about accepting one of the other offers I’ve had. As dear Oliver Messel was saying to me only the other day, I really would need to think about my reputation and my future if I were to become too associated with the kind of new-money clients Ivor seems to be attracting these days. Word gets round, after all. And, of course, the fact that he’s taken you on doesn’t help. Well, it wouldn’t do, would it? I’m surprised we haven’t been inundated with requests for quotes for redecorating Soho’s Chinese restaurants.’
Rose’s face burned as he sniggered at his own wit. She longed for it to be the end of the day so that she could escape from the poisonous atmosphere of the shop.
The only time she felt totally comfortable and safe and accepted was when she was with her aunt Amber, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she wanted to please her aunt so much, Rose would have begged her to help her find another job.
She got on well with Jay’s daughters and they had fun together but, despite their kindness, Rose was still very much aware that she was ‘different’ and an outsider, whose looks meant that people–men–often felt that they had a right to behave towards her in a way that made her feel vulnerable and afraid. They looked at her as though they knew about her mother, as though they wanted her to be like her mother. But she never would be, never…
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Ella, do be careful. You really are so dreadfully clumsy.’
Clumsy and plain, Ella Fulshawe thought miserably, as she bent down to pick up the clothes pegs that had fallen off the desk where the fashion editor’s junior had left them. They were used to hold in the backs of dresses worn by very slim models so that, photographed from the front, the clothes appeared to fit.
Ella had never really wanted to work for Vogue in the first place; she had wanted to be a proper reporter on a proper newspaper. Her sister Janey might have been filled with envy when she had been offered the job, but then Janey lived and breathed fashion whilst Ella wasn’t the least bit interested in it. She wanted to write about important things, not silly clothes, but her father had been so pleased and proud of her when she had been offered the job that she hadn’t felt able to refuse.
‘I expect your father is hoping that working for Vogue will transform you from an ugly duckling into a swan, Ella,’ had been Emerald’s taunting comment.
Had her father thought that working for Vogue would turn her into someone pretty and confident? If so, his hopes had been bitterly disappointed. If anything working alongside pretty, glamorous models only served to emphasise her own plainness, she thought. The models, with their small bosoms and skinny legs, made her feel so clumsy and huge. She had grown to hate her own full breasts and the curves of her body.
‘It’s such a pity that if you had to inherit your poor mother’s facial features you didn’t inherit her figure as well. Frankly, Ella, there is something decidedly bucolic and almost common about so much fleshy excess. Your poor mother would be horrified if she could see you now; she was so slender herself.’
Her aunt Cassandra’s unkind criticism, delivered when Ella had entered puberty, had left its mark, hurting her far more than her stepsister, Emerald’s, catty comments ever could. It was, in fact, burned into Ella’s heart.
The models were so slim and pretty, and she could see the admiration in the eyes of the male photographers who worked with them, whilst those same photographers dismissed her with one brief glance. Or rather, most of them did. There was one who had made his contempt of her far plainer. Oliver Charters.
Charters was an up-and-coming young photographer who had just struck out on his own. He was, according to Vogue’s Art and Fashion Departments, amazingly talented and bound ‘to go far’. He seduced models and editorial staff alike with just one look from his brilliant green eyes.
But when that green-eyed gaze had been turned in her direction, all the careless interest with which it rested on other girls had been banished, to be replaced with a look of disbelief. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, the exclamation that had accompanied it had underlined his feelings, causing the assistant art director to snigger, and then later repeat the incident to what now felt like the whole of Vogue’s office staff.
Oliver Charters was here now in the small cramped office, where Ella’s boss, the features editor, and the fashion editor were surveying the pretty model wearing the cream woollen dress that was far too big for her. More Ella’s size than the model’s.
Ella tried her best to disguise her unfashionable shape, wearing large baggy sweaters over pleated skirts and white shirts–rather as though she were still wearing their old school uniform, Janey had once told her disapprovingly.
At home at Denham she was the eldest, and there she felt confident enough to take her responsibility towards the younger ones, especially Janey, who was so prone to doing things without thinking and getting into trouble, sometimes very seriously indeed. All the more so when it came to her taking on lame ducks of every description–both animal and human. But here at Vogue, deprived of the protection of her father and her stepmother’s love, Ella felt awkward and vulnerable and stupid. Now her clumsiness had her face burning and her throat closing on the threat of tears.
‘I can’t write about that. It looks dreadful,’ Ella’s boss was complaining. ‘I’m supposed to be covering exciting new young fashion; that looks more like something a county farmer’s wife, or a girl like Ella would wear. Where’s that dress we got from Mary Quant? Go and find it, will you, Ella?’ she demanded.
Oliver, who was standing in the open doorway, propping himself up as he talked to the model, was blocking her exit. The leather jacket he was wearing, combined with a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, gave him a raffish air that matched his overlong dark hair and the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Janey would have thoroughly approved of him but Ella most certainly did not.
‘Excuse me.’
He was so engrossed in the model that he hadn’t even heard her apology, never mind realised that she couldn’t get through the door.
Ella cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Excuse me, please.’
The model tugged on his leather-clad arm. ‘Ella wants to get past you, Oliver.’
‘Squeeze through then, love. I don’t mind if you rub up against me bum.’
He was being deliberately vulgar, Ella knew, hoping no doubt to embarrass her, so she gave his back a freezing look. The model giggled as Oliver arched his back to create a space large enough, perhaps, for her to wriggle through, but nowhere near wide enough for Ella.
‘Ella can’t get through there. Ollie, you’ll have to move,’ the model told him.
Now he was looking Ella up and down and then up again, his inspection coming to an end when his gaze rested on her now flushed face.
‘Going to make the tea, are you, love?’ he asked her, giving her a wicked grin. ‘Two lumps in mine,’ he added, before deliberately letting his gaze rest on her breasts.
As she left the office Ella could hear the model saying bitchily, ‘Poor Ella, being so huge. I’d hate to be like that. She’s the size of an elephant. I’m surprised she doesn’t try to lose some weight.’
This was followed by Oliver Charters’ laughter as he announced, ‘There’s no point in her trying. She’d never succeed.’
Her face on fire, Ella was rooted to the spot,
