged and flattered around the department stores of London, either to suit their mothers, to suit themselves, or to suit sisters who simply couldn’t face the prospect of seven hours in Selfridges with a clothes-phobic who still pushed his jacket sleeves up like Don Johnson in Miami Vice.
Those were just clothes enquiries. Mind you, I’d already come to realise that clothes were usually just the tip of the iceberg. Once I’d proved I could deal with the clothes, all the other issues tumbled out like so much badly packed shopping.
Take Jeremy Wilde, for instance, younger brother of Cora Wilde, an old schoolmate whose Belgian mother ran off with a tennis coach and thus bonded Cora and me in our shared scandalous gloom. Jeremy was a semi-professional surfer, fulltime scarecrow, and utterly unable to talk to women without hyuk-hyuking nervously to himself every third sentence. He was lounging in front of me in the airy surrounds of One Aldwych, making the fashionable minimalist chair look positively fragile.
The surroundings weren’t helping. To disguise the fact that I didn’t have an office, I held my appointments in a variety of hotel lounges, and I tried to match the location to the client, so they’d feel at ease and also be obliged to behave well. As I’d shaken Jeremy’s hand, with the doorman’s eyes still trained on what appeared to be a vagrant being treated to a cup of tea, I knew I’d have to find some ‘school day room’ option too.
Cora had told me that her father’s constant attempts to smarten Jeremy up were driving everyone in the family insane, and frankly I could see why. He was wearing a zip-up Lycra cycling shirt, a pair of fraying cords and shoes that I couldn’t even begin to describe. OK, I’ll try – they looked as though he’d inserted each foot into a Cornish pasty, then run carelessly through a field. Where did these boys get their clothes, I wondered. Did they select them from the abandoned remnants in the school laundry-room, then commit to them for life?
‘So you can come in and sort out my whole wardrobe?’ he was saying with studied indifference.
I nodded. ‘We might have to be ruthless.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m not really into clothes.’ Jeremy scratched his ear and hyuked to himself. It might have been his ear, anyway. It was hard to tell under his blond afro.
‘We can pop in somewhere for a haircut too, if you like,’ I suggested.
‘And when we’ve done the clothes, can you, er, sort out some music for me?’
I peered at him over my glasses. I’d added glasses to Honey’s wardrobe: tortoiseshell 1950s originals that swept up at the sides like cat’s eyes.
Despite my initial decision to reserve Honey for dates, I found she was creeping into every aspect of the business. For one thing, making Honey the ‘face’ of the Little Lady Agency made me feel as though Melissa was still private property, like taking off a uniform and slipping back into comfy lounge pants at the end of the day. And for another thing, Honey wasn’t afraid to speak her mind; I realised pretty quickly that my own ‘softly softly’ approach was wasted on most clients, whose ears were tone deaf to female tact. Honey’s frankness saved us all a lot of time.
Moreover – and this was something I’d never have told Nelson in a million years – I was rather enjoying wearing Honey’s clothes to work. I tried it as an experiment one day, to see if it would help me be more assertive with new clients and did it ever! The stockings, the ‘best’ clothes, the sexy hair: it added up to a far more powerful, interesting woman than mousy old Melissa. I didn’t feel the need to disguise my hips as I normally did, because I was dressing up as someone else, a confident woman who filled out her pencil skirt fearlessly, and who wasn’t ashamed to admit she knew the best places to get men’s shirts tailor-made.
And, OK, I enjoyed wearing the blonde wig. Both up in a glamorous chignon and down in a tumble of golden curls.
Needless to say, though, on this particular occasion, Jeremy was getting a very low-fat version of Honey. He’d have hyuked himself into an accident otherwise.
‘Music?’ I said, puzzled. ‘But, Jeremy, you must know what music you like?’
He frowned. ‘I do. I mean, like, chick music? The last girl I brought home refused to put out when I put the Dead Kennedys on? Said it made her feel like she was being shouted at? Made me phone for a taxi!’
I wrote down HMV under Hackett, Nick Ashley and Reiss. ‘Don’t say chick, Jeremy. At least, not when you’re talking to another chick.’
‘Ho, then?’
‘No.’
‘Bitch?’
‘No!’
‘Female?’
‘Lady is just fine. It may be old-fashioned but it’s always flattering.’
‘Chuh!’ he said in his plummy drone. ‘I don’t want a lady! Hyuk hyuk!’
I removed my glasses and blocked off the whole of Friday for Jeremy in my desk diary. If he was as chronic a case as I suspected he was, I might need to bring in Gabi, the heavy artillery.
As Jeremy and I were wrangling over whether eat-all-you-can-for-a-fiver Chinese restaurants were an adequate first-date venue, my work mobile phone rang in my bag.
I knew I should have switched it off, but Jeremy had overrun and I needed to check some messages.
