Be Careful What You Wish For

by Gemma Crisp

  Nina was a hopeless magazine addict; she blamed it on having nothing to do while growing up on her family’s cattle stud in the Northern Territory. Always a fast reader, once she’d ploughed through her library books she started to devour her grandmother’s well-thumbed copies of Woman’s Day and New Idea, then moved on to her mum’s collection of Vogues. She loved everything about magazines, from the smell of the ink and the feel of the paper stock to the chatty tone of the articles as they spruiked the latest fashion and beauty products. Nina’s magazine habit made her feel like she had her finger on the pulse – she loved knowing about the next big thing, whether it was a nail polish colour, up-and-coming celebrity or new social media site. She never missed reading the editor’s letters and always looked out for her favourite writers’ by-lines. Whenever they disappeared from the staff list at the front of the magazine, she practically went into mourning, until they popped up on the masthead of another glossy. ‘Here comes the magazine tragic,’ Tess always said when Nina came home with an armful of new issues. Some people went to the gym or to the movies for stress relief or escapism; Nina read magazines. It was an expensive habit, but she had no intention of quitting any time soon.

  Forcing herself to ignore the glossy covers that promised perfect hair in sixty seconds, the secret to true happiness and, in Glamour’s case, the DIY trick that would stick a rocket up her sex life, Nina reluctantly left the magazines in her bag and checked her phone – only twenty minutes till the late shift arrived to start handover with herself and Annika. ‘That’s only one thousand, two hundred seconds till you can get out of here,’ she told herself. ‘Then you can spend the rest of the afternoon reading. Maybe with a cheeky G&T or two. How’s that for a deal?’ She quickly swiped on her lip gloss, took one last look at the stash of mags, then slammed the locker door shut and headed back to reception.

  two

  Instead of heading back to the one-bedroom flat she shared with Tess and Camille after clocking off from her shift, Nina found herself traipsing through the back streets of Soho until she was standing outside Freedom on Wardour Street. It was one of the first places Tess had taken her during her two-week London taste-test, and even though the cool crowd had chewed it up and spat it out long ago, Nina still had a soft spot for the cafe/bar. Its bright orange leather banquettes reminded her of massive nights in the downstairs club area and boozy Sunday afternoon sessions with Johan. The service was always terrible and the food beyond ordinary, but there was something about the place that drew Nina to it.

  Settling in next to the window overlooking the grimy street, she pulled the stash of magazines out of her bag, while trying to catch the eye of the hipster Brazilian guy who was preening behind the bar. ‘Why do I keep coming here?’ Nina muttered under her breath, trying unsuccessfully to keep her frustration in check as he refused to acknowledge her. One of the side effects of working in the hospitality industry was that Nina couldn’t help judging waitresses, barmen, supermarket cashiers, shop assistants . . . pretty much anyone in a customer service role. Having been trained up to the Bickford’s exacting standards, it grated when she stepped outside of the five-star bubble and had to deal with less than attentive service. Then again, comparing one of London’s top hotels with a past-its-prime bar wasn’t exactly the fairest of contests; Nina doubted the barman had ever been given a designer handbag, a fistful of fifty-pound notes or a pair of limited-edition Nike trainers as a tip for his efforts. Even Tess and Camille couldn’t get over how much swag Nina came home with, especially during the summer when the crème de la crème of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh descended on London to escape the blistering heat at home.

  Having given up waiting for the barman to tire of admiring himself in the reflection of the cocktail shakers, Nina was on the way to the bar when she caught sight of Freedom’s magazine rack. ‘Is that a new Marie Claude? I don’t remember seeing that cover . . .’ Gravitating towards it like Charlie Sheen to a mountain of cocaine, she picked up the magazine then couldn’t help grabbing a few of the celebrity gossip weeklies that were hiding behind it. ‘I still haven’t read last weekend’s Sunday Times Style magazine either,’ she thought, adding it to the growing pile under her arm. Nina wasn’t fussy when it came to magazines – glossy fashion bibles, weekly trash, free newspaper supplements, obscure indie titles: she’d read anything that had a masthead.

