by Wendy Holden
Lulu, recovering her dignity, called from the car park to Laura. ‘Vlad has come. We all go back to Kensington. Listen to Archers on way, hmm?’
‘I’ve just got to get my bag,’ Laura said, remembering it was somewhere among the snowglobes in the shepherd hut.
In the driver’s seat, Vlad politely cleared her throat. ‘I took the liberty of retrieving it and placing it in the car boot, madam.’
‘You think of everything, Vlad.’ Laura scrambled into the back gratefully.
‘Ssshh, is Lynda Snell!’ Lulu admonished.
Laura smiled to herself as the great car glided away. What a weekend it had been. She had discovered a great story and rekindled her relationship with a particularly favourite old boyfriend. Who had asked her to the Ivys, a prospect which seemed both terrifying and fabulous.
If, at the back of her mind, there was a Harry-shaped guilty shadow, Laura determinedly pushed it away. What did he expect?
The car purred down the village lanes. Past Addings, past Promptings, past Etchings, past the village hall that was the focus of so much hope and fear. Past the Ocado van that, even on a Sunday, seemed to be continuing its hopeless efforts to deliver to the local oligarchs.
It was on the final bend, as they passed the Goblemovas’ glowing neon lake sculpture, that a movement in the hedgerow caught Laura’s eye. The shape of a tall, broad-shouldered dark-haired man flashed across her vision. She wrenched herself round to stare out of the back window, unable to believe what she had just seen.
But had she just seen it? He could not possibly have been there really. He was a figment of her imagination, given shape by her guilt at having slept with Caspar.
Laura settled herself in the back seat and closed her eyes. She was overexcited. She had had too little sleep. Or maybe she was just mistaken. Because it was obviously absolutely, completely out of the question that she had just seen Harry Scott in Great Hording.
*
As Lulu revelled in The Archers omnibus, Laura called Harry repeatedly. But the phone line rang unanswered with a fuzzy, distant, foreign tone. She felt sure now that the figure in the hedge had been someone else. Or simply imagined. And that Harry was far away, engaged on his new investigation.
She racked her brains to recall what, if anything, he had said about it. Her efforts yielded nothing beyond the memory of him shrugging on his leather jacket and leaving the flat in Cod’s Head Row. That seemed like a million years ago, though was in reality only a few weeks.
As The Archers ended and Desert Island Discs began, Laura expected Lulu to turn off the radio and discuss the latest sensations in Ambridge. She seemed absorbed in her smartphone, however, tapping concentratedly away.
Kirsty Young’s interviewee was Roger Slutt, the famous rock star. He seemed to have chosen records mainly by himself. In between he related a series of expletive-studded rock rites of passage. These ranged from the obscure start in the backstreets of Stepney to the moment of total burn-out during an eighties tour of Japan.
‘It was BEEPing meltdown, man. Shoved my BEEPing gold suit down the BEEPing toilet,’ Roger informed Kirsty in his rasping Liverpudlian accent. ‘Took a lot of BEEPing flushing, I can tell ya.’ His distinctive tobacco cackle ended in a series of rheumy coughs and a dull beating sound that could have been the much-admired presenter banging him on the back.
Laura thought of Carinthia, who had yearned to be sent away to Radio Four’s desert island. She had kept an ever-changing list of tracks on her iPod just in case. The DID call had not come, however. And when Carinthia had eventually been sent away, it was to rehab. Compassionate spa leave, rather.
From where, it seemed, she had been doing a serious amount of meddling. With Carinthia’s help, Clemency Makepeace had been drafted in to co-edit Society and would no doubt arrive when Laura returned tomorrow. Large as life and ten times as ghastly.
Well, Laura resolved, she would show her who was boss. As the person on the ground, the woman on the spot, she had the advantage. It was her feet under the editor’s desk. Clemency could just go and sit outside with everyone else.
‘Yeah, BEEPing snobbish BEEPing BEEPS.’ Roger was continuing to turn the airwaves blue. Laura turned her full attention back to Desert Island Discs. She had half-heard something interesting, but what?
‘You’re saying country life wasn’t entirely successful, then?’ Kirsty was prompting in her pleasant but penetrating manner.
