The Love of Her Life

‘OK. Bye. Thanks.’

His mouth curled a little. ‘No, thank you.’

He was a flirt, such a flirt, she told herself, as Sean walked away. Kate watched him shaking his head at her over the ticket barrier, as the sea of commuters bustled past them, off with lives of their own, full of promise and exertion and interaction and … Oh, all the bloody things she was no good at. It was so sweet of him to try, she told herself. She stared after him. He would be there tonight when she got home, watching TV, and they’d sit on the sofa together and chat about their day and yet another day would have passed with her being shunned, like the Amish. So she’d cook him something and he’d teach her how to mend her bike, or how to rewire a plug, or something, and they’d spend the evening together, like they always did. She’d be fine, if she could come home to that life. It was a nice life. Who said you had to love your job?

But Sean was right. Because that very day, Charly decided to notice Kate.

They went to Anita’s, a traditional Italian around the corner from the office. It was free of Broadgate employees, by dint of the fact it served food, in particular food that wasn’t just leaves. Charly seemed to know them all, the waiters practically clapped as she slunk in, her long legs sliding into a table by the window.

‘God, Sue’s a bitch, man,’ she said as they were seated. She pushed her small frameless sunglasses up on her head and nodded at a waiter. Her honey-coloured hair tumbled around her, she smiled at Kate, the freckles on the end of her nose wrinkling. ‘Yeah, we’re ready,’ she said to the waiter, hovering nearby, a look of adoration on his face. ‘What you having? Salad nicoise for me. No dressing. With extra olives. And a coke. Thanks.’

She flung the menu back at him without acknowledging his presence. Kate said,

‘Er … me too.’

‘The same?’ the waiter said, raising his eyebrows.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, not wanting to be conspicuous. She handed him the menu back.

‘You don’t want dressing neither? The same?’

‘Yes!’ said Kate, trying to affect an incredulous laugh.

‘You want extra olives too?’

‘Oh, go away,’ Charly said, batting the waiter away. ‘Just bring her a normal one. Leave us alone. So. D’you like Catherine? What do you think of Sue?’ she demanded, leaning in, her long, slender fingers plucking a stale roll from the basket in front of them.

Kate was taken aback by the directness of the question, and a little terrified. She hadn’t imagined she’d have to speak, more that she could just sit there and listen to Charly, whom she’d noticed striding around the office, effortlessly glamorous. She never seemed to hang around with the Georginas and the Jos, the Pippas and the Sophies, she was her own separate entity. More beautiful than them, cooler than them (she had been wearing cropped trousers and heels for ages – long before Madonna in the Beautiful Stranger video, as she informed anyone who wanted to listen) – less posh than them, less fake than them. She knew it, and she didn’t seem to care.

‘Come on,’ said Charly impatiently, and Kate was shaken from her reverie. ‘Is Sue a good boss? She really annoyed me today, you know, telling me to recheck that piece on gloves for autumn.’

‘Er … Aah,’ Kate said, hating the impaired speech she seemed to have developed since her arrival at Woman’s World. What would Sean say if he could see her? She thought about it, and smiled. ‘I like her. She’s nice. Bit uncommunicative – I mean I wish she’d tell me what’s going on a bit more.’

‘Yeah,’ said Charly, nodding. ‘She seems to think you’ll just guess. She’s OK, but I know what you mean. I used to work for her.’

‘Did you?’ said Kate. ‘How long – how long have you been here?’

‘Not long,’ said Charly. ‘Too long, you might say. A year. I was her assistant, now I work with Catherine and Georgina –’ Kate nodded, she knew this ‘– and I sometimes write the editor’s letter when no-one else can be fucked to do it, and I do a couple of featurettes.’

‘You do the Letters Page, don’t you?’

A frown passed over Charly’s beautiful face. ‘Yeah, and I fucking hate it. Load of weirdos writing in to tell you how to make stuffed animals out of the lint from the washing machine, or wanting you to print a picture of their grandson just cos he’s done a shit that’s shaped like Alma Cogan.’

‘Really?’ Kate was fascinated.

‘Not the last one, no.’ Charly shook her head. ‘Barbara Windsor, actually.’

Luckily the salads arrived, saving Kate from further comment. Charly ate like a demon, shovelling food in her mouth, throwing out odd comments, inviting responses from Kate, making jokes about the office, filling her in on what she hadn’t known – Barbara in Sales had slept with Fry Donovan, the new Broadgate publisher, a couple of years ago, and he’d given her a job to keep her quiet, so the rumours went, which is why Barbara giggled helplessly whenever Fry walked into the room. Claire Cobain on the subs desk threw up into Phil’s yucca plant the day after the Christmas party; she’d forgotten and he hadn’t realized for three days, except they all kept gagging on the smell. And Jo and Sophie weren’t speaking to each other after Sophie heard Jo saying to Georgina in the loos that she looked rank in her new black patent platform boots.

All Kate had to do was throw in the occasional question, raise her eyebrows at the required moment, but Charly was a great companion, and soon Kate found herself opening up, telling her about her flatmate Sean, about her best friend Zoe, about how she’d started to dread coming into work, how she’d eaten her lunch on a park bench for the past two weeks –

‘By yourself?’ Charly demanded. ‘Sitting in Lincoln’s Inn eating a sandwich from Prêt à Manger by yourself? God that’s sad. What did you do if someone you recognized came past?’

