Can We Still Be Friends (5 page)

‘Annie, that order for White Horse. There’s some problem with the car firm – can you just get it all together and drive it over? Take the VW.’

Annie was delighted to have an opportunity to escape the office on a day like this. Through the small windows she could see the midday sun creating sharp shadows through the leaves of the plane trees that lined the street. She hauled the bags of props into the boot of the company VW Golf.

As the car began to move, the croaky sounds of Stevie Nicks’s voice on Fleetwood Mac’s
Rumours
filtered tinnily through the speakers. The music prompted a memory from an old family holiday,
of her father singing along, his arm lying on the open window of the car, a No. 6 between his fingers, as they drove through the Scottish Highlands. She remembered the back of his neck, where his hair was neatly shy of his summer shirt, and the printed cotton skirt of her mother’s dress flared over her legs, and what she called ‘my summer flop-abouts’, striped canvas shoes that she would bring out every holiday. They were playing Hangman, and she and her sister were taking it in turns to draw the sinister, dangling figure. Her father, as always, won. He was a competitive man – proud of his pretty wife and always pushing his daughters forward. That must have been a couple of years before he died. Unwanted, another image replaced that of her healthy father on holiday. It was of a waxy figure lying under a thin hospital blanket, devoid of all her father’s warmth.

The parking lot of White Horse Studios was full, and the nearest slot where Annie could leave the Golf was some distance from the steps to Studio 3. There was too much to carry in one trip, but she loaded herself up and staggered slowly into the studios and approached the oak refectory table that served as a reception desk.

‘Message for Jackson. Annie from TT is here. She wants help with the order,’ relayed the receptionist into an intercom. ‘Someone’s coming,’ she said to Annie, continuing to study her
Cosmopolitan
. Reading upside down, Annie noticed the name of the feature she was engrossed in: ‘50 Unforgettable Things You Can Do to Your Man (And 10 He Can Do to You)’.

The doors at the end of the room opened and a figure appeared and started walking towards her.

‘Hi. Jackson.’ His offered hand was firm. ‘I’m the producer on this job. Good of you to come. We’ve had a melt-down here – there’s not even a gofer I could send out to help you.’

Annie followed his quick, loose-limbed stride out to the car park. Together they unloaded the remaining contents of Tania’s car, heaving bags into the studio space, where a room set was in play. A deep linen-covered sofa sat to one side, waiting, she imagined, for the mounds of cushion covers she had delivered, while at the front
was a big trestle table piled with cameras, boxes of Fuji photographic film and the general paraphernalia of a photo shoot.

‘Someone let us down on all the table dressings, hence the panic phone call this morning,’ explained Jackson. ‘OK, everyone, clear the table and get it laid up, we need to get a move on here.’ Figures scurried out from the shadows of the studio at his command. Annie watched as the heavy lights were pushed around and the stylist and her team began dressing the set, arranging the cushions to a perfect degree of plumpness, placing a vase of wildflowers in the centre of the table.

‘Sandy, go easy. Let’s see what it looks like a bit sparse and homespun – we can load it on later if we need to,’ Jackson directed. ‘Annie here – it is Annie, isn’t it? – has brought us enough kit to furnish a whole house.’ Annie felt flattered to have Jackson refer to her by her name. A girl came over to him and took him by the arm to a corner of the set, her yellow dress a bright spot in the dark room.

As the table was transformed from a basic trestle into the French farmhouse of an advertising agency’s imagination – the gingham napkins folded flat on heavy white plates, chunky tumblers and slabs of wooden boards laden with bread, grapes and cheese – Annie could see that Jackson’s attention had been diverted. She felt uncomfortable and unnecessary. Was it rude just to leave?

‘I’ll be off then,’ she said, to no one in particular. Jackson stopped talking, held her gaze for long enough for her to wonder what he was looking at, and then waved, before turning back to the girl in the yellow dress, whose whispering and waving hands appeared to be gaining in urgency.

By the time Annie arrived back at the office the day had become unbearably hot.

The shade of the office was now welcome, and she walked through into the back, where a small patio-garden was filled with potted plants and palms. Tania was seated at a green ironwork table with her habitual cigarette and a glass of white wine.

