Little Lady Agency and The Prince

  ‘Oh, good, I’m so glad,’ I gabbled. ‘The dates would be absolutely up to when you could fit them in, and . . .’

  ‘I hope you’ll be joining the lucky winners?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘It was actually my flatmate and his date who won.’

  The dark laugh rippled down the phone again. ‘Even smarter!’

  ‘No, actually, that was just a coincidence—’

  ‘Whatever you say. I am putty in the hands of quick-witted women. If Nicolas had any sense he would be too.’

  I blushed.

  ‘Now, maybe you can help me,’ Alexander went on. ‘I wanted to surprise your grandmother with a little present, for her jewellery case – does she have a favourite jeweller, do you know?’

  Running through Granny’s favourite jewellers kept me on the phone for another twenty minutes.

  Despite my good intentions, it was nearly ten to three before I was ready to leave. I was doing my final check round the office for the one thing I always forgot when my mobile rang.

  It was Jonathan.

  ‘You’re not in a cab?’ he said quizzically. Jonathan was never ever late for anything. He kept his watch set fifteen minutes early.

  ‘No, I’m standing on the pavement waiting for one,’ I fibbed, leaning out of the window for authentic background noise.

  ‘Good, well, I’m just calling to say I hope you’re bringing something smart to wear tonight,’ he went on. ‘I’ve booked dinner at Georges – you know, that place on top of the Pompidou Centre?’

  ‘Lovely!’ I’d been wanting to go there for ages. ‘What do you mean by smart, though? You know I’ve been at work all day – aren’t my work clothes smart enough?’

  Jonathan seemed to be in traffic or something because I didn’t hear the whole of his reply. I just caught the bit about going straight there off the train, and then ‘pretty important’ and ‘can’t wait’.

  ‘I can’t wait either, darling,’ I said happily.

  Then, of course, the cuckoo clock had to go and chime the hour.

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Jonathan suspiciously. ‘You’re not still in the office, are you?’

  ‘No!’ I fibbed. ‘I’m just walking down, um, Ebury Street, and there’s a cuckoo! Ooh! Taxi! See you soon!’

  When I got into the Gare du Nord, Jonathan was there to meet me on the platform, and I still had my nose buried in his bunch of flowers when he started babbling happily about the exciting developments on the new job front, as well as the current one.

  It was all go on all sides, apparently.

  ‘I’ve been talking to some contacts here about building a client base and the more I look into it, the more potential this project has,’ he said, as we walked towards the taxi rank. ‘I thought it would be a good idea to get some wheels in motion, perhaps dry-run a few moves just to see what needs work and research and so on . . .’

  I gazed out of the taxi window, listening to the rise and fall of his voice as we sped through the ratty area around the station towards the centre of town. The taxis in Paris smelled different from the London and New York ones somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how. I really hadn’t spent very much time here at all. It was odd to think that in a few months it wouldn’t just be my home, I’d be expected to make it home for other people.

  ‘Have you made a new list for exploring this weekend?’ asked Jonathan, breaking into my thoughts. ‘I know we never get through half of your must-sees.’ He nudged me. ‘Can I trade you two cute little pâtisseries for a decent wine bar? We can make up for the ones we missed finding while we were in the country with your family.’

  I snuggled closer to him. ‘You know, I have other things I need to make up for as well as discovering little boutiques.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jonathan. ‘You’re not going to learn about Paris if we just stay in all day . . . And I need you to be my expert!’

  I sat up, to check if he was being serious or dry. I decided, disappointed, that he was being serious.

  ‘Anyway, we’re nearly here,’ he said, checking in his briefcase. He said something French to the driver, who pulled up sharply to let us get out.

  I realised we were right next to the Pompidou Centre – the huge industrial-looking building with its metal insides outside. Some students were lurking about, possibly demonstrating about something, and tourists were pointing at things I felt I should know about. But Jonathan was striding ahead and I had to walk fast to keep up.

  ‘I really appreciate you being so understanding about this, Melissa,’ he said, as the doormen let us into the lift to go up to the top-floor restaurant. ‘I know it’s a bit of an imposition, but it could be a real opportunity, and there’ll be plenty of other nights out for us, hey? I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.’

