Читать книгу It’s A Man’s World - Polly Courtney - Страница 12

Chapter 6

‘Pig Out?’

‘Hogwarts?’

‘Pig Headed?’ Derek sniggered and scratched his goatee, clearly finding the whole thing hilarious. ‘No, hang on, how about Pigs Might Fly? Ha!’

Alexa sighed. They were nearly two hours into the weekly editorial meeting and they’d barely scratched the surface of features. For the last ten minutes, conversation had revolved around possible funny headlines for Paddy’s first editorial assignment – a trip to a Suffolk pig farm. Alexa suspected that the location had been carefully chosen by the other members of the team to ensure maximum ridicule for the junior writer.

‘How about Pig Tales!’ roared Derek, looking around the table for a response.

Marcus, the ginger-haired news editor, guffawed appropriately and Sienna let out a girly squeal, rearranging her blouse to display a little more cleavage.

Alexa cleared her throat. ‘Shall we move on? I’m sure the features team will come up with something suitably funny.’ She looked at the balding, energetic features editor who nodded back at her. ‘Neil? What else?’

Before Neil could speak, Derek leaned forward, his head cocked aggressively to one side.

‘How about,’ he said, in a slow, condescending tone, ‘we carry on going round the table, like we’ve been doing, shall we? That’s tends to be how we do it, see.’ He smiled patronisingly at her.

Alexa managed to nod, despite the burning rage inside her. There were so many things she wanted to say. They weren’t going round the table; they were going through the magazine, section by section, as was customary in such meetings. She had looked to Neil because, as features editor, he was best placed to summarise the next topic of discussion. And to use that disdainful tone in front of the entire staff was not just unprofessional; it was pathetic. Alexa remained silent.

‘Er . . . same as,’ said the scruffy young man next to Paddy, who, for reasons unknown to Alexa, was known as Biscuit. She remembered him from her first day; he’d been the one brandishing the voice-distorting megaphone. He was responsible for the jokes pages of Banter.

‘Any news on the Guy Thomas thing?’ asked someone.

Biscuit screwed up his face. ‘He’s threatening to sue.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Fucker.’

Alexa looked around, perturbed. ‘Sorry . . . could someone explain the Guy Thomas thing?’

Derek sighed, loudly. ‘Could someone please explain the Guy Thomas thing, for the benefit of our managing director,’ he said, in a tired monotone.

‘We, um, printed a “fun fact” about him in the Celebrity Banter section,’ said Biscuit, not meeting Alexa’s eye. ‘Said he had a phobia of peas. He’s claiming it’s not a phobia, it’s an aversion.’

‘He’s going to court over an aversion to peas?’ Alexa frowned.

‘He always threatens.’

Derek leaned forward again. He had the same look on his face as before.

‘Round here, you see, lawsuits come with the territory. Not a lot you can do about them.’

Alexa disagreed, but said nothing.

‘Anyway! Good news,’ said Neil, tactfully changing the subject. ‘We’ve had Ricky Lewis confirmed as our lead feature next week. Got the green light for a “Love Rat Tells All” piece.’

‘Fan-fuckin’-tastic,’ said Derek, shaking his fist in what Alexa could only interpret as a display of jubilation. There were nods of respect from all round the room. A couple of men punched the air.

Alexa said nothing. She didn’t share their enthusiasm. Ricky Lewis was a premiership footballer whose exploits, as far as she knew, included: drink-driving, speeding, cheating on his girlfriend with a teenage prostitute and then walking out on said girlfriend, who had taken him back and was five months pregnant with his child. Was it right, she wondered, to splash heroic images of such a man across the pages of a magazine aimed at impressionable young lads?

‘Love the angle, too,’ added Derek. ‘Really get him to talk – you might get some juicy tit-bits.’

‘Some sordid truths about the wife, maybe?’ someone else suggested.

Neil nodded and jotted it down. Alexa nearly spoke out, but stopped herself. She was new to this market. There was clearly a lot for her to learn about what worked and what didn’t. If this was a feature that pulled in the readers, she could hardly speak out against it.

‘Other stuff . . .’ Neil was taking the lead as Alexa had suggested, she noted, his shiny pate bobbing from side to side as he skimmed down his list. ‘Ah, yes. This week’s Ten Sexiest is nurses, which is always a winner. I think there was only one that didn’t get her baps out, so that brings the nipple count to eighteen, from just the one feature.’

Alexa joined in with the general noises of appreciation, finding herself inadvertently glancing down, checking that her own nipples were hidden away under the dark, shapeless top – one of five almost identical garments that had become her own unofficial uniform since the day one faux pas with the suit. She felt uneasy. Did they seriously use nipple count as a metric to gauge an edition’s prospects?

