always popular.’
‘No,’ I agreed, my knee bobbing up and down underneath my desk, my black tights catching every time. ‘I suppose they aren’t.’
‘But this isn’t high school, we’re all adults,’ Joe said. ‘No one is here to be popular.’
I was, I wanted to say. I was there to be popular. Being popular was great, as I was certain he already knew. There was a distinct air of Captain of the Football Team about this man.
‘My job will be to look at how our brands can work more closely together to maximize our workforce.’ He held his hands out in front of him and then clasped them together to reinforce his point. ‘We have three separate women’s brands with three entirely separate editorial, sales and marketing teams, talking broadly to the same audience, Belle, Gloss and The Look. That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It makes sense to me,’ I replied. ‘People don’t only read one magazine.’
‘People barely read magazines at all,’ he argued. ‘You’re aware of how quickly Gloss’s online readership is growing versus your print numbers?’
I swallowed and shuffled myself upright in my seat. Why hadn’t I prepared for this meeting? Apart from forgetting I had it altogether, why didn’t I have all the latest numbers in front of me? One minute I was signing off receipts for manicure dates with Beyoncé, and the next I was fighting for the future of my magazine. This was not how I’d planned to spend my Tuesday afternoon.
‘Next week we’ll be announcing a consolidation of the marketing teams,’ he announced. ‘Instead of having one team per mag, we’ll have one team per brand stream.’
‘You’re going to make people redundant,’ I said slowly.
‘Certain positions will be eliminated,’ he replied. I felt as though I’d stepped into a bucket of ice water. People I knew were going to lose their jobs, six weeks before Christmas. It was like the first hour of a Lifetime movie without the happily-ever-after resolution tacked on the end. And I should know, I’d seen every single one of them.
‘Once the new marketing team has been established,’ Joe added. ‘We’ll be doing the same thing with the sales teams.’
‘And then the editorial teams,’ I guessed. He nodded and my knee crashed into the underside of my desk, knocking over my pencil pot. I righted it with trembling hands.
‘Nothing is confirmed,’ Joe said, resting his hands on his knees and graciously looking away as I calmed myself. ‘And we don’t want to worry anyone at this moment in time, so this conversation will be strictly confidential.’
‘I wasn’t about to call everyone in to announce the good news,’ I replied, full of fire for my magazine, for my team. ‘My people are good, Joe. They’re creative, they work hard. You won’t find better people doing what they do anywhere in this building or anywhere else in the city.’
It took me a moment to realize my voice had risen, I was half out of my chair and the entire team was watching through the glass walls of my office. Pushing my hair behind my ears, I cleared my throat and sat back down. Joe leaned forward and a full, wolfish grin appeared on his face. He had fantastic teeth. The utter bastard.
‘I heard you were passionate about what you do,’ he said. ‘And I heard you have a great staff at Gloss, so there’s no need to go to war just yet. I won’t lie, Angela, I like passion and I like balls. That attitude is going to serve you well in the new Spencer Media.’ Joe’s eyes lit up as he spoke and I was suddenly very, very worried. ‘Gloss doesn’t have the heritage of Belle or the familiarity of The Look but it is a fresh and vibrant brand. With you, I see growth potential. My job here is to prune the dead wood and encourage new buds and I already know I don’t need three mags in print with three full editorial teams and three editors to run three very similar outlets.’
Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. Shit.
‘Is Gloss a bud or are we dead wood?’ I asked, my brain completely blank. I’d never been much of a gardener, as the dead succulent on my windowsill would attest.
‘Gloss is a branch on the Spencer Media tree,’ he corrected, ‘that will either flower and bloom or wither and die.’
Such a reassuring man. Clearly Delia had employed him for his gentle way with words.
‘I’m meeting with all the editors in my brand stream this week.’ He flipped at his iPad and raised his eyebrows. ‘And then I’m out of town for Thanksgiving. I’ll schedule a follow-up meeting with you as soon as I’m back so we can discuss my strategy.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said with altogether too much enthusiasm for someone who felt as though they’d just been slapped across the face with a four-day-old kipper.
‘I have to say, I was very curious to meet you.’ Joe reached across the desk and took my hand in an absurdly firm handshake. ‘You didn’t take a traditional route into this job and you seem to be excelling. I know Delia has a tremendous amount of faith in you.’
It should have been a compliment but instead, it felt like a question. A massively unsettling, wanky, unanswerable question.
‘Hopefully I’m not too much of a letdown,’ I replied.
He cocked his head in agreement and I almost vaulted across the desk to knock him out. He was a monster. A horribly attractive and impressively tall monster.
‘Let’s get that follow-up in the diary,’ he said, still squeezing the life out of my right hand. ‘Great to meet you.’
‘You too,’ I managed to half stand and almost smile at the same time and it felt like too much of an achievement. ‘Looking forward to our follow-up.’
Like a hole in the head.
Considering my words with a nod, he released his handshake, leaving white indentations across the back of my hand that turned red as I flexed my fingers. I watched him walk out the door and close it carefully behind him, counting to ten before I picked up the phone.
‘Hey, what’s up?’
Jenny answered on the first ring.
‘Are you busy after work?’ I asked. ‘I need a drink.’
‘Yeah, I can be done by six if I hustle,’ she replied. ‘You want to get dinner?’
‘There can be food,’ I said, my skin prickling from head to toe. ‘As long as there is alcohol.’
Jenny made an unconvinced sound down the line. ‘We got drinks last night.’
‘Yes, we did,’ I replied. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Fair,’ Jenny acknowledged. ‘Meet at the St Regis? I’m sure it’s nothing a martini can’t fix.’
‘Let’s hope that’s true,’ I confirmed, suddenly aware of the seven staffers peering through my glass door. ‘Gotta go, see you in a bit.’
I hung up the phone and waved everyone in.
‘Was
