‘Ten Easy Steps to Feng Shui Your Relationship . . .’
Audrey’s bark was drowned out as she let the doors swing loudly behind her.
You have one new message.
Frankie’s mailbox flashed up on her computer screen. She double-clicked on her intray and saw that it was Rita. Frankie smiled. Because of the eight-hour time difference between London and Los Angeles, she often e-mailed Frankie in the middle of the night.
Happy birthday! I know it’s not until Friday, but I thought I’d get the congratulations in early. Hope everything’s OK – still loved-up with Hugh and the new job. Guess what? I think I’ve fallen in love with my acting coach. Before you say it, I know what you’re thinking. What happened to Kurt, the valet parker? Turns out he was married. What is it with me and married men? Anyway, Randy’s much nicer. And he definitely lives up to his name!!!!! As for my name, it’s still not in lights, but I’ve got an audition next week. Fingers crossed. Meanwhile I’m ‘resting’ – actress speak for only working on my tan. Would you believe it’s October and it’s 80 degrees! You don’t know what you’re missing. Randy’s taking me to the opening of some new bar on Sunset tonight. I can’t wait, you know how much I love star-spotting! Oh, blimey, that’s him at the door now. Better go. Haven’t finished putting the slap on yet. Love yer lots and lots and lots and wish you were here . . .
Frankie grinned to herself. Despite being complete opposites – Frankie had a steady job, a steady boyfriend and a wardrobe full of Next suits and Jigsaw jumpers; Rita juggled temping with acting auditions, had flings with married men and an overflowing wardrobe of multicoloured Lycra and Top Shop accessories – for six fun-filled, vodka and cranberry-drinking, EastEnders-watching years they’d been best mates and flatmates. But when a number 27 bus smashed into Rita’s Mini, causing a broken wrist, whiplash and a ‘disfiguring’ i.e. barely noticeable gash on her forehead, she received a substantial insurance payout from Westminster Council – and everything changed.
Giving it a lot of careful consideration – an evening spent chatting to Frankie over a bottle of white wine and a packet of Benson & Hedges at the Prince Bonaparte – Rita made the decision about what to do with her unexpected windfall. At thirty-one she realised a career at Manpower, a few panto roles, a sanitary towel commercial and a walk-on part in The Bill were never going to make her rich or famous. So, ignoring the advice of Frankie, who did the sensible-friend bit and suggested a savings account with the high-street building society, she packed in her day job, packed up her belongings and, with a dream in her heart and fifteen grand in her wallet, bought a ticket to LA and moved, lock, stock and two bursting suitcases, to Hollywood. Rita had never been one to do things by halves.
Frankie clicked on reply.
Have I got news for you . . . She typed hurriedly, keeping an eye out for the reappearance of Audrey, who had a habit of sneaking up behind her. I think Hugh’s going to . . .
Her computer screen suddenly went blank. Frankie wrinkled up her forehead. What was going on? She pushed on/off several times, but nothing. Just a black, empty screen. Deliberating whether or not to ring one of the nice, nerdy blokes from IT, she swivelled round in her chair, only to see everybody else in the office fiddling impatiently with their computers.
‘What’s going on?’ grumbled Audrey, her mouth full of almond croissant. ‘What’s wrong with these bloody machines?’ She gave her monitor a few hearty thumps with her fist.
‘The photocopier isn’t working either,’ whimpered Lorraine, the teenage work experience girl, who, suddenly realising she’d spoken out loud for the first time, looked mortified and went the colour of Audrey’s trousersuit.
‘There must be something wrong with the central system,’ know-it-all Becka, the stick-thin fashion stylist, said, putting down her fruit salad. ‘Where’s Simon?’
Simon Barnet was the managing editor and owner of Lifestyle. An ex-hairdresser from Essex, he’d cut his publishing teeth on several popular hair magazines before venturing into the glossy women’s market, and he seemed to spend most of the time in his office, fiddling with his feather cut and rubbing aromatherapy oils into his pulse points. Nobody ever saw him, unless he was going out on appointments, when he’d shimmy through the office in his pastel-coloured jackets and pleated trousers, leaving behind a whiff of vanilla essence.