  Putting her haul down on top of the bar with a heavy thump, she rolled her eyes as the Brazilian pretended he’d only just noticed she existed.

  ‘You want something?’ he asked arrogantly.

  ‘No, I’ve been waiting fifteen minutes in an empty cafe just for shits and giggles, while Pretty Boy behind the bar plays with his hair,’ Nina said tersely. ‘Can I have a gin – Hendrick’s, not Tanqueray – with half tonic, half soda, in a tall glass, with a slice of cucumber . . . please,’ she added quickly, before he started to translate her bitchy words in his head.

  ‘Make that two,’ said a lightly accented voice behind her. Nina swivelled around, almost sending the magazine stack toppling to the floor.

  ‘Johan! What are you doing here? Did we organise to meet up after my shift and I’ve forgotten about it?’ Nina asked as she hugged her best friend.

  ‘No, I was just walking past after having coffee with Fred at Caffè Nero and spotted a small blonde fluffball raping and pillaging the magazine rack – I figured it had to be the one and only Nina Morey, desperate for her fix after a fun-filled shift at the Bickford, so I thought I’d join you.’ He smiled while checking out the Brazilian’s butt as he measured out the drinks. ‘Mmmm, I see Freedom has recruited some tasty new talent,’ he murmured, scooping up the magazines with one massive hand and carrying both glasses in the other as they made their way back to the table.

  Nina had met Johan on her third day on the job. She’d been learning the shift-handover ropes when the sound of bouncing footsteps interrupted her training. Sauntering through the lobby from the back-of-house area was one hundred and ninety-five centimetres of Mother Nature’s finest work.

  ‘Rob who?’ Nina had thought as her eyeballs were taken hostage by shoulders the width of a three-seater couch, the black hair styled just so, striking green Eurasian eyes and huge hands with perfectly groomed fingernails. ‘You know what they say about men with big hands,’ she couldn’t help reminding herself, as her future husband strode towards the front desk, dressed in the hotel’s dapper uniform of striped grey trousers, crisp white shirt and matching striped tie topped off with a black morning coat complete with tails. The man was sex on a stick.

  ‘Hey, Johan, how was your weekend?’ asked Stéphanie, the French receptionist who was talking Nina through the handover process.

  ‘Precious, I’ve just come off a three-day bender – don’t talk to Daddy now, he can’t quite cope just yet. Let him go hide in the back with the reservations girlies for fifteen minutes until the rest of the late shift arrives,’ he had replied in a tone that had an unmistakeable tinge of gay.

  ‘Bugger,’ Nina muttered, without realising she’d said it aloud.

  Stéphanie smiled. ‘I know. Don’t worry, you wouldn’t be the first woman to be disappointed that Johan likes men. His mother is German and his father is Korean, if you’re wondering. The girl you replaced spent her first six months here refusing to accept that he wasn’t straight and would always ask him out on dates – poor Johan didn’t know what to do! He finally kissed Thomas, the butler, in front of her at the Christmas party – I don’t think she ever recovered . . .’

  When Stéphanie had finished explaining the handover procedure, Nina made her way through the switch room and into the reservations department. She found Johan entertaining the four reservations girls with tales of his weekend antics. When he saw her, he stopped mid-sentence, looked her up and down, then announced, ‘You must be the new Orrrrstraaaaaayyyylian,’ stretching out the vowels with an exaggerated Kath and Kim accent. ‘I love me some Orrrrstraaaaaayyyylians. Say fruit cake,’ he instructed.
/>   ‘Uh, sorry, what?’

  ‘Say it!’

  Nina felt five pairs of eyes burning into her. ‘Um, fruit cake,’ she said obediently, only to be greeted with a disappointed look.

  ‘Oh. I guess you must be from a posh bit of Australia. Most of the Aussies I’ve met say frooooot kaaayyyyk.’ Johan turned back to his eager audience to continue his story of weekend debauchery.

