The Forgotten Girl (15 page)

‘That's not what I meant,' I said.

‘There's nothing wrong with working in a shop, Nancy. It's a good business, that newsagent. Your dad's worked hard.'

‘I know,' I said. ‘I'm not la-di-da. I'm just enjoying doing something else, that's all.'

Billy's expression softened a bit.

‘Look, Nance,' he said. ‘I know your dad's a bit difficult sometimes. And I understand if you're nervous about working in the shop with him. But he's a good bloke, deep down.'

I snorted. Undeterred, Billy carried on.

‘I just think it's worth you working in the shop for now,' he said. ‘We might want to take it over one day.'

‘What about the garage?' I said. Billy was a proper grease monkey and never happier than when he was underneath an engine. I couldn't imagine him getting up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning to sort out a pile of Telegraphs.

He grinned.

‘We can have an empire,' he said. ‘Or we'll sell the shop and expand the garage. Who knows? The world is our oyster.'

He chuckled but I felt the walls closing in on me.

‘Beckenham's our oyster,' I muttered.

Billy pretended he hadn't heard.

‘It's good to keep your options open, Nancy. And if that means putting up with your dad for a while longer, then I reckon it's worth it.'

He got up and came over to where I leaned against the Formica counter and gently put his hand on my tummy.

‘Anyway, let's hope we'll have lots of little ones before too long and you can just stay at home and look after them.'

The stew was bubbling madly and relieved to have an excuse, I turned away from him.

‘Dinner's ready,' I said.

Billy watched me carefully but he didn't say more. Instead he sat down at the table as I dolloped stew and potatoes onto three plates, covering Dad's with foil and putting it in the oven. Then I almost threw Billy's in front of him and looked down at my own. The thin gravy slopped over the side of the plate and the peas were wrinkled. I felt nausea rise up in my throat.

‘I don't feel very well,' I said. ‘I think I'd better go to bed.'

Billy looked surprised.

‘What about dinner?' he said, a lump of beef hanging from his fork, halfway to his mouth.

‘Eat,' I said. ‘Let yourself out.'

I blew him a kiss and fled upstairs, pausing at the front door to pick up a letter from Dennis that I'd missed on the way in.

Upstairs, I pulled on my nightie and crawled under the duvet feeling shaky and sick. I felt like I'd been in a cage and though I'd once seen Billy as the one to open the door and set me free, I now realised what he was offering me was another prison.

I tore open Dennis's letter, hoping his funny tales about the boys he taught would make me feel better, but instead of his usual pages of neat handwriting, he'd simply scrawled on one sheet torn from an exercise book.

‘Nancy!' he wrote. ‘The headmaster needs a secretary. I've told him all about you and he says he'd love to meet you. Come and stay, flutter your eyelashes at him and the job's as good as yours. We could get a place together and Dad can't complain if I'm looking after you. What do you think? Let me know as soon as you can. Telephone me at work. Dennis.'

I stared at the letter. Once it would have been welcome – another escape from my life with Dad. But not now. Not now I had Suze, and George, and a career. I adored Dennis but living with him wasn't the answer either.

Stuffing the paper under my pillow, I closed my eyes. I'd made my choice.

Chapter 23

2016

Generally speaking I wasn't a crier. I was a coper. When things went wrong, I gritted my teeth, put my head down and got on with it, until they went right.

But it had been a difficult couple of months and Suze – or Susannah, or whatever her name was – turning me down was the final straw.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, walking up the path to her cottage, still holding tight to the photograph of the first Mode team. ‘I really can't help you.'

She opened the front door and flashed me a small apologetic smile over her shoulder.

What I meant to do was thank her politely, turn on my heel, find Damo and come up with a new plan. What I actually did was wail: ‘Please don't shut the door!'

Startled, she stopped and stared at me. I tried to smile but I couldn't. I felt tears hot in my eyes and even though I blinked I couldn't stop them falling.

