by Lindsey Kelk
‘Yeah, about that …’ She wove her fingers together and twisted them awkwardly. ‘We’re having a little trouble with it.’
‘Trouble?’
Meep.
‘IT are coming down, like, any second now,’ she said quickly. ‘It should be fixed super soon. The pages don’t want to load or something. It’s stuck on last week’s issue.’
‘Doesn’t the whole company use the same system?’ I asked, a trickle of cold desperation running down my spine.
‘Everyone’s set up independently,’ she explained. ‘In case this happens. I could maybe call Jesse and see if he knows how to fix it?’
‘I’ll call him,’ I said with a sigh. ‘What do we do if the system doesn’t start working soon?’
‘We’ll go with hard copies,’ she said. ‘Old school. I’ll make mock-ups of each page and fix a sign-off sheet for everyone to initial once they’ve checked them.’
‘Right.’ I sat back in my chair and cursed the day Mary Stein met Bob Spencer. Bobbity Bob Bastard Bob. ‘Let’s start doing that now. No one wants to be here all night. And let me know what IT says.’
‘Angela,’ Megan said, looking at the floor and sniffing, ‘is she really going to be sticking around?’
‘Who knows?’ It didn’t take a genius to work out whom she was talking about. Thankfully. ‘Honestly, I can’t see it. But you don’t need to worry, she’s not going to fire anyone and if she even looks at you the wrong way, tell me.’
‘It’s so hard to believe she’s related to Delia,’ she said in a whisper. No one wanted to be on Cici’s shit list. ‘I was talking to some of the girls who worked with her on The Look and they told me all the shit she used to do up there.’
‘She’s not going to be doing it down here,’ I promised, almost sounding as though I believed it myself.
‘I don’t want to be an asshole,’ Megan smiled awkwardly, ‘but if she wants to, who’s gonna stop her? She’s a Spencer.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I replied. ‘She’s a Spencer, she’s not Superman. I’m watching her.’
The look on Megan’s face did not convince me that the team had faith in my leadership abilities.
‘When people told you those stories, did anyone tell you about the time I kicked her arse in London?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, doubtfully. ‘But I wasn’t sure. You’re so nice.’
‘No, I’m English,’ I replied. ‘Americans often get the two confused.’
Unsurprisingly, Jesse’s phone went to voicemail sixteen times in between nine a.m. and midday. By lunchtime, I had given up calling and resorted to sending a short but not terribly sweet email that suggested he give me a call and that I would see him in the office the following day. When he didn’t reply to that either, I went for a brief sweep of social media but he had gone to full radio silence so he was either genuinely sick, genuinely pissed off or dead. I didn’t know which to hope for as none of them made me feel like I was going to the top of Santa’s ‘nice’ list.
On the upside, the crisis had really pulled the office together. A lot of people, me included, had never sent a magazine to print without our online approval system so Megan’s mock-up of the magazine made for a fun novelty. By one o’clock, we were already halfway through the approvals, way further than the average Monday, and whether it was because everyone was shitting themselves or because they just wanted to go home, I didn’t care. Even Cici seemed to be pulling her weight after the drama. Or at least she’d been answering the phones, taking messages and hadn’t tried to fire anyone in the last three hours. When the intercom buzzed, I answered without looking, assuming she was offering to get me my fourth coffee of the day. I was already shaking from ODing on caffeine but every minute she was in Starbucks was a minute she wasn’t in the office.
‘Angela, you have some visitors.’ Her voice was clipped and cold, making me look up through the glass wall. ‘They don’t have an appointment and I have explained that you’re very busy.’
Held at her desk, I saw a very, very annoyed-looking Jenny, accompanied by Louisa and Grace, both seeming to be struggling to keep their fists under control. And she hadn’t even been involved in last summer’s brawl, bless her tiny, cotton socks.
‘They can come in,’ I replied as quickly as I could. ‘They can always come in. You don’t need to buzz me.’
I watched her quirk an eyebrow before hanging up and waving my friends into my office.
