Confessions

by Amber Stephens

  Briony had been wrong. The new editor wasn’t just going to faff about with fonts and page orders. He’d changed everything, including the name.

  The cover was an almost naked Mimi Corvair, the model recently dropped by most of her sponsors when she was filmed having a coke-snorting threesome with the boyfriends of two other models. Her days as a cover-girl had been declared well and truly over, and now she was relegated to the name-and-shame pages only. The lads’ mags still wanted her, but for what her agent considered the wrong reasons.

  If Aidan wanted her on the cover it meant he was trying to make a mark. He was trying to kill Female Intuition and get the revamped mag back in the press. That was shocking enough.

  But it was the new title that hit Shelley hardest.

  In hot pink, and crowding the raunchy image beneath with huge letters was the new, bold title.

  VIXEN.

  Aidan paused for a moment, and then continued: ‘I can’t let this magazine die, I owe it to West End, I owe it to you and I owe it to my mother.’

  A solitary clapping from Bailey was taken up by the rest of the room, and soon even the post boys were joining in.

  But Shelley reckoned she wasn’t the only one who was totally terrified. If sex was the new direction this magazine was taking, then she wasn’t at all sure it was the right place for her. Sex wasn’t really her thing. She’d only done it a few times, and if we were talking, y’know, proper sex, she’d only done it with two different men.

  As they stood and applauded, she wasn’t thinking about the future of the magazine, or the fresh opportunities she was being presented with.

  She was trying to remember if she’d even had any actual sex at all in the last year.

  Chapter Two

  Briony and Shelley went to Dino’s for lunch, like they always did. Shelley toyed with a salad while they talked about the events of the morning. Aidan had told them that after lunch he was going to speak to each of them individually and define their new roles. Dishy as he was, Aidan was still management, and he used lots of phrases like ‘going forward’ as in, ‘We’ll roll out these new synergies, going forward,’ or, ‘We’ll revise our budgets quarterly, going forward’. The editor in Shelley wanted to point out that you could hardly do these things going backward.

  ‘Do you fancy him?’ Briony asked.

  ‘Do you?’ Shelley replied.

  ‘Yes, of course. The question is, do you?’

  ‘Why is that the question?’

  ‘Because Aidan’s obviously not interested in me, he’s interested in you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Shelley said. ‘If he looked at anyone today, it was Freya.’

  Briony snorted, ‘Only because she hung off him and kept getting in his way. Aidan Carter wouldn’t go for a girl like her anyway.’

  She chased a troublesome cherry tomato around her plate with a fork as she spoke.

  ‘Why not?’ Shelley asked, intrigued.

  Briony speared the tomato savagely, splattering juice over the plate. Then she looked up and eyed Shelley mischievously.

  ‘Because he’s the kind of man who likes a challenge.’

  Shelley shivered.

  ‘So I suppose that’s why he wouldn’t be interested in you,’ was the best comeback she could manage.

  Briony laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose so. So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Shelley replied, pouring herself more Diet Coke to avoid having to look at Briony’s smirk. ‘Anyway, how do you know so much about Aidan?’

  ‘I’ve been looking at his CV.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent, I know you googled him after the Christmas party.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting!’ Shelley snapped. ‘I did not!’

  Briony sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I mean you looked him up on Google.’

  ‘Oh … yes. Yes, I did,’ Shelley agreed. ‘I thought googling meant something else in that context.’

  Briony looked puzzled for a moment.

  ‘People these days like to write about themselves on social networking sites, you know, like Facebook or MySpace. If you want to know about someone, you just look them up. Aidan Carter’s MySpace page is very revealing.’

  ‘Really? What does it say?’

  ‘It says he’s single and looking for love. His ideal woman is his intellectual equal, someone who gives as good as she gets, in the office and the bedroom.’

  Shelley wilted.

  ‘Well that’s me out then,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not his equal in the office?’ Briony asked, smirking.

