“He didn’t,” added Nell. “Henry wasn’t one of his friends. He barely even drank.”
“And what happened to Rosie?” I asked. “What happened after she left me?”
“She went abroad and got herself a job, which was pretty unheard of back then.” Nell seemed proud. “She built up her own business in Switzerland, organizing chalet girls for ski parties and making sure they didn’t get into trouble. Turned into a right bossy boots, curfews and checks and everything. Marie Slopes, we called her.” Her face fell. “Of course, if we’d known…”
I tried to make sense of it all in my head. “So, when you met me at the memorial…did you know who I was? Did you go there to find me? How did you know what I’d look like?”
Nell fiddled with her cuticles, a habit I’d struggled with for years myself. “I was going anyway, but Rosie asked me to work out whether you wanted to be found. She was too scared to come along herself—worried that you might be there, and you’d think her a bit of a crasher for turning up at your real mother’s memorial service.”
She gave me a self-deprecating grin. “Not the best manners, really, for you or for Lady Frances. Bit of a scene stealer, don’t you think? So she sent me to find out, as best I could, what sort of feelings you had, if any, for the frightened little girl who’d left you on the steps.” She paused apologetically. “Her words, not mine, there.”
I tried to remember exactly what she’d said to me, when she’d accosted me by the photos. All I could remember was her feathery hat and her friendly face. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you pretend not to know who my mother was?”
“Because I didn’t know whether you even cared about her,” said Nell, suddenly serious. “For all I knew, you might have wanted to track her down to give her a piece of your mind. Or Frances might have told you a different story, that you still believed, and I wasn’t sure if it was the right place to start telling you that you weren’t actually a Royal love child or what have you.”
“And did you spot me straightaway?” I held my breath, hoping that some family connection had brought us together, even if we didn’t know.
Nell nodded. “I thought I wouldn’t, but I knew, once I saw you. You smile like Rosie does, and you start conversations with strangers in the same brave “what can we talk about?” way. But you’re more like Lady Frances in everything else.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes.” Nell nodded. “You stand the same, with that lovely straight back, and you have the same mannerisms, the way you tip your head when you’re talking, and that adorable smile…”
“And you walk the same,” added Lord P. “And you laugh just like her.”
Because Franny taught me to walk, and laugh, and smile. My eyes filled with tears again.
“When I said that you’d made us proud, I meant it,” said Lord P. “God knows I’m not one for this touchy-feely business, but you were the absolute light of Frances’s life. And mine. The most precious gift we could have had, and I’ll always be thankful to Rosie for giving us the chance to love you.” He blinked hard, and for a moment I thought I could see tears around his eyes. “And what you’ve done with this place…She always knew…”
I couldn’t let him get away with that. It was one thing being proud of me now, but if we were going to start dishing out home truths, I had some of my own.
“But you didn’t always think I was so precious, did you? I wasn’t good enough to be finished off!” I said. “You said the Academy wasn’t for girls like me!”
Lord P’s face crumpled as if I’d hit him. “Did you think that’s what I meant?”
“Yes!”
“That is harsh,” agreed Nell. “Oh, dear, Pelham, not well done at all.”
“And you covered up the scandal, brushed it under the carpet as if I were something to be ashamed of.” My face was getting red now. “OK, so I tried my best to make you proud of me, but didn’t you just take me in to stop the gossip getting out? Was that why you didn’t think I was good enough to go?”
“I thought you were far too good to go!” Lord P exploded. “You didn’t need finishing off, Betsy! Finishing off is for thick girls who can’t even get out of a car without instructions, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, thanks,” said Nell. “Touché.”
Lord P rubbed a hand over his face. “Betsy, the reason I didn’t want you going anywhere near the Academy was because I wanted there to be more in your life than just men and marriage and flower arranging. I had no idea until about an hour ago who your mother was, but I knew it was a girl who’d been let down in some way. A girl who wasn’t in charge of her own life. I didn’t want that to happen to you.”
