content.
In another case the complaint was less from the owner of the breasts than from her boyfriend. They might look great (he’d been the one to suggest the operation in the first place), but he didn’t like the feel of them—like trying to knead an overfilled waterbed. This comment was in quotation marks to show it was reported speech and not Marchant’s own assessment. Nice boyfriend. I could think of at least one operation that he would benefit from.
The last mammary problem was to do with size. The lady in question had been hoping for something more substantial. And her disappointment had made her pretty angry, to judge from the notes. I looked at the pictures andthought back to Olivia and her spirited attack on my sense of physical adequacy. The “before” photos were definitely on the pancakey side, otherwise she seemed to have a rather beautiful body. Whether it had been enough to blight her life—well, presumably I would find out.
One disgruntled client stood out above and beyond the rest. Marcella Gavarona had come all the way from Milan last summer to have a face tuck and was not at all happy with the result. She had made two subsequent visits four months ago and was still whining loudly. She was also still living in Milan. It was only an act of unbridled self-denial that prevented me from putting her at the top of the list. Instead, she ended up about halfway down a group of ten.
Now that I had a short list I thought about how I might reduce it further. The most obvious way would have been to compare the handwriting of the patients with that of the anonymous note. But in this computer age no one does with a pen what can be done with a keystroke, and although presumably they must have signed a consent form, or at least a check, there was no record of such anywhere in the files. No matter. I could always ask them to write something down when I saw them.
After a Chinese takeout and two lagers I had such an obvious idea that I was almost too embarrassed to ring in case she realized that I had failed to notice earlier. Blame it on the alcohol. The number she’d left for emergencies was a London one. She answered, then took the call in another room.
“I’m not sure what you mean …”
“Well, whoever sent the notes to Lola obviously knew the health farm well enough to target it pretty precisely.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s likely that at some point this person might have stayed there, even perhaps talked to Lola, got a sense of how unhappy she was.”
“It’s possible, though they could probably have got all the information they needed from the brochure.”
“But you do do referrals from the health farm to your husband’s clinic? Or vice versa?”
There was a slight pause. Maybe it wasn’t allowed. I thought of all that free advertising on the walls of the beauty salon. Olivia Marchant was nothing if not a businesswoman. “We don’t directly refer, but we can recommend, yes.”
There’s a difference? “So there’s a chance that the person we’re looking for might also be in your files?”
“Yes. I see what you mean.”
“How soon can you get me a list of those names?”
“Well, we make a note on their files on the computer, but we don’t keep them separately, so it’ll mean going through them all. I have to go up there tomorrow, anyway. I could fax it to you around lunchtime or drop it off later.”
I was tempted to ask her to deliver it in person to the office. Since Frank recarpeted the stairs, he’s always whining about how he’d like more clients to see the place. And Mrs. Marchant was just the kind of client he was talking about. But what the hell. There may be a new carpet, but I’m still getting backache from the same secondhand chair. Let him find his own long-legged beauties. This one was mine, bonus and all.
Chapter 8
N ext morning I took a long, hard look at my body and called my aesthetic surgeon.
The receptionist at his Harley Street office was awfully
In another case the complaint was less from the owner of the breasts than from her boyfriend. They might look great (he’d been the one to suggest the operation in the first place), but he didn’t like the feel of them—like trying to knead an overfilled waterbed. This comment was in quotation marks to show it was reported speech and not Marchant’s own assessment. Nice boyfriend. I could think of at least one operation that he would benefit from.
The last mammary problem was to do with size. The lady in question had been hoping for something more substantial. And her disappointment had made her pretty angry, to judge from the notes. I looked at the pictures andthought back to Olivia and her spirited attack on my sense of physical adequacy. The “before” photos were definitely on the pancakey side, otherwise she seemed to have a rather beautiful body. Whether it had been enough to blight her life—well, presumably I would find out.
One disgruntled client stood out above and beyond the rest. Marcella Gavarona had come all the way from Milan last summer to have a face tuck and was not at all happy with the result. She had made two subsequent visits four months ago and was still whining loudly. She was also still living in Milan. It was only an act of unbridled self-denial that prevented me from putting her at the top of the list. Instead, she ended up about halfway down a group of ten.
Now that I had a short list I thought about how I might reduce it further. The most obvious way would have been to compare the handwriting of the patients with that of the anonymous note. But in this computer age no one does with a pen what can be done with a keystroke, and although presumably they must have signed a consent form, or at least a check, there was no record of such anywhere in the files. No matter. I could always ask them to write something down when I saw them.
After a Chinese takeout and two lagers I had such an obvious idea that I was almost too embarrassed to ring in case she realized that I had failed to notice earlier. Blame it on the alcohol. The number she’d left for emergencies was a London one. She answered, then took the call in another room.
“I’m not sure what you mean …”
“Well, whoever sent the notes to Lola obviously knew the health farm well enough to target it pretty precisely.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s likely that at some point this person might have stayed there, even perhaps talked to Lola, got a sense of how unhappy she was.”
“It’s possible, though they could probably have got all the information they needed from the brochure.”
“But you do do referrals from the health farm to your husband’s clinic? Or vice versa?”
There was a slight pause. Maybe it wasn’t allowed. I thought of all that free advertising on the walls of the beauty salon. Olivia Marchant was nothing if not a businesswoman. “We don’t directly refer, but we can recommend, yes.”
There’s a difference? “So there’s a chance that the person we’re looking for might also be in your files?”
“Yes. I see what you mean.”
“How soon can you get me a list of those names?”
“Well, we make a note on their files on the computer, but we don’t keep them separately, so it’ll mean going through them all. I have to go up there tomorrow, anyway. I could fax it to you around lunchtime or drop it off later.”
I was tempted to ask her to deliver it in person to the office. Since Frank recarpeted the stairs, he’s always whining about how he’d like more clients to see the place. And Mrs. Marchant was just the kind of client he was talking about. But what the hell. There may be a new carpet, but I’m still getting backache from the same secondhand chair. Let him find his own long-legged beauties. This one was mine, bonus and all.
Chapter 8
N ext morning I took a long, hard look at my body and called my aesthetic surgeon.
The receptionist at his Harley Street office was awfully
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