Free The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne Page A

her hands. “You’re not just a shop assistant, you’re the manager! And you know what Franny was like about shoes—she’d have loved what you’ve done with that shop. I never knew a woman with better shoes than Franny. Didn’t she always say that the right heels were the first step in the best outfits?”
    My mouth twisted into a sad smile. “Yes. And that you could tell a lady from the state of her shoes. And that good shoes turned high street into Bond Street. She taught me to run for a bus in high heels, you know.” I sighed. “Poor Franny. I hope she had no idea how bad things were at the Academy after she left.”
    “But you can fix that!” Liv’s eyes were full of the sort of puppyish trust and enthusiasm that made law partners run to Tiffany’s with their checkbooks flapping in the breeze. “You can make it up to her by doing the job she thought you were doing, on the Academy! Go in there, and…I don’t know…make them tackle their filing, like you did with Fiona and her accounts.”
    “Oh, Liv, that was different! It was a tiny shop, not a finishing school. I didn’t even go to…” I started, but Liv wasn’t having any of it.
    “They obviously don’t have a clue, so what does it matter if you don’t either?” Liv tried to look motivational. “You don’t know what you can do till you try—that’s what you’re always telling me.”
    Well, actually, that was what Kathleen was always telling me .
    “And…” Liv rapped the table with her finger, then pointed at me to indicate that she’d had an idea. “You know you’re always going on about how you can’t start your own consultancy when you’ve got no experience? Well, look—you’ve done Fiona’s shop, and if you do this too, you’ve got references, right? I bet Dad’ll let you overhaul his office if you want, and there’s three! There’s your business plan! This time next year, you could actually be doing the job everyone reckons you are, and you’ll never have to come clean!” She paused. “It’s a fairly elaborate way of getting out of telling a lie, I’ll give you that, but you’re such a rubbish liar, anyway…”
    A slow excitement began to burn in my stomach. It was so ridiculous, it was almost reasonable.
    Liv saw she had me on the ropes and went in for the killer blow. “I mean, have you applied for any proper jobs recently?”
    I squirmed. Every couple of months I told myself it was about time I kicked my life into gear and had a furious week where I applied for “proper jobs”—accountancy, legal retraining, even the tax office. But when I actually had the pen in hand and the application form in front of me, I froze. I’d spent my whole life spinning wild possibilities about who I might be, and now it came down to boxes. It felt so final. Was I letting down some ballerina blood inside me? Was I really an actuary at heart?
    “But I can’t decide what I want to do,” I whined, then shook myself. Liv was hardly one to talk about career drift. Neither of us had exactly set the world on fire so far, although in Liv’s case, Ken’s regular bundles of fifties kept her pretty toasty. “Have you?”
    “No,” said Liv with absolute serenity. “I’m happy with my two days behind the bar at Igor’s. It gives me time to pursue my dreams of becoming a top photographer. Or possibly a poet slash muse.”
    “As well as time to be Eurostarred to Paris at the drop of a hat,” I pointed out.
    “That too.” She shook her long bangs out of her angelic face. “We’re not talking about me, though. This is one of those chances of a lifetime! I mean, I think Lord P’s got a bloody nerve asking you to go back there, when he wouldn’t let you in to begin with, but if the place is going down the toilet, what harm can it do for you to go and look round? You keep telling me you don’t want to be handing pop socks to women with bunions this time next year—isn’t this a great chance to get out of that?”
    The