He got up and started to pace back and forth in front of Miss Thorne’s photo gallery of grinning debutantes. “I’m not ashamed to say that I was all for closing the Academy down that year—the awful car crash and the girls and what have you. Utter, utter nightmare. Frances did her best to influence Coralie and Sophie in a positive way, but we weren’t their parents, most of that hell-raising went on outside term time, and Hector…How could we lay down the law when he was the worst of the lot?” He stopped and looked me in the eye. “It was only because Frances wouldn’t let me give up on a low note that this place carried on at all. Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to her. But I made a promise that under no circumstances would I allow your future to be risked mixing with girls who didn’t care what happened to them. You were too precious, to me and to Frances.”
“That’s not what it felt like to me,” I said, hurt.
Lord P looked mortified. “I can see that now. I should have let Frances handle things, but I didn’t want you to be angry with her.”
“But that’s why I moved to Scotland! That’s why I stayed up there!” I pressed my lips together, trying not to let my emotions boil over into tears. “I’ve never thought I was good enough. I’ve spent my whole life wondering who I was, and what I was meant to be, but mainly what was so wrong with me that I wasn’t even allowed to arrange flowers with those girls.”
“Then I’ve failed,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want you to care. I wanted you to realize how much better than that you were. I’m so sorry.”
Lord P’s shoulders sagged, and I knew he wasn’t just thinking of me—he was thinking of the years I’d spent away from Franny, who’d already lost one child to disappointment and misunderstanding.
“It’s asking a lot,” said Nell, breaking in with typical forthrightness, “but can you forgive a well-meaning old duffer with no idea of how to handle emotional issues, and a naive schoolgirl who got most of her guidance from the pages of Georgette Heyer? And tactless old me, for not telling you the entire ghastly tale the very instant I clapped eyes on you?”
I looked between them both. I had thought it would feel different, the moment when I found out who my parents were. But in the end it was just like reading the final scene in a detective novel; a part of me was going, “Ohhhh, now I understand” as the pieces clunked into place, but the greater part of me felt exactly the same as I had when I had walked in, only emotionally wrung out, and angry.
No, I corrected myself. I wasn’t angry with them so much as angry at the wasted time, and the energy I’d spent worrying about worst-case scenarios and horror stories that would never have happened anyway.
The truth was, it didn’t make any difference. I was still me. I was still Betsy, still Liv’s friend, still Franny’s daughter, still BA (Hons), still not a ballerina’s child or a rock star’s drunken secret. Only now I could stop wondering what I might be.
I had always thought I’d be disappointed, but actually the relief was incredible.
“If you can’t forgive me, and I can understand why,” said Lord P, looking me straight in the eye, “then please, tell me you can forgive Frances.”
I blinked back hot tears.
“Yes.” I hiccuped. “Of course I can forgive you. I can forgive you both. You and Franny. You’re my real parents.”
And for the first time since I was five years old and his Great Dane had dragged me the length of the garden like a rag doll, Lord Phillimore opened up his arms and hugged me tightly to his chest.
Epilogue
Always keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge for special occasions. Sometimes the special occasion is that you’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
“You’re seeing three of these women before lunch, and then two after, but you’re having lunch with Mr. O’Hare, so I haven’t booked the last two in until three-thirty, just in case you decide to, you know.” Paulette gave me a juicy wink. “Have a long one. If you know what I mean. Hahahaha! Oh, and I’ve scored them all out of ten, thought it might help. What with them being work/life tutors.”
I looked at the CVs she’d just handed me. The top one had a Post-it with Photo looks like a bloke—was Simon, not Simone?! Bad roots. 3/10 on it.
“Scored on what basis?”
“Clothes, appearance. Amount of boasting they did. I was going to write on it direct, then I remembered what you said about Post-its,” she added. She tapped her nose. “More discreet.”
