The Cinderella Reflex (22 page)

“We have Helene at the top of the programme – she’ll be talking about her efforts to look ten years younger – remember she talked about going to that top spa?” Too late, Tess remembered that that had been the meeting where Ollie and Helene had their big bust-up.

“Who cares whether that old bat looks ten years younger or not?” Ollie didn’t bother looking up from his screen. “It’s not as if she’s a celebrity!”

“Well, she’s coming on the show, nonetheless.” Tess tried to make her voice sound steely. She was determined not to be subservient this time around. Chris had given her express instructions to avoid what he called ‘status-lowering signals’. These included hand wringing and self-grooming gestures, apparently. Tess looked down at her fingers and saw they were locked together so tightly her knuckles were glistening bone white. She prised them apart and laid them flat on the desk to prevent herself from committing the next cardinal sin of touching her hair.

She opened her mouth to tell Ollie about the second item on the morning’s show – the Psychic Granny. But no words came out. Tess swallowed. She guessed Ollie would be bitter about the Ollie Lite tag and how Jack McCabe was driving down the content of the station to reach a more popular audience. He would
not
appreciate a fortune teller coming on his show. Still, what could she do? Helene had booked Rosa – when Tess had arrived this morning it was a fait accompli.

Suddenly she remembered one of Chris’s techniques for getting on at work. The mirroring technique, he’d called it. Tess tried to recall what he’d said. “
Subtly mirror a difficult person’s body language and they will instantly warm to you.
” That was it! Tess stole a glance at Ollie. He was still staring at his computer, his eyes bulging slightly, his mouth turned down in a disappointed slope, one shaky hand on his coffee container and the other God knows where. Tess suppressed a sigh. She was supposed to mirror that?

Still, she’d have to try. Tess stared hard at her own computer, pretending to study something on the screen, watching Ollie’s every move surreptitiously from under her lashes. Each time Ollie took a sip of coffee, Tess obediently took a swig from her own mug. Every time he sighed – which was every twenty seconds – Tess too let out a long-suffering sigh. When he blew his nose on a none-too-clean-looking hankie, Tess fished a paper tissue out of her own handbag. Ollie finally looked up.

“Is there something wrong with you?” he snapped.

“What?” Tess asked innocently, the tissue halfway to her nose.

“What? You’re sighing every twenty seconds.” Ollie sighed heavily again. Tess wondered fleetingly if Ollie had become clinically depressed since she’d seen him last. She took another deep, mirroring sigh. “We have the Psychic Granny for our second item. She’s the ... um ... fortune teller.”

Ollie’s eyebrows met in a belligerent frown on his forehead. “That nutcase who rang you on your fiasco of an agony aunt slot?”

She took a deep breath. Flatter them into submission – that was another of the techniques. “Yes. Her. But if there’s anyone in the world who can make this item interesting – it’s
you
, Ollie.”

Tess stopped. She hadn’t intended to sound quite so saccharine. He would hear how insincere she sounded and turn on her! But then, as if by magic, his whole body seemed to change in front of her eyes. His sat up straighter and his features lost their look of perpetual defensiveness.

“D’you really think so?” He sounded so hopeful that Tess felt a stab of guilt for wilfully misleading him. She nodded dumbly.

“And what makes you think that, exactly?” Ollie peered across the desk at her. Tess bit her lip.

“Because ... of the depth of your experience? And the fact that you’re er ... naturally good with people? And ...” Tess wracked her brain for more improbable compliments. Then she realised she didn’t have to. Ollie was on his feet and making his way around to her desk.

“Let me see what you have on the old charlatan!” He sounded positively jovial now. He stood behind her, one hand brushing her neck as he peered over her shoulder. Tess tried not to flinch.

“Right, er ... let’s see ... here it is.” She passed him the two-page brief she had written earlier for the Psychic Granny slot and watched nervously while he read it through impassively.

“You’ll be able to handle her better than I could. I mean, as I said, you have so much more
experience
, Ollie.” She sounded a bit desperate now. But Ollie looked up, his eyes shining with something unfathomable.

“You’re absolutely right! Of course. This fortune-telling lark is a load of old codswallop, but you know, I
do
have the experience and the talent to make anything interesting. I’ll see you in studio shortly.” He walked off, calling over his shoulder, “Watch and learn, Tess. Watch and learn.”