  ‘Um . . .’ I began. Had I missed something here? ‘What are you talking about?’

  Jonathan saw me looking rather blank, and stopped walking. ‘I told you on the phone this afternoon. The couple we’re meeting for dinner? To discuss relocation plans?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘No, I didn’t catch that.’

  Jonathan looked annoyed for one second, as I’d seen him do at work when human error derailed his planning machine, then he shifted his bag onto the other shoulder. ‘I did explain. It’s a contact I’ve made – could be the first bit of business for you and me, for our agency. Dom’s in Paris for some meetings tomorrow, and Farrah’s here with him for some shopping, and we managed to find a window for an informal discussion. Nothing fixed, just a chat.’ He put his arm around me, subtly hugging me and moving me along at the same time. ‘I knew if they met you, met us, it would make a far better impression than just me talking on the phone. You’re my secret weapon! Half an hour with you and they’ll want to move out tomorrow, so long as you’re in charge.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I said. But even though I could see his point, a stroppy part of me couldn’t let our romantic evening go, not just like that. ‘The thing is, Jonathan, I was really looking forward to it being just us tonight. I’ve really missed you! Can’t it wait until the morning? I’m not feeling very prepared.’

  ‘Sweetie, it was the only time Dom could do,’ he said. ‘He’s a busy guy. I’m sure they’ll need to go somewhere else afterwards, so if you want we can take our dessert somewhere different? Get ice cream and walk along the river, maybe. Hey? How about that? Our evening can start over then.’

  He squeezed me again, and I felt a churlish desire to stamp my foot, even though I knew how childish that was.

  ‘It’s for me and you,’ Jonathan reminded me. ‘Our business. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, conscious that we had spent lots of unplanned time with my family recently. He hadn’t made a big deal about that. Fair’s fair, I told myself, but I wished I’d learned some French menu vocab on the train.

  The severely clad waitress led us towards a table where two people were already seated. I tried not to let my head swing from side to side at the spectacular decor, so as not to seem touristique, but it was stunning: long red roses in the middle of each table, stainless-steel floors, and huge white-leather chairs. And the view over the rooftops of Paris was so amazing I could hardly drag my eyes from it to watch where I was going. Obviously, all the clientele was ignoring it.

  I looked round at Jonathan, to make a last-minute plea to keep it short so we could be together on our own, but he was already making ‘Hiiiii!’ gestures.

  I battened down my disappointment until later, and put on my professional pleased-to-meet-you face.

  ‘Melissa, may I introduce Dom and Farrah Scott,’ he said. ‘Farrah, Dom, my fiancée and business partner, Melissa Romney-Jones.’

  ‘Hello!’ I said, shaking hands and sitting down. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve literally just stepped off the train.’

  ‘Oh, I hate the Eurostar,’ said Farrah. She pushed back a thick wodge of hair from her face so I got the benefit of her Frenc
h manicured nails. She was, as Gabi would have said, ‘expensively put together’: blonde, buffed, tanned. Immediately, I felt as underdone as a damp crêpe.

  ‘We flew in,’ explained Dom. ‘It’s pretty quick from Manchester. Where we operate from. I mean, people always calculate time to Paris from London, but I always say, “Come on! There are other business centres in the UK!”’ He gestured to the waiter to hurry up with the wine lists.

  I hadn’t been in Paris much, but one thing I had learned was that it was impossible to speed up a French waiter.

  ‘Dom and Farrah are relocating here from Cheshire,’ explained Jonathan. ‘Dom works in venture capital, and Farrah is a PR executive.’

  ‘How interesting!’ I said. ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘For myself,’ she replied. ‘I have my own company. FSPR. Farrah Scott Personal Redefinition.’

  ‘I’d always go to a woman for PR,’ said Jonathan. ‘You’re just so much better than guys at really knowing how to play things. Melissa has her own management agency in London, but of course when we launch she’ll be coming on board with me to offer that sort of service alongside mine.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Farrah, raising her eyebrows at me. ‘Like concierging?’

