The Finishing Touches (21 page)

“Stop faffing about your bloody hair,” she’d said. “It looks fine.”

I’d made her take a photo, so we could create a workbook, and now we’d moved on to the “bar for a quick one after work” version.

I had to admit, I was secretly enjoying it. Liv had a real knack for pulling out my best features and blurring the rest. My reflection was looking gratifyingly unlike me—taller, cur
vier, much sexier, and accessorized like the sort of woman who bought cruise collections.

“I just think of a sentence in my head that I want the outfit to say, and go for it. This is saying, I have a great figure but I don’t need to prove anything with it,” she explained, pushing the sleeves up a little and wiggling the dress just above my knee. “I don’t know why you don’t make more of your figure, Betsy. You should have men falling at your feet, with knees like that.”

“I work in a shoe shop,” I reminded her. “The only men I meet who appreciate a good ankle tend to be ordering the larger sizes, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s no excuse.” She hovered between two long strands of beads. “You’ve got to
invite
romance into your life, instead of expecting it to appear from nowhere. You’ve got to look, and sometimes it’s there under your nose.”

I thought this was pretty rich coming from a woman who worked in a veritable supermarket of available, well-connected, fashionable types, most of whom were already fairly uninhibited thanks to Igor’s bohemian attitude to closing time.

“It’s not like I don’t have dates—” I began.

“Oh yeah, you’re great at
dates
,” she said. “You’re almost as good as Jamie when it comes to dates. Must be that finishing school training of yours.”

“Sorry, Liv!” I pretended to clean out my ear with a finger. “It’s just that I thought you said Mr. Lover Man and I were on the same sort of level there.”

Liv put her hands on her hips, still holding a chain belt and a bolero. “Actually, you know what? I take that back. I think Jamie might have moved ahead of you on that. I think he’s having some kind of midlife crisis. You know, he came into
Igor’s this lunchtime and asked if I wanted to spend an evening this week sorting out some bills?”

“And?”

“And he got his diary out, and apart from work, there were no dates in there at all.”

“Blimey.” My mouth fell open. “Not even on Friday?”

Liv shook her head. “He had a fancy dress party to check in on at ten, and then a personal trainer session first thing Saturday. And he told me he’s thinking of buying a house with a
garden
. For a dog! I’m starting to think he actually means it about settling down. He won’t tell me if there was someone in New York, but he’s been really cagey about why he’s back.” She unclipped my hair and rearranged it over my shoulders, doing something to it with her fingers that separated the curls into thicker waves. “But I think there must be someone. Last time he was single for this long he had that funny rash on his—”

“I don’t want to know,” I said hastily. There were very good reasons for Jamie’s playboy reputation.

“Mind you, that was five years ago,” said Liv. “Things change. People change.”

“No, they don’t,” I said. “That’s just something marriage counselors say, to drum up business.”

“But they do. When they have shocks, like Dad disappearing. Would you like Jamie more…if he got a bit more responsible?” Liv asked casually. She wasn’t very good at casual.

“Isn’t that like asking me if I’d like him more if he got a bit more Danish?”

“No.” She swatted me. “Be serious, will you? I think you two would really balance each other out—if he stopped acting like he’s God’s gift, and you stopped thinking there’s only one man in the world who’s perfect for you, and that everyone else will mess you around and leave you up the duff.”

“I do
not
think that!”

“Oh, come on, Betsy, you do. Some people, not me obviously, might think that the only reason you’re so fussy about Mr. Ideal is just so you’ll never have to find him, and he won’t let you down.” Liv fixed me with the sort of firm stare only a very, very best friend could. “But what if Jamie turned out to be sensible underneath it all? What if he got a briefcase, and stopped wearing shiny suits?”

“I think you’ve gone mad,” I said, feeling my face go hot. “In that case, he’d stop being Jamie. Jamie
is
irresponsible, and outrageous. It’s what makes him so horribly sexy and absolutely wrong for anyone with a brain in her head and—”

Liv’s mouth twitched into a smile.
“Oh, really?”

