by Jenny Colgan
Lizzie followed him into the shop. What was with this posh/rude thing? Would she ever learn?
“Are you following me?”
His self-confidence was galling, and Lizzie was remembering the circumstances she’d lost her last job in, still unconfident.
“Uh,” she said unconvincingly.
“You know, there’s a hostel around the corner.”
“I’m not a bag lady!” said Lizzie in annoyance.
“That’s not what your hat’s telling me.”
“You’re the rudest man I’ve ever met.”
“In that hat? I’m amazed.”
“Shut up about my hat!”
She calmed down as he stepped into the shop.
“I’m Lizzie. Penny’s sister.”
Sloan eyed her carefully. “Are you really?”
“You’ve met me. Tons of times.”
“Have I?” He sounded doubtful. He stared at her, hard. “I meet a lot of people. So, what are you doing here?”
Lizzie wasn’t quite sure how to approach this. Maybe mention that Penny was taking one day sick, then take it from there.
“Penny can’t come in today.”
Sloan rolled his eyes. “Oh, my goodness, that’s ridiculous. I’ve had some ditzy dollies work here before but your sister takes the biscuit. She knows this is a big day for me.”
“No, don’t say that!” said Lizzie. “You see, you can take me instead! I’ll do it!”
Sloan’s face cracked into a smile, showing brown and orange teeth. “You’ll do what?”
“I’ll fill in,” said Lizzie, looking around. “How hard can it be? I’ve worked in shops before.”
Sloan’s smile looked, on closer inspection, more of a snarl. “Are you those psychic twins one hears about?”
“Nope.”
“You sound nothing like her.”
“She puts it on.”
“And you look nothing like her.”
“I do if I go like this.”
Lizzie sucked her cheeks in as far as they would go and rolled her eyes. Sloan’s mouth twitched.
“And you think you’re just going to stand in for her?”
His phone rang. The ringtone was a little classical diddly number.
“Yes? Sketch? For nine people? Of course I made the booking. Uhhh . . . hang on a minute.” He looked at Lizzie. “Is this a prank?”
“Is what a prank?”
He gestured impatiently. “Are you really here to work?”
Lizzie nodded fervently.
Sloan shut the phone with a slam. “I think I may just have made a very big mistake.”
“Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “I’ll be good.”
They were both facing each other as someone entered the shop. It was a tall blond woman with a Nicole Kidman nose and superior air, as if just having a Nicole Kidman nose was enough to make you feel superior. Maybe it was, thought Lizzie.
“Hello!” she said cheerfully. “Can I help you with anything?”
The woman stared right through her as if she was made of invisible dust. Lizzie glanced at Sloan, but he was looking at her in exactly the same way.
“Well, I’ll just be over here,” said Lizzie, “if I can get you anything.”
The woman made a tiny moue with her highly glossed mouth. She glanced airily around the gallery.
“Are these all you have?” she asked eventually, with a slightly European accent Lizzie couldn’t identify.
“Uh, no, not at all, madam,” said Lizzie, bouncing forward. “I’ll just check in the back. What kind of color are you looking for?”
The woman stared at her. “What color?”
“You know. To go with your walls . . . on your yacht or whatever . . .” Lizzie’s voice trailed away. The woman was staring at her in disbelief.
The woman’s eyes flicked to Sloan, who jumped forward. “What this person was trying to say was that Brown’s extraordinary use of color is truly what sets him apart from other artists in this area.”
“But half of these are black and white.”
“Are they though?” said Sloan. “Are they really?”
The woman peered more closely at the pictures in front of her.
“You. Champagne. Now,” hissed Sloan at Lizzie out of the corner of his mouth.
“Thanks,” said Lizzie. “But it’s only ten-thirty in the morning.”
“For her.”
Lizzie stumbled into a large messy back room that was quite a contrast with the immaculate gallery next door. Frames were stacked in corners and a desk was completely submerged with paperwork. In the corner was an ancient fridge, held together with string, and inside were about twenty mini bottles of Moët. She grabbed one and looked around for something other than a chipped mug standing by the sink to put it in. There wasn’t anything. She checked everywhere. Oh God. Maybe this was some kind of fashionable east London thing where it was cool to drink out of big builder’s mugs. She poured it quickly.
Back in the gallery the woman and Sloan were deep in an animated discussion of just how many colors they could both see in the gray tones of Will’s work.
“There’s definitely some pink,” said the woman.
“That’s amazing,” said Sloan. “You know, there is, but only a very highly developed eye could have picked it out. I couldn’t—the artist had to show me.”
“You know him well?”
“He’s a very good friend of mine,” said Sloan.
“Champagne?” Lizzie said, holding out the chipped cup which, she now noticed, had a cover of the Sunday Sport printed on it.
The woman recoiled. “Excuse me?”
Sloan immediately grabbed it.
“I washed it,” said Lizzie as he pulled her to one side.
“I could smack you,” hissed Sloan, and he looked like he meant it. “Go get another one of those little bottles, open it, put a straw in it, give it to the nice lady, then get the fuck out of my sight forevermore.”
“What about Sketch?” said Lizzie bravely.
