The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [124]
Alice felt guilty over her deception, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop—not when the answers about Ella were so close. All she needed was more information about Kate Jackson; Carl was the only one who could help with that. Just a few more weeks, she told herself, then she could find the answers she craved.
***
“Tell me again why I don’t just quit.” Nadia reached forlornly for her glass of wine one night at the end of a busy week. Alice met her for drinks at a bar near the gym, skipping the virtues of a hip-hop class for the more immediate pleasures of alcohol and molten chocolate cake.
Slumping back against the dark-red leather banquette, Nadia sighed. “He did it again today: just talked right over me all the way through our client meeting. Every time I spoke up, it looked like I was being needy and, I don’t know, an attention whore.”
“Dickhead,” Alice said sympathetically. An art director at one of the smaller advertising firms, Nadia was struggling with her assigned copywriter, an arrogant asshole who reminded Alice of her own pleasant exchanges with Tyrell. “You could slip laxatives in his coffee next time?”
“Oh, I wish.” Nadia broke into a grin. She pushed her glasses farther up her nose and paused. “Although, now that you say that, I’m sure the intern he has running down for drinks would go in on that plan…”
“Do it.” Alice grinned. “Right before a big pitch. I mean, it’s not as if he contributes anything. What was that last one you told me about, for the deodorant…?”
“Oh, God, the caveman and his harem of slave girls.”
“Mmm, original.” Alice giggled. “He’s no Don Draper, that’s for sure.”
Nadia gave a flutter of her eyelashes and faked a swoon. “Don’t even talk about them in the same breath.” She took another sip of wine. “What about you? How’s the dragon lady?”
Alice made a face. “Awful.”
“Oh?”
Alice tried to phrase her reply without revealing any specifics about agenting or the office. She didn’t like to lie, but she couldn’t risk Nadia calling Grayson Wells one day to speak to Ella Nicholls, so, to her new friend—like Carl—Alice was a supremely overqualified, if underappreciated, legal assistant. “She’s gunning for one of the associates,” Alice told her instead. It was, technically, the truth. “Trying to take credit for all her work. They both were attached to…this project, but Vivienne blocked her all the way. Now it’s a success, of course—she’s saying it’s all her doing.”
“Of course,” Nadia agreed. “And you’re stuck watching it all.”
Alice nodded slowly. She’d overheard Vivienne chat with a producer, gushing about how she’d personally saved poor Kieran from a life of obscurity with her single-minded tenacity and determination. It was all very well to keep Vivienne’s associations with her clients—since Alice could see her name still carried weight in important circles—but she was getting a creeping feeling that her own efforts to relaunch Kieran and Julia’s careers might not yet earn her the respect she desired.
“That’s the problem, sometimes,” she said thoughtfully. “You can work as hard as you want, but if someone’s not willing to recognize your achievements…”
“You can’t force them.” Nadia gave Alice a rueful grin. “Want to go halves on those laxatives?”
***
They were deliberating a second slice of cake when Alice’s mobile began to ring.
“Sorry.” She reached to switch it to silent.
“No, take it,” Nadia said, getting to her feet. “I’m just heading to the loos anyway.”
“OK. Shall I order, if the waiter comes by?”
“You’re a bad influence…”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
She waited until Nadia was out of sight before hitting redial. “Hi, Jules, what’s going on?” Alice tried to catch