Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (6 page)

I can’t stay here all day. I’ve got to get to my girls before he does. My girls. Even the two boys among my staff are my girls.

• • •

All is quiet. I peek round the door of the cubicle, step outside, and grab a paper towel. After dousing it with liquid soap,
I remove the mascara smudges from underneath my eyes. My handbag is in my office, and I can’t do full repairs without my kit.
I look awful. I run the cold water and sloosh my face, then dab it gently with another paper towel, trying to avoid removing
the last vestiges of makeup. Okay, this should be enough to get me into my office. This time, as I stride purposefully back
across the open-plan floor, I fling neither casual hi’s nor smiles, keeping my eyes straight ahead.

“Just give me five minutes, Tanya, no interruptions, then come in and see me.”

Tanya looks at me, her face a question mark, then merely nods.

I close the door and get out my armor. Eye-whitening drops, lip- and eyeliner, YSL Touche Éclat to deflect light from the
shadows under my eyes. A comb. Looking the part helps. This time I really do have to be strong. Not for me but for them.

Five minutes later, Tanya knocks quietly and enters before I can answer.

“Close the door, please,” I say.

She sits down with me at the small round conference table, hub of the magazine, home—over the past eight years—to hundreds
of discussions, debates, heated arguments, and heart-to-hearts.

“Something awful’s happened.” My right hand is resting on the table, and Tanya instinctively reaches out to cover it with
hers. “
Jasmine
is to be relaunched with Mark as editor. I’ve no idea how many of the staff will lose their jobs, but there is one thing
I am absolutely determined to make happen. Mark will need an assistant. We both know he’s using a temp at the moment. And
you’re the girl for the job. He’ll let you fuss over him to your heart’s content, but more important, I really think that
the new
Jasmine
will be right up your street. Promise me, Tanya, promise me you’ll give it a go.”

Tanya’s lower lip is trembling; her eyes are welling up. “But Hope, this is too terrible. I couldn’t even begin to think of
working for Mark. Not after working for you. Why are they doing this? What’s going to happen to you?”

I gently remove her hand from on top of mine and place it between both my hands, taking control of the situation.

“Tanya, it’s just the way of the world. It’s unfair, it’s unjust, but it’s business. Although bad business, I can guarantee.
I’ll fight all I can to save as many jobs as possible. Me? God, I could do with a break. I’ve been doing this for nearly thirty
years. Who knows, I may decide to become a geologist. The world will hardly be a poorer place if Hope Lyndhurst gives up being
an editor.”

I’m fully in charge again. This is what I do best. “Look, we’ll have plenty of time to talk this over later, but now I have
to brief Megan. At midday I want everyone to gather round, and I’ll make the announcement. Make sure everyone who’s in today
stays here—all appointments, however important, are to be canceled. Simon’s coming at three-thirty. Ring that bar in St. James’s,
and if it’s available, book the private room in the basement for six o’clock. Tonight we’re going to get hammered. Drinks
on me. Or rather, drinks on Global. Let’s see if I can give my company Amex a heart attack.”

My tears are all dried up, but everyone else’s have only just begun. When I tell Megan, she cries. The fashion editor, the
beauty editor, the art director, and—probably because these things are catching—the intern who started this morning all cry.
The junior features assistant, my current candidate for penning a secret best seller about the bitchy world of women’s magazines,
doesn’t cry. She has started taking frantic notes and is grinning. I had her sussed right from the start. My features editor,
Ally, and my two boys—Saul and Cosmo, picture editor and style assistant, respectively—are looking shifty, which suggests
to me that Mark has already had “words” and that all three are moving camp. In Cosmo’s case, extremely camp. Saul, on the
other hand, is a father of three and as straight as Fifth Avenue. He can’t afford not to have a job, not even for a fortnight.
Their early absconding suits me fine; that’s three fewer to worry about.

The rest are genuinely shocked and deeply upset, for me, for the magazine, for themselves. I tell them to be ready to fire
questions at Simon about their future, but to be prepared for him to prevaricate. “Dig out your contracts when you get home
tonight,” I say, “so you get a clearer idea of where you stand.” I promise to talk first to HR and if I don’t get any answers,
to an employment lawyer who is a family friend. I promise to do everything I can on their behalf: write references, recommend
them to other editors, give them time off for interviews—whatever they need to get themselves sorted. “And remember, tonight
we’re going to get hammered. Until then try and make it business as usual.”

