Authors: Rebecca Chance
Jodie forced herself to sit back in her chair, to try to look as
cool as the woman sitting opposite her, who held the key to
her future in her manicured hands.
‘I just completely restyled myself in less than an hour,’ she
said. ‘And I bought your receptionist a coffee to make sure I
got to see you last. If I can think that quickly on my feet, I can
do anything you need me to do, and faster than anyone’s ever
done it before.’
Victoria stared down her nose at Jodie, tapping the toe of
her shoe against her silky-smooth golden calf.
‘Plus ten. Fine. You start in three weeks,’ she said. ‘Davinia
goes off to run the fashion cupboard in a month, and she’ll
have to spend a whole week training you up first. But there are
two conditions. First, go out now, buy some decent shoes and
throw out those ghastly ones. I can practically smell the cheap
leather from here, and it’s making me nauseous. Second, lose
seven pounds, minimum. No one who works for
Style
is more
than a size ten, and you’re clearly at least a twelve. If you step
over the threshold in a month’s time and haven’t lost the
weight, I’ll spin you on your heels and send you packing. Are
we clear?’
‘As crystal,’ Jodie said valiantly.
No shepherd’s pie for me, she thought. Mum’ll be so disappointed, but she’ll have to understand. The diet starts now
– I’ll live on Ryvita, apples and zero fat cottage cheese. I can do
this, she told herself determinedly. It’s totally worth it.
Victoria was flapping her hands at Jodie as if she were shooing geese, the grey diamond flashing; it was the signal for Jodie
to jump out of her chair, grab her bag and make for the door.
‘Oh, one last thing,’ Victoria said, head turned towards her
computer monitor. ‘Your name. That’s a minus ten. I can’t
possibly have an assistant called Jodie.’
Utter panic spiked through Jodie’s veins, a surge of adrenalin so sharp she flinched from the shock. She froze as if she
were playing a game of Musical Statues, portfolio under one
arm, the bag dangling from her other hand the only thing that
moved as Victoria continued:
‘We’ll have to call you something else. Believe me, I’m doing
you a favour. Hmm . . .’ she glanced down at her skirt ‘. . . I’m
loving
Chanel at the moment. Coco! There you go. From now
on, you’re Coco. Don’t bother to thank me. Tell Davinia on
your way out.’
Mouth open, fingers sweaty on the handle of her bag, Jodie
staggered out of Victoria’s office. Skinny Jeans, aka Davinia,
was sitting at the desk that would be Jodie’s in a month’s time.
She looked up at Jodie and drawled, ‘Do tell me you got the
bloody job, won’t you? She’ll be even more of a bitch if I have
to line up six more girls for her to rip to pieces.’
Jodie nodded, wordless with shock.
‘Oh, thank
God
,’ Davinia sighed in relief.
‘Only now I’m called Coco,’ Jodie managed to get out.
Davinia didn’t even blink at the news. Looking at her – slim,
confident and off to the dizzy heights of the fashion cupboard
– Jodie wondered whether Davinia, a year or so ago, had also
been a size 12 girl with a bad haircut, called Nadine or Cheryl
or Kimberley, with a much less posh accent than she had now . . .
‘Well, good luck, Coco,’ Davinia said dryly to her replacement. ‘You’re going to need it.’
ictoria Glossop had never spared a thought for other
people’s sensibilities. Not her parents’, not her three
brothers’, not a single person with whom she had ever come
into contact. Feelings were messy and unpredictable, a swamp
in which you waded around, not knowing what you’d step on
next or what would wind itself around your legs and try to
pull you down into the fetid depths. Victoria had always had
her own feelings very firmly under control, the more vulnerable and sensitive ones shoved down so far that she would
have had great difficulty accessing them. Not that she had
any wish to do so. Even when she got angry, threw a tantrum,
rampaged around the office shouting at her terrified staff, she
knew exactly what she was doing, was able to measure the
precise level of fear and trembling she wanted to induce in
her victims.
