With which she disappeared down the escalator leading to the tube that would take her across London to a committee meeting of a group whose declared aim was to persuade women already in powerful positions to help women who weren’t — and would like to be – but in reality was an excuse to network with the right people and do their own careers a great deal of good.
But the question taxing Ellie, clinging to the overhead strap as the tube hurtled through the tunnel, was not whether the group’s intention was worthwhile, but why, having reached a position of power, Eleanor Carter did not feel very inspired to help anyone? And yet why should she? After all, no-one had bothered to help her.
*
Jed’s blunt appraisal of Ellie’s attitude to her lot in life rankled, but in the aftermath of apologies, a hug and a conciliatory lunch, she was cautiously beginning to acknowledge that in one respect at least, he had a point.
All comers in Ellie’s life got a hearing. Rarely did she have the heart to turn away anyone wanting to vent their anger or frustration. She conceded that it was true: she did things, got involved or just listened, more out of cowardice than compassion.
‘We must, simply MUST celebrate,’ squealed Polly down the phone only days later after Ellie had vowed to Jed that she wouldn’t accept any more dinner invitations unless she truly wanted to be there. But Polly would instantly see her as a valuable contact and clearly wanted to move their friendship up a notch. Amazing how the effect of a promotion spread like ripples to the likes of Polly.
That morning, Roland had summoned the staff and, with much champagne flowing, had announced after a few minor changes and promotions that seemed to please or annoy in equal measure, the people affected, that he had also created a new column for Ellie.
‘Well done, ducky,’ Jed had smiled feigning surprise. With a broad wink he had given her a hug.
‘T’riff,’ beamed Rosie, who had preceded Ellie to Focus by a mere month and with the state of her home life, secretly relieved she wasn’t being asked to do more.
‘Heav-eee stuff,’ grinned Paul.
‘My, my,’ drawled Judith Craven Smith, Jed’s assistant, settling herself comfortably, and with a familiarity that sent eyebrows soaring, into one of Roland’s armchairs and sipping champagne. ‘Not just a beautiful face, eh?’
Now Ellie clenched her eyes tight as she held the phone. She had wanted an evening on her own, just to catch up with her own life, but it was always so hard to refuse Polly. I’ll say yes, she told herself. Then I’ll find some excuse not to go.
Such deception had once been alien to her. She was surprised to discover that now she felt no guilt, just relief that she was capable of it. Experience had taught her that people like Polly would demolish every excuse if you weren’t completely prepared, and she had most certainly caught Ellie in an unguarded moment.
In a day or two Ellie would call her back, sound desolate, shriek with disappointment and promise faithfully that the minute she could draw breath she would, honestly, take Polly up on it. Even though Polly couldn’t see her, Ellie blushed at the string of accomplished lies she was rehearsing.
She could hear Jed’s advice: if it makes you unhappy, don’t do it. It’s all right for him, she argued, then realized with an embarrassed start that she had said it again. But Jed didn’t understand that if you don’t socialize with these people, how can you expect to get on? If you’re there for them, they will be there for you. Right?
Sod him, she thought.
Meanwhile Ellie’s most pressing concern was to keep Polly from suspecting such a wanton act of cowardice was being perpetrated at the other end of the phone.
‘Polly, you are the best of friends, but it really is too generous of you. I’ve only been given my own column, not the entire magazine.’ She signalled to Lucy through the glass window to bring her some tea.
Polly was immovable, just as Ellie knew she would be.
‘No, no. Don’t say another word. It’s what you’ve been working towards and what we’ve all thought was long overdue. In fact I don’t think Roland realizes that if you left Focus, he would have a hell of a time replacing you. A little celebration is a must. Just leave everything to me.’
Ellie laughed, trying to make sure she sounded both flattered and touched. As she spoke she scribbled her signature on the last of the proofs in front of her and mouthed her thanks to Lucy who had deposited the tea and a fresh batch of work on her desk.
‘Polly, I can see why you’re so good at your job. All right, but don’t go mad, will you?’
