It’s A Man’s World

He stopped stroking her hair for a second and looked down at her face.

‘I’m going to take the job at Banter.’

Chapter 4

Alexa stepped into the lift, trying to align her thoughts. Her hands were clammy and her legs felt weak. She wanted to swallow, but her throat was devoid of anything to swallow.

The doors started to slide shut, then juddered to a halt as the other woman in the lift thrust a limb between its jaws, calling out to a colleague in the atrium. Alexa leaned back on the reflective wall and exhaled, grateful to the woman for adding an extra few seconds to her journey.

The women’s small talk washed over her as the lift lurched upwards. Alexa stared straight ahead, struggling to focus. The adrenaline was having a strange effect on her mind – muddling up the important things, like how she would hit the revenue targets laid down by Peterson, with the small, insignificant details that ought not to be taking up space in her head, like whether her shoes made her look too tall and whether she ought to have pinned back her fringe. It was only when the two women stepped out on the fourth floor that she realised she wasn’t going anywhere.

Alexa snapped to, pressing ‘5’ and checking her makeup in the mirrored wall. The shoes definitely made her look too tall, she decided, and her light brown fringe was hanging limply over her eyes like an unkempt mane. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? She turned away from her reflection in disgust.

Stepping onto the fifth floor, Alexa turned left, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was stooping. She pulled back her shoulders and forced her legs forward, one after the other, fighting the urge to turn and flee.

She had caught glimpses of the Banter office in the past, but she had never taken much in. The life-size pin-ups on the door had rather put her off. This was her first proper sight of the place she would inhabit for the next nine months.

The office was a colourful, dirty mess. It looked like a teenage boy’s bedroom. There were piles of magazines, DVDs and clothes all over the floor and copies of Banter strewn across every surface. Lodged in the gaps between piles were random objects that included, at first glance: a water pistol, a set of elf costumes, a pyramid of baked bean cans, a giant beer mug in the shape of a naked woman and a lawnmower.

Alexa drew to a halt in the gangway that ran along the middle of the office. There was nobody there. She looked at the clock. It was only ten past eight. Her nerves had woken her at six and she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

She felt a vibration and felt around for her phone, suddenly hoping for an email from Peterson saying he’d changed his mind and urgently needed her back on Hers. It wasn’t an email though; it was a text message from Matt.

Thinking of U. Mx

Alexa smiled, feeling a little more confident as she looked up at the fifty-inch plasma TV at the end of the office. It showed two semi-naked teenage girls, writhing around on a bed together, looking very unsure about what they were supposed to be doing. Alexa grimaced. Something had to be done about Banter TV. It was essentially a ten-minute roll of filmed photo shoots on loop, interspersed with amateur ads for cheap phone-ins that looked as though they’d been filmed in somebody’s garage. It was little wonder that Banter TV had no viewers.

Alexa scanned the five banks of desks, trying to identify her seat. It was only pin-ups, she told herself, wandering to the next bank of desks and coming face to face with a pair of giant breasts hanging from a filing cabinet door. She shuddered as the image of her mother flitted across her mind.

Alexa continued to scan the desks, wondering where Derek Piggott sat in relation to her. At Peterson’s request, she had had no contact with the deputy editor since the press release had gone out about her appointment. That was typical of how things were done at Senate: behind closed doors, with no collaboration, creating maximum potential for resentment. She didn’t even know how the deputy editor had taken the news of his effective demotion.

She jumped. Someone was clearing his throat behind her.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’

Alexa felt her heart rate triple. She turned to find herself staring at someone who looked exactly like Amir Khan. His hair was jet black, short and spiky, his angular jaw coated in a few days’ worth of stubble and his eyes were dark, like pools of ink.

‘Um, hi.’ She collected herself together and managed some kind of smile.

He was tall, she noticed. Alexa rarely found herself looking up to meet someone’s eye.

‘Alexa?’ he said, at exactly the moment Alexa chose to say her name.

They laughed awkwardly.

‘I’m Riz,’ he said, shaking her hand with the grip of a champion boxer. ‘Sports editor.’

