‘How parochial is that?’ Lisa interrupted, caustically. ‘We’ve got to feature international designers to be taken seriously.’

No way was she going to wear amateurish, home-made garments run up by Mercedes’ mates in their bedrooms! Proper magazines like Femme did photo shoots of exquisite garments sent from the press offices of international fashion houses. The clothes were only on loan but more than once they’d got ‘lost’ after a shoot. Naturally, the models had got the blame – let’s face it, didn’t they all have heroin habits to support? And if the missing threads turned up in Lisa’s wardrobe, then no one was any the wiser. Well, actually, everyone was very much the wiser, but there was nothing they could do about it. And it was a perk that Lisa had no intention of relinquishing.

Mercedes flicked Lisa a knowing, contemptuous look. To Lisa’s surprise, she was unsettled.

‘Is that it?’ Jack asked.

‘What about…?’ Ashling said slowly, barely trusting herself to speak. She suspected she was having an original thought, but couldn’t be sure. ‘How about a regular piece by a man? I know it’s a women’s magazine, but could we have a kind of A-Z of how a man’s head works? What he really means when he says, “I’ll call you.” In fact,’ she squeaked with excitement, ‘how about showing the woman’s side too? A his’n’hers piece?’

Jack gave Lisa a questioning eyebrow.

‘That’s so five minutes ago,’ Lisa said shortly.

‘Is it?’ Ashling said humbly. ‘OK.’

‘It’s the twelfth of May today,’ Jack concluded the meeting. ‘The board want the first issue on the stands for the end of August. That sounds like a long time for those of you who’ve come from weekly publications, but it’s actually not. It’s going to be a lot of hard work.

‘But fun too,’ he added, because he knew he should. Whoever he was hoping to convince, it certainly wasn’t himself. ‘And any problems, my door is always open.’

‘Which isn’t much use if you’re not in your office,’ Trix said cheekily. ‘I mean,’ she said hastily, as his face darkened, ‘that you’re often over at the telly studio, keeping the peace.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Jack directed this at Lisa, ‘our television and radio operations are at different premises, half a mile away. Demands of space mean that my office is here, but I still have to spend a fair amount of time over there. But if you need me and I’m not here, you can always ring me.’

‘OK,’ Lisa nodded. ‘And what circulation are we aiming for with Colleen?’

‘Thirty thousand. We may not get that initially, but over six months that’s what we hope to work up to.’

Thirty thousand. Lisa was appalled – if the circulation of Femme dropped below three hundred and fifty thousand, heads rolled.

Then Jack showed Lisa her freelance budget, but something was wrong with it – it seemed to be missing a nought. At least one.

That was it. She found herself politely excusing herself from the room and, as though in a dream, gliding to the ladies’, where she locked herself in a cubicle. To her surprise she found that she was heaving and sobbing. Weeping from disappointment, humiliation, loneliness, for all that she’d lost. It didn’t last long, she wasn’t really a cryer, but when she finally emerged from the cubicle her heart banged hard when she saw someone standing by the basins. Plain and simple Ashling, her hands behind her back. Interfering bitch!

‘Which hand?’ Ashling asked.

Lisa didn’t understand.

‘Pick a hand,’ Ashling said.

Lisa felt like smacking her. They were all mad here.

‘Right or left?’ Ashling urged.

‘Left.’

Ashling revealed the contents of her left hand to Lisa. A packet of tissues. Then her right hand. A bottle of rescue remedy.

‘Stick out your tongue.’ Ashling plopped a couple of drops on to Lisa’s nonplussed tongue. ‘It’s for shock and trauma. Cigarette?’

Lisa angrily shook her head, then wavered and passively let Ashling stick a cigarette in her mouth and light it for her.

‘If you want to fix your make-up,’ Ashling offered, ‘I’ve got moisturizer and mascara, it’s probably not as good as your usual stuff, but it’ll do.’ Already she was rummaging.

‘Did someone send you in here?’ Lisa was thinking of Jack Devine.

Ashling shook her head. ‘No one guessed but me.’

Lisa didn’t know whether or not to be disappointed. She didn’t want Jack to think she was wet, but it would be nice to know he cared…

‘I’m not usually like this.’ Lisa’s face was hard. ‘I don’t want it mentioned again.’

‘It’s forgotten.’

9

At the end of the first day Ashling was fit to collapse. Giddy with relief that she didn’t have to struggle on to a bus or a Dart, she staggered straight home. She was lucky. At least she had a home to go to, she realized – Lisa had to go out and hunt one down.

Ashling flung herself gratefully into her flat, kicked off her shoes and checked her answering machine. The red light winked lasciviously and joyously Ashling hit ‘play’. She was wild keen for company and connection, to help her process her strange, challenging day. But to her disappointment, all it was was a strange message from someone called Cormac, who would be delivering a ton of mulch on Friday morning. Wrong fecking number.

Bodysurfing the couch, she grabbed the phone and rang Clodagh. But as soon as she’d said hello, Clodagh launched into ‘I’m having the day from hell!’

Against a cacophony of yelling, she raised her voice and complained. ‘Craig has a pain in his tum-tums and all he had for breakfast was half a slice of toast and peanut butter. Then at lunch-time he wouldn’t eat a thing and I wondered if I should try him with a chocolate biscuit, even though he goes hyper every time he has sugar, so in the end I gave him a custard cream because I thought that would be slightly better than one with chocolate –’

‘Uh-huh,’ Ashling nodded sympathetically, as the howling all but drowned out Clodagh.

‘– which he ate, so I tried him with another but he just licked off the icing and though he doesn’t have a temperature he’s pale and SHUT UP! LET ME HAVE FIVE SECONDS ON THE PHONE, PLEASE. Oh, bloody hell, I can’t take much more of this!’