The Accidental Mistress

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?’