  ‘Actually I’m not that posh,’ Nina interrupted, annoyed that he had tried to embarrass her in front of her new work colleagues. ‘And we don’t eat a lot of fruit cake in Australia, we actually eat a lot of those green things – you know, like broccoli, zucchini, spinach . . .’ she trailed off, hoping he’d fall into her trap, while silently thanking Stéphanie for spilling the beans about his German origins.

  ‘You mean like wegetables?’ he’d said witheringly, realising too late that he’d pronounced the v the German way, instead of English. As the reservations girls fell about laughing, Nina and Johan had stared at each other. A glimmer of respect crossed his handsome face, then he stepped forward and wrapped her in a bear hug.

  ‘Well, well, well . . . the blonde fluffball isn’t as fluffy as she looks, is she? Something tells me we are going to get along just fine,’ he’d whispered in her ear. And he’d been right. Johan had become her closest friend in London – after Tess of course. Behind the disgustingly good-looking, confident exterior was a guy who was desperately concealing the truth about his sexuality from his family in case they rejected him. While he loved a good time and never wasted an opportunity to show off, there were a lot more layers to Johan than most people suspected.

  ‘So give me the update on Cupcake – what have I got to look forward to when I go back to work tomorrow?’ Johan said as they slurped on their G&Ts.

  Nina screwed up her face. ‘Do we have to talk about it? That place is doing my head in. If I have to listen to one more person whinge about their overnight first-class flight from JFK, I can’t be held responsible if I pummel them to death with the Sunday Times. As for Cupcake, she’s added a new cup of crazy to her repertoire – guess what Thomas told me was on her list of room requests this time?’

  ‘Ummm, unicorns?’

  ‘Almost. She wanted the bathroom in the Royal Suite to be filled with hundreds of white butterflies so they’d flutter around her as she, er, did her business. Thomas spent days calling butterfly breeders around the UK trying to track down the particular species she wanted and finally got his hands on some just in time to release them in the bathroom before her arrival, but then she was eight hours later than expected. By the time she was escorted to her suite, most of them had carked it and there were dead butterflies all over the bathroom floor. Apparently you could hear the shrieking from three floors away . . .’

  Johan snorted. ‘Sweet baby Jesus, what is she like? Bet housekeeping weren’t happy. Next time she’ll probably ask for Maltese puppies to wipe her butt with. Another one?’ He picked up Nina’s empty glass without waiting for her answer. ‘I know, I know – half tonic, half soda.’

  Nina smiled as she watched him flirt outrageously with the Brazilian barman. Pulling the forgotten pile of magazines towards her, she started flicking through Marie Claude, past the glossy advertisements for three-thousand-pound handbags and two-hundred-and-fifty-pound jars of eye cream, until she reached the page with the letter from the editor. Staring at the picture of the glamorous brunette wearing next season’s must-have green silk Chloé dress, Nina felt a prickle of jealousy. ‘Imagine what her life must be like,’ she thought. ‘Designer clothes at her fingertips, celebrity friends on speed dial, free champagne at parties every night . . . I wish I could be a magazine editor.’ Lost in the magic of the magazine world, she didn’t notice Johan was back from the bar looking very happy with himself until the clink of ice against glass broke into her daydream.

  ‘Couldn’t resist, I see. Come on,’ he demanded. ‘Hand it over.’ All Nina’s friends knew there was zero chance of having a decent conversation with her when there was an open magazine in the vicinity. ‘I need your advice on what to wear for my date with Mr Brazilian Barman this weekend,’ he said smugly.

  ‘You didn’t! Of course you did. Why am I even surprised?’ Nina reluctantly closed the magazine. ‘So where are you two going?’

  ‘God knows. I don’t really care, as long as his place or my place is where we finish up – Daddy has a scratch that needs to be itched,’ he said in his special ‘I’m camper than a row of tents’ tone. ‘Are you on the late or early tomorrow?’

  Nina sighed. She was in the middle of working ten days straight while Stéphanie took annual leave to visit her family in France. She was now on day eight and the cracks were beginning to show, thanks to Annika rostering her on a series of punishing ‘late-earlies’ – a late shift finishing at eleven pm followed by an early shift starting at seven the next morning. The good thing about doing a series of late-earlies was finishing mid-afternoon and not having to start work again till three the following day, but Nina always struggled with less than six hours in her sleep tank.

