Out of the Blue

Once I’ve done my first forecast, the rest of the morning flashes by. In between ‘hits’ I check the charts, phone the met office and update my bulletins as required. The nine thirty forecast is my last one, and that’s when the programme comes off air. We have a quick meeting in the boardroom, then I take off my make-up, sit at my desk and go through my mail. I get lots of letters. Most of them are from children asking me to help them with their geography homework. They write asking me what clouds are made of, for example, or why frost is white, or what the difference is between snow and sleet, or how rainbows are formed. Then I get letters thanking me for cheering people up. What I like about you, wrote Mr Barnes from Tunbridge Wells, is that, even when you’re giving us bad news you do it with a nice smile. Then – and I hate these ones – there are the letters about my appearance. The slightest change in it – such as a hair trim – produces a sack-load of disapproving mail. Then there are the ‘requests’ from those viewers who seem to think I’m God. Dear Faith, wrote a Mrs McManus from Edinburgh, this morning, please, please, PLEASE could we have some better weather in Scotland. We’ve had not a ray of sunshine since Hogmanay! I write back to everyone, unless they’re obviously nuts. Then, when I’ve done that, I tidy my desk and go home. People often ask me how I spend the rest of the day. The answer is, I potter. I feed Graham, of course, and take him for a walk. I might meet a friend, or go to the shops. I do the housework – I hate it, but we can’t afford a cleaner – I fill in competition forms, and I read. In an ideal world I’d do an afternoon job, but I can’t because I’m too tired. In any case it would be very awkward, because people know my face from TV. But the first thing I do when I get home is to go to bed and sleep for a couple of hours, so that’s what I did today. Or at least I tried to. But I found myself thinking, yet again, about what Lily had said last night. As I’ve said, she does sometimes say things I don’t like – including the odd uncharitable comment about Peter. Usually I just forget them, but this time I found I couldn’t. Why on earth had she said what she said and whatever could it mean? She’s so shrewd and clever – was it just a casual remark? I tried counting sheep, but that didn’t work. I tried remembering all the stations on the shipping forecast, but that didn’t help either. I tried recalling the names of all Peter’s authors, but still sleep eluded me, chased away by Lily’s remark. So I turned on the bedside radio to distract myself but that made no difference either. I opened my book – Madame Bovary – but even that didn’t help. My mind returned to Lily’s comment again and again and again. It was nagging me. Annoying me. Needling me. Gnawing at me. It kept going round and round in my mind like a mosquito in a hotel room. ‘Neeeee … ’ it went. ‘Neee … neeee … neeeeeeeeee.’ I tried to swat it away but back it came, so I pulled the duvet over my head. I thought of the children, and Graham, and I thought of the programme and how it had gone. I thought of my parents on their latest trip, and of the man who came to fix the roof. I thought about my Tesco reward card and tried to remember how many points I’d accrued; but still Lily’s strange words continued to clang away, like tinnitus. What was that remark about? What on earth could it mean?

‘Stuff it!’ I said to Graham as I threw off the duvet. ‘I’m going to damn well go and find out.’

‘Darling!’ said Lily, meeting me at the lift on the forty-ninth floor of Canary Wharf an hour and fifty minutes later. ‘What a divine surprise! But what are you doing over here?’

‘I was just passing,’ I said.

‘Really? Well, how lovely. You can share my take-away lunch. And how are you this morning?’

‘Not at my best,’ I replied. ‘Rather hungover, in fact.’

‘Oh dear,’ she murmured. ‘The wrath of grapes! But it was a wonderful evening,’ she added as she tucked the dog under her left arm. ‘Jennifer adored it, didn’t you poppet?’ Jennifer gave me a vacant stare. ‘And how marvellous of you to get up three hours later like that and calmly do the weather,’ Lily added as we crossed the editorial floor. ‘I watched you from the gym at six thirty. That girl Sophie’s rather bright,’ she went on, ‘perhaps we ought to do something on her in Moi! Terry whatshisname’s a bore though, isn’t he?’ she added. ‘A clear case of mistaken nonentity. Now,’ she said as we swept past a rail of designer clothes, ‘where are your lovely kids?’

‘They’ve gone back to school,’ I explained as a pink feather boa lifted in the breeze from Lily’s scented wake. ‘Peter took them to the station this morning. Term starts again today.’

‘They’re such darlings,’ Lily exclaimed as she stroked Jennifer’s topknot. ‘Isn’t Katie a scream with her psychoanalysis? Though I can’t help feeling she’s a little Jung. We must do a makeover on her for the magazine and get her out of those blue-stocking clothes. Now Jasmine … ’ She’d stopped at the desk of a whey-faced girl of about twenty. ‘I’ve told you not to drink coffee at lunchtime, you know it stops you sleeping in the afternoons.’

We passed the picture desk where a photographer was having his portfolio assessed and long-limbed girls leaned over the illuminated lightbox. Then we entered Lily’s glass-sided office, with its earthenware pots of splayed orchids, the Magnum shots of pouting models, the framed Moi! covers and the shining industry awards. She waved her hand at the wall-sized shelf-unit displaying all her rivals’ magazines.

‘World of Inferiors,’ she quipped. Then she removed a bottle of greenish liquid from the small fridge in the corner.

‘Wheatgrass juice?’

‘Er, no thanks.’ She poured herself a glass, then sat behind her desk and held up a plate.