‘I’d look down at my book, or else I’d turn my head so they couldn’t see me,’ said Kate, and as she said it, she realized how silly it sounded. Charly laughed, her eyes wide open with surprise, and Kate joined her.

‘That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard for a long time,’ Charly said.

‘I know,’ Kate agreed. She looked at her watch. ‘We should get back, you know.’

‘Yeah, in a bit.’ Charly looked carelessly at her watch, then pouted. ‘Let’s have a coffee first. So – where were you before here?’

‘Here?’ Kate gestured to the building behind them. ‘Nowhere. This is my first job.’

‘Your first – jeez,’ said Charly. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two. I left university this summer.’

‘Oh my god,’ Charly said, peering at her as if she were an exotic specimen. ‘And you started work right away? Didn’t take any time off?’

Kate shook her head uneasily. She didn’t want to disabuse Charly of the notion that she’d gone straight from university to a job, when in fact, she’d had a solitary, dusty summer at home in Kentish Town, slowly driving herself mad with the future. Her anyway-mostly-absent mother and stepfather were in the Hamptons for the summer and incommunicado, Daniel had a new girlfriend and was rarely at home; Zoe had skipped off into a Magic Circle job; so had Steve; Francesca and Betty, two of her closest friends, had gone travelling together for six months, not back till after Christmas. A few weeks ago, Kate had nearly put the phone down on Zoe when she’d told her that Mac, Steve’s older brother, had just been put on some special fast-track system for the best surgeons in the country. People she hadn’t even met were falling over each other to out-do each other, while she had whiled away the dog days of summer, saving up a trip to the newsagents each day. But that was over now, she hoped. OK, it was Woman’s World, it wasn’t Vogue, but it was a start.

‘What’s your ambition, then?’ Charly asked. It was a strangely childish phrase, that; it touched Kate, though she wasn’t sure of the answer. She wrinkled her nose. Charly persisted. ‘What do you want to do, what’s your dream job, I mean?’

It was what Sue Jordan, her new boss, had asked her, a month ago, at her job interview, and Kate gave the same answer then, as now. She looked over and above Charly, to the shelves behind the counter in the little restaurant. They were lined with spreads, old jars, tins. ‘I want to work in magazines, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I love them.’

‘Really?’ Charly sounded dubious. But Kate had heard it before.

‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling, and shaking her head. ‘I was a geek all through school, and the one thing I loved that wasn’t geeky was Vogue. Don’t know why, just did.’ She did know why, though; it was the entrée into a world she wasn’t part of, a world she could only aspire to: glamour, style, elegance, beautiful clothes. It wasn’t the posh people she was interested in; it was something more fleeting than that – she supposed it was the idea of a blueprint for how to live your life. With style, flair, purpose, and organization. The cold, beautiful women in those magazines, they weren’t ignored by boys, or by their co-workers, they didn’t have mothers who left them, fathers who were messy and annoying. They – all of them, whether they were the writers, the models, the society people – they had black shift dresses, scented candles, fresh linen. Boughs of apple blossom in big glass vases, thick black velvet evening cloaks – that sort of thing. She loved magazines, that was all; the smell of the new pages, the sheen of the pictures, the slice of life, the answers to her curious questions about things, how other people behaved, reacted, everything. She was happy simply to observe, she knew that too.

‘Well, good for you,’ Charly said, sounding uncertain. ‘So, you’ll be wanting Sue’s job in a year, then? Better tell her to watch out.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Kate, looking horrified. ‘It’s not –’

‘Calm down,’ said Charly. ‘Don’t get so worked up about it. It’s a job, OK? When you’ve been here for longer you’ll realize it’s not worth having kittens about. Me, I’m happy if it pays me enough to buy a couple of glasses of wine and some new boots every few months.’

‘Really? What do you want to do, then?’ Kate said, curiously.

‘Fuck all,’ said Charly. ‘I want to marry someone rich and go and live in Spain. Have a house here too, in the Bishop’s Avenue. With a heated indoor swimming pool, and lots of Sophie’s friends.’ They both laughed; Sue had just signed off a feature that morning about the millionaires’ row of houses in North London, and Sophie had spent a lot of time saying in a Very Loud Voice that she knew someone who lived there. ‘I think she’s reading the A-Z wrong. It’s probably Bishop’s Avenue in Acton, more like,’ Charly had said loudly that morning, and Kate had smiled, as Sophie turned on her heel and flounced back to her desk.

‘Hey,’ Charly added, as they laid their money on the table. ‘You been to the Atlas pub? Round the corner from the office?’

‘No,’ said Kate.

‘It’s nice. Fancy a quick drink there tonight?’

‘Really?’ Kate said, then corrected herself. ‘That’d be great.’ She looked at her companion. ‘Thanks, Charly.’

‘What for?’ Charly slung her bag over her shoulder, and pulled out the hair that was trapped underneath it. She shook her head, and the waiters in the café watched in adoration. Like a Timotei ad, Kate thought with amusement.