  ‘I meant the bedroom,’ Shelley replied.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Briony said. ‘You’re just out of practice.’

  ‘Fat chance of getting any of that in the near future, the hours I’m working,’ Shelley said.

  ‘You’re making excuses. Your problem is that you don’t put yourself out there enough, you never go out these days, you’ve had three dates in the last two years … how many times have you had sex in the last year?’

  ‘I had sex at my birthday party,’ Shelley retorted a bit loudly, drawing interested looks from the neighbouring tables. ‘With that accountant,’ she went on, in a hushed tone.

  Briony went back to smiling. ‘So that was a fumble in the cloakroom at Jerusalem, with a spod, two days after your 25th birthday, and when was the time before that?’

  Shelley had to think hard. Then it hit her. ‘It was at my 24th birthday party. With the guy from the video store.’

  ‘Which was a week before your actual birthday,’ Briony said. ‘So that means …’

  ‘I didn’t have sex once during my entire 25th year,’ Shelley completed, now thoroughly miserable.

  As a coup-de-grace, Briony whipped out her magazine, already open at an article titled ‘Women’s sexual peak now at 25’.

  ‘That’s not true!’ Shelley cried. ‘Everyone knows it’s 40 for women. I was looking forward to it.’

  Briony shrugged. ‘Sorry, Bird. Scientists are never wrong about these things.’

  Shelley took a mouthful of lettuce and munched thoughtfully. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the idea of sex, it was just that … well, just she had never been any good at it. As soon as she got naked with someone, she just froze up. She’d read all the magazines. She had a collection of steamy novels and she even had some videos. She knew the theory, but that almost made it worse, she knew the things she was supposed to be doing, and the fact she wasn’t doing them preyed on her mind and caused her to seize up even more. All she could think about was how awful the man must be finding it. There had even been times back at university where men had made excuses and left without finishing. Even back then Shelley had known that for a man not to finish was a pretty big deal.

  Briony interrupted her thoughts. ‘So what about Gavin?’

  Shelley stared at her, outraged. Realisation crept in.

  ‘So that’s what this is all about? You still want me to go out with Gavin?’

  ‘Actually, Shelley, I want you to stay in with Gavin and fuck him till his cock breaks off.’

  Gavin was Briony’s ex-boyfriend’s best mate. Shelley had been introduced to him at a party. She suspected that, being slightly geeky herself, she was paired off with him in the way that one might pair off the only two estate agents at a magazine launch. They’d better fancy each other cos there’s no-one else. Shelley had fumed. Didn’t they appreciate there is a geek hierarchy? Shelley was slightly geeky, Gavin on the other hand was an ubergeek. He looked the sort of person who’d designed and built a robot to cut his hair. And he was positively chubby; not that looks were everything. Gavin spent the evening following her about talking about Manga, which, as far as Shelley was concerned, were misogynistic Japanese comic books with terrible punctuation.

  Briony had apparently told him that Shelley was single and a real Manga fan.

  ‘Why did you tell him that?’ Shelley hissed at her while Gavin was off on
one of his regular toilet breaks.

  ‘I didn’t know Manga was comics,’ Briony had said in self-defence.

  ‘What did you think it was?’

  ‘I thought Manga was a Spanish film director,’ Briony replied sheepishly. ‘You’re into that kind of thing, aren’t you?’

  To make matters worse, Briony had given Gavin Shelley’s phone number and told him to call her to arrange a date. Shelley and Briony had had a falling out over this that involved ashtrays being thrown and the subject was still raw.

  Briony went on. ‘I sort of told him you might like to see him tonight.’

  ‘You did what?!’

  ‘Well you told me you weren’t busy. He said he had tickets to the Abba thing, you like musicals …’

  ‘I don’t like musicals.’

  ‘Course you do, you’re always off down to Theatre Land.’

  ‘Yes, to the theatre, I like going to the theatre. Do you ever actually listen to what I say?’