  ‘I’m on a late tomorrow . . . which means I’ll have to deal with Cupcake’s departure – kill me now.’

  ‘Oh, girlfriend, listen to you bitch about your first-world problems. If you hate it that much, why don’t you quit?’ Johan asked bluntly.

  ‘And do what? Go work in another hotel and deal with the same crap? Don’t forget I only have a few more months left on my working visa, so unless I decide to stay and get sponsored, I doubt anyone will throw a job in my lap.’

  ‘I know there’s no point in leaving to go somewhere where you’ll be just as miserable. And having worked at other hotels, I can tell you the Bickford’s actually pretty good compared to the others – it pays better, for one. I meant more that you should quit so you can do something you’re really interested in, rather than something you fell into, like working in hotels,’ Johan explained.

  ‘But that’s the problem – I don’t really know what I want to do. I’m not one of those people who have known exactly what they want to be since they were five years old. I barely finished my degree because I lost interest halfway through, I’m not particularly good at anything and the thought of going back to studying makes me want to hurl.’

  They sat in silence for a bit, staring out the window. Suddenly Johan said, ‘I remember someone on TV once saying that the best career advice they’d ever got was if you never want to feel like you’ve worked a day in your life, you have to do something that you love. Basically, think of something you’d happily do for free, like a hobby, then find a job that’ll pay you to do it.’

  Nina stared at him, then they both looked at the magazine mountain on the table.

  ‘But I’m not a journalist. And everyone knows it’s impossible to get a foot in the door of the magazine industry. I can’t just decide I want to work in publishing and walk straight into a job, that’s ridiculous,’ she protested.

  ‘Well, you’d have to start at the bottom and do work experience or apply for an internship or something,’ Johan pointed out. ‘Remember my ex, Will? His sister was a fashion assistant at Grazia and she once said that the best way to get into the industry was through work experience. It doesn’t matter if you have the best journalism degree in the history of the universe – if you don’t have work experience or an internship on your CV, you wouldn’t even be considered for an interview. Why don’t you contact a bunch of mags to find out what they offer? Surely there must be some kind of contact details on the letters page?’ He reached over and grabbed the Marie Claude, scanning the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘Look, it says here that they offer three-month unpaid internships in the features department!’

  Nina yanked the magazine out of his hands so she could see for herself. Printed in tiny text at the bottom of the page were all the details she needed: ‘Please be advised that we do not offer weekly work experience placements, only three-month unpaid internships in our features, fa
shion, art or beauty departments. Interested parties should email interns@ marieclaude.co.uk with a cover letter, CV and the department in which they wish to intern. Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted for an interview.’

  Feeling deflated, Nina pushed the magazine away. ‘There’s no way I’ll get an interview, let alone an internship. Why would they want someone like me?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they want someone like you?’ Johan shot back. ‘I’ve never met anyone who loves magazines as much as you do! I know that’s not all they look for, but it’s not like you can’t string a sentence together. What have you got to lose by applying? You won’t hear a knock at the door one day and open it to find a magazine editor offering you a job out of nowhere. You’ve got to be in it to win it. There’s no point bitching and moaning if you’re not prepared to put yourself out there.’

  ‘Alright, settle down!’ Nina laughed at how fired up he was. ‘I’ll email them when I get home, okay? I guess if nothing happens, at least I tried. Plus Marie Claude isn’t my only option – other titles will have some kind of work experience program too, right? So, seeing that you may have found me a new career, I guess I’d better buy you a drink. Same again?’

  three

  Hauling herself up the stairs at Brixton Tube station with her arms full of magazines, Nina started to regret the bucketload of booze she’d put away with Johan. ‘I wonder if the Brazilian started free-pouring that gin after Johan hit on him,’ she wondered groggily, blinking in the weak sunlight as she staggered out of the station onto Brixton High Street.