• • •

I leave them standing in forlorn clumps, like the wilted specimens on the last day of the Chelsea flower show. Back at my
desk, I dial Jack.

“Jack Steele is either on the phone or with a client. Please leave your name, number, and time of call, and he will get back
to you as soon as he’s free.”

“It’s me, darling, with some not so good news for the New Year. I’ve been put out to grass. Like the old mare that I am. Just
like that. Try and call, but if I don’t pick up, it’s because mayhem has broken out. I’m taking the whole team to Baz’s bar
later, so if you want to join the wake, you’ll know where to find us. Otherwise, I’ll be home late—very late and very drunk.
Tell Olly, and tell him I’m fine.”

I’ve passed the first hurdle. I’ve not let my team down. I’ve not let myself down. Now what the hell am I supposed to do?

• • •

Thursday night is as I knew it would be. Everyone gets rip-roaring, rat-arsed, out-of-their-brains, off-their-faces hammered.
I know, these are not genteel descriptions for a woman of my age. They’re not words I normally use to describe a state of
inebriation—I pick up the cool vernacular from Olly and the kids but never use it for fear of shaming Olly to death—but in
the circumstances, “rat-arsed” sounds about right. I’ve told everyone who wants to invite their partners to do so. The thought
of a giant hormonal gathering of hens, with Saul and Cosmo muttering on the sidelines, is more than I can handle. As it is,
the tears flow as freely as the champagne, girls hug girls and swear undying love for one another, and my fashion editor announces
to the entire room that if only Cosmo would let her shag him once, he would convert to heterosexuality for life. Saul and
Tanya get a little too familiar in the corner (Saul’s wife isn’t here because she couldn’t find a last-minute babysitter),
but then it occurs to me that if Saul and Tanya are both going to be working for Mark, they obviously have a lot to talk about.

I drink far less than I’d expected, determined to keep my wits about me. Jack arrives around eleven o’clock, looking haggard.
“It’s all right, darling, no one’s died,” I tell him brightly. “In fact, we’re having a lovely time.” Tanya, Cosmo, and Ally
have burst into a spontaneous rendition of “I Will Survive,” and everyone else is whooping and Mexican-waving.

“Jack,” I whisper, feeling a wobbly moment coming on, “please don’t say anything nice. I’m doing very well considering, but
one nice word from you and I’ll fall to pieces. What I really want right now is to go home to my bed.”

“Our bed, sweetheart.” Before the floodgates have time to open, Jack wraps an arm around me and leads me, as though I am an
invalid, slowly up the stairs.

• • •

On Friday I go straight to HR to see what transfers might be possible. I e-mail Mark to recommend Tanya to him, making no
reference to our encounter in the lift. “Tanya’s a great assistant, the best I’ve ever had. Give it some thought.” I call
some of the other editors in the company and some editors I know at other publishing houses. Then I brief Megan. In the afternoon
Tanya and I go through my office, sorting things into chuck piles, Megan piles, and take-home piles. I am on automatic pilot,
responding but not feeling, reacting but not thinking. Better that way. Then the flowers start arriving, each new bouquet
more stylishly sumptuous than the one before. Burgundy roses with winter berries from Estée Lauder. Chicly clashing tulips
in reds, oranges, and pinks from Lancôme. A succession of single orchids in ceramic pots from various fashion houses and PRs.
It’s called insurance. If I were to wind up in another editor’s seat in the near future, they would have already oiled the
path to my office door. If I didn’t turn up elsewhere, case dismissed. I’d never hear from them again.

The biggest bouquet of all comes from my publisher, the person responsible for the advertising and marketing strategy of the
magazine. Janet is a good publisher, pragmatic and ambitious. And a terrific salesperson. She could sell a shop-windowful
of cream cakes to a bunch of schoolgirl anorexics. Yes, that good. So flogging fiddly fondant fancy recipes to time-poor working
mothers will be a cinch, as far as Janet is concerned. I have neither the desire nor the strength to berate Janet for not
keeping me in the picture about Simon’s plans, which she clearly was in on. The difference between editors and publishers
is that good editors love their magazines, they believe in them; for publishers, it’s just a job.