‘Then we’re just deciding on whether to do a men’s summer diet feature – “The Mankini Diet”, we were thinking – or just a how-to on barbecuing. Or maybe some sort of how-much-sex-do-you-need-to-burn-off-the-calories type thing.’

Alexa tuned out as various suggestions were bandied about. It amazed her, how differently things happened here compared to two floors down. At Hers, features writing was seen as an art form. It was hard enough just to think of a theme that was topical – not just appropriate for the time of year, but based on real-life global trends. On discovering that, say, a wave of fifty-somethings were taking up extreme sports, or that refugees were crossing the channel and moving in with local pensioners, the challenge would be to find a hapless features writer willing to find a fifty-something mountain-biker or a Dover landlady harbouring immigrants. At Banter, it seemed, features were plucked from thin air. Funny surnames, whacky hair-dos, tasty breakfast cereals – anything would do.

The discussion eventually ran its course and Alexa looked around hopefully. She wasn’t going to bring the meeting to a close – not with Derek sitting three seats down.

‘One more thing,’ said Neil, just as Derek started noisily bashing his papers against the desk in a conclusive manner.

‘Mmm?’

‘As usual, we’ve had a shockingly bad set of Banter Confessions in this week.’ He pulled a face. ‘I was hoping Sienna might have time to write a few?’

All eyes turned to the peroxide blonde next to Derek.

‘I reckon I could fit it in,’ she replied, with extra emphasis on her last three words.

Alexa frowned, ignoring the ripple of smutty laughter that was travelling across the room. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But shouldn’t we be getting real girls to send in their confessions?’

Derek rolled his eyes. ‘That’s the idea, yeah,’ he said. ‘But like Neil said, we don’t always get enough and most of them are too crap to print. Sienna does a much better job, don’t you, darling?’ He turned to his PA and winked.

‘Apparently I do a very good “compliant”,’ explained Sienna, smiling demurely at Alexa as the dirty laughter flared up again.

‘I just wonder . . .’ Alexa feared that she might already be testing Derek’s patience, but she wanted to get something straight. ‘I was just wondering why we don’t get more confessions in. We offer a fifty pound incentive for the best one, right?’

Derek nodded reluctantly. Marcus rolled his eyes. The pallid redheaded news editor always seemed to side with Derek. It was as though they had some secret allegiance. Alexa persevered, nonetheless.

‘We have nearly fifty thousand female readers . . . But we have trouble eliciting three decent confessions from them each week?’

‘Yeah. Look, this isn’t exactly a new problem.’ Derek rolled his eyes impatiently and exchanged a look with Marcus. ‘It’s just the way it is.’

Alexa disagreed, again, but this time she was willing to speak out. Something was ringing bells.

‘Last year,’ she said, ‘when I was working at Hers, we noticed a massive drop-off in letters coming through to our agony aunt.’ She looked around. Sienna was inspecting her nails. Derek was spinning a pen around his thumb. Marcus was trying to do the same only failing and most of the others looked half-asleep. Only Neil and Riz seemed to be listening.

‘We realised that the drop-off coincided with the new editor mugshots. Our agony aunt’s new photo made her look about twenty years younger and a lot more attractive. It was putting the readers off. They wanted to see someone they could relate to. What mugshot are you using for the confessions?’

Neil looked up immediately. ‘It’s a picture of a random lad, looking kind of curious. I’ve always thought it’s a bit seedy, actually. My wife thinks it looks like a paedophile. Maybe we should change it? We could pitch it as “send your confessions to our secretary, Sienna”.’

‘Hey,’ Sienna pouted, pushing her breasts a little further onto the desk. ‘Not if it means an ugly mugshot.’

‘It doesn’t have to be ugly.’

‘Medium-ugly,’ said Marcus, raising a ginger eyebrow.

‘Oi!’

‘Tell you what.’ Neil was obviously adept at spotting potential deviations. ‘We’ll make someone up. Give her a medium-ugly mugshot and create a fake email address for her, then we’ll see what she brings in.’

‘Hallelujah!’ cried Derek, rolling his eyes. ‘Thank God that’s sorted. Real girls confessing to a fake secretary, saving Sienna about . . . what, half an hour a week? Fucking marvellous.’

There was silence for a moment. Alexa managed to maintain some semblance of a smile and then, since Derek was preoccupied with throwing his arms about and pulling stupid expressions, she checked for any other business and dismissed the team.

The deputy editor was one of the last to leave the room.

