Charlie Glass's Slippers (10 page)

“And how is Pal?”

I ask this in an upbeat and breezy tone. I missed Lucy so
much while I was away that I decided I was going to make a huge effort to be Entirely Positive about Pal from now on. If she loves him, it must be because there’s something about him worth loving. And because I love Lucy, I’m just going to have to work overtime to find out what that something is.

“Pal’s great. Actually, I have a bit of news on that front.”

“Oh, my God. You’re not engaged, are you? I mean,” I ask, hastily adjusting my tone so I sound Entirely Positive (as opposed to Dismayed and Distraught), “has he asked you to marry him?”

“No, no. I don’t think we . . . well, I don’t think
he
is exactly at that point, just yet. It’s still such early days, and it’s not like either of us is in a hurry.”

Lucy takes our coffees from the barista and leads the way to a corner table. “You have to come to a party this weekend, Charlie.”

“That’s your news? That you’re having a party this weekend?”

“Well, you haven’t heard what kind of party it is yet!” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a flat-warming party!”

“You’ve found a new flat?”

“Charlie, you’re being dense. Pal and I are . . . well, we’re moving in together.”

Entirely Positive, Charlie. Entirely Positive, remember?

“Lucy! That’s brilliant!” I lean across the table to give her a hug and start talking a mile a minute, a surefire way of covering up any not-so-positive reactions that might sneak out. “When did you decide? How did it happen? Are you going to look for a new place, or is he just moving in with you? Or are you just moving in with him? No—that doesn’t make much sense for you, because he’s all the way over in Docklands, isn’t he?”

“Well, actually, I
am
going to be moving into his place. In fact, I’ve already done it. Just this past weekend. I didn’t want
to tell you such huge news over email. Because it
is
huge, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. It’s . . . it’s terrific, Lucy.” I take a long, too-hot gulp of my Americano. “Though it’s going to be a bit more difficult for you getting to work, isn’t it? All the way over from Docklands?”

“Maybe, but Pal works much longer hours than me, so it’s really important that he’s the one who stays closer to work. And with any luck, YoHoHo will take off, and I’ll end up working from home anyway! Or, you know, maybe ever further down the line, there might be a baby on the horizon, and obviously then I wouldn’t be working at all . . . Not that Pal and I have discussed that, of course, with regards to ourselves, but I know he’s not a fan of mothers going back to work in general . . .”

God, Pal really does make this Entirely Positive thing difficult, doesn’t he?

“And talking of work,” she carries on (by the look on her face desperately trying to find a way out of this conversation), “I want to hear what you’re planning on doing. Not that you need to worry about work now that you’re this huge heiress!”

“I don’t think
heiress
is exactly the right word.”

“Oh, Charlie, please let me call you an heiress. It makes you sound like someone who runs around town wearing ball gowns and pearls and marvelous hats.” Lucy sounds wistful. “Someone who goes to posh parties in country houses, and gets cornered in the conservatory by the disreputable son of a duke who does unspeakable things to you behind the papy-rus . . .”

Tempting though it sounds to have unspeakable things done to me behind the papyrus, I need to drag Lucy back into the twenty-first century.

“But really, Luce, I’m not an heiress. Yes, Dad left me his shares in the business, but I’m not going to just go and cash those in.”

“Oh.” She looks disappointed, visions of the marvelous hats and the disreputable duke’s sons vanishing like fairy dust. “You’re not going to sell any of them?”

“No, because that would mean I have less than fifty-one percent. And if I hang on to fifty-one percent, that means I’m still the majority shareholder. And that means that it’ll make it harder for Diana to push me around when I start working there.”

Lucy plonks her coffee cup down on the table. “You’re going to work there?”

“Well, while I was away, I did a lot of thinking about what kind of job I might be able to do for the company. You know, seeing as I’m not very qualified or experienced or anything.” I hold up a hand to stop Lucy before she can jump in. “You know that’s true, Luce. I don’t know the first thing about the fashion industry, or about marketing, or about sales . . .”

“That doesn’t stop half the people who gets jobs in the fashion industry, or marketing, or sales,” Lucy mutters.

