“Of course it was,” I said. “But isn’t this great publicity? It’s worth about fifty grand, in terms of the space.”
Barri leaned towards me, so I got a sickening waft of his aftershave, and could see the careful powdering-in of the gaps in his eyebrows. “We’re upmarket, Ellie. Up-fucking-market. That means Vogue, or Tatler, or Harpers, or Elle at a push. We associate our brand with high-end titles and high-end titles only. Now what I want you to do is stop smearing our image all over the gutter press, only send out releases that have been signed off by me personally, and only send them to approved contacts in approved media – I’ll get Torquil to compile a spreadsheet and talk you through it. Now go back to your desk and start making calls to our approved journalists asking them if they are free to attend our polo event in May. You’ll report in to Daisy on that one. Clear?”
If Ruth or Duncan had asked me to do something so ridiculously counterproductive, I’d have looked at them and gone, “What?” and we’d have argued the toss until either they came round to my point of view or I understood the method in their madness. But I wasn’t sure it would work that way with Barri. To buy myself some time, I carefully wrote on my notebook, “Vogue, Tatler, Harpers” then, in brackets, “(Elle).” Then, “Polo.”
Then I said, in what I hoped was a calm and reasonable tone, “But, Barri, I really feel that…”
“No, Ellie.” He held his tiny, manicured hand up in front of my face. “Remember this. The Brand is sacred. We cannot allow our individual egos to interfere with The Brand. And another point. There’s a very wise thing I often find myself telling my girlies when they first come on board and do something a little bit off-message, and I feel you might benefit from bearing it in mind.”
He had a sickly sweet smile on his face. I bit back my rage and tried to look attentive, and picked up my pen.
“Ellie,” he said, “hear this: there is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’.”
I looked down at my notebook, and carefully wrote, “There is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’.” I looked up at him, smiled nicely and said, “Thanks, Barri, I’ll remember that.” And, slowly and clearly underneath, I wrote, “But there is a ‘U’ in ‘Cunt’.” Then I got up, taking the plate of pastries with me, and went to the kitchen and ate the lot, then was sick and cried in the ladies’.
When I’d finished crying and splashed cold water on my face (why does one bother doing this? It makes no difference at all, except that instead of looking puffy-eyed and blotchy, you look puffy-eyed and blotchy with wet hair), I went back to my desk, attracting various sympathetic and curious looks from my colleagues. When Piper saw me she discreetly slipped a pack of witch hazel eye pads over to me, and then made me a cup of tea, bless her, which of course made me cry again.
I sat hiding behind my monitor, waiting for the lump in my throat to subside and my eyes to stop burning. I was smarting with hurt and injustice, and when Peter sent me a direct message on Facebook at lunchtime asking how my day was going, I couldn’t resist pouring out the whole story to him.
“He sounds like a total dick!” Peter typed, loyally.
“He is,” I said, beginning to feel a bit better, the way you do when you’ve offloaded on someone who you feel is well and truly on your side.
“Want me to send the boys round?” said Peter.
“No,” I said. “Barri v gay, would love that.”
“I see,” said Peter. There was a pause, then he said, “Want me to hack into his Grindr profile and edit his personal info to say he is short and fat?”
I giggled in spite of myself. “Good idea,” I typed, “Except he is actually short and fat.”
“Okay,” Peter replied, “in that case we need a better plan. How about…” there was a pause, then I saw him start typing again. “I take you out for cocktails and dinner tonight to cheer you up? Will you feel a bit better after that?”
I thought how lovely he was, and wished I wasn’t having increasingly grave misgivings about our relationship – if you could even call it that after two shags (three if you counted round two on Sunday). “It’s working already,” I typed.
