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Reluctantly, Alexa turned to face Winterbottom.
‘You never told me which title,’ he said, patronisingly.
‘Oh.’ Alexa nodded. She thought for a moment. Part of her wanted to shock him by telling him about Banter, but she didn’t know whether that would reflect badly on Matt. ‘It’s a women’s magazine called Hers.’
‘A women’s magazine,’ he nodded, smiling. ‘Of course.’
Alexa managed to keep her cool. Inside, she wanted to grab the man’s tightly-stretched collar and shake him off his chair, wiping that smug, condescending smile off his face.
‘I trebled its gross revenue and shaved twenty percent off the costs last year,’ she said.
‘Did you?’ He looked at her, wide-eyed, glancing overtly at her breasts. ‘And how much revenue does a women’s magazine bring in, these days?’
Alexa exhaled. The fire was burning inside her. This man was intolerable.
As it happened, just as the collar-grabbing fantasy started to take hold in her mind, Alexa’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of her main course. Matt looked over and must have registered her expression because he suddenly wanted to know her opinion on joint liability in American asbestos cases.
Alexa’s shoulders remained tilted towards Dickie and Matt for the entirety of her next two courses: succulent veal followed by peach melba with raspberry coulis. She wasn’t enjoying the conversation exactly, or even following it, but she was doing a reasonable job of saying ‘mmm’ at appropriate intervals and the wine was slipping down nicely. Dickie and Matt didn’t seem to mind; they were lost in a world of corporate constitutions and shareholder rights.
Dessert wine was followed by cheese and port which was followed by a random selection of red and white wine scavenged by Dickie from nearby tables. Alexa was pleased when conversation eventually moved on to random trivia such as the fact that there were apparently more chickens in China than people. At some point in the proceedings, Fenella perked up enough to work her way through a large slab of Brie, but ten minutes later was looking decidedly queasy. It was agreed, through smeary wine glasses, that the time had come to go home.
Leaning against the cold, exterior wall, Alexa watched as Matt helped Dickie ease Fenella into a cab. She lifted her hair off her shoulders, tying it into a knot and enjoying the cool night air on her face.
‘You never told me,’ said a voice, languid and loud, right next to her ear.
She sighed, turning to face Winterbottom and feeling her spirits sink.
‘Told you what?’ she asked, reluctantly. Fenella was refusing to get in the cab. Her limbs were protruding from the open door and she seemed to be yelling something about a club.
‘How much money a women’s magazine makes.’
Alexa drew a lungful of air. She knew exactly what the man was getting at. The implication was that women’s magazines generated such small revenues that they weren’t worth the bother. The implication throughout the whole evening had been that women’s magazines, women’s jobs, women’s efforts in general, were a waste of time.
The rage mixed with the wine and port in her belly and, for a brief moment, Alexa wondered whether she might throw it all up on the obnoxious man. She held it in though, glancing sideways at the cab, where Dickie and Matt were attempting to trap Fenella in a pincer movement.
‘About thirty to forty million,’ she said, pushing away from the wall and feeling instantly dizzy. She steadied herself and looked into Winterbottom’s eyes. ‘The same as the equivalent men’s magazine.’ She started to turn away, but kept her eyes fixed on his face. ‘And by the way,’ she said, ‘that’s irrespective of whether it’s run by a man or a woman.’
She glared at him for a second, watching his jowls flap with the hesitant opening and closing of his jaws, then she turned and marched into the road, where Matt was patting the roof of the cab as it pulled away.
‘Matt?’
He looked up, seemingly perplexed by the speed at which she was tottering towards him.
‘What were you going to say? Before the dinner – about your boss?’
‘Oh.’ Matt nodded apologetically, holding out his hand as another cab pulled up. ‘After you.’
Alexa stumbled inside, falling back against the seat. ‘Tell me,’ she said, feeling her eyes drop shut.
Matt slipped an arm around her shoulder and drew her towards him so that her head was on his lap. ‘I was just going to say that he’s not one for respecting women.’
Alexa managed a laugh. ‘Really?’
