The Finishing Touches

Whatever it was, I felt better about myself than I had in years and years.

  I did a little half-turn and smiled. The Betsy in the mirror twinkled back.

  “Go on,” urged Clemmy. “You have to.”

  I bought the lot. On my credit card.

  The fruits of our efforts with Imogen came on Tuesday afternoon, in perfect time for the Open Day on Saturday.

  We were in the middle of a role-playing class about Worst Case Scenario: Very Public Disasters, when there was a knock on the door, and Mark put his head around the door of the Lady Hamilton Room.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I’ve got something for you.” He waved a copy of the evening paper at me.

  “Ah-ha!” I said as butterflies fluttered up into my stomach. “Shall we take a break, girls?”

  “No!” said Clemmy. She glared at Mark. “Mr. Montgomery can help.”

  “Help with what?” he asked pleasantly.

  “What you would do if you’d got to the church and decided that you didn’t want to marry your fiancé after all.” She paused. “We wanted it to be because the groom was sleeping with a bridesmaid and two of the ushers, but Betsy made us stick with ‘because he’s not Mr. Right.’”

  Mark took an unsteady step backward. “Sorry, I hoped it was going to be something about tax relief.”

  “Well?” demanded Divinity. “What’s the best thing to do?”

  “Whatever Betsy said. Which is…?” He looked at me with hilarious desperation, but I was eagerly eyeing the newspaper in his hand.

  “I said it’s never too late to call off a wedding if you realize you can’t go through with it and will be ruining his life as well as yours, but it’s better to pretend that you’ve had some kind of massive allergic reaction to your bouquet and/or fake a kidnapping on the way to the church.”

  “Isn’t that a bit melodramatic?” Mark asked, surprised. “Shouldn’t you just be honest about it?”

  “Well, normally, I’d say honesty is best,” I admitted. “But weddings are different. People talk about jiltings for the rest of your life. You should create some kind of drama to distract people’s attention from the fact that you’re standing up your fiancé. And then get your bridesmaid to redirect everyone to the reception to tuck into the food and drink while you go off on the honeymoon and return, ‘unkidnapped,’ a few months later.”

  “You seem to have given this some thought,” he said with a dry smile. “Do all women have this planned out?”

  “All women worry about being jilted,” said Venetia unexpectedly. “It’s good to have a Plan B.”

  I hadn’t had Venetia down as a wedding worrier. Personally, I’d sometimes dreamed about marrying Jamie, only to get to the altar to find another woman standing in my place, or my mother turning up and revealing herself in mortifying fashion. It would be complex enough just working out where to sit everyone when there were only four people on the bride’s side and technically no family at all.

  “Is that the evening paper?” I asked.

  “What would a man do?” the girls demanded. “What would you do?”

  “I would try to speak with my fiancée and get the ushers to clear the church,” Mark said solidly. “In instances like this, guests don’t want to poke their noses into other people’s distress.”

  “You’ve never been to a celebrity wedding,” observed Divinity.

  “And vot about the reception?” Anastasia tapped the table. I think she was still playing the part of the outraged mother-in-law, as per the role-play earlier. “It is all paid for!”

  “I’d send the food to a homeless shelter and the flowers to a hospital,” said Mark.

  “But vhy?” she wailed, pulling at her hair. “How could you treat my daughter so badly? My husband knows people…you vill never vork in Hempstead again…”

  “Ana,” I said hurriedly, as Mark edged toward the door, still holding the paper. “That’s enough. Mark, can I see the paper?”

  “Your daughter was shagging an usher too,” said Divinity, wagging her finger. “And she’s maxed out my son’s credit cards with her online bingo habit!”

  “He drrrove her to the bingo!” snarled Anastasia.

  Mark regarded me nervously from the door. “Um, should I come back later?”

  I held my hand out for the paper. “No,” I said encouragingly, “you’re being a great help! Now, what was the…?”

  “What are you meant to do as a guest?” Venetia buttonholed him with a direct look. “If you think something’s going on backstage, as it were?”

  “Get your camera phone out,” said Clemmy. “And get it onto YouTube.”