Tess sank her head into her hands as soon as Ollie left. It had been that
easy
? She remembered the months of turmoil when she’d tried to manage Ollie with logic and rationale and failed miserably. And all she’d had to do all along was to
flatter
him? She felt a fleeting sense of resentment for all the effort she’d wasted but she shrugged it off. If this was what she had to do to keep Ollie Andrews sweet, so be it.

“‘If there’s anyone in the world who can make this item interesting – it’s
you
, Ollie!’”

Tess looked up in surprise at the sound of Andrea’s voice, mimicking her.

“‘I’m sure you’ll be better able to handle her than I could, Ollie,’” Andrea continued, a nasty note in her voice. “‘You have so much
experience
.’”

Tess flushed. “It’s this mirroring technique that I talked to Chris about,” she tried to explain. “It ... er ... really works.”

“Apparently so.” Andrea gave a wintry smile and turned her back on her. Tess stared after her in panic. Had she found out something about Joe? Or that Tess had been in the same restaurant that night and hadn’t told her she’d bumped into him? A quick glance at the clock determined that she didn’t have time to find out. This Morning was about to go to air and she had no choice but to turn around and follow Ollie.

He was sitting in the soundproofed part of the studio, bent over a newspaper, and he didn’t look up when she arrived. Helene was nowhere to be seen. And neither was Grandma Rosa. Tess took her seat on the other side of the glass window and glanced down at the running order, trying to figure out what she could open with if neither of them turned up on time.

She was reaching for her contacts book when Sara arrived, a breathless Rosa in tow. “Helene’s been delayed in a meeting so we’ll have to start with Psychic Granny,” she explained, already leading Rosa in and settling her down opposite Ollie.

Tess exhaled quietly. She had been expecting Sara to be in a major sulk today because Tess’s arrival back at work meant that Sara’s promotion had been short-lived, but here she was, being completely professional about it, making sure the guest felt comfortable.

She had to smile at the sight of Rosa. She was wearing a black and white dotted gypsy-style scarf tied jauntily around her neck, and her huge hooped earrings dangled almost to her shoulders. She had replaced the purple hair with a violent shade of red and she was expertly shuffling and cutting her deck of tarot cards. Ollie darted a nervous look out to the control room at Tess.

“Helene is a bit late,” she explained on the talkback system. “So we’re going to start the show today with Psychic Granny.”

Ollie looked mutinous, so Tess added, a bit jadedly at this stage. “But
you’ll
know how best to handle it, Ollie.” This flattery was becoming exhausting, she thought, pressing her cheeks into her hands. She held her breath for the final few seconds before the show began. And then, just as the familiar signature tune for This Morning started up, Tess heard a rustling behind her.

She turned around to see Helene had arrived. Without stopping to explain or apologise or even to greet Tess, Helene barged breathlessly through the studio door, plonked herself down on the chair beside Rosa, and clapped the headphones over her ears.

“I’m here,” she announced needlessly. Tess flipped the talkback switch again.

“Ollie! Go back to Plan A. Start with Helene now that she’s here!”

Ollie sighed peevishly, but nodded in agreement. Tess breathed a final sigh of relief and sat back in her chair. They were On. Ollie was happy – or as happy as Ollie could be given that he was Ollie. Helene’s Ten Years Younger journey would be a hoot. And the Psychic Granny was bound to get lots of reaction.

Not a bad start for her first show since she’d come back. This time around, Tess decided, she would cultivate a healthier attitude towards her job. Today, instead of being hyper vigilant for things going wrong, she was going to trust that everything would go really, really well for a change. And that was the last Zen-like moment she had all morning.

It all started so well. Helene began by explaining the background to how she had started on what she called her Ten Years Younger Journey, how she had researched lots of treatments – Botox, non-surgical facelifts, anti-ageing creams with almost miraculous properties – all claiming to stem the tide of time. She would, she promised, be explaining to the listeners how all of these treatments worked in reality. She was breathless from her late arrival and as usual, she was speaking much too fast. But at least, Tess acknowledged, she wasn’t stuttering over quite ordinary words like she normally did on-air. And she was genuinely enthusiastic about this topic, which was always a plus.

