Take Me Back To The Start

Isabella leaned back in her chair, refusing to face her overflowing in-tray, agitatedly twisting her engagement ring around her finger. Half closing her eyes, she forced herself to think of the gracious Grecian pillars that almost guarded the British Museum, embodying everything she believed in, why she was here.

"Good morning, Isabella."

Isabella started violently. "Susannahhihoweareya," she said in a wild rush, hastily straightening up in her seat, pasting a painful smile on her face, "allgoodyeah?"

Susannah just tapped her teeth discreetly, before sweeping away, leaving Isabella staring stupidly at an empty space. Shaking her head, Isabella snatched up her bag, the handles almost hanging off it, before rummaging for her compact. Pulling it out, she held it up, checking her reflection, only to see a piece of spinach caught between her front teeth, lending her the look of a demented rabbit.

Cringing, she pulled a crumpled lace hanky out of the pocket of her navy pinafore, before ducking down behind her desk, desperately trying to dislodge the spinach, swiping the hanky back and forth like windscreen wipers.

"Izzie?"

Isabella hastily straightened up at the sound of Archibald's voice, only to smack her head off the underside of her desk, nearly knocking herself out.

"I think I'll take that as my cue to take my leave," Archibald observed, making a dignified exit, leaving Isabella half lying under her desk.

"Good idea," Isabella said from between gritted teeth, clutching her head, before slowly emerging, bracing her body for impact as she sat back down, scrunching up her eyes as the seat almost spun away out from under her. Despite being born and bred with a silver spoon in her mouth, Isabella was the epitome of awkward, hardly the heir her ancestors would have approved of inheriting their auspicious name.

Smoothing down her skirt, Isabella cast her hanky into the bin, only to miss, Isabella pretending not to notice. She was striving to be professional and put together, only to fail abysmally, literally falling apart at the seams. Her black hair was coming out its bun, her navy pinafore more schoolgirl than sophisticate, her high heels making her totter like she was on a tightrope.

Pushing her fringe out of her eyes, Isabella dragged up the spreadsheet she'd been struggling with for the past two days, her bright blue gaze travelling over the columns of numbers, her fingers fighting the urge to throw the computer out of the window.

"For the sake of all that's civilized, don't slouch, Isabella! It makes you look... deformed."

Slowly, Isabella raised her eyes from the computer screen, only to be confronted by the elegant spectacle that was her stepmother, the current Lady Devereux, the sixth to hold that title. Her predecessors had all fallen victim to death and divorce, Isabella's mother eloping with the under gardener, but Isabella had long arrived at the conclusion this had been inevitable, not since the day her father had spat his false teeth into the face of the Queen, trying and failing to do justice to a particularly tongue-twisting Latin title of one of his beloved fungi, destroying whatever romance had remained in her parents' marriage.

"I do believe you're developing a hunch, Isabella," Lady Devereux observed, her grey eyes narrowing, "it is most unattractive."

"And so is your tendency to speak in italics," Isabella said coolly, returning her attention back to the spreadsheet, her hand hovering over the mouse for a moment, before dropping it to her side. "Why are you here again?" she asked, brow furrowing. "You're not supposed to be here."

"I am accompanying your father," Lady Devereux said with a regal wave of the hand, indicating Isabella's father by the bay window, all bizarrely round blue eyes and stooped figure, "he expressed a desire to sit in on your meeting."

"Why would he sit in on my meeting?" Isabella said slowly. The meeting was the Meeting in her mind, the culmination of everything that she'd been working towards for the past year, an exhibition devoted to the Victorian explorer Percy Fawcett.

"Isabella, darling," Lady Devereux said with a tinkling laugh, "your father is above such petty protocol. There's something to be said about friends in high places - he's the reason why you got this position in the first place. In fact, he's practically bankrolling the British Museum as it is" -

- "Just because he stops a painting or so from being shipped out of the country, doesn't mean he owns the British Museum," Isabella said, struggling to keep her cool, "it was just an export bar and a few rather obscenely large donations he made"- As she spoke, her phone went off, the ringtone imitating Big Ben's chimes, making everybody's heads snap up, faces confused. "S'okay, j'st ma goddamn phone," Isabella called out, waving it in the air, everybody resuming their work.