I spent the rest of the day on the phone to Daisy’s press contact lists, trying to persuade them that what they really wanted to be doing on a Saturday in May was not enjoying time with their families, mowing the lawn, spending the day in bed with their partners, catching up on work, going to Tesco, or any of the billion other things that normal people do with their weekends, but attending Barri’s ‘star-studded’ polo day, and then writing about it. Needless to say, a lot of them said, “Let me get back to you,” and I knew they never would, and I’d have to chase them and chase them and they would end up automatically ignoring my calls and deleting my emails, which would make my job a lot harder when I was trying to get in touch about a story they might actually want to use.
So by the time five thirty came, I had well and truly had enough, and I shut down my computer and picked up my bag and walked out, even though there were only three names on the list left to call and I could easily have got through them before I left. I went to Selfridges, where I found a gorgeous black lace top to go with the grey pencil skirt I’d worn to work (even with my staff discount, I wasn’t going to give Black & White and by extension Barri a penny of my hard-earned salary that day), and impulse-bought a cute little T-shirt with a bee on it for Pers and a new Dior nail polish for Rose. Then I put on some red lipstick and went to meet Peter at the Connaught.
Within minutes of walking into the bar, I could feel my shitty day fading into the background. The room was so glamorous and fabulous, I felt pretty fabulous myself in my new top and flattering skirt and shiny lipstick, and Peter let me bitch about my horrible day and made me laugh and bought me a proper grown-up martini with an olive in it. I sipped my drink and looked at his tanned skin and smiley eyes and long legs and all the rest, and tried to feel lucky to be going out with him. But no matter how hard I pushed the part of me that was saying, “If only it were Oliver here, not Peter,” deep down inside myself, I couldn’t stop hearing it.
I know a lot of men who subscribe to the ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’ school of thought, and believe that every compliment you give a girl should be sort of countered with a dismissive comment; who’ll check out other women in the room on the basis that it’s going to make you more anxious to please them; who’ll try not to let on that they like you lest you fail to like them back enough and bruise their poor, sorry egos. Peter, bless him, wasn’t like that. All through that evening, he told me again and again how beautiful I looked, he laughed at my jokes, he reassured me that everything at work would work out fine, and even if it didn’t, it didn’t matter because someone as brilliant as I was would find another job just like that, recession or no recession. He bought us another cocktail and dinner in a posh bistro that had loads of vegetarian options on the menu, and by the time we’d finished and he’d insisted on paying the bill and found a taxi with impressive speed and skill, I was feeling so grateful for his niceness, and of course a bit pissed, so I asked him to come back to the flat.
After I’d fumbled my keys out of my bag and opened the front door, Peter lifted me up in his arms and carried me up the stairs to the flat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished that someone would do that to me, but to be totally honest when Peter did it I realised that, although romantic, it is rather over-rated. My head bashed against the ceiling light bulb, he almost tripped over my handbag, and I was worried that he was going to put his back out. So it was a bit of a relief when we got inside and collapsed on the sofa. Peter cupped his hands over my breasts in my new black lace top. “God, you’re sexy,” he breathed, and I closed my eyes and kissed him again.
“You, too,” I lied.
We pulled off our clothes, and I was lying back against the sofa cushions, Peter kissing the inside of my thighs, moving his mouth gradually upwards, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. “Shit!” I pushed him away. “Quick, into my bedroom. Rose is home.” We grabbed
our clothes off the floor – or most of them, anyway; I found my bra draped over the telly the next day, God only knows how it got there – and legged it into the bedroom, slamming the door behind us just as I heard Rose’s key in the lock, and her and Oliver’s voices as they entered the flat. I heard Rose say, just as she had the first night I met Oliver, “Whisky, Ollie?” but this time he said no thanks, he was rather tired and would just as soon go straight to bed.
Peter and I were lying on my duvet, giggling at the ridiculousness of the situation. “Come here,” he whispered. “I’m not going to be put off my stroke just because your little sister’s home. I might even like the idea.”
I pushed him gently away. It was no good, I realised – I couldn’t have sex with him, especially not with Rose and Oliver in the next room. It made me feel all knotted up and a bit guilty, as if I was cheating on Oliver by sleeping with Peter, and somehow deceiving Peter too. The idea made me curl in on myself, away from Peter, and I turned over and drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“I can’t,” I whispered to Peter.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” he said, and I said, “Shhh,” but neither of us laughed.
