The Finishing Touches

  “Get real, Jamie! It’s on the internet forever, anytime anyone googles Phillimore Academy! And I won’t forget,” I moaned. “It’s only cheap gossip to anyone reading it, but for me…” My stomach crawled. “For me, it’s…”

  I couldn’t hold back the tears now. I felt so small and humiliated, and angry—not just for me and the chance I’d had to run my own business, but for Franny and her reputation and the dreams I’d had since I was a baby.

  “The Academy is all I am.” I hiccupped. “My mother left me there to be part of it, and Franny was everything it stood for. If it’s cheap and tacky, then so am I.”

  Jamie let go of my hand and grabbed my shoulders. “Look at me,” he said, and shook me when I couldn’t lift my eyes from the seat.

  “Look at me, Betsy!” he insisted fiercely. “You are the most independent, intelligent woman I have ever met in my whole life. Everything about you is stylish. You never tried to make a sob story out of being adopted, and you were never a snob about growing up with a rich family. You were always just you. No airs or graces, no pretending to be stupid when it was obvious you were clever, no stuffing your bra or dyeing your beautiful hair. You were your own person, and I’ve admired that since I was fifteen years old.”

  “But…,” I began.

  “You can go back and find out who your real mum is, if you want,” he said. “Or you can think of Franny as your mother, just like you always have done. But it doesn’t make a shred of difference to who you are, and what you’ve done with your life, because you’re absolutely amazing, as you are.” Jamie paused, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a self-deprecating twist.

  “You’d probably be the first one to point out that I’ve met a lot of women over the years. Some of them very rich, some of them very beautiful, some of them bizarre, but none of them has stayed in the front of my mind the way you do. I go to a new bar, and I think, I wonder what Betsy would make of these highball glasses. Or I buy a new suit, and I think, I wonder if Betsy would say this was a bit car salesman.”

  He took a loose ringlet that had escaped from my hat and gently tucked it behind my ear. “I think the things I love about you most are the things you seem to hate. Like these gorgeous curls that you’re always ironing flat. And those hilarious to-do lists that you never let yourself finish. Like you’re keeping everything in check by following your rules.”

  His finger lingered behind my ear, sending electric sparks all the way down my bare neck, like a delicious chill. It traced a pattern in the soft skin, caressing the little hollow. “What you don’t seem to realize,” said Jamie slowly, holding my gaze, “is that the only person who has to make the rules for your life is you. Stop worrying about where you come from. You’re you. And you’re lovely.”

  I gazed at him, my lips opening in surprise. Had that softness in his face always been there? Hadn’t I noticed the vulnerability in his eyes, or was it just that I was so much closer to him now than I’d been before?

  I could smell the laundry detergent on his sweatpants and the coffee on his breath, and I didn’t want the moment to break. But still I felt that hesitation, that the anticipation might be better than the real thing…

  A voice in my head cut in, and it sounded a lot like Franny. What was the point in running away from relationships, in case they turned out to be as disastrous as my mother’s? I didn’t even know what had happened to her. I could only be myself, and right now all I wanted was to lean forward and feel Jamie’s lips against mine.

  His finger traced a tender line from my ear, along my jaw, to my mouth, and round the soft outline of my lips. I raised my head, almost in a trance, and Jamie leaned closer so I could feel his breath.

  “I stick around too,” he said. “Haven’t I been waiting all these years for you?”

  And suddenly I was the one leaning forward, catching the side of his mouth with my lips, until the stubble of his chin prickled against my face. We both hesitated for a microsecond, just feeling the heat of our mouths against wind-chilled skin, and then his hand tangled in my hair while his arm pulled me nearer and I felt myself being swept into the most dizzying kiss, as Jamie’s lips met mine, gently parting them and sending tiny ripples of pleasure all over my skin, hot and cold at the same time.

  All I could think of then was how absolutely right it was, how perfectly we fitted into each other, and how the anticipation had absolutely nothing on the real thing.

