The Accidental Mistress

She did not sound as if it was a lesson she was entirely happy about. Izzy was whipping eggs for Pepper’s breakfast, but at that she looked up sharply. Jemima had not only stopped listening, she realised with a pang, she had stopped confiding, too.

‘Everything okay, Jay Jay?’

‘Just great. I live in five-star hotels and when I wake up in the morning I don’t know which continent I’m in.’

Izzy’s eyebrows rose. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘It’s a living,’ said Jemima without expression.

Izzy was beginning to get worried. When Jemima had been selected by cosmetics house Belinda to be the face of their new campaign, all the papers had said this put her in the superstar league. It was the height of every model’s ambition, they’d said. But this did not sound like a woman enjoying well-deserved success. This sounded like a woman with problems.

But now was not the time to talk about it.

‘Let’s go for a pizza this evening, when the razzmatazz is all over,’ Izzy said.

Jemima gave a harsh laugh. ‘Who has time for pizza? I go straight from the presentation to the airport.’

‘You mean you won’t even be coming back here to pick up a bag?’ Izzy was shocked.

Jemima shook her head.

Izzy was filled with compunction. ‘I’m sorry I took the duvet off you this morning.’

‘If you hadn’t, I’d have slept for a week,’ said Jemima. ‘You don’t want to know how mad my life is.’

But before she could say any more Pepper emerged in a bathrobe. She had another sheaf of printed tables in her hand.

‘Jemima, Izzy—what do you think? I could just run through…’

More pressing concerns took over.

‘No statistics,’ they yelled in unison.

‘You,’ said the woman from the PR agency, ‘are a genius. I didn’t think it could be done.’ She had spiky, lurid green hair and a clipboard and she was terrifyingly professional.

Izzy was on a roll. She was good at crisis management, and this morning she was getting plenty of opportunity. Now she stopped tacking a piece of chintz across a nook full of wires and looked up. She tucked a stray lock of red hair back under her gypsy headscarf. ‘What?’

‘Getting the Beast of Belinda here before ten o’clock in the morning. She looks like a dream, all right. But that woman bites.’

Izzy was affronted. ‘I’m sorry?’

But the clipboard had already zipped to the other side of the big glass-walled reception room.

The in-house cameraman stopped adjusting his focus on the small stage and looked down at Izzy. ‘Molly means thank you for keeping Jemima sweet. She hasn’t actually sunk her teeth into anyone yet.’

Izzy blinked. ‘Beast of Belinda?’ she echoed.

He pulled a wry face. ‘Jemima Dare. Face of Belinda Cosmetics. Newest of the supermodels. And doesn’t she know it!’

And my sister, thought Izzy. Probably not a good moment to mention it, though. Normally she would go to war with her sister’s enemies at the drop of a hat. But twelve minutes before they opened the door on the launch of Out of the Attic was bad timing by anyone’s standards.

She flicked the chintz into expert folds and stapled it in place. ‘You know Jemima Dare?’ she said with deceptive mildness.

‘I’ve worked with her.’

‘Phew, yes,’ said the cameraman’s assistant, with feeling. ‘Serious pain in the ass, that one.’

Izzy held onto her temper with an effort. ‘How interesting,’ she said between her teeth.

She hammered an errant nail into place with force, flicked a dustsheet over the whole construction and stood up.

‘Done?’ said the woman with the clipboard, zipping back as if she were on rollerblades. ‘Can we let the punters in yet?’

Izzy cast a narrow-eyed look round the big reception room. It did not look like the launch of anything. It looked as if it was in the throes of refurbishment. Pots of paint stood around, amid step ladders and mysterious outcrops of furniture under dust sheets. The pictures on the walls were draped in sheeting and the big central chandelier was at the end of the room, leaning drunkenly against a trestle table. The carpet had gone. The London fashion crowd were in for a shock.

‘Yup. Ready to rock.’

The green-haired woman grinned. ‘I was right. Genius. Culp and Christopher would be a happy agency if all our clients were practical like you.’

‘Practical is what I do,’ agreed Izzy.

‘Sure is.’ The woman consulted her clipboard. ‘I’ve got the girls in position to hand out the goody bags. So we’ll open up the moment you give me the sign.’

She powered over to the big doors to the conference hall.

Izzy nodded and checked that her earpiece was in place. Then she pressed the connect button and spoke into her collar mike. ‘Testing. Testing. The partygoers are at the gates. Are we ready? Speak to me, people…Tony? Geoff?’

