Who's That Girl (3 page)

Painstakingly slowly we take a left and start weaving down various side streets until finally I see what looks like a main road ahead. Hopefully we're nearing the end of the diversion. I spot a set of lights. And they're green.
Come on, come on, come on
. Cars in front of me are filtering through.

I edge forwards, bumper to bumper. And now the lights are turning to amber. I try to squeeze through.

They change to red.

Argh.

Thwarted, I stop dead. Feeling the pressure building, I sit hunched over the steering wheel. OK, come on now, Charlotte, just relax, I instruct myself sternly. Getting all stressed out isn't going to make you go any faster, is it? Let's just do some relaxing breathing. Like we do in yoga. Closing my eyes, I flare my nostrils and take a deep breath.
In and out. In and out. In and
—

Oh, sod it. I snap open my eyes. Well, I'm sorry, Shivanyandra or whatever your name is, but this is useless. I'm going to have to ring Bea and see if she can rearrange my diary. I'm supposed to be on a conference call in fifteen minutes. Desperately, I snatch up my BlackBerry. But just when I thought it couldn't get any worse.

It has.

I've got no reception.

Great. Just great. What am I going to do now?

Chucking it down in exasperation, I glance back at the lights: they're still red. Jesus. These must be the longest lights in history. Distractedly, I let my eyes drift along the road, taking in my surroundings. There's a newsagent's on the corner, people waiting at the bus-stop, a tatty tanning salon that looks like it's been there for years. Actually, now I think of it, it has been there for years.

I haven't been paying attention, but now I realise where I am. I used to drive down this road to work every morning when I first moved to London. Only back then I used to drive in the opposite direction. I wonder how long it is since I last came down here. My memory flicks back. It was my first job and I was only twenty-one. God, it seems like another lifetime. Like another person.

Thinking back, my gaze floats across the intersection. Opposite, a line of cars are waiting and my eyes fall on the one at the front. It's an old Beetle, just like I used to drive back then, I notice. Gosh, how funny. It's almost identical. Same funny tangerine colour with the boxy little grille and rust around the headlights. It's even got a WWF sticker like I used to have, peeling off on the windscreen. I glance at the driver.

Oh my God, she looks just like me!

Me when I was twenty-one.

She's singing along to the radio, scrunching her dark, curly hair in the rear-view mirror just like I used to. She's even wearing a red-and-white T-shirt a bit like the one I always used to wear…

I stare in amazement as the lights change and the Beetle drives towards me.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.

The honking of a horn snaps me out of my daze and I slam my foot on the accelerator. The engine promptly stalls. Bollocks. Flustered, I quickly turn the ignition. Only I'm all fingers and thumbs and I can't get it to start and now several cars are honking their horns and - Suddenly the engine fires into life.

With an embarrassing screech of tyres I speed away from the lights, my mind whirring. I can't believe how much that girl looked like me when I was younger. The resemblance was uncanny. If it wasn't impossible, I'd almost think it
was
me. Goosebumps prickle on my arms and I give a little shiver. God, that was the weirdest thing…

Ahead, I see a sign looming - end of diversion - and feel a rush of relief. Thank God. My BlackBerry beeps from the passenger seat and I scramble for it. Hallelujah! I've got a signal. Plus five missed calls. OK, back to the real world. And slamming my foot on the accelerator, I speeddial the office.

Chapter Three

By the time I arrive at the office I've taken nine calls, replied to two emails (surreptitiously while stuck in yet more traffic) and put in a rush order at Interflora. Unfortunately they didn't do navy blue flowers - in fact the woman sounded quite puzzled when I asked - but they had purple, which is practically the same as navy blue.

Sort of.

As I charge through the door, my assistant, Beatrice, is waiting for me with a cup in her outstretched hand. This is how she greets me every morning: double espresso with a splash of soya milk. I'm on the phone with a journalist and I throw her a grateful smile and sweep it up like a relay runner. After two years we've perfected the pass. We don't spill a drop. I continue across the office, my stiletto heels clicking on the floor. (Polished cement, very
de
rigueur
. In fact the whole office is totally cutting-edge; in the PR world appearances are everything.) 'So I'll send over the new product for you to try. I'm sure you'll want to feature it in the magazine… Oh, right, you want the
whole range
?' Gosh, journalists can be so greedy.