  I would have stayed on the bench, lost in what Nancy’s novels would call “the delicious passion of Jamie’s embrace” indefinitely, if the clock in the church tower behind us hadn’t struck twelve and spoiled the moment.

  Three chimes you can ignore, but after five, it’s impossible not to count in your head. We pulled apart, suddenly self-conscious but not, I was pleased to feel, embarrassed.

  “Would you like me to help you make a list?” offered Jamie.

  “I don’t need to—” I began, eager to turn over a new leaf, but Jamie raised a forgiving hand.

  “I’ll let you off this time,” he said. “I’d be making one, if I were you.”

  “OK. Well, I should ring Lord Phillimore and check that he’s all right,” I said as my brain clicked into gear. “And Mark, to see if anyone’s called to demand a refund. And the girls, in case they’re mortified about—”

  “Forget the bloody Academy!” Jamie looked aghast. “That doesn’t matter now. The only people you should be thinking of are yourself, Kathleen, and Nancy, and possibly Lord P. Although if he’d been a bit more open with you from the beginning…” He handed me my phone, which he’d helpfully charged in the car, with the ringer safely off. “Call him now.”

  I took it tentatively. I had another ten missed calls.

  Soonest tackled, soonest finished, I reminded myself, and dialed Lord P’s number.

  “If I get Adele, I’m hanging up,” I told Jamie as it rang at the other end. If I got Adele, I wasn’t sure I could exercise politeness.

  Fortunately, Lord P himself picked up on the second ring. “Betsy! I’ve been trying to call you all morning!” He sounded relieved but very anxious. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry. Are you all right?”

  I looked at Jamie. “Yes, I’m all right. Upset, but…all right.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Lord P went on. “There are some matters I absolutely must clear up, and…” He paused. “There’s someone you need to meet. Where are you now? Can you come to Halfmoon Street?”

  “Halfmoon Street?” I looked at Jamie, who nodded.

  “I’ll take you anywhere you need to go,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll see you there in half an hour.”

  Jamie dropped me off at the corner of Berkeley Square.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he said again as I got out of the car, knees first as always.

  I shook my head. Already I was preparing myself—for what, I wasn’t sure. “I need to do this on my own. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  He leaned over the hand brake and beckoned. “Good luck,” he said, and kissed my cold nose with a tenderness that nearly made me get back inside.

  I set off toward Halfmoon Street, making myself swing my arms and hold my head up high even though inside I was quivering. I even took a leaf out of the girls’ book and put on my shades, so no one would see the nerves written on my face.

  As I rounded the corner, my whole body flinched: there was a man with a camera and a woman hanging around outside. When they saw me, I knew they knew who I was.

  The woman came haring down the street toward me. “Betsy? Betsy Phillimore? Is there anything you’d like to say for the record about the revelations in the papers?”

  “No,” I said politely, and kept walking.

  “Are you ashamed of the way the Phillimores covered up the scandal about your birth? Don’t you feel angry?”

  “No,” I said again. I was nearly at the door now.

  “Don’t you think it’s morally repre
hensible to set young women up for some kind of sick marriage market?” she persisted. “Isn’t it like a legalized form of slavery? Don’t you think you deserve to be told the truth about who your real parents are?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” My voice cracked. I didn’t want to talk about it. Not to her, anyway. It hadn’t been like that.

  I glanced up at the familiar sash windows where girls had once waltzed and curtseyed, and I thought of Franny and her kindness and the way she had smiled at everything I did. She had loved me. She’d wanted the best for me, in every way. That hadn’t changed.

  The journalist kept following me, though, running to keep up with me. “Are you going to find your real parents?”

  I turned and pulled myself up to my full height. “I don’t need to find my real parents,” I said. “I know who they are.”

  “You think your father was Hector Phillimore?” Her eyes lit up, and she gestured to the photographer. “What about your mother?”

  He started snapping away, and I covered my face instinctively.

  Then I removed my hands and removed my shades too, for good measure.

  I spoke very slowly, so she’d get every word and he’d get my best side. “My real mother was Frances Phillimore,” I said. “She was a gentle, wonderful lady, and if I could be half the woman she was, I’d be very happy.”

