NAKED IN KNIGHTSBRIDGE
by
Nicky Schmidt
Naked in Knightsbridge © Nicky Schmidt 2009
First published in England 2009
by Prospera Publishing Limited
E-edition published worldwide 2010 by Prospera Publishing
© Nicky Schmidt
All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical (including but not limited to: the Internet, photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system), without prior permission in writing from the author and/or publisher.
The moral right of Nicky Schmidt as the Author of the Work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover design © Prospera Publishing Inhouse
Cover photograph © istock
‘All By Myself’ lyrics and song © Eric Carmen 1975. All rights reserved.
All characters and events featured in this book are entirely fictional and any resemblance to any person, organisation, place or thing living or dead, or event or place, is purely coincidental and completely unintentional.
Contact: [email protected]
www.prosperapublishing.co.uk
Reviews and praise for Naked in Knightsbridge
WINNER: PINK THONG AWARD FOR
MOST PROMISING AUTHOR 2009/2010
RUNNER UP: BEST DEBUT NOVEL 2009
"If you like The Shopaholic series, you'll love Naked in Knightsbridge. This book is fantastic . . .
Mary de Bastos at The Sweet Bookshelf
" . . .it will get the chick lit world talking."
Stephanie Pegler at Chicklit Club
"It really was a joy to read."
Leah Graham at Chick Lit Reviews
"Naked in Knightsbridge is one of the best books I have read this year . . .
Trashionista
Bridget Jones meets credit crunch, I would say . . .
What will resonate with readers is the reality that Jools lives in - the spend now, pay later culture that is so prevalent in modern British society – I am very debt-adverse and am really terrified at the way people spend the money that they do not have. Coupled with references to [online auctions] (everyone loves a bargain, right?) and sham marriages for illegal immigrants to stay in the country, this is definitely intelligent chick-lit that makes itself very current and on the pulse. And of course, everyone has the one friend that you are slightly envious about right? So is the loneliness in modern society of having only a handful of friends – with everything falling apart once that small teensy support network collapses. This would not be a chick-lit without the knight in shining armour – and I do love the character development of the knight in this book. Mille Barker, Extraordinarily Ordinary
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Big X, Mrs S, Marsha, Yannick, Jayna and all at Prospera, many thanks for the edits. To the many friends and family members who contributed ideas for Jools’ escapades, thank you and may I say to some of you, I am worried for your mental health.
Readers please note: some of the policies mentioned regarding government benefits are fiction and liberties have been taken for the purposes of the story. Please check with any organisations mentioned for correct information should you require it.
Chapter 1
Dear Miss Grand,
I am writing with regards to your business overdraft, which is now almost £5000 in excess of the agreed amount. As you are aware, this additional expenditure is unapproved and in breach of your contract with us. You are therefore required to bring your borrowing under the agreed limit of £20,000 immediately, in order to retain your line of credit.
Yours sincerely,
Horace Fortescue
Loans and Finance Director
Commercial Bank London
THROWING THE LETTER onto the coffee table, Jools nudged best friend Mel and pointed eastward. Outside, Hunk of No Fixed Abode was standing by the letterbox, looking seedy.
‘Not him again,’ Mel grumbled. ‘A hobo with a strange mail fixation. What could you possibly see in someone like him?’
‘I’m sure he has one or two redeemable qualities,’ Jools grinned wickedly. ’Besides, I haven’t had sex in eight months.’ She picked a HobNob out of the packet on the window sill and bit it in half. ’I figure he won’t run screaming if he claps eyes on my unshaved bits.’
Mel snorted. ‘God, will you raise your standards up past your navel long enough to give a relationship a chance? You aren’t half bad-looking when you put on a bit of slap and a decent skirt.’ She looked Jools up and down. ’Or any skirt, for that matter. And if you don’t mind me saying, you could do with a bit of exercise and a few less biscuits.’
Jools knew Mel was trying to be supportive – in truth, she could do with a lot less biscuits. At nearly 11 stone, with weird, fuzzy dark-blonde hair that would do any loo-brush proud, and cream-coloured teeth that had borne the brunt of ten years of double-shot espressos, she urgently needed one of those extreme makeovers. Luckily her face was passable – greenish eyes and a certain satisfying symmetry to her features – but a pretty face didn’t hide the fact she was seriously lacking in finesse.
Reminding her friend of ten years that having standards was a luxury she couldn’t window-shop for, let alone afford, Jools considered Hunk of No Fixed Abode again thoughtfully.
‘Nice cheekbones,’ she said hopefully, as she watched him caress the mailbox.
‘How can you tell through all that hair? Look, it’s growing out of his cheeks. Possibly out of his eyeballs, too. And why on earth does he hang out by that mailbox all day? It’s not natural to molest a mailbox. I’m sure it’s a violation of some sort.’
‘Maybe he knows the postman?’
‘Wants to mug him, more like. And if I recall, it’s actually a postwoman.’
Jools swore. ‘I hope she’s not competition.’
