Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [2]
‘Sit down, Lisa.’ Calvin Carter inclined his silver bullet head graciously.
Lisa sat. She smoothed back her caramel-coloured hair, showing her free honey highlights to their best advantage. Free because she kept plugging the salon in the ‘Ones to Watch’ section of the magazine.
Settling herself in the chair, she tucked her Patrick Cox-shod feet neatly around each other. The shoes were a size too small – no matter how many times she asked the Patrick Cox press office to send a size six, they always sent a five. But free Patrick Cox stilettos were free Patrick Cox stilettos. What did an unimportant detail like excruciating agony matter?
‘Thank you for coming up,’ Calvin smiled. Lisa decided she’d better smile back. Smiles were a commodity like everything else, only given in exchange for something useful, but she reckoned in this case it was worth her while. After all, it wasn’t every day that a girl was seconded to New York and made deputy editor of Manhattan magazine. So she curled her mouth and bared her pearly white teeth. (Kept that way by the year’s supply of Rembrandt toothpaste which had been donated for a reader competition, but which Lisa had thought would be more appreciated in her own bathroom.)
‘You’ve been at Femme for –’ Calvin looked at the stapled pages in front of him. ‘Four years?’
‘Four years next month,’ Lisa murmured, with an expertly judged mix of deference and confidence.
‘And you’ve been editor for nearly two years?’
‘Two wonderful years,’ Lisa confirmed, fighting back the urge to stick her fingers down her throat and gag.
‘And you’re only twenty-nine,’ Calvin marvelled. ‘Well, as you know here at Randolph Media we reward hard work.’
Lisa twinkled prettily at this patent lie. Like many companies in the Western world, Randolph Media rewarded hard work with poor pay, increasing workloads, demotions and on-a-second’s-notice redundancies.
But Lisa was different. She’d paid her dues at Femme, and made sacrifices that even she’d never intended to make: starting at seven-thirty most mornings, doing twelve, thirteen, fourteen-hour days, then going to evening press dos when she finally switched off her computer. Often she came to work on Saturdays, Sundays, even bank-holiday Mondays. The porters loathed her because it meant that whenever she wanted to come to the office one of them had to come in and open up and thereby forgo their Saturday football or their bank-holiday family outing to Brent Cross.
‘We have a vacancy at Randolph Media,’ Calvin said importantly. ‘It would be a wonderful challenge, Lisa.’
I know, she thought irritably. Just cut to the chase.
‘It will involve moving overseas, which can sometimes be a problem for one’s partner.’
‘I’m single.’ Lisa was brusque.
Barry wrinkled his forehead in surprise and thought of the tenner he’d had to hand over for someone’s wedding present, a few years before. He could have sworn it was for Lisa here, but maybe not, perhaps he wasn’t as on-the-ball as he once used to be…
‘We’re looking for an editor for a new magazine,’ Calvin went on.
A new magazine? Lisa was jolted off course. But Manhattan has been published for seventy years. While she was still grappling with the implications of that, Calvin delivered the whammy. ‘It would involve you relocating to Dublin.’
The shock set up a smothered buzzing in her head, as if her ears needed to pop. A numb, fuzzy sensation of alienation. The only reality was the sudden agony of her crumpled toes. ‘Dublin?’ she heard her muffled voice ask. Perhaps… perhaps… perhaps they meant Dublin, New York.
‘Dublin, Ireland,’ Calvin Carter said, down a long, echoey tunnel, destroying the last of her hope.
I can’t believe this is happening to me.
‘Ireland?’
‘Small wet place across the Irish sea,’ Barry offered kindly.
‘Where they drink a lot,’ Lisa said faintly.
‘And they never stop talking. That’s the place. Booming economy, huge population of young folk, market research indicates the place is ripe for a feisty new women’s magazine. And we want you to set it up for us, Lisa.’
They were looking at