it be true? Could Aidan really want her to do hard-hitting investigative reporting? This is what she became a journalist for. This is what she’d dreamed of as a girl, and throughout university. She imagined herself hanging around the bars in Westminster looking for ministers willing to speak off the record, or blagging her way into the retinue of a gangsta rapper crime lord in South London.
‘I’ve already arranged your first undercover role,’ said Aiden.
Shelley sat forward in her chair.
‘It’s a lot of work. I’ll want a few thousand words a day.’
Shelley raised her eyebrows, but nodded. She could do that, she could do anything.
‘There’d be a bonus in it if you deliver,’ Aidan went on.
Shelley tried not to think in terms of bottles of The Crown’s finest dry white. ‘A few thousand words on what?’ she asked.
He sat back in his chair, grinned broadly.
‘The Secret Diary of a Sex Addict!’
A lengthy pause followed. The tick-tock of Kate Hurley’s ancient clock counted the treacherous seconds away as Shelley stared at her boss.
This couldn’t be right. ‘I’m sorry, I think I misheard you,’ she said. ‘You said Secret Diary of a … What Addict?’
‘SexAddict,’ Aidan repeated, gazing back at her steadily.
Shelley was floored. She’d been hoping to move away from love-soaked frippery and gossip; she desperately wanted to do hard-nosed, real journalism. Instead Aidan seemed determined to take her backwards. How could she, of all people, write a column from the point of view of a sex addict?
‘I need you to pretend to be addicted to sex.’ Aidan said, leafing through some pages on his desk. ‘We’ll come up with some convincing story for you. You can join a group, I already have most of this arranged, by the way. You’ll take a week to put together some stories. Feed them through and I’ll put them up on the blog site, when the next issue comes out we’ll run the best. We want them sexy, you understand? We want details.’
Shelley’s head spun. Was Aidan testing her? Or was he hoping to get rid of her? Did he want another walk of shame? Should she follow Stargazer and Maya the Sub down to Benny’s wine bar to drown her sorrows and draft her resignation?
Aidan didn’t speak.
No, she couldn’t bear the thought of walking out now. She wouldn’t let smug Freya have the satisfaction, for a start. They’d given her a challenge they thought she’d fail, because they thought she was weak. But she wasn’t weak. She was a tough journalist, she could handle any assignment.
Even sex ?
‘I’ll do it,’ she said, firmly.
‘Great,’ he said looking down at his papers again. ‘The course starts on Monday but you have to be at the centre on Sunday for orientation. Take a BlackBerry, you’ll need to smuggle it in. You’re to use the BlackBerry to e-mail your copy in and to communicate with us if necessary, but only by e-mail please. The IT department tell me they’re bound to notice if someone starts using a phone, but they’re unlikely to monitor wireless e-mail communications.’
‘You make it sound like I’m infiltrating the Kremlin,’ Shelley protested.
‘The centre’s clients are strictly forbidden to contact the outside world, Shelley,’ Aidan said, earnestly. ‘They’re very clear about that. They will be watching you closely and if they catch you they’ll throw you off the course, we’ll lose the story and a lot of money.’
What Aidan left unspoken was what exactly might happen to Shelley’s job if this happened.
‘Thanks for your time, Shelley,’ Aidan said, signalling the end of the interview.
She left the office feeling about as confused as she’d ever been in 25 extremely confusing years.
‘I don’t see what the problem is with landfill sites,’ Freya was saying to Briony in her squeaky, we’re-all-matey-inthe-pub voice. ‘If they don’t fill the land we’ll just have big holes everywhere.’ Briony and Shelley stared back at her, trying to work out if she was serious.
Freya was almost never invited to the pub after work. She was intensely irritating at the best of times and if you went around inviting her to things, she’d just take it as endorsement of her obnoxiousness.
Shelley and Briony would normally be baiting her and trying to get her onto the subject of immigration, where she leaned slightly to the right of Hitler, and if she’d include the Polish girl who cleaned the loos, but tonight Shelley’s heart wasn’t in it. The buzz at the table was of the changes Aidan had wrought at the magazine. Everyone’s job had changed. Even the post-room boys, who had been asked to start a blog about being the only men in an organisation stuffed with desperate young women, with a particular focus on all those ‘special deliveries’ they made to the girls in marketing.
The common theme of course was sex. The fashion shoots were going to feature more scantily-clad models, sliding over buff-torsoed men. There were to be more features on sex tips, marital aids and true-life experiences. Jen DuCroix, Features Editor, was excited about the prospect of road-testing the new vibrator on the block, the Berserk Bunny. Poor old Monica Bellamy, ad-sales executive and within spitting distance of retirement, had been asked to up the tit-count in the classifieds. Vixen was going to allow, and indeed encourage, phone-sex ads, albeit targeted at the female market. This meant ads for lingerie, dildos and even male escorts.
‘But it’s just pornography,’ Shelley protested, as Karen told them about her new feature, ‘How to Make Him Think You’re a Virgin’.
Freya snorted. ‘Don’t be such a prude, Shelley. All the women’s magazines these days have a bit of slap and tickle about them. It doesn’t have to be crude. What’s wrong with a bit of tasteful erotica?’
‘She’s right,’ Briony said. ‘As much as I hate to admit it. It’s not as if the mag’s going to be wall-to-wall cock.’
‘Yes,’ Freya continued. ‘Look at my new role for example.’ None of them had asked her about her job, not wanting to give her the satisfaction. ‘Aidan knows I have psych degree as well as my Masters in Journalism. Well, he’s asked me to write a series of feature articles on the psychology of relationships. Each is practically guaranteed to be a cover story.’
‘The psychology of relationships?’ Shelley butted in. ‘Sounds a bit vague. Any particular aspect of relationships?’
Freya appeared momentarily shaken but quickly rallied. ‘The physical side, mostly.’
‘Aha!’ Briony cried triumphantly. ‘You’re writing about sex like the rest of us. Let me guess, “What He’s Secretly Fantasising About”, or “10 Psychology Tips to get him Interested”. That sort of thing?’
Freya scowled. ‘Well, sex is important in a relationship, it’s certainly one of the main things that keep the spark alive between Harry and me.’ This last was delivered while she stared coldly at Shelley. ‘A satisfactory love life is essential in being fulfilled as a woman.’
‘So what’s your new assignment?’ Shelley asked, pointedly turning away from Freya. ‘You still haven’t told us.’
Briony smiled and very nearly looked embarrassed. ‘Aidan wants me to write a monthly column in which I describe a sexual experience. A new one every time.’
‘What, one of your experiences?’ Freya asked.
‘Yes, I basically find a willing partner, or partners, once a month, shag them and write about it.’