fantasies ground to a halt as a willowy, size zero blonde in a cream Chloé trouser suit waltzed into the office and sat proprietorially on the arm of the sofa, crossing her legs and dangling a Manolo off her foot. ‘So how was New York?’ asked Nicole Valentine, her voice hard and nasal.
Cate looked up at her deputy editor, annoyed that she had interrupted a rare moment of confession.
‘Hi Nicole, it was fine,’ she said. ‘Look, Nicole, we’re talking …’
Nicole ignored Cate and turned her attention to Lucy. ‘The fashion cupboard is a tip,’ she barked. ‘And why have we got racks of clothes in the meeting room? I need it cleaned, Lucy. Like, yesterday.’
Lucy flashed a look at Cate and left. Cate turned to her deputy. ‘Nicole. There is no need to talk to a senior member – any member – of staff like that.’
Nicole raised a perfectly threaded eyebrow at her boss. ‘As you wish,’ she replied defiantly. ‘However, we have more important things to worry about.’
‘Is that why you started the meeting without me?’
Nicole paused dramatically, playing smugly with the five-carat Asscher-cut engagement ring on her finger. ‘I started the meeting because we need to start getting things done. I spoke to Jennifer’s publicist last night and it looks like the April cover isn’t going to happen.’
Cate felt panic starting to flutter around her body. ‘What do you mean, isn’t going to happen? We’ve done the shoot. We’ve designed the cover. It looks great,’ she started, then rubbed her forehead. ‘Bloody hell. We go to press in a week. What went wrong?’
‘We said we’d give picture approval and when we sent the images over to her publicist – well, they don’t like the shoot.’ Nicole pursed her lips into a self-satisfied smile that said, ‘So, what are you going to do about that?’
Cate looked at Nicole and thought – not for the first time – how much the New Yorker unsettled her. Everything about her deputy, from the platinum-blonde highlights to her Manolo Blahnik heels was hard. Cate was a tough but fair boss: she gave respect and courtesy and received it in the same way from a grateful staff that, she was sure, had been enjoying life on the magazine since Cate became editor a year ago. But her relationship with Nicole was awkward and competitive and she regretted the day she’d hired her from W magazine in New York. Nicole was cold, efficient and ambitious, and it was that ambition that scared her, knowing how often it went hand in hand with deceit and disloyalty.
Sadie popped her curls round the door. She was holding a steaming china mug. ‘For my jet-lagged editor,’ she said, placing it on a flower-shaped coaster on the desk. ‘And William Walton has called three times this morning. He said could you pop up to see him as soon as you’ve settled in?’
In the six months since Walton’s appointment to the board of Alliance Magazines from a large advertising and marketing agency in Chicago, Cate had had very little to do with him. As his background wasn’t editorial, he showed no interest in Class, apart from the sales figures at the end of every month and any free tickets for the opera, Formula One or art-gallery openings that the features department could throw his way.
‘Really?’ said Cate, feeling a flutter of alarm. ‘What does he want?’
She caught the look on Nicole’s face, which was one of someone who’d just been given an early birthday present.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sadie with a sympathetic look, ‘but his secretary is starting to call every five minutes.’
All alone in the lift, Cate stared at the buttons and wondered what to say to Walton. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, she knew she should feel confident: if the reaction she’d got in New York was anything to go by, both the readers and advertisers were finally getting it. She’d spent twelve months redesigning the magazine, and had by sheer strength of will changed Class from a dated, pompous society magazine to a glossy fashionable read for smart, successful women. The catwalk shows had been a wonderful vindication; a raft of prestige advertisers who so far had only ever appeared in Vogue in the UK had suggested that Class would be added to their advertising schedule in the fall. That should please Mr William Walton, thought Cate, as the bell pinged for the top floor.
She walked through the double doors and down the cream corridors lined with giant-sized magazine covers, until she reached an unsmiling redhead behind a computer.
‘Is he busy?’
‘Go straight in,’ replied the woman, not looking up from her computer screen.
William Walton’s office was unlike anything else Cate had seen in the Alliance building. Interior-designed at great expense, it was decked out in walnut wood and shades of taupe instead of the usual Formica and magnolia walls that everybody else had to put up with. The man himself was sitting behind a wraparound leather-top desk. His self-possessed presence filled the room. Powerfully built, with wiry black hair, Walton’s expensive bespoke clothes masked the fact that he had got to the top the hard way. The very hard way. When, twenty years ago, the young William had beaten thousands to win a scholarship to Yale, he had assumed it would pave the way to privilege. He was mistaken. The doors to American society’s elite were still very much closed to a boy from the southside of Chicago and, instead of spending his summers making contacts in Connecticut country clubs, he was forced to fight his way through the mailrooms of Grey’s and Ogilvy & Mather to achieve the status he craved. But he had made it. Power and privilege, he’d learned, were things to be won by hard work and cunning, not born or bought into. All of which explained precisely why William Walton was looking at Cate Balcon with such distaste.
‘I wanted to see you as soon as you got in,’ began Walton. ‘I hear we have a few problems.’ Walton paused, his dark, feral eyes sizing her up. He’d seen her before, of course, and read about her in the society pages she seemed to monopolize along with her sisters. But alone and face to face for the first time, Walton was impressed despite himself. She might not be a patch on that actress sister of hers, but Cate Balcon was still a knockout. The firm, slightly sulky rosebud mouth, the wavy, dark-golden hair flowing over that elegant neck. And then there was the curvy body, no doubt considered plump by the stick-thin Zone-dieted women he’d dated in Chicago, but when he imagined it naked and wet under his shower, her plump lips round his cock, swallowing him whole … He stopped himself and shifted in his seat, motioning her to sit in one of the hard black leather chairs in front of him.
‘As you know, Cate, magazines are a business,’ he began.
She nodded hesitantly. ‘Of course. I had lots of compliments in New York about how we’ve really improved the magazine. The advertising is looking very promising.’
William didn’t seem to notice what she was saying as he flicked through an issue of Class with what looked suspiciously like disdain.
‘Magazines are a business,’ he repeated. ‘And I was brought into Alliance to improve that business. They are not simply entertainment, they are a commodity, and to be honest with you, Cate, I don’t think the numbers Class is selling at the moment really warrants the investment.’
Cate immediately realized that this was not going to be a friendly, ‘How were the New York shows?’ catch-up. She needed to do some firefighting.
‘With respect, we’re showing a definite turnaround in circulation,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘If anything, William, since I arrived at Alliance, we’ve improved the Class
