Hush Hush (4 page)

Oh Jesus, she
thought, flopping back on her pillow, I have become paranoid in these
last few years. I have allowed incidents from the past to grow out of
all proportion. I shouldn’t be so down on my own sex, the
oppressed sisterhood. I should apply to the desperate people at
Goss!
, even having the
nerve to spot their
‘
litiral’
at fifty paces. I need a job, I need the money, I need to appease
Rache and Mum in different ways.

Tomorrow, she’d
dust off her CV. Tomorrow, she’d fire off an email that repaid
the ad-speak with equally coded gimme-a-job-speak. The day after,
she’d probably get the job by some freak of nature
‒
first choice candidate killed by a dangerously swung cat or
something. If that happened
‒
if she got a job back in dreaded London
‒
would it then be too late to stop the
world and get off?

The nice people at
Goss!
were desperate
enough to call Angela for an interview. She didn’t expect to
get the job
‏‒
didn’t really want any job
‒
but she’d go for the interview experience. She’d only
applied to
Goss!
because its office was within walking
distance of Victoria station. No Tube trains would be involved. She
hoped.

There was always an outside
chance that a suspect package would close Victoria on D-day. Then she
might be re-routed to somewhere out of the way, like London Bridge
and, as she’d never braved a London bus, that would leave the
Tubes.

Angela tried not to panic unduly.
On the one hand, it was stupid to worry about factors beyond her
control. On the other hand, it was better to clench her buttocks in
anticipatory readiness. It was like going to the dentist. If you
dreaded a root canal and updated your will beforehand, you always got
off with a scrape and a polish.

Of course, over lunch in
Baggio’s, Sadie was keen for more particulars of her new job.

‘What’s the hold-up
with your start date?’ she waded in over starters.

‘No hold-up, Mum. It’ll
definitely be within the next couple of weeks.’ By which time
she’d have a convincing lie for the job’s disappearance.
The hush-hush new mag would come a cropper before the first fence.
But why? She quite fancied citing a spectacular row between the
editor and the publisher over launching the first issue with an
expos
é
of
the late Jackie O’s
allegedly kinky sex
practices.

Sadie prodded a spring onion
under her dentures.
‘
Will
you be able to cope with the commuting to London? Remember, you gave
it up four years ago because it stressed you out.’

‘Needs must,’
shrugged Angela uneasily.
‘
I
daren’t fail, with you and Rache nagging me to rejoin the rat
race.’

Angela had never told Sadie about
the Tufnell Park incident. Sadie believed that Angela had given up
work because the stress and spiralling cost of commuting had
outweighed her modest salary. And because Robert hadn’t
encouraged her to stick at it.

‘Let’s have no more
talk of failure and nagging, lovey. You’ll put yourself under
pressure before the off. I agree with Rachel that temping locally
might’ve been a gentler baptism.’

‘So you’ve talked
about me,’ muttered Angela.

‘We both care about you.
You’ve become a bit of a recluse in that house. It’s not
healthy.’ Sadie waved a salad-laden fork.
‘
Look
at me. I felt like giving up after Dad died. But I got on with it,
took that job at the newsagent’s, readjusted. Of course
…
’
she met Angela’s hostile stare,
‘…
it takes time. Nobody expects you to jump into a power
suit and start running ICI.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘I think you should start
this job with a
“
so
what?
”
attitude. So
what if it doesn’t work out? With the initial experience under
your belt, you’ll gain the confidence to pick and choose
applying for other jobs.’

‘The mocha mousse looks
nice,’ said Angela.

Sadie gnashed her irritation into
a lettuce leaf.
‘
Call
me an interfering old biddy,’ she hazarded.

‘As if, Ma.’

‘But I know the score,
Ange. Sit and fester over what might’ve been, and you get out
of bed one day and find a couple of years have whizzed past
unnoticed.’

‘Caused by a rift in the
time-space continuum?’

‘I’m only trying to
help.’

