Authors: Rebecca Chance
oco had spent weeks planning for this moment. By which,
of course, she meant planning what to wear. No wedding
dress could have been more painstakingly chosen than the
outfit she put together for her first day at work at
US Style
.
Her life had changed beyond recognition over the last eight
months. It couldn’t really be described as a Cinderella story,
even though she felt as if a fairy godmother had swooped in and
transformed her with the flick of a wand: because after the
transformation, Cinderella didn’t have to work harder than she
ever had in her entire life. Coco wasn’t just Victoria’s assistant:
she was her office cleaner, her de-linter, her personal waitress,
her all-round skivvy. If there had been a working fireplace in
Victoria’s office, Coco would unquestionably, Cinderella-style,
have been tasked with polishing the grate to Victoria’s exacting
specifications.
Still, to make the huge leap from
Wow
to
Style
was magical and unprecedented in itself; to be told, after barely six
months on
Style
, that your boss was moving to New York to
edit the US edition, and that she was taking you with her,
really was a fairy-tale.
A very modern fairy-tale, Coco thought. One where you
have to struggle with the fairy godmother to make sure she
doesn’t keep you as her slave forever.
Because Coco had had to negotiate like a foreign office
diplomat with Victoria to make sure that she didn’t get stuck
in the assistant position in New York.
‘Normally, your assistants do a year and then they get
promoted,’ she’d pointed out to Victoria.‘But if I go to America
as your assistant, I’ll have to put in a whole year at least while
everything gets settled in. And I’ve already done nearly six
months here in London.’
Victoria’s face had darkened – that was the only way to
describe it. Coco had seen this phenomenon directed at others
before, but never at herself; she’d sworn she wouldn’t flinch,
had braced herself in advance, holding onto the back of the
chair in front of Victoria’s desk. She wouldn’t have dared sit
down, not without specific instructions from Victoria.
With distinct trepidation, Coco watched as the tendons on
Victoria’s neck swelled against her necklace, which entirely
filled the open neckline of her sharp white Alexander McQueen
shirt with heavy twists of huge, semi-precious, rough-cut
amethysts, peridots and citrines, set in 18-carat gold. It had
been designed especially for her by Solange Azagury-Partridge.
Victoria raised a hand, running a finger under the thicklywound strands.
At least she can’t break this one, Coco thought, thanking
heaven for small mercies. A few weeks ago, Victoria had been
pacing the conference room, screaming abuse at a cowering
shoe editor and photographer who had, in her opinion,
completely ruined a high-concept shoot at London Zoo featuring avant-garde stack heels, Chanel’s latest hosiery designs, and
lemurs, when she had become so incensed that she’d ripped at
the choker she was wearing and sent black pearls flying all over
the carpet. Which, since the carpet was charcoal-coloured, had
entailed Coco crawling the length and breadth of it, squinting
for the telltale opalescent gleam of pearls buried in carpet
fibre. She’d counted them painstakingly, terrified that she’d
miss one and have to search the whole carpet all over again. Of
course, then she’d had to arrange a special courier to take them
to be restrung, and Victoria, naturally, had not only failed to
thank her, but had actually berated her for a few tiny slips in
carrying out all her normal duties to her demanding
specifications.
Definitely a modern Cinderella story, she thought. Or
maybe a Grimm version. The really dark kind, with blood in
shoes and ravens pecking out the Ugly Sisters’ eyes.
‘Please do tell me,’ Victoria had said icily, ‘why I shouldn’t
simply sack you on the spot? Any of the other assistants I’ve
had in the past would be sobbing with gratitude at the idea of
being taken to New York.’
‘I
am
incredibly grateful,’ Coco had replied. Her teeth were
chattering in fear, and, quickly, she sank her thumbnails into
the tips of her index fingers, hard enough for the pain to focus
her. ‘But I also know I’m the best assistant you’ve ever had.’
Victoria sniffed, but she didn’t contradict Coco, which was
acknowledgement enough in itself. Emboldened, Coco
ploughed on.
‘If you were in my situation, you’d say the same thing. You’d
want some assurance that you’d be doing creative work as
well.’
‘As well?’ Victoria jumped on this like a boa constrictor on
a mouse. ‘As well as
what
, exactly?’