‘I’m here.’ Simon made an unexpected appearance from his office. He looked serious. Gone was the pistachio Miami Vice suit; instead he was wearing navy-blue pinstripes. And he hadn’t even pushed the sleeves up round his elbows. Something was wrong.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’ He fiddled nervously with his gold identity bracelet.
‘Is it the computer system? The bloody thing’s just died on us,’ interrupted Audrey, tutting loudly and shoving her glasses up her nose with a podgy finger.
‘I’m afraid it’s more than just the computers . . .’ Simon cleared his throat and looked nervously at the floor. ‘I’ve just had a meeting with my bank manager and . . . Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but they’ve called in my loan.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Frankie quietly, feeling a knot beginning to grow in her stomach.
He paused for a moment and swallowed slowly. ‘It means that I’ve just lost my business. And you’ve just lost your jobs.’
Silence. Deadly silence. It seemed to go on for ever, until the work experience girl dropped a pile of envelopes, sending them scattering on to the floor.
It brought Audrey back to her senses. ‘What do you mean? We’re in the middle of an issue.’ She picked up one of the wire trays on her desk that was overflowing with unfinished feature pages and began waving it defiantly around in the air. ‘We can’t just stop.’
A few members of staff murmured their agreement.
Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘We don’t have any choice. I’ve run out of money. Everything’s rented . . . I can’t pay the bills, so they want it all back.’
As he stopped speaking, Frankie suddenly noticed a bald-headed bloke in an orange boilersuit emblazoned with the words jessops removals appear from Simon’s office. He was carrying the central computer.
The scene that followed would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. Audrey ran around like a headless chicken, protesting frantically and playing tug-of-war with the removal men over bits of furniture, while Simon sat cross-legged on the floor – his leather chair having been taken from underneath him – puffing furiously on Menthol cigarettes and doing some kind of meditational chant.
Frankie didn’t do anything. She just stood and stared, unable to take on board what was happening. She’d just lost her job. Gone. Disappeared. Taken away, along with the office furniture. She’d been made redundant! She flinched at the words. They sounded so alien to her. Being made redundant was something that happened to other people – coal miners and car manufacturers, middle-aged men who lived up north. Not twenty-something, university-educated women who worked in publishing and lived in west London. For years she’d paid no attention to newsreaders going on about unemployment figures. She should have done. She’d just become one of them.
In a daze she started emptying the drawers of her desk, throwing away out-of-date Cuppa Soups, a pair of unflattering flesh-coloured tights, a mouldy old packet of Lockets. She’d been trying for a job like this for ages and now she’d got it it was being taken away from her. What now? Temping? The dole? She’d been used to mornings writing features, lunchtimes shopping on Oxford Street, afternoons sharing office gossip and using the phone to make long-distance calls to her family and friends. Now what did she have to look forward to? Mornings with terrible TV talkshows, lunchtimes holed up in the flat with only a plate of beans on toast for company, afternoons scouring the job ads, trying to convince herself that insurance telesales might be rather fun. Picking up a couple of A4 files, she put them with the rest of her stuff. There wasn’t much. It was depressing to realise she could fit her career into one cardboard bo
x.
She said a few lame goodbyes. Nobody knew what to say, not even Audrey, who for the first time in her life opened her mouth to find no words came out. Picking up her things, she went into the corridor to wait for the lift. It arrived carrying two permed secretaries from the solicitor’s firm on the seventh floor, who, as soon as they saw Frankie and her cardboard box, stopped gossiping about the rumoured redundancies at Lifestyle magazine and fell into an embarrassed silence. The atmosphere was a killer. Trying to avoid their pitying stares, Frankie stared fixedly at the stained nylon carpet, wishing the lift would get a bloody move on. It didn’t. Instead it took it upon itself to stop at every floor and wait for a few minutes, opening and closing its doors for no apparent reason.
