Bad Friends

Sally lingered in my office. ‘The truth is, Maggie, I don’t think he’ll ever really fit in. He’s just one of those slightly oddball kids, you know? Like the ones at school who had an imaginary friend they played with at breaktime.’

‘Yep, I do know. But that lot can be remorseless, we both know that.’

‘I suppose.’ She brightened. ‘You going to Bel’s tonight then?’

‘Oh my God.’ I clapped a hand to my forehead in distress. ‘I forgot to pick up my dress. She’ll kill me.’ I cast a quick look across to Charlie’s empty office. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ve blown it.’

‘Go,’ Sally urged. ‘I’ll cover for you.’

I dragged my coat on and grabbed my bag. ‘With any luck,’ I switched my computer to sleep mode, ‘Charlie’ll be too pissed to notice anyway.’

In a dim little street on the Covent Garden borders I found the shop with the fancy name that Bel had insisted I visit. The window heralded some of London’s most expensive clothes – a veritable myriad of gorgeous stuff. Minty greens and frilly pinks, gold silks and silver froth, below which crouched lethal-looking shoes with four-inch heels, poised to spring cruelly onto unsuspecting feet. It was so utterly not me – but my fate was sealed. As I hovered by the door, a size-zero girl with scary eyebrows slithered towards me, and, with disdain ill-hidden, relieved me of my polystyrene coffee-cup. ‘Can I help, madam?’ she asked, barely keeping the sneer off her face.

‘I’ve come to collect a dress Bel Whitemore has reserved for me.’ I looked around nervously, taking in the flounces, the backless and frontless, the micro-mini and the slit-to-the-thigh. ‘Lord. I do hope it’s something subtle.’

The girl swished through the chiffon, the beribboned and the barely-there to find what Bel had chosen.

‘So brave to try that colour. Red hair must be so difficult.’

Manfully I ignored the girl as I stepped into the beautiful forest-green floor-length dress, plunging at the front and cut deeply at the back. To complete the outfit she gave me stilettos by someone called Manolo Blahnik, the perfect eyebrows nearly shooting off her face in horror when I said I’d never heard of him.

‘Everyone’s wearing Blahnik,’ she chastised, forcing my feet into what seemed little more than a few skinny straps and another killer heel.

‘Sounds more like a space shuttle to me,’ I joked, but she didn’t laugh – and she only blanched a bit at the scar on my left foot.

I wobbled out anxiously through the curtains to look in the full-length mirror, staring at myself for a silent moment. When I read the price-tag, though, I nearly fainted.

‘Thanks very much for your help, but I’m afraid –’

The girl was deep in conversation with another skinny someone – a someone I recognised with a painful thud. Serena. I prepared myself to say hello, but she just gazed at me vacantly, immaculate in a long leather coat, then tightened the belt around her tiny waist and carried on her conversation. I thought I heard her mention a wedding as I slunk back into the changing-room, sinking down on the stool in the corner.

When I eventually came out again, Serena was admiring her many reflections, all clad in a pair of vertiginous snakeskin boots. How appropriate and how very unethical, I thought sourly.

I bought the dress just to prove I had as much panache as them, and then I let the door bang behind me as I strode purposefully out of the shop. Outside, the street was busy, the clamour of Covent Garden loud and vibrant – but I felt like I’d lost my mooring, like I was floating off to sea.

Somehow it took some time to get back to work.

In a show of power no doubt born from my afternoon flit, Charlie had ensured I had a stack of new stuff on my desk to sort out for Monday’s programme. I was just putting the phone down from briefing Renee when he wandered in, breathing brandy fumes at me.

‘Marvellous lunch with Alan Yentob,’ Charlie crowed, pulling a book on the Lost Gardens of Heligan from my shelf. ‘He’s wetting himself with excitement over my idea for a layman’s Panorama. Current affairs for the thicko.’

‘Really?’ I said politely. It was extremely hard to imagine Yentob in Charlie’s thrall.

