Beautiful People (22 page)

    While he thought these thoughts, his eyes were trained gloomily through the slatted blinds of his office window on a street cleaner working below. As the man toiled gently in the sunshine, pushing his barrow along and picking up papers with the aid of a long pincer, it seemed to Mitch that he was deriving more satisfaction from his job than Mitch ever had from his own. He too worked mostly with rubbish. But it rarely made him feel as serene as that old guy down there looked.

    His phone rang. And when he put it down at the end of the conversation, Mitch wondered whether he had dreamt it all or whether he was dying and it was one of those wish-fulfilment scenarios people sometimes experienced on the point of expiring. Then he pinched himself, rotated a few times on his long-suffering office chair, and stabbed out Darcy's number. The call he had just finished had come just in time. She was still in L.A.

The phone at Darcy's hotel bedside shrilled.

"Hey there!"

"You sound pleased," Darcy said, rather crossly.

"Pleased? You bet I am."

Actually, thunderstruck was more the word.

    "I'll cut to the chase, baby," Mitch said now. "I just got a call from Jack Saint. He liked you."

    "Liked me? But…all those things I said…"

    "He liked your answers. They were the right answers."

    "But you said…"

    "Yeah, yeah, well forget what I said," Mitch said hurriedly. "Point is, he thinks you're honest. Original. Authentic." Mitch paused for effect. Then, with tremendousness, he announced, "Congratulations, baby. He wants you in his picture."

    Then, as Darcy did not react, he added. "Are you listening to me? You're the Grand Duchess of the Galaxy in
Galaxia
, honey. Shooting starts in Florence, two weeks from now."

    Darcy sat up. All the weariness she had been feeling fell away from her. She felt numb, then excited, then numb again, then excited again. Into the vacuum that had been her life shot a large object, not unlike the missile-cum-helicopter objects she had seen on Saint's model table. Whether or not she actually wanted to act in the movie seemed less important than the fact that she now had a distraction and a direction in life. Moreover, one that would probably really annoy Niall. Or Graham, as she was trying hard to think of him.

    "That's incredible," she managed to say to Mitch. "Amazing."

    Miraculous more like, Mitch thought. He'd never heard of anyone saying what she had apparently said to Jack Saint and being cast. Cast out, more like. And yet Saint had seemed to dig it. "Makes a change not to have a bimbo," he had remarked to Mitch. "Got plenty of them already in this film, believe me."

    Mitch wondered who. Due to the huge scale and fantastical nature of his productions, Saint generally started filming before the movie was entirely cast. The end was sometimes shot before the beginning, and any number of intermediate scenes were filmed as the sets were completed. Much was done at the editing stage, and there would be the computer graphics sequences, which the director was famous for putting in too.

    To an outsider, and to many of the insiders, the process was all incredibly confusing. The only person who ever knew exactly what was going on was Saint; it was part of his legend that he and he alone had the whole apparently rambling edifice organised down to the last tiny detail in his head. For all their apparent complexity, his schedules ran like clockwork, and the end results were always spectacular. Those were the reasons, Mitch knew, for why Saint was so sought after as a director.

    "Saint's people will be in touch about Florence. Sounds pretty nice," Mitch added enthusiastically. "All those canals."

    "That's Venice."

    "Oh…yeah. Right. Well, frankly, baby, if Saint wants canals in this film, Florence might well get 'em too."

    He put the phone down. Below him, through the slatted blinds, the street sweeper continued to pick up litter with his pincers. Mitch no longer envied him, however. He had the rare feeling of wanting to be no one apart from himself.

    As joy seized him again, he swung round on his office chair. When, shuddering, lurching, and creaking, the chair completed the circle and faced front again, Mitch found himself staring at the long, sly face of his least favourite colleague. Greg Cucarachi was staring at him with an expression of cool superiority on his long, sly face. Or more cool superiority even than usual, Mitch corrected himself.

    "Lot of excitement in here," Cucarachi remarked in a voice as smooth as his black hair. He was wearing a well-cut, obviously expensive grey suit, pink checked shirt, and pink silk tie. Mitch envied his colleague his style and trim frame, although not the work he did to maintain it. Cucarachi honed his body hard. He jogged at lunchtimes; he worked out; he did marathons. While, Mitch knew, the only part of himself that raced was his heart.

