Little Lady, Big Apple

by Hester Browne

  Her hands now made chop-chop gestures. I was getting terrible manicure envy. New York grooming was on a whole new level, even for me. I folded my hands into one another.

  ‘It sounds like you’ve got everything under control,’ I said nervously. ‘I can’t think what you’d need—’

  ‘I need you, Melissa,’ barked Paige passionately. ‘I want you to come on board and help Ric make it here in the US. I’m thinking in terms of a . . . personality makeover.’ She broke out a wide and very white smile. ‘Nothing too radical. Just, ah, encourage him to speak up, and be polite.’

  I scrutinised Paige, trying to work out what she wasn’t telling me. I might be naïve on occasion, but I’m not daft, and there seemed to be a few gaps here.

  For one thing, he was an actor! On television! I didn’t know any actors, but even I knew that they generally did what they wanted, and got away with murder. Wasn’t it one of the perks of the job?

  Second, I was beginning to wonder, queasily, if I hadn’t rather overstated my own agency in an effort to keep my end up at the party. What exactly did Paige think I did? Did she imagine I was one of those executive makeover people?

  I gulped.

  Then there was Godric himself. If he’d turned up at my office, wanting advice on smartening himself up for the Fulham dating market, I’d have considered it a tough assignment. But Paige wasn’t talking about improving his chances with a few Fionas, she wanted me to sort him out to international publicity standards!

  No, I couldn’t do it. It was asking for total humiliation. Not to mention the fact that Jonathan had specifically told me not to start getting involved in any work. And especially not with Paige.

  I took a deep breath. Saying no wasn’t one of my strong points.

  ‘Paige, you know I’m terribly flattered that you think I could help out here, but don’t you have all sorts of specialists you could be employing?’ I protested. ‘Voice coaches, and, um, movement people, and . . .’ I tried to remember the lists of people they had on film credits, after best boys and make-up artists to the assistants and that sort of thing.

  Paige pushed her glasses back up on her nose and looked at me. ‘But I want you.’

  ‘Well, that’s awfully kind of you to—’

  ‘Melissa, let me level with you.’

  This was the third levelling we’d had. Things were pretty flat between us by now.

  ‘I need someone discreet. Ric’s at a delicate stage in his career, and I’m loving his naturalness. Everyone’s loving his naturalness. I don’t want any gossip about coaching to impact that? And what could be more natural than to have someone like you, someone well-spoken, from his own jolly homeland, just reminding him, by being there, how he should be behaving? You’ll look like his PA, or an old friend, not some kind of crutch.’

  I could see where she was coming from but I still wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Paige, this may sound very odd, but being posh . . . it’s not the advantage you think it is at home. I mean, he might be trying very hard not to be, er, Hugh Grant, and if he’s decided that’s not him, I don’t think anything I say can—’

  But that just sent Paige off into a litany of how much everyone loved Ric and how his film was going to reach an unprecedented market share and end up with Mattel action figures of him in Wal-Mart, and her hypnotically soothing monologue gave me a moment or two to think.

  Despite myself, I was starting to be intrigued, and not a little tempted by the idea of working with someone who was about to be famous. Properly famous. I mean, how good would it be for the agency’s reputation back in London when I got back, not to mention the gossip I could dangle in front of Gabi?

  I wrestled with my conscience as Paige’s mellifluous tones and sing-song accent lapped gently at my ear. Maybe this could even be the start of a legitimate business in New York; OK, so Godric was a bloke, but really this was life coaching, not pretending to be anyone’s girlfriend, and that was what Jonathan – understandably – had had such a problem with, wasn’t it?

  I began to soften to the idea, despite the alarm bells going off in some distant part of my brain. How badly could it go if I just saw Godric for coffee and put him straight about a few things? Not saying ‘what’ and making sure he smiled now and again. He looked like he needed a bit of help on that score. And we did have, um, some history. It would look frightfully rude if I refused to see him . . .

  ‘. . . favour for a friend?’ Paige gave me a meaningful look and I realised I should have been listening harder. As usual.