  ‘Um, well, something like that,’ I said. It was very hard to explain the Little Lady Agency without sounding like a hooker, no matter how many times I’d been through it. ‘I act as a sort of freelance . . .’ I nearly said ‘girlfriend’, but stopped myself just in time, saying instead, ‘a freelance advisor for single men who need a bit of help keeping everything running smoothly. You know, all the things girlfriends do for free!’

  Farrah didn’t give me the amused eye-roll of recognition I normally got. Instead, she stared at me as if she didn’t know if I was joking or not. Even as I watched, I saw a certain contempt set into her expression.

  I swallowed. Dom was already grinning at Jonathan, but I knew I’d hit the wrong note with Farrah. It did sound a bit anti-feminist, when you put it like that. ‘I mean, there’s a lot in that old saying that if men had to pay their wives they’d never be able to afford the overtime,’ I stammered, trying to recover my composure. ‘Which is where I come in, to sort out their wardrobes and streamline their diaries and arrange decent parties and—’

  ‘We don’t need our wardrobes arranged,’ she said. ‘I have a stylist in Altrincham. So does Dom.’

  ‘Melissa’s being modest – she’s more a life coach than a concierge,’ Jonathan stepped in. ‘And her focus in our business partnership will be facilitating your move so you can hit the ground running, and not have to worry about where to send the dry-cleaning, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, looking over at him. It wasn’t exactly what I did, but . . . ‘I like to find out where the nicest markets are, and which boulangerie has the best croissants, and where you can walk your dog. You know, the sort of things you might not have time to find out otherwise. Things that really make you feel you’re settling in.’

  ‘That sounds sweet, but we don’t get a lot of time for relaxation,’ explained Dom. ‘I think we’ll be flying back to the UK at weekends, if at all possible.’

  ‘But you can arrange grocery delivery and dry-cleaning and a personal trainer – things like that, yeah?’ asked Farrah. ‘Because I’m just not going to have the time, and it would be good to know that was being taken care of. Bills, and getting registered with local taxes, water rates, yeah?’

  Jonathan was looking at me expectantly, and I heard myself say, ‘Well . . . yes, I suppose so!’

  Groceries? Dry-cleaning? Was I going to be some kind of upmarket chalet girl?

  ‘Whatever you need, I’m sure Melissa can find the answer,’ said Jonathan smoothly. ‘She’s an expert in making people’s lives easier.’

  I smiled. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

  Dom’s fight to get the waiter’s eye was halted in its thirty-third minute when Jonathan had the bill brought over, and we settled up.

  Jonathan, I noted, paid, so subtly that it was hard to spot when he’d actually done it.

  ‘Thanks for a really rewarding discussion,’ he said, shaking hands as we left. ‘That’s given us a lot of points to focus on.’

  ‘Us too,’ said Dom. ‘You’ve got a great idea there – the technical and the homely at the same time. Like it a lot.’

  ‘Anything you need to know,’ said Jonathan, ‘you’ve got my number. You too, Farrah.’

  She paused in the arranging of her scarf. ‘Of course, we’ll need to make arrangements for a new trainer before we arrive.’

  Jonathan looked at me. ‘Over to you, Melissa!’

  ‘A personal trainer?’ Farrah raised her eyebrows. ‘Of course, it has to be the right one. Whoever Kylie Minogue sees in Paris.’

  ‘Um . . .’ I felt floundery.

  ‘That’s the kind of insider knowledge that Melissa’s so good at getting,’ said Jonathan confidently.

  My heart sank. ‘Um, yes!’ I said, in response to a gentle nudge from Jonathan. ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘Listen, guys, we’ll be in touch,’ he said, and we all shook hands again and went off into the Paris evening. Dom and Farrah towards some trendy new bar that I pretended to have heard of, and me and Jonathan towards a coffee somewhere considerably less trendy, I hoped.

  True to his word, we got a bus towards the river, where Jonathan bought me an ice cream and we walked along the Left Bank, listening to the jostle and gabble of buskers and street-sellers, soaking in the busy evening atmosphere.

  I’d have been more soakable if my mind hadn’t been racing, trying to work out how on earth I could find out where Kylie went jogging. If she did.

