and fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare as her assistant shuffled through the door and placed two cups of tea on the desk with a barely smothered cough.
‘You know you’re not supposed to smoke in the workplace, don’t you?’ I asked, chugging my tea so there would be one less hot thing for her to throw at me.
‘I eat here, I sleep here, I shit, shower and shag here.’ Veronica ground the half-smoked cig into her ashtray, leaning forward and gripping the edge of the desk with her blood-red talons. ‘Can’t imagine anyone’s going to tell me to put my fag out. Unless it’s bothering you?’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I find it quite comforting.’
‘Your parents smoke?’
‘No,’ I replied, feeling the fear of God in my gut. ‘Just, you don’t see it enough these days, do you?’
She sat back again, reaching behind her and shoving the window open. It wasn’t until I heard the amplified buzz of traffic outside that I realized I’d been holding my breath. Sweet Baby Jesus in the manger.
‘So you don’t want to go to Italy for three months?’ she asked, clicking her mouse a couple of times and looking over at the screen of her Mac.
Thank God, we were back to business.
‘Three months is so long. A lot can happen in three months,’ I said.
‘Oh, are you expecting some other fashion icon to appear from the heavens and offer you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?’ she asked, her hands clasped together in prayer.
‘I don’t want to agree to three months,’ I replied, as staunchly as possible. Playing hardball had never been my thing. Actually, playing any kind of ball had never been my thing, euphemistically or otherwise.
‘I’ll tell them you’ll go for a week, do a recce and then make a decision,’ she said. ‘And if that decision is anything other than “thanks for giving me this opportunity, Mr Bennett, now may I kiss your arse?” I’ll have you fucking killed.’
A week. I felt relief roll off my shoulders. I could do a week. I’d know how I felt in a week. Probably.
‘Thank you,’ I said, visions of Roman Holiday and big plates of pasta suddenly rushing through my head. Everything I’d held at bay until now crashed over me on one big Italiano-gasm. I was going to Milan.
‘That would be amazing. It’s just that I’ve got other stuff, maybe. I don’t want to commit to something I might not be able to do.’
Veronica’s head snapped round towards me so quickly, her hair almost moved. ‘You know I’m your agent? You can’t book a job without me because then I’d have to fucking kill you and I hate having to sort that out. Right pain in the tits.’
‘It’s not a photography job, it’s advertising,’ I said quickly, preparing for a slap. ‘Like I was doing before.’
‘Can you see me right now, Tess Brookes?’ Veronica pushed her massive leather chair over to the wall behind her and began knocking her head against the wallpaper harder than I could imagine was comfortable. ‘This is me, banging my head against a brick wall. And why do you think I’m doing that?’
‘Is it because I’m a fucking idiot?’
I thought it was worth a guess.
‘Ding ding ding!’ She waved her arms above her head like Kermit the Frog and thankfully stopped bashing her head against the wall. ‘You’re a fucking idiot. This is a chance that will never come around again. You are a twenty-eight-year-old untested, unproven, rookie photographer. You ought to be spending the next five years trekking around shit weddings in Bracknell, taking pictures over dinner because the main photographer can’t be arsed.’
It was a fair point.
‘At best, you’d be looking the other way while some big-shit fashion photographer got a blow job from some underage model while you changed the flash and spent so long holding up reflectors that you had a right bicep bigger than a world champion wanker.’
Again, not untrue.
‘Am I getting through to you? Shall we just go over what exactly is on the fucking table here?’
I didn’t feel like we especially needed to but I didn’t think it would be in my best interests to tell her no and so I went with a noncommittal half-shrug and made an awkward mewing noise in the back of my throat. Veronica sat forward and held out her hand, ticking off each of her points with so much force, I was worried she was going to break off her own fingers.
‘One first-class fucking trip to Italy, a base in Bertie-cocking-Bennett’s private apartments in Milan, a job working personally with Bennett himself that a million other photographers would happily bum a goat to get, and a proposed fee that is twice what I would have even attempted to get for you – and I, Tess Brookes, am a fucking ballbreaker when it comes to fees. So what, pray tell, is your opportunity? Because if it’s anything other than Jesus-fucking-Christ asking you to rebrand his bell-end, I’m afraid I’m not going to understand.’
I bit my lip and pulled my handbag closer to my chest.
‘Do you know Perito’s Portuguese Chicken?’
According to a hastily scribbled note on the back of a Domino’s Pizza napkin, Amy was out at a job interview when I got back to the house and where her other five flatmates were, I didn’t care to know. Seizing my chance, I grabbed a semi-clean towel from Amy’s radiator and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. Sharing a bathroom with six other people, even temporarily, was enough to do terrible things to your sanity.
‘What am I going to do about Charlie?’ I asked my liberated rubber duck, who had insisted on accompanying me into the shower as I turned on the blessed hot water. ‘I do want to go to Milan but I really want to try for the pitch too.’
‘Can’t have it all,’ he replied with a silent quack. ‘But shouldn’t you try to clear your messes up here before you go gallivanting off to Italy? Are you moving in with Charlie? Why haven’t you called your mum? And how long has it been since you shaved your legs?’
‘I don’t think me or Charlie are ready to move in,’ I said, wondering whether or not that was actually true. It was only now that I realized how long it had been since I’d shaved my legs and he hadn’t complained about them once. ‘And my mum hasn’t called me, has she?’
It was fair to say my mother and I hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms the last time I’d been to visit.
‘You need to call her and you know it,’ the duck said.
Annoyingly, he was right. She might be a passive-aggressive pain in the arse but she was my passive-aggressive pain in the arse and the fact that we hadn’t spoken since our argument was starting to weigh on me.
‘And of course,’ Rubber Ducky wasn’t finished with his truth bombs, ‘you’re still thinking about Nick. Even though he hasn’t called you back.’
‘I am not!’ I snapped before realizing I was lying, not only to a rubber duck but also to myself. ‘But so what if I am? He told me to call and now he won’t speak to me. What if something has happened to him?’
‘Is that what you’re telling yourself now?’ he asked.
‘Fuck off.’
The ‘he must have died or he would have called’ rationale. Keeping single women delusional since the invention of the telephone.
‘I just don’t understand why he would ask me to call him and then not call me back.’
‘Could always move in here,’ Rubber Ducky suggested,