The Finishing Touches (11 page)

“Recently widowed,” said Nancy meaningfully. “She married the Duke of Pertonshire. Rather tragic—they were playing tennis one night, and a bolt of lightning hit his pacemaker and struck him stone dead. Still, he was over eighty. Fancy him being so active! I suppose it must have been a floodlit court…”

Kathleen met my eye and pursed her lips. Neither of us
needed to say any more, although Nancy was still musing on the oddness of it.

“If you ask me,” said Kathleen, “that one’s got her eye on Lord Phillimore. Always manages to be here in a tight skirt whenever he pays a visit, and makes a big thing about her husband’s only just dead. She’s giving him
grief counseling
, Geraldine Thorne says.”

“Oh, no, Kathleen,” said Nancy, looking at me quickly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t be so bold.”

“I’m sure she would,” retorted Kathleen.

I felt something twist inside my chest. The Phillimores had had the perfect, supportive marriage I dreamed of—the kind of breakfast-in-bed, nights-by-the-fireside security I was still holding out hope of finding, somewhere. You couldn’t replace that overnight! Not with someone like Adele Buchanan.

I didn’t mean to say anything, but it burst out of me anyway. “But they were married for forty years! He still has her breakfast tray set up by the kettle in the butler’s pantry—I saw it at Christmas! And you know what he’s like about
ladies
—he’s got no idea that women like Adele even exist!”

“Pay no attention to Kathleen, Betsy!” said Nancy, tucking her little hand around mine. “I’m sure it’s never even crossed his mind, even if the silly girl is setting her cap at him.
No one
could replace Lady Frances. Don’t you go worrying yourself! You’ve quite enough to think about.”

As I squeezed back, I felt a sudden jolt of fear at how fragile her hand seemed.

Franny had already gone, and when Nancy and Kathleen went, who would there be to tell me who I was? If I couldn’t find my mother, there’d be nobody.

Kathleen, though, was still gnashing her teeth about Adele.
There was obviously a raw nerve there. “Lord alone knows what she’s teaching those girls. She’s just as hard-faced as she ever was,” she snapped. “And she’s got one of those Shih Tzu things, brings it in with her in its own little handbag. Its own handbag, if you don’t mind! Can you
imagine
anything less sanitary?”

Well, she couldn’t have designs on Lord P, I thought with relief. He was a Great Dane man through and through. The Phillimore Great Danes ate lapdogs for a midmorning snack, between cats and pheasants.

By the time I arrived on Liv’s
doorstep at seven, I felt like I’d been up for about three days straight, even though that morning I’d been in Edinburgh and in a whole different world.

My legs ached from marching around in my high consultant heels, my head was pounding from my early flight, and my mind was going round and round in ever-tightening circles as I turned over my stupid promise to Lord P and the Academy. I knew I had to do something, but what? I didn’t even know where to begin.

If I told Lord P to sell the Academy because it was a money-sapping, feminist-enraging dinosaur, Nancy and Kathleen would be out on their ears, Franny would turn in her grave, and I’d never find out who’d left me there. On the other hand, if I encouraged him to keep it open, I’d have to find a way to
make it work, and I had more chance of bringing Jane Austen back to life to teach a minuet class than of pulling that off. Plus, I’d have to keep up my impression of a business highflyer for another fortnight and persuade Fiona not to sack me for deserting my post.

I swung my leather carry-on bag over the other shoulder and pressed the doorbell. Maybe something would come to me when I tried to explain it to Liv.

I closed my eyes and wished really hard for some divine bolt of inspiration.

Inside the house, footsteps thundered toward the door, which swung open with some force to reveal Liv, her blond hair soaked and plastered over her face. In the background I could hear a thudding sound.

“Betsy!” she gasped, grabbing my hand. “Quick! Help!”

“What?” I dumped my bag as she dragged me down the hall toward the kitchen. “What’s happened?”

“I’ve flooded the house!” she wailed. “And I can’t find the cat! And—”

“Deep breaths, Liv,” I said firmly. “Take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and shoved her long blond hair off her face. “I thought I ought to wash the sheets before you came. I used the last clean ones and didn’t have time to buy any more, so I put them in the wash.”

“And?”

“And…” Liv blinked and raised her hands. “And I don’t know after that!”

I rushed past her to survey the chaos in the kitchen. Soapy water was creeping across the tiles, with a pretty pink froth on top, and it seemed to be coming from the washing machine, which was making weird banging, grinding noises.

The washing machine door was partly open and a slimy pile of pink sheets had disgorged onto the floor in the manner of a gruesome birthing scene from a vet drama. Worryingly near the puddle of standing water was an ironing board, with an iron laid flat on a wet sheet, and a…

I didn’t waste time asking. I bounded across the kitchen, unplugged the iron, yanked it off the sheet just as smoke was beginning to rise from the scorch mark, and then, twirling round for somewhere to put the iron, turned the washing machine off at the mains for good measure.

Then I turned the radio off too, just to give myself a clear head, at which point the sound of a cat throwing up could be made out in the sitting room.

At the door Liv burst into tears. “Sorry!” she howled. “Sorry!”