“Maybe not, but this is a big deal to me, Luce. And I really need to try to play to my strengths, whatever they are. That’s what I realized, when I was talking about this with Natalie . . .”

“Who’s Natalie?”

“Oh, she was one of the trainers at the boot camp. You’d have liked her. I mean, when she wasn’t yelling at you to run faster, or jump higher, or do another twenty lunges on each leg, that is.”

“Right.” Lucy takes a sip of her latte. “Natalie sounds a barrel of laughs.”

“Well, she kept going on and on at me about how important it is to play to your strengths. Which I’ve never thought I had, really.”

“Are you crazy? How about the fact that you’re an amazing cook? That you should really think about going to catering college and getting a job in a swanky restaurant? Or apply to
go on
Masterchef
? Or sell your shares in Elroy Glass and use the money to set up your own party catering firm? And, you know, maybe go into business with your lifelong best friend, who just so happens to run a party
supply
firm, and who’s starting to think about offering a pirate-party catering option to her London customers . . .”

“Lucy, come on.” Tempting though the idea of party catering sounds, pirate-themed or otherwise, I need to focus. “Dad left me the company he loved. And he really seemed to think I could do something with it. Which is when it occurred to me, Luce, what my strength is. It’s Dad!”

Lucy glances nervously over her shoulder, as if she thinks I’ve just seen the ghost of Dad standing behind her or something.

“Jesus, Charlie, thanks for freaking me out!”

“Sorry—all I meant was that my
strength
is Dad. Knowing Dad, I mean. Knowing what kind of company he wanted Elroy Glass to be. Knowing the way he used to run things, before Mum died, and before the Mad Morocco era. And before he got too ill to keep doing things his way. That’s really when Diana started getting total control over it all. I mean, I’ve managed to get hold of just a bit of the company info from Dad’s solicitor, and for the last ten years, Diana has been constantly moving production around to different factories for a better deal, cutting corners on the quality to maximize profit . . .”

“You’re not actually talking about firing Diana, are you?” Lucy is looking even more freaked out than she did a moment ago, when she thought Dad had popped into Starbucks to do a little light haunting over a cappuccino and a blueberry muffin. “Because if you have an actual death wish, I think there are probably a hundred less terrifying ways to fulfill it.”

“No, no. God, no. I’m not thinking of firing Diana.” I feel the need to reiterate this, just in case—I don’t know—she’s got my handbag bugged. “I wouldn’t dream of firing Diana!”

“Relax. I’m sure she hasn’t got your handbag bugged. Well, I’m
fairly
sure she hasn’t got your handbag bugged . . . honestly, Charlie, you don’t need to check . . .”

She says this because I’ve reached down to get my handbag. But I’m not looking for a bug. I’m looking for a torn-out magazine page.

“Here,” I say, when I finally find it and hand it over to her. “I saw this in the Sunday
Times
I bought at Heathrow when I was on the way to America ten weeks ago. In the Style section.”

Lucy glances down at it. “Er . . . it’s a picture of a girl I’ve never seen before.”

“Yes. Melanie Morgan.”

“And Melanie appears to be . . .” She peers more closely at the page to read the accompanying bits of writing. “. . . an assistant hotel manager from Brighton.”

“Yes. It’s one of those pieces,” I add, helpfully, “where they have little interviews with ordinary people who just happen to be quite stylish, and ask them all about the clothes they wear for work, and for going out, and stuff.”

“I see,” Lucy says, though she sounds as if she doesn’t see at all. “And Melanie’s favorite outfit for going out is . . . ‘my Vivienne Westwood hobble skirt, layered vest tops from Urban Decay or Topshop, this Alexander McQueen clutch I snapped up for eighty percent off at a flash sale on The OutNet, and these amazing Jimmy Choos that my husband bought me for my last birthday
.
’
Huh. Why is Melanie Morgan married,” Lucy asks, pensively, “and not me? I mean, don’t get me wrong, she looks like a perfectly nice girl, but . . .”

“Lucy! Carry on reading!”