‘Yes, darling.’ He perched on the edge of my desk. ‘The EasyView, I think we’ll call it. You know, I never see you as the country type.’ He flicked through the garden book indolently. ‘Cornwall’s deeply unfashionable these days, darling. So bloody far away, and always raining. Give me Dubai any time.’ Charlie shoved the book back, knocking three box-files off the other end that he didn’t bother to retrieve. ‘Going to Bel’s tonight?’

‘Um, I’m thinking about it.’ I doodled on my pad, holding my breath. ‘Are you?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, darling.’

I breathed out.

‘So sad to be losing one of our very best girls.’ Bel had long since progressed onto make-up for drama and film, but Charlie liked to think of himself as a great benefactor, responsible for everyone’s career, and Bel was always remembered fondly. ‘Don’t be late now, eh?’ He strolled off around the office to peer down some cleavages.

I was so long at my desk that all the other girls left; they’d wait for me in the bar downstairs, they said, wired with Friday night anticipation. Eventually I headed to the loo with my dress. Mid tights-change, my mobile rang. ‘Private number’ flashed up on the display.

‘Hello?’

Nothing.

‘Hello? Hello?’ I repeated irritably. ‘Is anyone there?’

Just one long, slow breath – and then the line went dead.

‘For God’s sake.’ I considered the phone in my hand for a second, then I rang Alex’s number. It went straight to voicemail. I slammed the mobile down on the side of the sink, and stood for a minute. Then I fished out my eyeliner. ‘Bloody bollocks to you, too.’

The frosted window rattled suddenly; one of the cubicle doors banged. I jumped, drawing a great kohl tick across my cheek. Immediately tense, I peered round. I was sure I’d been the last one in the office.

‘Hello?’ I hated the fact my voice wavered as I spoke.

I thought I heard the shuffle of feet. A clammy sweat broke out on my top lip. I took a deep breath and crept down the row of cubicles to the one nearest the exit. It was shut.

‘Is anyone there?’

I stared at it and then quickly pushed the door: it swung open and smacked hard against the wall. The cubicle was empty. Nervously I laughed at my overactive imagination, but I struggled into the dress as fast as I could, not caring that I couldn’t reach the zip myself. I wanted to get out of there. As I walked into the corridor, one of the fire-exit doors swung shut.

I took a deep breath. I had to retrieve my stuff from my office, which was in darkness now as I hurried across, just the ghostly flicker of light from the computer’s screensaver. As I grabbed my bag, I heard another noise.

‘Who’s there?’ I swung round, my voice sharp with fear.

Silence fell again across the darkened room. Perhaps it was one of the cleaners. Perhaps I’d imagined it.

I hurried towards the lift now – and then I heard a cough. A definite cough. I froze for a second behind the central pillar, my heart pounding. Silence fell again.

I shook my head. I was being silly. Except, if I was being silly, why had no one answered when I’d called?

And then a low voice, sullen, wheedling, slunk out across the darkness. Peering round the pillar, I noticed the crack of light under Charlie’s door. I took a deep breath and crept nearer. I could hear the mutter more clearly: a lone voice. It wasn’t Charlie – that much I knew for sure. Flattened against the wall outside the door, which was slightly ajar, I realised someone was using his phone.

‘But what’s in it for me? I need some sort of assurance,’ I heard. A pause. Then –

‘So if I do it, you’ll sort the …? Okay. And can you put that in writing?’ the voice said. Another pause. ‘No, I realise that.’

I peered through the crack in the door now. There was Joseph Blake, his legs up on the desk, the phone cord wound around his stubby finger, smug even in the gloom. His shiny face was half-lit; his eyes narrowed as he listened. Fragments of lost memory suddenly floated through my throbbing head – a sudden image of Joseph in evening dress and …

I shuddered violently. That night at the –

His voice cut through my memories and they dissolved again.

‘Yeah, of course I’ll get you good ones. The most important. For the right –’