‘Vegetarian sushi?’ she enquired.

‘Oh, I’m not hungry, thanks.’

‘These seaweed rolls are awfully good … ’

‘No thanks.’

‘And this shiitake’s divine.’

‘Look, Lily,’ I tried again, ‘I just wanted to ask you something. Um … ’

‘Of course, darling,’ she said. ‘Ask me anything you like.’ Suddenly there was a tap at the door and Lily’s secretary Polly appeared.

‘Lily, here’s the February edition of Vogue. It’s just come in.’

Lily winced. She loathes Vogue, in fact it’s a minor obsession. This is because in 1994, when she was features editor there, they failed to promote her to deputy editor, a lapse of professional judgement she will neither forget nor forgive. She began to flick the pages of the magazine in an indolent, insolent way.

‘God, how boring,’ she muttered. ‘Tsk … that old story … seriously vieux chapeau. Oh good Lord, what a cliché – at Moi! we avoid clichés like the plague. Oh, purleeze, not Catherine Zeta-Jones again! Oh, God!’ she declared suddenly with an appalled expression on her face. ‘They’ve got Sally Desert working for them – I wouldn’t let that crummy little dwarf write my shopping list! Faith,’ she announced as she tossed the magazine onto the floor, ‘I am going to outsell Vogue.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you are Lily, but –’

‘We’re not far off,’ she added as she leaned back in her chair, steepled her long fingers and scrutinised the ceiling. ‘Lots of their advertisers are coming to us, and who can blame them?’ she asked. This was clearly a rhetorical question. ‘We make our advertisers feel wonderful,’ she went on seamlessly as she fed Jennifer bits of sushi. ‘We woo them. We flatter them. We give them very good rates. We –’

‘Lily.’

‘– look after them. Make them feel special. In short, we do not bite the brand that feeds us.’

‘Lily.’

‘And in any case they now realise that Moi! is the fashion magazine of the Millennium.’ She went and stood by the window, then raised the Venetian micro-blind. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she said as she gazed down on the Dome. ‘Isn’t it just wonderful?’ she repeated. ‘Come here, Faith, and look. Look at all … this.’ She’d threaded her slender arm through mine. ‘Don’t you think it’s just fantastic?’

‘Not really,’ I said truthfully as I inhaled the aroma of her Hypnotic Poison. ‘To me it’s all style and no substance.’

‘I was there,’ she murmured dreamily, ignoring my remark. ‘I was there, Faith, at that party.’

‘I know.’

‘I was there with the Queen and Tony Blair. Don’t you think that’s amazing, Faith? That your little schoolfriend was invited to that?’ Suddenly I looked at Lily’s profile and was transported back twenty-five years. I remembered the awkward girl, standing on stage in her blue gingham dress, and the look of fear and confusion on her face. Now here she was, atop London’s tallest building, with the world spread out beneath her feet.

‘Don’t you think that’s amazing?’ she pressed me again.

‘What? Well, yes, er, no. I mean, not really, Lily – I always knew you’d succeed.’

‘Yes,’ she said dreamily as we gazed at the boat-speckled river shining below. ‘I’ve succeeded, despite the attempts of a few people to put a spanner in the works.’

‘What people?’ I said.

‘Oh, no-one significant,’ she breathed. ‘Just nobodies, out to spoil my success. But they know who they are. And I know who they are, too,’ she went on with an air of slight menace. ‘But no-one’s going to stop me,’ she murmured. ‘No-one’s going to hold me back.’

‘Lily,’ I interjected, wishing she’d stop talking just for a second and listen.

‘I’ve trounced my enemies, Faith,’ she went on calmly, ‘by my vision and my hard work. And the reason why Moi! is going to be the Number One glossy is because we’ve got so many original ideas. Now,’ she added enthusiastically as she returned to her desk, ‘I just want your advice on a new feature we’re planning – top secret, of course. What do you think of this?’ She handed me a mock-up page. It was headed ‘Your Dog’s Beauty Questions Answered’. I am a Yorkshire terrier, I read. I have very fine, fly-away fur. I can never get it to stay in one place. What should I do? I am a white miniature poodle, wrote another. But at the moment my coat looks slightly discoloured and stained. This is causing me considerable distress. What grooming products can I use to restore it to its former glory?

‘The readers are going to love it,’ said Lily with an excited smile. ‘I’d like to do a dog special at some point, a pull-out supplement, maybe for the July edition, yes,’ she went on distractedly. ‘I could call it Chienne. We could get it sponsored by Winalot.’

‘Lily!’ I stood up. It was the only way to attract her attention. ‘Lily,’ I repeated. ‘I wasn’t just passing.’

‘Weren’t you, darling?’

‘No,’ I said as I sat down again. ‘I’m afraid that was a lie.’

‘Was it?’ she said, her eyes round. ‘Really, Faith, that’s not like you.’

‘I came here for a reason,’ I went on, my heart now banging like a drum. ‘Because there’s something I need to ask you.’

‘Faith, darling,’ said Lily seriously, ‘Jennifer and I are all ears.’

‘Well,’ I began nervously, ‘I know this will sound silly, but last night you said something that disturbed me.’

‘Oh, Faith,’ she said before taking a sip of wheatgrass juice, ‘I’m always saying things that disturb you, we both know that.’

‘Yes, but this wasn’t in the usual category of your flippant off-the-cuff remarks. It was not only what you said, but the way you said it.’