Coco started to speak, but Victoria cut her off, one of her
favourite power-plays.
‘You have this all worked out, don’t you?’ she asked, curling
her lip. ‘I must say, you’re fast. I gave you the news about New
York a mere hour ago, you acted very excited, and now you’re
back in here, setting terms and conditions. Like one of those
bouncy toys that pop right back again. What are they called?’
Coco was familiar with Victoria’s techniques by now:
distraction, confusion, throwing sand in the face of the enemy
to disorient them. Because everyone was the enemy to Victoria,
or at the least, an opponent. Every conversation was a battle to
be won.
So Coco ignored the question, knowing that Victoria
didn’t seriously expect an answer. Her fingers, resting on the
chairback, were sweaty; she pushed to the back of her mind
the fear that the sweat would leave marks on its white leather,
marks she’d have to clean away later, and continued with her
prepared speech.
‘I thought I could choose and train up an assistant for you
instead,’ she said, fixing her gaze on the perfectly smooth,
perfectly empty surface of Victoria’s glass desk, too intimidated to meet her boss’s ice-cold eyes. ‘I’d supervise her, make
sure absolutely everything with the transition to New York
runs smoothly, but I’d also have styling responsibilities. I’m
dying to be able to show what I can do creatively.’
‘God!’ Victoria sighed theatrically. ‘No one’s ever happy in
their job, are they? You get someone settled in and working
well, and the next thing you know, they’re whining about
wanting a promotion! Ugh, it’s
so
bloody exhausting.’
Coco bridled. She’s such a hypocrite, she thought angrily.
That’s exactly what she’s just done herself – gone running to
Jacob and demanded a promotion! And now she’s blaming me
for doing the same thing . . .
She bit her lip to stop herself blurting out those very words.
Victoria reached for the glass of water on her desk; it was
nearly empty. Instantly, Coco rushed around the chair to grab
the glass, dashing over to the built-in mini-fridge and removing
a clean chilled, silver-rimmed tumbler into which she poured
Victoria’s Fiji water, dropping into it, with tongs, a slice of lime
from a supply she had cut that morning. She shot back to the
desk, placing the new glass exactly where the old one had
been, keeping hold of the previous one, which she would
hand-wash in the kitchenette off her office.
It was a display of complete submission, a demonstration of
how well-trained Coco was in Victoria’s needs. And Victoria
reacted to it in a way that made Coco’s blood boil: she looked
down her long nose at the new glass, not even deigning to
touch it.
God, I hate her
! Coco seethed. But at the same time she
couldn’t help but admire Victoria’s air of utter entitlement. It
was what kept her at the top of her profession, made everyone
scuttle and run as she barked commands. Of course Victoria
had the talent, but without her queenly, diva-like attitude,
there was no way she would be on the verge of becoming the
editor of
US Style
, two years above schedule.
Is this Stockholm Syndrome? Coco wondered. She’d heard
that term before, and thought it meant identifying with
someone who treated you appallingly.
I’ll have to look that up
.
She was, as always, hugely grateful for Google and mobile
phones – they gave under-educated girls like her a more level
playing field with the posh girls who had gone to private
school and smart universities and seemed to know everything, effortlessly.
And God knows, no one helps you out here if you don’t know a
reference – they don’t just laugh at you, they tell everyone else in
their loud piercing posh voices that you didn’t know Joan Miró
was a man, for instance. I mean, he’s called Joan! That’s so confusing! Bloody posh cows.
‘Women have to be bitches in this world,’ Victoria observed,
making Coco jump: it was uncanny how often her boss
managed to read her thoughts.
Victoria sighed and pushed her chair back, crossing her legs,
light glinting on the perfect pale-blonde twist of chignon at
the crown of her head.
‘I’m going to expect total loyalty from you, Coco,’ she said,
twisting the stones of her necklace between her fingers. ‘The
staffers at
Style
aren’t exactly going to be jumping with joy at
my arrival. They know I’ll sack half of them and make the
other half work harder than they ever have before. You’re
going to be my eyes and ears in the office. Even with people
being careful around you, you’ll see things and hear things that
will be useful to me. I’ll need to know where the alliances are,
where the weaknesses are. Who’s feuding, which ones never
got on with each other before but are pretending to now that
I’ve arrived, where are the chinks in the armour.’