They were there. She ran through the roll call of her other helpers one by one. All in place, raring to go. Then at last she came to her cousin Pepper.

She was not worried about her décor, or the timing of her effects, but she was worried about Pepper. Should you be that nervous before the launch of a ground-breaking new business?

‘Pepper? How’s it going?’

There was an audible gulp. ‘Fine,’ quavered Pepper.

Izzy turned to face the wall, so that there was no chance of a passer by hearing her. She switched to one-to-one transmission and said into her mike, very softly, ‘Come on Big Shot. Entrepreneurs don’t panic. You can do this thing.’

There was a slightly watery chuckle. ‘You got evidence of that?’

‘You blagged the money men. After that, how hard can a bunch of journalists be?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘What’s more,’ interrupted Izzy ruthlessly, ‘you convinced me and you convinced Jemima. She knows all about clothes and I hate the things. So there you are. Every sector covered.’

This time the chuckle was a lot more robust. ‘So it is. Thanks, Izzy.’

‘My pleasure.’ She switched back to broadcast. ‘Okay, everyone. Showtime!’

She gave the thumbs-up to the woman with the clipboard. The tall doors were flung back. The waiting audience clattered in—and stopped dead at the decorators’ disarray.

Izzy could have danced with glee. Great! This was a launch they wouldn’t forget.

She said into the mike, ‘Geoff, city sounds please.’

At once a tape full of combustion engines and sirens and voices filled the room. The audience, London sophisticates to a woman, were even more intrigued. They began to move round the room, looking at the shrouded shapes questioningly.

‘Right,’ said Izzy. ‘Got them. Pepper, you’re on. Tony, start the light show now.’

The harsh lighting began to dim and a patch of rosy warmth appeared on the shambolic stage. It was empty. It should not have been empty.

Izzy’s heart sank. She must not let it show, though. ‘Pepper?’ she prompted into her mike, sounding as casual as she could manage.

And a blessed, blessed voice said in her ear, ‘We’re here, Izzy. We’re just going on.’

It was Jemima. It should not have been Jemima. Jemima should have followed Pepper onto the stage for dramatic effect.

Technically, she was only there to model a couple of outfits and mingle with the guests. ‘I’ll do the robot in the gear,’ she had said, right from the start. ‘But I haven’t got time to learn a script.’ Yet here she was, stepping into the breach, just as Izzy would have done in her place.

Huh! Beast of Belinda indeed, thought Izzy, bursting with pride. This was no pain in the ass. This was a fully paid-up member of the Girls Stick Together Club.

She said into the mike, ‘Go for it, Jay Jay.’

Jemima walked out onto the platform like a queen. Well, a queen taking a day off to paint the nursery, maybe, thought Izzy ruefully. As they had planned in various transatlantic e-mails, Jemima was wearing paint-stained dungarees. There were flecks of paint and ink over her hands and forearms. And her legendary hair was caught up in a tangly ponytail. The audience stopped chattering to their neighbours and frankly stared.

‘Life,’ said Jemima, standing close to the sound system and reading Izzy’s script from the palm of her hand without anyone noticing, ‘is a mess. Too fast. Too dirty. Too many disappointments.’ She paused.

‘Not,’ said a soft husky voice, out of sight, ‘always.’

From behind an edifice covered in dustsheets, a large, beautiful woman came out into the middle of the stage. She had a mass of gleaming red hair, she was dressed in a silk coat of peacock colours, and she was smiling. Pepper had come a long way since the sisters had taken her bathrobe and statistics away from her this morning.

It looked as if she had got over her momentary panic, too. Thank you, Jay Jay. But still Izzy crossed her fingers, just in case.

The audience gasped. This was not what they were expecting at all. This was no model. This was Pepper Calhoun herself. Entrepreneur, innovator and, just possibly, retail genius.

The light changed again, turned gold. The whole room was bathed in the soft glow of a summer evening. Birds cheeped. Insects buzzed. A stream chattered faintly in the distance. Ripples of light like water began to flicker across the shrouded shapes. Even the nosiest journalist dropped the corner of the dustsheet in simple awe.

‘Hi, there,’ said Pepper, in her soft American accent.

To Izzy’s relief she was as cool and friendly as if she had opened the door to a bunch of friends. Just as Izzy had coached her for a week. She sounded as if she did not have a nerve in her body and had never even heard of retail statistics.

