up the stairs. No response. ‘Who’s that? Are you okay?’
A minute later, Joseph’s blotchy red face peered down. ‘Oh,’ he said ungraciously. ‘It’s you.’
‘It certainly was the last time I looked,’ I agreed mildly. ‘Cigarette?’ I offered.
He stood and slunk down the stairs towards me, shaking his head at the packet, his blond hair flopping across his eyes. ‘No. I don’t.’
‘No, well, I shouldn’t. But we’ve all got to have a vice or two. Otherwise life’d be awfully dull, don’t you think?’
He shrugged uncommunicatively, bashing a suede brothel-creeper against the metal step.
‘So, d’you want to talk about it?’
He shrugged and bashed again. I felt my skin prickle with irritation. I took another drag of my cigarette. ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, Joseph, I can’t help.’
He hesitated for a moment, looking out across the rooftops. Two young men smoked out of a window in the building opposite; one waving cheekily when he saw me glancing over. I waved back. Finally, Joseph muttered, ‘It’s them.’
He flopped his hair toward the office behind us, towards the girls scattered round the open-plan room. I glanced back at them. From outside they looked like an advert for a young fashion house, miniskirted, skinny-jeaned, Ugg boots and stilettos thrust up on desks, expensive messy hair skewered with biros, scribbling furiously and tapping fruity-coloured nails impatiently as they waited for answers from the prey pinioned on the other end of the phone lines. Sometimes the noise inside was so intense, so deafening as they pleaded and persuaded and hammered their keyboards frantically, that you’d have to step out for a moment to literally hear yourself think.
‘They don’t like me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ But inwardly I sighed. Actually I was sure it was.
‘They never ask me to have lunch.’
‘They just need to get used to you. You should invite yourself along.’
‘They don’t talk to me if I do.’
‘Well, talk to them.’
His bottom lip trembled, just like Hannah’s did when she was going to cry. Poor kid.
‘Look, I know it’s really hard, being the new boy. And it’s a very female office, I know that. Let me have a word with them.’
He shrugged again. How much of this was his fault? I wondered. He wasn’t the most prepossessing figure; there was something inherently arrogant about his stance, despite the tears. The trouble was, he lacked the charm you needed to make it in TV-land.
‘Won’t that just make it worse? It did when my parents complained to the school.’
Aha. ‘Did it? Were you bullied, then?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘They said I was posh.’
He was posh. ‘I’ll be subtle, I promise. I’m sure it’s in your head, anyway.’
But it wasn’t in his head, unfortunately. The truth was they despised him.
‘He’s such a bloody drip,’ Donna moaned when I summoned the suspected ring-leaders into my office later that afternoon, having sent Joseph off to get some tapes dubbed. ‘Always complaining we give him the dull jobs.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Of course we do.’ She was defiant, her dark face sulky. I wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of someone like Donna when I started out. Driven and determined, she could persuade Blair he hated Bush if she put her mind to it.
‘You know how it works, Maggie. You gotta do your time. You gotta start at the bottom. We all did. Anyway,’ she sniffed, examining her pink palm-tree nails rather than looking at me, ‘he’s weird.’
‘What do you mean, weird?’
‘It’s just, he’s always poking around.’ She flicked her long braids behind her shoulder, her full mouth set firm.
‘He’s just a bit full of himself, I think that’s the problem.’ Sally’s broad pleasant face was thoughtful. ‘He gets people’s backs up because he acts like he’s too good for the jobs we give him.’
‘And have you talked to him about it?’
‘It was like this in the summer.’
The hairs on my arms stood on end. I shook my head as if it would bring memories back.
‘I’ve tried to explain, but he just bangs on about how he’s going to be a great auteur, and how this is just a stop-gap.’
I sighed again. Yet another aspiring Nick-blinking-Broom-field, about to save the world with his art. ‘All right, look, let’s just give him another chance, okay? I’ll have a word.’ I glared at Donna. ‘And be nice, yeah? I know how intimidating you lot can be if you put your minds to it.’
She grinned sheepishly, raising the palm trees in supplication before her tightly T-shirted bosom that read Respect Me. ‘Okay, okay.’
Sally lingered in my office. ‘The truth is, Maggie, I don’t think he’ll ever really fit in. He’s just one of those slightly oddball kids, you know? Like the ones at school who had an imaginary friend they played with at breaktime.’
‘Yep, I do know. But that lot can be remorseless, we both know that.’
‘I suppose.’ She brightened. ‘You going to Bel’s tonight then?’
‘Oh my God.’ I clapped a hand to my forehead in distress. ‘I forgot to pick up my dress. She’ll kill me.’ I cast a quick look across to Charlie’s empty office. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ve blown it.’
‘Go,’ Sally urged. ‘I’ll cover for you.’
I dragged my coat on and grabbed my bag. ‘With any luck,’ I switched my computer to sleep mode, ‘Charlie’ll be too pissed to notice anyway.’
In a dim little street on the Covent Garden borders I found the shop with the fancy name that Bel had insisted I visit. The window heralded some of London’s most expensive clothes – a veritable myriad of gorgeous stuff. Minty greens and frilly pinks, gold silks and silver froth, below which crouched lethal-looking shoes with four-inch heels, poised to spring cruelly onto unsuspecting feet. It was so utterly not me – but my fate was sealed. As I hovered by the door, a size-zero girl with scary eyebrows slithered towards me, and, with disdain ill-hidden, relieved me of my polystyrene coffee-cup. ‘Can I help, madam?’ she asked, barely keeping the sneer off her face.
‘I’ve come to collect a dress Bel Whitemore has reserved for me.’ I looked around nervously, taking in the flounces, the backless and frontless, the micro-mini and the slit-to-the-thigh. ‘Lord. I do hope it’s something subtle.’
The girl swished through the chiffon, the beribboned and the barely-there to find what Bel had chosen.
‘So brave to try that colour. Red hair must be so difficult.’
Manfully I ignored the girl as I stepped into the beautiful forest-green floor-length dress, plunging at the front and cut deeply at the back. To complete the outfit she gave me stilettos by someone called Manolo Blahnik, the perfect eyebrows nearly shooting off her face in horror when I said I’d never heard of him.
‘Everyone’s wearing Blahnik,’ she chastised, forcing my feet into what seemed little more than a few skinny straps and another killer heel.
‘Sounds more like a space shuttle to me,’ I joked, but she didn’t laugh – and she only blanched a bit at the scar on my left foot.
I