‘Read this,’ I said to him, and thrust a copy of Elle into his hands. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
I smoothed down my skirt, swallowed the big-sister tone I’d been taking with Jeremy, and walked through to the foyer where it was quiet.
Then I imagined a creamy hot chocolate in a pure white bone-china cup, picked up the phone, and said, ‘Good morning, the Little Lady Agency, Fiona speaking.’
I’d get a receptionist eventually. She would just have to have a stage name too.
‘Hello?’ said a familiar American voice. ‘I’d like to make an appointment with your boss. I didn’t catch her name.’
The hot chocolate in my imagination vanished, and was instantly replaced with a coupe of dry champagne. It was Jonathan Riley. His voice was brisk but assured and sounded far more at home at One Aldwych than Jeremy’s did.
 
; And after ninety minutes of Jeremy and his faux surf-dude drawl that kept slipping to reveal Eton vowels, I must admit I found the clipped novelty of Jonathan’s accent rather sexy too.
I swallowed, and wondered if there was any point in adopting a whole new voice. He’d see through it immediately. ‘I’m afraid Honey is with a client at the moment, but I can have her call you back . . .’
‘I’ll hold,’ he said.
What could I do? ‘Thank you so much. Let me transfer you.’ I pressed the silence button a few times, waited a second or two, then unhooked the call and said, in a marginally posher voice. ‘Hello, Jonathan! How delightful to hear from you again!’
‘Honey – as I now find I should call you,’ he said. His tone was suddenly much flirtier – significantly flirtier than it had been when we’d met the other night. Maybe he was one of those men who was better over the phone than in person. And I reminded myself that Jonathan was an estate agent: mini-Hitler or not, I’d never met one who couldn’t turn on the charm like a warm tap. ‘How delightful to hear someone say delightful,’ he went on. ‘You sound just like Mary Poppins.’
‘You’d be surprised how handy that can be.’
He laughed, a quick, dark sound, with just a hint of barkiness. ‘Listen, you must think me very dumb for not getting your name at a party that was all about networking, huh?’
‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘My fault for not networking properly myself.’
‘But my loss. Anyway, about what you were saying at the party – I was wondering if I could make an appointment to see you? I think I might have a project for you.’
‘Of course.’ I felt a faint twinge of nervousness in my stomach; there could be no amateurism at work with Jonathan. He was a smart guy. This would be a proper test.
‘What day were you thinking of?’ I asked, looking at my diary. There were significant chunks of it blocked off already: Jeremy W, shopping and grooming on Friday; Philip R, Habitat on Thursday morning; Bill P, parental visit to bachelor pad, Wednesday lunch . . .
‘Today would be good.’
‘Today?’ I mused thoughtfully, as if wondering where I could fit him in. Today was in fact clear after I’d disposed of Jeremy, but Jonathan didn’t need to know that. ‘What about three o’clock? I can squeeze you in for an hour?’
‘That sounds ideal. Do you serve English afternoon tea to your clients?’
His telephone manner really was rather charming. ‘Only the ones that have been very good,’ I said, matching his bantering tone without thinking.
‘And if they haven’t?’ joked Jonathan.
When I realised what I’d said, my face went crimson with embarrassment, but I told myself that it was good – Honey was meant to be confident and, um, a bit saucy.
‘Then they get sent . . .’ I was about to say ‘straight to bed with no supper’, but this time I bottled out, and instead said, ‘out to the patisserie to buy their own.’
Jonathan laughed again and I let out a silent sigh of relief, and tried not to notice how attractive his laugh was. It was hard to equate that laugh with Gabi’s whip-cracking uber-boss.
Not that I found him attractive. Just his voice.
‘Well, that’s excellent,’ I said briskly. ‘I’ll see you at three then.’
‘Isn’t there something you’ve forgotten?’
My mind went blank. ‘Um, I’m looking forward to seeing you?’
‘Well, so am I, but I really meant where’s your office?’ said Jonathan.
Dur. I blushed. ‘My office?’
‘Your office, yes,’ said Jonathan impatiently. ‘Don’t tell me you hold meetings in Starbucks.’
Well, it wasn’t going to be Starbucks but . . .
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ I said, my brain racing. Where could I take him? Not home, obviously, and the only other place I knew in London was . . .
My father’s pied à terre flat in Dolphin Square. Which he wasn’t in this week, because he was on some freebie constituency trip to a cheese factory outside Brussels.
I had a bad feeling about involving my father, however indirectly, in all this, but decided that making the right impression with Jonathan was critical. And it would only be this once.
I prayed silently that Daddy’s cheese trip wasn’t an elaborate cover for a dirty week in London with some bimbo PPA.
‘It’s not up to Kyrle & Pope standards, I’m afraid,’ I said breezily, ‘but I’m based in Dolphin Square. It’s a large block of flats, on the Embankment, quite near Whitehall. Do you know how to get there?’
He didn’t, so I gave him directions.
‘I look forward to seeing you later,’ he said, most courteously. ‘Honey.’
