The Finishing Touches

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Ken liked to wax lyrical about how Liv was “the image of my late mother, God love her,” but was furious that Jamie had inherited Rina’s canapé addiction and had no time for his “bloody pointless play-business.” Coming from a man who had started his fortune selling I Shot J.R. T-shirts out of the back of a car, this seemed pretty harsh, but then Ken had had high hopes for Jamie, the first one in their family to go to university.

  “Have you got hold of Ken, then?” I asked. “Liv says his mobile’s off.”

  “No, I got hold of the next best thing—his accountant. Literally got hold of him, if you’re asking. And he filled me in, as far as he knew. He’s fine, of course, just lying low while he liquidates some assets or something, but I don’t think he realizes what a mess Liv’s in, the selfish old…Listen, I don’t want to talk about Ken and spoil the evening.” He tapped the table with his finger. “Where’s that phone of yours? I insist you call this Nell woman right now.”

  I started backtracking; I couldn’t help it. “But it’s late. I don’t want her to think—”

  “No, it’s not. It’s between drinks and supper—perfect timing. What have you got to lose?” he demanded. “She’s not your mother. It’s not like you have to take it further than a chat. Ring her, meet for coffee, see what she’s got to say. But don’t waste any more time.”

  He paused and said something quietly, so I had to lean forward. “Sorry?”

  “I just said, Betsy, you can’t put your own life on hold, worrying about what other people might think. You’ve got to do what you need to do. It’s something I’ve come to realize recently.”

  I looked up, straight into his gray eyes, and wondered if he was talking about the girl in New York.

  “Don’t you want to know who you are, really?” he went on. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “’Course I am. Sort of.” I squirmed in my chair. Without realizing it, Jamie had put his finger on one of my sorest spots. I wasn’t worried about living up to what everyone else wanted—I could do that by working hard and flossing—but about discovering that actually, in my real flesh and blood, I wasn’t half as good as everyone hoped. Once I’d found my mother, what then? Might I have to go back to her life? And what if she didn’t want me in it?

  It was easy for Jamie and Liv. They had a rough-and-ready dad and a posh model mother, but they flitted easily between every sort of environment, shifting their accents as they went. Beautiful people fitted in anywhere, especially if they had plenty of money. But what sort of background created mothers who abandoned their babies? What might come out in me?

  “I do want to see her and ask questions,” I blurted out. “But there’s no going back, and I’ve got so much to worry about right now.”

  “I’ll come with you, if you want,” Jamie said. “I’ll be your moral support—your boyfriend, if you want. I’ll ask the tricky questions, if you don’t want to. But I do think you should do it, if not for yourself, then for any kids you might have. I’m not saying this to stir it up. I’m saying it as someone who’s known you for years and years…”

  I bit my lip and got out my phone. Immediately, I felt my fingers freeze. “It’s very noisy in here,” I started, but Jamie was too quick. Before I knew what he was doing, he’d shoved back his chair, taken my hand in his, and begun hustling us through the crowd by the bar.

  His hand was dry and warm clasping mine, and I could hear people saying, “Hi, Jamie!” as we went, but he didn’t stop to reply. Suddenly we were standing outside, in the cold street.

  “Ring,” he said firmly, and his breath made faint puffs of white in the evening air.

  “Cold,” I said, for the second time that evening.

  He rolled his eyes, but kindly. “Excuses, excuses. I’ll keep you warm, just dial the number.”

  I got the piece of paper with the numbers on it out of my bag and began to dial. As I fumbled with the phone, I felt Jamie shrug off his jacket and drape it over my shoulders. I was still registering the still-warm lime-green lining against my bare neck, smelling of his aftershave and warm skin, when I heard someone pick up at the other end.

  My heart leaped into my mouth.

  “Hello!” caroled a woman’s voice. “Nell here.”

  I glanced at Jamie, who nodded me on.

  “Hello!” I shoved aside my nerves and switched into my polite telephone manner. “It’s Betsy Phillimore; we met at Lady Phillimore’s memorial and—”

  “Betsy!” Nell sounded thrilled, although that might just have been her excellent finishing. It was cocktail hour too. “Darling, I’m so glad you called; I was hoping you would. I’m such an idiot; I forgot to take your number, then I was in Morocco, doing up a house for a shoot—did you want to meet up for a proper gossip?”

