The Forgotten Girl (18 page)

‘Do you know Amy Lavender?' I said. Suze nodded. ‘She'd be brilliant. She's gorgeous and she even looks a bit like your original cover model. We can style her in a sixties-inspired outfit.'

‘She's really fun, isn't she?' Suze said, thoughtfully. ‘I remember seeing her on that dancing show. So why don't you get someone to film your cover shoot?' she said. ‘They're always a hoot if you have the right model. You can edit the film and put it on the website.'

Impressed with Suze's ideas, I added that one to my already bulging notebook. I'd been so right to come. Suze's energy was amazing and I was already plotting to get her to the office to inspire my jaded team.

‘Let's go for lunch,' I said, looking at my watch and realising with surprise that it was already three o'clock. ‘A very late lunch. My treat.'

Suze nodded.

‘I'm starving,' she said. ‘All this planning has taken it out of me.'

She hurried off to get her coat and I fished my phone out of my bag. I had five missed calls from Damo, a couple from Emily, and even one from Vanessa. I fired off texts to them all, explaining where I was and how brilliant it was.

Emily replied straight away.

‘Amazeballs,' she wrote. I rolled my eyes. ‘Ask her if she'll do an interview. Ask her if I can interview her about being editorial assistant on the first issue. I can compare her life then to mine now.'

That was a brilliant idea, I thought. Emily really was a find. She'd be editor of Mode one day – if I didn't manage to close it first. As Suze came back into the room, wearing a classic beige mac and a gold scarf, I took a chance.

‘There's another feature we want to do,' I said, shoving all my papers back into my bag and picking up my own coat. ‘Sort of a “day in the life” of our editorial assistant, Emily.'

Suze nodded.

‘And she'd really like to compare her life with yours,' I went on. ‘She can interview you, and write it up. We'll shoot you together. It'll be really interesting.'

But Suze had gone pale.

‘No,' she said. ‘Absolutely not. I left that life behind a long time ago. I don't want to be a part of it.'

‘But it'll be great,' I said. ‘Shoots are loads of fun. We'll get your hair and make-up done, and a stylist, not that you need one...'

Suze was taking off her coat.

‘I'm sorry Fearne,' she said. ‘I'm Susannah Harrison now. I can't go back to being Suze Williams. There's too much at stake.'

‘Your books?' I said, not understanding.

‘Not really,' she said. ‘People. People are at stake.'

I stared at her open-mouthed.

‘I'm so sorry, I've just remembered I've got plans for lunch,' Suze said. ‘It was lovely to meet you.'

She started bustling me towards the front door.

‘It was lovely to meet you too,' I said, not sure what was happening.

Suze opened the door and I stepped out.

‘Suze,' I said.

‘Susannah,' she corrected.

‘Susannah. Can we meet again?'

She looked at me for a second, all sorts of emotions showing in her beautiful face. Then she shook her head.

‘I don't think so,' she said. Then she shut the door.

Chapter 28

I wasn't completely sure what had just happened. One minute we were laughing and making plans for lunch, and the next I was on the doorstep on my own.

Stunned into stillness, I stood there for a minute or two, then I rang the bell. I heard the little dog barking but Suze didn't come.

‘I have spent too long on this sodding doorstep today,' I muttered to myself. I pushed all my papers and notes into my canvas bag, picked up my handbag, spun round and left.

Now the shock of being turfed out of Suze's cottage was wearing off I was starting to feel angry. How dare she slam the door in my face? Who did she think she was?

I stewed about it all the way back to Sevenoaks in a cab, then I stewed even more when I discovered a branch had fallen down on to the line and all the trains were delayed. And when I eventually made it back to the office, past six o'clock, clutching a sandwich and a coffee, and discovered the whole team had already gone home, I was furious.

I marched into my office and threw my bag of notes in the corner. There was a pile of page proofs on my desk to read and though I'd been checking my emails all day, I felt out of the loop and out of sorts.

Working at Mode felt like an endless cycle of excitement and disappointment. I felt so helpless and as though nothing I did was ever going to work out.