“Oh, right. Um . . . ‘My weakness is designer shoes, which I treat myself to when I can afford them. I have two more precious pairs of Jimmy Choos at home, plus one pair of beautiful Gina peep-toes and some Miu Miu knee boots that my friends are always on at me to let them borrow. I desperately wanted to
wear Elroy Glass heels on my wedding day last year—what girl wouldn’t?—but they were so heartbreakingly expensive that even I couldn’t justify it! So I went with a classic silver Jimmy Choo sandal instead.’”

“So expensive that she couldn’t justify it!” I repeat. “I mean, did you know that these days Elroy Glass shoes are a minimum of six hundred pounds a pair?”

“Well, yes . . . Charlie, are you telling me
you
didn’t know?”

“I didn’t! I’m not even sure Dad knew, to be honest, although he always got in an awful temper whenever Diana sent the company accounts through. I mean,
six hundred quid
a pair, Luce! Not to mention the fact that—if what I’ve been reading online is anything to go by—the quality is pretty shocking, too.”

“I know. It’s crazy. Especially when the shoes are so boring these days.”

I stare at her. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, Charlie, have you not even noticed
that
? Elroy Glass shoes aren’t exactly the kind you swoon over. Not these past couple of years, anyway. I don’t even know who’s doing the designing right now.”

“Well, according to the information the solicitor sent me, I think it’s a whole bunch of freelancers. When Dad got very bad last year, he stopped even asking to approve the designs. But I didn’t realize . . . You never said you thought they’d got boring, Luce!”

“That’s because I’m not really in the market for a six-hundred-quid pair of shoes.”

“Well, Dad never intended his shoes to be totally out of reach like that. You remember the women who used to come into the store on Saturdays when we were little, don’t you, Lucy? Most of them were just ordinary women who’d saved up to treat themselves.”

“Like Melanie Morgan does with her Jimmy Choos.”

“Exactly. And they’d come to the King’s Road store, and they’d have a good old browse, and the shop assistants would offer them a glass of champagne even if they weren’t necessarily buying anything. And Melanie Morgan got me thinking that maybe I should be trying to resurrect that.”

“Free champagne for a bunch of women who can’t afford to buy the shoes?” Lucy snorts. “Yeah, Charlie, I really think Diana will go for that!”

“No. That I should be trying to resurrect the idea that Elroy Glass shoes are an affordable luxury.”

“Ohhhhhh.” For the first time since I’ve been talking about this, Lucy actually looks as if she’s got what I’m saying. “Affordable luxury. I like that, Charlie!”

“Natalie says affordable luxury is a big thing these days, what with the economy and sustainability and everything.”

“I like it slightly less now that I know Natalie approves of it.”

I let this go. “Anyway, I’ve been putting together this whole idea about launching a cheaper range of shoes within the brand. A kind of diffusion line, I suppose you’d call it. Only a very small range at first. I’d hire a recent graduate to do the designing, so hopefully that part wouldn’t cost too much, and Elroy Glass has already got factories in Italy that could do the manufacturing. And I was thinking of calling the range Glass Slippers,” I add, suddenly shy now that I’m actually saying this out loud. “What do you think?”

Lucy is staring at me. “I think it’s brilliant, actually.”

“And the best thing of all,” I add, “is that this would be a totally separate project. If I’m starting a new range, and trying to get the King’s Road store back up and running, I’ll hardly need to see Diana at all. Once I’ve gone there tomorrow and asked her if I can do this, that is.”

“You’re not going to ask her. You’re going to
tell
her.” Lucy bangs her hand on the table. “You own the bloody company,
Charlie! You can march in there and tell Diana you’re going to launch a range of moon boots for gerbils, and she can’t say a bloody word about it!”

“Actually, I think she can.”

“You know what I mean. She has to listen to you, Charlie. And as it happens, I think Glass Slippers is a really good idea. Providing you guarantee that I’ll be given free samples of these new shoes, that is. In a size five.”

“If this works out, Luce, if Diana doesn’t just automatically reject my proposal when I go in to see her tomorrow . . .” I take a huge gulp of my Americano, fortifying myself against the nerves that are already starting to creep in. “Well, trust me. You’ll get all the free shoes you want.”

chapter seven

M
y paranoia about today’s
meeting with Diana is spreading like wildfire. It’s the reason I was up at five thirty this morning for an hour-long run along the Embankment, it’s the reason I spent a further half-hour doing squats and lunges in the kitchen when I got back from my run along the Embankment, and it’s the reason why, a couple of hours later, I’m sitting in the waiting area of this beauty salon, waiting for my name to be called for my threading appointment.

