Last of the Summer Moët Page 5

  They looked very familiar.

  The noise was unbelievable. Tour groups in the room’s other corners turned to stare and exclaim.

  ‘The, whatstheirnames, the corgis!’

  ‘哎呀’

  ‘Mon dieu!’

  ‘The Queen’s corgis!’

  ‘Unglaublich!’

  ‘They’re attacking that woman... Ohmigod, it’s Savannah Bouche!’

  ‘哎呀 Savannah Bouche!’

  Laura had initially been unable to understand why the dogs had made a beeline for Savannah. They were seething round her feet, leaping up at her. But now she could see that the answer lay in the actress’s bag. The enormous black tote over the celebrity shoulder was moving; bulging and shifting as though there was something alive inside it. Several things, even.

  Faint yapping sounds could be heard. As Laura watched, a small doggy nose appeared. Then another.

  ‘Dogs!’ gasped Dr Summer. ‘Good Lord, she’s smuggled some dogs in!’

  It was clear now why the actress had turned down his offer of the cloakroom.

  ‘Pankhurst!’ cried Savannah, as a tiny white scrap struggled out of its black-leather prison and dived fearlessly into the snarling pool of much larger dogs below.

  ‘Mandela!’ screamed the star as a furry yellow ball did the same. More barking and snarling ensued.

  ‘How many more does she have in there?’ Dr Summer gasped to Laura.

  ‘Two,’ Laura said, as, right on cue, a further pair of fluffballs somersaulted out to join the struggle. They disappeared into the squirming, yelping, snapping mass of bodies.

  ‘Che! Mahatma!’ A howling Savannah hurled herself towards the mêlée just as someone else entered the room.

  ‘Holly! Willow!’ exclaimed the small, elderly woman with iron-grey hair and glasses. She wore a dark dress, carried a large handbag and had unmistakable presence. ‘Stop that at once!’ she commanded, in a voice which seemed used to issuing them. Her tones were intensely patrician, slightly reedy and extremely familiar.

  The effect was electric. The dogs stopped fighting instantly. The entire assembled company either sank into a curtsy, or bowed.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ breathed Dr Summer, reverently.

  The Queen, having gathered her pets to her heels, folded her hands over her shining black handbag and shot a sharp look round the room. Laura watched the monarch’s keen glance snag on the reigning, curtsying queen of Tinseltown. While nothing was said, and no criticism offered, the royal lips twisted slightly. The royal back turned and the presence was no longer present.

  Laura sensed that Savannah’s honorary DBE was no longer a possibility. Any designs the star might have on Prince Andrew were equally unlikely to come off.

  She, on the other hand, had one hell of an article.

  Chapter Six

  Three weeks later, Carinthia was still on compassionate spa leave. Laura remained in charge and, while initially nervous, had become gradually more confident in the role. She had finally succumbed to precedent, and had framed and mounted round the walls a collection of Society covers that had her stories as the main headlines. The awards Laura had won for them, and subsequent work, swelled the shelf of press awards previously won by Carinthia, which had not been removed.

  Laura had, however, removed the pink fridge full of alcohol. She had also tackled the vexed question of the editor’s chair. Carinthia suffered from a rare back condition called vertebrae editrix, or editor’s spine, caused by lugging outsize designer totes about the place. To combat it she had taken up the succession of ‘medical’ seating solutions proposed by Bootcamp Billy her physiotherapist. These had ranged from birthing balls to exercise bicycles and had only made matters worse when Carinthia, in a fit of rage or excitement, or drunk, had fallen off them. The black swivel chair Laura had introduced, prosaic as it was, might have been a better as well as a safer idea.

  Sitting in this chair, rocking gently backwards and occasionally swinging round just for the sheer fun of it, Laura felt more reluctant than ever to return to her former position as deputy editor. She hoped her boss would not come back.

  Carinthia, however, had no intention of bowing out. She rang the office on a daily basis demanding to see issue plans and be conference-called into every ideas meeting. Laura could hear her now, breathing heavily down the phone, sniffing and emitting the occasional loud slurp, which seemed unlikely to be caused by water. She tried hard to concentrate on the editorial features meeting which had just begun.