“I would rather have a robber’s dog look after this store while I’m out than you. I think I’ll just go down to the cellar and bring up some of the many rats who live there and invite them to take over. There’s a chap in Shepherd’s Market who looks after the prozzies with a razor and sells crack. I might ask him to step in for a couple of hours. After which I’ll call up Ronnie Biggs, the great train robber, to do the stock check . . .”
“OK, I get your point.”
“Following which I’ll see if Pol Pot is available to do the totaling up and get the resulting accounts audited by Enron. Am I making myself clear?”
Lizzie nodded.
“Where . . .” came the woman’s voice from over their heads, “did you get that hat?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my hat!” shouted Lizzie, finally pushed beyond endurance. “If you bloody upper classes weren’t so obsessed with things like bloody hats you wouldn’t all be going inbred and mental.”
The woman had moved forward, not listening to a word.
“It’s really terribly chic.”
They all paused.
“Uh, this hat?” said Lizzie finally.
“Yes. It’s got an ugly chic to it. I like it.”
Lizzie squinted at her.
“Please, madam, do take it if you like,” said Sloan obsequiously.
“No, you can’t!” said Lizzie. “It’s Penny’s.”
“‘Penny’s,’ eh?” said the lady. “I’ve never heard of them. Is there a waiting list?”
“Yes,” said Lizzie.
“Fabulous. Well done you, I’ll get my PA to look it up right away.”
She swept toward the door.
“Oh, and Sloan, get those two big landscapes sent around, will you? The ones with the pink in them.”
And the discreet bell of the shop politely twanged and she was gone.
“Stop it,” said Sloan, after a time.
“Stop what?” said Lizzie, who was try
ing to compose her face while staring out of the window.
“Stop trying to keep that stupid smug grin off your face.”
“Why should I have a stupid smug grin?” said Lizzie. “I’ve just made you tons and tons of money after being here for five minutes but you’re still going to throw me out on the street.”
Sloan’s mobile went off again. He listened to it intently, then hung up.
“Did you know,” he said, “that if you don’t take up your lunch reservation at Sketch they charge your credit card anyway on what they think you might have eaten?”
“Is that the kind of thing a West End art dealer’s assistant ought to know?” said Lizzie.
“Mmm,” said Sloan. He wandered into the back room. Lizzie heard him throw the china mug against the wall. It shattered with a crash. Eventually, he came back in, with a new, freshly straightened cravat.
“I’m temperamental,” he said. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“I’m temperamental, too,” said Lizzie.
“Tough shit. Are you going to sell a few of these bloody paintings?”
“Yes!”
“OK then.”
Sloan whooshed out of the shop and slammed the door, shaking his head to himself as he did so.
Penny sat in the waiting room of the local doctor’s surgery looking around with some interest, even as her left foot twitched uncontrollably. It was much smarter than Brandford community health clinic. There were pictures on the wall that nobody had nicked, and a couple of smartly dressed businessmen, fiddling with their BlackBerries while waiting to go in. This might not be a bad place to look for men. Then she remembered why she was here and groaned to herself. Oh, for goodness’ sake. It may look a bit smarter, but she was still having to wait. Although they did have the latest issue of Vogue rather than a five-year-old Reader’s Digest. That was something. Her fingers were a little shaky on the keys of her mobile when she called her sister.
“So how’s it going?”
“I realize why you spend so much time on the phone,” said Lizzie. “There’s really fuck all else to do.”
“Yes, but when I spend time on the phone it’s networking. You’re just arsing about.”
“Any news?”
“Nope, still waiting. Although, Lizzie, you should tart yourself up sometime and get down here . . .”
Sloan would be back soon from his liquid lunch, and she hadn’t sold anything else. Was this normal? She knew when she walked past these places (which wasn’t very often, and even then only on the way to John Lewis to buy thread with her mother), there never seemed to be anyone in them, browsing or purchasing. She’d kind of assumed people bought over the phone or something, but the phone hadn’t rung all day. Penny’s job was just literally sitting. When she thought of how busy she was in the café, running about, chopping, cleaning, serving, and chatting to the people coming in, she decided she had the better deal. OK, she had to start early in the morning, and she certainly got her hands dirty, and she didn’t have a second even to glance at Metro, but her day flew by, and she got the pleasure of feeding people, of giving people things they liked. It had seemed that woman earlier hadn’t even liked spending thousands of pounds on a huge treat like a painting, that it had been a chore rather than a pleasure.
But even just by being here, Lizzie could feel some of her suppositions falling away about these people. They weren’t, as it turned out, any less mean or ignorant than the people she hadn’t liked on her estate. They had the same expensive footwear (although shoes rather than trainers), flash motors, and an unearned sense of entitlement. But this, oddly, made her feel less intimidated. She really didn’t care.
Lizzie let herself slump over on the desk, not even worried now about the state of her hair. Oh God, and she really, really had to go and visit Gran too. Excellent, a two-hour bus journey on top of this day of hell. She let out a huge sigh, just as the door to the shop pinged.
“Aha!” came the loud voice dramatically. “I guessed it! You are betraying me! But Lizzie, working for me is much, much better, no?”
