'Ow!' Jane growled into the businessman's armpit as someone stood heavily on her toe. She moved her head the fraction that was possible to glare at the offender, and instantly wished she hadn't. An extremely spotty youth, his yellow-tipped, angry red bumps shining hideous and near in the harsh overhead light, gazed fishily back at her. Clamped to his ears were a pair of cheap headphones from which a grinding, sneering sound, interspersed with a fizzing rattle, emanated.
Jane sighed, loudly, knowing she was far from being the only unhappy traveller. The sense of mass irritation was almost as palpable as the overwhelming heat. She tried to prepare a selection of choice observations about the magazines she had read for the Fitzherbert breakfast, but was distracted by the sensation of her carefully moussed-up hair melting in the moist, sulphurous fug. She wrinkled her nose. The carriage, frankly, stank. It was one thing to travel like a can of sardines. To smell like them as well was just too bad. Desperately seeking distraction, she gazed through the window in the door at the back of the carriage, into the next one.
There he was. About eight feet away from her, his blond head clearly visible above the mass that pressed about him. Was she hallucinating? Had she finally gone mad?
No, she hadn't. It
was
him. No doubt about it. Tom.
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Suddenly, incontrovertibly, unbelievably here. Not in New York. Not anywhere else in the world, but here, alive, in the flesh, in London, in the very Underground carriage next to hers. He looked well, tanned, the ends of his hair bleached by the sun. He also looked even handsomer than she remembered.
Jane stared urgently at him. Surely he must see her. But Tom was gazing vacantly out of the carriage windows, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. Jane tried to move, to make a gesture. He would, he must, sense her presence. She struggled again, but she was packed too tightly between the armpit and the acne to move. She was trapped. Until the next station, that was. Please, God, let it come soon.
Between Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road, the train ground to a halt in the tunnel. Jane twisted herself desperately about, but could have been no more securely pinioned if she'd been bound hand and foot. And gagged into the bargain. For there was no point shouting. Tom would never hear her through two panes of glass and a mass of people. Feeling dizzy with panic, Jane locked her gaze on to him, burning into his leather jacket like a laser, willing him with every fibre of her being to turn and look at her. He must. He had to.
He didn't. The eyes that had melted her heart looked blankly out of the window at the black tunnel walls. The hand that had played her body like a harp, plucking deep, throbbing notes that still resonated, hung limply from a ceiling strap. Jane wanted to scream. Her eyeballs ached with the intense staring. She felt her gaze to be a lasso, thrown round him, connecting him, an invisible thread that would break if she so much as blinked. As long as she was looking at him, she thought, he could not get away.
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Eventually the train gave a juddering, shuddering lurch and moved on. Seconds later, it had drawn into Tottenham Court Road station and flung open its doors. Jane was forced to look away now. She had to get out. Desperately, she scratched, pushed and clawed her way out on to the platform and elbowed against the tide of people pouring out of the train. She struggled towards the next carriage. It was half empty when she gained it. And Tom had gone. ,
'Tom!' screamed Jane, turning desperately round in the midst of the raft of commuters and glancing wildly about her for the blond head and the leather jacket. The wide, ! unwieldy crowd moved with a pitiless shuffle up the stairs, making it impossible for her to move at more than a snail's pace. In the escalator hall, Jane scoured the length of the commuter-crammed moving staircases with her eyes, but Tom was nowhere to be seen. She pushed her way up, muttering apologies, attracting angry glances, crashing her shins painfully into the sharp, heavy edges of briefcases. Tom
couldn't
have disappeared into nothing. Not when she'd been so close to him.
Through the ticket gates the crowds moved, as thick, i slow and dense as treacle. Finally, Jane rushed out into Oxford Street, panting, her head bursting and dizzy with hot, pounding blood. For the next fifteen minutes she dashed up alleyways, down dead-end streets, across busy roads and around squares, but with no success. Tom had completely vanished. Eventually she slumped on a bench in Soho Square and burst into tears. No one passing batted an eyelid. You got all sorts of nutters wandering around Soho, after all.