She wrote ‘Why legal?’ on the page in front of her, an interview she had written several weeks before, and waved it above her head to attract Lucy’s attention while Polly squealed in delight.
‘Go mad? Moi? I’ll just invite... oh, you know, people like us, and we’ll have a low-key, fun evening. Now get your diary.’
‘Can’t Wednesday,’ Ellie told Polly, scanning the pages. ‘First night of Strangers. I suppose I could skip the party afterwards.’
Polly interrupted with an envious groan.
‘Honestly, Ellie, if you ever decide on another career you should be a critic. There can’t be a play in London you haven’t seen. Strangers, indeed. I can’t get tickets until March.’
Friday.... Friday? No, hopeless. The PR for the newly launched Aristo Airlines was taking a small group of carefully chosen journalists to New York for the weekend and Ellie would not get back until the early hours of Monday morning.
‘Polly, it’s all looking pretty dire until Tuesday of next week. Provided I can get out of this meeting Roland wants me to go to,’ she lied, describing an imaginary conference on Women in Crisis Management. ‘Is that any good?’
It was and thus it was all settled.
Outside the tiny office, the familiar hum of activity started to evaporate as the newsroom began to wind down for the day. Through the glass she could see the secretaries switching off computers for the night, returning from the ladies’ where their make-up had been adjusted for the journey home. Small groups of people began to drift off towards the pub. Lights flicked out, leaving the office suffused with a subdued glow.
There was something wonderfully satisfying watching it all, being part of it, even if the rumours that Belvedere might amalgamate with Bentley Goodman Publishing.
Maybe it won’t happen, Ellie consoled herself as she idly took in Roland Whittington’s progress as he strode through the open plan office, through the banks of black ash desks, past gleaming white computers and, for reasons no-one was ever able to fathom, since modern technology was designed to eliminate it, bins overflowing with reams of paper and the detritus of office life.
She saw him stop briefly to talk to Judith who threw back her head and laughed. Roland, grinning at their private joke, moved towards the opulence of the quarters that came with his job as editor.
‘Can’t think what she sees in him,’ Lucy sniffed disparagingly as she reappeared to tell Ellie she was off.
Ellie gently ignored the remark.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got to be at the preview by eight,’ Lucy reminded her.
Ellie smiled. ‘I won’t. ‘Night, Lucy,’ and with a great show of settling down to scrutinize on her screen the cuttings recording the career pattern of a newly appointed cabinet minister that she hoped to interview, Ellie tried to analyse why, of late, her mind seemed to be crowded with ideas for escape when all her life she had longed only to join in?
Putting her elbows on her desk she pushed her knuckles into the side of her head as though the pressure would help clear the confusion... no, not the confusion, the conspiracy, that was pushing her further and further down a track not of her making. It wasn’t that she felt unhappy. She just felt uncomfortable, restless. It had been like that for too long; not quite knowing what she wanted any more, pushing aside, cancelling and now lying to avoid confronting... but confronting what?
That I need to get out of London for a few days, she decided, listlessly pulling a
file towards her and gazing uncomprehendingly at Lucy’s carefully logged ‘Priority’ in black marker pen on the outside. It was a word she could so easily apply to herself. She who had spent a lifetime shying away from studying herself too closely, was now being compelled to do exactly that.
There was the Ellie who had been raised on a wing and a prayer by a delightful but impecunious father — an inspired but disorganized artist — and a string of helpful but uncommitted relatives and friends who passed in and out of her life, until at twenty she had left Dorset and arrived in London.
That Ellie had known the bewilderment of losing her mother when she was barely six years old, the horror of having her home removed, knew what it was to feel confused and frightened as bailiffs moved in on her father, watching in frustrated anger as he found himself at the centre of a scandal that had changed their lives.
Stop it, stop it, she scolded herself. It’s over. They can’t touch you ever again. Besides you’re no longer a child, no-one can try to take you away from anyone or anything you love, ever again.