‘Sorry.’ Matt started stroking her hair. ‘I would’ve swapped places if there’d been time.’
Alexa let out a quiet sigh. She was exhausted and very drunk, but she recognised the feeling inside her. It felt like fire. She had made up her mind about something.
‘Matt?’ she said again.
He stopped stroking her hair for a second and looked down at her face.
‘I’m going to take the job at Banter.’
Chapter 4
Alexa stepped into the lift, trying to align her thoughts. Her hands were clammy and her legs felt weak. She wanted to swallow, but her throat was devoid of anything to swallow.
The doors started to slide shut, then juddered to a halt as the other woman in the lift thrust a limb between its jaws, calling out to a colleague in the atrium. Alexa leaned back on the reflective wall and exhaled, grateful to the woman for adding an extra few seconds to her journey.
The women’s small talk washed over her as the lift lurched upwards. Alexa stared straight ahead, struggling to focus. The adrenaline was having a strange effect on her mind – muddling up the important things, like how she would hit the revenue targets laid down by Peterson, with the small, insignificant details that ought not to be taking up space in her head, like whether her shoes made her look too tall and whether she ought to have pinned back her fringe. It was only when the two women stepped out on the fourth floor that she realised she wasn’t going anywhere.
Alexa snapped to, pressing ‘5’ and checking her makeup in the mirrored wall. The shoes definitely made her look too tall, she decided, and her light brown fringe was hanging limply over her eyes like an unkempt mane. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? She turned away from her reflection in disgust.
Stepping onto the fifth floor, Alexa turned left, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was stooping. She pulled back her shoulders and forced her legs forward, one after the other, fighting the urge to turn and flee.
She had caught glimpses of the Banter office in the past, but she had never taken much in. The life-size pin-ups on the door had rather put her off. This was her first proper sight of the place she would inhabit for the next nine months.
The office was a colourful, dirty mess. It looked like a teenage boy’s bedroom. There were piles of magazines, DVDs and clothes all over the floor and copies of Banter strewn across every surface. Lodged in the gaps between piles were random objects that included, at first glance: a water pistol, a set of elf costumes, a pyramid of baked bean cans, a giant beer mug in the shape of a naked woman and a lawnmower.
Alexa drew to a halt in the gangway that ran along the middle of the office. There was nobody there. She looked at the clock. It was only ten past eight. Her nerves had woken her at six and she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.
She felt a vibration and felt around for her phone, suddenly hoping for an email from Peterson saying he’d changed his mind and urgently needed her back on Hers. It wasn’t an email though; it was a text message from Matt.
Thinking of U. Mx
Alexa smiled, feeling a little more confident as she looked up at the fifty-inch plasma TV at the end of the office. It showed two semi-naked teenage girls, writhing around on a bed together, looking very unsure about what they were supposed to be doing. Alexa grimaced. Something had to be done about Banter TV. It was essentially a ten-minute roll of filmed photo shoots on loop, interspersed with amateur ads for cheap phone-ins that looked as though they’d been filmed in somebody’s garage. It was little wonder that Banter TV had no viewers.
Alexa scanned the five banks of desks, trying to identify her seat. It was only pin-ups, she told herself, wandering to the next bank of desks and coming face to face with a pair of giant breasts hanging from a filing cabinet door. She shuddered as the image of her mother flitted across her mind.
Alexa continued to scan the desks, wondering where Derek Piggott sat in relation to her. At Peterson’s request, she had had no contact with the deputy editor since the press release had gone out about her appointment. That was typical of how things were done at Senate: behind closed doors, with no collaboration, creating maximum potential for resentment. She didn’t even know how the deputy editor had taken the news of his effective demotion.
She jumped. Someone was clearing his throat behind her.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’
Alexa felt her heart rate triple. She turned to find herself staring at someone who looked exactly like Amir Khan. His hair was jet black, short and spiky, his angular jaw coated in a few days’ worth of stubble and his eyes were dark, like pools of ink.
‘Um, hi.’ She collected herself together and managed some kind of smile.