‘Good to see you,’ she went on. ‘Glad you can be here with us today.’

So she was right back on Izzy’s carefully crafted script. Cautiously, Izzy uncrossed her fingers. Looking good, she thought. Looking more than good.

Pepper smiled sleepily around the room. She seemed to catch the eye of every single person of that select group there.

That was Izzy’s idea, too. They had practised it in the flat, over and over again, until Pepper had been reeling and Izzy had been gloomily certain it would never work. Now she held her breath.

Jemima stretched her arms out in front of her, as if she were easing her shoulders after a hard painting session. Only Izzy noticed that she was turning her hand so she could read from the back of it.

‘Couldn’t get the show on in time, eh, Pepper?’ she said as lightly as if she had only just thought of it. ‘What went wrong?’

The glittering green and blue figure on the stage beside her smiled.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘you just have to trust your imagination.’

That was the signal.

‘Geoff, Tony, ladies…’ murmured Izzy into her mike, more for herself than her well rehearsed team.

‘Let your fancy fly,’ said Pepper, laughing.

And the lights went out, right on cue.

There was a rush of cool air. Thank God they’d mastered the air-conditioning in time, thought Izzy. Half an hour ago she would not have put money on it.

The tape changed to strange, unearthly music. The darkened ceiling suddenly gleamed with a million stars. There was a concerted gasp from the audience.

Yes! thought Izzy. She let herself breathe again.

There was another gasp as the dustsheets rose like flock of huge birds before flopping to the floor like paper. Silent-footed, the junior helpers folded and rolled the sheets, getting them rapidly out of sight. Izzy waved them away. But they had rehearsed this. They didn’t need any more direction. They had all identified their nearest exit. Now they melted through the various doors while the audience was still staring entranced at the starscape.

Izzy was the last to go. She held the door to the kitchen open the tiniest crack so she could see the effect of her production. She was not disappointed. When the lights came up, there was a long indrawn breath of wonder from a hundred throats.

The reception room had magically turned into a big attic, full of sunlight. Wooden trunks of clothes stood invitingly open. Comfortable shabby chairs were set beside old fashioned clothes horses from which every colour of garment hung. There were cushions and books and pot-pourri, and the friendly smell of coffee and fresh bread. The guests looked around, enchanted, as if they could not believe their eyes.

Izzy let the door swing shut. She looked round the stainless steel work surfaces of the empty kitchen as if she didn’t quite know how she had got there.

‘We did it.’ She sounded dazed, even to her own ears.

‘You did it,’ said Geoff.

They shared a high five.

On the monitoring system they heard Pepper saying serenely, ‘Welcome to Out of the Attic. A whole new shopping experience.’ On the black and white screen above their heads, she spread her hands. ‘Enjoy.’

They did. They wandered round as if they had just discovered a treasure chest. Women who lived all their professional lives in designer black threw scarlet and gold shawls around themselves and looked wistfully in the mirror. Hard-bitten fashion professionals ran their hands sensuously over velvet and angora and sighed.

Izzy slid rapidly along to the Ladies’ Room to change out of her working decorator gear. Now that the theatrical tricks were over she had to turn herself back into Pepper’s efficient assistant and work the room. She was already hauling the dark tee shirt over her head as she walked in.

Jemima was at a basin, scrubbing the ink prompts off her hands. She looked up when the door opened and grinned at Izzy in the mirror.

‘That was a blast. Proud of yourself?’

‘I suppose I am, quite,’ Izzy admitted.

Jemima flicked water at her. ‘Make that lots. You’ve got them eating out of Pepper’s hand.’

Izzy wriggled out of her jeans. ‘You did your share. What happened up there? Pepper freak out?’

Jemima shrugged. ‘Said she couldn’t remember her words and you’d told her not to go into detail too early.’ She shook her head. ‘She may be a retail genius, but she sure doesn’t talk the talk.’

‘She does with a little help from her friends,’ said Izzy. ‘You handled that brilliantly.’

She splashed cold water under her arms and the back of her neck.

Jemima watched as she towelled off and pulled on sheer dark tights. ‘I couldn’t make head or tail of Pepper’s gibbering. So I went back to the first speech you wrote and said, “You do this bit; I’ll do that.”’

‘Worked like a dream.’ Izzy’s voice was muffled as she pulled a slim charcoal-grey dress over her head. ‘Looked good, too. Very cool. How did you get her to do it?’