  ‘Theatre, musicals, same thing. Anyway, I thought that since you can’t seem to get your act into gear then I’d have to do it for you. I’m going to make sure you get some sex soon, and I’m not fussy about who you do it with.’

  The man at the next table was definitely interested now. He kept trying to catch Shelley’s eye. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Honestly Briony, you’re a good mate and you’ve always stood by me, and I know you’re trying to help, but not Gavin. There’s just no way. Sorry.’

  ‘Look, he fancies you. What more do you want? How many other men have asked you out lately?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Shelley groaned, head in hands. ‘You know you’re a minger when only other mingers ask you out.’

  ‘You’re not a minger, Shell,’ Briony said. ‘You’re actually very pretty and you know it, but you need to start off on mingers until you get your groove back, then you can play with the big boys again. You know, work your way up through the grades.’

  ‘You sound like a boxing coach.’

  ‘That’s how you should think of me. I’m your coach, I know what’s good for you and I’m going to make sure Gavin gets into your ring.’

  ‘Oh you’re vile, Briony. Stop it.’

  ‘It’s not as if he’s an axe-murderer,’ Briony pleaded. ‘We know him.’

  ‘Yes we know him,’ Shelley hissed, ‘and may I just remind you that it was only a couple of weeks ago that you yourself referred to Gavin as a “cartoon-reading salad-dodger”. Now let’s drop it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Briony said grabbing her bag. ‘Let’s pop to the pub after work, you can see if you feel the same way after a couple of bottles.’

  ‘I’d feel the same way after emptying Oliver Reed’s drinks cabinet,’ Shelley said as she marched past Briony and out the door.

  After lunch, they were too nervous to do any work. Shelley didn’t see much point in continuing with her column – ‘Noughties Loving’ – if everything was going to be changed around. And as far as she knew, she might end up getting the sack after all, especially after correcting Aidan’s grammar during his grand speech.

  Aidan had posted up a schedule on the notice board giving everyone a 15-minute slot for an individual meeting in his office. Shelley was about half-way down, just after Freya who in turn was straight after Briony. She and Briony sat and watched as people filed in nervously and came again a quarter-hour later, some looking happy, some looking glum but most just looking gob-smacked. Stella Stargazer, who did the horoscopes (real name Moira something), stormed back out to her desk, packed up her things in a cardboard box and stomped straight out muttering ‘disgusting’ under her breath every few seconds.

  Shelley looked on wide-eyed.

  ‘She didn’t predict that,’ Freya reflected as she passed, then giggled at her own joke. Shelley watched her go.

  ‘What a cow!’ she muttered. ‘And why is she so confident?’

  Maybe Freya did know something.

  ‘You know what else I read about him on MySpace?’ Briony said, out of the blue.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He has a back, sack and crack done every three months.’

  ‘What!’ Shelley spat. ‘He wrote that on MySpace?’

  ‘Well, as good as. His blog said he visited Jen’s Unisex Hair removal salon last week for his quarterly treatment.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily to have his … ball-hair torn out,’ Shelley protested.

  ‘What else would he go for? His nostril hair?’

  ‘Why would someone write that on a blog? Is there no personal space anymore?’

  ‘Not everyone is as prudish as you, Shell, Aidan has over two hundred friends on his space, he can’t possibly keep up with all of them all of the time, so he writes a blog letting everyone know what he’s up to. Anyway, the reason he mentioned the trip to the salon was to recount an amusing anecdote about what happened while he was there. I don’t think he’s one of those losers who keep a meticulous log of his every waking move.’

  Shelley wasn’t really listening though, she was thinking about Aidan’s sleek, well-muscled back, his rock-hard, hairless buttocks, and two shiny-smooth …

  ‘Bollocks!’ someone shouted from Aidan’s office, which happened to be situated right behind Shelley. Then the door was flung open and Maya, one of the subeditors, marched out. Then she turned around and shouted back through the open door. ‘It’s all bollocks, Aiden Carter, and I’m not having it!’

  She followed Stella Stargazer down the stairs.