  “No!” I said. “Just…” I wasn’t sure what you were meant to do, actually. “Mark?”

  He shook his head. “Offer to arrange a game of charades to pass the time?”

  “Is that our interview?” yelled Divinity, and she had the newspaper off him faster than you could say “pre-nup,” her fingers flipping through the pages to the center.

  “Did they use the picture of me in my car?” demanded Anastasia. “Or Clemmy pushing the pram?”

  “No, she said she had some beautiful photographs of you in the ballroom with…”

  We all fell silent as I reached the page in question. Under the headline PRACTICALLY PERFECT was an enormous color photograph of Adele and Venetia, sitting on the grand piano in the old ballroom, looking “like sisters” with their long blond hair, ankles glued together, and spectacles perched on their noses.

  “But they don’t even wear glasses,” snorted Clemmy. “She’s wearing Miss Thorne’s!”

  “Oh, look, we are in it,” offered Anastasia, pointing at a tiny picture of her, Clemmy, and Divinity posing in the mews on her Porsche.

  My eyes were skimming through the copy with mounting disbelief. After a brief mention of visiting us in our car-parking class and chatting with “two cheerfully normal graduates of the new-look Phillimore Academy,” Clemmy and Divinity, Imogen’s feature was hijacked by an interview with Miss Adele Buchanan and her protégée, Venetia Hargreaves, in which Adele outlined her own take on the female graces, which seemed to consist of exfoliation, depilation, prenuptial agreements, and breath mints.

  I couldn’t tell whether the article was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Venetia, I discovered, “makes any party feel like a premiere” and “hides a razor-sharp mind behind her razor-sharp cheekbones.” She also enjoyed “playing the stock markets and polo.” Adele, meanwhile, had been “the most fun hostess in London since she arrived in town in the late ’80s” and was now “passing on her little black book of social secrets to a new generation of girls.” “It’s the least I can do!” she was quoted as cooing.

  “Oh, look,” said Clemmy, pointing. “You’re in it too.”

  I’d missed it, being dazed by Adele’s shiny legs, but there was a small but quite flattering photograph of me, taken during our procession round the house in our heels. I was kicking away at the front of the shoe conga, and my hair was coming down from the neat bun Liv had put it in, but at least I looked like I was enjoying myself.

  “The fresh direction is the brainchild of twenty-seven-year-old Betsy Cooper,” Anastasia read aloud, “who is pretty nimble on her stilettos and also pretty nimble when it comes to advising on tactful ways to bail out of dates and where to stick your savings. If anyone could teach me how to park with panache or rustle up a dinner to win any man’s heart, it would be the polished, unpretentious Betsy, and I’ll be seeing her at the weekend, to sign up for a course in making the most of myself. Because if I don’t sign myself up, my mother certainly will.”

  “Ker-ching,” said Divinity, looking at Mark. “Gotta be pleased with that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Although obviously I’m crushed that she didn’t mention the parking instructor by name.”

  “She said you were a racing driver, not an accountant,” Divinity pointed out. “That’s pretty flattering.”

  “And come on,” said Clemmy. ?
??She didn’t mention Mr. O’Hare either, and she used to go out with him.”

  “That’ll be why she didn’t mention him!” I laughed, although I felt a twinge of disappointment. Why had he said she was just a friend? I’d started to think more of Jamie than that.

  Just goes to show, I thought crossly. Leopards don’t change their spots. They just cover them up.

  “You’re very photogenic, though,” said Divinity generously. “You look like you’re having a whale of a time.”

  I stared at the small photograph of myself. I wished my hair had been neater and that I’d maybe worn more lipstick, but it wasn’t a bad photo. Being Liv’s portrait practice must have paid off. But would it be enough for my mother to recognize me? Might she be sitting on the tube this evening, or on a bus, reading the feature and thinking, yes, I’ll go along on Saturday and…

  And what? Say hello? My insides flipped over.

  “Anyway, you’re pleased?” said Mark. “Looking good?”

  I looked up and saw him hovering, his eyebrows lifted hopefully.

