Kathleen Tessaro 3-Book Collection: The Flirt, The Debutante, The Perfume Collector

‘Oh, yes!’ Mimsy was entranced. ‘That’s a brilliant idea! Very rough and tumble!’

‘I won’t be able to see.’

‘You don’t have to!’ He laughed. The assistants laughed. Mimsy laughed. ‘Everyone will be looking at you! And when you want to see someone, it’s like you come out from behind this veil of hair …’

‘Yes, yes!’ Mimsy nodded.

Olivia shifted. The dentist’s chair was uncomfortable. ‘But I don’t want hair in my eyes. I can’t stand it.’

Rolo went quiet. His lip curled.

The assistants looked nervously at one another.

‘Really, darling.’ His tone was flat, bored. ‘You have to trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Yes, Olivia!’ Mimsy berated her, aghast. ‘I mean, that’s why we came, isn’t it? To get expert advice?’

But surely I’m the expert, Olivia thought.

Then the inevitable undertow of guilt kicked in. She was wasting their time; it was what Mimsy wanted; what did she know about hairstyling, anyway?

They were staring at her; waiting.

Rolo checked his watch.

The passion of the morning ebbed away; a thick, numbing layer of hopelessness replaced it.

‘Well, I suppose …’

Then her phone rang.

It was Simon, calling to confirm that exact position of the Knowle sofa.

Olivia excused herself and under the withering gaze of both Mimsy and Rolo, took the call. Midway through, an idea came to her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she gushed, when she’d hung up. ‘A crisis at the gallery!’ Pulling off the Chanel jacket, she passed it back to Mimsy. ‘I’ve got to go immediately, I’m afraid. It can’t be helped.’

Rolo regarded her sourly. ‘There’s a cancellation fee for my time.’

‘Of course!’

‘But … but what gallery?’ Mimsy stammered. ‘You can’t just leave a hair appointment! We’re about to transform your life!’

‘They need me,’ Olivia said simply. ‘But why don’t you take my slot? After all, you deserve it.’ She eased Mimsy towards the chair. ‘I can’t wait to see how it looks!’

Sensing a far more lucrative client, Rolo sprang to life, yanking bits here, flipping bits there. Mimsy was lulled into a trance by the authority of his voice and her own glorious reflection. (Rolo had invested in incredible rose-tinted lighting that instantly took years off everyone.)

‘I’ll ring you later!’

Olivia made a dash for the door.

As little as a week ago this appointment had been the highlight of her month; the lynchpin in her campaign to win back Arnaud’s affections. And yet here she was, heading out onto the gloriously filthy streets of Soho unaltered; grateful to have escaped.

The gallery beckoned. There was that sofa to sort out, final adjustments to be made to the guest list and her very own protégée, Red Moriarty, to guide and promote. The girl was remarkable; both she and Simon were on tenterhooks to see what she would produce next. Already they’d reserved a space for it in the show.

Best of all, the spark of excitement was back, undimmed. And, stopping on impulse to buy a pair of electric-blue fishnets from the fashion wholesale shop (the colour was amazing even if she could never wear them) and a freshly baked croissant from Patisserie Valerie, Olivia took her time, wandering through an invigorating, strange, altogether darker part of London before returning to Mayfair.

Another Moriarty Original (#ulink_8f7847b3-45ed-5db1-9ddb-9af804a34f36)

Rose was standing in front of Moriarty’s Second-Hand Furniture Emporium on Kilburn Lane, waiting for her father. He was late. He’d been late all her life. Mick Moriarty was famous throughout London for both his ability to find whatever you were looking for and not showing up on time. He’d get things wrong by days rather than minutes. Knowing this, Rose had rung him twice this morning. But still, Mick was nowhere to be found; the shop was closed and his mobile mysteriously unavailable. Luckily, Rory had fallen asleep in his pushchair on the way over. She gently rolled him back and forth. At least he wasn’t awake, screaming and wriggling, wanting to get out.

Her father said he had something for her and Rose couldn’t afford to turn him down. It was sweet, really, the way he earmarked various bits of furniture for her. But she didn’t have all day to loiter about; she was due at the gallery this afternoon for a meeting with Olivia and Simon – a meeting she was dreading.

She checked her watch again. Now she was going to be late too.

Her dad was a law unto himself. He was a good father, so long as you didn’t actually need him for anything. There’d been a time, when she was very small, when he’d been different. Normal almost. Mick Moriarty had always liked to fix things. But after her mother had left, what had been a hobby became not only a profession but a mania. He became obsessed with what everyone else thought of as just junk. He only had to clean it, repair it, redeem it and send it out into the world again; maybe it wasn’t quite as good as new, but better than it had been. There was something in his zeal that Rose recognized; a way of making sense of the one event of his life he’d never managed to recover from.

Finally, just as she was on the verge of leaving, Mick rattled up in the battered white Transit van that had been the result of one of his earliest negotiations.

‘Dad!’

‘I know! I know! But you’ll never believe it!’ Hopping out, he flung open the back doors of the van. ‘Just look at this!’ He pointed to what looked like a pile of old kitchen units, in a strange turquoise colour. ‘Flung into a skip! As if it were junk! Isn’t that incredible!’

‘It is junk, Dad.’

‘You must be mad! Look! They’re original fifties units; I can get three grand for them if I take them over to Islington. Get in the van.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re going to Islington.’

‘I don’t want to go to Islington. I only came because you said you had something for me!’

‘Yeah, that’s right. You’ll love it. Can you put Rory on your lap?’

‘You’re not listening to me! We’re not going anywhere! As a matter of fact, I was hoping you’d look after Rory for me – I’ve got a big meeting and I have to get to Mayfair …’

Mick was already lifting the sleeping Rory out of his chair. ‘I’ll drive you, luv. Get in. God, he’s heavy!’ He gave him a cuddle, smoothing his hair down. Rory, exhausted from hours spent racing around the park chasing dogs and collecting used ice-cream sticks, wasn’t waking up for anyone or anything. He flopped over Mick’s shoulder, a solid, dead weight. ‘Get in!’

‘Mayfair’s nowhere near Islington and I don’t want you hauling him from shop to shop, Dad. He’ll go mad.’

‘Oh no, I can’t take him, angel. Not till later, anyway. But I’ll get you to Mayfair, no problem. Haven’t had a look around there for years. They’ve got nice digs in Mayfair.’

Rose thought she would scream. He was impossible. But still she found herself climbing into the front seat and taking Rory, strapping the seat belt across the both of them, burying her nose in his hair. The only way to deal with her father was to go along for the ride.

She watched in the rear-view mirror as he folded the pushchair up, putting it into the back along with the entire fifties kitchen and Lord knows what else. Slight, with thick dark hair and blue eyes, he was still an attractive man; handsome even in his funny white boiler suit. She’d never got to the bottom of the boiler suit – one day it appeared and suddenly it became part of his professional identity. Like a doctor in a white lab coat, he insisted upon wearing it every day, never visiting a client without it. Considering that most of his clients were willing to sell their own furniture to pay their debts, this delicacy struck her as particularly funny.

Climbing in next to her, he started the engine. ‘So what’s this meeting then?’