Peeling the wrapper off my sandwich, and feeling very sorry for myself, I settled down at my desk to read the pages.

‘How are you doing?' Damo's voice made me jump.

He wandered into my office, picked up the other half of my sandwich and sat down.

‘I thought you'd gone home,' I said.

‘Gym,' Damo said through a mouthful of chicken and avocado. ‘Just came back to pick up my keys.'

I shrugged, not remotely interested in his fitness regime.

‘How was Suze?' he said, reaching for my coffee to wash down my sandwich. I slapped his hand away.

‘That's mine,' I said. ‘She was lovely and completely bewildering.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Long story,' I said, throwing my sandwich packet in the bin.

‘I'm not going anywhere,' said Damo. He flashed me his most winning smile. ‘Fancy a drink?'

I had planned a hot date with my pyjamas, a large bar of chocolate and the season finale of The Good Wife, but what the heck. I nodded. Vigorously.

‘Yes please,' I said. ‘More than one, in fact.'

Damo grinned again.

‘Last one to the bar's a loser,' he said.

We went to the pub next door to the office. Damo bought me a bottle of beer, which I'd actually not drunk since I left Oz but it had been a strange sort of day so I didn't argue, and then he settled down opposite me.

‘Spill,' he said.

I swigged my beer.

‘It was brilliant,' I said. ‘She was so switched on. We went through the whole mag, and she gave me some amazing ideas. I was starting to think about asking her to come on board as an editorial consultant or something…'

‘So why was it confusing?' Damo asked.

‘As soon as I mentioned us doing an interview with her, she shut down,' I said, glugging some more lager. ‘She wouldn't even consider it. Then she shoved me out of her house and shut the door in my face.'

‘Ouch,' said Damo. ‘You obviously upset her.'

‘Well, yes, I realise that,' I said. ‘But how? All I said was we wanted to do a “day in the life” comparing how Emily lives now and how she lived when Mode launched.'

Damo frowned.

‘That was it?'

I nodded.

‘Apart from a bit early when she'd talked about a friend who died just before the magazine launched, she was fine all day,' I said.

‘Was her friend working on the mag too?'

I nodded.

‘She wrote a couple of features in the first issue,' I said. ‘Nancy Harrison, her name was. Suze took her surname as a pseudonym when she started writing.'

‘Oh that's sad,' Damo said. ‘Maybe you just brought back some bad memories for her. The time you'd be asking about – the launch of the mag – must have been when her friend died.'

I slapped my hand to my forehead in horror.

‘Oh of course,' I said. ‘There's me breezing on about comparing rents and what they had for lunch, and she'd have been thinking about her friend.'

Damo shrugged.

‘So call her and apologise,' he said. ‘It's not the end of the world.'

‘S'pose,' I said. ‘I feel bad, though. She's helped me so much.'

‘So send her flowers, then call her and apologise,' Damo said. ‘You made a mistake, that's all. Don't beat yourself up about it.'

‘I'm making a lot of mistakes lately,' I said, staring down the neck of my bottle. ‘In the time I've been working at Mode, I've gone from being this completely together, successful woman to a disaster.'

‘That's not true,' Damo said, holding my gaze for a fraction too long until I looked away. ‘You were never together.'

Despite myself I laughed, then groaned.

‘Oh but it is true,' I said. ‘I'd got it all sorted, you know? And now it's falling apart.'

‘You'll get it back,' Damo said. ‘You always do. You're Fearne Summers, editor extraordinaire. You're winning at life.'

‘Hardly,' I snorted. ‘My career's gone to shit, I live on my own with only some dying houseplants for company, I annoyed my best friend so much that she treated me just as badly as I'd treated her and I can't even blame her, and…'

I stopped. What I'd been about to say was that working with him, spending time with him, was reminding me what we'd had. And that I'd carefully packed my memories of him away in a part of my head labelled Sydney 2009. Back in the UK it was easy to rewrite my past and pretend my relationship with Damo had just been an extended holiday romance – something that belonged to a different me, like wearing flip flops to the office or spending Christmas Day on the beach with a load of other ex-pats. It – and he – had all seemed so far away from London. But now he was here. In my office and in my head and acting so normal, and it was messing with my compartmentalising.