The salon is called Skin Deep, and it occupies a chopped-up bit of the premises in between Dad’s old store and Chill. The prices seem pretty reasonable for a King’s Road location, probably because it’s tiny, and slightly scruffy, and because being there feels a little bit like you’re sitting in someone’s living room. In fact, the more I look around, the more I suspect that this
is
the owner’s living room. There are old family photographs on the walls, a couple of birthday cards on the telephone table, and, on the arm of the chair I’m sitting in, a copy of this week’s
Radio Times
, folded back on itself and with a big red ink ring around today’s scheduled episode of
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

But I’m not going to let any of these things put me off, not when this meeting with Diana is lurking on the horizon.
Even now that I’ve lost thirty-two pounds, Diana’s radar will just zoom around until it finds a fresh weakness to lock onto. I can’t predict absolutely everything she might choose to torment me about—that’s where the emotional terrorism bit comes in—but seeing as she’s already roundly mocked me for thinking I could ever work in fashion (terrible hair and charwoman’s hands, if I recall correctly?) I can certainly do my level best to match, as neatly as possible, the kind of women to whom I served tea and pistachio macaroons at Dad’s memorial.

Hence my appointment here, to try to whip my eyebrows into suitably arched shape.

“Sharlee?” demands a middle-aged woman in white overalls, appearing from the treatment area at the back of the salon. She’s burly and well-muscled-looking—and just as stern as the family members glowering down from the black-and-white photos—and despite the fact that she’s running a beauty salon, her only concession to traditional femininity is the slash of glossy crimson lipstick she’s wearing. “For eyebrow threading with Galina?”

“Oh—I think that’s me!” Highly likely, seeing as I’m the only person waiting. “Actually, it’s Charlie.”

“But you are here for eyebrow threading?”

“That’s right. It’s my first time, so . . .”

“This way, please.”

Galina leads me through a pale pink curtain and into a small treatment room. It’s windowless and faintly claustrophobic, and contains no furniture except a paper-covered treatment table, a very bright electric lamp, and a wheely table, a bit like a hostess trolley, containing a hot wax pot, splints of wood, bits of something that looks like dental floss, and a couple of pairs of nail scissors.

“Gosh,” I say. “It looks a bit like an interrogation room in here!”

She turns to look at me, hands on mighty hips. “I grew up in former Soviet Union. Please no joke about interrogation room.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry . . .”

“Father was four years in Stalin’s forced labor camp.”

“Again, I’m really, really sorry.”

“You think eyebrow threading is same thing as torture by Soviet secret police?”

“Well, I’ve never actually had my eyebrows threaded before, but . . . no,” I correct myself, hastily. “No, I don’t think that. Not at all.”

“Good. Please, lie down.” Galina indicates the treatment bed, with its sheet of paper coating, and I hop on. A moment later, she’s swung the lamp around over my face, and is studying me through a large magnifying glass that’s attached to it. “You are never doing eyebrows before.”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Is no need.”

“No need to have them threaded?”

“No need to mention is first time. Is very obvious.”

“Oh.”

“And you are also wanting mustache done?”

“Mustache? I . . . I don’t have a mustache.”
Do I?
“They’re just downy hairs above my upper lip.”

“Mustache and eyebrow threading at same time is fifteen pound. Eyebrow alone is twelve pound. Other facial tidy-up is five pound per area.”

“Oh . . . so it just makes financial sense to call it a mustache, then?”

She shrugs. “If is mustache I call it mustache.”

I’m not sure, as Galina advances on my eyebrows with a taut length of one of those pieces of dental floss, that it would be sensible for me to argue. I’ve already gotten on her bad side with the whole Soviet-interrogation thing, and the last thing
you want to do is upset someone who’s about to do something painful to—

Owwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

It hurts so much that I don’t even make a sound. My vocal cords seem to have been paralyzed.