‘Right.’ Alexa straightened up. It was refreshing, not having to stoop. ‘Great to meet you. I’m . . . well, you already know. I’m going to be managing director for the next few months. Launching new initiatives, that sort of thing.’ She glanced around. ‘That’s the plan, anyway.’

Alexa inwardly screamed at herself for adding the unnecessary final sentence. This had always been a problem. It wasn’t just first-day nerves; it was her pathetic inability to talk in a normal way to attractive men. It maddened her. She could devise a ten-million-pound business plan and execute it within a year, she could build websites and draw up cross-platform strategies, but she couldn’t have a normal conversation with a good-looking guy.

‘Yeah, we got the email.’ Riz moved a little closer, lowering his voice. ‘That caused a few ripples.’

Alexa tried to laugh, but nothing came out. The email. What had Peterson told them? How much did they know about the ultimate purpose of her secondment to Banter? The fact that the title’s future was in jeopardy would have been kept from the team, surely, in which case, why the ‘ripples’? She couldn’t think of a subtle way to ask.

Riz looked around the office. ‘You’re looking for a desk, I presume?’

Alexa nodded, still thinking about the email. ‘A desk would be good.’

He was wearing low-slung, casual jeans and a T-shirt, she noted, clocking his muscular shoulders as he headed off along the gangway. The trouser suit had been a mistake, she thought, cursing her lack of foresight. This was media; she knew how people dressed here. Why had she gone for the formal look?

Riz walked quickly to the far corner of the office and then stopped.

‘Hmm.’

Alexa followed, as speedily as her inappropriate high heels would allow.

Riz was squinting at one of the monitors on the last bank of desks, gently stroking the stubble on his chin.

‘I think . . .’ He grimaced. ‘I think the news desk might have got here first.’

Alexa drew level with Riz and then froze. On the desk in front of her, gleaming in the weak morning sunlight, was a black rubber dildo about four times the size of any she had seen in any shops. It rose up above her monitor like an obelisk.

‘Delightful.’ She managed a smile, but inside, she felt anxious. She could imagine it now, half a dozen grown men crowding round her desk like little school boys, smirking as they tried to agree on the optimal position.

Riz stepped forward and made as if to remove the offending article. ‘Shall I?’

Alexa nodded. ‘If you don’t mind.’

He lifted it off the desk and then looked around, surveying the mounds of paper and toys around them.

Alexa was about to suggest the nearest waste paper bin when she had a better idea.

‘Put it there,’ she instructed, clearing a space on the window sill next to her desk.

Riz looked at her. ‘You sure?’

Alexa nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s a lovely gesture, don’t you think?’

He smiled, slowly. ‘I see. Yes. Lovely.’

Alexa pulled out her chair and was only half surprised to find an A3 poster of a glamour model, spread-eagled, staring up at her with a wanton expression.

‘Am I to expect . . . quite a few of these little treats?’ she asked, unsticking the poster from her seat and folding it inside-out, only to find another image on the reverse, this one of a blonde on all fours.

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’re not at Hers any more.’

Alexa watched out of the corner of her eye as Riz returned to his desk, allowing herself a quick moment to wonder what might be going on two floors below. It was nearly half-past eight. Annabel would be sifting through the post in her slow, dreamy way, waiting for the kettle to boil for her herbal tea. Deirdre would be moaning about over-crowding on the Central line and Lily would be printing off knitting patterns. Riz was right; she wasn’t at Hers any more.

Logging on was a predictably slow, painful process that involved a multitude of error messages and three phone calls to the IT help desk. It was while she was on one of these calls that she realised she was being watched. The office had been slowly filling up with boisterous young men and until now, Alexa had kept her head down, waiting for a full house before she started to make her introductions. But it was becoming increasingly hard to ignore the man in his early thirties who was bearing down on her from across the desk. He had shoulder-length, oily brown hair and a small tuft of stubble at the base of his chin.

‘Oi oi!’ he cried, as she put down the phone.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling up at the man. She couldn’t help thinking that he might be reasonably good-looking, if it weren’t for the hair or the goatee.

‘I’m Derek,’ he bellowed, despite the fact that Alexa’s ear was no more than a metre from his mouth. ‘And you must be our new managing director.’