An indifference to other people’s feelings was one of the
principal reasons Victoria had been so successful. The other
was her world-class ability to charm and flirt with powerful
men, honed by years of practice on her father and brothers. A
brilliant lawyer who had climbed the career ladder smoothly
from QC to judge, Victoria’s father was the incarnation of an
authoritarian paterfamilias who bullied his sweet fluffball of a
wife and ruled his sons with a rod of iron. He had never realised how much he wanted a daughter until Victoria was born,
the last child and by far the most indulged one. From the
moment she could walk and talk, Victoria’s sharp little brain
had identified her father as the one with all the power. She had
quickly been able to wrap him round her little finger. Judge
Glossop had chosen a pretty, feminine woman to marry; if
Victoria had been a different kind of girl, she might have
considered it very unfair of her father to pick an adorably ditsy,
scatty wife and then spend the marriage criticising her for
precisely the qualities for which he had proposed to her in the
first place.
But Victoria had always been on her father’s side. The side
with the money, the control, the intelligence. Having worked
out how to manipulate her father, she used the same techniques on her brothers: charming, beautiful Victoria, always
dressed, by her mother, in the kind of pretty clothes that her
father considered appropriate, cut a swathe through her entire
family from an early age. Her mother was dazzled by her,
openly admiring Victoria’s ability to do what poor downtrodden Mrs Glossop couldn’t – get exactly what she wanted from
the judge.
Victoria could easily have been a politician or a lawyer, if
her father hadn’t emphasised how important he considered
femininity in a woman – and if she hadn’t hugely enjoyed the
process of choosing clothes, dressing up and then twirling in
her new finery in front of her besotted father. The only items
in poor Mrs Glossop’s household budget which her controlling
husband never questioned were the huge sums spent on
Victoria’s outfits. Her brothers, all competing constantly to
please their father, were now, respectively, a QC, a decorated
naval officer, and something in MI5 that he wasn’t allowed to
talk about, but the child Judge Glossop boasted about
constantly, the one whose photograph had pride of place on
his desk, was Victoria, editor-in-chief of
Style
, a fashion icon in
her own right.
Still, despite Victoria’s meteoric rise to success, all she
had achieved in her thirty-four years of life, she had one
more crucial goal to achieve. And – she checked her slender
gold watch bangle, a Vacheron Constantin antique which
had cost her husband nearly ten thousand pounds as her
birthday present last year – it was almost time for the dinner
appointment which might bring the ultimate prize within
her grasp.
Victoria’s heart pounded with excitement. This meeting
had been a long time coming. She’d schemed and planned
and manoeuvred for years to get here, worked every single
contact she had, charmed her way inexorably towards the
ultimate goal: the crucial conversation she was going to have
over dinner with Jacob Dupleix, head of the Dupleix media
empire, the man whose name was on the building, who made
the ultimate decisions about who edited his flagship magazines. Jacob’s range of investments was enviably extensive.
He had been an early adopter of the internet, and his tentacles stretched far and wide throughout the media. But no
matter how much money Jacob coined from all the pies in
which he had fingers, his real love was print. His magazines
were his babies, his editors carefully chosen for their artistic
skill and business sense, but also for their ability to incarnate
the magazines they represented.
Thin, elegant, hyper-chic Victoria was the living, breathing
embodiment of
UK Style
; however, this coveted, prestigious
job, was, to her, simply a stepping-stone to the definitive job in
fashion. The peak of the pinnacle. The biggest prize of all.
Picking up her Bottega Veneta bag, Victoria pushed her
chair back and stood up from the desk. She looked around her
office with a critical eye, at its polished teak floor, silk rugs and
custom-made cherrywood bookcases housing back issues of
Style
, and her own huge collection of photography and fashion
tomes. She strode towards the door in her high-heeled United
Nude pumps, designed by the famous architect Rem Koolhaas
– white leather ballet-style shoes set at a stratospheric angle to
the blocky black heel. They were very hard to wear, very hard
to build an outfit around, which was precisely why Victoria
had chosen them. Thousands of women would try to copy her
by buying the Block Pump Hi and fail abysmally to look as
good in them as Victoria did.