‘I’m not sure about this, Angie,’ Jenny said, flinging the door open and not even waiting for Louisa to shut it before she let rip. ‘Once a psycho, always a psycho. I don’t care if they upped her meds, no amount of Xanax can chill a bitch like that.’
‘She hasn’t upped her meds.’ I stood to give them all a quick hug. ‘She went to India. And I know. Everything. All of it. What’s up?’
‘So, merry Christmas.’ Jenny paused and prompted Grace to give me half a chocolate chip cookie and a grin. ‘We know you’re totally super crazy busy and that it’s press day and this makes us complete and utter assholes but could you watch Gracie for an hour?’
‘Say if you can’t,’ Louisa butted in before I even had a chance to explain why it was impossible. I noticed she was in her jeans and sensible shoes again, her ponytail back in place. ‘I know today is your mad day. We can just go home and do Christmas things, it’s fine really. We could make paper chains.’
I couldn’t imagine for a second that Grace knew what paper chains were but the very thought of it was enough to make her bottom lip start to quiver.
‘It is a bit mad, yeah,’ I said, feeling horrible for taking the cookie. Which I absolutely was not giving back regardless of the lip wobble. ‘Where did you want to go that you can’t take madam?’
‘James got us last-minute tickets to the Christmas thing at Radio City Music Hall,’ she explained. ‘But Grace won’t sit through it, I know she won’t. I mean, she’s about ready for her nap but if she wakes up and screams blue murder, it’ll be a nightmare.’
‘They’re front row, centre,’ Jenny added, waving two tickets in my face. As though that would help her case. I couldn’t be more jealous. ‘And Erin is out of town at Thomas’s parents’ place or we totally would have asked her to take Gracie for a couple of hours.’
‘We did have a full cookie for you but, well, she ate it.’ Lou looked so apologetic and I felt like such a twat. ‘Don’t worry, we don’t have to go. I’m sure James can find someone else to take the tickets.’
I looked at Grace, her face covered in cookie and her eyes drooping in her pushchair. She waved at me lazily and stuck out her tongue. Behind the pushchair Jenny and Lou, wrapped up in scarves, gloves and stylish but not terribly warm-looking coats, huddled together, the light of hope still in Jenny’s eyes. Damn them, they knew I couldn’t say no to a Christmas-themed activity. After all, if she was going to sleep, what was the difference? I was going to be stuck to my desk all afternoon anyway, and it might be nice to have some sensible English company for a change, even if that company was under two years old and occasionally pooped itself.
‘She can hang out here,’ I said, immediately regretting my decision. ‘What time will you be back?’
‘Four, four thirty tops.’ Jenny clapped her leather gloves together and did a little dance. ‘We’ll bring you some shit, I promise. I’ll kidnap a Rockette for you.’
‘Just go,’ I said, rushing them out of the office before I changed my mind. ‘Have fun. I’m jealous.’
‘She’ll go right to sleep,’ Lou said, ignoring the fact that Jenny was stood by Cici’s desk making hissing noises. Cici was studiously ignoring the two of them and staring at her nails. ‘Don’t give her any sugar.’
‘No sugar, check.’ I saluted and waved them into the lifts. ‘See you later.’
Ignoring the look on my assistant’s face, I turned back towards my office to see the previously sleepy Grace leaping out of her pushchair and grabbing the remaining half-cookie from my desk and shoving it int
o her face.
‘Indian giver,’ I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
‘That’s offensive to native Americans,’ Cici said over my shoulder before handing me the updated mock-up magazine. ‘Fashion pages. Megan needs them back in fifteen minutes.’
I nodded and tried to pretend Grace wasn’t climbing up the bookshelf and throwing herself onto the armchair in the corner of my office as we spoke.
‘I might need twenty,’ I replied. ‘She’s nuts.’
‘Let me look after her,’ Cici offered, crouching down in front of the armchair and clapping at Grace with wide eyes. ‘I love children.’
Yeah, right.
‘Is that for lunch or dinner?’ I asked.