She fixed Coco with a hard grey stare.
‘They’ll all try to turn you against me,’ she predicted.
‘They’ll make promises and dangle favours. You’ll be a fool if
you let them. I’m the editor of
US Style
as of a month after
next, and I’m not going anywhere for a long time. You screw
me and you’ll pay for it. I’ll kick you straight back to London
on the next plane. And you’ll pay for your own ticket. What’s
more, I’ll make sure no one in magazines in London will touch
you with a bargepole. Even if you crawled back to
Wow
,’ the
sheer contempt she managed to get into that three-letter word
was breathtaking, ‘they wouldn’t dare to rehire you.’
The threats were dire, but Coco was quick enough to realise
that they were a positive sign: they were the payment Victoria
was exacting for the concession she was about to make. And
the single most important part of this tirade was that Victoria
was still planning to take Coco to New York . . .
‘I was
already
,’ Victoria continued with froideur, ‘planning
to position you somewhere in the office that you could use to
listen out to best advantage. And naturally, that wasn’t going to
be stuck at a desk in my outer office. Who’s going to gossip
there, or let their guard down so close to me?’
Victoria stared at Coco, tilting her head to one side as if the
question had been genuine, but Coco didn’t fall for it: she
stood there silently, resisting the impulse to smooth down her
dress, which had rucked up a little after her dash to get
Victoria’s glass of water. It’s like facing down a vicious dog
with its teeth bared, she thought with a flash of dark humour.
Don’t move, don’t show fear, and whatever you do, don’t run
.
‘So I had
already
decided to put you in the fashion cupboard,’
Victoria said. ‘That’s the hub of the entire magazine. You’ll be
in charge of running it. That’s a full-time job in itself, plus
you’ll be interviewing, choosing and training up my new assistant. You won’t have a free moment to yourself. You think
you’re working hard now?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘In New York,
you’ll be begging for mercy. You’ll be in the office all day and
all night. I’m throwing you in at the deep end, and if you start
to drown, no one’s going to throw you a life belt. Understand?’
Coco knew she shouldn’t smile; she should look grave,
showing her consciousness of what a responsibility she was
taking on. But she couldn’t help it; she beamed with sheer
happiness at the news, her grin huge and wide. Running the
fashion cupboard! Seeing every piece of clothing, every shoe,
every accessory, that came in and out of
Style
, meeting every
single fashion editor and assistant as they rushed in and out,
the fastest crash-course possible to bring her up to speed at a
new job . . .
‘Close your mouth,’ Victoria said, swivelling back to the
desk, signalling that the talk was over. ‘I can practically see
your back teeth. Which, by the way, you should get whitened.
I’d recommend invisible braces, too. Oh.’ She shot a swift,
paralysing glance at Coco. ‘And lose another seven pounds, at
least. What are you now, a size ten? That’s an American six.
You need to get down to an American four if you don’t want
people in New York to call you a heifer. Believe me, the girls
there don’t have an ounce of fat on their entire bodies.’
That’s Victoria, Coco thought ruefully now, ensconced in
the Lipstick Building, watching the staff of
US Style
flap and
buzz and tear up and down the corridors like bees who had
just had the lid of their hive removed.
She’ll give you something
with one hand just to get you close enough so that she can slap you
across the face with the other
.
At least Coco knew that her outfit was perfect. A pale grey
Zero + Maria Cornejo stretch silk blouse, tucked into a zigzag
Missoni skirt in muted shades of green, grey and orange;
Wolford tights, sheer as silk, and Tory Burch copper wedge
pumps, the latest directional shade in metallics. Her Isabel
Marant brass chain necklace had a coppery sheen too, echoing the shoes: her hair had grown out to one length and was
cut into a smooth, fashionably long bob, parted at one side,
tinted a pale golden-brown. She looked as good as any of the
girls on
Style
.
If a few sizes bigger, she thought, wincing at the stick-thin
figures dashing past her. Victoria’s a mean bitch, but she wasn’t
joking about New York skinny minnies. Coco’s clothes were an
American size four, but they were cutting into her, and she was
relying heavily on her slimming underwear, a one-piece
bodysuit like a tight beige leotard which reached to mid-thigh.