  ‘Um, well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said, caught off-guard.

  ‘Melissa, I am so thrilled!’ she exclaimed, delighted.

  I panicked. What had I just agreed to? She was acting like I’d offered to marry him.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I just know you’ll be able to help him in ways I never could.’ She smiled conspiratorially. ‘I could tell you had a special talent right there at the party. Have you ever thought of working in PR?’

  I bit my lip and gathered up what remained of my concentration in this heat.

  OK, so maybe this was a little nearer to the whole man management thing than Jonathan would necessarily like, but it wasn’t like I’d be pretended to be Godric’s girlfriend. I’d be acting as his chaperone. His . . . manners coach. The fact that he was a rude man was neither here nor there; if Paige had a rude actress she’d be asking me to do just the same job. And if it went well, it might give me a footing to work here, as well as in London, and if Jonathan and I were going to make a go of things, that might be important.

  And, I conceded, it would be nice to have some spare cash. I wasn’t earning anything while I was on holiday, after all. And the rent still had to be paid on the office. Besides, every time I left Jonathan’s house I stumbled upon another shop selling fabulous little skirts or shoes that you just couldn’t get in London.

  As long as you don’t promise anything just yet, I told myself.

  ‘Well, maybe if Ric and I meet for a coffee and see how it goes from there?’ I heard myself say, in polished Joanna Lumley tones.

  ‘Fabulous. Fabulous. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you believe in this as much as I do,’ gushed Paige, and jabbed a button on her phone, adjusting her headset so she could talk into it. ‘Would you excuse me one second?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Hello, Tiffany, is he here yet?’

  Paige had invited Ric here already? Before she knew I was going to say yes?

  Confident, huh.

  Paige’s brow furrowed. ‘Tiffany, sweetie, you’re mumbling. You can’t mumble. It wastes my time and it makes you sound dumb,’ she said, in a gentle but steely voice. ‘Well, where is he? Have you called him?’

  I tried not to meet Paige’s beady eye, and fixed my attention instead out of her huge window. All I could see was a lot of other windows, in the looped arches of the block opposite.

  ‘He’s what? What? Tiffany, sweetie, I don’t want to be hearing that!’ Paige’s face darkened and she pressed one perfectly manicured nail against her cheekbone until the skin went white around it under her blusher. ‘No call? Nothing?’

  There were other people in the windows opposite. They were also staring out. I thought about waving, then thought again.

  ‘And you’ve paged him? Just twice? Keep paging!’

  Paige had a way of delivering all this that bespoke of a titanium fist in a velvet glove.

  That was agents, though, I guessed, and shivered as she stabbed at the button on the phone to cut Tiffany off, mid-protest.

  ‘Well, I had hoped to have him here,’ she said with a little ‘what can you do?’ shrug, and I guessed she’d wanted to open the door and wave Ric in as soon as I’d agreed, in the manner of a dating game show.

  Presumably, if I hadn’t agreed, she’d just have wheeled him in anyway, and showed me how dreadful he was until my professional pride was sufficiently roused to sort him out.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said brightly.
‘I’m sure we can arrange a meeting soon. I have quite a few windows in my—’

  ‘No, I need you to meet with him ASAP,’ interrupted Paige, with an apologetic moue. ‘Can I call you just as soon as I’ve tracked him down? The publicists are on my case, wanting to set up long lead-time interviews, and I need to have him good and prepped.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ll just—’

  Paige held up a hand. ‘Would you hang around here for a half-hour? He can’t be far away. I told him ten thirty.’

  I smiled politely. ‘Paige, I’m meeting Jonathan for lunch at one, and to be honest with you, I don’t know New York that well, so I was planning to leave a little longer to find—’

  ‘A half-hour.’ And now she wasn’t beaming so fully. In fact, her eyes had gone a little glinty. ‘Thirty minutes, Melissa. That’s all I’m asking of you.’