  It was then that I turned and saw Lord P standing behind me, listening to everything I’d said.

  The expression on his face was so dignified and grateful and uncharacteristically emotional that I nearly wept.

  Behind him was Nell Howard. And she looked on the verge of tears too.

  Twenty-six

  All ladies need one show-stopping, spirit-lifting classic dress, preferably in a fabric that will accommodate thin days and fat days—add up what you’d spend on hair and makeup and new shoes to make an ordinary dress fabulous, and it’s not so expensive.

  We found ourselves in the principal’s office, where Lord Phillimore sat behind Miss Thorne’s desk, looming awkwardly over her knick-knackery and mint imperial bowl, not quite sure where to rest his arms for fear of breaking something.

  It was the first time I’d been in this room without Paulette stumbling in with a tray of coffee at just the wrong moment—and I had to fight the temptation to go out and make some.

  “Where should we start?” asked Lord P, and his lack of training in difficult conversations showed. His shoulders were somewhere up by his ears.

  “How about with me?” I suggested half-hysterically. I turned to Nell. “Forgive me for coming out with a straight question, but are you my mother?”

  I could see it now—there was something in her oval eyes and tilted eyebrows that wasn’t unlike mine, though her dark hair wasn’t anything like mine. I wouldn’t mind if Nell was my mother, I thought. At least she was fun and had a job…

  “No,” she said, and pulled her generous mouth tight at one corner. “Sorry.”

  The simpering crowd of drug-addled bimbos and stupidly named boys reappeared before my eyes. I leaned back in my seat and shut my eyes.

  “I’m your aunt,” she went on, and my head spun so fast I nearly cracked a vertebra. She smiled ruefully at my obvious shock. “Believe me, it was as much of a shocker for me as it is for you. Shows what you know about your own family, eh? What next, Lord Lucan hiding out in the attic? No, sorry, should be serious.”

  Nell composed herself as if rearranging a complicated list in her head. When she spoke again, it was in a more sober tone. “My elder sister Rosalind called me last month when she heard about Lady Frances’s memorial service, and said she had something to tell me. She lives in Switzerland now, runs her own company supplying staff for chalets—none of us see her very often. I thought she was going to ask me to pass on some kind of message to Lord Phillimore here, because she always adored Lady Frances, thought the sun shone out of her lead crystal sherry glasses…”

  “Rosalind was one of Frances’s favorites too,” added Lord P. “Beautiful handwriting. Very quiet. Never had to worry about her at social events, unlike some of the little trollops in her year…” He recovered himself and put three mint imperials in his mouth to prevent further comment.

  Nell coughed. “Anyway, Rosie dropped a bit of a bombshell—she told me, quite calmly, that she’d been the one who left the baby on the step. I had no idea, I swear to you! Couldn’t believe it—my own sister, who only read the horsey bits of Jilly Cooper’s novels and skipped the sex!”

  “How?” I asked. “And…who? And…when?” I pleaded with my eyes. “I just want to know…it wasn’t anything—”

  “No! No, it couldn’t have been more of a Phillimore romance,” Nell insisted. “Rosie was an innocent from Buckinghamshire, and your father was a Guards officer called Henry. Captain Henry Buckhurst. Apparently Rosie met him at a formal dining evening, upstairs in the ballroom. We used to have these nights with crowds of eligible men, putting our skills into practice,” she explained, “with Vanders and Lady Frances watching us like hawks, and the bursar invited officers from his old regiment to be our other halves for the night. They were rather dashing in uniform, even the ones you wouldn’t normally give the time of day in civvies. Brave too. Much more the sort of chaps we were supposed to be aiming for, not like slimy Hector and his dreadful cronies.”

  Nell flashed an apologetic glance up at Lord P. “Sorry.”

  He tilted his head, as if he couldn’t really disagree.

  “What was he like?” I asked curiously. “Henry?” It felt too weird to call him “my father.”