What I don’t want to do is fill my home with these flowers, which would feel like being present at my own funeral. So I distribute
the bouquets among the staff. Around four-thirty, I am presented with my leaving card, or rather, “the book of condolences,”
as Olly dubs it later. The art department has performed a miraculous artistic feat in next to no time, being far too hungover
to do any proper work. It’s an album of images of my greatest moments, receiving awards, meeting various celebrities, curtseying
to Princess Diana on the polo lawn at Windsor. And, as is customary with these things, a mock-up of the front cover of the
magazine with the departing member of staff as cover girl. In this case, yours truly is Photoshopped so heavily that I’ve
almost morphed into Jennifer Aniston.

At five p.m. I suggest everyone call it a day, and the hugging and the kissing start all over again. I hang on by a thread.
By five-thirty I am ready to leave, just me and Tanya to go. “Tanya, please don’t say anything more. I may be old enough to
be your mother, but I’m also young enough to be your friend if you’d like me to be. We can meet for coffee, you and James
can come for dinner, and if Mark gives you trouble, he’ll have me to deal with.”

“Oh, Hope . . .”

“Oh, Tanya, you soppy thing, come here and give me a hug.”

• • •

I act almost normal over the weekend. After all, it is the weekend, and I wouldn’t be at work anyway. The nights are tricky.
Sex, of course, is out of the question. I don’t think Jack is much in the mood himself, to be honest. Sleep would have been
out of the question, too, but half a Zopiclone sends me straight into a blissful, dreamless eight-hour coma.

Olly is angelic. He takes me and Jack to a matinee of sing-along
Grease
at the Prince Charles Cinema. Incredible how a ’70s film about a bunch of American high school kids in the ’50s can stand
the test of time. Olly and his generation are as much fans of the movie as our lot were. He played the Frankie Avalon part
in a school version of the show last year, greased-back hair, padded-out front, totally hilarious. But I still think Olivia
Newton-John’s a drip: Even dressed head to toe in leather for the finale, she looks about as sexy as a bar of soap. Whereas
Stockard Channing as the plucky Rizzo—what a great girl. From now on, Rizzo will be my role model.

“Greased Lightning.” “Summer Nights.” “There Are Worse Things I Can Do.” For 110 glorious minutes, I forget being fifty, I
forget being fired, I even forget my sweaty legs. And when we go for Chinese in Soho after the movie, I keep the conversation
strictly neutral. Every time I’m tempted to mention Vanessa the Undresser, I shovel a mound of rice into my mouth and chew
and chew and chew until the temptation to talk goes away.

Jack agrees to field all phone calls for me, except for any from my sister, Sarah, or my friend Maddy.

My sister is psychic where I’m concerned, and she’s already suspicious. “Something’s up, isn’t it? I can tell,” she says when
she rings on Saturday morning. All I’ve said is hello.

“Everything’s fine,” I reply. “I’m just grumpy about being so old.”

“ ‘Fine’ means not fine,” she says. “Whenever you use that word, I know you’re not fine at all.”

“Just shut it, Sarah. Just this once. Give me a break. Okay?”

Now she can be absolutely certain that I’m keeping something from her. But she’ll have to live with it until I’m ready to
talk.

I tell Sarah everything (usually), and I tell my friend Madeleine almost everything, but her sister is in a hospice, dying
of melanoma that has spread to her bones, and the last thing she needs to hear about right now is my troubles. So when she
calls, we talk about the party and catch up on her sister.

Whenever anyone else rings, Jack tells them I am out. I am curled up in the corner of the sofa in my dressing gown, aimlessly
plucking hairs from my legs, my fingernails standing in as tweezers. It’s tricky at first, but with practice, you soon get
the hang of it.

• • •

Sunday is a write-off. I lie in bed until ten a.m., staring at the ceiling. I wash my hair and iron tea towels in the basement.
Ironing tea towels, I find, is extremely therapeutic. The rest of the ironing I leave to my cleaner, but tea towels are my
personal province. I listen to
The Archers
omnibus, then leaf without much interest through the papers. In normal circumstances, I’d be scrutinizing them intently,
circling stories with Magic Marker for ripping out later in the day, when Jack and Olly have done with them. Although I’m
not sure Olly ever gets past the sports section.