Up All Night

by Carmen Reid

  Drinks party hell. All drinks parties seemed to go like this for Jo. You got hot, crowded and uncomfortable. You drank two or three very strong things in succession. The noise level rose so high that you had no idea what people standing just two millimetres from your face were bellowing about, so you had to nod, smile and hope they weren’t detailing their grandmother’s gruesome murder.

  ‘Lovely . . . great. . . yes . . . hmmm.’

  The little party drinks and little party snacks were so deceiving. You thought you’d eaten, when in fact you’d only had twelve beads of fish egg on a Ritz cracker, you thought you’d only had a drink or two, when in fact you’d necked down four cocktails with the alcoholic equivalent of a bottle of vodka.

  She would get clumsier and clumsier, fall off her heels, knock things over, shout in people’s ears and spill her drinks over them. A muffling veil of drunkenness would provide some protection from the angst, but she would remember all her gaffes in horribly sobering detail in the morning.

  Meeting the paper’s Chief Executive, which she had done several times before, provided just the sort of panic-inducing situation where all the drinks party disasters could happen at once.

  She gulped hard at the champagne and tried not to actually pant with fear as Jeff led her over.

  ‘Jo Randall, how do you do?’ The steely-haired, immaculately dressed über-boss was holding out his hand at her. ‘You’re much prettier than in your byline photo.’

  ‘Oh n-n-n-no, not really,’ she stammered.

  ‘Get a new photo taken of her immediately,’ he said to the assorted execs standing in the circle around him, in his inimitable: ‘Am I joking? No one can be sure, so rush to do what I’m asking anyway’ power trip.

  Jo was now in the inner circle, boss opposite her, various executives, the Finance Director and Spikey all crowded around.

  ‘Busy week?’ Boss was asking her. Terror, terror.

  ‘Yes, as always,’ she smiled, winningly she hoped, praying he wouldn’t ask the follow-up.

  ‘So what are you working on?’ No luck, he asked it.

  ‘Oh well, I’m not sure if Mr Skinner would want me to talk about that,’ she said with a smile. And look, she’d managed to refer to her editor publicly as Mr Skinner, not Spikey. That was a good thing.

  ‘Feel free,’ Spikey volunteered. ‘I’m sure Mr de Groote isn’t going to tell our rivals.’

  Oh thanks a lot.

  ‘Well,’ she began. ‘The whooping cough story. We’ll have some new angles on that. Also, the prospective Green MP, Savannah Tyler, we’ve got a cracking first ever, up close and personal interview with her.’

  Spikey chipped in with: ‘A real team effort. Great story.’

  Team effort?! Crap! Her effort and a tip, a mere tip, from Aidan. Team bloody effort bollocks.

  ‘Oh God, I hate that woman,’ was de Groote’s magnanimous reply to this. ‘Bleating on about recycling and taking the train. She just doesn’t live in the real world, does she? I’m buggered if I’m giving up my car for anyone. Took delivery of the classic Aston Martin DB-7 the other day. Probably does about two miles to the gallon.’ He gave a cheery guffaw. Did he expect them to agree? Did he expect them to politely join in dissing their week’s exclusive?

  What was it with men in positions of supreme authority? Did they think they could only stay there if they put everyone else down all the time? Jo stared at her glass. Wondered if she had the nerve to argue the case . . . but there was her own editor nodding in agreement. Savannah was sliding right off the front page as they spoke.

  ‘So whooping cough,’ de Groote added. ‘Tell me what you’re doing on that. No, I’ll tell you—’ he gave a big grin: ‘Inform every parent in the country to go out and get their child vaccinated with the new injection made by Wolff-Meyer. I’ve got a lot of shares in that company.’

  Jo didn’t waver, just fired back: ‘Right well, Mr de Groote, I’ll make sure our readers help you out there. I’ll recommend every child has two, shall I? One in each arm.’

  She shot him a tight little smile and he raised his eyebrows at her. He obviously didn’t have too much experience of sarcasm, the blood-sucking leech.

  A tray of canapés swung in front of them and she picked the one nearest to her and bit in, hoping he would go away and pick on someone else.

