Charlie Glass's Slippers (35 page)

chapter twenty-one

I
t’s Tuesday lunchtime, and
I’m standing outside Elroy Glass on Bond Street. There are five minutes to go before the directors’ AGM. And I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my entire life.

It’s a Diana thing, rather than a rational thing. Knowing that I’ve got to sit facing her across a boardroom table, knowing that she’s got it in for me more than ever since she’s found out about me and Jay, I feel like an arachnophobe who’s just agreed, way beyond her better judgment, to put her hand into a box full of spiders. I’m so nervous that I can barely swallow. So nervous that this is the first morning in months that I honestly haven’t woken up thinking about a cooked breakfast. So nervous that the backs of my knees, for some reason, are slick with sweat, and there’s another pool of perspiration gathering in the small of my back.

The only person to whom I’d be comfortable confessing this pathetic level of terror is Lucy.

But spilling my (queasy) guts to Lucy, unfortunately, isn’t an option. After the dozen or so increasingly concerned messages I left for her yesterday, she finally texted me late last night saying that her boss had sent her on a last-minute trip to check out some new resort hotel in the Austrian Alps,
and that she’d probably be there until at least the weekend.

So I’m on my own.

Well, I’m psychologically on my own. I’m not physically on my own, not since approximately ten seconds ago, when a cab pulled up outside the store and Gaby emerged from inside it.

“Hel-
lo
,” is the first thing she says to me, with an unusual smile on her face. The fact that she’s smiling at all is unusual. But this is a
really
rare smile for Gaby: teasing and lighthearted, if you can believe it, rather than clipped and disapproving. “Who’s been a naughty girl, then?
Please
tell me Princess Robyn knows about this?”

“About . . .?”

“For Christ’s
sake
, Charlie! About you and Jay Broderick! Robyn must be
fuming
!” Gaby gives an actual cackle of laughter. It’s completely at odds with her chic appearance. “She’s wanted to get her claws into Jay Broderick for years! And don’t deny you’re seeing him, because I know it’s true. Mummy wouldn’t be in such an utterly disgusting mood if she hadn’t seen evidence of it with her own eyes.”

“I’m not denying any . . . Diana’s in a disgusting mood?” My gung-ho belligerence of the weekend has diminished a critical notch or two, now that I’m back in London and on Diana’s home turf.

“Truly vile.” Gaby seems to realize, suddenly, that this may not be exactly what I want to hear before I go into a meeting with her mother. “Oh, bloody hell, Charlie, there’s no need to get in such a state about it! Your idea for the vintage line is perfectly decent. Even Mummy can’t deny that forever. Especially when it could generate us all a bit of much-needed cash flow.”

By Gaby’s standards, this is a truly astonishing level of praise and positivity, and it leaves me absolutely speechless. (The fact that she’s finally admitted that there’s a cash-flow problem at Elroy Glass is, amazingly, a little less astonishing.)

“Well, the shoot turned out all right, didn’t it?” she goes on, shoving the door to the store open and stalking through it first while half holding it open for me to follow. “I saw it in the
Evening Standard
magazine on Friday. Daddy’s shoes looked fabulous.”

“They
are
fabulous. Um, Gaby, about that cash flow you just mentioned . . .”

“What about it? Haven’t I already mentioned there’s an issue?”

“Well, no, actually. You specifically said that sales weren’t bad.”

“Oh. Right.” She shrugs off the fib, almost as if someone else were responsible for saying it. “Well, I suppose it could be worth you and me having a sit-down sometime and going over some of the figures. Have a chat about the future of the business. I mean, I have to admit that you’re not turning out to be quite as incompetent as I thought you were.” Although this is still Gaby being nice (believe me; she can find much more brutally honest ways to speak her mind if she wants to), Robyn’s romantic humiliations must have really put her in a good mood, because she adds, “You actually had a good eye, Charlie, considering that it was your first photo shoot. You could build a strong brand with this, if you just keep trusting your instincts.”

But this is clearly a bit too far out of her comfort zone, because she finishes it up with a bossy command about not having all day and needing to get up to the boardroom before she stalks up the stairs in front of me.