‘And?' Damo said.

‘Pardon?'

‘Your career's gone to shit, you're a sad loner, you've pissed off Jen, and…?'

‘There was no “and”,' I said hurriedly.

‘It sounded like there was an “and”.'

‘No,' I said. ‘No “and”.'

Damo looked at me a bit strangely.

‘No?'

‘No.'

I forced myself to smile.

‘Isn't that enough?'

‘I guess,' Damo said. But he didn't look like he believed me.

‘So as I was saying,' I said. ‘Everything's ruined.'

Damo leaned forward. A bit of his hair flopped into his eyes and I fought the urge to push it back. Instead of looking at his face, I focused on his arms. His tanned, well-muscled arms… okay that didn't help. I looked up at his face again.

‘It's not ruined,' he said. ‘It just looks that way. You have to look at things differently.'

‘Like there's no such thing as problems, just opportunities?' I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

‘No,' said Damo, picking up my empty beer bottle. ‘By getting drunk.'

Chapter 29

1966

I had honestly never been so happy.

Every day I worked at Home & Hearth as usual. Then I dashed out of the office and headed straight to Suze's where we worked on our articles for a couple of hours. It was really hard to create an entire magazine when there were only two of us. Suze was right, we had written a lot of features between us, but we didn't have nearly enough. We also had to write all the other pages in the magazine – contents, and news pages, and fashion spreads, and all sorts. It was exhausting, it was never-ending, I was worried we wouldn't finish in time for Margi arriving in London, and I was absolutely and completely loving every minute.

I'd hardly seen Dad. He went to the shop early in the morning – before I left to catch my train – and he was often in bed by the time I got home. Each morning I prepared his dinner and left it in the fridge with some instructions about what to do with it. It was mostly sandwiches, or cold meat and salad and boiled eggs, but I'd not had any complaints. He left his dirty plate on the worktop each evening and I washed it up when I got home. I got the impression that Dad was happier when he didn't see me and I wondered – not for the first time – if he just couldn't cope with being around me. I looked more like my mum every day so I must have been a constant reminder for Dad.

Suze and I were working really hard – but we were having a lot of fun, too. I stayed with Suze at the squat some nights and once we'd finished our work, we went to parties. London was like a wonderland where everything was changing and no one played by the rules any more. For the first time I felt as though I was part of it and it was everything I'd dreamed about.

Suze had been working some lunchtime shifts in Bruno's café, where she eavesdropped on everyone's conversations. As a result she knew about every television show that was being written, who was recording a new album, where bands were playing – everything.

We shamelessly exploited all her knowledge and turned up everywhere. People began recognising us.

‘There's SuzeandNancy,' they'd say, making our two names into one. I was never sure anyone knew which of us was Suze and which was Nancy. I knew we looked alike, with our slight builds and dark hair – mine long and Suze's short. And it didn't seem to matter who was who.

‘SuzeandNancy said Michael Caine is going to this party tonight...' we'd hear people say. Or ‘SuzeandNancy will be watching Dusty Springfield sing later,' or even ‘SuzeandNancy are coming to watch the play so it must be good...'

It was as though we were winning. For years – decades – centuries even – older people had made the rules. They'd dictated what was in the news, what people wore, what we talked about, what we watched or listened to or read. But not any more. Now it was the young people who were making news. The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and everyone was talking about our music and our films and our books – Suze and I were determined to get them talking about our magazines, too.

And then there was George.

The day after Suze and I decided to make our own magazine to wow the bosses at Mode, I went to see him in my lunch hour. I found him perched on the bonnet of Frank's car, which was parked on Carnaby Street, smoking a cigarette and chatting to a man with a handlebar moustache and who was wearing a cape. I raised my eyebrow at George as the man said goodbye and he laughed.