Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [37]
To keep Jack off the subject of women, Kelvin asked, ‘How’s the latest ruckus with the unions at the television station?’
‘Sorted,’ Jack growled. ‘Until the next time.’
‘Jayzus, rather you than me.’ Kelvin knew that Jack was constantly walking a tightrope between the demands of management, the demands of the unions and the demands of the advertisers. No wonder he was always stressed.
‘And viewing figures are up,’ Gerry said.
‘Are they?’ Kelvin exclaimed, not terribly interested. ‘Fair fucks to you, Jack.’ He turned to Gerry. ‘It’s your round. Buy our glorious leader a drink.’
Cars, Kelvin decided. That’s what they’d talk about next.
Lisa was the last one out of the office on Friday evening. The streets were thronged and the setting sun was dazzling. Picking her way through the good-humoured revellers spilling out of pubs on to the streets of Temple Bar, she headed determinedly for Christchurch. But memories tugged faintly at her. Of other sunny Friday evenings. Sitting with Oliver by the river in Hammersmith, sipping cider, peaceful and free after a hard week.
Had that really been her?
She pushed Oliver away and tried to think of something else, then sticking out from under a pub table she saw a pair of white shins, criss-crossed with red lines. Trix!
At lunchtime, in honour of the blue sky and above-freezing temperature, Trix had shaved her legs in the ladies’ and bared them, bloodied but unbowed, to the world. She’d nearly cleared Ashling out of plasters.
Lisa hurried on, pretending she hadn’t seen Ashling waving to her to come and join them.
The good weather had obviously put Ashling in mind of defoliating her legs too, because Lisa had overheard her booking a lunchtime leg-wax. Oddly enough, though, she hadn’t tried to swing a freebie. It seemed she was just going to go in as a civilian and pay the going rate. But if Ashling didn’t have the nous to use – OK abuse – her position as assistant editor of a women’s magazine, it wasn’t Lisa’s job to wise her up.
There had never been much chance that Lisa would be friendly to someone as ordinary as Ashling. But because Ashling had caught her crying and treated her as though she needed tenderness, Lisa disliked her immensely.
She disliked Mercedes too, for totally different reasons. Mercedes, silent and self-possessed, rattled her.
When Ashling had hung up from booking her leg-wax, Lisa had made the whole office laugh by saying, ‘Now your turn to book one, Mercedes. Unless, of course, gorilla legs are in this summer.’
Mercedes shot Lisa a black look, so dark that Lisa held back what she’d been about to say next, which was that with her colouring, Mercedes was an ideal candidate for sideburns and a moustache.
‘Hey, it’s a joke.’ Lisa smiled bitchily at Mercedes, compounding the damage by making her seem like a bad sport as well as hairy.
To piss off both Ashling and Mercedes, Lisa was extra-sweet to Trix. It was a power-generating technique she’d used in the past – divide and conquer. Select a pet, shower them with intimacy, then suddenly abandon them in favour of another. Rotating the position engendered love and fear. Except for Jack, she was going to be nice to him all the time. He was the only thing in her life that was giving her hope. She’d discreetly studied how he responded to her and it was different to the way he treated the other female staff. He was amused by Trix, polite to Mercedes and seemed to positively dislike Ashling. But to Lisa he was respectful and solicitous. Admiring, even. And so he should be. She’d been getting up even earlier than usual this week, taking extra care with her already pampered appearance, expertly applying gossamer-thin layer after gossamer-thin layer of fake tan to give her a golden glow.
Lisa was clear-eyed about her looks. In her natural state – not that she’d been in that for a very long time – she was a pretty enough girl. But with huge amounts of effort she knew she’d upgraded herself from attractive