The Accidental Mistress. Sophie Weston

and stood up.

      ‘Done?’ said the woman with the clipboard, zipping back as if she were on rollerblades. ‘Can we let the punters in yet?’

      Izzy cast a narrow-eyed look round the big reception room. It did not look like the launch of anything. It looked as if it was in the throes of refurbishment. Pots of paint stood around, amid step ladders and mysterious outcrops of furniture under dust sheets. The pictures on the walls were draped in sheeting and the big central chandelier was at the end of the room, leaning drunkenly against a trestle table. The carpet had gone. The London fashion crowd were in for a shock.

      ‘Yup. Ready to rock.’

      The green-haired woman grinned. ‘I was right. Genius. Culp and Christopher would be a happy agency if all our clients were practical like you.’

      ‘Practical is what I do,’ agreed Izzy.

      ‘Sure is.’ The woman consulted her clipboard. ‘I’ve got the girls in position to hand out the goody bags. So we’ll open up the moment you give me the sign.’

      She powered over to the big doors to the conference hall.

      Izzy nodded and checked that her earpiece was in place. Then she pressed the connect button and spoke into her collar mike. ‘Testing. Testing. The partygoers are at the gates. Are we ready? Speak to me, people…Tony? Geoff?’

      They were there. She ran through the roll call of her other helpers one by one. All in place, raring to go. Then at last she came to her cousin Pepper.

      She was not worried about her décor, or the timing of her effects, but she was worried about Pepper. Should you be that nervous before the launch of a ground-breaking new business?

      ‘Pepper? How’s it going?’

      There was an audible gulp. ‘Fine,’ quavered Pepper.

      Izzy turned to face the wall, so that there was no chance of a passer by hearing her. She switched to one-to-one transmission and said into her mike, very softly, ‘Come on Big Shot. Entrepreneurs don’t panic. You can do this thing.’

      There was a slightly watery chuckle. ‘You got evidence of that?’

      ‘You blagged the money men. After that, how hard can a bunch of journalists be?’

      ‘Yes, but—’

      ‘What’s more,’ interrupted Izzy ruthlessly, ‘you convinced me and you convinced Jemima. She knows all about clothes and I hate the things. So there you are. Every sector covered.’

      This time the chuckle was a lot more robust. ‘So it is. Thanks, Izzy.’

      ‘My pleasure.’ She switched back to broadcast. ‘Okay, everyone. Showtime!’

      She gave the thumbs-up to the woman with the clipboard. The tall doors were flung back. The waiting audience clattered in—and stopped dead at the decorators’ disarray.

      Izzy could have danced with glee. Great! This was a launch they wouldn’t forget.

      She said into the mike, ‘Geoff, city sounds please.’

      At once a tape full of combustion engines and sirens and voices filled the room. The audience, London sophisticates to a woman, were even more intrigued. They began to move round the room, looking at the shrouded shapes questioningly.

      ‘Right,’ said Izzy. ‘Got them. Pepper, you’re on. Tony, start the light show now.’

      The harsh lighting began to dim and a patch of rosy warmth appeared on the shambolic stage. It was empty. It should not have been empty.

      Izzy’s heart sank. She must not let it show, though. ‘Pepper?’ she prompted into her mike, sounding as casual as she could manage.

      And a blessed, blessed voice said in her ear, ‘We’re here, Izzy. We’re just going on.’

      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