By the time she had opened the door, Coco was already on
her feet and moving towards her boss with a loop of wide
brown sticky tape already wrapped around her hands, as if
she were winding wool. Victoria opened her arms as if she
were being crucified. She stood there motionless, the huge
white handbag dangling from one wrist, as Coco meticulously went over her with the tape, lifting every single tiny
piece of lint from Victoria’s clothing. Coco unwound the
tape, dropped it into the wastebasket, produced a lint roller
and repeated the process, now including Victoria’s wide
suede belt, which she had avoided with the tape, the delicate
surface of the suede being too fragile to be touched by
anything sticky.
‘Your car’s waiting, Victoria,’ Coco said as she finished the
linting. This was a procedure she executed at least four times a
day – when Victoria came into work, before and after her
lunch, and when she left for the evening. Plus, of course, after
Victoria had been looking at angora or cashmere samples, or
whenever she capriciously deemed it necessary. ‘It’ll be pulled
up outside when you leave the building. The Fiji water in the
car is chilled to twelve degrees this time. I’ve instructed the
driver to take it out of the fridge three minutes before he picks
you up.’
Victoria merely nodded, but that was more than enough
praise for Coco, who continued, ‘Your table at the Wolseley is
waiting and Mr Dupleix’s assistant has confirmed he’s on his
way there. He’s due to arrive at least five minutes before you.’
Victoria refused to enter a restaurant unless she was sure
that at least one of the people meeting her was already
present. She had been known, on being informed by a greeter
that she was the first member of her party to arrive, to turn
on her heel and return to her car, making the driver circle
round the block until her assistant had rung to assure her that
the person she was meeting had checked in at the restaurant
in question.
‘And when I leave?’ Victoria asked, holding out her hand
imperiously for her shaved-mink jacket, silver-blue, soft and
luxurious. ‘Last time—’
‘You’ll ring me when you’re getting up from the table, and
by the time you walk out, the car will be on Piccadilly waiting for you,’ Coco said quickly. ‘I have the driver’s number,
and I’ll liaise with him the second after I hear that you’re
finished with dinner.’
Coco was perfectly well aware that the demands of her job
meant that she couldn’t make evening plans which entailed
switching off her phone. No theatre, no concerts, no clubbing,
because she couldn’t guarantee during those activities to be
able to grab a ringing mobile and answer it within two rings in
an environment quiet enough for Victoria to hear her with
perfect clarity. She had tried the cinema, sitting right at the
back, by the exit doors, keeping one hand on her phone at all
times so she could feel it vibrating and dash out into the corridor, but ever since she’d been so absorbed by a thriller that
she’d overlooked the tell-tale pulsating of the phone on her
lap, and been subjected to a fierce tongue-lashing by Victoria
the next morning, she’d given that up too.
Everything in Coco’s life came a dim second to her job. And
she wouldn’t have dreamed of complaining about it for a
moment.
Victoria smoothed down the jacket, enjoying the silky
texture of the fur, burned-out in a subtle devoré velvet pattern.
She was used to criticising her assistants, finding the flaw in
their arrangements, driving a stiletto knife into it and twisting,
exposing their incompetence, leaving them in a state of heightened nerves that motivated them better than any other lever
she had ever found. However, Coco was different. Her organisational abilities were extraordinary. She’d made a few mistakes
settling in, but not only had she never repeated them, she’d
improved so fast that in a mere three months she was unequivocally the best assistant Victoria had ever had.
Which left Victoria in something of a quandary. Because
Coco would clearly soon deserve a promotion. But Victoria
had no desire to promote Coco; ideally, she would have kept
Coco as her gatekeeper forever.
‘All right,’ Victoria said curtly, walking out of the office. ‘See
that it all goes smoothly.’
From her, this was a huge compliment: not a single negative
word. Briefly, Victoria considered throwing in something
snippy, to keep Coco on her toes – but Coco was always on her
toes, alert and ready.
Like the best kind of dog, Victoria thought, amused. Always
anticipating what you’re going to ask it to do, but not slobbering over you or licking your shoes.