When Jane entered the Archie Fitzherbert breakfast, she was half an hour late and felt a hundred years older. The breakfast was practically over but she didn't care. Nor
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did she care that her hair was all over her face and her mascara, despite automatic-pilot efforts in the loo, hopelessly smudged. She had walked the half mile from Soho Square to the
Fabulous
offices in a fragile daze, trying not to let the dreadful truth hit her that she had been mere feet away from the man she had been thinking of almost nonstop since he had left her, and she had let him get away.
Again.
'Jane! Good morning,' called the managing director, half bouncing up from his chair as she came in.
'So
pleased you could make it.' He appeared to speak without irony. Jane bulldozed a smile across her face as he motioned her to sit down, waving a tanned, square-fingered hand across the array of croissants and toast wrapped in linen napkins. 'Have some breakfast,' Fitzherbert smiled. Jane nodded and drew in the chair beneath her, noticing that no one else had taken up the offer so far. The food was untouched.
Jane was too distracted to notice much else. All she took in about Archie Fitzherbert was his rather theatrical lilac suit, fashionably jarring orange tie and air of focused enthusiasm. Motivation shone from his every pore. He radiated energy and success. He was, in short, a deeply depressing sight, and the last person on earth Jane wanted to see at that moment.
He introduced the others at the table to her, an assortment of deputy editors, managing editors and advertisement and promotions people from other tides in the group, whose names Fitzherbert was evidently proud to be able to recall from memory. In her frazzled state, however, Jane forgot them as soon as he said them.
'We were just talking about
Lipstick,'
Archie Fitzherbert said, training a polite but penetrating gaze on her. As she picked up her coffee cup, Jane heard the unmistakable
233
sound of a gauntlet hitting the floor. She was expected to make a contribution. Well, she could. Launched by a rival publishing company,
Lipstick
was the latest women's magazine to hit the already gorged market. It had been judged a great success, but Jane had thought from the start that it was boring. She said as much now.
'Really?
said Archie Fitzherbert, leaning forward and looking utterly fascinated. He clutched at the tablecloth with his fingers. 'How
very interesting.
Why
is
that?'
'There's nothing original about it,' Jane said, conscious, for once, of not giving a damn what anyone else thought. 'It's derivative, it takes the successful bits of practically every other magazine and mixes them together, but it's got no soul of its own. It's less than the sum of its parts.'
There was a shuffling silence. Jane suspected that before she came in,
Lipstick
had been the subject of considerable praise. But she didn't care. She felt oddly clear-headed and detached, as if the shock of seeing Tom and the misery of losing him again had left her no energy for worrying about trivia. She took a sip from her coffee cup, aware that Archie Fitzherbert was still staring at her. As was everyone else in the room.
Fitzherbert suddenly looked at his Rolex. 'Well, thank you for coming, everyone,' he said, and stood up, smiling politely as his guests drained coffee dregs and stumbled to their feet. There were a few crashes as the more maladroit dropped cutlery. Everyone mumbled their thanks, grabbed coats and bags and hurried out of the room. As Jane prepared to leave, she suddenly became aware that Fitzherbert had glided to her side. 'I'd like a quick word,' he said, sitting back down and motioning her to do the same. A few of the last to leave gazed curiously over their shoulders as the doors swung shut behind them.
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'May I ask, since you seem to have such strong views, what you think of your own magazine?' Fitzherbert inquired in carefully neutral tones, locking his eyes on to hers. He was, Jane noticed, really quite handsome. But she also noticed the wedding ring. Taken, then.
She hesitated. It was, she knew, her cue to say something flattering about Victoria, to laud her to the skies, to say what a great and inspirational editor she was.
'Fairly dull really,' someone said. Jane heard the voice ringing round the silent room and realised it was her own. 'I think,' the voice continued, 'that it needs to move with the times more. It's quite witty, which is important, and has a certain amount of glamour. But there's a lot that could be done with it nonetheless.'