'Absolutely. I'll get it hiked over straight away!' I say cheerfully. Reaching my desk, I end the call, sink down into my chair and drain my double espresso in one desperate gulp. I'm so fuzzy-headed before my morning coffee I can't think straight, let alone
see
straight. Which of course totally explains that weird incident at the lights.

'Morning,' chirps Beatrice, hugging a file to her chest and beaming. Beatrice is always to be found hugging files to her chest. Not because she's actually working on anything in the files, but because it's an attempt to hide her impressively large chest (or 'bosoms', as she likes to call them), which she inherited from her grandmother, the Duchess of something or other. Along with a double string of pearls, a substantial trust fund and a little 'bolt-hole' in town. The little bolt-hole being a ginormous penthouse flat in Devonshire Square, Wl. Honestly, Bea is so jammy I should hate her, but she makes it impossible by being one of the nicest people I've ever met.

'Hi, Bea. Thanks for the coffee.' I smile gratefully.

'Good weekend?' she says brightly, striding over to me and unlooping my bags, which I'd forgotten were still hanging from my shoulders. Deftly, she puts each in their place.

'It was OK. I had quite a lot of work to catch up on.' I shrug, thinking back to yesterday. I spent it at the dining-room table surrounded by paperwork while Miles played squash, which seems to be pretty much how I spend my weekends these days.

Plonking my elbows on a pile of papers, I rub my forehead. I can already feel the beginnings of a tension headache. 'Any messages?'

'Larry Goldstein's assistant called to confirm your lunch tomorrow at the Electric in Notting Hill.'

She begins peeling off Post-it notes. 'Sally Pitt, the editor of the lifestyle section of the
Daily
Standard
, called. They want to interview you for an article they're doing on women who have it all.' She throws me an excited look. 'Oh, and Melody called. Several times in fact.'

Melody is a famous TV presenter who recently had a baby, shed a truckload of weight and is now making a fortune sharing her 'secret' through her DVD, books, TV series and her new range of pre-packaged healthy meals, Easy Without the E-Numbers, for which we do the PR.

'She's a little upset about the Sunday papers.' Beatrice produces a copy of one of the tabloids. On the front page is a photograph of Melody stuffing her face with a large Big Mac and fries. The headline 'SECRETS AND FRIES' screams across the front.

'Ah, yes.' I pull a face. 'I saw them.'

'Actually, I think her exact words were…'Beatrice peels off a Post-it note and begins reading earnestly ' "Fucking furious. I want to fucking kill the
fucking 'News of the Screws
." '

Despite my anxiety, I can't help smiling. With Bea's cut-glass accent, it's like hearing the Queen blaspheming. Honestly, posh people shouldn't swear. It just doesn't sound right.

'I can imagine.' I nod, spreading the paper across my desk and feeling the knot in my stomach tightening.

Melody might be the nation's darling: all sweetness and light and toothpaste-ad smiles - but away from the cameras she's got a worse temper than… well, I don't want to mention any names as I don't want to get sued, but think of someone with a terrible temper and it's worse. Much,
much
worse.

'Do you think she supersized it?' says Beatrice, peering over my shoulder at the photograph. Beatrice just watched the docu-film about the man who lived on McDonald's for a month and she can't stop going on about it. Bea's like that. She watches movies about five years after they come out. It's the same with everything, music, fashion…

I take in Bea's outfit. She's wearing her faithful twinset, a knee-length skirt in grey tweed, opaque tights and the black court shoes from M&S she's had for ever. Oh, and don't forget the pearls. Actually, on second thoughts, I'm not sure what she's wearing was even in fashion five years ago.

'Does it matter?' I shrug, rubbing my temples. My head is really starting to throb. 'Supersized or not, she's launching her latest diet book,
Just Say No to Junk
, next month,' I remind her. 'And we're currently doing the promotion on her new range of Easy Without the E-Numbers soups.'

Beatrice frowns. 'Hmm, yes, that is slightly unfortunate.'

