It was also impossible not to breathe a sigh of relief to read that the caustic affair had finally ended, although Kate’s fallout with her boss and her state of mind about feeling trapped and miserable in both her job and her life, sounded like there could be something more going on with her than just a bit of depression. A case of post-natal depression, perhaps?
Isla had a friend back in Edinburgh who’d suffered badly with post-natal depression after a particularly traumatic birth, until she’d managed to get the help that she needed, which Isla recalled had been a combination of talking to a psychotherapist and prescription drugs.
So, Kate having had the foresight to go to the doctor was a positive move, suggesting she had control over her rational thoughts and her own well-being. Except, of course, that the drugs he had prescribed to her back then sounded rather brutal. Internal bleeding? Really? Poor Kate!
Isla flicked forward through a few of the journals filled with pages and pages of Kate’s erratic handwriting until she found some entries that looked a lot tidier and certainly a lot more upbeat.
A reflection of a new mood perhaps?
Feeling hopeful, she settled herself down to read on.
Kate’s Journal – May 1975
Harrogate. North Yorkshire
Something amazing happened today. Something that felt like fate and karma. I was coming out of the newsagents on the high street when I bumped into Mary Dodd, an old university friend of mine, who I hadn’t seen in quite a while. She looked all glammed-up in a tweed skirt suit and high-heeled shoes. I knew I looked drab in comparison so I couldn’t help but notice how Mary’s fine dark hair was cut in a short-feathered style à la Liza Minelli in Cabaret and that she was smiling at me through a slick of bright red lipstick. I wasn’t wearing any lipstick, as I haven’t bothered with it for ages, and my own hair was a grown-out version of Jane Fonda’s long shag. I asked Mary where she was going and she told me she had a meeting in London and that she was off to take the train.
‘London?’ I said. ‘But I thought you were with Yorkshire Scene? Don’t tell me it’s folded?’
I smiled sympathetically but she laughed and clutched her handbag and looked a little anxious.
‘Erm, no. It’s doing quite well, actually,’ she said. Then, all in a rush, she explained that she was attending an interview in London for a rather exciting position as Entertainments Editor with Rich & Famous magazine.
I looked on as she screwed up her pointy nose and stamped her little feet to show how excited she was about it. ‘Do I really look glam?’ she asked. ‘I hope so, because I’m wearing actual Dior. I ordered it from Paris especially.’
I didn’t know what to say, because I was feeling so envious and more than a little peeved. It still stung how Mary had got the job at Yorkshire Scene magazine over me when, fresh from university, I’d really wanted that job. I had come back to Harrogate especially for it and thought it was simply mine for the taking, until little Miss Mary Poppins here came along and snatched it away from under my nose. Then I’d had to settle for working at a rag of a local newspaper instead.
I smiled and wished her jolly good luck and Mary hurried away towards the train station.
Once she was gone, I saw my own reflection in a new light from the newsagent shop window and I suddenly became filled with an earth-shattering renewed hatred of my job and my life. The power of it seemed to rip right through me and I decided right there that I wanted to work for a glossy magazine and not a boring old newspaper. I wanted to interview the rich and famous not the poor and infamous. And damn it, I wanted to wear Dior suits and bright bloody red lipstick.
So feeling determined and fuelled by retribution, I went straight back inside the shop and bought the April issue of Rich & Famous. Elizabeth Taylor was on the cover. Elizabeth was wearing a beautiful scooped-neck gown and, around her milky neck was a yellow gold rope-pattern necklace with the heart-shaped rock of a diamond that Richard Burton had given her. The stone was large and flat, with an Arabic inscription on either side, set with rubies and diamonds. Still seething with envy, I vowed that I would no longer settle for staid and boring and that today was the day I would transform my life. I was determined to land the job at Rich & Famous for myself.
