‘Roars, like, are you listening?’ demanded Ticky. ‘I said Maaahn wants to see you at eleven.’
‘Does she?’ I asked. ‘What about?’
‘Well, obviously she sat me down in her office and explained precisely why she wanted to see you,’ said Ticky, rolling her eyes at me. ‘Then she told me all about the state of
her marriage and lent me a tampon. Jeez, Roars, like I know. She just said go to see her at eleven. End of.’
I supposed it was only to be expected that Amanda would want to see me now that Martha had left. But it made me nervous. With the features editor gone I was now officially the odd one out.
Martha had never been my ally, of course. In fact, we had probably avoided each other rather than clung together, fearing that our lack of poshness would become magnified by proximity, but in some
way I had felt that there was one person on the magazine who understood what it was like to be in this world but not of it. I knew she valued my dedication where others just wondered at my lack of
useful contacts or blonde highlights. Without Martha there I felt exposed and vulnerable as the hour of my meeting with Amanda approached. Clearly I wasn’t the only one to think that I might
be in trouble. Flickers and Noonoo were huddled together in a corner, whispering and casting looks over towards me. When they saw me looking back they both waved with unconvincing nonchalance. The
pointing and whispering just added to my sense of foreboding.
I kept my eyes fixed on the carpet as I walked to Amanda’s office at the appointed hour, but even so I could feel the frisson of interest that accompanied my progress down the corridor. It
wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that I was the subject of the latest office sweepstake. In fact, it would have surprised me more if I hadn’t been.
Catherine bustled over as soon as she saw me approaching. ‘Oh, poor dear Rory, what an ordeal. I am sorry.’ I wasn’t absolutely sure if she meant Auntie Lyd’s heart
attack or the impending meeting, so I just smiled politely and said thank you to cover both eventualities. Catherine ushered me into the editor’s office.
Amanda, who had her chair turned outwards to the window, spun around and stood up, smiling ingratiatingly. She motioned to the chair opposite her desk and I sat down, folding my hands in my lap
to prevent any nervous fidgeting. It wouldn’t do for her to see that I was anxious.
‘Rory, how
is
your aunt?’ she asked, nudging a box of tissues on her desk closer to me.
‘Much better, thank you,’ I said. ‘And thank you again for the flowers, we were both touched.’
Amanda waved away my thanks. ‘Oh really, a mere gesture. What sort of employers would we be not to acknowledge such a difficult time in your family?’ Well, I thought, the sort of
employer who has never before taken an interest in my personal life. The sort of employer who had refexively sent flowers to a former celebrity having no idea that she was the aunt of one of her
employees.
I left space for Amanda to speak. It was best to let her take charge of a conversation from the very beginning, I found, since she was bound to do so in the end anyway.
‘Although it was a surprise to me that you hadn’t mentioned before that your aunt was Lydia Bell – after all, she would be a wonderful candidate for the Marvellous Englishwoman
interviews.’
‘She – she’s not really a public person these days,’ I answered. ‘It didn’t occur to me to suggest it.’
‘Rory, you need to think more like a journalist,’ Amanda said. ‘Lydia Bell is always going to be a figure of interest to our readers – she’s the right age, the
right demographic. Everyone remembers
Those Devereux Girls.
You should have told me about her before. I mean, who else are you hiding?’ She tapped her pen briskly on her desk as she
looked at me, and I realized this wasn’t a hypothetical question. I felt like Ticky, forced to squeeze her contacts at every opportunity.
‘Er, Percy Granger and Eleanor Avery?’ I offered, unsure if she would be impressed by either.
‘Eleanor Avery from
Not Now, Padre
? Percy Granger from
Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood
?’ she asked, eyes narrowed. ‘Why didn’t you say so
before?’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be interested,’ I said, although the truth was it had never occurred to me to offer them up for publicity in order to further my own career.
‘Think. Like. A. Journalist,’ Amanda enunciated, tapping her pen sharply on the desk with every word. ‘Rory,’ she said, and she too tented her fingers as Lysander had
earlier. I wondered if it was a technique they had been taught at public school: position to be adopted when conveying difficult news. ‘Rory, you will no doubt be aware that Martha has
decided to leave us.’
‘Yes, I had heard that,’ I admitted.