'Such as what?' asked Fitzherbert, his light, pleasant tones still betraying nothing of what he thought.
Jane took a deep breath. She'd clearly talked herself out of a job anyway, so she may as well speak the truth. What had she to lose? Somewhere out there in the mockingly bright sunshine, Tom was wandering about London and she had no way of finding him. She had been given a second chance and had wasted it. What did anything matter now?
'Well, I think it could be better informed,' she heard herself saying.
'Fabulous
staff don't seem to think they need to read the newspapers, apart from the horoscopes, which is a pity. Which means that everyone else spots the big stories first and gets their interview requests in. And big interviews and stories, as you know, are what sell magazines.'
Fitzherbert nodded. He seemed to be encouraging her to say even more. Probably because after this she would have to offer her resignation and it would be cheaper than sacking her. Oh well. Since he'd asked . . . 'It's also not
235
very sexy,' Jane continued recklessly. 'Or perhaps as hip as its rivals.' That much
was
true — Josh had placed a far greater emphasis on predicting trends and spotting rising stars than Victoria did.
She stopped and took a sip from her coffee, feeling scared but strangely unburdened. Fitzherbert kept up a sphinx-like silence for a few seconds. Eventually, he cleared his throat.
'Well, I'm
very
interested in what you say,' he remarked. 'Very interested indeed.' The interview, such as it was, was evidently over. Jane scrambled to her feet, certain she would find her P45 on her desk that very afternoon. Once Victoria got wind of this, she would be out faster than a Porsche Boxster.
As she passed through the mirrored entrance into the Movers and Shakers party, Jane smiled. A beautiful stranger smiled back, dazzling in a clinging satin dress, perfect make-up and a Grace Kelly ripple of blonde hair curling down over her shoulders. She felt pure Hollywood. Or, looking down at the vast glass of champagne in her hand, perhaps pure Bollywood.
Jane planned to drown all thoughts about Tom in gallon after gallon of champagne. And all thoughts about her no-doubt-wrecked professional future. She had, so far, been spared the expected post-Fitzherbert tongue-lashing from Victoria, who had been out of the office all day having her legs dyed and her eyelashes waxed for the party. Or was it the other way round? There had also been something about a seaweed wrap, eyebrow reconstruction, mud treatment and cellulite-blasting. Victoria was, for all Jane knew, probably having a damp-proof course put in as well.
'Jane, darling, you look delicious,' cried Oonagh, bustling up atop a pair of high black boots.
'Wonderful boots,' said Jane.
'Thank you, my darling,' said Oonagh. 'They're my fuckits,' she added, unexpectedly.
'Fuckits?' said Jane. Did she mean fuck-me shoes? Or was it the new Patrick Cox label?
'That's right,' grinned Oonagh. 'Expensive things I treat myself to even though I can't really afford them. I just think, oh fuck it, and buy them.' Oonagh smoothed her heavily beringed hands down her body. Her clinging black dress showed off her tiny waist to perfection. For a fifty-something, she really had the most wonderful figure.
'How do you keep in such good shape?' Jane asked her, smiling gratefully at the waiter glugging champagne into her glass.
'Sleep in my bra, darling,' Oonagh said briskly. 'Always have done. Never take it off, except for gala occasions. Not that there are many of
those
these days.'
'Who's here?' Jane looked around at the sea of braying, grinning faces and wondered who they all were.
Oonagh on the other hand knew everyone. Being the
Fabulous
picture editor, Jane supposed that she probably had to. Nonetheless, she seemed to know more about the guests than might be deemed strictly necessary.
'Busty Binge-Fetlock's over there,' Oonagh whispered, gesturing in the direction of a stout, shock-headed man in tartan trousers who seemed to be deep in conversation with a coat stand. 'Terribly well-connected. On first-name terms with most of Europe's royal families. Rather nearsighted, though, as you can see. Probably thinks that fur's Queen Silvia.'
'And who's that?' Jane asked, looking in the direction of