It was at the third floor when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the edge of a photograph poking out from underneath the files in her box. Pulling it out, she saw it was a photo of her and Hugh, who was looking sexy in a dinner jacket, his bow tie hanging loosely around his neck. It had been taken last year at his work’s Christmas party and they had their arms around each other, smiling drunkenly into the lens. God, what on earth was she wearing? It was a ruffled, purple satin Gone With the Wind number from Laura Ashley – a desperate I’ve-got-nothing-to-wear panic buy that she’d regretted before the ink had even dried on the three-hundred-quid cheque. In her frenzied delirium, the shop assistant had managed to persuade her she looked like a seductive Scarlett O’Hara, but in the full-length mirror at home she’d discovered the awful truth: she looked like someone’s bridesmaid. Luckily Hugh had come to the rescue by saying he’d always had a thing about bridesmaids and kissed her reassuringly.
Smiling as she remembered, Frankie suddenly felt a wave of relief. Thank God she had Hugh. Losing her job was a shock, but Hugh would soften the blow. He was someone she could rely on, someone whose shoulder she could cry on, someone who would put his arms around her and tell her how much he loved her – P45 or not.
The lift finally reached the ground floor and, with a ping, the sliding doors opened. Without a backwards glance, Frankie strode across the carpeted lobby, past the uniformed porters and out through the revolving doors. She suddenly found herself outside in the cold, not sure which direction to take. She paused, and it was only then that she realised that the knot she’d had in her stomach had unravelled and disappeared. A sharp gust of wind tugged impatiently at her coat and, wrapping it tightly around her, she set off through the crowded streets of Soho. She didn’t have a job, but she had Hugh and everything would be OK.
4
Frankie turned on the hot tap and emptied into the bath a mixture of all the fiddly trial-size Body Shop bottles of raspberry jam gel, white musk lotion and spearmint goo she’d amassed over the last ten years and kept in a dusty wicker basket on top of the bathroom cabinet. She’d once read that hot baths were a beauty no-no, something about how they gave you cellulite, broken veins and sluggish circulation – but what didn’t? Coffee was enemy number one, alcohol was just as bad, and as for sunbathing and smoking . . . they were beauty suicide. Easing herself into the bathtub, she watched her legs turning a steamy scarlet and took a sip from her glass of ice-cold Chardonnay. Following all that health and beauty advice meant drinking gallons of water, slapping on SPF50 and being wrapped in cold, slimy seaweed twice a week. She knew which she preferred. Taking another mouthful of wine, Frankie lay her head back on a pillow of wet froth and poached herself in a medley of scented bubbles.
She’d been unemployed for four days, one of which she’d spent in the Benefits office filling in dozens of colour-coded forms and waiting in a maze of queues, before being told by Brenda in Claims that it would take at least six weeks before she received her ‘jobseekers’ allowance’ which would just about cover a Friday night out. Depressed, she’d gone home and spent the rest of the week outrageously embellishing her CV, floundering nervously through typing speed tests at intimidatingly trendy media temping agencies, and buying lots of beaded things on her credit card at Accessorize to try and cheer herself up and convince herself this was just a hiccup in an otherwise flourishing journalistic career.
Hugh’s reaction to her redundancy hadn’t exactly buoyed up her sunken spirits either. Instead of putting his arms around her and telling her not to worry, he’d gone all pale and twitchy and started talking about bills, the rent and the price of Whiskas cat food. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. After trying to put on a brave face all day, she’d been hoping for love and affection. Not a financial lecture on how she was going to have to tighten her belt, beaded or otherwise.
But today was her birthday, and she didn’t have to think about tightening belts, or saving money, or any of the other depressing stuff that came with not having a job. It was her twenty-ninth birthday and, unemployed or not, she was going to enjoy herself. She’d slept in decadently late. Hugh had already left by the time she’d woken up, but there was a card and a note telling her to be ready for seven. She didn’t know where he was taking her, but last year it had been a wonderfully expensive French restaurant in the West End. She’d forgiven him for being such a grumpy sod the last couple of days. After all, he was probably worried about their financial situation, what with a wedding to pay for.