‘Derek?’ She caught his attention as he passed. ‘Can I have a word?’

Derek stopped in his tracks, holding his position in the doorway as though deliberating over whether to heed or ignore the request. Eventually, when everyone else had returned to their desks, he turned to face Alexa.

‘I’d love to have a word with you,’ he sneered.

Alexa could feel herself tense up as she watched him return to his seat at the head of the table. They were now separated by four chairs, which seemed odd, but she didn’t comment.

‘I just wanted to say . . .’ Alexa took a breath and pushed out the words. ‘Well, I thought it would be sensible to talk about our roles and responsibilities.’

‘Our roles and responsibilities,’ he echoed mockingly.

‘Yes, let’s.’ Alexa thought for a second. She had known that this wouldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t quite anticipated the extent of Derek’s resentment towards her.

‘So, to clarify,’ she persevered. ‘In my mind, you are still the acting editor of this magazine.’

Derek snorted. ‘I don’t know what the fuck is going on in your mind. All I know is that a few weeks ago, I was demoted to deputy editor for no apparent reason and then you come along with a fancy title and start talking about rejuvenation and engagement.’

Alexa sighed. So this was what it was all about. Derek blamed Alexa for his demotion. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but at least there was no longer any room for doubt. Alexa wished she had spoken out when Peterson had told her of his plans. She ought to have foreseen this problem; she should have realised from Peterson’s cryptic mumblings that Derek Piggott would prove to be a problem. She should have advised the chief executive not to demote him. Inflated egos were far easier to deal with than crushed ones.

‘Look,’ she said, picking up on Derek’s last few words. ‘We need to get this magazine back on its feet. That’s why I’m here, and as soon as I’ve done my job, I’ll be out of your hair.’

‘Back on its feet?’ Derek stared at her, nostrils flaring. ‘Who said it wasn’t on its feet?’

Alexa was about to reply and then stopped.

He had no idea.

For the last few weeks, she had been working on the assumption that Terry Peterson had told Derek about the Americans’ plans to dispose of the title if it didn’t improve its profitability. She had assumed that he was being discreet by not mentioning it around the office. She should have thought. Derek wasn’t capable of discretion. Peterson had clearly kept him in the dark on purpose.

‘Sorry,’ she said, watching Derek tug irritably at his goatee. ‘That was melodramatic. I just mean, I’m here to try and help Banter hit its April targets. I’m not here to run the editorial side of the magazine.’

Derek just stared at her, shaking his head.

‘Primarily,’ she said when it became apparent that nothing more was forthcoming from the man, ‘I see this involving new channels for the existing content – your content. But it’s inevitable that at times, there may be a need to look at the content itself, maybe make a few changes.’

Derek continued to stare hatefully at Alexa, slowly shaking his head.

‘For that, I need your support.’ She could hear the desperation in her voice. ‘I need to feel that you trust me to get involved. I need to . . .’ Alexa faltered. This was the real reason she had called him in. She could barely bring herself to say the words. ‘I need to know that you won’t undermine me in front of the team.’

Initially, there was no reaction from Derek. Then he sat back, slowly, still looking at her through the dark slits that his eyes had become. All of a sudden, he launched himself forwards. Alexa jumped.

‘Banter,’ he spat, pressing his face right up to hers, ‘is a fucking good magazine.’

Alexa nodded mutely. He was so close she couldn’t breathe. ‘I know that,’ he said, through gritted teeth, ‘because I’ve worked here for six years. So when some bint in a suit comes in here on some crazy salary and starts telling me how to run my magazine and how to talk to my team . . .’ He sniffed loudly, angrily, only millimetres from her face, ‘then it’s hardly surprising when I don’t take too kindly to her. Is it?’

Alexa shook her head, saying nothing.

Eventually, Derek threw himself back into his chair, shaking his head and looking into the main office with a cold, hard stare.

Alexa slowly exhaled. She was about to say, tentatively, that she wasn’t trying to dictate how he ran his magazine or talked to his team, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Derek threw back his chair and stood up, marching out of the meeting room and slamming the door on his way out.

Alexa sank down in her chair and pressed her fingers against her closed eyes. She was so close to crying, but something inside her was blocking the tears. She couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t allow it. This was just part of the challenge, she told herself. This was the lion’s den Matt had warned her against. This was the all-male environment Leonie had been so worried about. She had to stay strong. She thought about Kate’s reaction to the girl in her boyfriend’s office who had let her tears show. She wasn’t going to be like that.

Alexa grabbed her notepad and stood up. She was going to go back into the office and continue to do what she was being paid to do. She was going back into the lions’ den.