    He folded his plump arms and fixed Cucarachi's eye with his own. "Yeah. It's kind of an exciting morning. My client Darcy Prince has just landed the female lead in
Galaxia
."

    Take that, asshole, he wanted to add, but didn't. There was no need. It was a body blow.

    Relishing the moment, Mitch happily anticipated Cucarachi's response, confidently expecting that thin, handsome-if-that-wasyour-idea-of-it face to spasm and contort with jealousy.

    But instead, Mitch's most loathed co-worker simply smiled. "Hey, I'm glad for you, buddy," Cucarachi said.

    Mitch wobbled on his chair. Glad? What was the guy talking about? No agent was ever pleased about another. Unless they were failing.

    "Yeah, I'm real glad." Cucarachi was nodding. "And I know you're going to be just as happy for me when I tell you that I had a conversation with Jack Saint this morning as well. That I too have a client with a starring role in
Galaxia
."

    "You do?" Mitch gasped.

    "My client Christian Harlow has been contracted to play the Duke of Lilo." The words exploded like bombs in Mitch's disbelieving, red-hot ears.

    "Christian…Harlow?"

    "That's right," Greg beamed, showing his strong, square white teeth. "The Duke of Lilo. The Grand Duchess of the Galaxy's number-one enemy. At first, that is. They're lovers by the end." He winked at Mitch, smirked, and withdrew.

Sloane Mews had gateposts with balls on either end, after which the actual houses were rather a disappointment. It was a small, quiet, cobbled road with a row of low, white-painted buildings on either side. Number 24, where Domestic Bliss was, looked just like all the others. Emma rang at the bell.

    The white-painted door opened to reveal a middle-aged, careworn Filipina wearing a white cap and apron over a black dress.

    "I've got an interview with Mrs. Connelly-Carew," Emma smiled.

    The maid did not smile back. She made a gesture inviting Emma to come in. Emma followed her into a tiny kitchen, which she was surprised to find already inhabited. A polished brunette with long, brown legs, which began in a denim miniskirt and ended in a pair of black ballerina flats, was propping up the sink and talking into a mobile. After rolling uninterested brown eyes over Emma, the brunette continued with her conversation amid much flicking of hair and inspection of perfect nails with the mobile-free hand.

    "New job going well is it, Totty? Must be if you've got all this time to talk on the mobile…"

    Emma, staring at the kitchen's rather grubby floor tiles, blinked. Totty? That Totty? She had a new job? Emma felt relieved for poor Hengist Westonbirt but pitied from the bottom of her heart whatever children Totty was looking after—in the loosest sense of the word—now.

    "The kids are a nightmare? Poor you, Totty. God, you always get the difficult ones, don't you. The mother's mad? The house is horrible? Oh, Totster. But they're taking you to Italy? Well, that's good, isn't it? Pantelleria? Costa Smeralda? Oh…Tuscany." This in a tone of the utmost disgust. "Yawnorama. God, how boring. Poor you, Totty."

    A thought struck Emma. If Hengist Westonbirt was no longer enduring Totty, might he not need someone else? Her, for example?

    "Where am I?" the brunette barked in a gravelly, well-bred voice. She looked scornfully around the kitchen. "Waiting to be interviewed. Daddy's threatened to cut me off if…yeah. I know. You've had that too. Where am I? Theodora's, of course. She sorts us all out, doesn't she? Didn't you get a job here once? What did you say?" The brunette screwed up her face. "Signal's a bit weak…you didn't realise I had childcare training?" She let out a goose-like honk of laughter, so loud it made Emma jump. "Course I don't. Did you? Thought not. Oh, you gotta go? Yeah. OK. Bye, Totty."

    The maid appeared. "Isabella Gough-Chumley-Fylingdales?"

    The brunette gave a curt nod.

    Emma watched them leave. Her mind was churning with what she had just heard. Isabella Gough-Chumley-Fylingdales had not only seemed to be saying that she had no childcare training herself, but Totty hadn't either. Surely that couldn't be true.