‘Everything all right? Jackson grateful? I hope so. I’ve known him
since he was a runner on
Constantinople Dreaming
. He was still at school. I was an odalisque – black wig and rouge on the nipples. All I had to do was lie around on a pile of tapestry cushions and he, bless him, was so wet behind the ears he was embarrassed by us naked girls.
That
didn’t last. He’s carved his way through half the city, so I hear.’

Annie walked into the small kitchen, where the sink, as usual, was filled with a pile of stained tea cups and the rubbish bin stank. She ran herself a glass of water and opened the freezer compartment door to discover the rubber ice trays all filled with the disappointing wobble of water. As she climbed the stairs back to her office she allowed herself the luxury of a quick daydream of a date with Jackson. It beat calling the thirty fashion assistants she needed to contact about the Swatch watches that were Tania’s new client: ‘Annie, we’re talking style bibles, fashion bibles, even The Big Fat Blinkin’ Bible here. I want to see Swatches everywhere, and quick.’ Annie still wore a Timex on a thin brown leather strap which her father had given her when she was thirteen. She supposed she should put in a call to
The Face
. On her desk was a When You Were Out slip: ‘Call your mum, and can you cover for me till I get back? Lee.’

She knew her mother would be trying to discover what time she was arriving for the weekend. Pleased as she was to have moved to London, weekends could be claustrophobic in the small flat. Only three hours now till she could leave work.

By five o’clock, Annie had dispatched ten of the Swatches to various publications, carefully matching the title to an appropriate colour and size and asking the fashion editors and assistants to get back to her with info on how they could feature them. For a Friday afternoon in August, the office was surprisingly active – intercom lines buzzing throughout, deliveries coming and going. As she began to stuff her Swatch press releases back into the box file where they were housed Lee walked back into the room and thumped a huge wicker basket of peaches covered in cellophane and tied with a bright-pink ribbon on to her desk.

‘
Ta da.
Somebody’s lucky day then.’ He stood over her as she opened the small envelope addressed to ANNIE which dangled from the ribbon. ‘Can I buy you dinner? Jackson.’

‘
Very
impressive.’ Lee drew out the words in camp exaggeration. Annie was silent, just looking at the gift, before seeing Tania’s bulky presence in the doorway, arms folded across her indigo smock.

‘Here we go,’ she boomed, looking at Annie’s delighted face. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned.’ Annie rewound her memory of Jackson in the studio orchestrating the proceedings, his undeniable good looks, his cool aura. An injection of excitement and happiness surged through her, changing the ordinariness of a hot working day into something filled with thrilling potential.

Sal stood in the small changing room of Joseph on South Molton Street. The floor was piled with black and white clothes – fine-knit sweaters, fitted short skirts, jackets with broad shoulders and large buttons. The summer sale had lured her in. It wasn’t the kind of place she normally shopped, or would even browse in. Way too expensive. She wasn’t keen on shopping but occasionally she’d dip into Miss Selfridge if she needed a dress for a party, or buy a cheap pair of earrings or belt if she just wanted something new. Come to think of it, where was that metallic cummerbund she’d bought a few weeks ago? At Joseph, the precise monochrome world and thin, black-clad assistants were daunting. One wearing a pair of tight black trousers and a knitted white vest approached her, thick silver hoop earrings glinting through glossy black hair.

‘Looking for anything special?’ she asked, with an expression that indicated she thought this extremely unlikely.

‘Not really, thanks,’ Sal muttered, trying not to look too obviously at the price tags when she riffled through the rails of sale items. She put her heavy handbag down, and pulled a cotton Katharine Hamnett suit from the rail and started weighing up its possibilities. On the positive side, it wasn’t too structured or formal, but did it have the authoritative quality she might need? It was worth a try anyway.

Eventually, she had scurried into an empty changing room with a huge pile of clothes in her arms, regretting that she didn’t have Annie there to guide her. Annie was brilliant at putting things together. She could make anything special, everything looking better for the way she mixed things. It was the kind of thing Sal was hopeless at. She was best when she stuck to plain fabrics and tight
shapes. Her shopping past was littered with mistakes, clothes bought in a flash of enthusiasm which overrode common sense.

It was ridiculous to feel in awe of a shop, she told herself. She was meant to be a reporter. What kind of a reporter broke out in hives on South Molton Street because a sales assistant came near her? She told herself to grow up. Not everyone got a contract to work on the features desk of the
Sunday Herald
, and she had just banked her first pay cheque. She deserved to buy something special. And it deserved to come from Joseph.