  Given that he’d virtually had real estate agents measuring the place up only a few weeks ago, I reckoned that was quite a turnaround.

  “Yes,” I said. “I reckon it should draw the crowds, if only to meet the fabulous Venetia. You’ve done really well,” I said, turning to the girls. “Well done on being such a wonderful ad.”

  I realized that the girls had drawn back from the table and were staring at Venetia in a hostile manner, and I wondered if they knew something they weren’t telling me about her.

  I remembered when I was younger I’d overheard Kathleen saying something about how some girls were born with silver spoons in their mouths and others came to the Academy to have theirs silver plated, which hadn’t made much sense to me at the time. I think they’d been talking about Adele, whose father had made his pile in soil diggers but who pretended her parents lived abroad, not in Preston. I wondered if Venetia was like that. She was certainly determined to get on Adele’s matrimonial social springboard.

  “Funny,” mused Clemmy. “They don’t mention anything about you living at home with your mum and dad still.”

  “I don’t,” sniffed Venetia. “I’ve moved out. Into Luka’s penthouse.”

  “Who’s Luka?” demanded Anastasia.

  “My boyfriend.” Venetia smirked. “He’s an entrepreneur. He has his fingers in many pies.”

  “You never said!”

  “You never asked,” said Venetia. “Anyway, unlike some, I don’t like to bring my private life into class,” she added, with a mean glance toward Divinity, who blushed.

  Clemmy leaped on her. “It says in this article that you’ve made some lifelong friends?” she asked, pretending to be confused. “Who are those poor suckers? Is there another class we don’t know about?”

  “Stop it!” I said, raising my hands. “Don’t spoil it! This is a wonderful ad for the Academy, better than anything I could have said, and it’s going to make people rush to visit us on Saturday. I’m deeply grateful to you all.”

  I wasn’t all that grateful to Venetia, letting Adele hijack it like that, making herself look as if she’d masterminded the entire redirection, but I tried to let that pass. I knew that the more little pinpricks of doubt I let Adele shove into my self-confidence, the harder I’d find it to put on my confident front for the Open Day.

  I needed all the confidence I could get, because I wasn’t just pretending to be a management consultant anymore. I was pretending to be an etiquette expert, and a confident woman, and someone who wasn’t acutely aware that she’d stirred up the past and now had to deal with whatever it decided to throw back at her.

  In four days’ time.

  Twenty-two

  Don’t bring flowers to a dinner party—it distracts the hostess from her last-minute panics—but do send them the next day. You’ll be on her guest list forever!

  Before I arrived at Halfmoon Street first thing on Saturday morning, I did something Franny used to do for me before big occasions—I stopped at a flower stall and picked up a small bouquet for each of the girls, as a thank-you for helping out.

  I chose the flowers carefully, out of habit. Franny and I had had a running joke about the old-fashioned language of flowers that was still part of the Home Enhancement class; I knew all the different messages you could send with red roses and white lilies. Unfortunately, the language of flowers was somewhat monosyllabic the week before Valentine’s Day in central London, and the best I could come up with were yellow tulips (“You have sunshine in your smile!”) and some pink rosebuds (for “thankfulness”). I avoided yellow carnations (“You have disappointed me!”) because who wouldn’t be disappointed, frankly, with petrol station flowers?

  As I let myself in, I was pleased to see the lion’s head knocker was now gleaming again. Kathleen turned up her nose at what she called “spray and go” cleaners, and her gift to the Open Day had been to arrange for some “proper ladies” to blitz the place first thing. I could tell they’d been there from the crisp smell of recently polished tiles as soon as I opened the door. The boxes of lilies I’d ordered had been left on the back step, and I arranged them quickly in the big urns, running through lists in my head as my fingers automatically stripped the stems and clipped off the pollen-heavy stamens, letting their heady scent fill the entrance hall.

  The peaceful atmosphere in the house helped me concentrate, and I was almost startled when the silence was broken by the arrival of Clemmy, Divinity, and Anastasia. I could hear a distant cackling from some way down the street, and though I hoped it wasn’t them making the racket, I didn’t mind so much when they crashed through the front door and came to a flattering halt on seeing me.

