Extract 11

Meeting the editor of a glossy magazine in The Ritz was definitely Jane’s idea of journalism. Even if the editor had not yet arrived. Pastel satin sofas and low-slung chairs lurked invitingly in gilded corners. A pianist tinkled soothingly in the background, while penguin-suited waiters glided smoothly about bearing trays of champagne and bowls of fat nuts.

Refusing all offers of refreshment – she didn’t want to commit herself to a mineral water and have Victoria roll up and order a champagne cocktail – Jane fished in her bag for the virgin copy of Hello! that lurked in its depths. She waded greedily through the glossy pages, wallowing in the usual smorgasbord of washed-up rock stars in stonewashed jeans, lovely homes with a firm emphasis on leopardskin, face-lifted film stars flogging autobiographies and, Jane’s personal favourite, Euro-royal gatherings featuring dresses apparently designed by people who had heard about clothes but never actually seen them. Grinning to herself, Jane turned the page. Her good mood evaporated instantly as her eyes fell on a large photograph of Champagne and her latest lover gurning at the camera from the frilled and flower-printed depths of a large four-poster bed. ‘Britain’s Most Famous Party Girl Talks Frankly About Fame After Her Recent Illness And Introduces Us To The New Man In Her life’ ran the big red and white headline. Jane hesitated. She knew reading on could seriously damage her mental health. But she couldn’t help herself.

Champagne, you’re a model, TV personality and, most famously, a writer- How do you fit so many things into your life?

I’m fantastically well-organised, basically. And very self-disciplined. The early bird catches the modeling contracts, after all.

You’re obviously ambitious. What drives you?

A chauffeur, mostly. Ha ha ha. No, but seriously, I love working. I have a very strong work ethic.

Champagne, what is the secret of succeeding in so many different areas?

Sheer perfectionism, I think. I also make it an absolute rule to be pleasant, patient and punctual at all times.

Jane gasped and stretched her eyes.

Your life seems very glamorous. Endless parties and celebrity premieres. Is it as glittering as it looks?

Not at all. Making small talk with famous people is completely exhausting, and I’d like to see the average builder manage five hours a night in my Gucci stilettos.

Did all this have anything to do with your recent illness?

Yes. I was burnt out, basically. People just don’t realize the hard, hard work that goes into being a star. They think they’d like my money and fame but they wouldn’t last two minutes with my timetable. Most of the time, it’s unbelievable.

Unbelievable was the word. And two minutes, thought Jane, was about the longest Champagne spent on any item on her timetable.

Champagne, you have achieved so many things. Is there any ambition you would still like to fulfill?

I would love to be appreciated for my writing. Not for who I am. And I would love to develop my film and TV career. This morning, for example, I visited a beekeeper for a guest slot on a nature programme. It was amazing. So many bees. I told him I couldn’t imagine how he remembered all their names. I would also love to do some charity work. I’m looking into doing something for the Centreparks charity for the homeless, taking over where the Princess of Wales, God rest her, left off.

Finally, Champagne, could we ask you about your relationship with Dai Rhys?

Dai is the first man in my life I would seriously consider settling down with. He’s so supportive and, being so well-known himself, he completely under­stands the enormous pressures of fame and the endless demands.

Tell me about the endless demands, thought Jane sourly.

Are you a football fan?

I wasn’t, but I am now. Dai’s explained so much about it. I even understand the offshore rule – very important when you earn as much as Dai does.

Do you prefer rich men?

I really don’t care about money. Love is the most important thing to me. If Dai hadn’t a penny in the world I’d still adore him.

Jane snorted so loudly that a couple of elderly duchesses on the next sofa almost dropped their glasses of sherry. They glared over their bifocals at her in fury.

Are wedding bells in the air?

Marriage is certainly on the cards.

You bet, thought Jane. Dai’s credit cards.

Would you have a traditional wedding?

Yes. With my darling little pet poodle Gucci as Best Dog, of course.

Extract 12

When Jane returned to the lounge, a woman with a helmet of black hair, a slash of red lipstick and spike heels was occupying a minuscule area of one of the sofas. Jane had seen enough pictures of the Fabulous editor to know who it was. The woman was talking urgently into a mobile phone. Or was she? As Jane approached, she realised there was a mirror glued to the inside of the mouthpiece flap. Victoria Cavendish was evidently checking her lipstick the executive way.

‘Hi,’ said Victoria, holding out a cool hand clanking with rings. ‘Two champagne cocktails, please,’ she added, waving imperiously at a passing waiter. Jane felt relieved. At first glance, Victoria had looked dangerously like the skinny, self-denying sort whose idea of a racy drink was Badoit and Evian in the same glass.