‘You could BEEPing say that. BEEPing nightmare from start to BEEPing finish,’ Roger rasped. ‘Wasn’t BEEPing posh enough for the villagers, was I? Was I BEEP. Thought I was nasty and common, they did. Always BEEPing complaining about my BEEPing parties. Didn’t like that I’d altered the BEEPing name of me ’ouse to Riffs.’
‘Riffs?’ repeated Kirsty, obviously amused.
‘Yeah, like guitar riffs, you know? ’Lectric guitar, tool of me trade, yeah? I put in a guitar-shaped swimming pool as well. They went BEEPing postal over that...’
Laura frowned. Riffs rang a bell. Wasn’t there a house of that name in Great Hording?
‘And Ekaterina, that’s my wife—’
‘I’ve read that you met her when she delivered some packages to, er, Riffs?’
‘S’right. Me statins. Dead romantic it was. Anyway, she don’t like living in the middle of BEEPing nowhere either so we’ve sold up and gone back to London. She takes me clubbin’ every night now. Anyone’d think she wants me to kick the bucket and leave her all me money, ha ha...’ The sentence dissolved into another coughing fit.
‘Your next record, please, Roger,’ Kirsty hastily cut in.
Words spoken in a strange accent now drowned out the radio. A pair of intensely black sunglasses were turned questioningly in her direction from over the rear of the front seat. Lulu was talking to her, Laura realised.
‘Is done! I buy house!’ she announced triumphantly.
‘What? Just like that? Without even viewing it?’
‘Like that, just. Have instructed lawyers. Boring legal stuff happen this week and I move in next Saturday.’
Laura wondered whether she would ever get used to Lulu’s extravagance. She bought houses like other people bought shoes and she bought shoes like – well – like no one else. Laura thought she knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway. ‘Lulu, the house wouldn’t happen to be in Great Hording, would it?’
The diamonds in Lulu’s ears winked triumphantly. ‘Owner very happy to sell to me. Say willage need someone like me in it. Say is just what they deserve.’
‘And the house is called...’
The sunglasses flashed happily. ‘Riffs.’
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday night in Cod’s Head Row was the worst ever. Edgar returned at four in the morning with some Mexican dancers picked up in a club called Rear Entry. ‘Come in and have a caipirinha!’ he invited when Laura, unable to bear any more carousing directly above her bedroom, went upstairs and banged on his door.
‘No thanks,’ she snapped, tempted to threaten to tell his father of Edgar’s doings, now she knew where he lived. The money tap might then be turned off and her troublesome neighbour made to move away. She desisted, however; this was Shoreditch and who might take Edgar’s place did not bear thinking about. His predecessor had been a TV survival consultant who hoarded piles of twigs and crossbows and whose supplies of live mealworms had made their way down into Laura’s flat.
She set off for work next morning with heavy eyes. She had drunk so much coffee she was shaking. She could have done with an extra hour – an extra six hours – in bed, but was determined to reach the office early and stake her territorial claim. It was only just past eight o’clock when she tiredly slipped through Society House’s revolving door and nodded at the security men behind the desk.
One looked up from the Sun. ‘Cheer up, love. Might never ’appen.’
Laura stopped herself from snapping that it already had. But perhaps she was being over-pessimistic. People were always changing their mind
in Magazineland. Maybe Clemency wouldn’t join the staff after all. Or maybe the scene last week on the sixth floor, in Stone’s office, had just been a bad dream.
Her own office, as she pushed open the familiar white door, looked normal enough. Perhaps a little tidier, but that would have been Roberta, the cleaner. As she walked towards the glass-walled editorial box she realised that something definitely had changed, even so. Someone she did not recognise sat at Demelza’s desk.
The woman was young and extremely attractive. She wore glasses, but in the way a model for a line of spectacles did, to draw attention to a beautiful face rather than because she needed any optical assistance. She had huge lips and high cheekbones. Long, glossy hair swirled with gold was caught in a full, high ponytail. Her sleeveless fitted red dress revealed the slim, straight shoulders and long arms of a supermodel, and the legs folded beneath the desk were correspondingly colt-like and endless, although end they did, in elegant high-heeled beige pumps.
