It’s A Man’s World. Polly Courtney
chickens in China than people. At some point in the proceedings, Fenella perked up enough to work her way through a large slab of Brie, but ten minutes later was looking decidedly queasy. It was agreed, through smeary wine glasses, that the time had come to go home.
Leaning against the cold, exterior wall, Alexa watched as Matt helped Dickie ease Fenella into a cab. She lifted her hair off her shoulders, tying it into a knot and enjoying the cool night air on her face.
‘You never told me,’ said a voice, languid and loud, right next to her ear.
She sighed, turning to face Winterbottom and feeling her spirits sink.
‘Told you what?’ she asked, reluctantly. Fenella was refusing to get in the cab. Her limbs were protruding from the open door and she seemed to be yelling something about a club.
‘How much money a women’s magazine makes.’
Alexa drew a lungful of air. She knew exactly what the man was getting at. The implication was that women’s magazines generated such small revenues that they weren’t worth the bother. The implication throughout the whole evening had been that women’s magazines, women’s jobs, women’s efforts in general, were a waste of time.
The rage mixed with the wine and port in her belly and, for a brief moment, Alexa wondered whether she might throw it all up on the obnoxious man. She held it in though, glancing sideways at the cab, where Dickie and Matt were attempting to trap Fenella in a pincer movement.
‘About thirty to forty million,’ she said, pushing away from the wall and feeling instantly dizzy. She steadied herself and looked into Winterbottom’s eyes. ‘The same as the equivalent men’s magazine.’ She started to turn away, but kept her eyes fixed on his face. ‘And by the way,’ she said, ‘that’s irrespective of whether it’s run by a man or a woman.’
She glared at him for a second, watching his jowls flap with the hesitant opening and closing of his jaws, then she turned and marched into the road, where Matt was patting the roof of the cab as it pulled away.
‘Matt?’
He looked up, seemingly perplexed by the speed at which she was tottering towards him.
‘What were you going to say? Before the dinner – about your boss?’
‘Oh.’ Matt nodded apologetically, holding out his hand as another cab pulled up. ‘After you.’
Alexa stumbled inside, falling back against the seat. ‘Tell me,’ she said, feeling her eyes drop shut.
Matt slipped an arm around her shoulder and drew her towards him so that her head was on his lap. ‘I was just going to say that he’s not one for respecting women.’
Alexa managed a laugh. ‘Really?’
‘Sorry.’ Matt started stroking her hair. ‘I would’ve swapped places if there’d been time.’
Alexa let out a quiet sigh. She was exhausted and very drunk, but she recognised the feeling inside her. It felt like fire. She had made up her mind about something.
‘Matt?’ she said again.
He stopped stroking her hair for a second and looked down at her face.
‘I’m going to take the job at Banter.’
Chapter 4
Alexa stepped into the lift, trying to align her thoughts. Her hands were clammy and her legs felt weak. She wanted to swallow, but her throat was devoid of anything to swallow.
The doors started to slide shut, then juddered to a halt as the other woman in the lift thrust a limb between its jaws, calling out to a colleague in the atrium. Alexa leaned back on the reflective wall and exhaled, grateful to the woman for adding an extra few seconds to her journey.
The women’s small talk washed over her as the lift lurched upwards. Alexa stared straight ahead, struggling to focus. The adrenaline was having a strange effect on her mind – muddling up the important things, like how she would hit the revenue targets laid down by Peterson, with the small, insignificant details that ought not to be taking up space in her head, like whether her shoes made her look too tall and whether she ought to have pinned back her fringe. It was only when the two women stepped out on the fourth floor that she realised she wasn’t going anywhere.
Alexa snapped to, pressing ‘5’ and checking her makeup in the mirrored wall. The shoes definitely made her look too tall, she decided, and her light brown fringe was hanging limply over her eyes like an unkempt mane. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? She turned away from her reflection in disgust.
Stepping onto the fifth floor, Alexa turned left, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was stooping. She pulled back her shoulders and forced her legs forward, one after the other, fighting the urge to turn and flee.
She had caught glimpses of the Banter office in the past, but she had never taken much in. The life-size pin-ups on the door had rather put her off. This was her first proper sight of the place she would inhabit for the next nine months.
The office was a colourful, dirty mess. It looked like a teenage boy’s bedroom. There were piles of magazines, DVDs and clothes all over the floor and copies of Banter strewn across every surface. Lodged in the gaps between piles were random objects that included, at first glance: a water pistol, a set of elf costumes, a pyramid of baked bean cans, a giant beer mug in the shape of a naked woman and a lawnmower.
Alexa drew to a halt in the gangway that ran along the middle of the office. There was nobody there. She looked at the clock. It was only ten past eight. Her nerves had woken her at six and she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.
She felt a vibration and felt around for her phone, suddenly hoping for an email from Peterson saying he’d changed his mind and urgently needed her back on Hers. It wasn’t an email though; it was a text message from Matt.
Thinking of U. Mx
Alexa smiled, feeling a little more confident as she looked up at the fifty-inch plasma TV at the end of the office. It showed two semi-naked teenage girls, writhing around on a bed together, looking very unsure about what they were supposed to be doing. Alexa grimaced. Something had to be done about Banter TV. It was essentially a ten-minute roll of filmed photo shoots on loop, interspersed with amateur ads for cheap phone-ins that looked as though they’d been filmed in somebody’s garage. It was little wonder that Banter TV had no viewers.
Alexa scanned the five banks of desks, trying to identify her seat. It was only pin-ups, she told herself, wandering to the next bank of desks and coming face to face with a pair of giant breasts hanging from a filing cabinet door. She shuddered as the image of her mother flitted across her mind.
Alexa continued to scan the desks, wondering where Derek Piggott sat in relation to her. At Peterson’s request, she had had no contact with the deputy editor since the press release had gone out about her appointment. That was typical of how things were done at Senate: behind closed doors, with no collaboration, creating maximum potential for resentment. She didn’t even know how the deputy editor had taken the news of his effective demotion.
She jumped. Someone was clearing his throat behind her.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.’
Alexa felt her heart rate triple. She turned to find herself staring at someone who looked exactly like Amir Khan. His hair was jet black, short and spiky, his angular jaw coated in a few days’ worth of stubble and his eyes were dark, like pools of ink.
‘Um, hi.’ She collected herself together and managed some kind of smile.
He was tall, she noticed. Alexa rarely found herself looking up to meet someone’s eye.
‘Alexa?’ he said, at exactly the moment Alexa chose to say her name.
They laughed awkwardly.
‘I’m Riz,’ he said, shaking her hand with the grip of a champion boxer. ‘Sports