He said the last two words slowly, with emphasis, as though expecting some kind of applause. Alexa looked over his shoulder and realised that, in fact, the deputy editor did have something of an audience. Half a dozen young men from the nearest bank of desks were looking over, smirking. Derek Piggott clearly had a following.

Alexa rose to her feet with what she hoped was a mixture of grace and poise, offering out her hand. It was only as she did so that she realised how incredibly short the man was. He couldn’t have been more than five foot six.

‘Alexa,’ she declared, as boldly as she dared. She had a feeling that Derek was not the type of man who liked to be talked down to, but there was little she could do about the practicalities of the situation.

‘Well,’ he replied loudly, having offered a surprisingly weak handshake. ‘I look forward to seeing your managing and your directing.’

She held his fake smile. This was bad. Already there was hostility between them and she had barely taken off her coat. Alexa wondered again about the contents of that email. Perhaps Derek felt that she was partly to blame for his demotion. He obviously saw her as some kind of threat.

‘I’m looking forward to working together to monetise all the great content you produce,’ she said calmly.

Alexa instantly regretted her choice of words. They were too condescending. She could see that in the way Derek turned his back on her, clearly pulling a face to the other members of the team and sitting back down at his desk, which, she realised with dismay, was the one diagonally opposite hers.

‘Oh,’ he said, in the same oratory tone. ‘Alexa, the kitchen’s down the corridor, on the left.’

There were sniggers from the nearby band of desks. Alexa could hear the laughter travel through the office like a wave. Her cheeks burned, her whole body starting to shake with a mixture of rage and embarrassment.

What was the appropriate response? The longer she stood there, the more she felt like a freak: tall and conspicuous, the butt of the joke. Sitting down now would be to concede defeat. She had to say something. But what? She didn’t understand the office dynamics yet. It seemed very much as though everyone looked up to the deputy editor. In her head, she could hear the voice of Miss Calder, her old English teacher: Do you find something funny? Hmm? Would you care to share the joke with the rest of the class? The last thing she wanted was to come across like Miss Calder.

Eventually, after what felt like hours of standing in mute panic, Alexa was saved. She didn’t need to say anything, because, she realised, nobody was looking at her any more. All heads had swivelled towards the peroxide blonde who was sashaying across the office in a pair of gold hotpants, stilettos and a push-up bra.

‘Hi,’ the girl purred, winking flirtatiously at the rather unattractive redhead on the near bank of desks and sliding into the seat next to Derek’s. Alexa could just make out the sight of her round, tanned buttocks, slowly escaping from the shiny hotpants as she logged onto her computer.

It took a while for Alexa to realise that she was the only one left staring at this spectacle. The men, of which there were now seven or eight, had reverted to throwing parcels around, playing with gadgets and flipping through newspapers. Occasionally, eyes would return to the girl’s backside, but there was no sense that the sight of it was anything unusual. Slowly, Alexa sat back down, wondering whether she had had all the conversations she was going to have for the day. Only two men had bothered to make eye contact so far – and in Derek’s case, it was only so that he could set her up for public humiliation.

She opened up her email and pretended to scan her empty inbox, glancing sideways at Sienna Pageant. This, she thought, was her PA. Or at least, this was the ‘Editor’s PA/Editorial Assistant’, according to the credits in the magazine, which was all she had to go on. Once she had agreed to the role, Peterson had become distinctly vague about how exactly the power share would work between Derek and herself.

‘PADDY.’

A loud, robotic voice fired out across the office. A scruffy-looking lad in shorts was talking through some kind of voice-distorting megaphone.

‘GET THE COFFEES IN.’

A lanky young man with wild, curly hair and braces sprung to his feet in the middle of the office.

Alexa watched as, to her surprise, the young man bounded towards her.

‘Nice t’meetcha,’ he said. He was Irish. ‘I’m Paddy.’

‘Nice to meet you too.’ Alexa smiled, grateful for the non-confrontational human contact. ‘What do you do here?’

‘Anything they tell me.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the man with the megaphone. ‘I’m the office gopher. D’you want a tea or coffee?’

‘I’m fine, but thanks for the offer.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘PADDY! COFFEES!’