She turned a long-lashed hazel stare on the gaping Laura. ‘I’m Karlie, how can I help you?’
Laura, tired and confused, gripped the edge of a nearby desk. This happened to be Thomasella’s the food editor’s and she felt her fingers push through a soft cardboard lid and into something soft and mushy.
‘Clumsy!’ said Karlie. ‘That’s the new pink hummus you’ve just shoved your hand into.’
Laura stared at the rose-coloured slop on her second and third fingers. She rather liked hummus but was reluctant to lick it off in front of this absurdly assured creature. Clumsy? How dare she? And why was it pink?
‘Made with Himalayan raspberry salt,’ Karlie supplied, displaying a disturbing knack for mind-reading. Laura blinked. She was sure she hadn’t spoken aloud.
‘How... I mean... why?’
‘The man who just delivered it told me all about it.’
Laura pulled herself together. ‘Not the salt,’ she snapped. ‘You! Who are you? Where’s Demelza?’
‘I’ve just told you,’ Karlie said calmly in a strangely accentless voice. ‘I’m Karlie. And Demelza’s having a break.’
A break? Laura’s secretary had only just returned from her latest holibobs, as she called them. On whose authority was she taking yet another? She, Laura, was the boss round here.
‘You don’t make the decisions any more,’ said Karlie, again as if Laura had spoken aloud. With a swing of her ponytail, she nodded towards the editor’s office.
Laura looked, and her heart briefly stopped in her chest. Someone was inside. Sitting at the desk. Someone with long, curly red hair. Clemency Makepeace!
‘How dare she?’ Laura muttered under her breath. ‘How very dare she?’
‘Because she’s the editor,’ said Karlie.
Laura glared at her. ‘Actually, she’s the co-editor.’ She had to force the words out, they stuck in her throat. ‘I’m the other editor. And that’s my office! I was in it first!’ She stormed towards the glass door of her former sanctum and wrenched the handle. It did not open. Was it stuck? Laura rattled it. Not stuck, she realised. Locked.
Locked out of her own office! How horribly undermining and humiliating.
Ignoring Karlie’s cool surveillance, Laura banged on the glass. But Clemency neither looked up or gave the smallest indication she was aware of Laura’s presence.
She was calmly reading a set of page proofs. What page proofs? the enraged Laura wondered. What right did she have to sign off any section of the magazine?
‘Hey!’ she shouted, banging the glass again.
Inside, Clemency picked up the telephone and spoke into it. She still didn’t look at Laura but turned her face sufficiently towards her for her pitying, slightly smiling expression to clearly be seen. What could also be seen was that Clemency had had a considerable amount of work done since their last meeting. The slanting green eyes looked even more catlike, her nose looked slimmer and her cheekbones looked higher. Surgery, wondered Laura. Or just filler?
Clemency spoke too softly for her words to be heard. She put the phone down and returned composedly to the page proofs.
They were, Laura saw with a rush of fury, some she herself had rejected weeks ago, Raisy and Daisy’s fetish tablecloth sports bra shoot. ‘Hey!’ she yelled, striking the windows with her fists once again.
It was now that she noticed her framed front covers had been taken down from the editor’s office walls. They had been replaced with photographs of her arch-enemy. One was a studio shot in which Clemency was posed with pensive hand under her chin, the light streaming through her red hair so it appeared like flames round her head. Hell flames, Laura thought. The others were of Clemency with celebrities, hugely blown up from the smartphone selfies they looked originally to have been. Posing with Cara Delevingne, posing with Savannah Bouche. Posing with Caspar, even. This one sent a knife-thrust of white-hot fury through Laura. When she finally got in the office – her office – that would be the first one off the walls.
But that was not all, Laura now saw. The shelves were empty; all her journalism awards, plus Carinthia’s various trophies for Services to Dry Cleaning, Champagne Drinker of the Year and so on had been removed. Seeing the distinctive top of one of her predecessor’s awards – shaped like a gold hairbrush and awarded for Lifetime Achievement by the blow-drying industry – poking out of the waste-paper bin, Laura felt an angry tightening in her chest. Red mist floated before her eyes. Perhaps, after all, it was just as well the office door was locked.