He was tall, she noticed. Alexa rarely found herself looking up to meet someone’s eye.
‘Alexa?’ he said, at exactly the moment Alexa chose to say her name.
They laughed awkwardly.
‘I’m Riz,’ he said, shaking her hand with the grip of a champion boxer. ‘Sports editor.’
‘Right.’ Alexa straightened up. It was refreshing, not having to stoop. ‘Great to meet you. I’m . . . well, you already know. I’m going to be managing director for the next few months. Launching new initiatives, that sort of thing.’ She glanced around. ‘That’s the plan, anyway.’
Alexa inwardly screamed at herself for adding the unnecessary final sentence. This had always been a problem. It wasn’t just first-day nerves; it was her pathetic inability to talk in a normal way to attractive men. It maddened her. She could devise a ten-million-pound business plan and execute it within a year, she could build websites and draw up cross-platform strategies, but she couldn’t have a normal conversation with a good-looking guy.
‘Yeah, we got the email.’ Riz moved a little closer, lowering his voice. ‘That caused a few ripples.’
Alexa tried to laugh, but nothing came out. The email. What had Peterson told them? How much did they know about the ultimate purpose of her secondment to Banter? The fact that the title’s future was in jeopardy would have been kept from the team, surely, in which case, why the ‘ripples’? She couldn’t think of a subtle way to ask.
Riz looked around the office. ‘You’re looking for a desk, I presume?’
Alexa nodded, still thinking about the email. ‘A desk would be good.’
He was wearing low-slung, casual jeans and a T-shirt, she noted, clocking his muscular shoulders as he headed off along the gangway. The trouser suit had been a mistake, she thought, cursing her lack of foresight. This was media; she knew how people dressed here. Why had she gone for the formal look?
Riz walked quickly to the far corner of the office and then stopped.
‘Hmm.’
Alexa followed, as speedily as her inappropriate high heels would allow.
Riz was squinting at one of the monitors on the last bank of desks, gently stroking the stubble on his chin.
‘I think . . .’ He grimaced. ‘I think the news desk might have got here first.’
Alexa drew level with Riz and then froze. On the desk in front of her, gleaming in the weak morning sunlight, was a black rubber dildo about four times the size of any she had seen in any shops. It rose up above her monitor like an obelisk.
‘Delightful.’ She managed a smile, but inside, she felt anxious. She could imagine it now, half a dozen grown men crowding round her desk like little school boys, smirking as they tried to agree on the optimal position.
Riz stepped forward and made as if to remove the offending article. ‘Shall I?’
Alexa nodded. ‘If you don’t mind.’
He lifted it off the desk and then looked around, surveying the mounds of paper and toys around them.
Alexa was about to suggest the nearest waste paper bin when she had a better idea.
‘Put it there,’ she instructed, clearing a space on the window sill next to her desk.
Riz looked at her. ‘You sure?’
Alexa nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s a lovely gesture, don’t you think?’
He smiled, slowly. ‘I see. Yes. Lovely.’
Alexa pulled out her chair and was only half surprised to find an A3 poster of a glamour model, spread-eagled, staring up at her with a wanton expression.
‘Am I to expect . . . quite a few of these little treats?’ she asked, unsticking the poster from her seat and folding it inside-out, only to find another image on the reverse, this one of a blonde on all fours.
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’re not at Hers any more.’
Alexa watched out of the corner of her eye as Riz returned to his desk, allowing herself a quick moment to wonder what might be going on two floors below. It was nearly half-past eight. Annabel would be sifting through the post in her slow, dreamy way, waiting for the kettle to boil for her herbal tea. Deirdre would be moaning about over-crowding on the Central line and Lily would be printing off knitting patterns. Riz was right; she wasn’t at Hers any more.
Logging on was a predictably slow, painful process that involved a multitude of error messages and three phone calls to the IT help desk. It was while she was on one of these calls that she realised she was being watched. The office had been slowly filling up with boisterous young men and until now, Alexa had kept her head down, waiting for a full house before she started to make her introductions. But it was becoming increasingly hard to ignore the man in his early thirties who was bearing down on her from across the desk. He had shoulder-length, oily brown hair and a small tuft of stubble at the base of his chin.