“Liv, it’s fine,” I said, scooping up the soggy sheets and dumping them in the sink. “Everyone has a washing machine disaster at some point. I’m sure manufacturers cut deals with the bed linen people, to make sure you replace your sheets regularly.”

But Liv had sunk into a chair and was burying her face in her arms. “I’ve had such a shit da-a-a-ay!” she howled. “Everything’s going wro-o-o-o-ong!”

I tried to keep calm and picked out a rogue red, hand-dyed T-shirt, the source of the pink.

“Look, at least you
tried
to wash the sheets,” I said, looking under the sink to see if she had any color-run remover but finding only an empty can of fly spray and a used J Cloth. “That’s much more sensible than just going to buy a new set.”

Liv made a terrible gurgling sound, much worse than the washing machine. “I
couldn’t
get new sheets! My card got re
fused! I’ve got twenty-three quid left in the world, and Dad’s on the run! From the law!”

“What?” My head bounced up so rapidly I almost hit it on the ironing board.

“Dad’s gone to Spain and he hasn’t paid my allowance and he can’t help me because he can’t move any money out of his accounts!” Liv dragged her hair back off her face, and I could see the whites around her eyes. She looked a bit mad. “I mean, he’s not acting worried, but he won’t say what’s up, just that his assets are freezing or something, and I—” She clapped her hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. “What if the police kick down my doors?”

I dumped the sheets in the sink to drain. “Liv, that only happens on telly. Calm down. Deep breaths. Tell me properly. What’s happened?”

She wiped the mascara from under her eyes and fought to stop her sobs, staring at the mess between hiccups as if she couldn’t believe how it had got there. “I wanted to get the house nice for you coming to stay.” She hiccupped. “I put everything in together, and it took me ages to work out which liquid was which, and—”

“Forget the washing machine. I mean, what’s happened to
Ken
?” I asked. “This is soon cleared up. Look, we need tea. You put the kettle on, and I’ll start on the flood. Did he say when he’d be back?” I dragged the squeezy mop out of the cupboard and began squidging.

“No. But now that wad of cash he gave me last week makes sense…Oh,” she said, peering at my rapid mop action, “is that what you’re meant to do? Push, then squeeze? I’ve never used that. It’s clever, isn’t it?”

“Easy when you know how. Keep taking deep breaths.” The water was receding, and so were Liv’s hiccups. But that only gave her more breath to panic with.

“What am I going to do? No Erin, no Joan, no Dad…I can’t even put a
wash
on without flooding the house,” she said, following the mop, hypnotized. “And I’ve got a whole bunch of letters from the bank and the mortgage people, and I don’t understand them because Dad always takes care of stuff like that—”

Liv stopped suddenly and looked me in the eye. “Tell me honestly, Betsy—I need to learn. That washing machine. The door’s meant to open, right? If you press the emergency stop button?”

“Olivia,” I said. “I’ll be frank with you. There isn’t an emergency stop button on a washing machine. That’s the on/off switch.”

“Really?” she said. “And do you put the liquid bag things in the…drawer part?”

“You really don’t know how to work your washing machine?”

“No,” she said in a small voice. “Does that make me a bad person?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

I’d always known Liv was one of those lovably ditsy types whom people rushed to bail out—I’d been explaining everything from bicycle locks to the euro to her since we were at school. But I had no
idea
she’d managed to arrange a whole wall of people to shield her from the grim reality of washing machines. If she couldn’t wash her own pants, what was going on in her brain about mortgages? Liv wasn’t stupid, far from it. She had, after all, managed to line up four fiancés, one of whom had his own plane, and keep all the engagement presents afterward.

She
does
know about wine, I told myself. And she has basic French, her hair’s immaculate, and she always looks like she has a live-in stylist.

“You are OK to make the tea, aren’t you?” I asked hesitantly.

“Of course!” Liv pouted, then undermined herself by having to check all the cupboards before she located the tea bags.

I shook the last drops off the mop into the bucket and pointed to the kitchen table, which was, I noticed, covered in the same piles of paperwork I’d sorted when I was last there. “We’ll sit down, open
all
those letters, and get things straightened out. I’ll help. It’s not that hard.”

Liv had one final hiccup and managed a smile. “God, Betsy, you make it sound so easy. How come you always know what to do?”

“I don’t,” I said simply. “I just deal with things one at a time. Now, from the start. Ken called you to say that he’s not on holiday but on the run…”

It took a while to extract the details, since it hadn’t occurred to Liv to ask certain key questions (like why or for how long), but reading between the lines, it seemed that certain officers of Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue Collection Agency had sniffed fruity accounting, and now investigations were afoot into Ken’s returns. Consequently, Liv would no longer be receiving her monthly allowance—the proceeds from certain rental properties.

“It’s a nightmare!” she wailed. “He kept saying, ‘It’s better if you don’t know, princess.’ I don’t
mind
not knowing, so long as I know roughly what it is he’s not telling me! I mean, is it better not to know he’s going to prison? Or that he’s remarried and doesn’t want to tell me? Or what?”