‘Very sad,’ said Amanda, unconvincingly. ‘For us, I mean; of course it’s delightful for Martha, and we are all so happy for her. And for those of us left behind it means
some changes. Which is why I asked you here.’
Amanda seemed to be looking at me as if for the first time. I wasn’t sure what such intense scrutiny was in aid of. Get on with it, I thought, digging my nails into my palms. Stop acting
like you’re about to reveal whodunnit. Just tell me you’re making me redundant.
‘Rory,’ she said. ‘I have yet to decide who is going to replace Martha. I’m sure you will appreciate that it’s not simply a matter of just moving everyone up a
level. There is a real opportunity for change here and I need to think about it seriously.’
‘Of course,’ I said, wishing she would hurry up and put me out of my misery.
‘I’m going to be changing around some responsibilities. Taking this chance to shake up the editorial team. That being said, I’d like you to apply for the position of features
editor. Formally, I mean. You’ve surprised me lately, Rory. The Unsuitable Men column has been fun – witty. Very different from the staid art history pieces I’m used to from
you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said cautiously, suspecting that my stock had risen in her eyes less because of Unsuitable Men than because she had discovered that my aunt was once well known. I
tried not to be offended that she considered my previous work staid.
‘Did I offend you in some way, Rory?’ Amanda asked, raising a supercilious eyebrow.
I felt oddly emboldened, by what I don’t know. Usually I would have muttered, ‘No’ and seethed about it in private. But audiences with Amanda were so rare I knew I would regret
it for ever if I didn’t speak up properly.
‘Amanda, I like writing those art history pieces. That’s why I work here. I like visiting country houses, and researching the artworks, and finding out the history behind things. I
– I don’t think I’m the right person for this job if my value to you comes only from writing a dating column, and being related to someone who was once famous. I think, actually,
it might be time for me to move on from
Country House.
I think I should find somewhere that I fit in better.’
Amanda gripped her pen between her fingers and stared at me crossly. ‘Firstly, Rory, the person who decides what makes a good features editor is not you. It is me. Which is why you will
apply for this as I asked.’
I started to speak, but Amanda raised her hand to stop me.
‘Secondly, baby. Bathwater.’
‘Sorry?’ I asked.
‘Rory, you have invested a lot of time at
Country House
and, whatever you might think, you are valued here. Don’t go throwing the baby out with the bathwater because of some
silly notion that you don’t fit in. I’ve told you there will be changes here. Write me a proposal. Tell me how you propose to integrate the old
Country House
with the new –
how you can keep the art history but bring in new readers. Pitch me an idea for an advice columnist. Baby, bathwater. Think about it.’
‘But . . .’ I felt my grand gesture had been swept under the carpet. I thought I had just resigned, but Amanda didn’t even seem to notice.
‘End of conversation, Rory,’ said Amanda, turning back to her computer screen. ‘Let me have your pitch by Monday.’
I left her office stunned, hardly able to take in what she had been saying. Amanda considered me a valued member of the team? She thought I fitted in? She was considering promoting me, and not
dismissing my ideas out of hand? I had gone in there expecting to be made redundant, ended up offering my resignation, and now I was leaving not only still with a job, but with the possibility of a
promotion that I wasn’t even sure I wanted. My shocked face was like a lure to Ticky, who sprang to my side out of nowhere as I passed the kitchen.
‘Roooooars,’ she drawled, deeply sympathetic. ‘Was it appalling? What did Maaahn say? Are you okay? How are you feeling? When do you leave?’
‘Leave?’ I asked.
Ticky nodded. ‘Yah.’
I noticed how the office seemed to have stilled, waiting for me to answer. They all thought Amanda had called me in there to get rid of me. That she would fire me the day I came back from the
bedside of my aunt.
‘Roars,’ said Ticky suddenly, clutching at my arm. ‘It’s faahrking shit. Maaahn is insane. This place would, like, fall apart without you.’
Lysander appeared on my other side, holding his fooling-no-one piece of paper. ‘Aurora, please say it’s not true. Isn’t there something we can do?’
Noonoo’s head rose up above Lysander’s shoulder like a pashmina-swathed moon. ‘I raaahlly can’t believe she’d do it, Rory Who’s going to make all of my
friends sound like they can actually string a sentence together if you’re not here?’
