The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne

over the crowded table.
    “In that case, you can start by not pointing your chopsticks,” I said, helping myself to sweet and sour pork balls. “It’s the height of rudeness.”

Five
    If you’re wearing very high heels, fishnets are easier to walk in than sheer stockings because they slip less inside the shoe. They’re also far more eye-catching.
    As soon as I got back to Edinburgh, I bit the bullet and asked Fiona for ten days off.
    Fiona was about as calm as a shop owner in the end throes of January sales could be, i.e., she couldn’t speak for five minutes, and when she did, it was in tiny squeaks punctuated by wild gestures toward the cash register. However, when I explained what I was going back to do—save a finishing school from ruin using only my math degree and my glass-polishing tips—she gave me a look that clearly said, You’re checking into rehab, aren’t you? I didn’t need to add anything else, and she even pressed a pair of black patent-leather pumps into my hands, “for luck.”
    I spent the rest of the week reading what I could find about modern finishing schools on the internet. There wasn’t very much. That didn’t surprise me, because for one thing, who on earth needed to be taught manners anymore? And for another, surely the whole point of social coaching was to give the impression that you’d always been so poised and elegant, not that you’d bought your manners. Besides, Miss Thorne didn’t seem to be the type to embrace the technological age. No one needed to email a bishop.
    The night before I flew down to London, I watched every episode of The Apprentice that I could find on YouTube. Then I hauled every navy item of clothing out of my wardrobe and practiced scraping my curls into a sort of bun until I looked almost severe. I packed some Georgette Heyer romances to read on the plane for etiquette and some Post-its that I’d borrowed from the shop stationery drawer for efficient note taking.
    And I packed another notebook, a smaller one that I could sneak into my bag, for taking covert notes. On the first page, I’d written, Nell Howard’s phone number?
     
    At half past nine the following Monday morning, after catching the first Edinburgh–Heathrow flight, I stepped bleary-eyed out of Green Park underground station and onto Piccadilly, with its bright sales signs and coffee shops glinting in the winter sunshine.
    As I passed a café full of suits queueing for their morning espressos, I checked myself out in the glass: my outfit, at least, looked convincing. I was wearing a fitted wool suit I’d bought from Hobbs in one of my “proper job” application phases, with my best crisp white shirt and Fiona’s sympathy-gift shoes. Over my arm, as the key “finishing touch,” was my big leather handbag. It was a properly expensive bag, a Christmas present to myself, and it was postbox red. Franny said that red was a neutral when it came to bags and shoes, and I couldn’t wearthe color anywhere near my hair without looking like Ronald McDonald.
    I turned down Halfmoon Street, where the shadows cast everything into black and white, and while I was still admiring the sun streaming through the iron railings, I came face-to-face with the lion’s head knocker on the door of number 34, and suddenly my confidence deserted me.
    I hadn’t actually rehearsed what I was going to say. For some stupid romantic reason, I’d imagined the right words would just pop into my head, and now all I could hear in my head was the Britney Spears tune blaring out of the coffee shop on the corner.
    Just get on with it, I told myself sternly, and rapped the brass ring hard against the door before I could think twice. Then I stepped back and took a deep breath as I distracted myself with details.
    The Academy hadn’t got any cleaner since the previous week. The murky windows were positively spooky, and next to the discreet smartness of the town houses on either side, the house had the look of a mad old