I realized what I’d just said and hurried to correct myself. “I’m not saying
I
find him horribly sexy; I’m just speaking as an impartial observer of—”

“Do me a favor!” She waved the bolero at me. “I saw you over dinner the other night—you couldn’t keep your eyes off each other! You go red when he talks to you, and I’ve never seen you do that for any other bloke. And the other night? You drank my wine twice and dropped nuts all over yourself when he laughed at your stupid jokes. Of
course
you fancy him. I’d have to be
blind
not to notice.”

I looked down at my feet. Was it that obvious? Oh, dear. I wondered if Jamie had noticed too. I wondered if Liv had any thoughts on how
he
felt about
me,
and immediately felt mortified. How old were we? Fifteen?

“I don’t
mind,
” she insisted. “I’d mind more if you carried on pretending you didn’t. So long as you can still see what a
knocker
he can be and you don’t mind me whining about what a bossy sod he’s turned into. Go ahead and fancy him, please—you’d be the best thing to happen to him in years! In fact, I don’t even mind you getting together.” She
paused. “So long as it doesn’t happen here. That would be too weird.”

As if, I thought. “Liv, there’s no chance of that happening. OK, so I have a bit of a crush, but it’s not going to happen—it would be a disaster. For him as well as me. I need someone a bit calmer, more reliable, and he’s after an heiress, isn’t he?”

“But this is the thing”—Liv looked tortured, as if it was killing her inside to admit it—“he’s offered to help me change my mortgage! And explained home insurance!”

“Liv,” I said firmly. “It’s just shock, about Ken. It’ll pass. He’ll be caught red-handed with twin Tatlerettes by next week, don’t worry. I’m happy to wait for the right man—I’ve said it before.”

She sighed and passed me a pair of diamanté chandelier earrings. “Why are you still single? You’d make some lucky sod a wonderful girlfriend. Can’t you start jogging in Green Park at lunchtime and bump into a banker?”

“Actually, there is someone at work,” I said. “The bursar, Mark. It turns out he’s quite dry, and not bad-looking.”

I ignored the fact that Mark was still a bit touchy about lights being turned off, and had told me to bring in extra cardigans for the end of the week when, according to his “home weather forecasting kit,” there’d be a nip in the air and no increase in the heating facilities upstairs. I liked a touch of grumpy charm, but I didn’t think Liv would get it.

She didn’t. Her expression struggled between encouragement and horror. “You mean Mark the Sandwich Rationer? Have you been sniffing furniture polish again?”

“So he’s got a lot to learn about first impressions,” I conceded. “But he’s taller than me, he’s not divorced, he rides a bike, he’s got a proper job, he isn’t fussy about his fingernails like some people who have man-icures…”

“Leave Jamie out of this for a moment,” said Liv. “Look,
that all sounds great from your famous checklist point of view, but, important question: is there a tingle? And I don’t mean from the static in his bicycle clips.”

Tingles were important to Liv.

“Yeees,” I said, trying to remember if it had been a tingle or just a chill. We’d definitely had a sneaky chuckle about Miss Thorne’s cats, and I’d felt a nice warm glow when Mark had complimented me on my lesson proposal. “I think there could be a tingle. He’s the kind of guy who needs a little defrosting, but you know, I
prefer
that to the type who hit you with the charm and flattering comments about your hair straightaway. It’s not very English.”

“Quite Danish, in fact,” said Liv archly.

“What’s not very English?”

Liv and I turned to see Jamie strolling through the hall toward us, and I felt a definite tingle run simultaneously down from the top of my head and up from my toes to meet in the middle of my stomach where it rippled out in delicious mini tingles to all my extremities.

“Did you let yourself in?” demanded Liv. “Where did you get those keys? Don’t I have any privacy anymore?”

“Sorry, I’ve always had them, just in case you burned the house down making toast. Joan made me a set,” he said, not looking at her but staring directly at me, in my cocktail outfit on the coffee table. My knees felt hot all of a sudden. “Hello…Betsy? Is this the new table dancing course?”

I knew there was a witty retort in my brain somewhere, but it disappeared like something sinking into quicksand at the way he winked at me.

“Nurgh,” I said, pulling the dress back down over my knees and wondering if I could step down without falling headfirst into the sofa or crashing into the television.

“You’re interrupting my first lesson,” said Liv crossly.

“And what’s that?” Jamie settled himself on the sofa opposite and slung one long leg over his knee. He carried on beaming at me, and I tried to imagine if someone with eyes that outrageously suggestive could ever be sensible in a recognizable sense of the word.

