The Love of Her Life

‘OK. Bye. Thanks.’

His mouth curled a little. ‘No, thank you.’

He was a flirt, such a flirt, she told herself, as Sean walked away. Kate watched him shaking his head at her over the ticket barrier, as the sea of commuters bustled past them, off with lives of their own, full of promise and exertion and interaction and … Oh, all the bloody things she was no good at. It was so sweet of him to try, she told herself. She stared after him. He would be there tonight when she got home, watching TV, and they’d sit on the sofa together and chat about their day and yet another day would have passed with her being shunned, like the Amish. So she’d cook him something and he’d teach her how to mend her bike, or how to rewire a plug, or something, and they’d spend the evening together, like they always did. She’d be fine, if she could come home to that life. It was a nice life. Who said you had to love your job?

But Sean was right. Because that very day, Charly decided to notice Kate.

They went to Anita’s, a traditional Italian around the corner from the office. It was free of Broadgate employees, by dint of the fact it served food, in particular food that wasn’t just leaves. Charly seemed to know them all, the waiters practically clapped as she slunk in, her long legs sliding into a table by the window.

‘God, Sue’s a bitch, man,’ she said as they were seated. She pushed her small frameless sunglasses up on her head and nodded at a waiter. Her honey-coloured hair tumbled around her, she smiled at Kate, the freckles on the end of her nose wrinkling. ‘Yeah, we’re ready,’ she said to the waiter, hovering nearby, a look of adoration on his face. ‘What you having? Salad nicoise for me. No dressing. With extra olives. And a coke. Thanks.’

She flung the menu back at him without acknowledging his presence. Kate said,

‘Er … me too.’

‘The same?’ the waiter said, raising his eyebrows.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, not wanting to be conspicuous. She handed him the menu back.

‘You don’t want dressing neither? The same?’

‘Yes!’ said Kate, trying to affect an incredulous laugh.

‘You want extra olives too?’

‘Oh, go away,’ Charly said, batting the waiter away. ‘Just bring her a normal one. Leave us alone. So. D’you like Catherine? What do you think of Sue?’ she demanded, leaning in, her long, slender fingers plucking a stale roll from the basket in front of them.

Kate was taken aback by the directness of the question, and a little terrified. She hadn’t imagined she’d have to speak, more that she could just sit there and listen to Charly, whom she’d noticed striding around the office, effortlessly glamorous. She never seemed to hang around with the Georginas and the Jos, the Pippas and the Sophies, she was her own separate entity. More beautiful than them, cooler than them (she had been wearing cropped trousers and heels for ages – long before Madonna in the Beautiful Stranger video, as she informed anyone who wanted to listen) – less posh than them, less fake than them. She knew it, and she didn’t seem to care.

‘Come on,’ said Charly impatiently, and Kate was shaken from her reverie. ‘Is Sue a good boss? She really annoyed me today, you know, telling me to recheck that piece on gloves for autumn.’

‘Er … Aah,’ Kate said, hating the impaired speech she seemed to have developed since her arrival at Woman’s World. What would Sean say if he could see her? She thought about it, and smiled. ‘I like her. She’s nice. Bit uncommunicative – I mean I wish she’d tell me what’s going on a bit more.’

‘Yeah,’ said Charly, nodding. ‘She seems to think you’ll just guess. She’s OK, but I know what you mean. I used to work for her.’

‘Did you?’ said Kate. ‘How long – how long have you been here?’

‘Not long,’ said Charly. ‘Too long, you might say. A year. I was her assistant, now I work with Catherine and Georgina –’ Kate nodded, she knew this ‘– and I sometimes write the editor’s letter when no-one else can be fucked to do it, and I do a couple of featurettes.’

‘You do the Letters Page, don’t you?’

A frown passed over Charly’s beautiful face. ‘Yeah, and I fucking hate it. Load of weirdos writing in to tell you how to make stuffed animals out of the lint from the washing machine, or wanting you to print a picture of their grandson just cos he’s done a shit that’s shaped like Alma Cogan.’

‘Really?’ Kate was fascinated.

‘Not the last one, no.’ Charly shook her head. ‘Barbara Windsor, actually.’

