‘Why?’
‘They said I was posh.’
He was posh. ‘I’ll be subtle, I promise. I’m sure it’s in your head, anyway.’
But it wasn’t in his head, unfortunately. The truth was they despised him.
‘He’s such a bloody drip,’ Donna moaned when I summoned the suspected ring-leaders into my office later that afternoon, having sent Joseph off to get some tapes dubbed. ‘Always complaining we give him the dull jobs.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Of course we do.’ She was defiant, her dark face sulky. I wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of someone like Donna when I started out. Driven and determined, she could persuade Blair he hated Bush if she put her mind to it.
‘You know how it works, Maggie. You gotta do your time. You gotta start at the bottom. We all did. Anyway,’ she sniffed, examining her pink palm-tree nails rather than looking at me, ‘he’s weird.’
‘What do you mean, weird?’
‘It’s just, he’s always poking around.’ She flicked her long braids behind her shoulder, her full mouth set firm.
‘He’s just a bit full of himself, I think that’s the problem.’ Sally’s broad pleasant face was thoughtful. ‘He gets people’s backs up because he acts like he’s too good for the jobs we give him.’
‘And have you talked to him about it?’
‘It was like this in the summer.’
The hairs on my arms stood on end. I shook my head as if it would bring memories back.
‘I’ve tried to explain, but he just bangs on about how he’s going to be a great auteur, and how this is just a stop-gap.’
I sighed again. Yet another aspiring Nick-blinking-Broom-field, about to save the world with his art. ‘All right, look, let’s just give him another chance, okay? I’ll have a word.’ I glared at Donna. ‘And be nice, yeah? I know how intimidating you lot can be if you put your minds to it.’
She grinned sheepishly, raising the palm trees in supplication before her tightly T-shirted bosom that read Respect Me. ‘Okay, okay.’
Sally lingered in my office. ‘The truth is, Maggie, I don’t think he’ll ever really fit in. He’s just one of those slightly oddball kids, you know? Like the ones at school who had an imaginary friend they played with at breaktime.’
‘Yep, I do know. But that lot can be remorseless, we both know that.’
‘I suppose.’ She brightened. ‘You going to Bel’s tonight then?’
‘Oh my God.’ I clapped a hand to my forehead in distress. ‘I forgot to pick up my dress. She’ll kill me.’ I cast a quick look across to Charlie’s empty office. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ve blown it.’
‘Go,’ Sally urged. ‘I’ll cover for you.’
I dragged my coat on and grabbed my bag. ‘With any luck,’ I switched my computer to sleep mode, ‘Charlie’ll be too pissed to notice anyway.’
In a dim little street on the Covent Garden borders I found the shop with the fancy name that Bel had insisted I visit. The window heralded some of London’s most expensive clothes – a veritable myriad of gorgeous stuff. Minty greens and frilly pinks, gold silks and silver froth, below which crouched lethal-looking shoes with four-inch heels, poised to spring cruelly onto unsuspecting feet. It was so utterly not me – but my fate was sealed. As I hovered by the door, a size-zero girl with scary eyebrows slithered towards me, and, with disdain ill-hidden, relieved me of my polystyrene coffee-cup. ‘Can I help, madam?’ she asked, barely keeping the sneer off her face.
‘I’ve come to collect a dress Bel Whitemore has reserved for me.’ I looked around nervously, taking in the flounces, the backless and frontless, the micro-mini and the slit-to-the-thigh. ‘Lord. I do hope it’s something subtle.’
The girl swished through the chiffon, the beribboned and the barely-there to find what Bel had chosen.
‘So brave to try that colour. Red hair must be so difficult.’
Manfully I ignored the girl as I stepped into the beautiful forest-green floor-length dress, plunging at the front and cut deeply at the back. To complete the outfit she gave me stilettos by someone called Manolo Blahnik, the perfect eyebrows nearly shooting off her face in horror when I said I’d never heard of him.
‘Everyone’s wearing Blahnik,’ she chastised, forcing my feet into what seemed little more than a few skinny straps and another killer heel.
‘Sounds more like a space shuttle to me,’ I joked, but she didn’t laugh – and she only blanched a bit at the scar on my left foot.
I wobbled out anxiously through the curtains to look in the full-length mirror, staring at myself for a silent moment. When I read the price-tag, though, I nearly fainted.
‘Thanks very much for your help, but I’m afraid –’
The girl was deep in conversation with another skinny someone – a someone I recognised with a painful thud. Serena. I prepared myself to say hello, but she just gazed at me vacantly, immaculate in a long leather coat, then tightened the belt around her tiny waist and carried on her conversation. I thought I heard her mention a wedding as I slunk back into the changing-room, sinking down on the stool in the corner.
When I eventually came out again, Serena was admiring her many reflections, all clad in a pair of vertiginous snakeskin boots. How appropriate and how very unethical, I thought sourly.
I bought the dress just to prove I had as much panache as them, and then I let the door bang behind me as I strode purposefully out of the shop. Outside, the street was busy, the clamour of Covent Garden loud and vibrant – but I felt like I’d lost my mooring, like I was floating off to sea.
Somehow it took some time to get back to work.
In a show of power no doubt born from my afternoon flit, Charlie had ensured I had a stack of new stuff on my desk to sort out for Monday’s programme. I was just putting the phone down from briefing Renee when he wandered in, breathing brandy fumes at me.
‘Marvellous lunch with Alan Yentob,’ Charlie crowed, pulling a book on the Lost Gardens of Heligan from my shelf. ‘He’s wetting himself with excitement over my idea for a layman’s Panorama. Current affairs for the thicko.’
‘Really?’ I said politely. It was extremely hard to imagine Yentob in Charlie’s thrall.
‘Yes, darling.’ He perched on the edge of my desk. ‘The Easy View, I think we’ll call it. You know, I never see you as the country type.’ He flicked through the garden book indolently. ‘Cornwall’s deeply unfashionable these days, darling. So bloody far away, and always raining. Give me Dubai any time.’ Charlie shoved the book back, knocking three box-files off the other end that he didn’t bother to retrieve. ‘Going to Bel’s tonight?’
‘Um, I’m
