The Little Lady Agency

  ‘He’s fine, thank you.’

  ‘Still no plans to find somewhere of your own?’

  I shook my head. ‘I like living with him. It’s like flat-sharing with Jamie Oliver and the Dalai Lama.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Granny, crossly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s . . . oh, rather delicate, really.’ She stopped walking and sighed. ‘I had a little windfall on the horses on Ladies’ Day’ – Granny knew someone who knew one of the Queen’s trainers, as you do – ‘and I want to get rid of it before your father finds out and demands that I pay for Emery’s ring cushions or some other horror. He really is a dreadful man, Melissa.’

  She let out another deep sigh of resignation and plucked at a magenta rhododendron. ‘Grab, grab, grab. You’d think he was fund-raising for some disaster appeal, not paying for his daughter’s wedding.’

  ‘You could always buy some of Lars’s spearheads?’ I suggested. ‘I hear he has a new consignment coming in.’

  Granny looked coyly at her rhododendron. ‘Well, I was rather hoping I could persuade you to launder it for me.’

  ‘Me?’

  Launder it?

  ‘Well, the bet was sort of, um, in your name. Oh, just a silly loophole,’ she added, in response to my aghast expression. ‘Tax, or something. I was going to give it to you for Christmas. But, listen, darling, I thought you could use it as a deposit on a flat?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said stoutly. God, did everyone take advantage of me – even when I wasn’t there? ‘But I like living with Nelson, and you know how I feel about handouts.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not a handout, darling!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s an . . . under-handout!’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ I insisted. ‘I’m an independent girl, and if you must know things are going quite well at the moment . . .’ Then an idea came to me, cutting straight through my usual warm fog of principles. It startled me with its Honey-ness.

  ‘You know what, Granny?’ I said. ‘Can I make you a business proposition?’

  Granny actually clapped her hands with glee when I told her about the agency. Well, the edited highlights of it. I swore her to hand-on-heart secrecy, of course, and made her draw up a little ‘between us’ agreement, so I’d be paying her back at a decent rate of interest once I started making a profit. She wanted to lend me double, just to annoy my father, I think, but I refused. Her loan was enough for a deposit on a very, very small rented office, but somewhere smart, and that was all I needed.

  ‘Melissa, darling, I’m so proud of you. You’re a chip off the old block,’ she said, and that made the loan feel less like a debt and more like an advance.

  Unfortunately, she drove off home to Brighton soon afterwards, and by the time I got back to London on Monday night I felt utterly washed out. Emery’s toile was ‘all wrong, totally wrong. Oh God, Mel, you’ve got to start all over again!’ She had lost more weight and yet her arms now seemed to be three inches longer, which she put down to Pilates. I put it down to her innate ability to make my life complicated.

  On the bright side, my father disappeared after lunch on Sunday, saying he had to get back to London ‘for a meeting’. He didn’t, however, offer to drive me back, although I was grateful. If he was shaking Granny down for cash for Emery’s wedding, I had to be next on his ‘debts to call in’ list.

  Gabi was as good as her word and within a matter of days she had found me a small office in a quiet street near Victoria Station above a very discreet beauty salon that looked more like a solicitors’ from the outside. I’ll draw a veil over how she negotiated such a cheap rent from the landlord, but suffice to say, it involved her famous Carolyn Harker impression and some sweet-talking from me.

  I also had to explain my move to Jonathan, who swallowed my witterings about ‘proximity to public transport’ and ‘period charm’ with little or no incredulity. He was an estate agent, though.

  ‘Obviously I should be charging you more rent,’ grumbled Nelson as he grappled with a roller. We were painting the main sitting room – now my office – a soothing shade of lavender that Nelson claimed reminded him of the school san.

  ‘Listen, I thought getting you to do my books would put your mind at rest, not give you more ammunition to hurl at me,’ I protested, hurt.

  ‘Oh, the figures add up,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t realise I was harbouring such a devious little businesswoman.’