By now, my heart is hammering, most unpleasantly, in my chest. Actually, I think my heart has migrated about eight inches northward, and is currently lodged in my throat. For all Gaby’s (admittedly brusque) encouragement, if I wasn’t nervous enough before she let slip the details of Diana’s mood, I certainly am now. Diana is boundary-less in pretty much
every way, and never more so than in her lust for punishment when she feels her authority has been flouted. When I was eleven, she made me sleep without a duvet for a whole month (in January) because she thought I’d stolen a tenner from her wallet (it was actually Robyn, who wanted the money for a Chanel lipgloss). For an entire six months, when I was fourteen, she made me eat all my meals outside on the back patio, because she imagined I’d signed her up for a website that kept sending porn DVDs, indiscreetly packaged, through the post (again, it was actually Robyn, who’d just started going out with a seventeen-year-old and wanted some tricks up her sleeve to impress him). So really, is it any wonder that I’m practically sick with nerves, now, remembering the look in Diana’s eyes this past Saturday, when I foolishly dared to stand up to her?

It’s an odd thing, though, because as soon as Gaby and I walk into the boardroom, where everyone is already gathered, sipping coffee and making uncomfortable small talk, Diana heads our way with a huge smile on her face.

And I don’t mean one of her faker-than-fake smiles, the kind that make you want to wet your pants and/or spontaneously combust. I mean, it’s still a
chilly
smile, there’s no doubt about that—I’m not sure Diana is capable of anything
but
a chilly smile—but it’s hovering somewhere around Light Snow Forecast rather than Blizzard Coming In.

“Darling!” This is actually directed at Gaby, whom she kisses on both cheeks. But then she turns to me and kisses me on both cheeks as well. “And Charlie! Goodness me, don’t you look lovely today? I adore you in that shade of gray. You should wear it more often!”

I’m all poised for the inevitable follow-up:
because it does wonders for a sallow complexion? I think Robyn used to wear that color a lot when it was in fashion ten years ago? It makes a nice change from all that black you usually wear when you’re trying to disguise your county-sized bottom?

But there is no follow-up. Diana just continues to smile at me—actually, make that practically
beam
at me.

“And what sweet earrings,” she adds, reaching up (I nearly flinch) to touch the little gold hoops—old ones of Mum’s—that I’m wearing in my lobes. “I do like a hooped earring. I picked up some lovely ones the last time I was on holiday on Capri. Then wretched BA lost my luggage on the way back and I never saw them again.”

Again, I wait for the follow-up, even though I’m less sure what it might be this time. Some way to blame me for British Airways’ incompetence? A tortuous segue into the delicious food available on the island of Capri, and how much she’s sure I’d enjoy stuffing my greedy gob with it? Honestly, none of these outlandish leaps are beyond her, usually.

But not today.

Okay, okay, I get it. It’s a new tactic in her ongoing psychological warfare against me. She’s performing the role, today, of Good Cop, while getting Alan Kellaway—over there by the coffee table, talking at an extremely bored-looking Terry Pinkerton, while the two Jameses are simply looking tense and talking (possibly to each other?) on their phones at the boardroom table itself—to play Bad Cop. He’ll be the one to put the kibosh on my dreams for Glass Slippers, while Diana just looks sorrowful and keeps up appearances as the benevolent stepmother.

Well, it’s a tactic that’s already borne fruit. I’m feeling quite seriously unsettled as we all start to take our places at the boardroom table. I deliberately plonk myself down at a seat along one of the sides and start setting up my laptop, so Diana can’t pull her ghastly trick of getting me to take the seat at the head of the table again. In fact, Diana herself takes the top seat, her faithful lapdog Alan at her right-hand side. Terry Pinkerton sits down in the seat next to me, muttering a rather irritable
Morning
,
Miss Glass,
but quite kindly reaching
to pour me some water from one of the carafes on the table.

I’m glad of the water, and gulp it down to moisten my dry throat. Matters are not helped by the fact that my laptop is proving so slow to start up this morning. It’s all I need, frankly, because a quick glance at the printed agenda sitting on the table in front of me shows that I’m Item One, due to kick off the AGM with what’s been described—either because of a typo by Diana’s assistant or just because of Diana making yet another attempt to unsettle me—as
Presentation by Charlotte Glaze.