‘I know.’ Angela
banged the menu shut.
‘
For
some reason, the more you and Rache try and help me, the more I
resent the pair of you. I’m just an awkward customer at the
moment. Please try and forgive me.’

Back
home, Angela donated online to Sadie’s favourite charity. She
agreed with Sadie on one thing. There were always people worse off
than you, and if they couldn’t benefit from your days of smug
contentment (when you forgot their existence), it behoved you to
remember them when personal misery came to call.

She caught the nine-fifty to Victoria. The
commuter rush had passed and there was a leisurely day-tripping
atmosphere among the backpackers and ladies who lunched. Angela sat
carefully upright in her suit. It had seen better days.

She was tall, long-boned and
sallow, not suited to lilac. But at least the suit was clean and
pressed and, what was more important, went with her only pair of
dressy shoes. They were cream, square-heeled court shoes, bought six
years ago for Rachel’s wedding-that-never-was. After Rachel had
changed her mind at the eleventh hour and given Kevin the boot,
Angela had mothballed the shoes. She wasn’t sure why. She did
think Rachel mad to dump Dr Kevin Whitaker. Tall and dark with a
killer smile, he was the archetypal hero of the hospital romance he’d
kindled with Rachel.

Rachel could be hard on men,
thought Angela, tucking one cream shoe over the other. Kind men
eventually bored her, handsome men were too much competition (in
Angela’s silently held opinion), rough trade no more than a
temporary distraction. But then, Rachel wasn’t looking for Mr
Right and roses round the lintel. She was hooked on variety, the
spice of life
‒
and
that tended to jade the palate quickly.

Angela fidgeted on her seat. It
seemed ages since she’d visited London by train. Now and then,
she and Robert had driven up to take in a show. But his heart was
never in it. He hated the traffic and fell asleep before intervals.
Les Misérables
made so little impression on him that,
by the following week, he was convinced it was
Riverdance
that
they’d seen. They’d argued pointlessly until Angela dug
out the programme.

Angela had sold the car after his
death. It cost too much for a non-driver to tax and insure.

She flattened her forehead
against the window as the train slid into Victoria station, shrieking
brakes startling a flock of pigeons out of the rafters. Angela’s
heart quickened. The immensity of London, reflected in the boastful
masonry of its Victorian railway stations, oppressed her once more.

On the concourse, a
respectable-looking man, using Sadie’s index for such things,
was kicking a chocolate dispenser. Builders mooched atop the
inevitable scaffolding. Scurrying dots converged at the Underground
sign, occasionally colliding and twirling in a brief dance of
concourse rage.

Angela hurried, head down, out of
the station. London flowed past her and soared above her. The air was
pungent with an over-succulent potpourri of chip fat, exhaust fumes
and roasting coffee.

She reached the rambling gothic
façade of Marchbank Publishing
‒
in days of yore an alms house
‒
with inflamed nerve-ends, but its carpeted foyer and smiling
receptionist soothed her. That was, until the receptionist buzzed
Goss!
and announced,
‘
Mizz
Carmody’s here for her eleven-fifteen.’

‘Carbery,’ mouthed
Angela.

The receptionist put down the
phone.
‘
Take
the lift to the second floor, Mizz Carmody, and somebody called Marla
will meet you there.’

Marla Symonds was chief
sub-editor of
Goss!

Angela practised her death’s-head
grin in the lift mirror. Who would stick their hand out first for the
handshake? If she did it simultaneously with Marla, there might be an
embarrassing collision of fingers, like warring stick insects.

Just as the lift doors opened,
Angela noticed that one half of her blouse collar was poking over her
jacket lapel. She prodded it back into place and found Marla’s
hand swooping down to shake hers.

‘Hello, I’m Marla!
Thanks ever-so for coming in to see us.’

Wasn’t that the brush-off
speech at the end of the interview?

‘Thanks for having me,’
mumbled Angela and cringed.