But of the many uncertainties in her life, it was an unshakeable faith in her father’s innocence that had become her one strong security. Oliver’s too. They didn’t talk about it anymore, and the gossip had long since died down. Even if they remembered, no-one ever mentioned it.
Then there was the Ellie she had become. Still funny and clever, but sharper, speaking a language that would have been quite alien in the midst of her family. Adopting a stand on issues that were politically correct rather than instinctively embraced. For one so stubborn, so realistic, she had willingly allowed herself to be reinvented.
Ellie was startled out of her thoughts by the phone, which gave a bullying squawk. The interview with the cabinet minister would have to be postponed. Awfully sorry, came a voice that held no sorrow at all. This was something Roland had better know at once. The slot was for the next issue in time for the election.
With a muttered oath, Ellie replaced the phone and thrust her chair back. She reached for the trio of gold interlocked bracelets she had slipped off and wriggled them over her wrist.
As she passed from the newsroom towards the editor’s office she glanced briefly in the mirror that lined one wall. Neither pleased or dissatisfied with what she saw, she simply knew that she now looked every inch the Ellie she had become, without a trace of the Ellie she had once been, who was someone she never wanted to meet again.
The newsroom was deserted as she crossed it towards Roland’s office. No light showed from Dixie’s room and Roland’s door was shut.
Damn, he must have gone. Ellie looked around for a pad on which to scribble the news that Downing Street had vetoed the interview with the newest member of the government.
Rapidly scrawling the time she had left the message and that she would talk to him next day, she ripped off the top sheet, opened Roland’s door and walked in.
Puzzlingly, the room was in darkness, except for a small lamp glowing on the corner of his desk. For some reason, although it was still daylight outside, the blinds were pulled right down. Ellie blinked in the gloom. But in the lozenge of light cast into the room from the outer office, she had no trouble at all in recognizing the large, overweight figure of her boss appearing to be lying full length on the sofa.
‘Roland, I thought you’d gone, I’m so sorry... I had no idea you...’ She stopped. Why was Roland lying like that, eyes half closed, moaning softly?
Jesus... a heart attack... no... what? There was a muffled oath and the unmistakeable figure of Judith, struggled to sit up.
The implications of the scene before her took several seconds to hit Ellie. A sharp intake of breath, as she gazed in disbelief at the frantic couple in front of her.
‘Oh my God...’ she muttered, backing out of the door, slamming it shut. For a second, not knowing whether to laugh or feel outraged, she held the door handle as if fearful that the over-excited duo behind it might try to leave.
*
‘After all,’ she said to Jed later over a quick drink before the preview, ‘what else do you do, coming across your boss with his trousers round his ankles?’ Ellie took a gulp of vodka and tonic. ‘I mean I don’t give a toss one way or the other what Judith does, but she can’t really fancy him, can she? I mean she doesn’t need him to get on. She’s so bright. So pretty.’
‘And so lazy,’ Jed interrupted. ‘Judith doesn’t see why she shouldn’t have it all now. The good life, the restaurants, the discreet weekends in the sun.’ He drained his glass and got up. ‘Judith just wants to do it the easy way, that’s all.’
‘Easy? You call that easy? It’s the hardest route ever invented because it runs out of mileage around the time his wife gets wind of it and then what? It won’t get her anywhere.’
‘Not necessarily. Judith believes there are two routes to success. Your route, the sisterhood, the networking, eventually, maybe, victory. She isn’t prepared to wait that long. Trouble is,’ he said, handing Ellie her jacket, ‘she just doesn’t believe the sisterhood will be there for her when the chips are down.’
Ellie’s face made him stop.
‘C’mon,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I’ll drop you at the preview, though I don’t know why you bother. Debra Carlysle is a lousy actress.’
Ellie regarded him crossly.
‘You know I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I promised I would.’
It was pointless to tell Jed that he didn’t understand. Ellie knew the two routes very well indeed. One was Judith’s way, relying totally on being available to a man who could shape her career, cut corners for her. The other was Ellie’s. Longer, but such carefully prepared groundwork was a surer way of staying on top on her own terms. But something told her that Judith was not taking the easy route. In spite of appearances and the bravado, Ellie shrewdly suspected that Judith paraded for appearances sake, that she really had fallen for the man.
