The Forgotten Girl (2 page)

‘We know you won't let emotions or sentiment get in the way of doing your job.'

Oh.

‘You brought me here to close the magazine?' I said, as I worked it all out.

Lizzie had the grace to look slightly shame-faced.

‘Well,' she said. ‘Close it or make it work. Take back some of the sales we've lost to Grace.'

I looked at the budget again. With the figures she'd given me it was obvious which option she wanted. I could barely cover the staffing costs with this amount of money – and I had no chance of booking top photographers or paying for big-name writers. It was an impossible task.

‘How long have I got?' I said. ‘How long do I have to make Mode pay?'

Lizzie looked a bit confused. She'd clearly not considered this.

‘Six months?'

I swallowed.

‘Give me a year,' I said, wondering how on earth I managed to keep my voice steady when I was so terrified by the task that lay ahead. ‘I need a year to have a proper go at this.'

Lizzie looked at something on the papers in front of her. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed.

‘Nine months?' she said.

I shrugged.

‘Is that the best you can offer?' I said. She nodded.

‘So if I can increase sales enough in that time, you'll let the magazine carry on?' I said.

Lizzie nodded again.

‘If you can make it work on the new budget, then we'll reconsider,' she said, sounding incredulous that I was even thinking about it.

‘Great,' I said, faking excitement when all I felt was despair. ‘Nine months is more than enough.'

I gathered up my things and stood up, hoping she couldn't see my legs trembling. ‘If you'll excuse me, I'm going to meet my team now.'

Chapter 2

That may have been a fairly terrible way to start my new job, but as it turned out, Lizzie was a pussycat compared to the rest of the Mode team.

There weren't many of them – lots of staff had left recently and a few people had gone with the former editor, Sophie, to her new role on a supermarket magazine. The features desk was down two writers, I had no deputy, and the art editor was working out her notice. The words rats and sinking ships crossed my mind, but I dismissed that. I had to make this work. I'd sacrificed a lot for this job.

My office was bare, with a clean desk and a shiny computer. There was no good luck card, or welcoming cup of coffee. In fact, there weren't even many smiles. I stared round at the stony faces in our planning meeting that morning and wondered if I hadn't just made a massive mistake.

‘So,' I said, uber-brightly. ‘What have we got for the next issue?'

I looked at my new features director, whose name I couldn't quite remember. She was tall and angular with pale skin and fine blonde hair pulled back into a bun – like a ballerina with a bad attitude.

She looked back at me, unsmiling.

‘Veronica?' I said.

‘Vanessa.'

Shit.

‘Sorry,' I sang. ‘Vanessa, who's on the cover this month?'

She named a soap star, Dawn Robin, who was well into her forties and though stylish, nothing like the celebs our readers were interested in.

‘Oh,' I said, so surprised that manners deserted me. ‘That's an interesting choice.'

‘It was Sophie's choice,' Vanessa said.

I chuckled.

‘You got that right.'

No response. Clearly humour didn't work.

‘Is the interview done?' I asked. Perhaps Dawn had said something amazing that we could spin.

‘It's done, and her PR has approved it,' Vanessa said. She stared at me as if challenging me to tell her to start again.

For a moment I considered pulling rank, spiking the whole thing and getting a new cover star. But it was early days and I needed the team behind me if I was going to make this happen.

Instead I smiled.

‘Great,' I said. ‘It's good to have it in the bag. What about next issue?'

Vanessa made a show of flicking through the pages in her notebook and I forced myself to stay smiling.

‘I'm talking to Sarah Sanderson's agent,' she said. I groaned inwardly. Sarah Sanderson was a breakfast news presenter who'd been around for donkey's years. Maybe it was time to get tough.

‘She's not the right cover star for us,' I said. ‘Scratch that. Give the interview to one of the other mags if you like. We need someone younger, sassier, more exciting.'

Vanessa pointedly scored out something on her notebook and gave me a steely glare.

‘Like who?'

I looked round at the tiny team.