“Thanks, Paulette,” I said. I was getting through on the discretion front, albeit slowly.
I’d been in charge for a month, but it felt like a lot longer. I’d be telling a solid gold social fib if I said it had been easy to gloss over the terrible publicity: for two days, in a slow news month, it had been seriously grim. Heavy breathers calling the office with “proposals,” photographers lurking outside, the lot. If it hadn’t been for Anastasia offering to get her dad to buy the offending newspaper—as in buy the business, not the foldy, printed type—“and see to the woman who wrote those lies!” I don’t know if I’d have found a funny side.
I was touched by the deputation of three that turned up on Tuesday morning, their privacy protected by massive sunglasses and hats, and their no photos! body language whipping what had been two snappers and a bored hack into a veritable scrum. At least they’d had coaching in how to get a good paparazzi snap.
Venetia wasn’t with them. She’d “gone into hiding,” or as Clemmy put it, “she’s staying with her mum while she tries to get hold of Max Clifford.”
“I’m starting to feel sorry for Venetia,” said Divinity, sitting up in the bursar’s office where Mark and I were trying to deal with the refund calls and the general inquiries. It wasn’t all bad news; some people had phoned to inquire about getting onto the Marrying a Millionaire course.
“Venetia? I don’t feel sorry for her at all!” Clemmy flicked her hair back; she’d toned herself down from Raven Black to Mellow Crow since Liv’s makeover and now looked dramatic rather than downright scary. “All right, so she’s skint, but she didn’t have to marry some fat old arms dealer.”
“She hed the contacts—she could hev dealt her own arms,” said Anastasia. “Tvice the profit.”
“Can you help her?” Divinity gazed at me with her brown eyes full of pity. “Can’t you ring her and tell her what to do? I don’t reckon as Miss Buchanan’s going to be much help, not now.”
“Help Venetia? Are you mad?” demanded Mark, looking up from his calculations. “I’m looking at these figures, and it’s touch and go, frankly. One more cancelation and it’s all over.”
I’d been thinking about Venetia since the smaller follow-up piece on Monday had caught her emerging makeup-less from her “shamed bankrupt parents’” home in South London. It turned out that her dad was a lawyer with an unfortunate poker addiction and an even more unfortunate conviction for fraud; her mother had come from better things and had sunk her savings into Venetia’s fees as a last attempt to salvage the family fortunes with a hefty marriage. If it had happened to someone nicer, Nancy agreed, it would have been almost romantic, Venetia plumping up her bosom, slapping her thigh, and setting forth to do what she could to save her parents from negative equity.
“I’ve got a plan for Venetia,” I said. “What she needs is a job, doing something she knows about, like fashion, somewhere out of London where she can start again. Maybe somewhere like…Edinburgh.”
Clemmy looked at me strangely. “You seem very chipper for someone whose business is about to shut down.”
“That’s the best part about a disaster,” I told her. “Once the worst has happened, it can only get better. As a wise woman once told me.”
Clemmy raised both her thumbs, sarcastically. “Good luck with that.”
After that, it did get better, but slowly. I decided that the only way around the Curse of Google was to start again under a new name: The Finishing Touches. I rented out my flat in Edinburgh, invested in some decoration for Halfmoon Street, and threw myself into making manners for a modern age seem like the best secret boost a smart girl could give herself since Spanx.
Miss Thorne took “early” retirement, at very much the same time as Miss Buchanan also regretfully resigned from the teaching staff. Venetia hadn’t held back in revealing who’d been tutoring her in the art of marrying well, and although I’d heard rumors that Adele was thinking of starting some kind of anonymous Springboard Marriage coaching blog, she denied them passionately—but then, I wasn’t a diarist on the Evening Standard.
“I’m a very private person,” she told me, while the decorators hammered overhead. “I can’t have my personal life raked over; it’s too cruel for those close to me.” Then she asked for her term’s invoice, which she needed, she claimed, for a spa holiday to the Caribbean—which I noted with a heavy heart coincided with a test cricket series.