  I’d had to come clean to Nelson about the deposit from Granny. And he’d seen the new leaflets I’d had printed, complete with lists of Homme Improvement packages and a few charmingly worded testimonies from satisfied clients, identified only by discreet initials. Reluctantly, he’d had to agree that it all looked pretty smart.

  ‘Well, make up your mind,’ I huffed. ‘Either the business is a go-er or it’s not.’

  Nelson said nothing and eliminated another section of slurry-brown wall. Nelson saying nothing was worse than a lecture.

  For once, though, I refused to be cowed. I’d had a very productive day: an easy morning’s work helping a charming but taste-free IT whizz-kid friend of Aaron’s buy a pair of glasses (which turned into a quick trip around the shops for a matching date outfit for him), followed by an afternoon chatting with my contact at South West Property Now magazine. I was writing a feature for them about adding the woman’s touch to a bachelor flat and I had my fingers crossed that if I did it well enough, I could pitch for it to be a regular Little Lady advice series.

  The day had been rounded off in splendid fashion by an after-work drink with Jonathan and some interior decorators who were competing for the Dean & Daniels’ rental refurbishment contract. It had been especially flattering because he’d deferred to my opinion several times during the meeting, claiming that I was a freelance interiors expert. He’d also given me a very friendly squeeze on the way out, which might have been for the benefit of his contacts, but was rather nice all the same.

  I paused and reminded myself that I definitely didn’t want to start fancying Jonathan just because there were no other men on the scene. Mind you, there was something rather sexy about men who knew what they were talking about. Men who might not be conventionally attractive, but who were obviously highly competent at their jobs. And I was beginning to think that Jonathan’s terseness was largely for the sake of office appearance: I noticed he was perfectly courteous to waitresses and always tipped taxi drivers lavishly.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Nelson.

  ‘Stop what?’ I blushed.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking about.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ I said, immediately filling my mind with a wall of iMacs and laser printers.

  Nelson put down his roller and wiped the lavender paint off his hands. His hair was liberally speckled with it already. ‘Oh, yes, I do.’

  ‘Ohhhh, no, you don’t,’ I said, then regretted it because Nelson didn’t look as if he was in a pantomime mood.

  ‘It’s behind you?’ I tried.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Nelson.

  ‘No, really.’ I’d just spotted Gabi pulling up outside in Aaron’s Audi TT. Aaron’s fifteen-hour day in the City meant Gabi drove it more than he did – which suited her fine. ‘Gabi. She’s just behind you.’

  Nelson swore under his breath, looked ashamed, then went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea.

  Within moments, Gabi’s feet were thundering up the stairs. ‘Wow!’ she said, bursting through the door. ‘Someone’s been busy!’

  ‘Someone has been busy,’ said Nelson, emerging with a tray of mugs and a packet of chocolate digestives. ‘Mainly me, with back-up from Lots Road auction house, Busy Bee Electricians of Parson’s Green, Dial-a-Granny Financial Brokers and IKEA of Croydon. Mel has also popped in to offer advice. And now you’re here to help test-run the refreshment facilities!’

  Gabi stared at him and smiled goofily.

  It was not her best look.

  ‘Tea?’ I said, perhaps a little too loud.

/>   She nodded, and I sloshed out strong tea for the three of us. You really would have thought the plain white cups and saucers had come from Heals, not IKEA. I hadn’t got the furniture from there though – I wanted the office to have a warm, reassuring feel, so we’d scoured Lots Road for old-fashioned heavy furniture: a big desk for me, some squishy red leather armchairs, brass desk lights and the pièce de résistance, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that Nelson and Woolfe had made for me at the weekend from MDF, then stained to look like solid mahogany.

  It was now an office that Mary Poppins and Sherlock Holmes would be proud of.

  ‘Nelson has been an absolute star,’ I said, giving him a big hug before handing him his tea. ‘My gratitude knows no bounds, but he knows that already.’

  He grunted, but I spotted a trace of pleasure under his grumpy expression. ‘I still say why not put a rocking horse in here and be done with it?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Gabi.