A phone shrilled somewhere and made her jump. Karlie, behind her, was holding out a receiver. ‘Call for you.’
Laura remained where she was, reluctant to cooperate. Karlie covered the receiver with a slim manicured hand. ‘You’d better take it,’ she said in her accentless voice. ‘It’s Christopher Stone.’
Doubtfully, reluctantly, Laura took the phone. ‘Christopher?’
‘Laura.’ The MD’s tone was terse. ‘I’ve just had a most concerning call from Clemency.’
So that was who she had been ringing. The cheek! Laura hurled a burning look towards the glass office walls. This time Clemency met her molten gaze with one that combined triumph with amusement. She followed this with a yawn, then returned to the fetish tablecloths.
‘As you know,’ Stone went on, ‘the idea was for you two to work together in harmony...’
Harmony!
‘...but it seems there’s been an unfortunate scene already this morning. Poor Clemency’s temporarily locked in the editor’s office. Something went wrong with the handle, apparently.’
Oh yeah? The disbelieving words wobbled on the edge of Laura’s tongue. With a mighty effort, she choked them back.
‘The poor thing suffers from acute claustrophobia and she’s desperately trying to stave off a panic attack,’ Stone went on. ‘But she tells me you’re trying to break the door down and it’s really not helping. She feels she might lose control at any minute.’
Laura felt that she might do the same, and in seconds, not minutes. The inside of her head was a white fuzz of static fury. She could see Clemency smirking from the desk and knew she was being provoked. To give in to the urge would be to let Clemency win. ‘I see,’ she said, in the steadiest voice she could manage.
‘I have to say I’m disappointed, Laura,’ the managing director continued. ‘For you to act in this dramatic fashion is very unlike you and doesn’t, I have to say, bode well for a productive working relationship.’
‘But—’
‘Clemency assures me, however, that she would be happy to accept an apology and we can take it from there.’
This was too much. ‘An apology! But Christopher, she’s taken down all my pictures! She’s thrown all my trophies in the bin!’
‘Clemency mentioned that there had been some disturbance in the office. She says the cleaning staff have broken items over the weekend. I’ve instructed HR to disengage the current hygiene operative and find a new one.’
Laura thought of Roberta, the smiling Fili
pina who counted herself blessed to work in a magazine office. She took great care with everything – polishing Laura’s awards with especial reverence – and was thrilled whenever Laura gave her a brand-new issue to send home to her mother. She showed her appreciation with occasional gifts of wonderful home-cooked food which Laura would find on her desk, warm and fragrant beneath the tinfoil. And now Roberta would be laid off because of Clemency’s casual lie, a lie designed to get Laura into trouble. Tears of fury and frustration stung Laura’s eyes.
She could not let Clemency win. Her eye caught the page proofs of the fetish tablecloth sports bras. She took a deep breath and forced herself to sound calm.
‘Of course I want to work well with Clemency,’ she pushed out between gritted teeth. ‘However, we need to practise a little more collaboration. She seems to be passing pages that I’d put on hold.’
There!
‘Ah yes, I’m glad you’ve brought that up. Clemency informs me that there are quite a few features commissioned by Carinthia that you’ve seen fit to spike since taking over as,’ Stone paused before adding, ‘ahem, acting editor.’
The pause and the ahem were not lost on Laura. A familiar fear slithered coldly through her belly. Clemency Makepeace had only just got in the building and already her job was in danger. Again.
She thought of the Great Hording article. If she kept her job long enough to write it, surely it would save her.
Christopher continued, ominously. ‘A piece about the new hemlock fudge was mentioned, and the current craze for off-grid holidays in decommissioned coal mines. Clemency thought they made perfect Society features.’
‘But—’
‘She also mentioned a piece about bright young things playing ducks and drakes with their smartphones. A delightful idea.’
‘A slightly old-style Society one though,’ Laura managed to force out. ‘It had its ridiculous aspects.’
‘Why ridiculous? Just fun, I thought, and so did Clemency. She couldn’t imagine why you’d spiked an article about the fashion for wearing shoes as hats, either. I told her to revive it anyway. Really, Laura, I must say I agree with Clemency that your instinct as an editor seems to be open to question.’