  What the hell was this? She’d attempted to bite the canapé in half, but now she realized she had a piece of very crumbly oatcake in her mouth and between her teeth was the stringiest bit of ancient smoked venison, or maybe even smoked deer hide, she’d ever encountered. She was trapped. If she let go with her teeth, the remains of the canapé would fall on the floor and a strip of venison would be hanging from her mouth. She couldn’t bite it in half, but nor could she hoover the whole thing into her mouth. She would suffocate, not to mention spend an hour trying to chew the bloody thing down.

  She was frozen, hand at her mouth, teeth clamped down on this monster, when, of course, the boss asked her another question.

  ‘So where do your ambitions lie, Jo? Going to stay on the news floor for ever, or do you think you’d like to join us up in the stratosphere one day?’

  No one needed to tell her that this was an important question. She suspected that she probably would not like to join the stratosphere, she probably just wouldn’t fit in. But it was bloody nice to be asked and it deserved a careful, well chosen, ambitious kind of answer. Not silence as she wrestled with Grampa Roe Deer.

  She looked at the nearly empty champagne glass in her hand and had an idea. Without thinking it entirely through, she turned quickly away from the group, put her hands up to her face and feigned a sneeze.

  With the big, dramatic ‘atchoo’, she spat the canapé into her champagne glass. Then gripping the glass in two hands, so no one could see inside, she turned round to the boss again.

  ‘Excuse me, so sorry about that. . . The stratosphere . . . I haven’t thought about it, Mr de Groote. I enjoy my reporter’s job. But the newspaper needs to grow, develop, and I hope I can help with that.’ See? Great answer, situation rescued . . . victory.

  Except, the boss smiled, held out a hand to her and said: ‘Good, good, well it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Ms Randall.’

  In the manoeuvre that followed, Jo moved her right hand from the glass to meet de Groote’s, and used her left hand to whisk the glass behind her back. Well, that was the plan.

  But in the whisking, the glass spat an arc of champagne and oatcake remains over Denny Fox, de Groote’s deputy.

  Fox was in a fitted white silk thing which looked terrifyingly like Chanel and now across her waist was a thin trail of oaty gruel.

  ‘I am so sorry . . . good grief, I’m so clumsy . . . let me go and get a napkin straight away,’ was Jo’s embarrassed response.

  ‘No, no, I’ll sort it out myself,’ came the clipped, teeth-gritted reply. Fox looked furious, and from long experience of spilling drinks over people, Jo could see Fox was not going to be someone who took a spill casually, who forgave a spiller.

  So before Fox could even begin to wonder how oatcake had come out of a champagne glass, Jo had to bolt.

  ‘You know. . .’ Jo stumbled over her excuse, ‘it’s been a p-p-pleasure to meet you, but I’ve got a mountain of work to get through tonight . . . so if you’ll excuse me.’

  De Groote made a curt nod.

  So she was dismissed from the circle of the great and the good. Pah! Feeling about one million rungs lower than when she’d been thrown into it. Bloody oatcake and venison canapés, who the hell had thought that would be a good idea? A Scottish sadist chef?

  Come and work in the upper echelons?! Jesus Christ, no thanks, can you imagine working for a bunch of arseholes like de Groote and Fox every day of your life? She’d rather poke her eyes out with a spoon.

  ‘How did that go then?’ Jeff was at her side.

  She snorted at him: ‘Don’t think you have to worry about me being summoned from the news floor to join them just yet.�
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  ‘Good,’ was his verdict. ‘Are you heading back to the office?’

  ‘What the fuck do you think? I’ve got to knock the Savannah piece into some sort of shape. Then as I explained to you in great detail yesterday I’m meeting my friend at the Wolff-Meyer headquarters.’

  ‘Maybe you should leave that till next week,’ Jeff suggested, feeling guilty at how much work seemed to have piled on to Jo’s shoulders.

  ‘She’s already there. This is the best chance I’ve got to do some serious research,’ Jo said.

  ‘Well, just go and join her. Do the Savannah writeup tomorrow. We’ll wait for you.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’ And she did, she really did. ‘Is your wife here tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I have to talk to you about that. . .’

  ‘Really? Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s fine. We’ll talk tomorrow. After-work drinks? Are you staying on tomorrow night?’

  ‘Am I staying on?! I’ll probably still be filing,’ she replied.

  She waved him a little goodbye and slipped out of the party.