Alexa risked a smile as she watched the lad spring off towards the kitchen. Again, her thoughts were drawn to what was probably happening two floors down. At Hers, they took turns to make the coffee. Nobody bellowed when they wanted a drink and the juniors were treated like valued members of the team. Still, Paddy didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t even look put-out when someone from the sports desk tried to garrotte him with an elf hat as he passed.

Alexa jumped as her phone buzzed on the desk.

Go get em, Lex!

Good luck with Day 1. Kx

She looked back at her empty inbox, trying not to let the situation get to her. She wondered how Kate would react, in her shoes. Alexa was pretending not to notice, but it was clear that the redheaded man on the next bank of desks was talking about her to one of his colleagues. They kept looking up at her and then nudging one another, muttering quietly and sniggering.

Would Kate put up with this? Would she have remained silent in response to Derek’s joke? It was unlikely. In fact, by now, Kate would probably have reprimanded the deputy editor and the redheaded man like a parent with a child, alienating them and anyone else who dared cross her path. That was the difference between Alexa and Kate. Kate didn’t care what people thought of her. Alexa cared too much.

The office continued to fill up. Alexa opened a browser, trying to decide the best way to get to know everyone. At Hers, she had held a company meeting and played ice-breaker games before holding a brainstorm to generate ideas for reviving the title. Somehow, that didn’t seem like a viable tactic here. She needed to meet the section teams individually. She needed some introductions.

Alexa leaned across the desk, catching the attention of the busty blonde.

‘Hi. Is it Sienna?’

The girl’s plump, red lips melted into a false-looking smile. ‘That’s right.’

Alexa swallowed. It was like talking to a lap dancer.

‘I’m Alexa. It’s nice to meet you.’

It was difficult to know whether a handshake was appropriate, given not only the volume of clutter between them but also the potential for a wardrobe malfunction on the part of Sienna’s low-cut top. Alexa opted for a cheery wave.

‘Can I ask a favour?’

‘Sure,’ she said, batting her eyelashes for the benefit of Derek, who was making no secret of the fact that his foot had worked its way over to Sienna’s side of the desk and was foraging for a playmate.

‘I . . .’ Alexa tried to focus. The deputy editor was playing footsie with his PA. ‘Can you tell me whether any meetings have been set up for this week?’

‘Meetings?’ She jerked sideways, trying not to smile.

‘Yes. You know, introductory . . .’

‘Oh. Right. Um . . .’ Sienna glared playfully at her male boss. ‘Not that I know, no. Ow!’

Alexa thought for a second. She didn’t want to start throwing her weight around but she really did need some help setting up meetings for all the departments. It would take hours to trawl through the names and send out blind invitations to all the people she had never met.

‘Could you . . . might you be able to help set some up for me? Introductions with each of the teams?’

For a moment it looked as though Sienna was too preoccupied with her under-the-desk tousle to hear the question. Then she looked up. Suddenly, she was no longer smiling.

‘With all due respect, Alexa, that’s not my job.’

‘Oh.’ Alexa recoiled, suddenly wondering whether she’d misread the credits. Perhaps Sienna wasn’t a PA after all. ‘I’m so sorry. I must have made a mistake. What . . . What is your role?’

Sienna glanced salaciously at Derek, who grinned back at her.

‘Editorial assistant.’

‘Oh.’ Alexa frowned. She wanted to grab a nearby copy of Banter to check. ‘I thought you were also the editor’s PA. Perhaps I—’

‘I was, but we agreed to drop the PA bit, didn’t we, Derek?’

Derek was no longer looking at Sienna, no longer grinning. His eyes were resolutely fixed on Alexa. ‘That’s right.’

‘But . . .’ Alexa was struggling to understand. ‘Who does the administrative work?’

Sienna shrugged slowly. ‘I guess we don’t really have much, do we, Derek? We all just muck in.’

Alexa was about to reply and then stopped herself. The situation was impossible to navigate. Derek had accepted Sienna’s effective promotion because, presumably, he was getting sexual favours in return. It was not in his interest to restore her official title and Alexa already knew that sexual favours or no sexual favours, Derek would not be siding with her in an argument. But she needed a PA.

The question was, should she go in heavy-handed and demand that Sienna do what she was paid to do, or should she accept the situation and just muck in?

