since the Group Christmas party last year. She had tried to explain that just because someone dances with you didn’t mean he fancied you. ‘He’s just about the only decent prospect in a company made up of eighty per cent women and could have his pick of the ladies. He was only being polite in trying to dance with as many women as he could. He did the “Macarena” with Sonia Bailey for God’s sake,’ Shelley had pointed out.
‘So why did he come back later to dance with you again?’ Briony asked, knowingly. ‘When “Careless Whisper” was on?’
Shelley had just blushed and got on with her work, not wanting to think about it.
Now Aidan stood tall, next to the tiny Bailey who, Shelley couldn’t help noticing, sneaked a look at his crotch, to her at eye-level. She spoke again.
‘Ladies … and err gentlemen,’ peering over at the post-room boys, the only other males on the floor. ‘You probably all know Aidan Carter, Group Marketing Director. Aidan has taken a keen interest in the fortunes of Female Intuition over the past few months, and has personally determined to turn this magazine around. I give you your new Editor-in-Chief, Aidan Carter.’
A set of gasps escaped around the room like timed pistons. Aidan had no experience as an editor, he was abrasive and demanding, he already had another job and worst of all …
He was a man.
‘Thank you, Sonia,’ Aidan began, putting a hand on one hip, which had the effect of brushing his suit jacket open and offering a glimpse of his chest muscles through an ever-so-slightly too tight shirt. Another chorus of appreciative breaths.
‘Firstly a couple of words about Kate Hurley,’ Aidan began. ‘A hero of mine. One of this country’s finest journalists, and a pioneering feminist. She had a mind like a razor, a heart like a lion, and balls of steel. She will be missed.’
Though unsure about the third simile, Shelley found herself muttering ‘hear, hear’ along with everyone else.
‘Do you know? My mother used to read this magazine,’ Aidan continued, lifting the latest issue and waving it at the team aggressively. ‘She loved it. This magazine helped her through some difficult times.’ Freya nodded sympathetically and put her head to one side, blinking those doe eyes. Bailey nodded sagely.
Aidan walked over to the windows and everyone swivelled to follow. ‘She read this magazine in hospital when she had breast cancer,’ he continued, gazing meditatively out over North London. ‘She read this magazine at home after my father left her. She read this magazine in the nursing home as she watched over her own mother dying.’
He turned back to face the group, hands at his sides, his face simultaneously full of loss and warmth. Shelley felt a little funny, and squeezed her legs together and glanced around the room. Even Briony was staring at Carter, mouth open. Freya looked like she was about to have an orgasm.
‘Unfortunately my mother doesn’t read this magazine anymore,’ he said. ‘Do you want to know why?’
Briony hissed and mouthed ‘Dead?’. Shelley frowned back in distaste.
‘She thinks it’s too boring,’ Aiden said.
Grumbling and shaking of heads.
‘Things have changed. My mother has changed. The world has changed. She wants more from her magazines these days. More stories about having fun and not so many about illness, more stories about love and not so many about heartbreak, more stories about life and less about death.’
‘Fewer,’ Shelley said automatically.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘F-fewer stories about death,’ Shelley stammered. ‘Not less stories about death.’ Why had she said that? Was she to get herself fired just as the magazine was being saved?
He stared at her hard, a strange look on his face, then he snapped out of his trance and walked off towards the window again. His square-jawed, brooding face shadowed before the May sunlight pouring in.
‘My mother is tired of sickness, sadness and saying goodbye,’ he continued. ‘That was the past. People choose life these days. People choose … happiness … and people choose sex.’
He spun for the finale.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to your new magazine.’ And with that he stepped over to an old ad board lying against the wall and flipped it to reveal a blown-up magazine cover.
Briony had been wrong. The new editor wasn’t just going to faff about with fonts and page orders. He’d changed everything, including the name.
The cover was an almost naked Mimi Corvair, the model recently dropped by most of her sponsors when she was filmed having a coke-snorting threesome with the boyfriends of two other models. Her days as a cover-girl had been declared well and truly over, and now she was relegated to the name-and-shame pages only. The lads’ mags still wanted her, but for what her agent considered the wrong reasons.
If Aidan wanted her on the cover it meant he was trying to make a mark. He was trying to kill Female Intuition and get the revamped mag back in the press. That was shocking enough.
But it was the new title that hit Shelley hardest.
In hot pink, and crowding the raunchy image beneath with huge letters was the new, bold title.
VIXEN.
Aidan paused for a moment, and then continued: ‘I can’t let this magazine die, I owe it to West End, I owe it to you and I owe it to my mother.’
A solitary clapping from Bailey was taken up by the rest of the room, and soon even the post boys were joining in.
But Shelley reckoned she wasn’t the only one who was totally terrified. If sex was the new direction this magazine was taking, then she wasn’t at all sure it was the right place for her. Sex wasn’t really her thing. She’d only done it a few times, and if we were talking, y’know, proper sex, she’d only done it with two different men.
As they stood and applauded, she wasn’t thinking about the future of the magazine, or the fresh opportunities she was being presented with.
She was trying to remember if she’d even had any actual sex at all in the last year.
Briony and Shelley went to Dino’s for lunch, like they always did. Shelley toyed with a salad while they talked about the events of the morning. Aidan had told them that after lunch he was going to speak to each of them individually and define their new roles. Dishy as he was, Aidan was still management, and he used lots of phrases like ‘going forward’ as in, ‘We’ll roll out these new synergies, going forward,’ or, ‘We’ll revise our budgets quarterly, going forward’. The editor in Shelley wanted to point out that you could hardly do these things going backward.
‘Do you fancy him?’ Briony asked.
‘Do you?’ Shelley replied.
‘Yes, of course. The question is, do you?’
‘Why is that the question?’
‘Because Aidan’s obviously not interested in me, he’s interested in you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Shelley said. ‘If he looked at anyone today, it was Freya.’
Briony snorted, ‘Only because she hung off him and kept getting in his way. Aidan Carter wouldn’t go for a girl like her anyway.’
She chased a troublesome cherry tomato around her plate with a fork as she spoke.
‘Why not?’ Shelley asked, intrigued.
Briony speared the tomato savagely, splattering juice over the plate. Then she looked up and