The Finishing Touches

by Browne, Hester

  This meant only one thing. Liv’s man detox was at an end. She only played Abba when she was getting ready for a date. The stomping upstairs also suggested she’d reached the dance routine stage—i.e., shoes on, only lip gloss to go.

  “Liv!” I yelled up the stairs. “Liv!”

  “I’m coming down!” she yelled when she eventually heard me. “Two minutes!”

  I went into the kitchen and was surprised to see Mark at the breakfast bar, idly going through the bread bin where Liv and I put all the bills and receipts.

  He was wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen before—dark jeans and a soft weekend-y shirt and, blimey, indigo suede sneakers. There was a black corduroy jacket hanging over a chair, though, so he hadn’t turned entirely fashionable without warning.

  “Mark?” I said.

  He spun round guiltily and rammed the council tax bill back in the bread bin. “Oh, hello, Betsy.”

  “Are you auditing Liv now?” I asked. “Academy not challenging enough for you?”

  “Um, sort of.” He gave me a nervous smile that made his face look surprisingly attractive. I wondered if the attic offices had some cruel kind of lighting flaw, because Mark looked about 100 percent more cute in Liv’s kitchen. His hair was shinier; his expression was more confident. I took back my “porridge oat box” assessment and upgraded him to “rugged, outdoor J. Crew model.”

  He went on, “I’m taking her out to say thanks for helping me buy some new clothes.”

  “She helped you buy some new clothes?” I repeated, rather stupidly. I couldn’t quite line up the mental images of Mark Montgomery spending actual money on clothes and Liv strolling around Selfridges with a man who wore red socks and tweed jackets. “When?”

  “This afternoon.” Mark looked pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “She made some rather, um, punchy observations yesterday about my wardrobe looking like someone’s dad’s and suggested she take me shopping, and so we did, as you can see.” He made a self-conscious gesture toward his outfit. “And I thought the least I could do was to take her out to say thanks.”

  “Right.” I looked him up and down. “Well, it’s definitely worth at least a burger. Those are fantastic jeans—they really suit you! You’ve got great legs! Can I get you a drink?” I asked, opening the fridge. “Liv might be a while. When she says two minutes, she doesn’t mean two of our earth minutes. She works on some Roman numeral system.”

  “Oh, er, yeah, thanks. Cup of tea would be great.” I’d expected Mark to come out with some sarcastic quip about the female time/space continuum, as he’d have done over sandwiches in the office, but he didn’t. In fact, he seemed a lot less confident altogether out of his suit.

  I put the bottle of chardonnay back into the fridge and stole a quick glance as I swilled the teapot with hot water. Mark was so much better-looking when he wasn’t spitting feathers about Miss Thorne’s expenses. It was suddenly easier to imagine him working on his car, stripping it down with oily rags and that sort of thing. That was a good practical hobby for a man to have. And quite a sexy one…

  I wondered if Liv would mind me coming with them. I could help the conversation along—she was getting mildly obsessive about the change jar stacking up in the kitchen, but that didn’t mean she could sustain a whole evening’s chat about personal tax allowances, with a little engine chat for light relief.

  Mark ran a hand through his hair, which also seemed to have been cut. Was it this light, I wondered, or was he looking more like Colin Firth? Could Liv have helpfully chipped away the outer economist to reveal the inner attractive man she kept insisting would walk into my life one day and sweep me away from—

  The kettle boiled, and I jumped, taken aback by the unexpected turn my imagination had taken.

  “Great news about you staying,” said Mark. “Don’t suppose you’ll be needing a bursar now, will you, if you’re going to be in charge?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I mean, since you’re more qualified than me, probably.” He smiled wryly.

  I put the teapot down in front of him. If we were going to start flirting properly, then I needed to be honest. From now on, I decided, I wasn’t going to make up anything about my job, my social life, my background, anything.

  “I’ve got a confession to make,” I said.

  “Go on,” said Mark. “Don’t make me guess. It’ll only end in tears.”

  “I’m not really a management consultant.”

  “Of course you’re not.” He lifted the pot and raised an eyebrow. “Milk first or second? I can’t remember.”