So I lost two teachers, and gained two—Liv became a part-time style consultant for me, Jamie taught a couple of very popular classes a week on whatever he wanted, and I was almost at the point of employing a proper member of staff to coach new students in preparing for the workplace.
Which was why, one month from the day I’d found out exactly who I was, I was sitting upstairs in my newly painted office wearing my new green suit, my hair swept into a chic chignon I’d learned how to do myself, and, most important, Franny’s lustrous pearls. I was a real pearl convert. Everything she’d said about pearls coming to life on a woman’s skin was true; from the moment I fastened the clasp, they glowed against my pale skin like tiny lamps. The only addition I’d made was to fasten the little diamond bee onto the clasp, so it hung like a charm. I felt I’d got the best of both mothers then.
The phone rang on the desk next to me, and I answered it with a happy flourish.
“Is that the School for Common Sense?” inquired a familiar teasing tone.
“Why? Are you looking to acquire some?” A smile curled round my lips, and I knew it showed in my voice. Liv said I had a particularly pukey smile when I talked to Jamie on the phone. When I was with him, I was too preoccupied with other things to notice what my face looked like.
“Nope. I leave the common sense to my girlfriend. She has enough for both of us. I’m just checking that she’s still on for lunch,” Jamie went on. “We could go to a new Greek place that’s just opened in Knightsbridge, or we could try out a party venue in Soho—bit dodgy, very fashionable—or we could get sandwiches and eat in the park.”
“Park, please,” I said, sounding a bit village idiot but not caring.
“Good,” said Jamie. “I don’t know what you’re teaching there, but I hear that most restaurants frown on public displays of affection. And I’m not driving all the way from Islington to Piccadilly if I can’t at least have one kiss before coffee.”
“I’m sure it’s very bad manners not to offer one,” I agreed. “Park it is.”
Paulette had appeared at the door and was pointing at my desk, then at me.
“I have to go,” I said. “I’ve got staff to engage.” I hung up before I said anything a passing personal assistant might find embarrassing in her new boss.
“Shall I show her in?” Paulette asked.
I straightened my jacket and smoothed my hair down. “Yes,” I said. “Oh, hang on, Paulette, which one’s??
?”
But she’d vanished.
OK, I thought, checking my reflection in the mirror I kept in my drawer. Buttons, done up; Lipstick, poppy red and fresh; Teeth—I bared my teeth—fine.
Or was that a bit of toast stuck in the side of my…I pulled my lip back to check.
“Hello!”
I dropped the mirror in my haste to get up and nearly spilled cold tea on myself.
The first candidate was standing in the doorway—a tall woman, late forties, in a green suit a bit like mine, with lovely pale skin. No makeup, just red lipstick.
Chic, I thought approvingly.
“Sorry,” she apologized, “your assistant said to come right in.”
Your assistant.
Deep breath, be calm, be friendly, I reminded myself, and held out my hand. “Hello, I’m Betsy Phillimore,” I said. “And I should be sorry; Paulette hasn’t actually told me which of these CVs is yours.”
The woman had a good handshake—firm, three shakes up and down, lots of eye contact. She had lovely eyes too, with long lashes, and laughter lines feathering the edges.
Her hand lingered in mine for a second or two after we’d finished shaking, and she didn’t break off the eye contact.
“It’s the one without the photograph,” she said. “Very boring CV, really, just the one business for the last twenty years. I’m not sure how qualified I am, but I’m very keen. As soon as I saw what you were doing here, I wanted to be part of it.”
“Right,” I said, shuffling through the papers. I tried to hide Paulette’s frank Post-it assessments from view. If she decided to give up as a PA, I thought, there would be a job for Paulette with Simon Cowell.
“What lovely pearls,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said proudly. “They were my mother’s. I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find—”
“I’ve been running a chalet business,” the lady went on. “In Switzerland?”