On Sal’s first day at the
Herald
, she had been immediately subdued by the prevailing atmosphere of masculinity. The offices were a sea of grey suits and white shirtsleeves, although Jackie, the features desk secretary seated outside the senior management offices, was wearing what seemed to be the women’s uniform: a floral shirt and a calf-length skirt. Jackie had shown her the Ladies, the kettle and where the stationery was stored before bustling off, gesturing to the fax machine on her way.

Nobody spoke to Sal for what appeared to be hours and, for the first time in her life, she felt unable to deploy her naturally flirtatious exuberance. Her white shirt was fine, and she had taken trouble to check it was a thick enough cotton that her bra wouldn’t show through, but the red skirt made her feel conspicuous. She couldn’t see anyone else wearing a bright colour. As the lunch hour approached she saw a posse of men pass and glance over to where she sat. She ate an apple at her desk. As they returned hours later, they looked again at her, more brazenly this time, before heading off in pairs to the Gents, hoisting the waistbands of their trousers.

Her presence was a reminder that the newspaper industry was changing. New printing presses were on the way, there would be fewer jobs and, to many of the old guard, the hiring of young people like her, who had found short-cuts through the traditional provincial route, was a provocative move. Towards the end of her first afternoon a man, his collar unbuttoned and tie askew, approached her.

‘Give this number a ring and check out what the story is on Paula Yates at the Embassy last night.’ He handed her a scrap of paper scrawled with a phone number. ‘I’m Stuart.’ She guessed he must be from somewhere up north, with his flat vowels. ‘There may be something there.’ He looked over her head as he spoke.

She had not known who she was ringing, or what kind of story Stuart had in mind, but her diary shifts had taught her the knack of following a trail, asking questions that would lead to fuller answers than the interviewee expected. Within an hour she was back to Stuart with three hundred words written not about Paula but about one of her girlfriends who was discovered in the small bathroom with another girl that night, screaming as they mistakenly flushed a wrap of coke down the loo. The information was greeted with a marked lack of interest by Stuart: ‘Just another day in Shangri-la, then.’

Now, weeks into the job and with a few small stories to her name, the office had begun to lose the impenetrability of the new and, from what initially had appeared as a collective personality, the journalists and editors were starting to emerge as individuals. One lunchtime, she had been delighted to be asked by Stuart to join an outing to a dark Fleet Street wine bar where bottle after bottle of red wine had been drained. As the afternoon merged into evening, they all moved on to the famous El Vino’s bar, unbothered by a return to the office. Seated at a table in the corner with Doug, one of the home desk stalwarts, she learnt of his difficult custody battle with his wife.

‘I’m dossing on friends’ sofas at the moment. She’s in the house and she’ll only let me come round when her mum’s there.’

‘That must be awful for you.’

‘Yeah. I’m living out of my desk drawer.’ He tipped the dregs of the bottle into her glass and stood up to walk over to the bar for a replacement. When he returned, Stuart had moved into his seat and he had to perch on a low stool, shouting across the table.

‘Stu, how about William knocking off Noreen? He got her out of there double quick once our venerable editor got wind of the
situation.’ The affair between the foreign editor and the managing editor’s PA had become common knowledge. ‘It’s normally the women who get the sack with this kind of thing,’ he informed Sal. ‘Happens all the time.’

From her reflection in the full-length mirror in the Joseph changing room, it was clear that the Greek suntan had nearly gone and that Sal was overwhelmed by the black jackets. A scratch below her eye had swollen. Perhaps black was a mistake, but it would tick the cost-per-wear box surely, and it would be useful camouflage, adding the veneer of professionalism. She eased a Lycra-saturated skirt over her bottom – great: you couldn’t see the line of her knickers – and buttoned up the matching jacket. It was obvious that she had nothing save a bra on underneath, which gave the outfit a casual sexiness, she thought. She didn’t want to appear too buttoned up, too sexless. The older women on the paper all looked like that. They had a faded appearance, as if they had been punctured and all the pleasure had run out. The price on the tag had been crossed out three times, each one lower than the previous. A black Joseph suit at a bargain price – she had to have it, even though it cost more than her month’s rent to Annie. She wished she didn’t feel so awful.