She pulled down her skirt hem, as she did every few minutes;
she was paranoid about it riding up when she was sitting,
exposing the nasty beige cycling-short legs of the suit.
‘You
bitch
!’ Caroline Chase Phillips, the senior fashion
editor, screamed inside Victoria’s office.
Coco didn’t even flinch; Victoria had been conducting a
long stream of interviews that day, and she’d started with the
sackings. Victoria had no interest in ingratiating herself with
anyone.
‘I’ll ruin you in this city!’ Caroline howled. ‘I know everyone. I’ll get you blacklisted everywhere. I’ll make it my personal
mission to screw you to hell and back! I’ll—’
Coco had been working through a stack of applications for
the job of Victoria’s assistant that had been sent to her by the
Dupleix HR department, but now she stood up and went over
to Victoria’s office, opening the door. Caroline Chase Phillips
had been a successful, second-tier model in the eighties; as her
shelf life came to an end, she had sensibly decided to become
a fashion editor and work her way through a series of increasingly rich property-developer husbands. Still very beautiful, if
rather gaunt, she was pacing the office, waving her hands
around and screeching like a bad soprano. Victoria was sitting
behind her desk, cool and crisp and completely unaffected by
Caroline’s histrionics.
‘Is everything all right, Victoria?’ Coco asked.
It was the third time this morning she had had to intervene
to speed up the firing process, and Victoria’s answer was always
the same: she heaved a beautifully-executed yawn of boredom, and said, from behind the hand covering her mouth,
‘Another glass of water, Coco. All this firing makes terribly
thirsty work.’
‘You heartless
hag
!’ Caroline Chase Phillips shrieked, and
looked around her for something to throw at Victoria,
Mercifully, Victoria had had the editor’s office remodelled
over the weekend in time for her arrival, and not only was it
now painted the precise shade of greige with which Victoria
was obsessed, but all the little shelves for ornamental knickknacks, silver photo-frames and decorative vases which Jennifer
Lane Davis had had installed had been ripped out, giving a
much cleaner look. The office was large enough to accommodate Victoria’s huge Japanese tiger screen, which had been
hung behind her desk, so that anyone confronting her had to
look not only at Victoria, but at the tiger’s snarling muzzle,
teeth bared, directly above her head.
Just as it had been in London, Victoria’s desk was one
smooth glass sheet, unencumbered by anything but her
computer. There was almost nothing for Caroline Chase
Phillips to grab.
‘Let’s hope she doesn’t go for the keyboard,’ said a voice
behind Coco, modulated so that only Coco could hear her.
‘Jennifer tried to smash hers when Jacob sacked her.’
Coco swung round and saw a very slim, very elegant girl
standing there, her dark hair pulled back from her face into an
enviably thick and glossy ponytail, wearing a beige suede dress
that Coco instantly recognised as being from the Ralph Lauren
pre-fall collection. It would have cost thousands of pounds
retail, and if you got even one tiny stain on it, you might as
well chuck it in the bin. Coco gawked at the girl, unable to
help it. Suddenly her confidence in her outfit fell away; she felt
like a fat lumpy peasant next to this exquisite creature.
‘Tried to smash the
keyboard?
’ she managed to ask, not quite
believing what she’d heard.
The girl’s wonderfully thick eyebrows lifted. ‘Oh yes,’ she
said. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’
‘Coco!’ Victoria snapped. ‘My water,
now
!’
Luckily for Coco, the fridge had not been installed in
Victoria’s office yet; it was a huge relief that she didn’t need to
step further into the room. Coco dashed into the kitchenette
to fetch the water, dodging back into the office with it, putting
the side of the glass desk between her and the furious Caroline
Chase Phillips, keeping safely out of the line of fire.
‘I think we’re done here,’ Victoria said, taking the glass and
sipping from it, turning away from Caroline in her characteristically dismissive manoeuvre. ‘HR will get in touch with
you about your severance package, Caroline. Have a nice day,
won’t you?’
Left with nothing to say, Caroline Chase Phillips threw back
her head, stuck her chin in the air and stalked from the office
as if she were working a runway for a designer who had told
the models to pretend they were stabbing their rivals to death
with every thrust of their spiked heels. Coco couldn’t help
swivelling her head to watch her exit.