‘Oi oi!’ he cried, as she put down the phone.
‘Hi,’ she said, smiling up at the man. She couldn’t help thinking that he might be reasonably good-looking, if it weren’t for the hair or the goatee.
‘I’m Derek,’ he bellowed, despite the fact that Alexa’s ear was no more than a metre from his mouth. ‘And you must be our new managing director.’
He said the last two words slowly, with emphasis, as though expecting some kind of applause. Alexa looked over his shoulder and realised that, in fact, the deputy editor did have something of an audience. Half a dozen young men from the nearest bank of desks were looking over, smirking. Derek Piggott clearly had a following.
Alexa rose to her feet with what she hoped was a mixture of grace and poise, offering out her hand. It was only as she did so that she realised how incredibly short the man was. He couldn’t have been more than five foot six.
‘Alexa,’ she declared, as boldly as she dared. She had a feeling that Derek was not the type of man who liked to be talked down to, but there was little she could do about the practicalities of the situation.
‘Well,’ he replied loudly, having offered a surprisingly weak handshake. ‘I look forward to seeing your managing and your directing.’
She held his fake smile. This was bad. Already there was hostility between them and she had barely taken off her coat. Alexa wondered again about the contents of that email. Perhaps Derek felt that she was partly to blame for his demotion. He obviously saw her as some kind of threat.
‘I’m looking forward to working together to monetise all the great content you produce,’ she said calmly.
Alexa instantly regretted her choice of words. They were too condescending. She could see that in the way Derek turned his back on her, clearly pulling a face to the other members of the team and sitting back down at his desk, which, she realised with dismay, was the one diagonally opposite hers.
‘Oh,’ he said, in the same oratory tone. ‘Alexa, the kitchen’s down the corridor, on the left.’
There were sniggers from the nearby band of desks. Alexa could hear the laughter travel through the office like a wave. Her cheeks burned, her whole body starting to shake with a mixture of rage and embarrassment.
What was the appropriate response? The longer she stood there, the more she felt like a freak: tall and conspicuous, the butt of the joke. Sitting down now would be to concede defeat. She had to say something. But what? She didn’t understand the office dynamics yet. It seemed very much as though everyone looked up to the deputy editor. In her head, she could hear the voice of Miss Calder, her old English teacher: Do you find something funny? Hmm? Would you care to share the joke with the rest of the class? The last thing she wanted was to come across like Miss Calder.
Eventually, after what felt like hours of standing in mute panic, Alexa was saved. She didn’t need to say anything, because, she realised, nobody was looking at her any more. All heads had swivelled towards the peroxide blonde who was sashaying across the office in a pair of gold hotpants, stilettos and a push-up bra.
‘Hi,’ the girl purred, winking flirtatiously at the rather unattractive redhead on the near bank of desks and sliding into the seat next to Derek’s. Alexa could just make out the sight of her round, tanned buttocks, slowly escaping from the shiny hotpants as she logged onto her computer.
It took a while for Alexa to realise that she was the only one left staring at this spectacle. The men, of which there were now seven or eight, had reverted to throwing parcels around, playing with gadgets and flipping through newspapers. Occasionally, eyes would return to the girl’s backside, but there was no sense that the sight of it was anything unusual. Slowly, Alexa sat back down, wondering whether she had had all the conversations she was going to have for the day. Only two men had bothered to make eye contact so far – and in Derek’s case, it was only so that he could set her up for public humiliation.
She opened up her email and pretended to scan her empty inbox, glancing sideways at Sienna Pageant. This, she thought, was her PA. Or at least, this was the ‘Editor’s PA/Editorial Assistant’, according to the credits in the magazine, which was all she had to go on. Once she had agreed to the role, Peterson had become distinctly vague about how exactly the power share would work between Derek and herself.
‘PADDY.’
A loud, robotic voice fired out across the office. A scruffy-looking lad in shorts was talking through some kind of voice-distorting megaphone.
