Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [134]
Morale soared briefly when freelancer Carina secured an in-depth interview with Conal Devlin, a beautiful Irish actor who was all cheekbones and stubble. Then morale plummeted when he cropped up in the July issue of Irish Tatler, telling their interviewer all about his childhood abuse – which he was supposed to have given Carina an exclusive on.
‘We’ve been scooped!’ Lisa was raging. ‘That bastard! No one treats my magazine like second best!’ Not only did the piece have to be killed, but it had the knock-on effect of the film page having to be rewritten. They’d given his new movie a glowing recommendation. ‘Slate it,’ Lisa now ordered. ‘Tell everyone it’s pants. You, Ashling, you do it.’
’But I didn’t even see the film!’
‘So?’
Any achievements were hard won. The one thing – probably the only thing, in fact – that everyone agreed on was that Lisa was a total nightmare to work for. She was very definite about what she wanted. Then three hours later, when a piece was half written, she was just as definite that she didn’t want it. Until a day later when she was adamant that she wanted it again. Pieces got slaved over, binned and cried over, reinstated, killed once more, then cut in half and stuck back in. Ashling’s lovely no-matter-what-you-want-from-your-hair article had been dropped, cropped, rewritten and reinstated so many times that she actually wept when Lisa reprieved it one more time. ‘Will you rewrite it?’ Ashling hiccuped at Mercedes. ‘If I have to look at it ever again I’ll set myself on fire.’
‘Sure. If you’ll ring that maniac Frieda Kiely about Saturday’s shoot.’
Lisa had gone ahead with her threat to reshoot most of the Frieda Kiely fashion piece.
‘Ashling, Trix and Mercedes, cancel Friday night, we’ll all be working on Saturday,’ Lisa announced. ‘We need bodies to carry the clothes, fetch coffees, that kind of thing.’
There was a shocked clamour of complaint but it didn’t do anyone any good.
‘She’s a slave-driving bitch,’ Ashling wailed that night over dinner in Mao with Marcus. ‘The biggest bully I’ve ever met in my whole life.’
‘Don’t hold back,’ Marcus urged, pouring her a glass of wine. ‘Go on, have a good old rant.’
‘Ah no.’ Ashling ran a stressed hand through psychiatric-looking hair. ‘It’s just that she’s such a pushy bitch, she doesn’t seem to care that any one of us has a life outside her precious bloody magazine. And when are we supposed to sleep? Or eat? Or wash our clothes?…’
By the time Ashling finally stopped she’d drunk most of the bottle of wine and was in much better form. ‘Just listen to me, I sound like a nutter!’ she exclaimed, her face rosy. ‘Oh don’t! I’ve had enough.’ She tried to stop Marcus pouring the last of the wine into her glass.
‘Go on,’ he insisted. ‘Get that inside you, you need to keep your strength up.’
‘Thanks. God, I feel better,’ she groaned, slumping in relief against the banquette. ‘Psychotic episode over, I’ll act normal now.’
Lingering over coffee, they speculated about the other customers. It was a game they usually played, attributing stories, indeed entire lives, to the people around them.
‘How about him?’ Marcus indicated a weather-beaten older man, wearing sandals over socks, who had just walked in.
Ashling considered thoughtfully, ‘A priest home on holidays from the missions,’ she finally concluded.
Marcus was greatly tickled. ‘Hmmm, funny girl, arncha?’ Admiration softened his voice, then he nodded across the restaurant at two young men drinking hot chocolate and eating cheesecake. ‘And what about that pair?’
Ashling wrestled with her opinion. Perhaps she shouldn’t voice it, but the wine got the upper hand and eventually she said, ‘OK, it’s probably not politically correct to say so, but I reckon they’regay’
‘Why?’
‘Because… well, lots of reasons. Straight men don’t eat together, they have pints together. And they don’t sit opposite each other, they sit side by side and refuse to make eye-contact. And the eating-cake thing – macho men are too afraid that it looks sissy. Gay men