Luckily the salads arrived, saving Kate from further comment. Charly ate like a demon, shovelling food in her mouth, throwing out odd comments, inviting responses from Kate, making jokes about the office, filling her in on what she hadn’t known – Barbara in Sales had slept with Fry Donovan, the new Broadgate publisher, a couple of years ago, and he’d given her a job to keep her quiet, so the rumours went, which is why Barbara giggled helplessly whenever Fry walked into the room. Claire Cobain on the subs desk threw up into Phil’s yucca plant the day after the Christmas party; she’d forgotten and he hadn’t realized for three days, except they all kept gagging on the smell. And Jo and Sophie weren’t speaking to each other after Sophie heard Jo saying to Georgina in the loos that she looked rank in her new black patent platform boots.

All Kate had to do was throw in the occasional question, raise her eyebrows at the required moment, but Charly was a great companion, and soon Kate found herself opening up, telling her about her flatmate Sean, about her best friend Zoe, about how she’d started to dread coming into work, how she’d eaten her lunch on a park bench for the past two weeks –

‘By yourself?’ Charly demanded. ‘Sitting in Lincoln’s Inn eating a sandwich from Prêt à Manger by yourself? God that’s sad. What did you do if someone you recognized came past?’

‘I’d look down at my book, or else I’d turn my head so they couldn’t see me,’ said Kate, and as she said it, she realized how silly it sounded. Charly laughed, her eyes wide open with surprise, and Kate joined her.

‘That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard for a long time,’ Charly said.

‘I know,’ Kate agreed. She looked at her watch. ‘We should get back, you know.’

‘Yeah, in a bit.’ Charly looked carelessly at her watch, then pouted. ‘Let’s have a coffee first. So – where were you before here?’

‘Here?’ Kate gestured to the building behind them. ‘Nowhere. This is my first job.’

‘Your first – jeez,’ said Charly. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two. I left university this summer.’

‘Oh my god,’ Charly said, peering at her as if she were an exotic specimen. ‘And you started work right away? Didn’t take any time off?’

Kate shook her head uneasily. She didn’t want to disabuse Charly of the notion that she’d gone straight from university to a job, when in fact, she’d had a solitary, dusty summer at home in Kentish Town, slowly driving herself mad with the future. Her anyway-mostly-absent mother and stepfather were in the Hamptons for the summer and incommunicado, Daniel had a new girlfriend and was rarely at home; Zoe had skipped off into a Magic Circle job; so had Steve; Francesca and Betty, two of her closest friends, had gone travelling together for six months, not back till after Christmas. A few weeks ago, Kate had nearly put the phone down on Zoe when she’d told her that Mac, Steve’s older brother, had just been put on some special fast-track system for the best surgeons in the country. People she hadn’t even met were falling over each other to out-do each other, while she had whiled away the dog days of summer, saving up a trip to the newsagents each day. But that was over now, she hoped. OK, it was Woman’s World, it wasn’t Vogue, but it was a start.

‘What’s your ambition, then?’ Charly asked. It was a strangely childish phrase, that; it touched Kate, though she wasn’t sure of the answer. She wrinkled her nose. Charly persisted. ‘What do you want to do, what’s your dream job, I mean?’

It was what Sue Jordan, her new boss, had asked her, a month ago, at her job interview, and Kate gave the same answer then, as now. She looked over and above Charly, to the shelves behind the counter in the little restaurant. They were lined with spreads, old jars, tins. ‘I want to work in magazines, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I love them.’

‘Really?’ Charly sounded dubious. But Kate had heard it before.

‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling, and shaking her head. ‘I was a geek all through school, and the one thing I loved that wasn’t geeky was Vogue. Don’t know why, just did.’ She did know why, though; it was the entrée into a world she wasn’t part of, a world she could only aspire to: glamour, style, elegance, beautiful clothes. It wasn’t the posh people she was interested in; it was something more fleeting than that – she supposed it was the idea of a blueprint for how to live your life. With style, flair, purpose, and organization. The cold, beautiful women in those magazines, they weren’t ignored by boys, or by their co-workers, they didn’t have mothers who left them, fathers who were messy and annoying. They – all of them, whether they were the writers, the models, the society people – they had black shift dresses, scented candles, fresh linen. Boughs of apple blossom in big glass vases, thick black velvet evening cloaks – that sort of thing. She loved magazines, that was all; the smell of the new pages, the sheen of the pictures, the slice of life, the answers to her curious questions about things, how other people behaved, reacted, everything. She was happy simply to observe, she knew that too.