  I forced my lips into a smile. ‘But even if he arrives in the next thirty minutes, I still don’t have very long . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ said Paige, with a touch of sadness in her voice. ‘I thought you’d understand how time-sensitive these things are.’ She paused, then added, ‘Did you say you ran your own business?’ as if she’d heard wrong.

  Something in me cavilled at that.

  ‘Well, half an hour. I really must go after that. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait in the café over the road,’ I added. ‘I have some calls to make.’ I paused too. ‘I need to check in with my assistants at the office.’

  I smiled to underline that this was my final offer, and Paige was smart enough to nod curtly. ‘You have your cell phone switched on?’

  ‘Not during a meeting,’ I replied. ‘That would be terribly bad manners.’

  Paige beamed. ‘Oh, you! Well, if you could turn it back on now?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  Not that I was going to answer it on the first ring, though.

  When I’d settled myself into a corner seat in the Starbucks over the road, with a bucket of cappuccino and a slab of blueberry coffee cake that couldn’t possibly be as low-fat as it claimed, I turned my phone back on and immediately it ding-donged with new messages.

  ‘Mel, it’s Gabi. I can’t find Allegra. She’s not been in all day, she won’t answer her phone, and she’s left me a note to pick up her bloody car from the garage. Can you have a word with her? She’s . . . [sound of a door banging] Oh, hello. What time do you call this? [muffled response] I don’t care what your barrister says! I’m on the phone to Melissa right now, actually. Do you want to talk to her? No? And you can put that down. You can . . . [not-so-muffled crash]’

  I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead.

  ‘Hello, Melissa.’ My eyes opened. It was an American voice. ‘My name’s Agnetha Cooke, we spoke briefly at Kurt and Bonnie Hegel’s cocktail party? You might recall we had a discussion about tea, and I was wondering if you could give me the name of the place in London you mentioned that did that special tea you were talking about?’

  God, what had I told her? By that stage in the evening I was barely registering names, let alone recalling advice, such was the high-pitched note of stress in my brain. I made a note to call her back.

  As I was jotting down Agnetha’s many phone numbers, I let my eyes wander around the room. New Yorkers were, on the whole, not so different from Londoners, really. SoHo, NY, had much in common with Soho, W1: trendy black-framed glasses, strange clothes, laptop bags, people wearing sunglasses indoors . . .

  My eyes stopped wandering as they fell on a familiar figure in shades.

  Godric.

  He was reading a thin book, very intently, and drinking espresso. I assumed, from his black clothing and existentialist demeanour, that it was something in the original French – Voltaire, or Sartre, or something. Emery had gone through a phase like that. Although in her case the books were chosen because, being short, they took up less space in her handbag.

  As I watched, his phone rang, two people turned to glare at him, and he sent it to ‘busy’.

  Honestly. Lateness I could forgive if one had had to save the life of a passing lollipop lady, or rescue a cat from a burning house, but not just because one had reached a gripping argument for free will.

  I got up and moved purposefully across the café, slipping onto the easy chair opposite his. ‘Hello, Godric,’ I chirruped. ‘Aren’t you meant to be in a meeting right now?’

  He looked up bewildered, realised it was me, and let his shoulders slump down into ennui mode again.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said defensively. Then he looked up, and added, ‘How do you know that, anyway?’

  The phone rang again, and we both stared at it. Godric sent it to ‘busy’ once again.

  ‘Because you’re having the meeting with me,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Godric, would you take off your sunglasses? I know it’s sunny outside, but it’s rather rude to the person you’re talking to.’

  ‘I need them for privacy reasons,’ he sulked. ‘Don’t want to be recognised.’

  ‘Please? It makes an enormous difference.’

  He huffed, but removed them, rubbing his eyes in the unexpected sunlight.

  ‘Thank you!’ I said. ‘Gosh, now I see you properly, you’ve hardly changed!’

  He hadn’t, actually. The ludicrously long, dark eyelashes, and purplish shadows beneath his round brown eyes were just the same as I remembered from when he was advancing on me in the props cupboard, hands already splayed for groping. Godric was one of those boys who always looked hung over, regardless.

