Free Flawless by Tilly Bagshawe

conversation with Mrs. De Beers and Mrs. Cuypers.
    If the IVF had fucked up, they could always try again.

     
    Meanwhile, across town in Greenwich Village, Nancy and Scarlett were up in one of the guest bedrooms of Nancy’s parents’ palatial brownstone, trying on outfits for tonight.
    “It’s ridiculous,” said Scarlett, standing in front of the full-length mirror in her bra and underwear. “I go to so many of these things nowadays, but I’m still never sure how to pitch it. Should I go for sober businesswoman?” She held up a severe, black Calvin Klein suit with a killer pencil skirt.
    “Very ‘Angelina at the UN,’” said Nancy.
    “Or wild, artistic genius?” Pulling her newest acquisition, a tiered, multicolored Marchesa gypsy skirt, out of its bag, Scarlett held it to her waist and twirled around and around.
    “I’d go for the skirt,” said Nancy, looking at her friend’s flawless model figure with good-natured envy. “Everyone in New York lives in black; you’ll stand out more in color. Besides, I can’t wear my red flamenco number if you turn up dressed all CNN.”
    Nancy Lorriman and Scarlett Drummond Murray had been firm friends since the age of thirteen, when Nancy had arrived at St. Clement’s Girls’ Boarding School in Inverness, shivering like a polar explorer in her lightweight American clothes and wondering if she’d landed on the set of a
Munsters
remake, and Scarlett had taken her under her wing. Physically, they were as different as different could be, with blonde, curvy Nancy standing almost a foot shorter than Scarlett, who as a teenager was as tall, pale, and skinny as an unripe stick of asparagus. But they immediately recognized one another as kindred spirits—bright, independent-minded, romantic, and, in Nancy’s case particularly, harboring a strong rebellious streak.
    Nancy’s father had sent her to St. Clement’s on a whim, having seen the school advertised in the back of a magazine and developed a notion that Scotland was a land of beauty and mystery in which his daughter couldn’t fail to blossom. The fact that the school itself looked like Cinderella’s castle had been an added bonus, and besides, he was running out of options in New York, where Nancy had already been expelled from two schools and was hardly being welcomed with open arms by others.
    A sweet kid but highly intelligent and consequently easily bored, Nancy also suffered from being the only child of very wealthy, older parents who spoiled her with material things but left her too much in the care of nannies and were far too overprotective. Yearning for freedom and adventure of the sort she read about constantly in books, Nancy spent much of her early life giving her nannies the slip and running off on her own into the Manhattan streets that became her private playground.
    To say that St. Clement’s came as a shock, with its rigid rules and routine, revolting food, and subzero dormitories, would be a serious understatement. She contemplated running away, but Scarlett soon convinced her that there was really nowhere to go—Inverness had little to offer in terms of urban excitements. They would simply have to rely on each other’s company and make their own excitement, tormenting their poor teachers with a litany of pranks and amusing their classmates with tales of their latest misbehavior.
    Somehow both girls made it through to graduation without being expelled, and both achieved creditable grades. After Scarlett went to London to model, Nancy raced delightedly back to the States to study journalism at NYU, and the two girls lost touch for a while. But when they reconnected a few years ago, it was as if nothing had changed. Scarlett might now be a hotshot designer and Nancy an up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, but at heart they were still the same two mischievous misfits they’d been at school.
    “What do you think?”
    Nancy had poured herself into a pillar-box-red dress with a ruffled train that