  The other subs went back to checking copy. It was Briony’s turn next; Aidan popped out before she went in and said:

  ‘I’d love a coffee, anyone else want one?’

  The room went as quiet as a library. No editor had ever made even their own coffee, let alone made one for someone else. No one replied except Briony.

  ‘Yes. I would, thanks. White with three,’ she said.

  ‘Righto,’ Aidan said cheerfully and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Shelley looked at her quizzically. ‘You already have a coffee,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I know. I want to see how well made his coffee is. Is he just trying to create a good impression by offering to make a cup? Is this the first cup he’s ever made? Or does he make a habit of it? If it’s shit, we’ll know he’s a fraud. If it’s good, we know we can trust him.’

  Almost without thinking Shelley answered. ‘I trust him.’

  Shelley surfed the net absently while she waited for Freya’s interview to be finished. Briony had come out of Aidan’s office looking thoughtful, but told Shelley she wanted to think things over before talking much about it. All she’d say was that Aidan had presented her with a challenge, an assignment tougher than anything she’d done before.

  ‘We’ll talk about it tonight, yeah?’ Briony said absently, checking her phone for messages. This of course made Shelley even more nervous and she tried to do some work to take her mind off it.

  She was half-heartedly researching an idea she’d had for her column, which she was sure would never see the light of day again, at least not in its current form, but she needed to do something. Her column was supposedly about twenty-something singletons looking for love in the big city, but she was no Carrie Bradshaw and sometimes wondered if she should rename the column ‘Sad in the City’. For the past three issues she’d written pretty much the same column, how difficult it was to meet a man who wasn’t gay, hygienically-challenged, socially inept or carrying more baggage than a kleptomaniac Sherpa. She needed something new.

  She had an idea to write about the new craze supposedly sweeping the singles bars – Nude Speed Dating. The reasoning was this: why go through all the trouble of spending five minutes finding the right life partner, only to find when you got them into bed that they had an unpleasant mole somewhere intimate? Or that the blonde hair came out of a bottle? It’s the future after all, who has that kind of time?

  Shelley clicked on the site of one of the companies that organised the evenings and waited for t
he page to load up on the crappy old Mac, only to be greeted by a full-screen, hi-res image of the naked torsos of a man and a woman, each holding a drink. Shelley stared in horror at the well-toned bodies, the woman’s perky breasts and the man’s only partially flaccid penis. She stabbed with the cursor to close the image, but the computer was old, and had to think a while before attempting to perform the simplest tasks.

  The door to Aidan’s office opened behind her and Shelley turned, feeling her face turn crimson. Aidan stepped out first and turned to wait for Freya to emerge, glancing curiously at Shelley’s monitor as he did so. Freya came out afterwards, beaming and shook Aidan’s hand warmly.

  ‘Thanks so much, Aidan,’ she said ingratiatingly, ‘I really appreciate this opportunity.’ She walked back to her desk, swinging her hips and looking very much like the cat that’d got the cream.

  ‘I hate her,’ Briony whispered. Shelley nodded.

  ‘Come on then Shelley, let’s be having you,’ Aidan said. Briony snorted as she walked into Aidan’s new office and the door closed behind her.

  ‘Now we have met before, haven’t we?’ Aidan said as he ushered Shelley into a comfy chair.

  ‘You held the lift for me yesterday,’ she replied. ‘Such a gentleman.’

  Oh God, she thought, who do I think I am, Elizabeth Bennett?

  Aidan smiled, then immediately frowned, ‘Yes, but I’m sure we met before that, properly …?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shelley confirmed, ‘at the …’ and she blushed again. What was wrong with her? ‘… at the Christmas party last year.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ Aidan said beaming, ‘“Macarena”, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I … no. That was …’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ he said, looking down at the sheaf of papers in front of him. ‘Now, I’m going to cut to the chase here, we don’t have much time. Your column, though well-written and very funny, is not going to be suitable for the new look of the magazine.’