    By the time the brunette reappeared, shuffled past with a smirk, and was shown out by the maid, Emma had convinced herself she had somehow misheard.

    Now it was Emma's turn. She straightened her spine, cleared her throat, pulled down her jacket, and followed the maid through the kitchen door into Mrs. Connelly-Carew's inner sanctum.

    This was a small dining room whose walls were crowded with paintings that seemed rather too big for them, and the furniture, while grand, seemed oversized as well. Emma edged past an oval dining room table that almost pressed against the walls.

    A thin woman of about fifty-five was sitting at one end of the desk and looking at her keenly over a pair of gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses on chains. She wore caramel-frosted lipstick, and her brown hair rose in an iron wave from the freckled skin of her forehead.

    "You must be Emma."

    Emma forced herself to rally. What was she worried about? Unlike the last person, her experience and qualifications were excellent.

    Theodora Connelly-Carew was rummaging in a plastic file. Emma watched as she drew from it her own letter. Theodora Connelly-Carew glanced down at it and cleared her throat. "Emma, er…"

    "Sidebottom," supplied Emma, wondering why Mrs. ConnellyCarew was asking when the name was printed there on the paper right in front of her.

    "Sidebottom, yes. Mmm." The caramel-frosted lips pursed.

    "Your qualifications are impeccable," said Mrs. Connelly-Carew, her fingernails sweeping Emma's letter.

    Emma nodded. Of course, they were.

    "However, that is not the issue."

    "It's not?"

    "Not entirely. You're rather more…" The agency head cleared her throat delicately. "Rather more northern than I imagined."

    "Northern?"

    "Mmm." Mrs. Connelly-Crew took off her glasses, stood up, and strode the five paces or so to the small window where she stood with her hand in the small of her back looking thoughtful. Emma took in the elegant, brown-suede trousers and brownleather ankle boots and the sharp profile against busily patterned pink and white curtains.

    She jumped as Mrs. Connelly-Carew turned round suddenly, her beige layers whirling. "What would you say," Mrs. Connelly-Carew asked, "if I told you most of the nannies we employ are Hons?"

    "Ons?" echoed Emma, completely at a loss. On what?

    Mrs. Connelly-Carew sighed. "Hons. Honourables. Daughters

of the gentry. For example, I've just placed the girl before you, whose father is a marquis, with Lord and Lady Westonbirt."

    Emma felt her heart sink. Bang went the job with Hengist then. But hadn't she heard Isabella say with her own ears that she had no qualifications?

    "Well-connected girls are our speciality," Mrs. Connelly-Carew trilled on in her imperious voice. "It's what people come to us for. Our USP, if you like. If you know what that means."

    "I do know what it means and mine is that I'm a good nanny," Emma said doggedly.

    Mrs. Connelly-Carew drummed her café-au-lait-tipped fingers on her dining table. She passed a hand across her tanned brow as if all this was the most fearful bother. "Oh, well," she said eventually, with the air of one conferring a great favour. "Let's get on with it. I need to ask you some questions."

    "Of course."

    "About how you would deal with, um, certain situations."

    Emma waited confidently. There could be no situations in the nought-to-five category that, over the years, she had not either learnt about or personally dealt with.

    "Imagine the scenario," Mrs. Connelly-Carew invited her, "if, at a children's birthday party, the son of an earl went to the food table before the son of a duke. What would you do?"

    "Make sure they'd both washed their hands."

    "Actually," Mrs. Connelly-Carew flared her impressive nostrils, "it's a question of precedence. Dukes come before earls in the social order. So the earl's son should go in after the duke's." She leaned forward. "Have you never read Debrett's?"

    "Not recently," Emma admitted.

    Mrs. Connelly-Carew took off her glasses and stood up again. "Thank you so much for coming," she said in syrupy tones as she wafted to the entrance door in a caramel flow of woollens. "We'll be in touch."

    Seconds later, Emma found herself outside in the cobbled mews, Mrs. Connelly-Carew's dry scent in her nostrils and a feeling of ashes in her mouth. Picking her way carefully across the cobbles, Emma passed the stone balls at the entrance. She briefly imagined wrenching one from its position and hurling it through Theodora ConnellyCarew's window.