The car was waiting outside the glass doors of the Dupleix
building, the driver running to open the door as soon as he
saw Victoria exit, resplendent in her mink jacket and impossibly short white grosgrain Cavalli mini-skirt. Sinking into
the leather seat, crossing her endless legs, Victoria debated
briefly with herself on how to make sure Coco stayed in her
current job for as long as possible. How could Victoria bear
to lose the only assistant she had ever had who never, ever,
bothered her boss with a single piece of information about
her private life?
God, how I loathe women and their endless compulsion to
tell each other everything! Victoria thought crossly. I’ve
already looked at enough bloody family photos and pretended
to care about my bosses’ fiancés and weddings and babies to
last me the rest of my life. Why don’t people realise that you
don’t actually give a shit about their stupid boyfriends?
Anyone who listens to you drivel on is either sucking up, or
biding their time till it’s their turn to witter on about their
own love life . . .
Years ago, as a feature writer on
Vogue
, Victoria had been
sent to interview a female producer at the BBC who had
worked on a sitcom parodying the sacred monsters and overthe-top characters in fashion PR. Written by a woman, with an
almost entirely female cast, it had been a template for all the
girls-behaving-badly comedies that had followed it, a huge and
enduring success, a flag-planting moment for women who
wanted power in the media.
She would never forget what the producer had answered
when Victoria had asked her about working with other women.
Leaning forward, digging both her hands into the roots of her
curly hair, dragging the skin of her forehead tight, the producer
had said bitterly, ‘I never want to have to start another bloody
meeting at the BBC sitting down at the table and having to do
the round of: “Ooh, you look good, have you lost weight? I
love
your jacket! No, I love
your
suit! Your hair really suits you like
that. How are Jack and the kids? Lily’s just starting school,
isn’t she – how’s she settling in? And is your cat better after it
got that infection last year?” God!’
She stared at Victoria, eyes dragged outwards by the fingers
in her hairline, face distorted.
‘You know what it’s like,’ she said cynically. ‘You work in
magazines, it’s all women there too. Shit, the time I waste on
that rubbish! And they get really offended if you don’t remember the name of their cat or their kid or their husband! You
know who doesn’t do this? Men. They don’t give a shit about
each other’s families and they don’t bloody pretend they do.
Women are such hypocrites.’
She caught herself.
‘That’s all off the record, of course.’
Victoria’s article hadn’t been much good – she was no
writer, and was quickly moved back to the fashion desk
ladder by the editor who was mentoring her. But that
producer’s words had echoed in her mind ever since. It was
a bare five-minute ride from Brewer Street across Regent
Street to Piccadilly, and by the time the car pulled up
outside 160 Piccadilly, the stunning Grade II listed building
with its three grand arches, decorated with elaborate and
delicate wrought-iron struts and curlicues that had housed
Wolseley cars in the 1920s and was now one of the most
fashionable restaurants in London, Victoria had determined
to keep Coco in her assistant job as long as possible. Coco
would kick and scream and plead for a promotion, she was
sure, but Victoria would hold her off. She was simply too
valuable where she was right now.
And she wants what I can give her enough to stick it out for
at least a year longer, Victoria thought with satisfaction as she
strode up the marble steps and into the Wolseley, past the
liveried doorman who was holding open one of the enormously heavy glass-and-iron doors.
I’ve got her over a barrel.
Victoria didn’t give her name to the greeter at the front
desk; she expected to be recognised instantly, and she was.
‘Ms Glossop!’ the greeter said quickly. ‘How nice to see you
again. Mr Dupleix is at his usual table.’
A waiter led Victoria past the black-lacquered bar, over the
black and white zigzag marble floor to the table for four where
Jacob was waiting, placed strategically near the entrance, so
that Victoria could see everyone and be seen in her turn. The
Wolseley hosted the most famous actors, TV presenters, writers and business tycoons in London, a clientele which was used
to instantly recognisable faces passing their tables every few
minutes, and which was far too sophisticated to gawk openly.
But Victoria Glossop’s arrival turned every head. Though as
stunning as an actress or a model, Victoria had infinitely more
power. She could make careers by declaring a woman a fashion
icon or putting her on the coveted front cover of
Style
. She had
the looks of a professional beauty and the authority of a tyrant,
a combination rare enough that everyone in the Wolseley had
to sneak a quick look at her, to see her for themselves. Many
raised a hand in greeting, and Victoria cast brief smiles in their
direction, though without slowing her catwalk stride. Jacob
Dupleix rose from his seat to greet her, arms outstretched, and
the sight of him drew even more attention. The actors and
presenters and writers were supplicants, famous as they were.