“I just can’t,” I said softly, “not while Rose and Oliver are next door.”
“But you must have done before.” Peter looked baffled and annoyed.
Well, of course I’d had sex any number of times with Rose asleep – or awake, I have no idea and don’t really care – in her bedroom. But I couldn’t say that to Peter, so I just said again, “Pete, I can’t. I’m sorry. Next time we’ll go back to yours and…”
But Peter was already getting up off the bed and pulling his clothes on. “I think I’ll go back to mine now, actually,” he said, rather huffily, “And please don’t call me Pete,” and of course I said, “Go, then, Pete,” and that was it – our evening together was well and truly spoiled. I got under the duvet and lay there, numb and silent, while Peter finished putting his clothes on and checked his pockets for keys, mobile and so on.
Then he said, “I’ll ring you,” and walked out.
I turned off the light and lay in the darkness with my eyes closed. It took me a little while to realise that I was straining to hear any sounds coming from the rest of the flat. I thought I could hear the murmur of voices but I wasn’t sure. Then, very clearly, came the sound of Rose’s bedroom door opening and closing, and then the front door slamming again, considerably harder than it had done when Peter had left.
Puzzled, I got up – I needed to clean my teeth and take my make-up off anyway, I told myself – and walked downstairs to the living room. Rose was on the sofa, her feet curled up underneath her. She was wearing one of the pretty lace camisole and knickers sets she sleeps in, and she was crying.
“Rose?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“Oliver’s gone,” she said. “He didn’t want us to have sex and when I tried to talk about it he walked out.”
I sat down next to her, suddenly wanting to laugh. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said. “Pete – Peter’s just stormed out into the night in a massive strop because I wouldn’t have sex with him.”
Rose looked at me and I looked back at her, and I put my arms around her and felt her delicate shoulder blades under my hands as I have done countless times over the years when I’ve hugged and comforted my sister while she’s cried, and her hair tickled my nose the way it always has, and a tear trickled down her cheek and into my ear, and I shook my head to get rid of it and met her eyes, and we both started to giggle helplessly. We ended up tangled together on the sofa, laughing so much we couldn’t stand up, until eventually I calmed down enough to make us a pot of tea and Rose found a box of chocolates one of her admirers had given her, and we had a bit of a midnight feast, and for a while it felt as if we didn’t need anyone else as long as we had each other.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rose held her long hair in a bundle on top of her head while I pulled the zip up her back, and then let it fall. We stood next to each other in front of the mirror. She was wearing a metallic silver bandage dress, strappy at the top and coming about halfway down her thighs, and on just about anyone else it would have looked tarty and OTT, but Rose was so slim and delicate – even slimmer than usual, I noticed – and her makeup was so subtle, she looked elegant and perfect. I’d borrowed a plain black shift dress from her, and was feeling decidedly smug because I’d never been able to fit into any of Rose’s clothes before, but now I could, and I looked pretty good myself.
“Not bad,” I said.
“I think we’ll do,” said Rose, and we picked up our handbags and went downstairs to ring for a taxi.