  “Yes, no sugar.” I realized what he’d said, and my mouth dropped open in horror. “What do you mean, of course you’re not?”

  “I worked that out after day two.” He stirred my tea and passed me the mug. “Obvious. You didn’t delegate anything to anyone. You just did it. I could understand every word you said, and there were no memos, jargon, or long absences while you lunched other people. The math degree I could believe,” he added. “Your budgets added up, at least.”

  “Why didn’t you say?”

  “Oh, stop blushing, it’s fine. I didn’t know what you’d told La Thorne, or Phillimore. And it seemed like a small price to pay for having a reasonable human being around the place for support. Anyway, it’s been fun. For the first time in years, I’m glad my dad made me promise to take over his bloody volunteer work.”

  Our eyes met, and I honestly felt a small frisson run over my skin. Whatever transformation Liv had done to Mark had extended far beyond his clothes.

  “Would you stay?” I asked. “I mean, part-time? I don’t know how much money there’ll be for new teachers, to begin with, so I’d need to keep you and Liv and Jamie on as…Mark? Mark, are you listening to me?”

  He wasn’t listening, and his face had gone funny. I turned to see what he was staring at.

  Liv was standing in the doorway in a minidress that fell into her “restaurant dress” category. Without the benefit of a tablecloth, it’d cause her serious sitting-down issues, but on the all-important way to the table, it made her legs look a mile long. Her blond hair was loose around her shoulders, her makeup was invisible, and she looked as if she’d just thrown her outfit together despite having been upstairs throwing everything else around for hours, probably.

  “Hi!” she said breathily. “Ooh, tea, fantastic!”

  Mark rushed to pour her a mug and managed to slop milk all over his new jeans. “Oh, bollocks,” he said, trying to mop the spillage with my Visa bill.

  “Get some warm water, from the loo—under the stairs on your left,” I said quickly.

  With a shame-faced grimace at Liv, Mark rushed out, backward.

  “Doesn’t he look great?” said Liv fondly. “It only took me three hours to get him out of cords and into denim. I’m very proud.”

  “He looks gorgeous,” I admitted. “You’ve really brought out the man in the accountant.”

  Liv turned back to me, and her face sparkled with more than just highlighter. “I know! And I take it all back—you’ve been right all these years. I just didn’t realize how attractive a man like that can be. He’s going to help me buy a cheap car, he says.”

  “But you don’t drive—” I began, then started again. Just to be clear. “You and Mark. Is this…a date?”

  Liv looked coy. “I don’t know. But he’s lovely, isn’t he?”

  “But he’s a man with good-quality socks and a sensible job!” I hissed in an undertone. “You said he was exactly the sort of man to steer clear of? In favor of fun? And excitement?”

  “The sort of man you should steer clear of,” Liv corrected me. “Me, on the other hand, I need someone who cares more about socks than, I don’t know, minibreaks. As soon as I met Mark, I realized that he’s the kind of guy I’ve been waiting for all these years.” Her eyes had gone starry. “He didn’t even try to chat me up! He was wearing those awful trousers, and I just knew here was a man who wasn’t married to anyone else.”
/>   “OK,” I said slowly, surprised at how disappointed I felt. “OK, but I thought I might—”

  The loo flushed in the downstairs bathroom. Mark was on his way back. Liv grabbed my arm and pointed her finger at me fiercely.

  “No!” she gabbled, desperate to get everything in before Mark came back. “Get it together with Jamie! I insist! I’m fed up with you two faffing around, dropping stuff and generally acting like a pair of morons when you’re together, because I saw him yesterday, and he does it too. He wants to settle down. With you! Call him tonight, have dinner, sort it out, do what you have to do, or else…or else…”

  “Or else what?” I demanded.

  “Or else, I’ll tell him you fancy him,” she said.

  We stared at each other in horror as her words sank in.

  Liv put her hands on each side of her face. “You’ve turned me into a thirteen-year-old,” she said. “Please, just get on with it.”