  I could see why Paige was so sure teenage girls everywhere would be squealing in excitement over him. If he were my boyfriend, though, I’d be forever itching to take him on a brisk walk and get some colour into his cheeks.

  Still, mine was not to reason why.

  ‘Right, can we go over to Paige’s office, please? I have a lunch appointment today and I don’t want to be late.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ Godric managed to sound both bored and annoyed at the same time. ‘I’m busy too.’

  ‘Doing what?’ I enquired sweetly.

  ‘Researching.’

  I looked at his book. He was reading James and the Giant Peach.

  ‘I’m an actor,’ he snotted, in response to my raised eyebrow. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  If I hadn’t been so hot and on edge from my own meeting with Paige, perhaps I’d have been more intimidated by his attitude, but there were limits to how long I was prepared to hang around waiting for anyone.

  ‘Well?’ I said, gathering my notebooks together and pushing my chair back. ‘Shall we go across there now? Sooner we do it, the sooner we get out, and we can both carry on with our busy days.’

  Godric regarded me sullenly. ‘What if I don’t want to go?’

  I stopped. ‘Godric, it’s a business meeting. About your business.’

  ‘Then it’s my business whether I go or not, surely? Not any of yours?’

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to this without being actively rude, but by now all I wanted was to get back to Jonathan’s house, get out of my smart clothes and get in the shower before meeting him for lunch.

  ‘In that case, I’ll just have to invoice Paige for three wasted hours of my time, which I’m sure she’ll dock from whatever you’re earning.’

  That seemed to galvanise him into action, and in ten minutes all three of us were back in Paige’s office, setting up an appointment for Godric’s – or Ric’s, as I now supposed I had to call him – new set of publicity photographs. And somehow, I found myself agreeing to ‘pop along’ with him, just to hold his hand and keep him calm.

  ‘But I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ protested Godric, in appalled tones. ‘What do you think I am? A baby or something?’

  ‘Work with me here,’ said Paige lightly. ‘OK? We don’t want a repeat of the Balthazar incident, do we?’

  And they shared a look of such mutual distaste that even I shrank
back in my chair.

  ‘I need a slash,’ announced Godric, shoving back his chair, and shuffling out of the room in high dudgeon.

  ‘I can’t believe you got him over here,’ whispered Paige. ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I just told him we had to go,’ I said. ‘And he came.’

  Paige clasped her hands together. ‘You are so good! I told you, I can’t get him to do anything, but he’s responding to you!’

  ‘It’s all in the tone,’ I said, vaguely aware that Mummy had said exactly the same thing to me when she was detailing how to bring Braveheart to heel.

  I had a grim feeling Godric was going to need more than chicken scraps and ear tickling, however.

  11

  ‘So what are you up to today?’ Jonathan said, raising his voice to make himself heard over the plaintive sound of a histrionic dog being ignored in a box.

  It felt awfully cruel, but we were, on my (OK, my mother’s) strict instructions, disregarding Braveheart’s outrage at being placed in the crate of doom while we ate our breakfast, to teach him first that his crate was a fun place to be, and, second, that only human beings had breakfast actually on the breakfast table.

  Easier said than done, when Braveheart was emoting like Barbra Streisand.

  In desperation, I spun round in my chair and tried the Look. The one I gave idiot boys like Jem Wilde when they messed around with depilators in Liberty.

  To my surprise, and his, Braveheart shut up.

  ‘Hey! Melissa, you haven’t lost your touch!’ Jonathan pointed at me and clicked his fingers in delight – an annoying gameshow-host tic I thought I’d cured him of when he first moved to London.

  I gave him the Look and he stopped too, and stared at his fingers.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Force of habit.’

  ‘So, what are you up to today?’ Jonathan bit into his wholegrain bagel. ‘I’m really sorry about missing lunch yesterday,’ he added for the ninth time.

  ‘Jonathan! Honestly! I don’t mind,’ I replied, also for the ninth time.

  He looked apologetically over the table. ‘I thought Lori had cancelled, but apparently the Schultzes had flown back to New York specially to make the viewing, so I just had—’