Lizzie looked up and could not stifle a smile, even though she’d intended to treat Georges coldly the next time she saw him, after he’d been so short with her about taking time off. He was, for the first time, wearing a suit rather than a stained T-shirt with a striped apron tied around his middle or, at the party, a black shirt that simply screamed, “I am a black shirt donned solely for my apparently slimming qualities.”
Now, however, he was wearing a very well-fitting gray pin-stripe, with a cream shirt and a darker gray and yellow tie.
“I’m just covering for Penny,” said Lizzie. “Just for a couple of days. She’s sick.”
“You have not left forever?”
“No. Not at all. You look very smart.”
“I am a very snappy dresser,” said Georges. “Don’t you think?”
Lizzie looked at the heavy gold ring and the little tufts of dark hair escaping from the cuffs of his immaculate shirt. Oddly, she found it rather sexy; the contrast between the pristine cloth and the animalistic man underneath made her shiver.
“Yes, you are. How did you guess I was here?”
Georges waved his hands. “Well, I recognized that drunk man. Sometimes he comes in and asks me if I have any wines and I say no, we don’t have any wines, we are a lunchtime shop with no wines, and he says, OK, and then he forgets and comes back the next week and asks for wines.”
Lizzie nodded sagely.
“And I am on my way to see my bank.”
“Oh.” Lizzie felt concern. There was nothing wrong with the business, was there? She hated to think of other places, who didn’t care so much about their ingredients or how they threw their food together, getting the better of Georges by being cheaper.
“Is everything OK?” she asked worriedly, thinking of Sloan’s meeting.
Georges smiled broadly. “Lizzie, it is OK. You do not need to worry yourself about us.”
Lizzie rather liked him using the term “us.”
“Oh good,” she said. “It’s a very good café.”
Georges looked around. “What are these? They look like holiday pictures.”
“They’re paintings,” said Lizzie. “Those ones there are by my sister’s evil ex-boyfriend.”
Georges raised his shaggy eyebrows encouragingly. There was no sign of Sloan in the street; perhaps he’d taken his meeting on to the Arts Club, where, according to Penny, he could sit in the corner smoking with a cigarette holder and discourse on contemporary art for hours despite being absolutely whizzbanged. “It’s so boring it makes you want to kill yourself,” she’d said. “I think that’s why he gets drunk all the time. Otherwise he’d have to bash his own head in.”
Lizzie told Georges the whole sad story “. . . and that is why she’s at the doctor’s.”
“I know this word,” he said, holding up a finger. “It is bounder. That is the word, yes?”
“Yes,” said Lizzie. “That’s it. And what he didn’t think was, we don’t have any money. He didn’t realize.”
“He didn’t see your kitchen,” said Georges.
Lizzie shook her head.
“I’ve seen your kitchen,” said Georges. He looked grave. “And you work for me. Very few rich people work for me.”
“Well, quite,” said Lizzie. “Can I have a raise?”
“A raise? While I am in here talking to you while you are working for somebody else?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Lizzie.
Georges walked around looking at the pictures closely. Lizzie wondered where he’d got a suit to fit him so well. Their mother’s old lodger had had a suit, but he’d bought it at Burton’s and it looked as if he was going to court, and not as a lawyer either.
“You know,” Georges said finally, “I am a little sorry for Will.”
“Sorry for Will? How can you be sorry for him? He got my sister pregnant, then dumped her because we’re poor! Be sorry for us!”
“He doesn’t know she is pregnant, no?”
“She didn’t want to blackmail him into anything,” said Lizzie.
“That’s good.”
“Plus she thought he still might not care. And that would make her feel worse.”
“That’s bad.” He looked meditative. “You know, Penny will be all right. She’s a survivor.”
Lizzie let out a sigh.
“But to be a leech, to try to live off women’s money, to pretend to make love . . .”
“He didn’t pretend to make love,” said Lizzie. “That’s what got us into this mess.”
“Well, I think that is a very sad thing for a man to do. Or do you think I’m old-fashioned?”
“Georges, you make your own bread and you don’t use a microwave. I know you’re old-fashioned.”
Georges smiled. “I think I want to buy one of his paintings.”
The doctor was a woman clearly younger than Penny, which made her sullen.
“You can just buy a test in Boots, you know,” said the doctor crossly. “They’re just the same and much quicker.”
Penny looked at the floor. “I couldn’t afford to,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” said the doctor, as if the concept of not being able to afford something was entirely new. Which it probably was.
“Nothing,” said Penny.
“Well, now I have to send it away to the lab. It’ll take five days. Should I write down that this is a wanted birth, or do we have to discuss our options?”
Penny wondered if being told off by a sixteen-year-old virgin was some kind of cosmic punishment. As was, it seemed at the moment, the whole of the rest of her life.
Lizzie was so shocked she burst out laughing.
“You want to what?”
“Buy a painting. Then Will can give some money to Penny if she has the baby. From himself, not from playing kissy with a woman. And look, he is very talented.”
“You’re serious.”
Georges nodded.
“Which painting?”
“You choose.”
Lizzie almost giggled.
“Georges, they’re thousands of pounds.”
Georges shrugged.
“But . . .”