  ‘That went well, don’t you think?’ said Jonathan. Now we weren’t in a business situation, he’d reverted to the familiar off-duty Jonathan I knew and much preferred. By off-duty, I mean he’d taken his cufflinks out and rolled up his sleeves a little, revealing fine strands of pale gold hair.

  ‘All down to you, though,’ he added. ‘Dom thought you were great. It’s a smart move, you know, letting them feel that no detail is too small. Bills, clubs, milk deliveries . . . Builds confidence in the whole package.’

  ‘So are you actually organising Dom and Farrah’s move right now?’ I asked.

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Oh.’ I licked my ice cream. ‘Does that mean you’ve handed in your notice at Dean & Daniels?’

  He paused. ‘Not yet. Not exactly. You want another glace?’

  I peered at him out of the corner of my eye. It really wasn’t like Jonathan to be so evasive.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m OK with this one. So when are they moving?’

  ‘It depends. I’m looking at a couple of properties for them. They’re looking at June, July – before Paris empties out for August . . .’

  ‘And when are you going to resign?’ I stopped walking and looked at him. ‘What’s the timetable? Because obviously I need to resign from my clients too.’

  I ignored the little flip in my stomach as the words left my mouth.

  Jonathan smiled and shrugged. ‘I hadn’t fixed a date beyond September, but I guess . . . August first? Give me time to make the transitions. How about that?’

  ‘Don’t you have to give Dean & Daniels more notice than that?’ I asked curiously. ‘It’ll take them ages to find someone who can take over from you.’

  ‘I’m . . . hmm, playing that one by ear, shall we say,’ he said, and neatly swiped the ice cream from my hand, giving it one lick before depositing it in a nearby bin. ‘Anyway, that’s quite enough business. Here we are, walking along the Seine – how much more romance could you want?’

  ‘None,’ I assured him.

  10

  My knowledge of Paris was based largely on films – An American in Paris, Paris When it Sizzles, Day of the Jackal (Nelson’s favourite) – and to an extent, my weekends with Jonathan lived up to my Technicolor expectations.

  The Marais
apartment, for a start, was the top floor of an old-fashioned ‘hôtel particulier’, built around a cobbled courtyard and hidden from the street by one of the anonymous gates I found so fascinating. Jonathan had picked up the ‘in’ areas immediately, and took great pains, while standing on our balcony, to demonstrate how close we were to the Place des Vosges, a huge seventeenth-century square where aristocrats had once paraded and where yummy mummies in puffa jackets now wheeled their mini-puffa-jacketed offspring.

  I was much more excited about wandering through the boutiques and tiny galleries that filled the narrow alleyways of the Marais. I made endless lists of things I wanted to find, for my own interest, as well as for the benefit of future clients – the glowing brass and glass cafes on the Left Bank where every customer looked like a philosopher or a writer, the higgledy-piggledy flea markets at Porte de Vanves and the stalls of old books in the Latin Quarter. Everywhere you looked in Paris, there was some exquisite detail to admire: even the métro was stylish, with its art nouveau flourishes and decorated station walls, unlike the spare Underground signs (and the frankly incomprehensible New York subway, all numbers and no names). I wanted to eat tarte au citron and drink noisettes at polished counters and wear cropped cigarette pants, and buy a scooter and swan around in my own Jean-Luc Godard film.

  In real life, though, I couldn’t find a pair of cigarette pants that didn’t make me look like a skittle, and Jonathan refused to get a scooter. He also insisted on doing a fair amount of dull trekking round residential areas. Each time we left the apartment there was another dramatic set of wrought-iron carriage gates with a mysterious courtyard just beyond, or another boutique with one perfect red-leather bag in the window. Jonathan indulged me for maybe an hour, then insisted we get back to business. I tried to tell him that it was my business to know where to get the perfect bag, but he laughed and dragged me away to the next ‘up and coming area’.

  But on balance, if I could just get over my innate English fear of feeling stupid when I tried to speak French (and taking it personally when the French speaker sniggered at me), I didn’t see why Jonathan and I couldn’t make a little corner of Paris’s bustling village our own.