  From behind the big glass editorial desk, Laura smiled round at her staff. She did not intend them all to remain. She wanted new blood, fresh ideas, ambitious and talented people, not girls Carinthia had employed just for their social connections. She had always loved seeing the forest of hands when she asked which of them lived in houses open to the public.

  Laura, on the other hand, was determined to introduce a more meritocratic regime. She had started by relaxing the hierarchy. The yellow sofa opposite her desk was no longer reserved for section editors. People could sit where they liked; first in was best seated. The days when Clemency Makepeace, Laura’s bitter enemy and the former features editor, could sashay in last and ostentatiously take the best place, were over. As was Clemency herself. Laura had not seen her byline for some time and had heard a rumour she had left the country. Fingers crossed.

  Laura picked up a glass of water. The first time she had sat at Carinthia’s desk, the carafe had contained pure vodka. ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  It would be interesting to see which staff members had taken on board the fact Society was now going in a different direction. Still glamorous, still witty, but more relevant to the young working women who were its readers.

  The glass cubicle was packed solid. Unlike Carinthia, Laura invited everyone, including the newest intern – especially the newest intern – to the ideas meetings. Inspiration – inspo, as magazine people called it – could come from anywhere and anyone. When a discussion really got going, ideas flew like sparks. Laura loved it when that happened.

  ‘Ready!’ crackled the conference line. A crash followed, and a swishy liquid noise. It sounded as if, in her agitation, Carinthia had knocked her drink all over the phone. The line went dead.

  ‘Okay,’ said Laura. ‘Let’s start with fashion. Raisy and Daisy?’

  The future of the two blonde fashion directors was one Laura was particularly doubtful about. She was fond of them, but they seemed incapable of understanding that things had changed. When she had asked them last week to produce the perfect job interview outfit their suggestions had included a £1000 jumper and a £695 document wallet.

  The two blonde sisters rose to their feet, large printouts under their skinny white arms. ‘I feel seriously pumped about this,’ Daisy said brightly, fixing Laura with a dazzling smile made all the more impactful by neon green lipstick. ‘Seriously pumped.’

  Daisy’s modus operandi was to present her ideas as keenly as possible, in the evident hope sheer enthusiasm would get them through.

  Laura looked at the images now being held up for her perusal, hoping she would understand them. Or, at least, like them.

  A group of thin, sulky girls were standing by a rusting fence.

  ‘What are they wearing?’ she asked, having tried and failed to identify it.

  ‘Sports bras reimagined in tablecloth plastics,’ Raisy explained proudly. The sisters always spoke alternately. ‘It’s an out-of-kilter aesthetic that’s having a moment.’

  Laura reminded herself that a big part of the job as a glossy-magazine editor was to take the ludicrous seriously. Most of what came up was pretty silly, but distinguish-ing between good silly and bad silly was where the skill lay.

  ‘It’s a bit...’ she began, searching for the word everyone in magazines used when they meant no. ‘Niche,’ she added, triumphantly.

  Raisy looked as stern as anyone could while wearing black wellies, gold eyeshadow and an electric blue twinset. ‘We need to reclaim PVC,�
� she asserted. ‘Take it out of the ghetto of fetish fabric.’

  Laura stared. ‘I thought you said it was tablecloth plastic.’

  ‘Fetish tablecloths,’ Daisy smiled.

  Demelza was holding the phone out and pulling an anguished face. ‘Carinthia again. Shall I put her on speakerphone?’

  The speakerphone was duly put on. There seemed to be a row at the other end. A nurse could be heard entering the room and removing what was evidently a banned bottle of vodka. ‘Another? Who’s giving you this stuff?’ she was asking. Then, again, the line went dead.

  ‘Right,’ said Laura, relieved. ‘Features.’

  She had spiked Carinthia’s planned articles – the fashion spread about shoes being worn on heads; the feature about bright young things playing ducks and drakes with their Smartphones, skimming them into the sea.

  But what was she going to put in their place? The first proper Laura Lake issue had to be very, very special. Set out the tone and style of what was to come. Alert people that someone new was in charge.

  The Savannah interview would have been perfect, except that it had run in the last issue edited by Carinthia, and a hopelessly emasculated version at that. Far from being, as Laura had assumed, thrilled at the revelation that the actress had her sights set on being a Windsor, Carinthia had insisted all unflattering references should be removed. The piece had been sent to Savannah before publication.

  Laura had been aghast. ‘You’ve given her copy approval?’ Full veto, in other words! Licence to whitewash! Bland, unquestioning sycophancy, with no critical element whatsoever!

  ‘Oh course I bloody have,’ Carinthia had snapped back. ‘How the hell else do you think I got her to agree to do it?’

  ‘But you didn’t! I set it up myself!’ Laura felt sick with indignation and disappointment, as well as furious at Carinthia’s appropriation of what had been her triumph. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. Nervous about what Laura might write after the Buckingham Palace episode, Savannah had evidently instructed Brad Plant to lean heavily on Carinthia. The fact that she had decided not to do the same with Laura was some comfort. She suspected her, at least, of some integrity, some journalistic values. But how were they to be expressed now?

  She needed another meaty story, Laura knew. One with no copy approval. But there was no meat – literally – in the piece Thomasella the food editor had just suggested about wild hemlock fudge. Or the feature Selina the travel editor was now outlining about holidays in decommissioned coal mines being the latest in off-grid chic. The meeting ended with the suggestion, from the beauty department, of an interview with London’s hottest new plastic surgeon who speeded up recovery by hanging patients upside down with their heads in a bucket of ice.

  Laura imagined her grandmother’s bemusement. Mimi held that facelifts were too try-hard and that people should enjoy the face they had today. ‘Because it’s the one you’ll wish you had in ten years’ time, chérie!’

  Later, as Laura picked at the moss salad ordered for Carinthia’s daily lunch which no one had got around to cancelling, she rattled between her teeth the Montblanc fountain pen her predecessor had left behind. A wave of self-doubt broke over her. Perhaps being an editor wasn’t as easy as Carinthia had made it look. Perhaps she couldn’t do it after all.

  As her confidence plunged earthwards, Laura firmly reminded herself that Carinthia had made it look easy precisely because all the work was being done by Laura. She had effectively been editor for months. Of course she could do it!

  Especially now Clemency Makepeace was gone for good. Laura would never have to see those evil green eyes again. Nor that snake-like hair as red as Clemency’s lipsticked smirk.

  There was a knock on her door and Wyatt clumped in, in unflattering black combat trousers, nose stud gleaming in the overhead light.

  ‘Sit down.’ Laura gestured to the yellow sofa, which Wyatt looked at doubtfully. Since she had become editor, waves of gifts sent by advertisers and designers had crashed into Laura’s office. Never before had she realised just how many freebies Carinthia routinely received. The smell of new leather was almost overpowering. ‘Shove that stuff aside,’ she told Wyatt.

  Watching the intern move a turquoise fur jacket and pink alligator-skin rucksack, Laura reflected that, as a plus-size Goth, Wyatt was not in any sense a fit for a glossy magazine. But she felt she owed her something. Wyatt had been admirably discreet in the aftermath of the Nipples At Dawn incident. Several papers had wanted her to write her side of the story. She had refused them all. Now Laura had a suggestion to make.

  ‘I’d like you to write a feature for me,’ she said brightly, expecting Wyatt to exclaim in delight. No exclamation was forthcoming, however.

  ‘It’ll run in the magazine,’ Laura added encouragingly.

  Wyatt did not answer.

  Laura suppressed her feeling of impatience. ‘Don’t you want to write?’ she asked, knowing that this was a ridiculous question. Everyone on Society wanted to write. ‘You want to be a journalist, don’t you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Wyatt said bluntly.

  Shock coursed through the acting editor. A journalist was all Laura had ever wanted to be. She could not imagine the mindset of someone who didn’t. ‘Um, so at the risk of sounding obvious, what exactly are you doing here?’

  Wyatt met Laura’s gaze through resigned eyes ringed heavily with kohl. ‘Because my mum made me and my dad bought it for me.’

  Well, that was honest if nothing else. ‘Oh,’ said Laura, stumped. ‘Right.’

  ‘And it’s really unfair.’