“Now I do underneath brow. Is more painful than above.”

I can report that Galina is right. I can also report that by the time she’s done underneath my left eyebrow and above my right eyebrow, the only thing that’s preventing me from jumping off her table, running to the nearest police station, and having her indicted as some kind of war criminal is the fact that if she doesn’t do beneath my right eyebrow, I’m going to look like I’m raising one eyebrow at Diana. Which, obviously, isn’t an attitude that Diana would take kindly to.

“Eyebrows done,” Galina announces, peering at them beneath her magnifying mirror for a couple of moments. “Now your mustache.”

“No!” I find my voice. “I mean, I’ve changed my mind about my . . . about the downy hairs above my upper lip.”

“You are finding very painful?”

“I am finding very painful.”

“Is pity. Threading is big improvement.” She reaches into the front pocket of her tunic and pulls out a hand mirror, which she holds up to my face. “You see?”

It’s hard to see, given that my eyes are still watering, but when they start to clear, I realize that Galina is right. My eyebrows do look much better. I’m not sure, yet, that the threading has achieved any “opening up” of my face, the way the magazines are always telling you it will, nor that it’s necessarily made me look five years younger, which is the other thing the magazines are always telling you. But these things may be more apparent
when the bright red goes down. I’m just relieved, frankly, that there isn’t profuse bleeding.

“You have mustache done next time,” Galina suggests,
standing back to allow me up off the treatment bed. She pulls back the pink curtain and we head out into the reception area again, where her next victim—sorry,
client
—is already waiting. “When you are coming back for wax.”

“Er—
am
I coming back for wax?”

I mean, did I accidentally make an appointment or something? The last two minutes are such a blur that I wouldn’t be surprised what I’d agreed to.

Her own eyebrows shoot upward. (I notice, for the first time, that she doesn’t appear to be a devotee of threading herself.) “You are not
waxing
? You are leaving legs
with hair on
?”

“No, no!” I say, in case the next client overhears and gets the impression I go about the place like a yeti. “I shave!”

“Waxing is better. But I tell all clients this. Not just hairy ones.”

The good news is that at least the rest of my face now matches my flame-grilled eyebrows. And the other good news, I guess, is that at least the next client is tactfully burying her head in a copy of
OK!
magazine. I grab a ten- and a five-pound note out of my purse, hand it to Galina, and mutter at her to keep the change.

“For this price I could have done mustache, too,” she calls after me, reproachfully, as I make a dash for the door. “I wait for your call, Sharlee. For booking next appointment!”

• • •

With the help of a few ice cubes, a dab or two of arnica gel, and a careful coating of concealer, my eyebrow area is both deflated and back to its usual color by the time I arrive at the Bond Street store for my meeting with Diana, at four fifteen this afternoon.

It’s a relief, because it would have been ironic if, after all my other painstaking preparations for this event, bright-red brows had been the thing that blew it for me. Honestly, I think
there are Hollywood starlets who put in less grooming time before an appearance on the red carpet at the Oscars than I’ve just done for this silly little meeting. The starlets are probably less stressed out about it all as well. As for me, I can’t exactly claim that I’ve kept my cool. There was a last-minute panic when it looked like the new clothes I’d ordered online from H&M (regular, not plus-sized!) weren’t going to arrive on time. Then, though they did arrive on time, I panicked again when it looked like the top I was most comfortable in didn’t really go with the trousers I was most comfortable in and I had to make an agonizing,
Sophie’s Choice
–worthy decision between top half and bottom. (Bottom half won, because the alternative to the trousers was a new pencil skirt that would have had to be worn with heels, and I didn’t fancy the idea of falling flat on my face when I get up to greet Diana.) Then I took much longer doing my hair than I’d allowed for, because I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of the new fringe and all the layers, and it takes me a good half-hour with a round brush and plenty of wrist-ache to blow-dry enough oomph into it. And then, of course, there was the fact that I hadn’t factored in extra time to put those careful coats of concealer on my eyebrows before I even started the rest of my makeup.