  ‘You stupid, bloody, fluff-headed fashion twit.’

  It was no use swearing at the door, it was no use jiggling the handle up and down a hundred times, and it didn’t even help to kick the door hard with her size five torture shoes.

  The door had been locked. The key was in Tilly’s handbag and Tilly was already halfway to Battersea. But Jo’s clothes were on the other side of that door. Jo knew this, Tilly had now been informed of it too, but there was nothing either of them could do about it.

  ‘Just go home in the dress, your clothes are totally safe,’ Tilly had told her on the mobile.

  ‘I’m not going home, that’s the frigging point,’ Jo had roared back, ‘I’m going to do some subtle undercover work in a frigging pink lame dress from frigging H&M. Unless you know of a 24-hour suit shop, I’m frigging . . . frigged.’

  ‘Oh just shut up now, Jo, it’s not the end of the world,’ Tilly had told her. ‘Button up the coat, take your disgusting old handbag with you and I’m sure no one will bat an eyelid.’

  ‘Disgusting old handbag?’ She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘My handbag is a Mulberry bag. It cost nearly a month’s wages and you told me it would be an investment purchase.’

  ‘I told you to get it in any colour apart from russet,’ Tilly snapped.

  ‘Oh did you? Well. . . well. . . so what?’ But she felt winded. All that money and it was the wrong bloody bag. That was bloody fashion for you. It was a game with so many tortuous and complicated rules, she really should never even try to play. ‘I have to go,’ she added.

  ‘I’m sorry about your suit,’ Tilly said. ‘And it’s not really a disgusting bag . . . I just said that because I was pissed off with you.’

  ‘Thank you. I like the flipping bag.’

  ‘It’s great, really,’ Tilly added. But it was no use, Jo didn’t believe her. Investment bloody purchase. Who was she trying to kid? It had been in fashion for five minutes, well no, apparently it had been the wrong colour for even those five minutes.

  And what about all those other investments she was supposed to be making? The pensions plan, the savings account, the rainy day fund? She had ‘invested’ in the stupid handbag. Maybe she could resell it on eBay? Just the thought of that made her feel sad.

  She was joined at the hip to this bag and to the big battered leather wallet inside it. Jeff had given her the wallet last year.

  ‘Jo, do you realize you’ve been here four years to the day?’ he’d said, casually leaning over her desk.

  ‘Have I?’ She’d felt horrified that the time had passed so quickly but it had also occurred to her that generally, she loved her job, and Jeff would probably be celebrating her 15th anniversary here one day.

  ‘Let me go and see what I can find in my freebie drawer to mark the occasion,’ he’d added.

  ‘Oh, you’re too kind! Yes, I could really do with another baseball cap with the crappy logo of a kids’ film that went straight-to-video.’

  ‘I’ll look out for one of those, then.’

  But he’d returned to her desk with the wallet. ‘You’re in luck,’ he’d said, handing it over.

  ‘You get freebies from Mulberry?’ she’d asked.

  He had just tapped his nose in reply.

  ‘Look, room for all the receipts you’re supposed to hand in to me slightly more often than twice a year, please,’ he’d added.

  ‘Thanks. This is really nice.’ She’d looked it over appreciatively.

  It had matched her bag exactly. Same colour, same leather, same design. What were the chances of that?

  Chapter Seventeen

  People miss out on 68 nights of sleep a year, doctors have revealed. Research shows Brits get 90 minutes less shut-eye a night than 25 years ago.

  Daily Mirror

  Still Friday: 9.15 p.m.

  ‘So what do I say at the door?’ Jo was on the phone to Bella getting the story straight before she turned up at Wolff-Meyer and risked giving anything away.

  ‘Oh Jo, hello,’ Bella gushed with quite unusual enthusiasm, ‘I’m so glad you got my message. I could really do with an assistant tonight, there’s much more work to do here than I was expecting. There’s corruption cropping up all over the interface and we’ll be running test drives all night long at this rate.’ Ah, this talk was obviously being made for the benefit of someone else in the room with her. Or, who knows, maybe someone else on the line?

  ‘There won’t be any problem getting into the building, I’m assured,’ Bella added. ‘Security have been told to expect Jo Dundas with ID, obviously’ – something of a little growl on the obviously – ‘and they’ll bring you up to where I’m working.’