A shiver went through me at the casual way his accent wrapped itself round the little endearment, and I gave myself a real shake. I was going to have to get used to men calling me Honey. And I was going to have to get used to differentiating ‘work’ charm from simply being nice myself. Jonathan was an estate agent; he was practised at this easy professional charm, knowing it didn’t mean anything. I could do it too, with men like Jeremy or Roger, where I knew where I stood, but Jonathan wasn’t the sort of man I was used to dealing with.
He was no Quentin, no Nelson, and he was certainly no Orlando. Which left me with very little to go on.
Back in One Aldwych, Jeremy had hooked a long leg over the arm of the chair, exposing the patchy crotch of his cords which was worn like an old teddy bear, and was snickering over some lingerie spread in Elle. As I walked in, he slipped a hand down the back of his waistband, scratched himself like a monkey, then examined his fingernails. I had no compunction whatsoever about booking him in for an expensive session of date-behaviour coaching later on in the month. Then I packed him off at high speed, so I could prepare myself – and my father’s flat – for Jonathan’s appointment.
Daddy’s flat used to belong to my grandmother when she still lived in town. Now Granny was ensconced in Brighton, Daddy used it during the week when Parliament was in session, and had unceremoniously banned anyone else from having the keys, even for overnight theatre stays and so on. I only had a set because he frequently took advantage of my proximity to phone me at all hours with instructions to ‘let the plumber in’ or, on one memorable occasion, ‘sort out the fumigation people’.
The porter at the front desk greeted me with a big smile as I walked in. Jim and I had spent many a happy hour dealing with Daddy’s imperious instructions, and I made sure the porters were all well tipped at Christmas, even if he didn’t.
‘Mr Romney-Jones still away then?’ he asked.
I nodded. That was good. There were hundreds of flats in the building, but the porters had a magical recall of everyone’s whereabouts, and if Jim thought Daddy was away, then he was. ‘Just popping in to meet a, um, an interior designer,’ I said. ‘Sorry, can’t stop!’
Jim waved me through graciously.
I put the key in the lock and crossed my fingers. ‘Hello, Daddy!’ I called out, ready with my story about hunting for a missing bag, just in case.
But there was no sound and I let myself in with a grateful exhalation of breath.
It wasn’t a large flat: there was a spacious sitting area, with cream sofas at one end and a dining table at the other, a compact galley kitchen, bathroom and double bedroom. However, the fondant colours and streamlined Art Deco style (organised by me, with Granny’s assistance) made it seem much bigger than it was, and the view over the Thames from the large windows was marvellous.
I sighed. I’d have loved to live here. Granny had told me such marvellous stories about chilling magnums of champagne in the bath, and running around the Embankment in bare feet after fancy-dress balls in town, and all the fun she’d had with her string of bizarre friends.
But there wasn’t time for any of that. I opened my big fake Kelly bag on the coffee table and took out the bunch of flowers I’d brought with me, plus my desk diary, a pint of milk, some biscuits I’d packed for my lunch a
nd my smart shoes that I couldn’t actually walk in but which looked divine for sitting around in.
Daddy used the flat mainly as an office, so there was enough hardware around for it to look genuine; I just had to hope no one called him while we were here. I didn’t even have to run round removing family photographs, since there wasn’t a single one on display.
That, in itself, made me feel much less guilty about borrowing the place.
The intercom buzzed dead on three, just as I was giving the room a quick hoover round and I composed myself to let Jonathan in.
I hoped he could find his way through the maze of corridors: I’d given him very specific instructions so he wouldn’t have to enquire at the front desk for Melissa Romney-Jones. My eye skated around the room, looking for last-minute giveaways. I couldn’t see any, and then there was a knock on the door.
I took a deep breath, steeled myself and turned the handle.
‘Hello again,’ Jonathan said, and politely held out a hand for me to shake. He was wearing a very well-cut navy suit, with a sharp white shirt underneath and a lilac silk tie in a perfect Windsor knot. His hair gleamed in the sunlight; Gabi had been wrong – there was nothing freakish about it whatsoever. Jonathan had lovely hair.
I almost wished we’d met at One Aldwych so I could have demonstrated to Jeremy how a man should dress.
‘No Fiona?’ he said, with a trace of a smile.
‘Fiona?’ My mind went blank. Oh yes, my secretary. ‘Dental appointment,’ I said breezily. ‘Will you come through? Excuse the informality, but I didn’t think a tower-block office would be conducive to business.’
‘It’s an awesome apartment. I’m impressed. Tell me,’ he said, following me and taking the sofa opposite mine, ‘what is it that’s different about you today?’
I smiled and pushed my horn-rimmed specs up my nose. ‘I’m wearing my glasses, and not my contact lenses.’
‘That must be it.’ There was a momentary pause, then he sat back and crossed his legs. I noticed he was wearing black silk socks and well-polished shoes, and I had to suppress a sigh of approval.