Marla didn’t seem to
notice. Her sensible shoes tapped efficiently down a narrow corridor.
Angela following in her wake because there wasn’t room for two
abreast. This meant that Marla had to toss small talk over her
shoulder and Angela had to field it back deftly.

‘Smooth journey getting
in?’

‘Oh yes, very smooth.’

‘
Avoiding
the early-morning scrum
makes all the
difference.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, here we are. Tea or
coffee?’

‘Neither, thanks,’
beamed Angela, dry lips cracking.

Cups of tea and coffee, like
squishy chairs, were best avoided. Too much scope for slopping and
flailing. She was four years out of this game, but she wasn’t a
complete greenhorn.

In Marla’s tiny, chaotic
office, the large and
horsey
Marla pored over Angela’s CV, apparently reading it for the
first time. She looked up and smiled invitingly.
‘
Tell
me a bit about yourself.’

For pete’s sake, screeched
Angela’s desperado inner voice, all about myself is on my CV,
you silly bint!

‘Well,’ she began,
folding her hands on her lap,
‘
as
you can see, I was widowed fairly recently. I gave up my sub-editing
job four years ago to, um, assist my husband in his car dealership
business, but before that, I had a lot of varied experience in the
magazine industry. I love subbing,’ she lied, with solemnly
sincere eye-contact.

Marla nodded.
‘
So,
you were helping hubby with the books and admin, that sort of thing?’

Angela nodded modestly.
‘
It
was a small-time operation, but it kept us ticking over. I had to
wind things up after Robert died.’

This lie was strictly functional.
No prospective employer would be impressed by the Tufnell Park
incident. Thankfully, Lazlo had waved her off four years ago with a
glowing reference and a kindly-meant plea to
‘
get
some therapy’.

‘You’re very brave,’
said Marla, eyes pools of professional sympathy.
‘
It’s
not easy re-entering the fray after a lay-off. I took a year out
after my baby, and found it hell on wheels getting back into the old
routine. You wouldn’t mind if we give you a little subbing
test?
I’ve set you up on
a spare Mac here in my office.’

Alone in Marla’s office,
Angela peered onscreen at a
feature posing the question: ‘Who’s got the
biggest-earning booty, Kim K or J-Lo?’

Her
tights were scratchy with heat on her inner thighs and she wanted to
leave that second, but Marla’s office was glass on two sides
and even her body language might be under scrutiny. She straightened
her shoulders,
clicked on the
mouse and began.

Angela liked an interview to be followed up by a
letter. Phone calls threw her. When Marla rang two days after the
interview, Angela was about to poke a knife into her toaster in
search of a slice that had never popped out.

‘Angela, it’s Marla
Symonds. Listen, we’d like you to join the team, if you’d
still like to join us. Congratulations!’

‘Er
‒
wow
‒
thanks.’

‘I assume you’re
available for an immediate start? We should’ve discussed it at
the interview, but it’s all hands to the pumps, and we could do
with an experienced sub a.s.a.p. Does the day after tomorrow suit?’

‘Yes
‒
I mean no! Oh boy, Marla, you’ve caught me out with such a
swift comeback. You see, I booked a holiday a few weeks back, you
know, before I saw the ad for the job. I’m going
‒
tomorrow
‒
for two
weeks. Sorry.’

A tiny pause lasted an eternity.
Marla was pissed off.

Marla was withdrawing her offer.
‘
Fine!’
said Marla, perhaps too chirpily.
‘
Nil
problemo at all. You’ll be refreshed after your break and we
can work you like a slave. Hah! Only joking. Going anywhere nice?’

‘Canaries,’ supplied
Angela crisply. Good choice. She’d have been caught out with a
destination that closed down for the winter.

‘
R
ight,
I’m just readjusting my diary,’ murmured Marla, flapping
pages her end.
‘
See
you on Monday the sixth then, nine thirty. Don’t do anything I
wouldn’t do!’

‘Sure won’t, Marla!’

God, why did people say that? She
couldn’t imagine doing anything that Marla, with her robust,
loose-limbed horsiness, wouldn’t do in a flash.