  ‘Right, that’s fine . . . You’ve caught me on my way out, I’m afraid. Shall I just come like this? Or is there time for me to go home and change?’

  ‘I’d rather you just came straight over, but I suppose it depends what you’re wearing, Jo.’

  ‘A pink dress and heels,’ Jo replied. ‘No, I’m not even wearing the heels any more because they’re such damn agony.’

  ‘A pink dress and heels?’ There was something so trilly about Bella’s voice that there had to be someone else in the room listening. ‘Will we allow that, Mr Mortimer? Yes, Jo – a pink dress and heels will be fine.’

  Mr Mortimer? Jo wondered who he was. Bella wasn’t bringing anyone. He had to be from Wolff-Meyer. Maybe they were going to have a babysitter all night long. Maybe their plan to snoop round the computer system wouldn’t work out at all.

  But when Jo arrived at the drug company’s glittering headquarters, she was escorted smoothly through reception and down one of the many long marble-floored corridors, then up in a glass elevator to the computer-packed nerve centre, where Bella was already ensconced.

  ‘Hello, nice to see you, glad you could make it at such short notice,’ were Bella’s words of greeting.

  Once the security guard was out of earshot, Jo asked: ‘What about Mr Mortimer, is he still around?’

  ‘No, no. We’re all alone.’

  ‘Look at you,’ Jo smiled at her friend. ‘And I worried that I was overdressed for this job.’

  ‘I had a meeting thing, before I came here,’ Bella told her.

  ‘Aha.’

  There she was, the woman determined to take the corporate-computer-systems world by storm, in her latest ‘my career is going stellar’ purchase: a pale blue-grey tightly nipped-in suit. Vivienne Westwood? Yves St Laurent? Something astronomical anyway. Complicated lilac heels, three inches high, completed the look, along with the two remaining items of slick, Nineties career girl: vibrant red, I’m-here-for-business lipstick and a white blouse so well pressed you could hurt yourself on the edges. The handiwork, surely, of Helinka, the world’s most fabulous nanny and housekeeper.

  Bella ran a hand through her thick brown bob, one of those soft, on-the-shoulder rumpled ones that only very
expensive hairdressers can cut, undid the buttons of her jacket and flung her high-heeled feet up onto the desktop.

  ‘It’s Desperate Housewives meets Mission Impossible,’ Jo couldn’t resist.

  ‘OK, here’s the plan,’ Bella began, ignoring the teasing. ‘Most of the virus checking and software updating is going on over here,’ she gestured to two large screens grouped on her left. ‘It’s mainly automatic, it’ll alert me when anything needs to be done manually, or supervised. So over here –’ this meant the two computers on her right – ‘we can start digging around. We can run searches for key words, we might be able to find a log of meetings, minutes of issues discussed, that sort of thing.

  ‘But I warn you it’s going to take ages because the system is on total go-slow because of the check-up going on. So you might as well pull up a chair beside me, we’ll get comfortable and I bet you’d like some of my supper.’

  With this, Bella unzipped the large insulated bag at her feet and began putting metal tins up on the desk top, then two proper plates, cutlery and wine glasses.

  ‘What is all this?’ Jo asked, amazed at her friend’s forethought.

  ‘This is Helinka’s idea of a meal for one. Maybe she thinks I’m pregnant – or maybe she’s hoping to get me pregnant, so she has a baby to look after as well as my boys and my household and my hob.’

  Bella began to take the lids off the dishes and the tins, releasing appetizing aromas into the room. There was even a half-bottle of red, which had been carefully uncorked and then had the cork pushed back halfway in.

  ‘Oh, I have died and gone to heaven,’ was Jo’s comment as she leaned over one of the dishes and inhaled. ‘I’m starving, I’ve had one roe deer canapé since lunch.’

  ‘Well now you can have bortsch, latkes, blinis with smoked salmon, red cabbage casserole, lamb stew with dumplings . . . just your standard Eastern European evening fare.’

  ‘This is so unbelievable.’ Jo settled down into the chair beside her and began to help herself to some of the food. ‘I can’t believe you have a nanny who cleans your house to palace standard and cooks you amazing takeaway picnics. That is just so unfair.’