  “Yes,” I said bravely. “I’m in London until the end of next week, and—”

  “Cut to the chase, how about tomorrow?” she suggested. “I’m away again on Thursday, and I’ve dug out something for you—something that you might find rather intriguing.”

  “Oh, really?” I said. “Yes, well, tomorrow would be fine.”

  Jamie was leaning over my shoulder now, trying to listen in, but he was putting me off my concentration. I could feel his warm breath on my neck.

  “Fabulous! Whereabouts are you lurking at the moment?”

  “I’ll be at the Academy,” I said. “I’m working with Lord Phillimore to update it a bit.”

  “Rarely?” Nell was a “really/rarely” kind of posh woman. “Fabulous idea! Do you have a local? Last time I was there all the pubs were full of prostitutes and dukes, and Miss Vanderbilt wouldn’t even let us stop outside them, let alone go in. Probably all made over now, I expect. I’m in Notting Hill, if it helps.”

  I thought quickly. “How about somewhere in between. Do you know Igor’s?” I gave her directions to the bar where Liv worked. She’d be able to get us a nice quiet booth.

  “Sounds extraordinary! Five-ish suit you?” she went on.

  “Yes, fine,” I said, amazed at how easy this was turning out to be.

  “Darling, no—not the rhino head! The other one…yes, that’s the fellow!” she yelled, then said to me, “So I’ll see you there, then.”

  I hung up. One phone call and all the little cogs had started to move. My hands trembled—with excitement, or cold, or maybe both.

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. “So?”

  “I’m seeing her tomorrow, for a drink. And something intriguing. Here.” I offered him his jacket. It was a nicely heavy jacket, and I saw the label as he swung it back on—Richard James. “We should rescue Liv. She’s probably being chatted up by a waiter as we speak, and you know how keen she is to stay on her man detox.”

  “Indeed.” Jamie put a hand on my back as he pushed his way gently through the crowded bar area. “Want me to come with you?”

  I stopped and looked at him, to see if he was being serious.

  “For moral support?” he went on. “I can imagine it might be a bit weird. I don’t mind pretending to be a boyfriend, give you a second opinion?”

  “I should be fine,” I heard myself say. “But thanks.”

  Damn! Why did my brain take over like that? Was it like a safety switch or something? I’d have loved Jamie to pretend to be my boyfriend.

  “If you’ve got Liv hovering around, I suppose you don’t need any more O’Hare backup,” he said, twisting his mouth. “One of us is more than enough. But I meant it about the classes. Sounds like a great idea. If you need any help, advice, PR, you know…call me.”

  He said it really sweetly, but then he made a phone gesture with his thumb and little finger that was so cheesy I couldn’t stop myself.

  “But you’re so busy with work,” I reminded him. “Weren’t you telling Liv ten minutes ago that Party Animals isn’t just an excuse to test champagne and meet every gorgeous woman in London throwing a twenty-first? That it’s a serious business that takes up twelve hours of every
day?”

  Jamie pretended to look affronted. “It’s turning over enough to give me the occasional day off, helping out an old friend.” He patted me on the arm and winked. An old-friend gesture. “You work out what your girls need to know about men, and I’ll fill them in. So to speak.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I wanted to tell him that he could start with me, but I didn’t.

  Eleven

  Lip glosses with flavors aren’t chic.

  Before I strode consultant-ly into the Academy on Wednesday morning, dressed in my Proper Job suit and yet another designer blouse that Liv hadn’t even taken the tag off, I did something I should have done right at the beginning of the week. I went to have breakfast with Nancy and Kathleen.

  I knocked on the mews cottage door at ten past eight, and Nancy let me in, cooing, “Guess who’s here?” to Kathleen in the kitchen. Kathleen’s voice bellowed back, “If it’s that Harrison Ford again, tell him to bugger off.”