‘Let's have a brainstorming session tomorrow,' I said. ‘We can line up some really exciting interviews. Anything goes – don't just stick to actresses and musicians. Think about politicians, sports stars, writers, bloggers – anyone doing anything or saying anything interesting.'

Vanessa scribbled something in her pad without meeting my eyes.

‘Oh and Vanessa,' I said. ‘I don't want publicists approving interviews.'

She rolled her eyes.

‘Tricky,' she said.

‘I know,' I admitted. ‘Let them sit in on the chat if they have to, but remember we're Mode magazine – they need us just as much as we need them. In the future, let's be a bit sassier.'

Vanessa made a face.

‘Do we have one?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘A future. Does Mode magazine have a future?'

My stomach lurched. I'd been hoping to give the team a boost before I started talking about closures and redundancies. But judging by the grim faces that surrounded me, I had to tackle this now.

I was sitting behind my desk, but now I got up and came to perch on the front instead.

‘Honestly?' I said.

Vanessa nodded, her pale lips a tight line.

‘I hope so,' I said.

I took a breath.

‘I have always wanted to work on Mode,' I said. ‘This is my dream job and I was so excited about it.'

‘But?' Vanessa said.

‘But things are trickier than I thought,' I admitted. ‘Our circulation is lower than it's ever been.'

‘Because of Grace?' said the art editor – a tiny redhead called Milly.

‘Because of Grace,' I agreed. ‘They've really raised their game, and of course print's a tricky place to be anyway because of digital. But Grace's success is proving there's still a place for glossy mags – we just need to remind people we're here and we're the best.'

There was a murmur of voices, but Vanessa wasn't giving up yet.

‘I heard they want to close us,' she said, raising her voice so I could hear her over the chitchat.

Everyone fell silent and stared at me.

‘Is that true?' Milly asked. ‘Are they closing us?'

I thought about lying, but they were all seasoned magazine journalists. I knew I couldn't fool them.

‘No,' I said firmly. ‘It's not true. But it's a possibility.'

The chitchat became a hubbub of voices. I let them all talk for a moment, then I held my hands up.

‘Hold on,' I said. ‘Listen…'

Eventually everyone stopped talking.

‘Okay,' I said. I closed my eyes briefly and sent up a silent prayer to the magazine gods that I was doing the right thing and that my already depleted team wouldn't all hand in their notices immediately and leave me trying to save Mode on my own.

‘They've given us nine months to turn things round,' I said. ‘To improve sales, to get our brand out there, to get people talking about Mode again.'

I paused.

‘We've got a lot of work to do.'

I spent the next hour fielding questions about exactly what Lizzie wanted (‘I don't know,' I said), about what redundancy packages might be on offer (‘I don't know,' I said), about how they would measure our success and whether it would just be sales or if it would be profits too (‘I don't know,' I said) and how I was planning to make this all happen.

‘I don't know,' I said, yet again. ‘But I do know this is a brilliant magazine with a long history.'

I looked round at the team once more.

‘And I know you're all great writers and editors and designers,' I said. Vanessa made a face but Milly smiled. ‘I want this to work and I can't do it by myself, so I need you all on board.'

I thought for a moment.

‘Let's spend tomorrow afternoon coming up with some ideas,' I said. ‘Not just cover stars, but let's think about what we can do to get a buzz round Mode magazine again. Anything and everything you can think of – I don't care how off the wall the ideas are, but I want everyone here to come up with something.'

I wrapped up the meeting and the team all filed out of my office and back to their desks, muttering to each other – no doubt saying all sorts of rude things about me – and I was alone once more.

‘Bloody hell,' I said out loud, feeling shell-shocked by my morning. But, I had to admit, being honest with the team had been the right thing to do, even if Vanessa had forced my hand a bit.

Hopefully we could come up with some exciting ideas tomorrow, I thought, leaning back in my chair. I already had lists of cover stars, features ideas and campaigns that I wanted us to try, but I knew that I needed this to be a team effort. I needed everyone with me if this was going to work.

