hadn’t changed all through lunch so I had no idea what he was thinking. ‘It’s my boyfriend’s thirtieth birthday.’
No one looked particularly impressed.
‘He’s in a band and they’ve been asked to play a festival in Paris.’
Still not impressed. And now Bob was looking at me as if I were a groupie.
‘And I thought it would be really good for the blog. Didn’t the visitor numbers go up when I was in LA?’
‘Yes, but you were plastered all over the gossip pages when you were in LA,’ Mary reminded me, unnecessarily. ‘Are you planning on making an international spectacle of yourself in Paris?’
‘Wasn’t planning on it the first time, so who can say?’ I defended myself pathetically.
‘I think this all sounds great,’ Bob said, finally breaking the stony silence that had built up between me and Mary. ‘Emilia is planning a European issue in a couple of months. Perhaps you could put together an insider’s guide to Paris for Belle? Off the beaten track, show us all the underground hotspots?’
‘I could do that,’ I agreed slowly.
‘Then you’ll come in and meet the Belle team tomorrow.’ Bob suddenly got up from the table. ‘I’ll have Emilia’s assistant call you later today, Angela.’
Mary stood up just as suddenly and, not knowing what else to do, I followed suit and accepted Bob’s overly dramatic air kisses.
‘Lovely to meet you, Angela, and Mary, always a pleasure.’ He smiled and walked over towards a long black town car that had just pulled up beside the restaurant. Mary sank back down into her chair and emptied her wine glass.
‘Cheap bastard didn’t even pick up the bill.’ Mary shook her head and pulled a huge wallet out of her even bigger bag. ‘Well, I hope you’re happy, Angela Clark.’
‘Shouldn’t I be?’ I asked, trying to work out what had just happened. And whether or not Mary was sleeping with Bob. Because she most definitely had been at some point.
‘Writing for Belle magazine is not going to be the same as writing a blog for me.’ She called over a waiter and passed him a black American Express card. ‘You’re going to need to know exactly what you’re doing.’
‘But I can do this, the travel guide to Paris,’ I said. ‘It’ll be fine. Won’t it?’
‘You know I like you, Angela,’ Mary said, putting her elaborate signature on to the credit card slip. ‘But if you fuck this one up, there’s no way I can help you. The girls on Belle are not the girls on The Look or Icon.’
‘But they want me to do this, don’t they?’ This did not sound promising. ‘I mean, it was their idea?’
‘It was Bob’s idea,’ Mary corrected me. ‘Worse, it was Bob’s granddaughter’s idea. Just, before you go in to the office, know that the girls on Belle make Cici look like a labradoodle. Each and every one of them has destroyed the career of someone else, or slept with at least three different married men to be there.’
‘They sound nice.’
‘Then I’m underselling what a pack of bitches they are.’ Mary tucked her wallet back into her bag. ‘They’re not going to love that you’re waltzing through the door with a Paris assignment without ever having so much as broken a nail at Fashion Week. Not that any of them have actually ever broken a nail in their lives. Unless it was to scratch someone else’s eyes out.’
‘Oh bloody hell,’ I said, breathing in deeply. ‘Any way I can get out of this?’
‘Not now Bob’s involved,’ Mary said, standing up again. ‘Look, I don’t want to be too cynical, this could be great for you. Just keep your eyes open, OK? And you might want to get a haircut before your meeting.’
Well, I thought, pinching the ends of my bob, checking the split ends and sighing, at least Paris will be fun.
Three hours later, after a hastily arranged trim and several buckets of iced tea, I’d found the last shred of shade in Central Park and was halfway through my Rough Guide to Paris, with the Lonely Planet and Wallpaper guides well thumbed beside me. I scribbled down address after address in my notebook, but somehow my mind kept flitting back to an image of me and Alex skipping along the banks of the Seine, him in a black polo neck, holding a cigarette, and me in a very fetching stripy sweater dress and beret. Sometimes I was clutching a baguette. Sometimes I relocated us to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was all very Tom and Katie. Except less creepy.
An irritating beeping snapped me out of my fantasy. I looked around, but for some reason, everyone was staring at me. It took me a couple of moments to realize that it was my phone ringing and a couple more redfaced seconds to find it in the bottom of my bag.
‘Hello?’ I answered, eventually.
‘Is that Angela Clark? This is Esme from Belle magazine. You have an appointment with Donna Gregory tomorrow at nine. Please be in the Belle reception at eight forty-five a.m.’
‘Uh, OK?’ Esme from Belle magazine was all business. ‘Will Emilia be in the meeting?’
‘Sorry?’ Esme from Belle magazine sounded confused.
‘Emilia. Bob, Mr Spencer, said she was keen to meet me,’ I explained, feeling a little bit like an idiot.
‘Oh. No.’ Esme from Belle magazine confirmed I was in fact, an idiot. ‘Do you need directions to the offices?’
‘No, I actually work on The Look so—’
‘Oh, cute. Then we’ll see you at eight forty-five,’ Esme from Belle magazine confirmed. And hung up.
I lay back on the grass and stared up at the sunshine. This was going to take some thinking about. Writing my blog was great, but writing for Belle? It could just be incredible…Everyone read Belle, it was global, it was massive. And surely Mary was just throwing a hissy fit because she was pissed off that Bob had gone over her head. It made sense, she didn’t like having her writers poached for bigger publications. She was the online editor at TheLook.com. With Belle, we were talking the printed pages of the world’s biggest fashion monthly. There was way too much at stake here for me to worry about offending Mary’s ego, that wasn’t going to get me anywhere fast. She had offered me the moon on a stick when I’d pulled off the James Jacobs interview and so far I’d seen an awful lot of the stick and not very much else. Where was my monthly column in The Look? Still ‘under discussion.’ This was an opportunity that I would not cock up.
My phone was still hot in my hand from my brief chat with Esme when I felt it vibrate into life again.
Did u get ur hair cut yet? It looked like shit last week xoxo
Of course it was Jenny. I checked my watch for the time difference between LA and New York, five p.m. here, two there. Knowing her, she’d probably
