Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [144]
With rising panic Lisa knocked on Jack’s door and didn’t wait for him to answer before she marched on in. ‘The shows,’ she said with an involuntary wheeze.
In surprise, Jack looked up, frozen in a hunched pose over what looked like a ton of legal documents. ‘What shows?’
‘Fashion shows. Milan, Paris. September. I will be going?’ Her pounding heart was too big for her chest.
‘Sit down,’ Jack gently invited, and instantly she knew those words were bad news.
‘I always went when I was editor of Femme. It’s important for the profile of the magazine that we have a presence there. Advertising, all that,’ came out in a garbled rush. ‘We’ll never be taken seriously if we’re not seen…’
Jack watched her, waiting for her to finish. The sympathy in his eyes told her she was wasting her time, but never say die.
A deep breath steadied her, ‘I am going?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack crooned, his voice like Savlon. ‘We don’t have the budget. Not this year, anyway. Maybe when the magazine is more on its feet, when the advertising has increased.’
‘But surely I–?’
Sadly he shook his head. ‘We haven’t the money.’
It was the pity in his look as much as his words that finally hammered the truth home. The full awful reality slammed into her. Everyone else would be there. Everyone in the whole world. And they’d notice she wasn’t, she’d be a laughing stock. Then an even more awful thought filled her head. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.
Jack was pouring oil on troubled waters like no one’s business, promising to buy syndicated pictures from any number of sources, how Colleen could still do a fantastic spread, how the readers would never know that their editor hadn’t actually been…
It was then that Lisa realized she was crying. Not angry, tantrummy tears, but pure, sweet grief that she was powerless to control. Infinite sadness heaved out of her with each sob.
It’s only a few silly fashion shows, said her head.
But she couldn’t stop crying and from nowhere came a memory, completely unrelated to anything. Of when she was about fifteen, smoking and mooching around Hemel town centre with two other girls, complaining about how shit it all was.
‘Full of spastics,’ Carol’s slick mouth had twisted with bored disgust as she surveyed the high street.
‘And pricks with shit clothes and shit lives,’ Lisa had agreed nastily.
‘Look, that’s your mum, isn’t it?’ Andrea’s blue-mascaraed eyes were catty and amused as, with a nod of her backcombed head, she’d indicated a woman across the road.
With an unpleasant lurch Lisa saw her mother, dowdy and ridiculous in her ‘best’ coat. ‘Her?’ Lisa had scorned, exhaling a long plume of smoke. ‘That’s not my mum.’
Back in Jack’s office she was saying something. Over and over, her voice muffled. ‘I’ve worked so hard,’ she insisted, into her hands. ‘I’ve worked so hard.’
She was barely aware of Jack, as he pawed around in his pockets. There was the rustle of cardboard, the click of a lighter, the acrid whiff of nicotine.
‘Can I have one?’ She lifted her tear-mottled face briefly.
‘It’s for you.’ He passed her the lit cigarette which she accepted meekly and sucked on as if it was saving her life. She smoked it in six hungry pulls.
Jack continued pawing. Passively, uninterestedly, she watched him pull a scratchcard from one pocket, a receipt from another. Finally, in his desk drawer, he found what he was looking for. A wodge of paper napkins bearing the SuperMac logo, which he pressed into her hand.
‘I wish I was the kind of man who carries a big, clean white hanky for this sort of eventuality,’ he said softly.
‘’s all right.’ She rubbed the shiny paper over her salt-tender cheeks. With each hit of nicotine, her weeping lessened, until the only sound she was making was a sporadic tearful gasp.
‘Sorry,’ she eventually said. Everything had slowed down; her heart rate, her reactions, her thoughts. She could go on sitting in this office for ever, too stupefied to be embarrassed, too sleepy to question what was happening to her.
‘Another one?’ Jack enquired as she stubbed out her cigarette. She nodded.
‘You