Not for the first time that day, I wished I was still working with Jen. She was such a brilliant sounding board for ideas – and always came up with different approaches and creative ways of doing something.

But I was on my own with this, and I had to do my best.

I spun round in my chair and stared out of the window at the bustling Soho streets below me.

‘I can do this,' I said out loud. ‘I can bloody well do this.'

‘You can do anything you want,' a voice said. A very familiar Australian accent that I'd not heard for more than five years. ‘You always have.'

I froze. Then slowly, I turned my chair round so I was facing into my office again.

‘Damo,' I said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?'

The huge figure of my ex-boyfriend filled the doorway. His hair was longer than I'd ever seen it, and he was wearing a grey beanie hat on his head. He looked absolutely knackered, very scruffy, and really, really hot. My heart started to beat a little bit faster.

‘What kind of a welcome is that?' he said, laughter in his eyes. ‘I just came to wish you luck.'

‘All the way from Sydney?'

‘All the way from over there,' he said, tipping his head in the direction of the team that produced the men's mag Homme, and who shared our office.

What. The…

He laughed properly at my startled face.

‘Don't read Homme much, huh?' he said. ‘I've been working here for ages.'

‘Not full-time?' I said. My voice was wobbly.

‘Nah,' Damo said. ‘Bit of this, bit of that. You know how it is.'

I did. His lack of focus was one of the things that we'd clashed about when we were together. But now I was grateful that despite the bad luck that had brought him here on the biggest day of my life, his
unwillingness to commit to anything was still intact. If he was only freelance, our paths wouldn't have to cross.

‘But,' Damo said. ‘I'm actually covering for the art editor for a while. She's gone on maternity leave.'

Ah.

‘Got to run. Features meeting,' he said, rolling his eyes and making me wonder how he'd cope with the day-to-day business of life on a magazine. ‘Catch up later?'

I nodded, dumbly, staring at the door as he shut it, then I put my head in my hands. What should have been the best day ever was turning into the worst. The magazine was in trouble, my new team were hostile – at least some of them were – and my ex-boyfriend (and not just any ex-boyfriend, THE ex-boyfriend) had turned up. What on earth was I going to do?

Chapter 3

1966

‘Bye, Dad,' I called as I shut the front door. There was no reply but I wasn't surprised. I'd put a cup of tea next to his bed before I left and he'd barely stirred. Sleeping off last night's whisky, I assumed. I guessed his assistant, Trev, would've already gone to the shop to open up. No doubt Dad would drag himself along when he finally fell out of bed.

I checked my watch. I was going to have to hurry to catch my train and I didn't want to be late for work. Deftly, I picked up the hold-all I kept stowed in the bin shelter in our front garden and set off.

I made it to the station with seconds to spare – thank goodness – and immediately shut myself in the tiny toilet on board the train. My journey from Beckenham – the sleepy suburb of south-east London where I lived – to the centre of town where I worked, took exactly half an hour. Which gave me more than enough time to transform myself from the accounts assistant in an insurance company based just off Oxford Street that I pretended to be, into the junior writer on a magazine in Soho that I really was.

Things at home were… difficult. We'd been a happy family, once. At least, Mum worked hard to make sure me and my brother Dennis were happy. Dad just worked hard. He was a stickler for appearances and making sure we were all respectable. But he had a temper that he didn't always keep under control.

And then Mum died. I was only thirteen when she got ill. Dennis was seventeen and doing his A-levels, and he went off to university not long after. So it was just Dad and me.

It was hard, without Mum. I missed her with a quiet intensity that never really went away. In the early days I'd unthinkingly set four places at the table and then have to put one set of cutlery back in the drawer, or shout hello when I came home from school, only to have my voice echo round the empty
hall. I learned to cook and to clean and to sew because Dad was traditional. And he fell apart when Mum died, spending some days in silent grief and others in a furious rage, lashing out at the world – and me.