  “I never met him,” Nell admitted, “and Rosie only had one photo, but she said he was like something out of War and Peace in his uniform—gorgeous eyes, broad shoulders. Red hair. The works. He’d already got some decoration or other for valor, but she said she fell for him when he admitted that he was terrified of Coralie Hendricks and what she might do to him on the balcony.”

  “And they fell in love over dinner?” I asked, embroidering the scene in my mind. The best silver. Bare shoulders. Roses.

  “Oh, yes. Who wouldn’t?” Nell smiled nostalgically. “What with the candlelight and the champagne and everyone flirting their heads off, I can see why Rosie got carried away. She wasn’t too experienced in the old romance game, God love her. Imagined you went from eyes meeting over the centerpiece to the announcement in The Times to a house in Gloucestershire all in one go. No one really explained the stickier bits in between—despite Coralie and Sophie carrying on…Anyway, I was at school still, had no idea what was happening, apart from her letters raving about this dishy soldier who made her feel weeny and fragile, but the next thing we know, the aged parents get a letter from Rosie to say she’s upped and gone to Meribel for a few months to learn how to make fondues.”

  “Sorry?” I frowned, wondering if I’d missed something.

  “No, we didn’t get it either.” Nell lifted her shoulders and then dropped them so hard her earrings jangled. “But that’s what girls did, went off on courses. Two months learning tartiflettes here, three months on ancient crocks at Christie’s, two months ruining your nails touch-typing…Rosie sent us the occasional postcard—the parents weren’t too bothered, considering she seemed to be in with some jolly nice people. And then she reappeared around Christmas, and she couldn’t even use a fondue properly. That’s when I knew something wasn’t right.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “She hadn’t been in Switzerland?”

  “No. She hadn’t. She’d been hiding in Cheltenham the whole time.” Nell looked guilty, as if she should have known. “She’d seen the divine Captain Henry for a couple of weeks, and they’d been absolutely head over heels, and he’d given her that lovely bee charm for Christmas, with a ring to follow, but then his regiment got their marching orders, and he couldn’t tell her where they were going because it was all so hush-hush. You see? Terribly Battle of Waterloo. But she’d carried on writing, and then one day all her letters came back in a bundle. She cou
ldn’t find anything out, since she wasn’t family or anything, until there was a little obit in The Times. He’d been killed in Northern Ireland, in a terrorist operation that went wrong.”

  Nell’s eyes filled up, and mine did too. “Rosie was in a real state, and then the poor darling found out she was in the family way. Took her long enough to work it out, but when she did, she panicked and decided that if she didn’t tell anyone, she could pretend it never happened. Our parents would have gone berserk, and she hadn’t even met Henry’s, so she found herself a nursing home, like you could then, and said she was skiing.”

  “And then popped back and left me on the steps,” I said hollowly.

  Nell nodded. “She knew Lady Frances adored children, and she thought she would look after you better than she could. Make you into the lady poor Rosie had decided she wasn’t.”

  “But that’s so ridiculous!” I protested. “It’s not a crime to make a mistake! People have unexpected babies all the time! Why didn’t she just tell someone?”

  “Because…” Nell struggled to find the right words. “She felt she’d spoiled everything. We were in a Cinderella frenzy that year—the Royal Wedding seemed like our own fairy tale, a nice finishing school girl like us, friend of a friend, no O levels but awfully sweet, no previous success with chaps, bags a prince! We thought, well, if it could happen for Diana Spencer, it could happen for us too. And poor Rosie…She’d dreamed of that. I mean,” Nell added, “if we’d known then what we know now, she’d doubtless have acted a bit differently, but then…Well. Rosie did what she thought was best, and made herself live with the consequences.”

  It was a lot to take in at once. Suddenly I had a real mother and a real father whom my real aunt seemed to know as well as I now did.

  I turned to Lord Phillimore. “Didn’t you try to find out who’d left me? Franny must have recognized the necklace.”

  “Quite tricky, asking parents if their daughters have mislaid any newborn babies recently,” he said mildly. “Of course we made discreet inquiries—I gave Hector the third degree, just to be sure, but he claimed not to know a thing.”