‘Really, I have a way with kids.’ She made goldfish faces at my goddaughter while she spoke and held out her arms for a hug. Grace immediately leapt onto her new playmate, grabbed a handful of hair extensions and pulled. Hard. I winced, waiting for her to chuck the toddler out of the eighteenth-floor window, but instead all Cici did was laugh. A genuine, sweet tinkle of a laugh, not her raucous LOL in real life guffaw but an actual, honest to God chuckle. I pinched myself and snapped back to reality.
‘She’s fine,’ I said, marching over and grabbing Gracie out of her arms and getting a slap in the face for my trouble. Someone needed to teach that girl some manners. And it wasn’t going to be me. ‘We’ll be fine.’
No matter how tempting it was to palm Grace-sitting duties off on someone else when I was busy, Louisa would end me if I gave her baby to someone who made Cruella De Vil look like an animal rights activist.
‘I’ll go get her some juice.’ Cici stood up and smoothed out the tugs and pulls in her outfit. ‘And check back in twenty.’
‘That would be great,’ I replied, just as Grace sneezed on my shoulder. The amount of crap that came out of someone so small … ‘But we’ll be fine.’
Cici nodded and shrugged, leaving us alone in the office.
‘We’ll be just fine, Gracie,’ I told her as I wiped down my sticky cashmere. ‘You would have to get up to some pretty evil shit before I asked Cici for help. And you’re not going to do that, are you?’
She sat prettily on the edge of the armchair and shook her head, smiling and swinging her pink T-bar-clad feet back and forth.
‘Of course not,’ I said, sitting back at my desk with the magazine mock-up. ‘You’re a bloody angel.’
‘Cici …’ Not even fifteen minutes later, I threw myself around my office door, panting. ‘I need your help.’
There weren’t many sentences in the English language I’d never imagined myself saying but that was one of them. My shiny new assistant jumped out of her chair and came running as fast as her Louboutins would carry her, which was actually surprisingly fast.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, closing the door behind us.
In lieu of more words, I pointed to the corner of my office that Grace was currently terrorising. Everything that had ever been on a shelf was now on the floor, pages had been torn out of magazines, she was covered, head to toe, in slashes of black ink and fluorescent yellow and was traipsing up and down the office with my Jimmy Choo black patent pumps on her feet and my grey suede Gucci Mary-Janes on her hands. This was entirely my fault for keeping such an extensive shoe library under my desk. Of course, she hadn’t bothered with the Topshop ballet pumps or the Aldo heels, had she? Oh no, like most terrorists-in-training, this one had great taste. I had got up at six a.m. on the first day of the Saks sale and then fought like a dog to get those Mary-Janes, there was no way they were going out like this.
Things had started off so well. I’d sat Grace in the armchair with an old copy of the magazine, a pad and the closest thing I had to felt-tips – a Sharpie marker and a highlighter – and had gone back to my desk to review the fashion pages. The next time I’d looked up, she’d given herself a David Bowie makeover with the pens and shredded the magazine. Before I could even get to my feet, she was off, tearing around the office and knocking over anything she could get her hands on. At first I thought she was tired and then I put it down to acting out because her mum had stuck her with me for the afternoon. Within three minutes, I decided she was clearly mentally imbalanced and needed electroshock therapy.
‘Help me?’ I begged. ‘Every time I get near her she screams.’
‘Oh, I figured that was you,’ Cici cooed, waving at Grace who had sat herself in my chair and was happily spinning in circles. Not that I could call her for that, I obviously did it every time the office was empty. ‘I thought maybe you were just super excited about that holiday sweater spread.’
‘Well, I was,’ I admitted. ‘But most of the screaming was the baby.’
‘Hey, honey.’ She tilted her head to the side and smiled at Grace. Grace stopped gnawing on the heel of my Choo and smiled back. ‘Want to hang out somewhere fun?’
Of course. It made sense that they would have a kinship – they were both completely mad and dead set on destroying my designer footwear.
Cici held out her hand and Grace clambered out of the chair to take it, gathering up her colouring in as she went.
‘Bye, Anala,’ she said as they sailed out of my office together. I held my breath and counted to ten, waiting until they had locked themselves in the tiny meeting room, and then ran to the toilet. My bladder couldn’t take all this stress. Or the four cups of coffee I’d drunk already.