Although probably in her mid-forties, Victoria had the figure and, perhaps less advisably, the clothes of someone half her age. That someone, however, was not Jane. Victoria’s sharp suede jacket and matching miniskirt were far snappier and more costly than anything she had in her own wardrobe. Round Victoria’s neck was a soft brown shawl, which Jane recognised as one of the wildly expensive kind which were, as far as she could remember, made from the beard hairs of rare Tibetan goats. Victoria’s, of course, was probably made from the facial hair of the Dalai Lama himself.

Jane crouched on the edge of the seat, crossing her legs to minimise the spread of her flanks and wishing she had remembered to clean her shoes. Come to that, she wished she had had her hair cut, lost a stone and spent a day in Bond Street in the company of a personal shopper and an Amex card.

‘Well, as you know, I need a deputy,’ said Victoria, lighting a menthol cigarette with a lipstick-shaped lighter. She crossed her bird-like black legs, the razor sharp heels just missing her bony ankles. Jane shivered. There was more than a touch of the Rosa Klebb about all this.

‘You’re very highly recommended,’ said Victoria. ‘Appar­ently you handle contributors very well and I particularly need someone I can trust with a very high-profile new writer we have coming on board.’ A thrill ran through Jane. A famous writer. How wonderful.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘Can’t tell you, I’m afraid, until you’re all signed up,’ said Victoria, taking another swig from her champagne glass. ‘But someone who will hopefully send our circulation into the stratosphere.’

Martin Amis? wondered Jane. Iris Murdoch? She thrilled at the thought of day-to-day contact with a proper author. ‘Sounds wonderful,’ she said, reaching for her own glass, then realising it was empty. As was the dish of nuts. Jane realised she had shovelled in the lot in her excitement.

‘So I take it you’re interested,’ said Victoria, clicking her metallic blue-tipped fingers for the bill.

Jane nodded. ‘Yes please.’

‘Good. I’ll bang you a contract over tomorrow.’ Victoria levered herself upright. ‘Must run now,’ she said, which struck Jane as no less than fighting talk, given her footwear. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’ She shimmered away across the carpet in a cloud of the sort of delicious perfume Jane instinctively knew one didn’t buy in Boots.

Jane wandered slowly out of the hotel and along the darkening street back towards the Tube station. The 2CV, which had not worked for several days now, lay languishing by the Clapham roadside waiting to be put out of its misery. It probably would not live to see another MOT. The potholes of Mullions had seen to that.

It was flattering though odd, Jane thought, as she wandered absently down the stairs into Green Park Tube, to be suddenly so much in demand. Odd, too, that Victoria Cavendish should be eager to sign her up without so much as asking for her opinion of Fabulous, let alone without a CV, references and especially without the reams of sparkling features ideas invariably demanded on these occasions and never referred to thereafter. Especially as Victoria, if rumour was to be believed, had her own special methods of selection.

Candidates for employment were, so it was said, generally invited to lunch with her so she could observe their table manners and satisfy herself that they didn’t cut their salad with a knife or belong to what she designated the HKLP (Holds Knife Like Pen) brigade. Victoria, reportedly also used these occasions to ensure that any of her would-be co-workers were not prone to the verbal social faux pas that would condemn them without trial into what she called the PLT (Pardon, Lounge, Toilet) category. Jane could believe it all. Victoria, as was well known, was completely unrepentant about both her magazine and the social aspirations it enshrined. ‘Snob­bery,’ she was often quoted as saying, ‘is merely an acute awareness of the niceties of social distinction.’

Even candidates who scraped through Victoria’s restaur­ant tests were far from home and dry. They still risked one of the editor’s celebrated spot checks in which she had a member of staff call the would-be employee’s parents’ home (the number, with address, was demanded on the Fabulous application form) to make sure that the person answering had a suitably patrician tone of voice. By these combined methods any social chameleons of humble origin were prevented from getting their plebeian feet under Fabulous desks. Some, it was said, were filtered out right at the beginning of the process simply by Victoria’s casting an eye over the parental address. If it was a number rather than a name, the letters were filed straight in the bin, a process which had always struck Jane as somewhat unre­liable, ruling out as it did any members of the Prime Minister’s family, for starters.

Yes, it was certainly strange that none of the usual hurdles had been placed before her, thought Jane now, crossing the dirty platform to her Northern Line connection at Stockwell. Especially as she was not at all sure she could have jumped over any of them. The word ‘toilet’ had certainly passed her lips from time to time, and she had yet to see anyone, herself included, eat a Caesar salad without resorting to a blade of some sort. And, although thinner than she used to be, she was certainly not racehorse skinny.

There was, however, one highly plausible explanation for Victoria’s keenness to get her on board, one quite detached from all the flattery about her superior editing skills. Josh. All being fair in love and circulation wars, it was entirely within the rules of the game for Victoria and her rival to poach as many members of each other’s staff as possible. Bagging as key a person as the Gorgeous features editor was certainly a feather in the Fabulous editor’s cap, and would be even if Jane’s parents had lived at 13 Railway Cuttings and she ate her salad in the lounge with a saw held like a Biro.