‘Well, good for you,’ Charly said, sounding uncertain. ‘So, you’ll be wanting Sue’s job in a year, then? Better tell her to watch out.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Kate, looking horrified. ‘It’s not –’

‘Calm down,’ said Charly. ‘Don’t get so worked up about it. It’s a job, OK? When you’ve been here for longer you’ll realize it’s not worth having kittens about. Me, I’m happy if it pays me enough to buy a couple of glasses of wine and some new boots every few months.’

‘Really? What do you want to do, then?’ Kate said, curiously.

‘Fuck all,’ said Charly. ‘I want to marry someone rich and go and live in Spain. Have a house here too, in the Bishop’s Avenue. With a heated indoor swimming pool, and lots of Sophie’s friends.’ They both laughed; Sue had just signed off a feature that morning about the millionaires’ row of houses in North London, and Sophie had spent a lot of time saying in a Very Loud Voice that she knew someone who lived there. ‘I think she’s reading the A-Z wrong. It’s probably Bishop’s Avenue in Acton, more like,’ Charly had said loudly that morning, and Kate had smiled, as Sophie turned on her heel and flounced back to her desk.

‘Hey,’ Charly added, as they laid their money on the table. ‘You been to the Atlas pub? Round the corner from the office?’

‘No,’ said Kate.

‘It’s nice. Fancy a quick drink there tonight?’

‘Really?’ Kate said, then corrected herself. ‘That’d be great.’ She looked at her companion. ‘Thanks, Charly.’

‘What for?’ Charly slung her bag over her shoulder, and pulled out the hair that was trapped underneath it. She shook her head, and the waiters in the café watched in adoration. Like a Timotei ad, Kate thought with amusement.

‘Just – thanks for asking me out to lunch and stuff,’ she said, as they stepped out onto the street. ‘It’s weird when you start a new job. Not knowing anyone, you know.’

‘Course I know,’ said Charly. She didn’t look at Kate. ‘When I joined last year no one spoke to me for three weeks. Hey.’ She pushed her hair out of her face. ‘I reckon we could be a bit of a team, don’t you think? Show Sophie and Jo and Georgina, those bitches, show them we’ve got our own thing going on. OK?’

‘I’m not bothered about them,’ Kate said, surprising herself.

‘Sure, whatever,’ said Charly darkly, and Kate wondered which one of them had incurred her wrath. ‘No worries.

But still, we’re going to stick together. I’ve decided. You up for a drink then?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I’ll see who else is around, too. Introduce you to some other people. We’re going to have a great time.’

The sun was warm on Kate’s hair; she felt relaxed, herself, for the first time since she’d started there. ‘Great,’ she said, as they turned the corner and walked up towards their building.

‘Look at that loser over there, with the Beckham haircut,’ said Charly, flinging her arm out so that she nearly knocked over a teenage boy who was staring at her. ‘What a jackfruit.’

The loser with the Beckham haircut was coming out through the revolving doors. He raised his sunglasses and smiled at them. He was extremely good looking.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ Kate said, then wished she hadn’t.

‘You never called me back, Charly,’ he said, looking hopefully at her. ‘When are we going out again?’

‘Fuck off, Ian,’ said Charly. ‘It’s not happening. Kate, I’ve got to get some gear from the postroom. See you later, OK? Atlas, straight after work? I’ll come and pick you up.’

‘Great,’ said Kate, and Ian stared at her, annoyance crossing his otherwise perfect face.

That night, when Kate rolled back to Rotherhithe at twelve a.m., swaying and singing softly to herself like a sailor on shore leave, Sean was still up watching American football on Channel Five. As she staggered into the sitting room, Kate waved at him nonchalantly, trying to prove she was sober, and her hand flew back and hit the door frame with a loud thwack. Sean smiled to himself but only said,

‘Good night then?’

Kate’s mind was whirring, with the white wine pooling in her stomach, in her throat, in her head. Good night? The best night, that’s what. She and Charly, Claire and Phil had gone to the Atlas, sunk a few drinks, then some more, then Sophie had joined them, and the five of them had played the pub quiz machine, screaming with joy when they got one of the questions right. It was Kate who knew that Chairman Mao died in 1976. She didn’t know how she knew, she’d just known, and as she’d leant forward, punching the big plastic square on the machine, shouting ‘Yesss!’ as she did so, she felt, slightly hysterically, as if all those years of being the class swot, the one who got their homework in, the one who really never did anything bad, they were paying off. Charly had screamed, jumped up and down, and high-fived Kate, and then ‘Spice Up Your Life’ had come on the juke box, and they’d both jumped off their stools and danced like crazy.