“I’m going to show the girls how to make three outfits out of one dress using only different tights and simple accessories!” announced Liv. “This is the evening-wear section.”

“And very good it looks too,” said Jamie. “Ten out of ten. Can you make the skirt a bit shorter, though?”

“Jamie!” Liv snapped.

“Well, if you’ve got it…You should be teaching the girls to maximize their assets, Miss O’Hare. Or should I call you ma’am?”

I felt too self-conscious to carry on standing on the table, but also too self-conscious to move in my current clumsy condition. I needed a distraction, so I could escape.

“Oh, Liv!” I said, as if I’d just remembered. “I found something at Kathleen’s—Jamie, would you get my bag out of the kitchen for me?”

“And bring us a drink at the same time?” added Liv.

Jamie raised his eyebrow but got up anyway, with a sarcastic salute.

Gratefully, I scrambled down off the coffee table and slipped on a stray scarf as I did, stumbling toward Barry the cat, who leaped backward behind the sofa. It could have been worse.

“See?” said Liv, while I tried to disentangle the scarf from my heel. “You’re a mess. And he’s doing sensible fetching and carrying. You have a magical effect on each other.”

“Shh,” I hissed, “he’s coming back.”

Jamie returned with my handbag and a bottle of wine and
some glasses, expertly hooked beneath his fingers. “So when do I get to do my lesson?” he asked, peeling off the foil.

“Oh, here we go,” said Liv. “What lesson’s that going to be?”

“Something very useful to the modern girl and related to my area of expertise.”

Liv cast a despairing look in my direction. “I swear to you, Betsy, what was I saying earlier? I wasn’t making it up. I know it looks like I was…”

I opened my notebook and found the old snap of me and Liv outside our GCSE exams. “See, I used to be able to accessorize. Have you ever seen so many bows?”

Liv took it from me as if it were an antique. “Oh, Betsy, you look so pretty! Look at you—I’d forgotten…” Her voice trailed away, and she sounded quite choked for a moment.

“Forgotten what? Liv, are you OK?”

“Yeah, fine.” She smiled, and I could see her eyes had filled up. “We just look so
young,
and you look so
pretty.
With your hair nice and curly and those old-fashioned dresses you used to wear, you know, before you went all…” She stopped herself and looked rather guilty.

“All what?” I asked her, but she fiddled with the belt she was holding.

“Before you went off to university and started dressing like a grunge librarian,” Jamie finished for her. “What was it you said? Hair bands were for stupid girls who needed to have their brains held in? Here, let me see.”

I looked at Liv. “Grunge librarian?” I mouthed. OK, so I’d dumped the prom dress and pearls look I’d had at school, but surely it hadn’t been
that
bad.

Liv carried on fiddling with the belt as Jamie crossed the room and leaned between us to get a good look at the photo. My nose filled up with the smell of his cologne and warm skin.

“Oh, that photo! I had a copy of that,” he said, chuckling. “You’d never know what a pain the pair of you were at the time. Windy day, was it? Ah, my sister the toy poodle.”

Liv shoved him. “You were no better. You had spots and a bowl haircut. Anyway, what were you doing with a photograph of us?”

“Just to make me look popular, why else?” Jamie nudged her back. “Two more girls on my wall—swelled the numbers, helped the reputation. Anyway, this leads me nicely onto what I wanted to talk to you about, Betsy. My lesson.”

I glanced quickly at Liv. “Um, right. You know, we do have a lot of party experts on the staff already, and I don’t want to make it
all
about socializing. And I know you’re very busy…”

“Not too busy to help you out! And don’t worry, this is going to be very useful
and
practical.”

“OK,” I said warily. I wasn’t sure that the girls would be listening to Jamie’s actual words so much as gazing at the vision in front of them. “What is it? A guide to New York? That would be helpful.”

“No, how to look good in photographs,” he said with a
ta-da
flourish. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and I reckon it’s something everyone would love to know. As you can see”—he waggled the photo—“it’s not something that comes naturally, but who wouldn’t like some top tips? We can mock up a ‘Welcome to My Lovely Home!’ shoot in the ballroom, if you want. They can take turns to pose by the grand piano and practice looking modest.”