I felt like I had a fire burning inside me as I made a note of both the telephone and facsimile numbers of the entertainments desk at Rich & Famous and made a call telling them to expect a copy of my curriculum vitae. I then rushed back to my desk. It only took around twenty minutes to send a page of text to another fax machine, which was much quicker than taking the bus across town or a train to London or putting a letter in the post.
I knew I’d impress Rich & Famous before I even got there.
In anticipation of landing a fabulous new job and starting a completely new life, I went back into town and blew most of my wages shopping for a Dior-esque skirt suit and high heels. I also found the exact shade of Red Temptation lipstick that Liz had been wearing on the cover of the April issue.
I became a different person today and it’s all thanks to Mary Dodd.
I’ve just had a huge row with mum. She’s managed to totally ruin what would have been a very happy day for me. I was ecstatic at being offered the job with Rich & Famous and, when I broke the news, my dad was fine about it. He wished me luck and said he was happy for me and that it did sound like a fantastic job and a great opportunity. But my mum told me I was being selfish. ‘Selfish to whom?’ I asked her. ‘Dad has just got retirement and now has a good pension. You don’t need me for anything. It’s not like I have any real reason to stay here. I think it’s you who is being selfish!’
‘And what about Maggie?’ she yelled back at me.
‘What about Maggie? It’s not like she is relying on me for love and support. I don’t have any responsibilities to her at all!’
My mum slapped my face. She’d never hit me ever before. EVER.
Chapter Seventeen
Kate’s Journal – June/July 1975
London
I’ve rented a nice little apartment just several tube stops from Kings Road. I don’t know anyone well enough to meet up after work yet, so I’m spending time exploring all the shops like Biba and Laura Ashley and Mary Quant looking for trendy stuff to buy on payday. Everyone dresses so well in London. Money’s a bit tight for me just now but I’m feeling very excited and not at all lonely. I’m not missing Yorkshire. I love being in the big city. I feel like my life is starting over. I’m excited for the first time in a very long time. I’m going to be the best Entertainments Editor that Rich and Famous ever had!
My weekdays are exhausting. I’m up at six am so I can wash my hair and put on my make up and get to work in time to be at my desk for 8.30am. Everyone starts at 9am but I want to appear keen so that I can get considered for the best assignments. I’m told the more favoured you are by our editor-in-chief the more important the celebrity that you get to interview for the magazine.
To save some money, I’ve been spending my evenings and weekends on my sofa-bed reading Jackie Collins novels. After getting The World is Full of Married Men, and her latest called Sins, out of the local library, I feel rather inspired to write a novel myself. I could call it The World is Full of Sinful Women. I could see how a career writing bestselling glamour fiction would be a natural progression for me after working with Rich & Famous. My job is exhausting and I’m working long hours but I love it and it’s going really well. Everyone is friendly and everyone seems to like me. My editor-in-chief, Coco, is an extremely glamorous woman whose real name is Charlotte. She has inspired me to shorten my own name from Katherine to Kate.
This morning we had a staff meeting. I’m trying to learn all the ‘buzz words’ that the more ‘switched on’ people use all the time. We have meetings on the last day of every month and they are meant to keep editorial staff ‘in the loop’ during which time everyone is encouraged to ‘think outside the box’ for features in the next issue. I had the bright idea of pursuing Jackie
Collins in an over-the-telephone interview. I was really excited to be given the ‘green light’ by our editor-in-chief.
I’ve been so busy at work that the days are flying by. I haven’t had the spare time or the energy to keep up with my journal as much as I used to but I am still getting on really well at work and I’m learning so much about the magazine. I get on particularly well with Coco. I found out that we are both Taureans. Today I plucked up the courage to ask her what perfume she wears as she always smells so nice. She told me it’s Chanel No.5. I went out to get it but can’t afford it just yet – it’s almost ten pounds a bottle – so I bought a bottle of a new fragrance called Charlie instead.