‘I hate the Spice Girls!’ Charly had shouted. ‘They’re fucking awful!’

‘I love them!’ Kate said. ‘Sort of …’ she continued, as Charly looked on at her in horror, and both of them laughed again.

Gorgeous Ian had turned up – Kate didn’t know how he’d worked out where they’d be. Charly ignored him all evening, drinking beer from her bottle, cheering Kate on in the quiz and then, as they all stood around outside the pub after they were kicked out, suddenly walked off down the street with him, her hand carelessly clutching the back of his neck. Kate had been almost shocked, impressed by her total insouciance, the very Charly-ness of it, and then it had made her smile.

As she sat on the night bus home, trying not to acknowledge that she did feel a bit sick, she thought how great life was, how all the usual things that worried her – her dad, her mum, her sad little life, her fear that, since she split up with Tony, her university boyfriend, nearly two years ago, she would never find love again, her fear of her job, that she was just a big fat failure – all these things seemed to vanish, with the optimism of youth, and what she remembered instead was Charly’s face as she bought them all another round of drinks with the winnings from the machine. Her amused expression as she said, ‘You’re hilarious Kate, you know that?’

‘Thanks, Charly,’ Kate had said. ‘This is great.’ She patted her arm.

Charly had shrugged. ‘My pleasure.’ She’d looked strangely pleased. Kate fell onto the sofa next to Sean, put her head under his armpit, and smiled, ridiculously.

‘Found some friends then?’ Sean said. ‘Or have you been drinking alone again?’

‘Shurrup,’ Kate said, her voice muffled by Sean’s sleeve. ‘Friends from work, nice.’

It was so cosy on the sofa, next to him; she loved Sean. ‘So, where did you go?’ he said, muting the sound on the TV. He turned towards her, and stretched his arms, yawning, and pulled Kate towards him. She wriggled into him, happily.

‘Just pubs near the work, near the work building,’ she said. They were silent together, for a moment, and she could hear his breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest, her head against him.

‘Oh, Kate,’ he said, softly.

Kate sat up slowly, suddenly not feeling so drunk, knowing he was looking at her, and their eyes met.

Sean was a closed book to her in so many ways; she had known him for years, though they had never been best friends or gone out with each other. He was a genial, all-American kind of guy – the first impression, and then you realized, in his quiet, understated way, he was more British than that. His clean-cut, sporty appearance belied his more studious, careful character; though she knew him well, Kate never quite knew what he was thinking. Through the waves of cheap white wine, spirits and exhaustion, she looked at him now, blinking, wishing he would speak first, not knowing what was suddenly, now, between them. Someone more worldly-wise would have known what to do now, on the sofa, having a moment with their flatmate. They would either have leaned over and kissed him, or got up and made some coffee.

Watching him, watching his softly twitching lips, Kate wanted to kiss him suddenly, wanted it fiercely. But she couldn’t. It was Sean, after all. Her flatmate. And she was drunk. No.

‘Pfff,’ she said, rather helplessly, smoothing her skirt with her hands.

It broke the tension, and Sean smiled at her. ‘Oh, babe,’ he said kindly, and he patted her arm. ‘You’re hilarious.’

‘That’s what Charly said!’ Kate said, remembering the evening again, happily.

‘So the mean girls aren’t being mean to you any more?’ Sean said lightly, sitting back and taking another sip from his bottle of beer.

Kate sank against the sofa. ‘Oh,’ she said, her eyes closing, glad the moment was over, and it was normal again. ‘No, hope not.’

Sean nodded, and looked back at the screen. After about a minute, he realized that the head next to his arm was lolling, and that his flatmate was fast asleep.

The last thing Kate remembered that night was Sean’s gentle shove as he pushed her onto her bed where she pitched headfirst onto the duvet. She woke up early the next morning as the late September rays were creeping into her room, the curtains wide open, having not been drawn the night before. She lay there, reconstructing the evening slowly, from its unexpected start to its slightly strange finish – had any of it really happened? Had she imagined the lunch with Charly, the drinks, the general knowledge? The night bus – and that moment with Sean, last night, had she made it up? She patted the bedside table next to her, feebly, feeling for her water glass, and then sat up slowly. Her mouth was dry, her head was ringing, she felt as if she wanted to die, but for the first time in what seemed like a really long time, Kate realized she was looking forward to the day ahead.