  “No, it’s Betsy!” said Nancy, who had years of training in tuning out sarcasm. She ushered me through to the kitchen. “Come on in, we’ve just made you a little snack, to set you up for the day…”

  To the untrained eye, it looked as if Kathleen had gone mad and catered for me and the England cricket team. There was a vast dish of scrambled eggs on her hostess warmer, bacon sizzling alongside bulging Cumberland sausages, a massive pot of tea, and coffee and orange juice on the table.

  “But I told you not to go to any bother,” I said weakly.

  “This? Oh, I whipped up an extra egg,” Kathleen insisted from the stove, where she was frying bread. “What did I tell you? Breakfast like kings, dine like paupers—healthiest way. Winston Churchill swore by it.”

  I was pretty sure Churchill had dined like a king from morning to bedtime snack, but it was hard to argue with the delicious smell of a full English.

  “Tuck in, Betsy,” Nancy urged, pouring the tea. “You’re skin and bone since you moved up to Scotland. You need some feeding up.”

  That was hardly true, but I began heaping a plate with golden scrambled eggs speckled with pepper and made with more butter than I’d normally use in a week. I tried to resist seconds, but I couldn’t.

  After some general chat about what was going on next door (“I haven’t seen the police recently, Betsy—has that Russian girl sold her car?”), I nudged the conversation round to the other reason I’d called, apart from eating three days’ worth of calories on toast.

  “Is my stuff still upstairs?” I asked Nancy. “I suddenly thought last night, I should have a look at my old notebooks.”

  “Everything’s exactly as it was when you left it, petal,” she said fondly. “We didn’t move a thing.”

  “Except to tidy up.” Kathleen gave me a much less starry-eyed look. “It was like a charity bazaar in there. After all Nancy taught you about a place for everything and—”

  “Everything in its place. I know.” I protested as I put my knife and fork neatly together on the clean plate. “And I’m teaching Liv everything you taught me about running a tidy house. She’s my model student—what Liv doesn’t know is exactly what the Academy needs to be teaching from now on.”

  “Ooh, Betsy, that’s a job and a half,” said Kathleen.

  “God bless her,” added Nancy.

  “Well, that’s why I want my notebooks,” I said. Between ironing lessons and the notebooks, I reckoned that was the syllabus cracked. All I had to do was type it up into a semblance of professional jargon and get Miss Thorne to OK it.

  “Can I tempt you to a tiny bit more bacon?” asked Kathleen, wafting the plate near mine.

  “No,” I said, and I had to push myself away from the table as I said it, because my stomach was saying, oh, go on, then. “I’ll just pop upstairs, and then I need to get on. I’ve got stacks to do today…”

  “I’ll make you some sandwiches,” Kathleen shouted after me as I headed for the stairs. “You can share them with that nice young bursar. I bet he’d not say no to an egg roll.”

  I made my way carefully up the stairs, trying not to knock off any of the assorted framed samplers or baby photos, and opened the door to my tiny old bedroom.

  It was, as Nancy had said, just as I’d left it, right down to the hair ribbons on the dressing table and the magazine pages of famous redheads that I’d used to paper the inside of the wardrobe: Fergie, Molly Ringwald, Rita Hayworth (bit of a long shot, that one). Feeling a bit like an intruder, I dropped to my knees and reached into the back, between the slithers of winter coats and long skirts, my hands groping for the shoe box I kept my treasures in.

  My hands met something box-shaped but much bigger than I was expecting. I drew it out, and when I saw what it was I sat back on my heels with a thud.

  An old Cooper’s Marmalade box.

  My heart seemed to stop beating. This had to be the marmalade box, the one Nancy had insisted had been thrown away for hygiene reasons every time I had asked where it was. They hadn’t thrown it away. They’d kept it.

  My throat tightened as I lifted it, turning it in my hands so I wouldn’t miss a single scuff or crease. I’d never seen this before. Someone had put me in this and then walked away.

  Now that I had it in my hands, my old daydreams sagged. What would a ballerina be doing with a gross dozen jars of marmalade? It wasn’t exactly something normal people had knocking around the house. Only the Academy took marmalade in quantities like that—they’d started taking Cooper’s as a tribute to me, Franny had said.

