going to have to start self-medicating and drinking at lunch and keeping pills in my desk and everything?’
‘Oh, Angela.’ Delia jumped up and pulled me to my feet for a hug. ‘You’re a real journalist now.’
‘Yeah, a hardened artery away from a Pulitzer,’ Mary added. ‘Delia, you want to leave us to it? So we can discuss the finer details?’
I stared at Delia, begging her to say no and insist we all immediately leave the office and fly to Vegas to celebrate, but instead she broke our hug and nodded as sombrely as possible, which was not sombrely at all, and headed for the door.
‘You’re going to ace this,’ she said with a wink. ‘In three months you’ll be begging Mary to take another trip. Trust me.’
‘Of course,’ I nodded, waving her away with a smile on my face and waiting for the door to close behind her. ‘For fuck’s sake, Mary, what are you thinking? Please don’t leave the magazine.’
‘I assume you mean, please don’t leave me?’ She gave me her most teacherly look and frowned.
‘Yes,’ I replied, pulling my chair closer to her desk. ‘Of course that’s what I mean.’
‘It’s time, Angela,’ she shrugged. ‘Bob is taking a step back from the business. I’ve been at this desk or one just like it for more than thirty-five years. I want to actually see the world rather than write about it. Preferably while I still have control of my bladder. I think we’re leaving things in very capable hands.’
‘Yeah, Delia’s,’ I said, torn between wanting to give her a big hug and wanting to cling to her leg and beg her not to go.
‘And yours,’ Mary said. ‘As weird as it feels saying this, I’m not worried about Gloss or you. You’re smart, you’re driven and you care more about this magazine than anyone. Plus, you’ve been working for me for nearly four years. If you haven’t picked up what you need in that time, you never will.’
I suddenly regretted dedicating so much time to beating my high score on Candy Crush Saga during all those editorial meetings.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she went on. ‘And I’m only ever as far away as the end of the phone. Or more likely an email – I might be overseas. Bob is talking about chartering a boat.’
A sudden vision of silver fox Bob and his blushing bride giving it the full Titanic on the front of some mega-yacht popped into my head. I’m flying, Bob! And try as I might, it would not go away.
‘You can’t fuck this up, Angela.’ Mary snapped her fingers in front of my distressed-looking face. ‘This magazine is idiot proof. I’m not going to sit here and puff up your ego by telling you how amazing you are, desperately trying to convince you that you can do a job you know perfectly well that you’re capable of.’
‘I am capable,’ I repeated. Only I wasn’t sure of what.
‘Exactly,’ Mary agreed. ‘This magazine might have been your idea but I’ve been the editor since launch. It’s my baby. There’s no way I’d sit back and watch someone run it into the ground for fun.’
It was the closest thing to a compliment she’d ever given me.
‘Any other concerns?’ she asked, turning her attention back to her computer.
‘So, you and Bob, eh?’ I said, standing and making a clucking noise. ‘That old devil.’
‘Go get a coffee and try not to speak to anyone until you’re properly caffeinated.’ She raised a hand to wave me away. ‘And don’t slam the door on the way out or I’ll fire you before you can take over.’
I assumed she was joking but that didn’t stop me closing the door extra quietly, just in case.
By the end of the day, I was ready to jack it all in, let Alex knock me up seventeen times, move to a farm in the middle of nowhere and be milked like a cow until the end of my days. Even though I hadn’t technically accepted the job, it seemed the entire office already knew what was going on and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. There were cover lines to come up with, future features to approve, freelancers to look at and now apparently I needed to attend lots of exciting circulation meetings and schedule all sorts of thrilling executive appointments that almost all involved Excel spreadsheets. I hated Excel spreadsheets. Someone in finance had emailed me about something called a pivot table three times and I’d already come out in a rash. On the upside, I now had hot and cold running coffee, morning, noon and night, hand-delivered by writers who had barely acknowledged my existence before today, and someone from an entirely different magazine who was looking to make a move to ‘the most exciting publication in the company’ brought me a bagel. Power, it turned out, was delicious but exhausting. I was fairly certain, if it weren’t for the three and a half venti Starbucks I’d put away, I’d have passed out at my desk by five p.m.
My brain was buzzing with numbers and pictures and Taylor Swift’s love life and I desperately needed to hear the voice of someone normal. Reaching for my phone, I dialled the only number I knew would help me make sense of such a ridiculous twenty-four hours.
‘You’ve reached Louisa. I’m not around to take your call right now but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
With an audible sob, I replaced the handset and cursed the Atlantic Ocean. I couldn’t really complain when Lou wasn’t able to take my calls – she had an actual baby to keep her busy and, to her credit, she had never been one of those mothers who made it sound easy. I’d known Louisa my whole life and no one had ever been better suited to motherhood – her mum used to joke that she would have changed her own nappies if she’d been able – but even she couldn’t paint parenthood as a walk in the park. Lou was obsessed with baby Grace. Since the second she had popped out of her vajay-jay, she had been her everything. Lou had left her job when she got pregnant and now it even felt like her husband, Tim, barely got a look-in. The last time we had spoken, she didn’t even know what had happened in the last season of True Blood. It was that serious. But she was pragmatic and honest and she always knew just what to say to make me feel better. When she answered her phone.
‘Hey, only me,’ I told the beep. ‘Just feel like we haven’t talked in ages. Give me a call when you can. Love you.’
The second I hung up, the phone rang again.
‘Louisa?’ I was almost too excited.
‘Angela?’ a confused voice, not Louisa, replied. ‘It’s me. I’m waiting in the lobby?’
‘Jenny?’
Of course. I suddenly remembered, the doctor’s appointment.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll be right down.’
There was no rest for the wicked, or for friends of Jenny Lopez.
Although she was wearing her ‘take me seriously’ shoes and most resolute face, I could tell Jenny was nervous. She talked about her plans for Jenny Junior all the way up Madison but I couldn’t quite tell whether she was trying to convince me or herself that it was a good idea. I listened quietly, making encouraging noises often enough to sound supportive but not regularly enough to sound thoroughly enthused. Because I wasn’t. I heard my phone chiming inside my Marc Jacobs satchel just as we arrived