Mel rolled her eyes. It was alright for Mel, Jools thought sulkily. She was gorgeous, in that pixie-like way men adored. Tidy black bob, size 8 body perfectly proportioned for her all-black feminista garb purchased exclusively from Prada. Mel was listed in Debrett’s even though her father, Lord Something or Other, had almost disowned her when she’d told him that come the revolution, he and his kind would be the final guests in the Tower.
Somehow, Mel managed to overlook the fact that she was also ’that kind’. She worked tirelessly for two quid a week as an equal opportunity solicitor, sticking claim forms up the proverbials of evil bosses who dared to insult the gender, race or religion of her clients.
Why were they friends? Jools suspected Mel’s curiosity about the other half – the great fat unwashed – had brought them together. When Mel spied Jools at UCL, abusing a vending machine for stealing her change, Mel decided to take her on, the same way someone adopts a wayward stray from a shelter.
Given Mel’s looks and connections, the new friendship helped Jools establish herself as a dominant force of the ’it’ crowd. She even managed to lose her virginity to a popular and remarkably randy little medical student named Horry, who told her he ‘liked ‘em chunky’.
Eager to move on from the mailbox molesting hobo, Mel asked what the latest was with the business.
‘Not good.’ Jools preferred to avoid thinking about the state of her small cleaning company. Dire was the best description for it now and if Jools was honest, it had never been more than a few women running around cleaning houses for a few bob.
It had all started when she couldn’t get a job after university. Oddly, her arts degree with a major in bed-hopping didn’t seem to excite potential employers. She’d gone round to Mel�
��s old Knightsbridge flat (who’d since upgraded to a three-bed in Kensington) to complain about her sad state of affairs and Mel’s next door neighbour, Mrs Randy, had popped in to share the disastrous news that her cleaner had quit.
‘I’ll do it,’ Jools had said, despite being utterly useless at cleaning anything effectively – except her dinner plate, of course.
But Mrs Randy (why someone would choose to keep that unfortunate surname ‘in memory of my dead husband’ was beyond Jools) had seemed happy enough at her feeble attempts with a dustcloth and Dyson, and when she had extracted a crisp twenty pound note for two hours’ work, Jools figured there were worse ways to make money. (Like the time she had to dress as a chicken and parade outside the takeaway place on the high street, clucking and handing out ‘buy one get one free’ coupons – all for the princely sum of four quid an hour.) Jools shuddered at the memory. Wiping down every toilet seat between Knightsbridge and Heathrow was better than that sort of public humiliation.
So she launched a quest for more work near Mel’s, hoping to save energy and money by keeping all her clients close together. Knocking on one imposing door, she came across Mrs Pho. The woman didn’t want to pay for cleaning – the richer they are, the stingier – but she would let Jools use her 30-square-foot basement studio flat as an office in return for cleaning the five-storey house every week, and her kitchen every day. She also wanted Jools to scrub down her mother-in-law on Mondays but Jools drew the line at that!
Slowly, over two years, her small company expanded – thanks to a large bank loan and the conditional generosity of Mrs Pho. Mel told her over and over to become a limited company, saying Jools would be personally liable if things went wrong, but somehow she never got around to it.
Then things started to unwind.
First, one of her cleaners went on a pilfering spree and redefined ‘cleaning out’ a bedroom by nicking £4000 worth of jewellery from the Slatterly-Walsh household on Montpellier Street. Their insurance company sued Jools for it. Bastards. It wasn’t her fault, was it? Of course, not having insurance presented more than a slight problem in defending the claim. Even with Mel’s pro bono aid, all of Jools’ reserves went to appease the ‘We Are Not Kidding We Will Send the Boys Around’ insurance.
After that, Jools got business insurance, which cost her triple thanks to her business being sued for theft. But she was certain things would work themselves out, so she just called the bank, increased her overdraft, paid the insurance and carried on.
But things didn’t get better. A chain of gourmet sausage shops – for which Jools had the exclusive cleaning contract – poisoned a couple of hundred people, including the local health and safety officer. They had to close, and Jools took a heavy hit – 60 per cent of her income was sausage-related. That’s what you get when you rely too much on cheap meat. And they even had the nerve to blame her for the listeria!
Her remaining clients were the finicky kind no one else wanted – and they rarely paid on time, if at all. Like Mr Polowski, who always found ‘DE FLUFF’ under the sofa. Jools suspected he had a jar full of ‘DE FLUFF’ he’d gathered, placing it strategically throughout the flat to test her. And he was nothing compared to Madame Nabet, who insisted Jools vacuum her annoying little Chihuahuas. Jools rubbed her wrist where one had clamped onto her. Neither had paid since . . . well, Jools would need to look over her largely non-existent records to be sure.
So in the last month, once she took out insurance payments, wages and all the other stuff you needed to run a company, Jools earned negative £2000. Not exactly the lucrative business she’d been hoping for. She’d thought she could deal with it, though.
