rushed off to change in the loos into her yoga gear. Apparently, she couldn’t bring herself to travel to work in it as everyone else did. Finally ready for class and back in the main office, Roxanne assumed the required seated position on a mat next to Marsha. Funnily enough, that space was always the last one taken.
Whilst pretending to sit completely zen, Marsha snuck a glance at Roxanne, who was still panting a little. Marsha had already spent an awful lot of time observing her over the past fortnight. She was always running, Marsha had noted – off to appointments and shoots, cheeks flushed, hair askew, phone clasped to her ear. And she was in some state this morning. Her cheeks were bright red and her casual topknot was tumbling loose, with strands of fair wavy hair flapping in her face. However, although it pained Marsha to admit it, Roxanne was still striking for her age (when you were a mere thirty-three, ‘late forties’ sounded geriatric), her natural beauty quite captivating. Her light blue eyes were stunning and she was blessed with the kind of delicate bone structure that gave a person an air of elegance and dignity.
On top of this, Roxanne had a casual, bohemian way of dressing that Marsha could only hope to emulate – just how did one throw a perfect outfit together, seemingly without effort? Whenever Marsha tried to do that, the ‘quirky’ accessory – even something as innocuous as an Indian scarf – had the appearance of being flung at her by a passer-by as a cruel joke. As a result, Marsha tended to stick to the safe territory of fitted shirt in cream or white, plus black trousers; a uniform, really, which eliminated the hassle of thinking about what to wear every morning. Rufus had assured her that the editor of a fashion magazine was there to drive sales, not appear as if she had just stepped off the catwalk.
There was something else about Roxanne that Marsha had noticed, apart from the natural beauty and effortless style, damn her; she had a childlike enthusiasm that drew people to her and commanded fierce loyalty. Marsha had already had informal chats with Zoe and the other department heads, all of whom had been pleasingly compliant about the direction the magazine should take. Where Roxanne was concerned, she suspected things might not be quite so simple. Marsha’s intention was to put a stop to the stunning fashion photography for which the magazine was known, and instead feature hundreds of cheap-as-chips outfits, promising figure-shaping miracles. Miracle knickers, bum-slimming trousers, boob-hoisting bras: that was what Marsha wanted to see. Of course, Roxanne would hate that. It hardly fitted in with her romantic aesthetic of achingly beautiful girls on horseback, swathed in chiffon – but who cared? Marsha’s job was to sell more copies, reversing the circulation decline, and maximise profitability. This would secure her not only a whopping bonus but may also be the trigger for Rufus to leave that dreadful wife of his, and be truly hers. She loved the man deeply, and her favourite pastime was picturing the two of them – London’s media power couple – scooping every accolade going at all the industry awards.
Whilst holding a perfect downward dog pose, Marsha glanced around at her team. All were obligingly trying their best, although she caught the odd anxious glance at the wall clock. Poor Tristan, the art director, was trembling visibly, a vein protruding from his neck. She caught a whiff of cigarettes from Grace, the beauty assistant, and Kate, the fashion assistant, let out a groan.
Meanwhile Marsha held the pose firm – muscles taut, wobble-free bottom hoisted high in the air – as she glanced at her potentially troublesome fashion director. She would have to be tough with Roxanne, but Marsha wasn’t fazed by that. In all areas of life – such as achieving a tightly honed body and stratospheric career success – she had a clear end goal in sight, and she wasn’t about to let Roxanne Cartwright stand in her way.
Gently melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a small saucepan …
That sounded simple enough. This was a children’s cookbook – a gift from her older sister Della, and intended as a joke. Roxanne was no cook. She couldn’t see the point of baking anything you could quite easily buy from a shop. However, if a seven-year-old could manage it then surely, at forty-seven years of age, Roxanne could follow a simple step-by-step recipe without setting her kitchen on fire. Couldn’t she?
Roxanne had chosen to make brandy snaps, her attention caught by the photograph in the book. As fashion director of YourStyle, she liked things to look pretty, and what could be more eye-pleasing than lace-textured biscuity curls? She opened her fridge, averting her gaze from the clear plastic sack of kale, which she had bought with the intention of throwing it into smoothies – to boost her energy and make her ‘glow from within’ – and which was now slowly decaying whilst awaiting a decision to be made regarding its destiny. Throw it away, like last time, and endure the wave of disquiet that was bound to follow? (‘I can’t even get it together to use up my kale!’) Or just leave it sitting there, quietly rotting? Deciding to pretend it wasn’t there, she grabbed the butter, checked the use-by date on the packet and shut the fridge door. It was still edible – just. As Roxanne lived alone, a single packet could last her for weeks.
Not being in possession of kitchen scales, Roxanne estimated quantities, all the while picturing Sean’s look of surprise and delight when he came over later and saw what she’d made for him. An edible love offering for his fiftieth birthday! How sweet was that? In the nine months they had been together, she had never made anything more complicated for him than toast, a coffee or a gin and tonic. ‘My undomesticated goddess,’ he called her, fondly, often teasing her about the kale supply: ‘Why not just stop buying the wretched stuff?’ Well, that would have been far too logical, and would have highlighted that she had given up on self-improvement. It would be like accepting she would never again fit into those size eight jeans stuffed in her bottom drawer and donating them to charity.
You kept them, just in case. Surely any woman understood that?
Anyway, never mind that right now. With all that syrup and fat, brandy snaps hardly counted as ‘clean food’, but on a positive note, an unusually delicious and heady aroma was filling her small, cramped kitchen.
While Roxanne might not exactly be glowing from within – a spate of late nights with Sean had dulled her light blue eyes and fair skin – she still experienced a flurry of anticipation for the evening ahead. Pushing back her long, honey-coloured hair, she smiled at the unlikeliness of the situation: Roxanne Cartwright, actually baking! She owned just one saucepan, one frying pan and a single wooden spoon with a crack in it. As children, her big sister Della had been the one to potter away contentedly with their mother in the kitchen; she now owned a quaint little shop back in their childhood Yorkshire village of Burley Bridge, which sold nothing but cookbooks. Initially stocked with their mother’s collection after she’d died, the shop was now thriving, a real hub of the close-knit community up there. Yet to Roxanne, that kitchen back in Rosemary Cottage had never felt welcoming. If she’d tried to help, she had botched things up and been snapped at by her mother: For God’s sake, Roxanne, how hard is it to chop a few onions? Oh, just give me that knife. Might as well do it myself! At the sound of a bicycle approaching along the gravelled path, Kitty’s expression would brighten. Ah, that sounds like Della. Thank goodness someone around here is capable of helping. Off you go, Roxanne. You’re just getting under my feet …
‘Getting under my feet.’ How those words had stung. I won’t, then, Roxanne had vowed. I’ll get well out of your way – as soon as I possibly can. She had dreamed of escape and adventure; of stepping onto a London-bound train and never looking back. Her mother smacking her bare arm with a fish slice – ‘Go on, scarper, can’t you see I’m busy?’ – had been the final straw.
Right here, in North London, was where Roxanne had landed at eighteen years old, having talked her way into the lowly position of fashion junior on a women’s magazine.