Jeremy came striding down the corridor from the art department, squaring his dark-framed glasses determinedly with his hand. ‘I’m going in there, Rory. I’m going in there right
now and telling her we won’t work until you’re reinstated.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait, all of you. I’m not leaving.’
‘You’re not?’ said Ticky. ‘Faahrking hell, Roars, way to make the lot of us have, like, a collective faahrking heart attack.’
Lysander glared at her and she hastily continued, ‘Oh yah, sorry, no offence to your aunt, Roars.’
Jeremy looked enormously relieved, placing a palm flat on his chest and exhaling loudly. ‘So I don’t actually have to go in there? Oh thank God, Rory, because I don’t know if I
really could have done it.’
‘So what’s going on then?’ asked Flickers, drawn by the knot of people in the corridor.
‘Is the sweepstake ruined?’ I asked.
‘Rory,’ he said, looking wounded. ‘There are some things that even
I
won’t bet on.’
Later I saw him returning pound coins to a few people. But by then I didn’t really mind. Amanda had told me I was valued at
Country House
, but I had thought it was just to stop her
losing another member of the team when she was already short-staffed. The reaction of my colleagues, however, had astonished me. I did have friends here. I was of value. I was going to write that
proposal. I was going to get that job.
Auntie Lyd’s house was still full of flowers, although some of them had started wilting by Friday. Mum had sent a box of peculiar lemon-favoured Spanish chocolates and a
bottle of brandy, and had had to be prevented from flying over to look after her sister – her penchant for dramatics would have been strictly against doctor’s orders. There had been
other gifts, too: a box of books selected by Lysander from his shelves of freebies and sent with a grovelling note that begged an audience with ‘the divine Lydia’; a cashmere blanket
from Linda Ellery, who begged to know when her former co-star was allowed visitors. The oddest gift though had been a vast hamper of assorted meats from the butchers, mortified at Auntie
Lyd’s collapse on their premises. Eleanor and I had packed away as much as possible into the freezer, but there was still an entire leg of lamb that we couldn’t wedge in no matter how
we arranged the frozen peas.
Auntie Lyd declared that she was going to cook it for all of us as a thank-you for our help while she had been ill. Her only concession to our objections had been to
agree to Jim helping her cook while she dictated instructions from the armchair he had carried downstairs to the kitchen. She had even suggested to me that I could invite Martin if I liked, but I
hadn’t passed on the invitation. I had promised him an answer tomorrow, and I hoped that by then I would finally have made up my mind.
I had thought about it. I really had. Especially since I’d spoken to Amanda. Baby, bathwater. Was I going to throw away eleven years just because he had made one mistake? I’d put in
all that time and effort and love, and now I was considering turning my back on him – on us – for ever. And for what? It wasn’t like I’d been swept off my feet by the
available men out there. If anything, the thought of the unsuitable men I’d encountered should have me running back gratefully into Martin’s arms. I was nearly thirty; it was time to
behave like a grownup, not the delayed adolescent dater that I had been over the last few months. Did I really want to walk away from a stable adult relationship for sordid encounters with
unemployed musicians and teenaged sexters? Like my job at
Country House
, my relationship with Martin wasn’t perfect. But maybe it was good enough. Perhaps things could change between
Martin and me. Perhaps we could be happy together again.
Everyone in the kitchen was slightly hysterical when I got home from work. I thought they must have started drinking already, but nothing stronger than tea was in evidence, even in
Eleanor’s cup. She and Percy were lining a complicated-looking fish-shaped mould (‘From eBay – can you imagine? Someone was selling it for a song!’ said Eleanor) with smoked
salmon, and arguing over the consistency of a pale-pink mousse that was to be placed in it. Percy wanted to add more lemon juice but Eleanor slapped his hand away when he ventured near the bowl,
and pointed authoritatively towards the recipe book, announcing, ‘Do not question Delia.’ Rich smells indicated the lamb was already in the oven, while a plaster on Jim’s thumb
suggested that Auntie Lyd had had him using her lethal mandolin slicer for potatoes dauphinoise. The kitchen table had been cleared of its normal detritus and was laid for five, with Auntie Lyd
placed at the head.