  Suddenly, in adult hindsight, that sounded like Franny being nice. They’d probably always taken Cooper’s. Was that where the box had come from, the Academy kitchens? Surely that meant my mother had to be an Academy girl. The fact that she’d chosen a box with a royal crest sounded like the kind of thing Miss Thorne would recommend for the appropriate disposal of unwanted babies.

  But she could just as easily have found the box round the back, where the bins were. Or got it from the hotel where she worked. There were plenty of hotels around Mayfair, plenty of chambermaids—and plenty of dubious ladies in paid-for flats…

  I put it to one side and lifted out the box inside it—my own Chinese box of treasures.

  In 1999 I’d slammed this box into the back of the wardrobe and sworn never to open it again. I hadn’t actually thrown it away—I didn’t have enough history to make grandiose gestures—but I’d hoarded everything that had the tiniest significance to me: gummed-up nail varnishes, notes that Liv and I had passed in class, plane tickets, goofy passport photos of us before our school trip to Boulogne, Valentine’s cards. I wanted to inspect them all, but I made myself put them to one side until I’d found what I had come for.

  At the bottom was the stack of lavender leather-bound notebooks, the ones handed out to the Academy girls each term. Franny had given me one as soon as I was old enough to write my own name, and after that I dutifully wrote down everything, even things I didn’t really understand. It made for some confused scrawls about “Tenshun Headakes” and “Marritul Relashuns,” but I kept the notebook with me in my pocket, even when Franny and I were out shopping or in the car. She always said something worth noting down.

  I wrote down Kathleen’s and Nancy’s tips too, but they tended to be the “put eggshells on a wine stain” and “iron + brown paper removes candle wax” variety, and they went in the back of the book. Even my notebooks had a dual personality.

  As I read through the spider diagrams illustrating the Secrets to the Perfect Party, I could hear Franny’s voice—calm but confident, because her parties were never less than perfect.

  “Water and a slice of lemon looks like a gin and tonic if you can’t drink but don’t want to be a party pooper.”

  “Send shy men out with the tastiest canapés so they’ll meet everyone without trying.”

  “Wear white things near your face—the light’s more flattering.”

  My writing grew up as I turned the pages, and I felt a sudden yearning for that time i
n my life when Franny’s tips had made grown-up life seem so gorgeous. You’d never think I was a waif and a stray, with the notes I had on stopping roses dropping their petals and how to get a tiara to stay on. All I really had to bother about, according to these notes at least, was whether I’d ever get a boyfriend who’d wear the right shoes with country attire.

  A couple of photographs fell out of one book: me and Liv, just after our final exams, in our shades—hers Kate Moss aviators and mine retro cat’s eyes above red lips, very Audrey Hepburn. It dawned on me just how much I’d changed when I’d gone up to Scotland. I’d been quite girlie in those days, more like an old-fashioned Phillimore Girl, with my bouncy curls and pretty sundress. And my eyebrows…I’d forgotten how into eyeliner pencils I had been at sixteen, but it hadn’t made my pale face seem more together.

  I also seemed to have laughed a lot more. I turned the photo, but there was no date. I thought Jamie must have taken it. That was probably why I was smiling in that half-pouty, half-nervous manner.

  I put the snap to one side to show Liv later and carried on reading the notes I’d made. It was going to be useful, I thought. I just had to adapt it. That tiara tip—it’d work for hairpieces now, or those tiny wedding hats. And men always needed telling which shoes to wear with what. My spirits started to lift as I read on through to the scrawls at the back—the good-bye notes from Academy graduates, bouncing out of there to go on to run ski companies or take jobs at Christie’s.

  I’ll miss you SO MUCH, Betsy, PLEASE stay in touch, THERE’S A HOT TODDY WAITING FOR YOU IN VERBIERS!!! xoxoxox! Charlotte Prior-Yardley had scribbled, along with several phone numbers (London/Bucks/Scotland/France). They were always devastated to leave, and compleeeeetely dying to meet up again “as soon as.” Charlotte’s sidekick, Tilly Tarrington, had rebelliously drawn hearts over all her i’s (one of Miss Vanderbilt’s pet hates) and written See you at my wedding to Tom Cruise! which even then I’d thought was hopeful.