“Good morning!” Diana beams around the table at us all—Alan Kellaway, Gaby, the two Jameses, Terry Pinkerton, and me. Especially at me. “Welcome to our AGM.”

There’s a general muttering of acknowledgment, and a hearty
hear hear
from Alan Kellaway.

“Now, I’m very excited that we’re kicking off the meeting with something a bit more fun than the same old boring facts and figures . . .”

“I’d rather like it if the facts and figures
were
boring, for once,” Terry Pinkerton interrupts. It’s not entirely clear whether he’s addressing his coffee cup or the entire table. “All that plummeting the figures have been doing for the last nine quarters in a row may be thrilling to some, but give me a tedious old revenue increase any day.”

“Shall I start my presentation?” I blurt into the uncomfortable silence that follows Terry’s remark. I think it must be nerves that make me do this: certainly a couple of (apparently) pleasant comments about my outfit aren’t enough to whitewash twenty years of cruelty and make me want to save Diana from any embarrassment. I’m immediately annoyed with myself, though, for letting my nerves get the better of me, because my laptop is still dozing contentedly on the table in front of me, not even deigning yet to ask me for my password. “Um . . . if you could all just chat amongst yourselves for a moment
while I try and start up PowerPoint . . . Oh, thank God!” The laptop has just powered to life. I tap in my password with one shaky hand and try to remember all the advice Maggie gave me yesterday. (Smile. Make eye contact. Don’t
um
and
ah
too much. If all else fails, imagine them in their underwear.) “So! Since we last met, work has been progressing on . . . on Glass Slippers.”

Seven blank faces and Diana’s beatific one gaze back at me. I select Alan Kellaway, at random, and try to imagine him in his underwear.

But this just brings back a fifteen-year-old memory of seeing him in Diana’s kitchen in his Y-fronts and his argyle socks, popping a Charbonnel et Walker white chocolate truffle into his mouth, and I feel a fresh wave of nausea wash over me.

“Er . . .” Okay, it’s not an
um
or an
ah
, but it’s not brilliant. I try to remember my lines while PowerPoint slowly loads up. “Oh, yes . . . the aim of Glass Slippers is to bring glamorous, comfortable, and affordable shoes to every customer that’s out there looking for them! I have half a dozen very promising designs, based on Elroy Glass’s seventies and eighties heyday, and produced by two young Cordwainers College graduates, which I’ll be showing you later in the presentation. But first, a new angle has come to light that I’m extremely keen to bring to your attention. As some of you may know, the old King’s Road store has for many years been an unofficial storage facility for my father’s old—I mean,
vintage—
shoes.”
Finally
, PowerPoint is ready. I flick through, hastily, to slide number four, a photo of row upon row of Dad’s shoes, neatly laid out on the shop floor. “After discussion with leading fashion stylist Maggie O’Day . . .” I flick to slide number five, which was meant to be a photo I took of Maggie yesterday looking cool and professional but—too late, I realize I’ve uploaded the wrong photo—is actually the photo I took of Maggie yesterday where she suddenly pulled up her top to flash pert,
bra-less breasts. “. . . who absolutely is not this person!” I say, frantically stabbing at my computer keyboard.

Opposite me, James the Second suddenly sits up and pays more attention. To my right, Terry Pinkerton lets out a long, weary sigh.

My computer obeys, moving off the offending slide and onto a nice, safe one featuring early press clippings that I found in a box file beneath Dad’s bed.

“Anyway, after discussion with
respected industry leader
Maggie O’Day, I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to fully exploit the great history behind Elroy Glass, the best way to launch Glass Slippers would be—”

“To use those vintage shoes!” Diana clasps her hands to her face, looking delighted. “Well, I happen to think it’s an inspired idea!”

I just stare at her.

Is she
high
or something?

“I’m sure we all saw that fabulous piece in last week’s
Evening Standard
magazine,” she continues, glancing around the table for confirmation of this. “Such a fascinating glimpse into the possibilities, Charlie. But I’d love more detail. Are you meaning to sell the originals? Copy them? Simply use them for publicity purposes?”

“Um, all three. I mean, as I said, I have a pair of young designers on board who have already been working on a small vintage-inspired range, to launch later in the year if things go to plan. But to sell the originals, I, er, need to get permission from . . . well, from you folks. I mean, they’re company property, so obviously you all have—”