Beatrice has a knack for understatement. Being a small boutique agency, we only have a few accounts - I take care of the large ones, while Beatrice deals with the smaller ones - and Melody's range of products is one of our biggest and most profitable. The last thing I need is for a paparazzi photograph to jeopardise that by discrediting her as a health and fitness guru.

'It's potentially a disaster,' I murmur, shaking out two paracetamol from the family-sized bottle I keep on my desk and flicking on my computer. The screen comes awake and I quickly start typing into Google.

Beatrice tightens her grip on her pearls. 'Golly,' she says in a hushed voice. '
A disaster?''

A bunch of articles pop up on my screen and I click one of them. '
Potentially
,' I correct her, quickly scanning through the article. After a moment's pause I look up at Bea. 'Call her agent and tell him we're going to put together a press release saying she's hypoglycaemic'

Beatrice throws me a puzzled look.

'In other words she has low blood sugar.'

Her face floods with recognition. 'Oh, what a coincidence!' she whoops, galvanised by this piece of information. 'So does Mummy! She can't go anywhere without her Ritz crackers! Once she forgot them and her level dropped and she fainted. Right at the feet of Prince Philip.' She pauses as she sees my expression. 'We were in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot at the time,' she explains.

'Beatrice, she's not really hypoglycaemic.'

She looks at me blankly. Then it registers. 'Oh… I see… Gosh, you mean it's all a
ruse
,' she says, her voice lowered.

I nod.

'Gosh, Charlotte, you're so clever. That's why I love working for you!'

People are often fooled by Bea. They dismiss her as a ditzy Sloane, rather like I did when she first came for an interview, out of breath from running from the Tube, with her hair all over the place and a ladder in her tights. But in fact she's super-brainy and behind that dumb-blonde persona lies an academic genius. This is a woman who got a first in applied mathematics and double physics at Cambridge University and in her spare time solves geometric equations, 'just for fun'.

To be honest, she's totally overqualified for the job. We're the same age and she should be working in some lab somewhere, doing something mind-bogglingly scientific. But she insisted she really wanted to work in PR and was incredibly enthusiastic. Plus she has the poshest voice I've ever heard, which in the world of PR is invaluable.

Traditionally the girls who work in public relations are middle-class girls from the Home Counties, not girls from Yorkshire with an accent that's pure Pennines. Actually, mine isn't so much pure Pennines any more. Ten years of London have mellowed it to the point where I take
barths
not baths and tea is something I drink, not something I eat at 5 p.m. Nevertheless, Bea's cut-glass accent opens doors that mine never could. We work as a team. A sort of bait and switch. I make the deals, get the contracts and take care of our clients, but Bea is the first point of contact for the press and media. And for that, her knack for sounding like the Queen is priceless.

The phone starts ringing and Bea rushes to answer it. 'Good morning, Merryweather PR,' she trills. 'Which publication are you calling from? The
Telegraph
? Oh, how thrilling! My grandfather was the editor for many years.'

See what I mean?

After rescuing the Melody account from imploding, the rest of the morning slips away in the usual hive of activity: making calls to journalists, writing press releases, taking conference calls with clients. One minute it's 9 a.m. and I'm trying to think of something sexy and fabulous to say about a dandruff shampoo, which is part of the new range by Johnny Bird, a West End hairstylist, and the next minute it's nearly one and I'm being tossed about in the back of a cab on my way to a lunch meeting at the Wolseley, a fashionable restaurant in Piccadilly. Usually I drive, but today I thought a cab might be quicker. More importantly, it means I can catch up with some work on the way.

I hang on to a strap to steady myself while reading an email that's just popped in on my BlackBerry. Scrolling down with my thumb, I'm about to start typing a reply when my mobile starts ringing. I have a BlackBerry and a mobile. The BlackBerry's for business; the mobile's for personal calls. Normally I switch it to silent during day, but I must have forgotten. I dig it out and glance at the screen. It's my parents.

Oh, shoot. Dad's birthday. I was going to call as soon as I had a free minute. The thing is, I'm still waiting for that free minute.

'Hello, Charlotte Merryweather speaking,' I say out of habit before I can stop myself.

'Oh, so you
are
alive!' laughs a voice dryly.

'Oh, hi, Mum,' I say innocently, trying not to think of all the voicemail messages she's left over the past week. 'How are you?'