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CHAPTER 7

The Fashion Mistress

They were both prone to itchy feet. Edward – as she always called him, though to the other staff he was Ed – began to worry that he had gone to the ends of the earth, fallen off the radar. His applications for deputy head positions at some of the great public schools went nowhere.

‘If it gets past ten years, I’m stuck,’ he said. ‘I’ve achieved everything I can here. From the brink of Special Measures to Outstanding, and North-West Region School of the Year. But once the turnaround is complete, it’s boring – and still bloody hard work. And you need a change as well. If I got a good position in the private sector, we’d have a house, and I’d have a bigger salary, and you wouldn’t have to teach any more. That’s what you keep saying you want. You could get on and finish that second book. You’ve been stuck on it for years.’

He saw no alternative but to look further down the public school pecking order. A respectable but dull, middle-ranking ‘minor public school’. He could make an impact there. Move them into the big league. Improve the Oxbridge acceptance rate while also starting a programme of scholarships for deprived inner-city kids. That would hit all the buttons.

Blagsford came up, and he walked it. His unusual background – street cred combined with Oxford – would give the school edge over all its rivals. The chairman of governors rubbed his hands with glee at the thought of Edward Chamberlain’s first appearance at the Headmasters’ Conference. But Lisa wasn’t at all sure she wanted to move away from her big family. Nan was such a great babysitter, and Emma loved her cousins. Edward always had an answer.

‘Come on, in your heart you’ve made the move already. You hardly see them now we’re out in Cheshire. When did your mum last babysit for us?’

‘And what about work? It really kept me sane, going back part-time once we knew Emma was OK. I was going to start again now that George is a bit older.’ This wasn’t true, but she had a point to make.

Edward was exasperated. Lisa was always changing her mind about whether or not she wanted to carry on teaching. ‘You won’t have to work – Blagsford are offering a big salary and a free house.’

‘Great, so we’ll be homeless when you get bored and leave.’

‘We’ll sort something out on that front – a holiday home by the sea, maybe, or a London flat.’

Lisa liked the sound of a London flat.

Then Edward played his trump card.

‘Look, you don’t really want to go back to teaching.’

This was the truth. She’d crack open the champagne if she knew for sure that she’d never have to spend another hour in a classroom in her entire life. She knew what Edward was going to say next. They always read each other’s minds.

‘All you want is a little bit of money that you can say is your own. That you’ve earned, and that you can spend on whatever you want. Which is mainly designer dresses. And shoes. And make-up. And more shoes.’

Lisa laughed. He was so right. That was why there had been no regrets when she left her brief starter marriage. Pete had been a control freak. He had insisted that she close down her bank account and get her teacher’s salary paid into their joint account. The account in her married name. She should always use her married name, he insisted. The only compromise he allowed, and even that had been a battle, was that she could be Miss Blaize at St Joseph’s.

Then, one afternoon towards the end of the summer holidays, when she was bored at home because Pete was out playing cricket all day, as he did every Saturday, she took a DVD case off the bookshelf. Out fell a folded bank statement. She glanced at it and saw that it came from an unfamiliar bank. So Pete had kept his own personal account, despite making her giving up hers. She looked down the row of figures. Every month, there was a payment for a few hundred pounds, marked ‘Dividend’. It took a while for her to work it out. But there could be no question. He had some sort of family trust fund that he’d never told her about. The sums weren’t huge, but that wasn’t the point. It was the principle. She took the statement and found her own hiding place for it.

She said nothing to Pete that night, though she did refuse to make love to him – on the grounds that he had come in late from drinking with his cricketing mates. The folded statement was her get-out-of-jail-free card.

Edward knew all this. They had talked over the circumstances of their respective divorces a thousand times. When they married, he insisted that she should keep her own name and her own bank account, and that he had no interest in how she spent her teacher’s salary and any other earnings. ‘You won’t find me snooping around your private account for Ladies’ Nice Things,’ he assured her.

‘Listen, though,’ he now said, ‘you’ve got your magazine column, and that could be the beginning of a career as a proper freelance fashion writer. One thing leads to another. That’s what I’ve found with my articles about education policy. Soon you’ll be getting all sorts of commissions – but that’ll only happen if you’re near enough to London to go to parties and openings, and to start meeting the editors. It’s such a trek from Cheshire. Blagsford has a really fast link to Marylebone on the Chiltern Line. Most reliable network in the country.’ With all his London meetings, Edward had become a bit of a railway timetable nerd.

This was the clincher. Lisa had always rather regretted how she had scuttled home after her MA and fallen into teaching textiles. She should have gone back to London and tried to make it in the fashion world. She had hoped that publication of Lipstick and Lies would lead to other opportunities, but it hadn’t happened, mainly because she was stuck in Liverpool. Now she’d just had her first real break.

A friend from her Manchester Art School days had become features editor at City & County, an upmarket monthly glossy magazine. She’d asked Lisa to start writing a regular column answering readers’ requests for fashion tips, with a spin that offered nuggets of information from fashion history. It was a neat idea, and Lisa’s first couple of columns – for which they’d made up the readers’ questions – had gone down well. Edward was right – working out of Blagsford would give her many more opportunities to go to London and build on this success.

* * *

Jane (by EMAIL) to The Fashion Mistress: I am getting married this summer in a marquee in the country. I have my wedding dress, but am struggling to find something for a breakfast party we are hosting the following day. I want a more relaxed look that’s still a bit bridal, which I can wear again. I am 25, 5’ 6’’ and a size 12. I have good arms. My budget is £350.

A touch of lace will help to carry through a romantic wedding theme into the day after. As it’s a summer wedding, you can pep things up with a pop of colour. Mango has a lace, sleeveless dress in acid yellow, or for something slightly more ‘fash’ and floaty, you could go for a two-piece silver set from Hobbs. Tuck the cute cami into the culottes’ grosgrain waistband, and keep heels fuss-free – or wear with white brogues.

What kind of lace? Duchess point (Point Duchesse) is the term for a Belgian lace that does not have a réseau. It was named after the Duchess of Brabant, Marie-Henriette of Austria, who was a supporter of lace production. It is made entirely on the pillow, with a pattern where the leaves and flowers naturally join, so there is rarely a bar thrown across to connect them. As there is no réseau, the designs are more continuous. It’s that elegance which makes it my favourite lace.