Control, that’s what Jed didn’t understand — the need to control what was going on in your own life, being part of the decisions. Just as she preferred. Not at the mercy of someone’s whim in the way that Judith was with Roland and with not a hope in hell of getting what she wanted.
*
Next morning Ellie heard Judith demanding aspirin and black coffee by the bucketful from the disdainful secretary who looked after the editorial writers.
Roland was striding towards them and as he drew alongside, Judith raised her head and began to smile, but he strode straight past without a glance.
‘Ellie?’
She turned as Judith spoke to her. ‘I just – I thought – I mean. It’s not like you think.’
Ellie picked up a copy of The Times and started to move away. ‘I don’t think anything,’ she gave a quick smile. ‘None of my business. God, is that the time? Got to rush.’
Ahead of her at the lift she saw Roland press the button for the top floor where the Chairman could be found, smiling flirtatiously at the Chairman’s secretary.
Ellie decided to take the stairs. Fast route my Aunt, she muttered.
Chapter Two
In the event, as Ellie had half feared she would, Polly pulled the rug from under her and a mere week after she had lied that she wouldn’t be able to join her for dinner she found herself making her way to Polly’s Camden Town residence.
‘Marvellous news,’ Polly had giggled gleefully down the phone. ‘I ran into Roland and said – you know mock seriously – please don’t make Ellie go to that stuffy conference. And do you know what he said?’
Ellie held her breath.
‘He said “What conference?”’
Ellie wasn’t at all surprised.
‘Darling heart, don’t you see? He’s forgotten. Now you don’t have to go and you can come to me. Brill, eh?’
Brill indeed.
Thus it was, cursing her cowardice, she punctually presented herself at Polly and Warren Lambton’s decoratively correct town house.
Polly didn’t care for carpets or antiques. She
liked the feeling of being ahead of the game, totally plugged into the look, the feel, the mood of the moment. On the starkly plain white walls, limited editions of David Hockney jostled with a Victor Koulbak, a Lanskoy and some minor Polish artists that Polly liked to think she was ‘bringing on’. Banks of lilies, their perfume dizzily overpowering, cascaded from pitch-black cast iron pots.
Two long, lean, le Corbusier sofas sat in almost splendid isolation on stripped and waxed beige floorboards. An open, fake log fire was the only concession to warmth in a room that was reeking of chic, throbbing with style but, Ellie thought, too clever by half.
The Lambton’s fourteen-year-old son, Silas, lurched sullenly into the entrance hall as Ellie arrived. Torn, skin-tight black jeans clung to stick-thin limbs. A cotton T-shirt with ‘All Fuckin’ Mighty’ scrawled on it was effectively ripped. His blonde, lank hair touching his bony shoulders concealed his face. He was clutching, as aggressively as such an item would allow, a McDonalds carton full of chips.
‘Mum,’ he began as he caught sight of his mother bearing down on them. ‘Mum…?’
Polly, in a bronze and gold silk jersey dress with bat wing sleeves, her black hair cut in a squared, geometric style that swung crazily around her plump face, rushed forward as Ellie arrived, bestowing hugs and kisses and ordering a great many things to happen at once.
‘Warren? Look, Ellie’s here. Get her a drink. And Paul. Lovely, lovely. What is it, Silas? Yes, yes, take what you want, but just go,’ cried Polly impatiently thrusting her purse at her son with one hand and grabbing Ellie with the other.
‘Everyone, she’s here,’ she called, brandishing Ellie’s clasped hand in hers. ‘You look so... so powerful,’ she gurgled. ‘That dress is a real Ellie dress. Isn’t it, Warren?’
Warren Lambton, who had spent the day desperately rescheduling the loans to keep his import company afloat, agreed Ellie’s knee-skimming, midnight blue chiffon shift dress was indeed Ellie.
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