  I was wearing the outfit Liv had picked out for me, and I had to hand it to her, I felt amazing.

  “Wow! You look hot!” said Divinity, overcome with honesty.

  “That color is so good on you,” agreed Clemmy. “It’s like you’ve had surgery or something.”

  “But obviously you haven’t,” Divinity corrected her, then looked confused. “Unless you have?”

  “Always best to assume not, unless the person offers the information,” I said. “You look pretty fantastic yourselves!”

  Liv had been firm but fair about their various strengths and weaknesses, and they’d actually listened. Clemmy looked sophisticated in a red swing jacket and matching miniskirt, with her thick bangs cut just above her eyes, and Anastasia had dressed up her bouclé shift dress with a glittery selection of paste-looking brooches, which probably weren’t paste. Divinity, as ever, looked like a doll in a floaty black dress and cobwebby tights.

  “Well, wanted to look nice,” said Divinity. “Seeing as how there might be cameras.” She dropped her voice. “I’ve made sure not to wear white underwear with my black top, like you said.”

  “Smart move,” I said. “You all look adorable. Ooh, have you seen the special delivery?” I pointed to the hall table, where I’d put the flowers. They shrieked in delight and scrambled over to see who had what.

  “Are these from Mr. O’Hare?” Divinity wondered aloud. “Or Lord Phillimore?”

  “You wish,” snorted Clemmy, then turned to me. “It’s from you, isn’t it? Aw. Thanks.”

  “Good morning, ladies!” Miss McGregor arrived with Mrs. Angell in a cloud of hair spray and newly set hair, with Paulette close behind. “Flowers! How delightful! Have you pricked the stems, girls? Now, what kind of vase would be best for tulips?”

  “I don’t think we have time for flower arranging,” I said, checking my watch. “I wanted to run through a couple of things before anyone arrived. Has anyone seen Miss Thorne? Or Venetia?”

  “I wouldn’t wait for Venetia,” said Anastasia. “I doubt if she’s going to make it today. She told us she had something verrry important on last night.”

  “Wouldn’t say what,” added Divinity.

  “Which means it was nothing,” said Clemmy sarcastically. “She’s
such a fantasist.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, before they could get going.

  The big clock in the hall began to chime, and I was suddenly very conscious of all the things I needed to do before the Old Girls—no, before the guests—arrived.

  “Anyway, girls, there’s something I wanted to say to you before—” I stopped, hearing the door open.

  “Sorry, am I late?” Jamie inquired. “Tell me I haven’t missed the big speech!”

  I had to hand it to him: he could make an entrance. The girls’ heads—and Miss McGregor’s and Mrs. Angell’s—turned like a chorus line as he strode in, slipping his double-breasted coat off his shoulders and unwinding his scarf from his neck and smiling broadly at everyone. At which point they smiled one after the other, again, like a chorus line.

  Jamie always dressed as if he was off to, or just back from, some VIP party, but this morning he’d aimed for something more respectable than fashionable. The effect made me swallow in surprise. He’d put on his most sober gray suit, the one Liv had forced him to buy when she thought she was getting married to Lachlan the landowning laird—although Jamie hadn’t bothered with a tie, and his blue shirt was open at the throat, revealing a sexy, tanned hollow.

  What really sent my blood racing was his damp hair, teddy-bear brown where it hadn’t quite dried yet into the familiar blond—there was something intimate and vulnerable about it, as if he’d been in the shower just minutes ago. It curled round his ears, just inviting someone to push it back.

  “Morning, Betsy,” he said with a quick wink.

  I opened my mouth, but it had gone very dry and nothing came out.

  Behind Jamie, looking quietly amused, was Mark. He was wearing the suit he’d worn for the memorial service, and if Jamie hadn’t been there stealing the oxygen in the room, I’d have thought Mark hadn’t scrubbed up too badly. His thick black hair was maybe in need of some styling intervention and he was wearing his horrible tie again, but he was rubbing his chin with a wry Clark Kent–ishness that made up for his sartorial shortcomings.