She felt a guilty pang about the new Karen Millen outfit she’d bought that morning, but it was just that, a pang, and it was swiftly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of excitement. Tonight was the night. The proposal. She closed her eyes and surrendered to her imagination. Would he get down on one knee? Hugh was a sucker for tradition, but surely he wouldn’t go that far. Would he? Her stomach fluttered excitedly as she tried to imagine how she’d react. Would she pretend to be surprised, or would she come clean and confess to finding the receipt for the ring? And talking of rings, what would it be like? An in-yer-face diamond, a sophisticated cluster of rubies, a traditional solitaire? Would the band be 24-carat gold, white gold or platinum? A million thoughts whirled endlessly around in her head like confetti and, relishing every one, she poured herself a top-up, sank deliciously back into the bubbles and hummed happily along to the sounds of Abba wafting from the stereo in the living room.
Her daydreams were interrupted by the sound of a key in the latch. It was Hugh, home from work. She heard the door open and slam shut behind him, the heavy thud of his briefcase on the floor, the jangle of keys thrown on to the table. He turned off her CD and switched on the radio.
‘Frankie?’ He sounded grumpy.
She hesitated. ‘I’m in the bathroom.’ She hid her wine glass under the bubbles. She didn’t want him thinking she was drinking already.
Footsteps. The door opened. ‘I hope you’re not going to be in there for ages. The cab’s booked for seven.’ He walked over to the mirror, wiped away the steam and ran his fingers impatiently through his hair.
‘Don’t I even get a kiss?’ She puckered her lips in a petulant, playful pout, ignoring his bad mood.
‘Sorry, I’ve just got a few things on my mind.’ Avoiding her lips, he brushed the side of her face with his mouth, barely touching the perspiration on her skin. ‘Did you like my card?’ he asked, changing the subject. Loosening his tie, he took it off and threw it over the towel rail.
‘Yep, it was lovely.’
Frankie loved receiving cards from Hugh, though she couldn’t help wishing he’d written something a bit more romantic this time than his usual ‘Lots of love Hugh’ and a smiley heart face. He drew one whenever he gave her a card. At first she’d thought it was a cute, couply gesture, but then she noticed he did it on everyone else’s birthday cards too.
She leaned forward, resting her head on her soapy knees, a damp curl falling across her forehead. ‘Hugh, where are we going tonight?’
Opening his mouth, Hugh started flossing his teeth, tipping his head backwards and forwards as he moved between each molar, flicking out bits of leftover tuna sandwich from lunchtime. Frankie watched him. Hugh was obsessive about his appearance. Always plucking, shaving, tweezing,
brushing, he spent longer in the bathroom than anyone she’d ever met.
‘Hugh . . . did you hear me?’
Gargling with mouthwash, he sloshed it from side to side, and spat the blue liquid out into the sink. ‘Yes, I heard you. And no, I’m not telling you. It’s a surprise. Wait and see.’ Wiping his mouth on a towel, he flashed a smile at himself in the mirror and, pleased with his reflection, marched out of the bathroom.
Wait and see. Frankie grinned to herself and, wiping the froth off the rim of her wine glass, drained its contents in one go.
‘You can’t look yet. Two more minutes and we’ll be there.’
Hugh sat in the back of the cab barking directions to the taxi driver and covering Frankie’s eyes with the palm of his hand. Frankie leaned back against the PVC seats, the floor heaters warming her bare legs, and wondered where they were going. At first she’d tried to work out if they were heading towards Soho, Chelsea or Notting Hill, but orienteering had never been her strong point and after a couple of minutes of turning left and then right she’d become totally confused and given up.
Suddenly the cab swerved and, braking hard, screeched to a standstill.
‘We’re here. I’ll go first. Keep your eyes closed.’
Hugh opened the door and she could hear him paying the driver. Frankie pulled a face. Hugh could be so bossy sometimes, she thought, grasping his hand and stepping tentatively out of the cab. The air felt cold and damp and she shivered in her high heels. Stumbling slightly, she leaned on Hugh, who led her briskly up the concrete path. Then she heard the sound of a door being opened. Suddenly she experienced a jumble of warmth, light and noise.