  Mark and Liv went out on what I now realized was their first date, and I settled myself on the sofa with Barry the cat and Liv’s entire selection of cheesy DVDs, but I couldn’t get past the first ten minutes of anything.

  I should have been feeling on top of the world, and in some ways I did, but little things kept niggling away at me.

  Adele, for a start. She couldn’t seriously be making a move on Lord P, could she? Could she end up my stepmother, technically?

  And Jamie. Just thinking about him working with Adele made my scalp crawl with invisible lice of mortification. And Mark! I didn’t begrudge Liv a good, sensible man, but it wasn’t like I was inundated with candidates myself right now.

  And Nell. What was she playing at? I’d seen her hovering around the Open Day, but then she’d disappeared before the end. Again.

  I thought about my airy flat in Edinburgh, and my old life that suddenly seemed very uncomplicated by comparison. Dull, but uncomplicated. I knew where I was with shoes. If I stayed in London and opened the new Academy with all the fanfare it deserved, it wouldn’t be long before someone discovered that I was no etiquette expert. And what if it was my real mother who decided to turn up and expose me? She was out there somewhere, just waiting to turn up and honk at me like Emma-Jane and her farmyard animal impressions.

  I opened a bottle of wine and got one of the lilac notebooks out of my bag. I held it in my hand, feeling the satisfying weight of the leather binding and the gleaming gold edgings to the paper, then opened it at random.

  It was halfway through two lessons, and my writing struggled to keep up with Franny’s enthusiastic advice, offered while she drifted round the class, clicking her fingers as she thought of new points to make.

  I could hear her now.

  “A Good Chap (GC) will say nothing when you’re wrong, but will make a real song and dance when you’re right. A GC probably won’t comment on your clothes, but he’ll always let you know when you’ve made him proud to take you out. Don’t worry if he forgets flowers—only international GCs and husbands are trained in that respect, and it can be a little creepy and make you wonder what he’s hiding—just make sure he remembers to do the little things, like offering to help when there’s nothing in it for him, and making you tea in the morning, and not criticizing your parking. These are things you can’t train, they’re inherent; so when you find one, treasure him.”

  “Thank-you letters. Always write your thank-yous the same day and on good paper or amusing postcards. Keep a stock in your desk for that reason. Don’t use free ones from hotels; it’s showing off…”

  That I could do. Thank-you cards.

  I poured myself a large glass of wine and got my correspondence cards out of my bag. I had a lot of people to thank, and at least I knew how to do that, even if I’d thoroughly cocked things up on the GC front.

  “‘Dear Miss McGregor. Thank you so much for all your halp.’ No, help. ‘The right fork can bring so much small happiness to…’ I can’t read this, it’s all smudgy…”

  I opened one bleary eye. I was on the sofa, I noted, not in bed. And my head was throbbing.

  Liv was standing over me, reading aloud from the thank-you notes I’d started the previous night. “‘Dear Clementine. Thank you so much for all your halp.’ Again. Halp. Tsk. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not a strong, individual young woman because…’ Oh dear, anyone would think you’d been drinking when you wrote these.”

  “I had,” I croaked, “one or two glasses.”

  “One or two buckets. But still writing thank-you notes! There’s manners for you. ‘Dear Miss Thorne, I’d like to thank you so much for all your help, but I can’t because you didn’t give me any, you stuck-up old…’ Oooh, good job that smudged.”

  “Stop it,” I said, dragging myself to a sitting position.

  “‘Dear Liv,’” she read. “‘Thank you so much for letting me share your flat and boss you around. You are the best friend a girl could want. Please tell Jamie that…’” She stopped. “Oh. No, I won’t tell him that. You should tell him that yourself.”

  I slumped back onto the sofa and waited for Liv’s horrified intake of breath as she got to the end of the card.

  It took longer than I’d thought—my writing was hard to make out.

  “What do you mean, you’re probably going back to Edinburgh! Why are you leaving?” demanded Liv. “You’ve just inherited the business of your dreams—you’re going to be the first manners millionairess in London. Come on! You’re making the family fortunes over again!”