But then, halfway through Helene’s recitation of the scientific ingredients in one of her treatments, Ollie got bored. Tess knew the moment he began to run his fingers through his hair, followed by fiddling with his pen, clicking the top of it on and off noisily. Helene ignored him until he finally interjected. “And tell me, Helene – what’s so important about looking ten years younger in the first place?”

“Well, it’s more important for women to look young because they are judged as much on their looks as their ability,” Helene replied confidently.

“Really?” Ollie sounded sceptical.

Tess shifted in her chair, her antenna up.

“Really! In fact, women have to do better than men in all areas of life simply to get the same results. As someone said about Ginger Rogers, she had to do everything Fred Astaire did, except she did it backwards in high heels.” Helene smiled flirtatiously at Ollie, delighted with this opportunity to portray her sense of humour on-air.

“And what does that mean?” Ollie asked irritably.

“What does it mean?” A note of defensiveness crept into Helene’s voice. “It’s a
metaphor
– for how much more difficult things still are for women in the workplace.”

“I don’t know if I agree with that, actually,” Ollie folded his arms and stared at Helene.

“You don’t have to agree with it.” Helene leaned forward in her chair, enunciating her words very carefully, as if she were talking to a two-year-old. “Which part of it do you not understand, Ollie?”

Tess pushed the talkback switch. “Go back to talking about the treatments, Ollie.”

But Ollie’s earlier acquiescence had vanished. “Let’s see what someone else thinks, shall we? Our Psychic Granny is here with us in studio too and she’ll be telling us about her psychic abilities in just a moment. But what do you think of all this, Grandma Rosa?” he asked abruptly.

Rosa, who had been studying her tarot cards, looked up when she heard her name. “Er ... about what?” she asked.

“Helene has just said women have to do everything men do to succeed – except they have to do it backwards and in high heels.” Ollie didn’t bother to keep the sneer out of his voice. Rosa considered his words silently, her neck to one side, like a little bird. Say something, Tess implored via mental telepathy, as several seconds of dead air ticked away.

“I think Helene probably has something there,” Rosa said finally. “Things are harder because women have to have their babies at the same time as they are building up their careers. Whereas
men
can put off that lark until they’re in their dotage, so it’s not exactly a level playing field, is it?”

“Thank you, Rosa.” Helene turned back to Ollie. “So. To get back to my Ten Years Younger Journey ...”

“But what I’d like to know is how to
feel
ten years younger!” Rosa said suddenly. “Have you any tips on that, Helene?”

“No, I don’t,” Helene said shortly. “That’s not what my journey was about.”

“It’s just that when you get to my age – and I don’t mind telling the listeners,” Rosa leaned into her microphone, “that I’m over seventy – feeling ten years younger is a lot more attractive than simply looking it. Do you
feel
better since you had all these treatments and therapies?”

“No, actually.”

Tess, who had glanced down at her notes, and was wondering how soon she could pull the Ten Years Younger item, jerked her head up at the strange note in Helene’s voice.

“In fact, I feel ... very peculiar ...” And then her voice trailed away altogether and she slumped sideways in her chair.

Grandma Rosa and Tess were on their feet at the same time. But by the time Tess had pushed through the door, Rosa, displaying remarkable strength for her age, had caught Helene, stopping her from hitting the floor.

“Play some music!” Tess hissed at Ollie. She hunkered down beside Helene.

“Is she okay?” She looked fearfully at Rosa, who had two fingers on Helene’s wrist. “Ring for an ambulance!” Tess turned back to Sara who was hovering in the doorway.

“She’s okay,” Rosa said soothingly. “She’s just fainted.”

Tess looked at Helene. Her bright red lipstick was like a gash against her pale, translucent complexion. Beads of moisture gathered on her forehead and she looked clammy and sick.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Tess decided. “Sara! Dial the emergency services.”

“Honestly, there’s no need.” Rosa said calmly. “I was a nurse in a former life and I know what I’m talking about. Look – she’s coming around already.”

Tess looked down as Helene’s eyelashes fluttered like spiders on her cheeks. She opened her eyes, and looked about her, dazed.