‘It's supposed to be the best job in the world,' I said, gripping on to the rails of the iron garden gate like a prisoner, my voice quivering. ‘But it's all gone wroooooong.'

Suze looked like she was going to say something, but she didn't. Encouraged, I opened the gate and followed her up the path, but she gave me a quick sympathetic grimace and stuffing the photograph into her pocket, she shut the door.

Embarrassed and annoyed and horribly aware that I wasn't acting like the editor of Mode was expected to act, I discovered that once I'd started crying, I couldn't stop. I sat down on the doorstep of the cute cottage, pulled my knees up to my chest and wept.

After a while, the little dog bounded up to me, licked the knee of my Whistles trousers, which were soaked with salty tears – the horror – and then scratched at the front door.

Interested, I raised my head. Suze said the dog could get in the back door, right? So why was it trying to get in here? Was she standing on the other side, listening to me crying my eyes out?

I wiped away a tear and took a breath.

‘It's called imposter syndrome,' I said, in a tone that suggested I was simply carrying on a conversation, albeit a bit of a teary one.

‘I wrote a feature on it for my old magazine – imposter syndrome. It's that feeling that you're going to be found out. That you're faking it. That one day soon, someone's going to track you down and tell you there's been a terrible mistake. You're not supposed to be editor of Mode. How ridiculous. Clear your desk and get out.'

I stopped and listened. There was no response from the other side of the door, but I thought I heard a floorboard creak. The little dog had sat himself on the step next to me, so he obviously thought it was worth carrying on.

‘I think with me it goes back to my parents,' I said, giving little laugh. ‘Doesn't it always? Nothing I did was ever good enough for them. It still isn't. They don't value creative talent – writing isn't a job in their eyes, unless you're writing text books or articles for The Economist. I should have been in banking, or law, or done anything that makes a lot of money and sucks out your soul…'

I took another deep breath.

‘I've spent my whole life trying to get this job,' I said. ‘I have always wanted to be editor of a glossy magazine and I worked really hard to get here.

‘I've worked long hours. I've worked at weekends. I've got not social life to speak of except in the summer when I spend every Saturday at other people's weddings, trying to avoid being set up with one of the ushers. And now all those brides are having babies, and I've not even had a boyfriend for years…'

I shifted slightly on the step.

‘And when I did have a boyfriend, I dumped him for the sake of a job.'

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I heard movement on the other side of the door. Hoping Suze was on the other side and I wasn't losing my mind, I went on.

‘As for friends,' I said, with a hollow, mirthless laugh. ‘I'm not sure anyone likes me very much.'

I thought of Jen's face when I told her I didn't want to launch The Hive like we'd planned.

‘I've treated my best friend dreadfully,' I said. ‘I let her down and abandoned all our plans just because this job came along and I didn't want to miss out. And she forgave me. At first.'

I took a breath.

‘She came to some meetings, heard all about what we were planning – and then she took a job as editor of Grace magazine, which is the reason Mode is doing so badly.'

I paused for a minute as I thought about just what a massive problem Jen going to Grace was.

‘And I couldn't get cross with her, of course, because she's basically done exactly what I did to her.'

The floorboard on the other side of the door creaked again.

So, it's been a long road,' I said. ‘I've dumped boyfriends, treated my friends like shit, and given up anything remotely resembling a social life for my career. I've done all that to get this job at Mode. So when they approached me I was thrilled. The publisher emailed and asked me to have lunch with her. I couldn't believe it – it was all so easy. I've always believed that to make it in life you have to work really hard – that's why I hate the X Factor and shows like that. Those people just want success given to them. They're not interested in grafting.'

Aware I was babbling, I tried to focus on my point.

‘Anyway, when Lizzie asked me to lunch, I thought that was it. All my hard work had paid off. And it seemed like that at first. It really did. I was pleased with myself. Smug, even. I'd made all those sacrifices and now it was coming together.

‘But on my first day, they told me the magazine was sinking and they'd really only brought me in to close it.'