  “I’m not family. Hector’s not my dad,” I said. “Nancy told me yesterday. He had mumps that rendered him technically no danger to innocent young ladies.”

  “Oh.” Liv pulled a fancy that face. “Bet that was an interesting conversation. So? You’re still Lord P’s family—he adopted you, for God’s sake! What more do you want? And you’ve still got an amazing business to run.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “It feels wrong. Yesterday I thought, wow, this is my destiny! I can do this because I’ve inherited Franny’s social genes! But now…” I looked round the kitchen for the glass of water and Nurofen that I always left out to force down before sleeping. Typical. I had forgotten to take it for the first time since Freshers’ Week. No wonder my head was banging.

  “Now you’re going to run away to Edinburgh?” said Liv sarcastically. “Because running away is the one genetic certainty you have? Give me a break.”

  “No,” I started, but she carried on boggling at me. “You’ve got very tough of late,” I informed her.

  “I can’t think why. I’ve only had some first-class life coach moving in with me and kicking me up the arse and generally helping me get my act together.” Liv thrust the glass of water at me. “You’re not going anywhere, not just like that. Drink this, put the coffee machine on, and I’ll go and get the papers. You’ll feel tons better with some caffeine and a proper breakfast inside you—isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”

  “I need to rewrite those thank-you notes anyway,” I conceded.

  Liv’s face brightened. “Great. Now, get in the shower, and I’ll be right back.”

  I did feel a bit better with clean hair, and significantly better with coffee flowing through my veins. Liv crashed back in while I was still in her dressing gown, making myself a second cup.

  “I blew the budget and went to Paul for proper French croissants,” she informed me, breezing past with several bags. “Don’t even think about arguing. Mark says that you can’t put a price on feeling good. And I’ve got a selection of papers—serious, scandalous, and the one that pretends to be serious but that’s just full of prurient gossip about celebrities and rich people cavorting around town.”

  She threw the papers down in a fan shape on the table. “You can have the pick. So long as you read the horoscopes out loud.”

  I managed a smile and grabbed a croissant as I pulled the nearest paper toward me.

  Silence fell in the kitchen as we scarfed flaky pastry and slurped away at
coffees, now that no one was there to inspect our table manners.

  “Would you believe Jennifer Lopez has lost weight?” I observed, turning the pages of my tabloid. “And Gwyneth Paltrow has put it on.”

  “Baby, or comfort eating due to secret agony?” said Liv, without looking up.

  “They don’t know. It looks like a bad dress to me.” I bit into my croissant and turned the page.

  SCANDAL. SEX. SOCIALITES. WHEN GOOD GIRLS GO VERY VERY BAD.

  She looked familiar, I thought, inspecting the blonde in question as I reached for my coffee. In fact, she looked a lot like…

  Venetia.

  Twenty-five

  Make sure you’ve got one stunning photograph of yourself ready for sending to the newspapers in case you win the lottery/disappear at sea/file a news report from some disaster zone via your mobile. The last thing you want is your moment of glory being illustrated by some hideous office-party snap.

  ILLICIT LIAISONS. DRUNKEN ANTICS. SEX. THE FINISHING SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL?

  My eye scanned the page up and down, unable to take all the words in at once.

  The main photograph was the one of Venetifa from the feature earlier in the week, but Adele had been replaced with a blurry long-lens paparazzi picture of a man I assumed was Luka the fiancé with the Ferrari. He wasn’t quite the smoldering Adonis she’d made out either. From what I could see, he was about as round as he was high, and Venetia would be condemned to ballet flats for her entire married life—however long that was, according to Adele’s “starter marriage” prescription.

  On the other side of the double-page spread was a group shot that I hadn’t seen before but had still seemed oddly familiar. I looked closer and realized it was the missing “Class of 1980,” but with little “Where Are They Now?” boxes springing from each of the girls, and photos of floppy-haired, posh heartthrobs alongside. I didn’t know any of the men, but they looked like characters from Brideshead Revisited, with names I vaguely recognized—Rory McAlmont, Lord Inverisle, Simon Fitzgerald, Bingo Palmer, the Honorable Hector Phillimore.