  ‘Well . . .’ Nelson waved an airy hand around. ‘The pretty colours, the Enid Blyton books on the shelves, the comfy chairs . . .’

  Gabi looked at him mistily. ‘Did you have a nursery, Nelson? Did you have a nanny?’

  ‘Melissa . . .’ Nelson appealed to me.

  I didn’t say anything, because there had been a rather lovely old rocking horse in the auction that I’d seriously thought of buying. I’d read somewhere that rocking could be therapeutic too. But I’d keep that to myself for the time being.

  ‘Look, Gabi,’ I said, ‘do you like the sign?’

  I pointed to the newly painted sign, now ready to be hung up on the bracket outside where the London Violin Academy sign had once peeled in the breeze. I’d designed it myself: a silhouette of a woman clad in a full New Look skirt, juggling a tray of cocktails, a ribbon-wrapped present, a stack of papers, a diary and a birthday cake. ‘The Little Lady Agency’ curled around it in italic script.

  ‘He-e-e-ey,’ cooed Gabi, ‘I like that! Especially the bomb!’

  ‘It’s a birthday present,’ said Nelson. ‘Though a bomb wouldn’t be inappropriate for some of Melissa’s clients.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘It’s making me want to walk in and spend money. And I don’t even need your services!’

  ‘Don’t say that yet,’ observed Nelson, dunking his biscuit. ‘None of us ever knows when we might need Mel at an hourly rate.’

  ‘For you, Nelson darling, it would be free,’ I said blithely and helped myself to another biscuit.

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Melissa,’ said Gabi, patting my knee. ‘You’re a real pro now!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I feel like a real pro!’

  She and Nelson sniggered – another of their private jokes, I supposed.

  I just smiled and sat there, sipping my tea, looking around my new premises, and felt a warm glow of satisfaction. It might not be completely finished just yet, but the Little Lady Agency was definitely on the way.

  12

  When Emery phoned up the following week to cancel her dress so ‘we could start all over again with more of a medieval feel’, I tried really hard to think of three positive things.

  After a good deal of effort, I could come up with only two.

  One: I wasn’t really up for the forty-two thousand beads she wanted embroidered all over the original design, and if she’d actually thought about how heavy that would make it, she wouldn’t have been so keen either.

  Two: to be honest, I wasn’t quite as far along with it as I’d claimed.

  In fact, I’d barely even thought about buying the material. The toile – the trial-run version I’d made to get the measurements right – was still on the dummy in the spare room in my office where I’d left it, lending a spooky Miss Haversham feel to the place. I hadn’t even got round to unpinning it.

  I just didn’t seem to have the energy. Since I’d stopped running around town like a mad thing and started sticking to a routine, I was getting twice as much done, but by the time I got home my brain seemed to cut out entirely. It was as much as I could do to help Nelson rustle up some supper, then sink in front of the television with him. I was so bushed one night that I even sat through a whole episode of Das Boot without registering it was in German.

  Or that Nelson had finally got his way and watched Das Boot instead of Coronation Street.

  ‘Do you think you’re overdoing it?’ he’d asked, prodding me occasionally to check I hadn’t slipped into a trance state.

  I shook my head. It was a blessed relief to be Melissa and not have to come up with some bright and articulate response. It was also nice to give my body a rest from the slinky clothes too: I was slumped in a pair of tracksuit bottoms, an old Pony Club T-shirt and Nelson’s slippers, while my work clothes hung behind the door in my bedroom, still neat and curvy, unlike me.

  ‘Mel?’

  Not that I resented it. In fact, I surprised myself with how decisive and practical I could be. But I had to keep reminding myself that Honey wasn’t really me, and that I needed to keep her out of my house.

  Our house.

  Thank God I lived with a man who didn’t care what I looked like of an evening.

  ‘Mel?’

  I could hear Nelson somewhere far off in the distance, but I was too comfy where I was to reply. Then I fell asleep and apparently dribbled onto his shoulder for two hours.

  Nelson, being a complete sweetheart, didn’t move me.