I felt myself close to tears again.

‘They've only given me a few months to turn it round,' I said breathlessly. ‘I've got no budget, an unenthusiastic team and one brilliant editorial assistant, and now the person I trusted with my ideas has gone to run the competition. It's like climbing Mount bloody Everest wearing flip flops. But even though it seems hopeless, I'm not giving up. I'm going to do this, I am. I just need a bit of help…'

On the other side of the door, I heard the sound of a lock turning. The little dog gave me a triumphant look, barked once, then ran off round the side of the cottage.

I stood up, slowly, feeling my knees crack because I'd been curled up for too long.

Eventually, after what seemed like forever, the door opened and Suze stood there.

‘Imposter syndrome?' she said.

I nodded.

She bit her lip, making her look very young despite her steely grey hair.

‘I know all about that.'

‘Will you help me?' I said, desperate for her to agree. ‘Please?'

She stepped back away from the door so I could go into the cottage.

‘What do you need?' she asked.

Chapter 24

While Suze made tea, I texted Damo to tell him I was going to be at least an hour and to head back to the office if he wanted. Then I settled down on the over-stuffed sofa and looked round. It was quite a small room with a low ceiling but it wasn't dark in the slightest. The walls were painted a warm white and the wooden floor was stained a light oak colour. The sofa I sat on was also white, with a blue stripe, and opposite me was a wing-backed chair upholstered in a gorgeous flowery fabric. The whole room was like an advert for countryside chic. Suze obviously had exquisite taste.

The alcove to the side of the open fire was lined with shelves which were brimming with books. I got up and went to look. Suze – Susannah Harrison – had written most of them.

‘I always feel like I'm showing off having them in this room,' Suze said, coming into the room with a tray of tea. ‘But I can't have too many books upstairs in the study because the floor's not strong enough to hold the weight.'

I fought the urge to look up and check the ceiling wasn't about to come down.

‘It's a beautiful house,' I said. ‘It's very quiet.'

Suze smiled. She sat down on the sofa and poured tea into two cups.

‘Milk?'

I nodded.

‘I wanted a complete change from London,' she said. ‘But I'm near enough to visit once in a while.'

‘Why did you give up magazines?' I asked. I hadn't meant to be so direct, but I couldn't square the Suze I was talking to now – in this quiet, stylish cottage – with the bubbly sixties fashionista in the picture Emily had found. ‘Did you always want to write romances?'

Suze laughed.

‘God, no,' she said. ‘I wrote the first one almost by mistake. It was like I was writing the story of how I wanted my life to turn out. But then a contact who worked for a publisher read it, she offered me a deal and I decided to give it a go.'

I must have looked doubtful. I couldn't understand why anyone would give up editing the most famous women's mag in the country, at the most exciting time in magazines, to write what I saw as throwaway romantic novels.

‘Don't dismiss what I do,' Suze said mildly but with a definite barb in her tone. ‘Romantic fiction sells by the bucket-load. I may not be in the running for the Booker Prize but I make a good living. A very good living.'

I gave her a rueful smile and sat down next to her.

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘I'm so consumed by Mode that I can't see anything else.'

‘I was like that once,' Suze said, handing me a cup of tea. ‘I understand.'

‘Do you miss it?'

‘Not any more,' said Suze, offering me a biscuit. ‘I did at first, of course. I missed the whole life. It was such a wonderful time…'

She trailed off, lost in her memories, then shook her head and looked at me.

‘I'm not sure I can help you much,' she said.

I pulled all my papers out of my bag and thrust them at her.

‘I've got nine months to save the magazine,' I explained. ‘I want to make people talk about it, but with my tiny budget it's not easy. So I need to do something that will grab everyone's attention. We've been planning to theme the issues, but now Jen's gone to Grace so they'll be a step ahead of us and I think we might need to do something else. I'm sort of desperate.'

Suze was sorting through the bundle I'd given her. She pulled out my battered copy of the first issue and gazed at it in wonder.