Much as I liked Ken, if he’d been there, I’d have kicked his sweet-talking rear end right over Clapham Common and into Wandsworth. It was one thing treating your little girl like a princess, but leaving her in the lurch with a mortgage that she didn’t even know how to pay wasn’t fair at all. Until now,
Liv’s part-time job in a Scottish-themed wine bar run by Ken’s dodgy friend Igor, plus Erin’s rent, had been keeping her in takeout and shoe money while the “house account” took care of the serious expense of living in London. The house account currently had fifty-three pounds and ten pence in it, and Liv’s
Vogue
subscription was due to go through any moment, which could wipe out the lot since Liv couldn’t recall how much the direct debit was for.

“Calm down,” I said. “We can work this out. It’s just a case of adding things up.” I automatically arranged the various bills into priority order. “You know roughly how much you need to cover utilities and the mortgage and stuff?”

Silence. I looked up to see Liv chewing her lip and looking ashamed.

“Liv?” I prompted. “How much is the monthly mortgage?”

“I don’t know!” she squeaked. “Erin worked everything out on her spreadsheet and I paid my half. Come on, she was good at it!” Liv helped herself to another organic triple chocolate cookie—we’d cracked open the emergency chocolate supplies. “I’m sorry, Betsy. I feel so stupid. I didn’t ask you down here to sort out my life.” Pause. She gave me an appealing blue-eyed peek through the lashes. “Unless you could…”

I forced myself to be firm with her, for her own sake. “Olivia, you’ve got to do this,” I said. “It’s not your fault you haven’t done this before, but soonest started, soonest over, as Nancy says. You’ve got to open these letters. All of them. I’ll help you, I promise.”

She stared into her cup of tea. “I suppose you’re right.” Then she put the whole cookie into her mouth, as if she didn’t know when she’d get the next deli special.

I decided not to push it. I didn’t want her bolting for Spain too. So I made a proper pot of tea this time, and to make her feel like she wasn’t the only one in over her head, I told her
about my roller-coaster day, starting with Miss Thorne informing me that I had a parlormaid name and finishing with Kathleen and Nancy’s impending eviction, with a bit of Mark the bursar’s sell-sell-sell spiel in between.

“And when Nancy looked at me like one of those abandoned old pets you see at Battersea Dogs Home and said, ‘I suppose the new owners might need someone to vacuum the stairs…’” I spread my hands wide and blinked, half-laughing, half-crying, at Liv. Tears were coursing down our faces. “What could I say?”

“Nothing, it’s too horrible.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Poor Nancy and Kathleen. What are you going to do?”

I sighed and shook the last cookie out of the packet. “Well, that’s the thing. What
is
there to save now? It’s pretty hard to argue with Tightwad Mark when he says we should just tell Lord P to sell up and get out. I mean, obviously I don’t want to do that, what with Kathleen and Nancy, and me losing the chance to track down Nell Howard, but I just don’t remember it being so…” I struggled to find words to sum up how weirdly
let down
I felt by the ramshackle, dated mess I’d found.

“So what?” prompted Liv. “So big? So posh?”

“No, so
irrelevant
!” I burst out. “I mean, I’m sure Franny used to teach girls to do more than just host dinner parties and eat cheese nicely!” I dug the brochure out of my bag and slid it across the table. Liv’s eyes widened when she saw the photograph of the girl in white gloves shaking hands with a vicar, under the heading “Making the Right Connections.” “It’s all teaspoons and addressing envelopes and what to say
to divorced earls. Meaningless stuff about…butlers! Who in their right mind cares about etiquette anymore?”

“Betsy, people do! You can’t
move
for etiquette guides in WHSmith!” Liv flipped through the pages, frowning. “You only say that because you already
know
it. Everyone else is like, this is a
minefield
! I mean, weddings.” She pulled a “mad” face. “That’s one social nightmare after another. Remember when I nearly got married to Charlie Palmerston and you helped me work out what to do with the divorced bits of the family so no one was offended—I hadn’t got a clue, but I knew they did.” Her face darkened. “And if you hadn’t given me that wake-up call about his mummy complex…well, that was even more helpful. Believe me, if there’s an accepted formula when it comes to breaking off an engagement, people want to know.”

“Maybe
that’s
what they should be teaching the girls,” I suggested drily. “Arranging a wedding, and then getting out of one, if necessary.”

“Well, who else is going to tell you?” Liv nodded, ignoring the fact that I was joking. “Mothers aren’t what they used to be when it comes to advice like that. I mean, look at us. Rina bunked off before I even had a boyfriend to ask her about. Didn’t Franny give you that big Things You Should Know talk, remember, when we were in the fourth form? What to do about Wandering Hand Taxi Man? And Lend Me a Tenner Boy? You had it all in that notebook.”

I knew exactly what she meant—the notebook and the advice. All the Phillimore girls had lilac leather books that they were supposed to jot down the lessons in, and I’d always had them at school. They made me feel extremely sophisticated, even if I was just scribbling down addresses. Franny’s “things you should know” advice had been delivered over a series of girls-only teas at the Ritz, the summer I was fifteen, and I’d felt
deliciously grown-up as we sat there, sipping tea, while Franny reeled off all the different men who’d apparently be queueing up to take me out for dinner—their good points, bad points, and “things to watch out for.”