Jacob and Victoria were the fame-makers, the powers behind
the scenes who pulled the strings and made the puppets dance.
They were the ones who needed to be courted, flattered,
fawned to. And they knew it.
‘Darling!’ Jacob said, enfolding Victoria in a warm embrace,
then pulling back to look at her, holding her shoulders, before
planting a kiss on each cheek. Though Jacob had been born
and brought up in New York, his family’s origins were a
complex mixture of European and Middle Eastern wealth and
influence, and his manners were elaborate and courtly.
‘You look as beautiful as ever,’ he said fondly. ‘Please.’ He
gestured to the leather banquette beside him, waiting until
Victoria had smoothed her minuscule skirt underneath her
tiny bottom and sat down before he took his place beside her.
This was how Jacob always preferred to be seated when he
dined tête-à-tête with an attractive woman, on a banquette
they shared; and he had the status, even at the best restaurants,
to reserve a table for four if necessary to ensure his
preference.
‘An apéritif, Ms Glossop?’ a waiter enquired, gliding up to
the table.
‘VLT,’ Victoria ordered. ‘Plenty of ice.’ Vodka, lime and
slimline tonic was the carb-free drink of choice for fashionistas
watching their weight.
‘So,’ Jacob said, as she shrugged her arms out of the mink
jacket, draping it over her shoulders. ‘How are you, my
darling?’ He smiled happily. ‘I’ve been taking meetings with
my editors all day, but this is the moment I’ve been looking
forward to. My fervent congratulations. You’ve done the most
amazing job.’
Victoria smiled complacently. She knew she had, but it was
pleasant to hear her boss say it, rather than having to make the
point herself.
‘
Style
’s brighter,’ Jacob continued. ‘Livelier, hipper, peppier.
Younger. And the advertisers love it. The circulation is rising
and we’ve just managed to raise ad rates, even in these terrible
economic times.’
Victoria’s smile deepened, but she didn’t say a word. When
people were praising you, you let them keep going. Most
women would have felt obliged to murmur a self-deprecating
comment at this stage, but the reason Victoria was so successful was that she wasn’t most women. And she certainly didn’t
do self-deprecating.
‘Your cocktail, madam,’ the waiter murmured, sliding it in
front of Victoria. ‘Are you ready to order your dinner yet?’
‘Tomato soup and steak tartare, no frites,’ Victoria said
without even looking at the menu.
‘Half a dozen fines de claire oysters and the sea bass,’ Jacob
said cheerfully.‘Give me her frites on the side, why don’t you?
I love the way you guys do them here. Even better than
Balthazar,’ he added, naming the famous SoHo bistro that was
the Wolseley’s New York counterpart. ‘And bring me some
mayo too, why don’t you.’
The waiter gathered the menus and slipped away. Jacob
raised his glass of champagne to Victoria in a toast.
‘To my star editor,’ he said fondly. ‘Jesus, Vicky, how long’s
it been?’
‘Oh God.
Decades!
’ Victoria said jokingly, clinking her glass
with his.
It had, in fact, been twelve years or so since Victoria, an
achingly-ambitious, twenty-two-year-old, very junior editor
at
US Style
, had targeted, focused on and succeeded in dating
an influential, much older art dealer simply because he was a
good friend of Jacob Dupleix. Twelve years since she’d been
taken by the art dealer to Jacob’s mansion in the Hamptons,
the stretch of Long Island where the truly rich New Yorkers
maintained beachfront houses that cost in the tens of millions,
for Jacob’s renowned Fourth of July party, and, between the
firework displays and private concert by Mariah Carey, had
wangled an introduction to the great man himself. Exquisitely
turned-out in a white poplin Armani mini-dress and stratospheric heels, looking as cool as a cucumber, her cut-glass
English accent enchanting even the most jaded of Americans,
Victoria had been an instant hit with Jacob even before she
casually dropped into the conversation that she was one of
his employees.