My transatlantic Jackie Collins telephone interview went fantastically well. I tried not to come over as a gushing fan and I felt Jackie and I had a real rapport. We were like we were old friends chatting and gossiping and laughing. She assured me that her fictional plots and her books’ characters were all inspired by real events and real people. She also confessed to me that she’d often had to ‘tone down’ all the real and exuberant tales of debauchery going on at the other side of the Atlantic to successfully fictionalise them in her books. Imagine that? Well I could!
I realise, since chatting to Jackie, that I really want to go to Hollywood and Los Angeles and mix in the same circles as she does with ‘the rich sinners and notoriously renowned’ so that I too can write about them and become a multi-million bestselling author.
I ate lunch in the diner across the street today instead of the staff canteen. I discovered that lots of American’s eat there and I love to sit and hear them talk. Their accent is so appealing. My Yorkshire accent, which I’ve desperately been trying to lose ever since I arrived in London, sounds so backwards and stupid here, so I’m practising speaking a little slower than I usually do and with a slight drawl. I’ve been using words like ‘hi’ instead of ‘hello’ and ‘sidewalk’ instead of ‘pavement’ and ‘cool’ instead of ‘super’ to tone down my accent and sound more interesting. Jenny, our fashion features editor, actually asked me today if I was from The States. Of course, I told her I wasn’t - but that my mum was - and that’s why I sounded a little bit American. It was a terrible lie but she won’t ever know that my mum has never left Yorkshire.
I have big news. Coco called me into her office today and said she absolutely loved my Jackie Collins interview feature and that she wants to drop it in as our main celebrity feature in the next issue. That almost never happens - as our features are usually scheduled for many months ahead. This means that she absolutely loves me and my work and that the stars and not the sky is the limit!
Isla realised she was smiling and indeed some of the entries that she had read had also made her gasp or chuckle. Kate’s job at Rich & Famous magazine sounded terribly important and exciting and her life in London was such a colourful and vibrant contrast to her previous life in Yorkshire.
She was more than happy for her at last. Although it bothered her a little that she hadn’t once mentioned Maggie or her mum and dad back home all this time. Perhaps she could simply put this down to Kate only managing a short entry once a week in her journal because of her busy schedule.
Feeling that she might read just one more entry before she retired for the night, Isla delved into the jewellery box for the next journal in the pile. This one, in contrast to the last art-deco inspired cover, had a glittery image of the Statue of Liberty on the front of it and random newspaper articles and writing paper and postcards stuffed inside and jutting out of it.
Kate’s Journal -August 1975
London
After our staff meeting today, I overheard a conversation between Coco and Paula, who is our head of Celebrity Features. It caught my ear because I heard New York being mentioned and so I made it my business to linger a while and listen. When I heard that Paula had landed a fabulous assignment involving a ten-day trip ‘across the pond’ and that she was leaving the next day, I was green with envy. So envious, in fact, that I gave the American diner a pass at lunchtime and made sure to sit next to Paula in the staff canteen. We chatted casually about work before I broached the subject of her trip and, of course, as she finished drinking her coffee, she was more than delighted to tell me all about it.
‘Well, yes, tomorrow I’m flying to New York and then onto LA and Vegas.’
‘And I suppose along the way, you’ll get to interview all the rich and famous in pop and show business?’ I clarified with a sigh in order to disguise the bitterness in my voice.
She waved her hand with an air of nonchalance. ‘Well, yes. That’s the plan. But of course, it will be exhausting. It’s such an awfully tight itinerary of popping from one celebrity party to the next all the way from the east to the west coast.’
‘Oh, you lucky thing. I bet you can hardly wait.’ I replied, smiling as nicely as I could while my stomach churned with jealousy. ‘Another coffee, Paula?’
Coco called me into her office today to tell me the sad news about Paula, who had become terribly sick overnight with excruciating stomach pains and had to be rushed to hospital. I said how shocked I was. Especially as I’d only had lunch with her yesterday when she had seemed perfectly fine to me.
‘Maybe it’s something horribly serious like appendicitis?’ I suggested.