‘I told her she owed you.’ Jemima was whipping her maltreated hair into place with expert rapidity.

‘Owed me?’

‘Yup.’

‘Owed me? But this is her project, her idea. I wouldn’t even have a job if it weren’t for Pepper and Out of the Attic.’

‘Correction. You’d have another job.’

‘Maybe. But—’

‘No maybe about it,’ broke in Jemima. She stopped fiddling with her hair and sent Izzy a minatory look. ‘Don’t put yourself down. You can turn your hand to anything.’

‘So can the odd job man in our block.’

Jemima ignored that. ‘And you’re always the best, too.’

Izzy smiled in spite of herself. ‘You’re prejudiced.’ She cast a cursory look in the mirror and fluffed her hair out.

‘Let me do that,’ said Jemima impatiently.

She pressed Izzy into one of the small gilt chairs and took up a brush. Her own tangled ponytail had been an artful creation, whereas Izzy’s tangles were the result of too little attention and a hectic three hours spent scrambling among the installations.

‘I am going to give you a present of a day at a decent salon,’ Jemima said, attacking the tangles ruthlessly. ‘When did you last have your hair done properly?’

Izzy chuckled. ‘The last time you gave me a present of a day at a salon.’

Jemima smacked her lightly with the brush. ‘How you have the gall to lecture Pepper, I’ll never know.’

‘That’s different. That’s business. It matters how Pepper looks.’

‘It matters how everyone looks,’ said Jemima, shocked to the core.

‘Believe me, it doesn’t.’

Jemima paused in her work. She met her sister’s eyes in the mirror.

‘You mean when you were hiking round the world you had more important things to think about than your split ends?’ she interpreted.

Izzy was shocked. ‘Am I that smug?’

‘You’re that weird,’ corrected Jemima. She extracted the last tangle and pursed her lips. ‘Plait,’ she decided. ‘No option. Don’t fidget, I gotta concentrate.’

‘I’m not weird,’ said Izzy, offended.

‘Yes, you are. Don’t give me that nonsense about not caring about clothes. You love clothes. But you’re always finding stuff for other people. I used to think it was just me. But since Pepper arrived you’re always coming home with things to suit her, too. Never you.’

Izzy shrugged. ‘Well, you two are on display all the time. I’m a backroom girl.’

Jemima was whipping threads of thick red hair into a plait. They kept springing free.

‘Oh, this is hopeless. I need gel. Don’t move.’ She rootled through her bag, saying over her shoulder, ‘You go to parties. Most people like to look good at a party.’

Izzy clicked her tongue. ‘I go to parties to meet people. Not to be looked at.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jemima dryly.

Izzy slewed round. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Don’t move.’ Jemima found the gel. ‘And, yes, you did mean it,’ she said. ‘And I’m tired of it. At some point you decided that I was the pretty one. So you delegated caring about clothes and makeup and stuff to me. Boring.’

‘I—’

But Jemima was combing the gel through her hair with busy fingers and refused to be interrupted.

‘You’re not on some broken-down Latin American bus any more. You live in London. You have a job. Out of the Attic sells clothes, for heaven’s sake. Wake up and start looking in the mirror. You’re beautiful.’

This time the hair slid sweetly into its elaborate plait.

‘There!’ Jemima stepped back. ‘Bit darker than we started off with, but not bad. Not bad at all.’

Izzy looked at herself. Her hair was still ordinary red. Not Jemima’s lustrous firelight tones, not Pepper’s curling Titian—plain, common or garden, brickdust-red. But the plait and the fashionable gel made her look alert and faintly dangerous—and at least she was dark auburn for the moment. She grinned.

‘Well done.’

‘Not finished.’

Before Izzy could complain, Jemima was waving pots and brushes around. They had done this since they were small. Izzy sat very still, resigned.

‘Apes groom each other, too, you know,’ she said chattily.

‘Shut up.’ Jemima’s eyes narrowed to slits. Then she swooped, lipliner in hand.

It took less than two minutes. Jemima, after all, was a professional model. When she straightened, Izzy had cheekbones. She looked at herself in the mirror, half-bemused, half-uneasy.

‘Thank you,’ she said, trying to feel grateful.

‘Make-up lessons,’ said Jemima, committing it to memory. And, with apparent irrelevance, ‘You taking Adam to the party, then?’

‘No.’

Jemima nodded. She did not look surprised. ‘Another one falls at the Third Date fence,’ she said sadly. ‘What is it with you?’

