The Forgotten Girl. Kerry Barrett

       Chapter 7

      I can’t lie, those first few days on Mode were a slog. I started work early and stayed late, going over page proofs, rewriting features to make them fit within our back-to-basics theme, making endless lists – and avoiding Lizzie.

      I’d expected to see Damo around but actually I’d not crossed paths with him since that first day. Once, I’d been staring out of my office window and seen him crossing the road outside, and I’d heard his laugh a few times echoing down the open-plan office from Homme, but I’d not actually spoken to him. I couldn’t decide if I was pleased or disappointed about that.

      Desperate to get everyone involved in the process of revitalising Mode, I got a big white board put up in the office and urged everyone to write ideas on it.

      ‘Anything goes,’ I trilled, putting some pens on the shelf next to it. ‘The crazier, the better. Features ideas, cover ideas, events, sponsorship plans – absolutely anything.’

      But now, a whole week after it had been put up, the board was still mostly bare. Riley had written up some ideas for future fashion shoots, but I wasn’t sure ‘SOMETHING FUNNY’ was really what Mode readers were after. I did, however, love the idea for a monthly ‘unlikely style crush’. How to recreate outfits worn by cartoon characters, people from books, old ladies … Riley had scrawled on the board.

      I picked up a pen and wrote ‘I love this!’ next to her idea, then I stared at the rest of the bare board in despair.

      ‘Come on,’ I said, under my breath, even though it was barely eight a.m. and I was alone in the office. ‘I can’t do this by myself.’

      I’d come in early to wrestle with the budgets for the next few issues, which wasn’t a fun way to start the day. The rest of the office filled up gradually, and by ten a.m. everyone was there. I left my office door open all the time but no one popped their heads round to say hello. I was still very much an outsider.

      I sent my budget outline to Lizzie, hoping she’d agree with how I’d moved the money around, and then I sat quietly for a minute, trying to pluck up the courage to go and speak to my team. I didn’t want to – how ridiculous was that?

      I picked up my phone to call Jen, then put it down again. She probably wouldn’t answer anyway, and – I thought with uncharacteristic insecurity – I couldn’t say I blamed her.

      A knock on my office doorframe made me look up. It was Emily, the intern, wobbling under the weight of a pile of magazines.

      ‘I’ve been using these for my uni research project,’ she said. ‘Thought they might be useful.’

      She lurched over to my desk and dropped the pile in front of me.

      ‘They’re the first issues of Mode,’ she said. ‘They’re amazing.’

      I looked at the issue on the top. It was from the late 1960s and had Twiggy on the cover. I felt a shiver of excitement.

      ‘Where did you get these?’ I asked Emily.

      She grinned at me.

      ‘There’s a guy called Kevin, works in the library in the basement,’ she said.

      ‘There’s a library?’ I was impressed with her knowledge.

      ‘It’s not massive, but it’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Kevin’s got a daughter about my age, I gave him some advice about something, and bob’s your uncle – he bent the rules and let me take the magazines away.’

      I was impressed. I studied Emily carefully. She had strawberry blonde hair that was twisted back and up on her head, Adele-style, and she was wearing capri pants and a fitted fifties-look blouse. She looked great and absolutely nothing like the interns I was used to, who were like one great identical mass of oversized tote bags and false eyelashes.

      She looked back at me for a moment then lowered her eyes shyly.

      ‘Just thought they might be helpful,’ she said.

      ‘They’re not just helpful,’ I said, picking up the Twiggy issue. ‘They’re life-saving.’

      She grinned again.

      ‘How long are you here for, Emily?’ I asked.

      ‘One more month,’ she said.

      I made a note on my to-do list to speak to HR about taking her on full-time, and to re-do the budget I’d just sent to Lizzie to pay for her, then smiled at her.

      ‘There are some photos in there,’ she said, gesturing to the magazines. ‘I found them inside one of the issues.’

      She leafed through the pile and pulled out an A4-size black and white glossy print.

      ‘It’s the team who worked on the very first issue,’ she said.

      I looked at the photo. There were about ten people in the shot, their arms linked. At the centre, holding a magazine, was an older woman – about fifty-ish – stylish in a boxy Chanel suit. It was mostly women and they all looked incredible. I breathed out.

      ‘Those clothes,’ I said.

      ‘I know,’ Emily said. She came round my desk and leaned over my shoulder.

      ‘That’s the first editor,’ she said, pointing to the older woman.

      I nodded.

      ‘Margi Matthews,’ I said. I’d read about her, of course. She’d come from the States and had been a real trailblazer.

      ‘And that is Suze Williams,’ Emily pointed to a young woman at one end of the picture. She had dark hair in a crop just like Twiggy’s, and she was wearing a very short, black pinafore dress over a white long-sleeved t-shirt and white tights.

      ‘No way,’ I said. Margi was the founding editor of the magazine, but it was Suze who’d made it what it was now. She’d been editor in the late seventies and had taken Mode from its cautious beginnings as a fashion mag, to one of the most controversial and sassy women’s mags in the business.

      ‘She started out as editorial assistant,’ Emily said. ‘She worked