Charlie Glass's Slippers by Holly McQueen

Author:Holly McQueen [Holly McQueen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476727059
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2014-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

chapter fourteen

I’m starting to see why Robyn never appears to do a day’s work and why Gaby, who does do a day’s work, is always looking so stressed. It’s the grooming. How could I not have realized, at the age of almost twenty-nine, that grooming is pretty much a full-time job? And I’m not even talking about the optional extras: facials, and Botox, and laser skin resurfacing, and all the other things I haven’t the time, money, or inclination to get involved in. I’m just talking about the basics. Or rather, what seem to be the basics, nowadays, for any self-respecting woman wanting to walk down the street without being chased down it by angry villagers bearing flaming torches and pitchforks.

You need hair without visible roots. You need a thorough wax, seeing as it’s summer. You should have a pedicure, for feet that won’t shame your sandals. You need non-bushy eyebrows. You need to be free from any hint of (what I’m still reluctant to call) mustache and sideburns. And all of this is to be fitted in around a workout schedule that would make an Olympic athlete weep, and on an energy-sapping, low-carb, low-fun diet that’s starting to make me feel like weeping, too.

I’m actually starting to think that there should be some kind of government subsidy for basic female grooming needs. Or at the very least that it would be nice of them to make it tax deductible.

Not to mention the fact that it’s just so bloody difficult to schedule it all. I have to fit in enough of those Olympian workouts (vital, because I’m not going out for dinner with Jay Broderick feeling like the largest potato in the sack), which negates any notion of getting a pedicure until I can stop stuffing my feet into my trainers. I’m too busy to go to Galina for the wax until tomorrow morning. And this lunchtime—Monday’s—is spent, for two and a half boring and heinously expensive hours, flicking through old magazines at the hairdresser’s while a very nice girl called Louisa obliterates any pesky hint of mouse-brown root from my newly blond hair.

I’m almost starting to wonder if going out with Jay tomorrow night is worth all this faff and hassle.

I said almost.

Anyway, it’s not as if I haven’t got about a million better things to do with my time than whirl endlessly around on this carousel of beauty upkeep. I’ve already spent the morning unpacking every single pair of Dad’s shoes from the crates in the storeroom, photographing them and cataloguing them all in a file on my computer. I need a full inventory of what’s actually available to show to Maggie—and to the directors, of course, if the project ever gets that far. And not only this, but on the (safe) assumption that Diana is going to put every possible wrench in the works to prevent Glass Slippers from selling Dad’s vintage shoes, I’ve decided that it would be a good idea to start work on the vintage-inspired line that would, anyway, follow.

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