CHAPTER EIGHT

March 2001

More than a year after she’d started at Woman’s World, the pie chart of Kate’s friendships was clear. Charly was her best friend. Zoe was her newly engaged, other best friend. Her other friends Betty and Francesca were happily ensconced in their chaotic flat in Clapham; Betty worked in a gallery and tied bunches into her short dyed hair, while Francesca, who was a banker, and the person Kate had been closest to at university, was now extremely grown-up, wore grey suits and worked in Canary Wharf, which was suddenly where everyone was working.

Charly and Kate were still editorial assistants, they sat across from each other and helped each other, they went to the same Italian deli round the corner for lunch (where Kate happily stuffed her face with carbs and fats and Charly gingerly picked out the tomatoes in her sandwich and ate them) and occasionally got the tube to TopShop on Oxford Circus where Kate would try on clothes that didn’t suit her and buy them, and Charly would try on clothes that made her long, leggy form look even more stunning and complain that nothing fitted her, and leave buying nothing. In the evenings, they went to the pub, where they gossiped and bitched about the day at work, their sometimes eccentric colleagues, and the endless fascination of the microcosm of the office.

Kate was changing; she only realized it when other people remarked on it. ‘Nice work, Kate,’ Sue had said briskly to her a couple of months ago, after she had written a little piece on Alma from ‘Coronation Street’. ‘You’re really coming out of your shell, aren’t you?’

The truth was she loved it, she loved her life now. She took to it like an ugly duckling to water. Now Kate strode to the Tube station in the mornings, her long legs flying out in front of her, her long hair catching in the breeze. She laughed with the mailroom boys, she said hello to Catherine the Editor with a bright smile on her face, not a mumbled, half-horrified grunt, in fear lest she might try to engage her in conversation. She loved answering the phone to random readers, calling to ask whether ‘The Darling Buds of May’ was ever coming back on TV again or where they could get the recipe for hot-pot that had been in last week’s issue. And she looked forward to relaxing, drinking, chatting, laughing in the evenings, as she had never done before.

One Friday afternoon in March, Kate sat at her desk, trying to concentrate on the letter she was writing, whilst resisting the temptation to play with her new mobile phone, her first, which she had picked up that very lunchtime. She hadn’t actually called anyone on it yet, but she had taken down everyone in the office’s number, entering each one in the address book, slowly and painfully. It was four o’clock, and the office felt dead. Kate felt dead too – it had been Sophie’s birthday drinks the night before, a long, messy night, culminating in Kate not getting home till two because of the vagaries of the night bus. Charly had disappeared at midnight, with a random ad exec she’d pulled hanging onto her arm. She had been in a strange, cool mood, and Kate could tell a storm was brewing.

Kate chewed on her biro and looked up from her desk, where she had been idly pressing buttons on her mobile. ‘So – did you go back to his place?’ she asked.

Charly was flicking through a magazine, exaggeratedly pouting. She was supposed to be checking the text for the recipe card layout.

‘God, I love Britney Spears,’ she said. ‘There’s no way she’s a virgin. No way. Look.’

She waved the magazine in front of Kate.

‘Fake boobs,’ said Kate, glancing at the magazine.

‘No,’ said Charly. ‘They’re real.’

‘They’re fake!’ said Kate. ‘Come on! Where did they come from! She used to have no boobs at all.’

‘From growing up, she’s only nineteen,’ said Charly, as Kate’s boss Sue zoomed into view, her heels clicking madly on the thin lino. Charly carried on flicking through the magazine, as Kate turned back to her computer screen.

‘Are you in next week?’ Sue said, not slowing down or making eye contact with Kate.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, who was used to her boss. ‘Why, what do you need?’

‘I’m on holiday next week. Bloody half-term. Fucking Malcolm’s booked that stupid riyad in Morocco. Can you do the Editor’s Letter for me? I thought you might like to do it.’

‘Sure,’ said Kate, half standing up, like a Captain in the mess when the General pays a visit. ‘Of course, Sue. Wow, how great! Thanks – thanks a lot.’

Sue stood still, several steps ahead of Kate, on her way out to the lifts. ‘Great. Good one. Get it to Catherine for her to look over by Tuesday morning. OK?’