Until Eugenia, her last remaining employee, burned down Mrs Pho’s house. Who knew burning incense near a gas burner would cause explosions? It wasn’t like there were warnings – on either the stove or the incense! Eugenia might have noticed the top-floor studio was on fire if she hadn’t been bonking her boyfriend Nutto on the kitchen table. By the time Jools arrived to supervise (as per the contract with Mrs Pho), the place had burned to the ground.
Literally, it burned to the ground. Jools had assumed it just a saying, but no – Mrs Pho’s beautiful, white Victorian terrace was indeed reduced to a pile of black soot.
‘How could you!’
What could she say? Clearly she could because she had.
Or at least Eugina and Nutto had. In more ways than one.
‘Mrs Pho, I can explain everything.’
But Jools’ most important client (and landlady) wasn’t in the mood to hear anything.
Not even the hunky fireman with the ever-so-subtle goatee was on her side. ‘Pretty bloody hard to explain how you blew up a whole house, without trying to.’
Eugenia piped up: ‘Actually, it wasn’t that hard – ’
Mrs Pho stomped her Manolo on the footpath. ‘What do you mean, stupid girl? I pay you to clean my beautiful home, and you burn horrible stick in mother-in-law’s room and blow up house!’
Then it was Jools’ turn. ‘How come you alive anyway? You supposed to watch cleaner. How come you not dead?’
She made it sound like Jools being alive was a bad thing. Looking at the fierce frown on the face of the cute fireman, it seemed a popular opinion.
‘Well?’
Oh shit. ‘I had an emergency, Mrs Pho. I’ve been here all the other times, I promise.’ Total lie – she was in Harrods’ foodhall most other times, indulging in macaroons at Laduree, but there was no point in upsetting the poor woman any more, was there?
Mrs Pho moved in close. Her Botoxed face shone like her brass door-knocker – before it was blown off the front door and became a projectile. She grabbed Jools by the neck.
‘I would love to say you fired – and evicted. But there no business, no house, and no point!’ She jabbed Jools in the chest as she spoke. ‘But I promise you,’ she spat, as one of the firemen somewhat begrudgingly dragged her off Jools, ‘you never work in Knightsbridge again. Not as long as I breathing.’
Soon after, the insurance company informed Jools they wouldn’t cover her anymore. Shockingly unprofessional, Jools thought – what was insurance for, if not for incidents such as these? She was probably their best customer! Then the stuffy Royal Borough called to tell her if she worked without insurance, they’d put her in jail – if the police didn’t get to her first for something called criminal negligence.
Jools updated Mel on the latest bit about the council. She knew the rest of the gory details already.
‘God, Jools, what are you going to do?’
‘What everyone else does when they go bankrupt – go on the dole. At least I’ll be able to live.’
‘Oh.’ Mel went quiet.
‘What is it?’
‘I think that little problem a few years ago might work against you.’
Shit, she’d forgotten about that. Jools had claimed for a non-existent child for three years. It hadn’t been total bogus in the beginning – she had honestly thought she was pregnant for a week or two. And she’d paid it all back. Surely that must count for something?
Mel shook her head. ‘Not really. They had to threaten you with jail before you paid up. Remember?’
‘I was broke – a uni student. Talk about stingy!’
Mel shrugged. ‘Not big on fraud, the government.’
‘Unless they’re the ones with their noses in the trough,’ Jools spat. ‘Like that guy who claimed second home allowance on a wheelie bin.’
Mel reminded her he actually was in jail as they spoke. ‘May I suggest you try to drum up some more business and avoid bankruptcy? Surely you can work as a cleaner for someone else? That way you avoid the whole insurance problem?’
Jools groaned. God, she was sick of bloody working. Cleaning other people’s muck for ten quid an hour wasn’t exactly a dream job.
She stared at Mel enviously. Life was alright for her – sitting at a desk and lording it over people. And even though she tried to distance herself from her a
ristocratic family, her mother insisted on buying the Kensington crash pad, and her father was constantly sending cars round for the drive back to their Hertfordshire country estate. (Apparently when her father had said he disowned her, he meant for five minutes, on full trust fund.)
Jools’ life looked even more rubbish in comparison. She lived in a studio flat near the Willesden Green bus garage. Well, ‘near’ was putting it nicely. She was so close to the drivers’ canteen that remarkably consistent farting could be heard day and night through the flat’s only opening window.
‘Well, what else are you going to do? Maybe Deepak will give you a job at Handimart?’ Handimart was the nearby 24-hour off-licence where Mel and Jools were infamous late-night regulars seeking emergency alcohol supplies.
Jools turned a deep shade of puce. ’Deepak caught me pinching a packet of Tampax last week.’
‘Jools!’
‘Oh, come on, Mel! I was desperate and there was a huge queue. I was going to pay for them right after I went to the loo.’
Mel was silent.
‘I was, I just forgot.’
‘Well, if not Deepak, then someone else. You’d better start looking for work, or you’ll get evicted.’
‘I figured that out for myself, thanks very much.’ Jools was slightly indignant. ’In fact, no matter what you say, I’m going to apply for help, join the queue of the great unwashed. Isn’t this what our taxes – ?’
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