I don’t know what I’d expected Oliver’s birthday dinner to be like – when Rose had explained that it was going to be champagne followed by dinner at an Italian restaurant I suppose part of me expected it to be a bunch of mates meeting at a bar somewhere before going on to Pizza Express for some food, like my friends’ birthday parties generally are. But then Rose had explained this was an Italian restaurant run by a celebrity chef, with a plate of risotto setting you back forty quid, because it came with shaved white truffles (I checked out the menu online), and all the women would be wearing designer frocks, and Rose had bought Oliver a painting (a painting! My mates were lucky if their girlfriends bought them a bottle of wine and a DVD), so I dashed out and bought him a present too, spending ages trying to choose between dozens of pairs of almost identical, equally expensive pairs of cufflinks. Rose and I had taken two hours to get ready, and she had that nervous, fluttery look about her that made me suspect she was hoping for great things to come of the evening. While we waited for our taxi she changed her shoes from black stilt heels (“I always think black makes you look like you’ve only got one pair of shoes in the world,” she said) to red stilettos, but then those got rejected also (“Too obvious,”) in favour of a pair of silver sandals, until she decided they didn’t work either (“Too matchy-matchy,”) and she went back to the black, which of course had been the right choice all along, and I sat and waited not very patiently while she faffed about. I’d texted Peter the day before, after three days’ silence from both of us following our row, and apologised for behaving weirdly, and checked that he was still coming. I was genuinely sorry we’d had a row and I felt bad about hurting him, but also part of me, the shallow, shameful part I’d rather forgetten existed, wanted Oliver to see me with a good looking, suitably smitten boyfriend in tow. So I texted Peter again to make sure that he knew the address and tell him we were going to be late, and at last, when the cab had been waiting almost ten minutes and I was fretting that the driver would get fed up and leave, Rose was ready.
There was something about Rose that evening, I thought as we scrambled into the back of the taxi. She’d lost weight, as I’d noticed when I zipped her into her dress; her slenderness was bordering on fragility, I was worried that she hadn’t been eating properly. But she was sparkling with nervous excitement, almost manic with it, opening her bag and checking her face in her compact mirror, applying fresh lipgloss, fiddling with her hair. I wondered what Oliver had done to crack the veneer of indifference that Rose had so carefully preserved over the past few weeks.
“So who else is going to be there tonight?” I asked.
“Well, Ollie, obviously,” Rose said, “and us, and Peter, and Ollie’s friend Algy from work, and some other colleagues of his, and various art people. Simon and Khalid. Jamie Cunningham.”
“Who’s he?” I asked. The name was vaguely familiar.
“Honestly, Ellie, do keep up.” Rose smiled. “He’s an artist. Ollie bought a couple of his paintings recently, and we’ve got one in the flat – the little drawing on the landing?”
I’m not like Rose – I don’t mind art, but I don’t particularly notice it either, so I had to close my eyes and mentally transport myself back home so I could picture what she meant. It was a small charcoal sketch of a cat, and I liked it becau
se it reminded me of Winston, Ben’s black and white moggie, and every time I looked at it I thought of Ben and that made me happy. I hadn’t been looking at it much recently, though.
“Cool,” I said. “Is he nice?”
“He’s all right,” Rose said with careful indifference. “A bit shy. He keeps saying he wants to paint me. I think he’ll be out of his depth with Oliver’s crowd.”
I thought, but didn’t say, that I was likely to be out of my depth with Oliver’s crowd too, and I was really glad that at least Peter would be there, and he’d talk to me even if none of the bankers and art people did. I thought fleetingly how nice it would be if, instead of being on my way to a smart restaurant where I’d have to be appear my sparkling best and talk to strangers without being gauche and shy, and not embarrass Rose, and impress Oliver, I was on my way to meet Ben or Claire for a pizza. But I swallowed the knot of trepidation in my throat, and said to Rose, “Are you sure I look okay?”
“You look amazing, Ellie,” she said. “You always do.” But she was anxiously inspecting her own face yet again, so I wasn’t sure I could believe her.
“Seymour Street, madam,” said the cab driver, and we paid and piled out.
The entrance to the restaurant was almost blocked by a crowd of about fifteen men in jeans and boots and padded jackets, and I thought how odd it was that a group of homeless people would congregate outside an expensive restaurant in Mayfair, and then I noticed that they were festooned with cameras, most bearing long lenses that would probably cost more than our entire dinner.
“Smile!” Rose hissed, as a fusillade of flashbulbs exploded in our faces.
I smiled determinedly, and fought the urge to hoik up my bra strap, which was slipping down my left shoulder, and we made our way to the entrance, looking a lot more poised than I felt.
It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend Page 17