"Do you really need to speak like a redneck?" Lady Devereux said witheringly.

"Can't help it," Isabella said, squinting at her phone-screen, "it's in the blood."

Lady Devereux just pursed her lips, hiding her disgust at her husband's only heir being the offspring of new money, Isabella's mother a reluctant Southern belle who'd ran away to New York to study art. During her parents' divorce, Isabella had spent some time in Alabama with her mother's people, picking up something of their Southern tones, reinforcing the speech patterns she'd unconsciously imitated from her mother.

"Yum-may, Batata Harra and Sfeeha tonight," Isabella said to herself, scrolling through the text from her fiancé Achraf, "even if I do say so myself, it's rather wise of me to marry a man who can cook."

"I can't believe you're marrying a snake charmer," Lady Devereux said, shaking her head, "it's unheard of."

"He's not a snake charmer," Isabella said through gritted teeth, "he's a primary school teacher."

"He's the very embodiment of Aladdin" -

Isabella slammed her phone down on her desk. "One more racist remark an' I will stomp your ass, yeah?" she hissed, not caring who heard, only for her eye to be caught by a tall moustachioed man in amber and gold checked tweed, his dark hair slicked back, a black cravat carelessly knotted around his neck. He was weaving his way through the maze of desks, peering at people through his monocle, nostrils twitching oddly. "Anyways," Isabella said, shaking her head, turning her attention back to her stepmother, "where were we?"

"You were threatening me," Lady Devereux said icily. "Remember?" Before Isabella could frame a reply, her stepmother suddenly went sideways, grabbing Isabella's desk to stop herself from falling. "Do you mind!?" Lady Devereux exclaimed, rounding on her assailant, only be confronted by the sight of the moustached monocled man Isabella had observed moments earlier. "This is Chanel!" she declared, smoothing down the front of her black shift dress, her aristocratic nostrils flaring.

"Vell, this is" - the man began in a guttural German accent, gesturing to his tweed ensemble as he spoke, before launching into a series of grunts and high-pitched whistles. Then he turned on his heel and stalked off, leaving Lady Devereux speechless.

"Never mind him," Isabella said dismissively, flapping her hand, "we get all sorts in here. They spend too much time with books, and not enough with people, real people I mean, not paper people. It's tragic really."

"Was that racket meant to indicate the designer of that frankly hideous suit he is sporting?" Lady Devereux said in disgust.

"I think so," Isabella said, not really caring.

"Ladies," a voice said stiffly behind them, making both women glance round, only to see Lord Devereux, half hunched over, his unruly grey hair almost obscuring his pellucid eyes.

"Father," Isabella said just as stiffly, "how nice to see you."

Lord Devereux surveyed his daughter, seeing himself in her, so different but the same, her thick black fringe falling into her eyes just like his own hair did, those round blue eyes his eyes, a Devereux trait that refused to die out. "Curating away, are we?" he said, his wife slipping her arm through his, a nasty smile playing across her lips, silently imparting to Isabella who held the upper hand.

"I seem to spend more time behind this desk balancing budgets and nonsense, than actual curating," Isabella said, gesturing to the virtual reams of spreadsheet on her computer screen, ignoring her stepmother's silent insult, "it wasn't exactly what I signed up for."

"I did explain it wouldn't be all ancient artefacts and buried treasure," Lord Devereux said, shaking his head, "it's not a heroic job, Isabella."

Isabella bowed her black head. She had spent years studying and travelling the world, but none of that had impressed her interviewers when she'd applied for the post of curator, only seeing her title and not past it. Her father had pulled some strings behind the scenes, donating an exorbitant amount of money towards the renovation of the Great Court, practically paying for every pane of glass in the soaring ceiling, doing damage that had taken Isabella a long time to unravel. She had battled hard to earn her place in this room, proving people wrong, but with her father standing before her desk, it felt like a hollow victory.

"Heroes are born, not made, Isabella darling," Lady Devereux said gently, "it's best to stay with what you know, behind this desk, making a difference in your own unique way."

Isabella just bit her lip, before drawing her keyboard towards her, silently signalling an end to the conversation. Wherever she belonged, it wasn't behind this desk, of that, Isabella was more than sure.

Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart...