‘It’s been a pleasure,’ he said courteously. ‘Literally a flying visit! Thank you so much for dropping in – oh look, I did it again – and sorting out our
problem for us. I really don’t think Brianna Jade would have managed it on her own. She was so keen to protect you, you know. Honestly, I don’t mean to be self-deprecating, but you
really are her first priority. She’s so grateful to you for all the sacrifices you’ve made for her.’
The choking sob Tamra gave on hearing these words was identical to the one Brianna Jade had emitted just a short time earlier, and so was the speed at which she shot across the Hall in the
direction of the servants’ wing and Mrs Hurley’s office. Edmund stared after her, struggling nobly with what he knew was a sexist impulse to assume that both women, so physically alike,
were also synchronized in their monthly cycles and were simultaneously suffering with uncharacteristically nasty bouts of premenstrual tension.
But frankly
, he thought,
it’s the most flattering explanation as far as I’m concerned. Otherwise I really do have to assume that I not only forgot to wash this morning,
but for the last three days, and I pong like a laundry bin full of schoolboys’ socks and jockstraps after a rugby match.
As the thought occurred to him, he actually raised his arm and sniffed under the armpit. The relief of securing empirical evidence that he had, in fact, not only washed but applied his Nivea For
Men Sensitive 48 Hours deodorant stick that morning, as always – they could call it ‘48 Hours’ all they wanted, but Edmund, a fundamentally cautious soul, wasn’t prepared to
live that dangerously – was blotted out as soon as he realized that he had just committed the most appalling breach of etiquette. Blushing from head to toe at having just sniffed his own
armpit in the middle of his own Great Hall for anyone to see, the Earl of Respers went upstairs to find out if his fiancée was in any mood to receive him, or if she were, perhaps, going
through some particularly awful women’s problem and the sight of him would only exacerbate it for some unknown reason.
Jodie Raeburn was working late, as she did for the three days every month when the latest issue of
Style
was due at the printers. Plus the two days a month when
Mini Style
was ditto, plus the days when she had to oversee special issues . . . She worked late more often than not, frankly. But there was no need to rush home, as her fiancé was
still in New York: hopefully he would be moving to London later this year. Currently he edited the fashion pages of
Style Men,
and the plan was for him to transfer to the parallel role in
London when the job came free and his visa was issued.
Though she missed him, Jodie was fine with the temporary separation: these were the crucial career-building years for her, in which she needed to devote much more of her time to her job than to
her private life. Luckily her fiancé, having met her at work, fully understood how driven she was.
Jodie had never made any secret of her ambition to one day take over from Victoria Glossop as editor of
US Style
, and she was well on her way to achieving it. The plan was to follow
Victoria’s career path, which meant working like a dog in her twenties, then get married and try for children in her early thirties. After which time, hopefully, Victoria would have loosened
her hold on the reins in New York enough to consider Jodie fully qualified to take over from her there as editor . . .
Though Victoria had to pull the move of going to
Harper’s
for a while, raise her value until Dupleix caved in and asked her back
, Jodie reflected
. I might have to do
that too. It wouldn’t at all hurt me to work outside Dupleix for a while – and God knows, Victoria responds to nothing so well as a show of power.
‘Jodie? I’m so sorry to disturb you while you’re going over proofs.’
Jodie looked up to see her assistant, Catalina, standing half in her office, half out, her figure so slim that this meant that her body was barely visible. Jodie really did try to employ
Style
staffers who were not sample size, but, annoyingly, Catalina had been by far the best qualified candidate on paper, and equally impressive at her interview; Jodie had had no choice
but to hire her. She
did
make sure that there were plates of elegant little sandwiches and tasteful nibbles lying around the
Style
offices to counteract any idea that
Style
demanded that its personnel all maintain a UK size four, but so far Catalina hadn’t put on a pound, rather to Jodie’s annoyance.
‘What is it?’ she said abruptly, her concentration entirely on the images and text in front of her.
‘It’s someone called Tamra Maloney,’ Catalina said. ‘She says she doesn’t have an appointment, but she wants to see you anyway, and she’s
brought—’
‘Cocktails!’ Tamra announced, swirling into Jodie’s office not by pushing Catalina aside, but by fully opening the door and using the considerable space that Catalina’s
skinny frame left vacant. Behind her came a young man wearing the black trousers, white shirt and black waistcoat of the professional waiter: he was carrying an ice bucket containing a bottle of
champagne in one hand, and a tray in the other which bore two martini glasses and a silver shaker.
‘They’re Pimm’s Cup Martinis,’ Tamra continued, gesturing to the young man to put down the tray on the white laminated table between the two burgundy Fritz Hansen
‘Egg’ chairs. ‘With a champagne float.’
‘How did you get into the building?’ Jodie asked, her brows drawing together. ‘Security’s very strict. I’m sure no one here gave you entry clearance.’
Catalina shook her head in confirmation as Tamra said airily, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t expect me to tell you if I’d slipped some poor underpaid security guy a fifty and told him I was
a friend of yours come to buy you a drink while you were working late, would you? Because then you’d have to sack the guy, and that would be totally unfair when he thought he was helping to
give you a lovely surprise.’
Jodie assessed Tamra Maloney’s Prada camel coat, her Ferragamo boots and Reed Krakoff bag, her experienced fashion editor’s eye identifying every single label and season instantly.
She had met Tamra, of course, at Stanclere Hall the day of the shoot, but Jodie’s focus, in such a tight schedule, had been entirely on the logistics of making the day work, and the girls who
would be modelling for her, as well as the particular challenge of working with royalty. And Tamra had not been trying to stand out from the crowd: for her, that day had been all about Brianna
Jade.
But Jodie had certainly noticed Tamra then: it was impossible not to. Her particular kind of burnished golden perfect-featured beauty might not be model-fashionable from Jodie’s
perspective as a magazine editor, but it was unmistakable.
Christ, she really does wear clothes well
, Jodie admitted.
So much poise. If we were back in the 1980s, she could have been one of the classic supermodels. She’s got that
whole Christie Brinkley/Cheryl Tiegs American blonde confidence.
Something else was tugging at Jodie’s memory as she looked at Tamra standing there in the middle of her office on the bright Marimekko rug, coat pushed back so that she could put her hands
on her jean-clad hips, and the image in Jodie’s head wasn’t of the Amazonian, Versace-clad beauties who had walked the runways in the 1980s. Eventually she located it, and it came as
quite a shock: although Tamra and she looked nothing alike, and Tamra exuded much more confidence than Jodie had done then, Jodie was remembering herself, standing in this very office, in front of
Victoria Glossop, the then-editor of
Style
, years ago, interviewing for the position of Victoria’s assistant.
Then, as now, Victoria had liked to rule by fear, although her new relationship had certainly softened many of her rougher edges. And she had conducted the interview with Jodie by adding and
subtracting points, out loud, when she approved or disapproved of something Jodie was saying or wearing.
Ten points
, Jodie thought now.
Tamra just admitted to bribing the guard downstairs and stopped me from sacking him in a couple of sentences. That was very well done. I get people
trying to force their way in to see me all the time, and no one’s ever pulled it off like this woman has.
‘I should get security to chuck you out,’ she said, testing Tamra just as Victoria had tested her years ago.
‘Oh, poor Michael,’ Tamra said, smiling beautifully at both Jodie and the young waiter. ‘He had this huge balancing act carrying everything over here from Claridge’s, and
all the way up in the elevator – you’re not going to make him take it all back again, are you? At least let him pour the drinks!’
Ten more points
. The Pimm’s Martinis did sound delicious.
‘Catalina, it’s fine,’ Jodie said, releasing her poor assistant from limbo: Catalina had been following the dialogue between her boss and the interloper like a trapped mouse at
a catfight. She positively scrambled to get out of the office and close the door behind her. Michael, after a nod from Tamra, filled the glasses from the cocktail shaker, leaving a good centimetre
on top for the Pol Roger, which he opened with the tiniest, most elegant of pops and then trickled carefully on top of the pale cinnamon Pimm’s-tinged martini.
‘You can go, Michael. Thank you,’ Tamra said.
She had already taken care of the tip: the waiter smiled and followed Catalina out of the office, leaving Jodie and Tamra together.
‘I’m not going to put your daughter on the cover of
Style Bride
just because you did a home invasion on my office and brought me a drink,’ Jodie said, keeping her face
straight and serious.
‘Well, of course not!’ Tamra said, apparently shocked that Jodie would even think such a thing. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Go ahead.’ Jodie gestured to the Egg chairs.
Tamra took her coat off, draped it over a side table and sank so elegantly into one of the chairs that Jodie, less naturally graceful, couldn’t help but envy her.
‘Did you ever do any modelling?’ she found herself asking.
‘No,’ Tamra said simply. ‘It was all about my daughter. I was a single mom, and I wouldn’t leave her behind to go try my luck with a modelling agency in a big city.
I’d’ve loved to do pageants, though, believe it or not. They’re real fun if you’ve got the right temperament, and you can use your title as a great platform to take you
where you want to go. I bet the editor of
Style
thinks pageants are totally old-fashioned – hell, you’ve probably got way worse words for ’em than that – but
I’d really have enjoyed ’em.’
She winked conspiratorially at Jodie, picking up a glass and holding it out to her in invitation.
‘And I could
totally
deal with all the girls scheming behind my back and being bitchy to my face,’ she added. ‘I bet you get a lot of that in your job.’
‘Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy,’ Jodie heard herself saying, much to her surprise, as she stood up, came round her desk and sat down in the other Egg chair, swivelling
it to face Tamra and taking the glass the latter was proffering. ‘At least, that’s been how it’s worked for me.’
Tamra nodded with sympathy as she picked up her own glass and chinked it with Jodie’s.
Ten more points! Sod it, twenty!
Jodie thought as she sipped some of the cocktail.
She just got me to tell her something personal, let down my guard – wow, she’s
really
good.
‘This is great,’ she admitted, setting down the glass.
‘Yay!’ Tamra flashed her stunning teeth. ‘I’m so glad you like it! Now, I can see you’re working, so I won’t take up more than a few minutes of your
time.’
‘You’ve got as long as it takes me to drink this,’ Jodie said, returning the smile for the first time. ‘And I really like it, so I may drink it pretty fast.’
Tamra’s smile was appreciative now.
‘So let me get right to it,’ she said. ‘What you saw of Brianna Jade at the shoot wasn’t really who she is. Brianna Jade’s done a shitload of pageants. She can get
up on stage and smile for the cameras and pose her ass off at the flick of a switch. I’m not going to tell you what went wrong with her that day, because it would sound like I’m making
excuses for my daughter. But she can bring it – she’s incredibly photogenic – and there’s no way she’s not going to do it on her wedding day.’
Jodie sipped some more of her cocktail, not saying a word: it was a technique she’d learnt from Victoria, the silence that intimidated her interlocutor but also instructed them to keep
talking. She was unsurprised to see that Tamra was not ruffled in the slightest by this treatment. Instead, she continued, crossing her legs and sitting back, the picture of relaxation and
elegance:
‘Maybe Milly and Tarquin’s wedding would be right if you were picking a cover for
Mini Style Bride
. In fact, it totally would. I can see that: she’s got that
flower-power boho vibe that the tweens and teens are really keen on right now. But she doesn’t look grown-up enough to be on the cover of
Style Bride
, does she? I know you’re
pursuing a policy of avoiding really young models, which as a forty-year-old woman, by the way, is
fantastic
, and thank you for that! But little Milly, with her Shirley Temple curls and
her Little Lord Fauntleroy fiancé – oh God, I can’t
even
! I mean, that’s
before
you start picturing what my sources tell me’s going to be some
wild-flower-and-vintage-china hippy-dippy puke-fest in Tuscany . . .’
Jodie, drinking some more of her cocktail, had to use all of the self-control she had learnt working as Victoria Glossop’s assistant not to spray her Pimm’s and champagne martini out
through her nose at this.
‘I mean, how can that even
compare
with a wedding in the Stanclere Hall chapel, attended by Princess Sophie?’ Tamra concluded triumphantly, reaching into her handbag and
pulling out her iPad from its Italian leather croc-embossed sleeve, drum dyed in a pale gold. Jodie’s eyes went straight to the sleeve: she hadn’t seen quite that pebble-effect leather
before, and it was highly covetable.