‘Look,’ she began, preparing to lay down some terms. Behind Sienna, she noticed, the redhead and colleagues were passing around pieces of paper, looking in her direction and collapsing in fits of hysterics. Alexa tried to concentrate. She opened her mouth to address the PA and as she did so, she thought of an alternative. ‘I’ll ask Peterson for the headcount to recruit a PA. Someone who can do the administrative work.’

For a fleeting moment, Sienna lost it. ‘Wait!’ she spluttered, before quickly recovering her composure. ‘There’s no need. I’ll do it. I’ll set up your meetings, no problem. I just meant, generally, we don’t have much admin.’

Alexa smiled. ‘Great. Thanks.’

She was about to set off on an introductory tour of the office when something occurred to her.

‘Sienna?’

The girl looked up with a fake, breezy smile. ‘Mmm?’

‘Can you please thank whoever gave me my gift?’ She nodded to the giant dildo on the window sill.

Sienna glanced sideways at Derek, then back at the pasty-faced redhead, both of whom were pretending not to be listening.

‘Sure,’ she said, with another false smile. ‘I’ll pass it on.’

Chapter 5

‘Just remember, don’t mention my job.’

Matt rolled his eyes, glancing sideways through a wisp of blond hair as they waited for the lights.

‘Sorry.’ Alexa waited for him to look round again, so she could show him how grateful she was for putting up with her neuroticism today, but the lights were about to change and Matt was clearly intent on making a quick getaway. Not that any getaway was ever slow in the Aston Martin DB9.

The lights went green and Alexa’s head jerked back against the seat. She wondered what her parents would think when they saw the car. Her mother would instantly want to know one thing: was it paid for with earnings or family money? She would probably spend the whole afternoon trying to work it out. Her father would probably pretend not to care, while secretly yearning for a ride. Maybe Alexa would engineer some sort of outing for Matt and her father, if the opportunity arose. That might give her a chance to break the news to her mother about the job, too.

‘Why are you so stressed, anyway?’

‘I’m not stressed.’

Matt gave a half-smile and put his foot down, propelling them onto the motorway.

Alexa closed her eyes, feeling slightly sick. Annoyingly, Matt was right. She felt stressed. It was partly the new job, but mainly, she knew, it was the prospect of telling her parents about the new job.

‘You’re jiggling,’ he pointed out.

Alexa looked down at her bare knees and clamped them together, forcing the involuntary movement to stop.

‘Why is it such an issue, telling your folks?’

Alexa shrugged. ‘It’s just . . .’ She tried to think of a way of putting it. ‘They’re quite old-fashioned.’

‘So? Shock them. No big deal.’

She said nothing. Matt hadn’t met her parents. He hadn’t met her mother, or witnessed the power that she still exerted over her daughter. To be fair, it was Alexa’s fault that Matt didn’t understand. She was the one who had put off the introduction for so long. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her boyfriend. Nor was she ashamed of her parents – despite her mother’s overbearing manner and embarrassingly loud voice. No, she was ashamed of herself and the crushing sense of impending failure she felt every time she saw her mother. She knew how absurd it would seem to a handsome, confident city lawyer that a twenty-nine year old woman still lived by her mother’s rule book and that was why it had taken seven months for her to summon the courage.

‘Would it be better if I wasn’t here?’ asked Matt.

‘Of course not!’ Alexa recoiled at the thought. ‘That’s the whole point of the barbecue. Mum and Dad want to meet you. Anyway, I want them to meet you. I think Mum’s worried I might be gay.’

Matt whipped round, his blue eyes squinting at her in the sunlight. ‘Why would she think that?’

Alexa forced a shrug, wishing she hadn’t said anything. ‘I dunno.’

She did know, but she wasn’t going to tell him.

Matt accelerated up the slip road and onto the dual carriageway that led to her parents’ village. He still looked perplexed.

For a moment, Alexa considered explaining the truth – that he was the first boyfriend to meet her parents, the first to make it past the two-month mark. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Again, it was something she couldn’t explain – not just because she didn’t want to ruin her chances with Matt but because she didn’t know. She was as keen as her mother was to work out why her relationships had never lasted more than a few weeks in the past.