  ‘Unfair?’ Laura blinked. ‘Internships here are very sought-after.’

  ‘That’s my point,’ Wyatt said.

  Laura passed a hand over her forehead. She was confused.

  ‘Internships are unfair.’ Wyatt raised her plump white chin defiantly. ‘They’re a closed shop for the well-connected. They stand in the way of social mobility and they skew the employment market so graduates can’t get a paid entry-level job.’

  Laura stared at her. She was right, of course. Wyatt had put her black-nail-varnished finger on something Laura had spotted too. The need to open up internship opportunities. Convert them into actual salaried posts, even.

  ‘Tell me about your background,’ she said, wondering if she had got it wrong and Wyatt came, not from a dynasty of City plutocrats, but a line of firebrand socialists.

  ‘My dad’s a banker.’

  ‘Where does he work?’ Perhaps he wasn’t a very important one and Carinthia had exaggerated.

  ‘He’s deputy governor of the Bank of England.’

  ‘And what does your mum do?’ Perhaps she was a Marxist academic, a human rights lawyer or a shadow cabinet minister. They sometimes had wealthy husbands.

  ‘Shops. Has Botox. Decorates the, um, houses.’

  ‘Houses?’ The slight, shamefaced pause had not been lost on Laura.

  Wyatt shifted uncomfortably besides the pile of complimentary luxury leather goods. ‘During the week we live in, um, Holland Park. But at weekends we live in the, um, country.’

  Laura thought of Edgar, whose family followed the same pattern. She leaned forward slightly. ‘Where in the country?’

  ‘It’s called Great Hording. You won’t have heard of it.’

  Laura tried not to look as if this was the third time she had in less than a month. First the women in Umbra. Then Edgar. Now this. She remembered the old journalists’ adage: ‘Once is interesting and twice a coincidence. But three’s definitely a story.’ Especially if it was the weekend retreat of both the head of MI6 and the Bank of England number two.

  ‘What’s Great... er... Hording like?’ Laura tried not to sound too interested.

  ‘Boring.’

  Laura would not be brushed off so easily. ‘Boring in what way?’

  Wyatt sighed. ‘Just boring.’

  ‘Who else lives there?’

  Laura stared at Wyatt until she gave in, dropped
her eyes and gestured at Laura’s desk. ‘Well, her.’

  Laura glanced down at the stern old trout pictured in the open newspaper. ‘Dame Hermione Grantchester?’ The interview she had just read had been breathless with excitement. Short, the much-anticipated next instalment of Dame Hermione’s ‘Saddle-Saw’ series, written from the point of view of Napoleon’s horse, was about to come out. Nasty and Brutish, the first two, had both won the Booker prize.

  Wyatt was looking at the wall now. ‘Him too.’

  She nodded at one of Laura’s framed articles: ‘YBAs: Twenty Years On.’ The image above the title was of a famously notorious work; some underpants nailed to a chopping board.

  ‘Zeb Spaw?’ Laura examined the hammered-on Y-fronts yet again. They were made of a particularly hideous ribbed blue nylon. The chopping board, for its part, was covered in stains and food debris. The whole piece was disgusting and yet Crucifiction had launched the artist into the stratosphere. ‘He lives in Great Hording?’

  ‘Got a studio there,’ Wyatt said flatly. ‘And a ginormous mansion. He’s horrible.’

  Laura didn’t need to be told this. Spaw had cancelled the interview last minute and left her scrabbling through previous articles to pull together her piece. But it was rather amazing that he lived there too. ‘Anyone else?’ she asked Wyatt. ‘Politicians? Actors? Writers? Newspaper editors?’

  She was half-joking, but Wyatt twisted her black-painted lips. ‘All of those, actually – except no journalists.’

  A great surge of excitement went through Laura. She only just prevented herself from slapping the desk in triumph. Here was her meaty story. Britain’s Best Connected Village! The UK’s Highest-Powered Hamlet!

  Wyatt had slipped her a brilliant exclusive. Exactly the kind of social reportage piece she wanted to run. How could she ever have doubted that she was born to be an editor?

  Wyatt was rising to her Dr Martened feet. ‘Well anyway, sorry.’