‘You know what I tell people about you?’ Jacob asked
rhetorically, drinking some champagne. ‘I could tell from
the moment I met you that you had more ambition in your
little finger than most people have in their whole goddamn
bodies. I can smell it on people. It’s my special talent.’ He
grinned. ‘Baby, if you could bottle that and sell it, we’d be
billionaires.’
Jacob Dupleix made being in your fifties look like the prime
of life. It helped that his complex ethnic origins had given him
a smooth, Mediterranean skin colour that looked as if he had a
perpetual tan, and that his lightly-silvered mane of hair was
still so thick that it made his balding, hair-plugged contemporaries grind their teeth with jealousy. His dark eyes gleamed
with seductive warmth; everything about his demeanour spoke
of worldly wisdom and the kind of sexual experience that
made women melt with anticipation. In his time, he had been
compared to Jeff Goldblum, Antonio Banderas, Imran Khan,
even King Juan Carlos of Spain.
Although Jacob was definitely not running to seed, decades
of five-star living had put a little excess weight on him; he had
a personal trainer and nutritionist, but he ignored their instructions as much as he followed them. His dark Hugo Boss suit
was expertly cut to flatter his silhouette, and his big frame
could carry the extra pounds that fine dining and finer wines
had packed on.
He’s as charismatic as ever, Victoria thought, sipping her
VLT and looking Jacob up and down with open appreciation.
‘I know, I know,’ Jacob said, his dark eyes glinting. ‘I could
stand to lose a few pounds, and you look as skinny as always. I
should take diet tips from you, Vicky. You look amazing.
Jeremy’s a lucky guy.’
‘He certainly is,’ Victoria said briskly. ‘And he knows it, too.’
Jacob’s grin deepened. ‘Yeah, I bet you remind him morning
and evening just how lucky he is,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t, but I
will,’ he added over his shoulder to the waiter extending a
wooden tray of freshly-baked rolls. ‘Give me that one, the
tomato bread. And don’t even bother showing the lady
anything with carbs in it – am I right, Vicky?’ He ripped open
a roll, bringing it to his nose, nostrils flaring with pleasure as he
inhaled the delicious, yeasty smell of the bread studded with
sundried tomatoes. ‘Mmn, that smells good.’
Victoria, never one to be distracted from her goal, completely
ignored the pleasure Jacob was taking in his roll.
‘Jeremy may be lucky,’ she said, taking another measured
sip of her cocktail, ‘but I’m not. Because I work like a Trojan
for everything I’ve achieved. I push everyone around me hard,
but I push myself hardest of all. You know that, Jacob.’
‘I do,’ he agreed through a mouthful of fluffy bread.
‘And I’m ready for my next challenge,’ she continued firmly.
‘Now, Vicky—’ he started.
‘I’ve done everything you asked me to do.’ In a characteristic gesture, Victoria raised her slim hand and ticked off the
points on her fingers. ‘Raised circulation, increased advertising,
raised ad rates, practically doubled the subscriptions, made the
magazine the most fashionable periodical in the UK. It flies off
the shelves, and the website’s won a whole string of awards.
You know how shitty that website was before. Practically nonexistent. I sacked everyone on it and brought in my own
people. Have you looked at it recently?’
‘I look at everything,’ Jacob assured her, dusting the crumbs
off his hands. ‘Believe me, I do.’
‘So you know what a transformation I’ve created!’ She
smoothed back her already perfect chignon. ‘It’s just what you
wanted, much more vibrant and alive. I instructed all my
editors that everything had to be shot in motion. The girls
jump and run and smile much more than they used to.’ Victoria
pulled a face.‘God, the fuss everyone made at first. “It’s not the
British way to smile in fashion shots,” they told me,’ she said
sarcastically. ‘Everything was so dour and serious. Well, not any
more! And it’s what women want to see,’ she added passionately. ‘American energy and drive. It’s so much more fun.’
The waiter brought their first courses, but Victoria
completely ignored her tomato soup; she was turned away
from her place setting, towards Jacob, making her pitch with
fervency.