  Still, I firmly believe that if you look for those three positive things, eventually they’ll all turn up.

  Lovely Madeleine at South West Property Now magazine had liked my advice feature so much that the following month she’d asked me to write an etiquette agony column for them. I had to make up my own letters, but since I spent most of my working day explaining what men should wear to weddings, or how to tackle unhygienic flatmates, I didn’t need to stretch my imagination too far. I was at my desk on Friday afternoon, finishing off the reply to my final Little Lady letter (how to deal with annoying group email jokes without alienating people you don’t even know) when the phone rang.

  I was hoping it would be Jonathan. We were meant to be working our way through his Welcome to London theatre tickets, and I was in the mood for something involving dancing, theatrical dialogue and bright lights. He had become rather tedious on the subject of how much better these things played on Broadway, but always remembered to pre-order drinks for the intervals which more than made up for it.

  ‘Hello, is that the, er, Little Lady Agency?’

  I could tell at once from the extreme reluctance in the caller’s voice that he half wanted me to say no.

  ‘It is,’ I said in a friendly, encouraging tone. ‘How can I help you?’ I reached for my notebook and gazed at the tree outside my window. If Jonathan couldn’t make the theatre, I wondered about suggesting the London Eye. As far as I knew he still hadn’t used the tickets I’d given him.

  ‘Oh. Um, I read about you in South West Property Now.’

  ‘Good!’ I replied brightly. Not that anyone would see us on the London Eye, so strictly speaking it wouldn’t be a business date. More of a ‘getting to know you’ sort of date. I wasn’t nosey, but there were one or two things that were starting to pique my curiosity.

  ‘I need you to dump my girlfriend for me.’

  ‘Right.’ That snapped my mind back into focus.

  ‘I mean, she’s not really my girlfriend,’ he amended quickly.

  Really, I thought wearily. How many times had I heard this? There’s a certain breed of young men who would secretly prefer girlfriends to come with a licence, like cars or shotguns, to save confusion.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ I said. It wasn’t nice being dumped. Even all these months after the event, I still had hot and cold flushes, thinking about Orlando and how frightfully it had turned out. If I could come up with a kinder way for some other girl, it could only be a good thing.

  ‘I mean,’ I added, ‘if she’s not really
your girlfriend, then perhaps you just need to be rather firm and . . .’

  There was a faint, frustrated groaning from the other end. ‘No, you don’t get it. I’ve tried being firm. She just decided we were going out and that was it. I’ve tried talking to her but she just doesn’t want to hear. And now . . .’ The voice trailed off disconsolately.

  ‘I see,’ I said, tersely. Some men were frustratingly vague about their intentions. I checked my desk diary, which was looking quite full for the following week. ‘Why don’t you come into the office and we can discuss it? I could see you on Wednesday afternoon?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s urgent. I need you to help me dump her this afternoon.’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘Yes!’ he squeaked. Then he added, ‘I’m outside! Can I come in?’

  I peered out of the window. There was indeed a nervous chap hopping from one foot to the other on my doorstep. One of the beauty therapists from downstairs was sneaking a cigarette break and staring at him, in the same way a garage mechanic looks at a clapped-out Vauxhall Nova.

  Oh, why not, I thought. He’s probably the one who needs a stiff talking-to, not his poor deluded girlfriend.

  ‘Come on up,’ I said, adjusting my wig and slipping my stilettos back on underneath the desk.

  ‘Are you telling me everything, Bryan?’ I asked, giving him a firm look. ‘Absolutely everything?’

  Bryan Birkett nodded unhappily. ‘I know I should have told her from the start. I mean, it was a nice dinner and everything, and I know it wasn’t very gentlemanly to take advantage, but I didn’t think we’d end up . . . like this.’ His voice, which had been rising hysterically, dropped at the end and he gazed at his feet.

  I put the cap back on my fountain pen and pushed the horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of my nose. There was something else underneath all this, but he wasn’t going to admit it. ‘And this dinner was what? Eleven months ago? And you’ve been trying to split up with her since then?’