Izzy knew how to deal with a nosy younger sister. ‘The party is work. You know we don’t mix work and play.’

‘You play?’ said Jemima, mock incredulous.

‘Watch it, brat!’

‘Social skills course and make-up lessons,’ said Jemima, grinning.

Izzy stood up and gave Jemima a quick hug. ‘Don’t waste your money,’ she advised.

Jemima bit her lip.

‘Don’t worry about it. I prefer being the sister who bites.’

‘I don’t care about that,’ Jemima said impatiently. ‘It’s this giving up on clothes and third dates that worries me.’

Izzy grinned. ‘I’m just not the pretty one. Get used to it.’

Jemima was packing away her stuff. She glared.

‘You’re crazy. You ought to be gorgeous. You’re three times as much fun as I am. You dance like a maniac. Guys line up and half the time you don’t even see them. And you look as if you don’t own a mirror. And,’ yelled Jemima, suddenly losing it, ‘I feel—as if—it’s my fault.’

‘Hey. Calm down.’ Izzy was disconcerted and a bit annoyed. ‘It’s nothing to do with you if I look like a rag bag.’

Jemima stopped yelling. But under the exquisite make up her face was drawn and her eyes tired. ‘Yes, it bloody is,’ she said. ‘And we both know it.’

Their eyes met. For a moment there was silence in the luxurious cloakroom. Then Jemima gave a quick, spiky shrug and started to stuff all her tubes and pots and brushes back into the designer tote bag.

‘Oh, what’s the point?’ she said wearily. ‘Come on. We’ve got a cousin’s business to promote.’

She stuffed the bag under the coat rack and went back to the conference room without a backward look.

Izzy followed more slowly. There was a faint frown between her brows. It was not like her sister to fly off the handle. Maybe all the time-zone hopping was getting to her.

‘You and I,’ she muttered, ‘have got to have a long talk. And soon.’

But Jemima did not hear. Or did not want to hear. And once in the conference room, like the professional she was, Jemima went instantly into posing beautifully for assorted photographers, her usual vibrant self again.

She had changed into what Pepper hoped would be the Attic’s signature outfit: soft full trousers and a shirt with sleeves that an eighteenth-century duellist would have killed for. Jemima’s chosen colours were chocolate and amber. They made the glorious hair look alive, as if it had caught lamplight and fire in its depths.

Even Izzy, used to her sister’s beauty, was startled.

‘She really is gorgeous, isn’t she?’ she said, almost to herself.

The clipboard queen was passing. ‘Gorgeous,’ she said indifferently. She stuffed the board under her arm and held out a hand. ‘Molly di Peretti from Culp and Christopher. Too much of a rush to do introductions earlier. But I wanted to say how much I admire what you did here today.’

‘Thank you,’ said Izzy, but absently. She was still looking at Jemima. That outburst was so out of character! What was going on behind the professionally flirtatious manner?

But Molly di Peretti was more interested in the concept of the launch. ‘This is just so original. You know, when Pepper told me what you were planning, I told her it was too weird?’

‘Oh?’ From a distance she could see that Jemima was clearly on edge. Her hands were never still and she kept touching her face, her hair.

“‘The hacks want champagne and lots of it,” I said. “Coffee and chat won’t cut the mustard.” That was your idea, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Izzy absently.

Jemima wasn’t happy. Other people might not notice, but Izzy had protected her from her first day in the playground. She could see that, however much her sister smiled, she was just desperate to get away.

‘Well, I was wrong,’ said Molly, oblivious. ‘It’s brilliant. Everyone is going to remember this launch.’

Izzy pulled herself together. ‘That’s the name of the game,’ she said gaily.

‘Hmm. Not everyone can do it, though.’ Molly di Peretti thought a bit. ‘And you’re Pepper Calhoun’s assistant, right? You don’t organise events for a living?’

‘Good grief, no. I’m just the gofer.’

‘Hmm,’ she said again. ‘And how did you get together with Pepper?’

‘We’re cousins.’

The woman’s eyebrows climbed towards her green hairline. She looked across the room to where Jemima was laughing a little too loudly at something one of the photographers had said. ‘Ah. So you must be related to the gorgeous Jemima as well?’

‘She’s my sister.’ Izzy’s voice was neutral. She waited for Molly di Peretti to remember that she had called Jemima the Beast of Belinda. She was not vindictive but she would enjoy seeing the brisk sophisticate wince.