Still, the final effect of all the effort and panic is . . . well, if a long way from Hollywood starlet perfection, then at least decent enough to make me confident I’ve got my defenses shored up against my wicked stepmother.

Because I’m a couple of minutes early, I decide it might not be a bad idea for me to go and have a little look in the store itself. Seeing as I’m, you know, sort of the owner now and everything.

The Elroy Glass store on Bond Street is a pretty forbidding place. Gaby was responsible for the design, and it’s so sleek and minimalist that there are only ever about three shoes on display, and even those are displayed in a rather off-putting
fashion, usually teetering on narrow and extremely high Pers-pex units that make it clear you have to be almost six feet tall to even catch a glimpse of them. The rest of the place looks more like an art gallery than a shoe shop, with the occasional
photograph
of a shoe popping up on a large expanse of blank wall. I’ve not, I realize, actually been inside the store since I brought Dad here—the one and only time he paid a visit—the week after it opened almost five years ago. Dad, of course, hated the new store in the way only Dad could hate things—simmering volcanically for weeks afterward, with the occasional terrifying eruption—and I have to say I don’t blame him.

Courage sufficiently plucked, I open the door and go inside.

The sales assistant pounces as soon as I go in.

“Hello! Can I help you?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m not here to buy shoes.” I feel the need to apologize, because there are, in fact, no other customers in the place. This is in stark contrast to all the other shops I was glancing in as I walked along Bond Street just now, most of which were filled with a pretty healthy gathering of customers. “I’m here for a meeting with Diana.”

“Diana Forbes-Wilkinson?”

“Yes. Unless there’s another Diana working here that I don’t know about!”

The sales assistant just stares at me, her expression a mixture of blankness and mild hostility.

“Um, yes, Diana Forbes-Wilkinson,” I say, feeling foolish now. “But I didn’t want to bother you or anything. I was just popping in to have a little look at the latest collection.” (Which, by the way, doesn’t look as if it’s going to take me very long. As expected, there are only four pairs of shoes on display: three metallic strappy sandals and a pointy high-heeled pump in nude patent leather. And Lucy’s right: they are a bit boring. Not to mention the fact that they also look fairly flimsy
and that the pointy toe on the nude pump looks so inhumanly pointy that I wonder if either the designer or the factory got a measurement wrong somewhere. Or if they used an elf from Middle Earth as their foot model.) “Maybe I’ll just go on up to the office, and—”

“
Charlie?
” This comes from Gaby, who’s just appeared from the back of the store.

“Gaby!” Despite myself, I’m pleased to see her. Pleased, too, to see that she’s abandoned her customary black, presumably as a nod to the warm day, and is wearing a pale gray linen shift that makes her look almost winsome, for a change. On her feet are the inhumanly pointy nude patent pumps. Impressively, she can actually walk in them. “You look lovely!”

“And you look . . .” It would be an exaggeration to say that her mouth opens and closes like a goldfish—this is Gaby we’re talking about, after all, and I’m not sure she’s done anything like a goldfish one single time in her thirty-three years—but it certainly opens once before she gets control of it. “My goodness, Charlie!” she manages, after a moment. “That’s quite the dramatic makeover! I thought you were just going traveling these past couple of months.”

“Well, you know. I thought it was a good opportunity for a bit of self-improvement.”

“You don’t say!” Her gaze is sharp now, as she gives me a keen once-over. “You’ve lost weight!”

“Yes.”

“And your hair . . .”

“Yes.” Having already been through all this, and in precisely the same order, with Lucy, I’m not all that keen to go through it again. I know I was tired of being invisible before I lost weight, but it’s not as if I want to replace that with a minute level of scrutiny every time I run into someone I know. “I’m here for a meeting with your mum!” I say, attempting to change the subject.

“With Mummy?” Gaby frowns.

“Yes.”

“This afternoon?”

“Yes . . . Look, Gaby, is there some kind of a problem? Is Diana out or something?”

“No, no, she’s here. In the boardroom.” This seems to remind her of something, and she turns her attention to the sales assistant. “Pippa, does it
really
take you fifteen minutes to produce a pot of coffee? Are you roasting the beans yourself ? Flying off to source them in Nicaragua like the man from the bloody Kenco ads?”