bloody-minded bitch. And perhaps, sometimes, she was. But she got things done. Despite everything, she got things done…
Her mobile phone rang.
“Hello?” she snapped. She listened for a moment, and her voice softened. “Hello, how are you? That’s great… I’m glad to hear it.” She paused. “No, I can’t see you tonight, love. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow. Yes, okay. I promise.”
She rang off and leaned back in the chair. A headache was brewing. As she rubbed her forehead in a vain attempt to ease the tightness, Sasha realized she couldn’t keep this up much longer. It was all getting to be too much.
As she glanced again at Valery’s email on her laptop screen, her resolve hardened. She had to find another way to sabotage Holly. She retrieved her mobile and hit redial.
“It’s me again. There’s been a change of plan. Meet me in my office as soon as you can.” She paused at the protests that filled her ear. “Just do it!” she snapped. “If you want to be the next features sub-editor — and if you don’t want me to tell Valery you didn’t actually graduate from business school — then you need to help me get rid of Holly. Or you’ll continue making copies and fetching coffee for a very long time. I’ll see to it.”
Sasha snapped the phone shut and strode to the smaller office adjoining hers. Scowling, she began to riffle through Holly’s desk, looking for her interview notes. There had to be something, somewhere in this mess of papers and folders and KitKat wrappers… How on earth did Holly stay so thin? She ate like a bloody horse…
“I’m here.”
Sasha barely glanced up. “Good. Get busy and help me find something — anything! — that’ll make Holly look bad. An unpaid parking ticket, a faked expense account, a secret love child with Phil from Accounting…”
“Okay. Move over.” Kate Ashby tossed her bag down and began to yank open desk drawers. “I doubt there’s anything here. Holly’s working on the interview at home, so her notes won’t be here.” She straightened. “I’ll go home and see what I can find. Perhaps she’ll leave her document open—”
“Never mind that,” Sasha said impatiently, “just find her notes. Look for something — anything — that we can use against her. An off-the-record comment, for instance.”
Kate looked at her doubtfully. “Holly told me she uses a mini-recorder to do interviews, as a back-up if she misses something in her notes.”
“There you are. Perfect. Find something, anything, that Holly — or, more importantly, Henry Barrington — wouldn’t want in print, and slip it into the interview.”
“But, Sasha — if we print an off-the-record comment, BritTEEN could be sued for libel.”
“That’s what libel insurance is for.” Sasha strode back into her office.
Kate followed her. “But…what about your job? You could get sacked for this.”
“I won’t get sacked,” Sasha said, “because only you and I know about this. And you’re not telling anyone, are you?” She flicked a glance at Kate and sat down behind her desk.
“Why do you have it in for Holly, anyway?” Kate asked, curious. “You’ve always said that if things ever go pear-shaped, you’ll marry money; so why do you care if she gets your job, then?”
“I don’t. She can have my bloody job, and welcome to it. I just can’t stand girls like her, that’s all.”
Sasha jerked her middle drawer open. Her position as Valery’s assistant was hard won, and often difficult, but it was hers. She’d always loathed the smart, clever girls in school, the ones who never struggled with maths or French the way she did, the ones who effortlessly earned top marks.
Instead, Sasha devoured fashion magazines and learned how to dress stylishly on a budget, how to use cosmetics to make the most of her features, who the top clothing and shoe designers were and what made their designs so sought after. She knew the fashion world like the back of her hand.
And she refused to let a pampered clever clogs like Holly James show up and take her hard-won success away from her.
Ever since Holly had joined the BritTEEN staff, Valery seemed to find favour with Sasha less and less, yet lavished praise on Holly.
And Sasha was bloody sick of it.
“Holly’s no threat to you,” Kate scoffed. “She hasn’t your experience, for one thing.”
“No, she hasn’t. And she’s never walked twelve blocks to a job interview, either, or shopped at Oxfam — not for fun, mind you, but because that’s all she could afford. She’s never lived in a bedsit in a dodgy neighbourhood, or eaten a jam sandwich for dinner because there was nothing else.”
Sasha clasped her hands tightly together, remembering. Had six-year-old Holly ever lain in bed, listening as her mother and a strange man went at it in the next room? Had she ever come home from school to find her mum passed out on the sofa, an empty bottle of gin lying beside her on the floor?
Of course she hadn’t.
“Still, she seems okay,” Kate added doubtfully. “She helped me get this job, after all.”
“She’s a posh little princess. She wouldn’t know hardship if it bit her on the arse.”
Kate opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. “My dad and Nat’s grandfather are partners,” Holly had said off-handedly, as if co-owning a major British department store were nothing special.
And even though she liked Holly, Kate felt, not for the first time, a tiny knife-twist of jealousy.
It wasn’t fair that while she struggled to make ends meet, borrowing money occasionally from a payday lender to cover her bills, Holly James worked, probably as a lark, so she could buy the latest handbag or an extra pair of designer shoes.
“Holly’s not posh,” Kate said, but her words lacked conviction. “Her family’s well off, that’s all. She can’t help that.”
“Perhaps not,” Sasha agreed, “but nor should her family name allow her any special considerations. Valery already thinks Holly’s ‘promising’ and ‘full of good ideas’.” She snorted. “Full of herself, more like.”
“But you’re Valery’s assistant, not Holly. You’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” Sasha assured her smugly. “Once this interview with Henry Barrington hits the stands, Holly bloody James will find herself booted out of BritTEEN so fast her knickers will catch fire.”
“Oh, shit,” Holly mumbled as she sat up in bed and groped on the table for her mobile. She squinted at the number on her screen and groaned.
Her father was the last person she wanted to talk to this morning. Because just now, it felt as though a DJ was spinning house music right inside her head.
Maybe