Post-pee, I immediately felt better. Now, to conquer the fashion pages and get the magazine sign-off back on track.
As soon as I found the fashion pages.
I scoured my desk, searching underneath my keyboard and my mouse pad, even getting on my hands and knees to look underneath, which seemed a bit like overkill when the entire bloody thing was made out of glass, but still, you could never be too sure. I just couldn’t work out where they could be. There wasn’t enough room in my office to swing a cat, or at least a very nice Alexander Wang handbag, as Jenny had proved the first time she came to visit and did just that. She broke a mug and knocked over a massive jar of Skittles. I couldn’t have nice things. But that wasn’t the pressing issue at that exact moment. The pressing issue was that ten pages of magazine had completely disappeared from my desk in the three minutes I had taken out to have a wee. This was why we needed Jesse. To stop me from going for a wee whenever I felt like it.
Maybe, I thought in desperation, just maybe Cici had come in and taken them back, thinking I was finished. I looked over to her desk but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the meeting room either.
‘Megan,’ I said, running over to the door and pasting an unconvincing smile onto my face. ‘Did Cici give you the fashion pages?’
‘Nuh-uh.’ She shook her head and tapped her watch. ‘Did you give them to her?’
‘No.’ I was reluctant to admit I couldn’t find them. I really didn’t want an arse-kicking. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Should I reprint the fashion pages?’ Megan clearly had one priority and one priority only. ‘I’d need to get Chloe to go over them again.’
‘Let me have one more look.’ I ducked my head back into my office. Maybe they had fallen off my desk during Grace’s explosive exit. ‘And can you see if you can drag Cici up from whatever crack in the floor she’s fallen into?’
It wouldn’t be difficult to lose Cici – she was so skinny she could easily get stuck behind a filing cabinet or something – but it seemed really unlikely that Grace would be so hard to find. Between the trail of sticky handprints and the banshee-like wailing-slash-maniacal laughter, she was usually a bit of a giveaway. Satisfied, or rather desperately freaked out, that the pages were in fact no longer in my office, I went back to ask for them to be reprinted. Yes, it was going to be embarrassing but it was still going to be better than Megan coming into my office in five minutes to beat me with a massive stick.
‘I’m really sorry but I’m going to need those pages again.’ I attempted to woo Megan with my shiniest smile, showing al
most all of my teeth, and another gingerbread man but for whatever reason she wasn’t reacting. In fact, she looked more freaked out than I did. So I pulled the second gingerbread man out from behind my back. Still nothing. This girl had a heart of stone.
‘Uh, Angela, did you tell Cici to take that little girl out someplace?’ she asked, an incredibly hopeful look on her face.
This didn’t sound good.
‘I did not,’ I replied, magazine panic falling, Grace panic rising.
‘Because Chloe said she saw them putting on jackets and taking the elevator.’ Megan pointed over at the fashion desk, basically directing me to blame another messenger. ‘While you were in the bathroom.’
Seriously, a girl couldn’t even go for a whizz around here without the entire world falling apart.
‘Right, I’ll call her.’ I tried to block all images of Cici kidnapping Grace and running off to India to live in a commune from my imagination. Now wasn’t the time for it to be active. Now was the time for it to be very quiet and sit in a corner. ‘And you print out the pages because all this is fine and they’re probably outside getting some fresh air or maybe fetching me a coffee or something and it’s fine.’
‘Maybe they went out to look at the snow?’ Chloe suggested, raising her voice but not daring to stand up.
‘It’s snowing?’ I squealed and ran to the window. Snow! Christmas snow! ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I’ll call her. Me, phone, you, pages, everybody’s happy.’
‘Sure.’ Megan’s eyes widened and her mouth narrowed into a tiny cat’s arse of terror as she clicked away at her computer. ‘Everybody’s happy.’
My phone was ringing as I stepped back inside my office and I grabbed the receiver without hesitation, a) because my assistant wasn’t there to do it for me and b) because I was hoping it was said assistant calling to see if I wanted two or three sugars in my chai latte and not to explain that she had kidnapped my goddaughter.