‘Look…’ Coco said to me, only slightly hesitantly, while tapping her polished finger nails anxiously on her desk. ‘I can’t go. Elizabeth, my deputy editor, is still on holiday. There really is no one else I can spare from my senior staff. Can you do it, Kate? I mean, would you be willing to take over this assignment at such short notice?’
Naturally, I said I’d be happy to help. So, this afternoon, I was fully briefed with the itinerary, given first class plane tickets, a VIP pass for Studio 54, an expense budget, and a hit list of celebrities deemed worthy of being labelled Rich & Famous!
Isla, both flabbergasted and in awe of the pace of Kate’s new and glamorous career, turned the page to find a postcard of the Empire State Building and the next few entries written on sheets of headed paper from exclusive American hotels, all held into the journal with paperclips.
She couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Mary Dodd and Paula, the poor colleague at the magazine, whom had suddenly become sick and couldn’t go on the coast-to-coast assignment.
The suddenness and the description of the symptoms sounded so ominous that she couldn’t help but suspect that Kate might have had something to do with it. She’d previously mentioned the pills that had given her chronic stomach pain and there had certainly been no attempt in the writing to hide her unscrupulous nature.
But could she? Would she ever do such a thing?
Looking up at Kate’s bemused smile in her portrait, just as a rumble of thunder sounded overhead and a crack of lightning lit up the room, gave Isla the answer she feared.
Kate’s Journal – August 1975
The Plaza Hotel, 5th Avenue, Manhattan.
New York City
Over the past two days, I’ve had absolutely no time to write anything, least of all in my journal. Paula was right, the itinerary is exhausting and my time here has been totally wild. I’d no idea that life could be so much fun. Right now, I’m staying in a hotel famous for being the haunt of the rich and famous on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Eighth that looks like a fairy-tale castle with turrets and flags and everything. I’m living the American dream!
I didn’t realise how hot it would be here in New York so today I shopped in the mall and bought some shorts called ‘hot pants’. As my legs are by far my best assets, I’m wearing them with knee length suede Navajo boots and getting lots of compliments as I walk down the street. In Greenwich Village this afternoon on my way to interview Grace Jones I even got a wolf whistle. That would never happen to me back in Harrogate. In New York I feel alive. I feel beautiful!
Today I casually bumped into David Bowie and managed to get an impromptu interview. He is staying on the floor above me here at The Pla
za and happened to be in the elevator when I got in it. I couldn’t believe my luck. I’m just about to have a bath and get dressed as I’m heading out to interview Cher and afterwards I’m heading over to Studio 54 because Bianca Jagger and her entourage will be there. I expect we’ll party all night long!
Last night was totally wild. I got back to my suite here at 5am this morning and had to sleep off my hangover. My celebrity features are a little bit behind schedule but I’m making copious notes and I’m sure Coco will understand – especially when I tell her about David – she’s a huge fan. I must find time to call her later and file some copy as my butler has just informed me that I’ve missed some calls. NY is fabulous but tomorrow I’m headed for LA!
Millennium Biltmore Hotel, Grand Avenue.
Downtown Los Angeles
I’ve been doing everything expected of me here in LA and more, yet Coco is being a real bitch about it. Apparently, I’m not reporting in often enough and she says my expenses are ‘considerable and out of control’. I mean, if I’m supposed to be out mixing with the millionaire stars of stage and screen, then considerable expenses are a prerequisite, are they not?
I didn’t get to bed last night at all and yet, somehow, I have still managed to file all my features today. With all the effort that was required to do so, when I have the hangover from hell, I’d at least expect some thanks and congratulations. But no, instead I got another arctic blast from the other side of the pond from Coco, accusing me of living a hedonistic lifestyle instead of writing about one. I really don’t understand. She herself said it was okay for me to hire photographers and limousines, stay in five-star hotels and drink champagne and eat in Michelin starred restaurants. I mean, how can one mix with the Hollywood God’s without doing so?
Island in the Sun Page 12