The Cinderella Reflex

by Buchanan, Johanna

  The panorama of the city spread out before her, the old red rooftops jostling with the newer, greyer buildings. Above her, pale stars had started to spike the darkening sky. The air was heavy with the scent of the spring flowers that were stuffed into the small balcony space – extravagant arrangements of mauve and white hyacinths, late yellow daffodils and pink tulips planted in giant terracotta pots. Tess sat down at a tiny, ornate table topped with mosaic purple tiles and sipped her wine thoughtfully. Had she imagined the chemistry between her and Jack this evening?

  By the time he came out to join her she was sure she had. He was rubbing one hand distractedly through his hair and looked a million miles away.

  “Sorry about that. Louisa’s still mixed up about that idiot Richard!” He raised his eyebrows. “I did try to tell her that her troubles wouldn’t be over simply because I bought Atlantic. I couldn’t make much sense of what she was saying on the phone right now to be honest. But ...” he stopped, as if wondering whether he should continue. Then he fixed solemn brown eyes on Tess. “Look, I’m just going to come out with this question. Have you heard anything about Richard having an affair with someone at work?”

  “No!” The instinctive response was out before Tess could think about it. She bit her lip. That was an outright lie. But on the other hand, she wasn’t one hundred per cent certain about Helene and Richard. It might just be run-of-the-mill office gossip. She twisted her hands together uncomfortably, as she remembered what Helene had said to her the day in the pub, just before she’d sacked Tess. “I know what you must think about me and Richard. What everyone thinks when they hear about us.” But that wasn’t an admission of anything, was it? Tess would need cast-iron evidence of an affair between Richard and Helene before she’d say anything that would ruin a marriage. Thankfully, Jack’s phone bleeped again, this time with a text message.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Believe me, I am not always this rude.” He scanned the message and his features darkened. “It’s Paulina. Something important has come up. I really am sorry but I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave.”

  Disappointment surged through Tess like a sudden winter shower. She had almost forgotten that Jack was with Paulina.

  “So?” Jack looked at her quizzically. “You still haven’t given me your answer about coming back to produce Ollie.”

  She opened her mouth to reply but he held up a hand. “Before you answer, I just want to remind you of something. When I first met you at Grandma Rosa’s you told me you worked for a tiny flop radio station.”

  “Er ... did I say that?” Tess flushed.

  “You did!” Jack grinned. “I remember it very well because of the misgivings I felt about it at the time! But, if you come back to work for me, you would have a chance to help change all that – to be part of something really big!” He sounded so passionate that even if she hadn’t witnessed the dispiriting job queue earlier Tess probably would have agreed.

  “Yes. I’ll come back.”

  Jack punched the air. “Result! I promise you won’t regret it.”

  Tess smiled weakly. She somehow doubted that. She knew that whenever Ollie Andrews or Helene Harper was giving her grief she would think back to this moment and be sorry she’d agreed to backtrack on her life. But it would give her a chance to save some money and plan the next stage of her life. And, as she watched Jack turn to leave, she knew a large part of her decision was also because going back to Atlantic meant she would see more of him. There was something about him that made her want to be near him, in his orbit, absorbing his almost ridiculous sense of enthusiasm for life.

  She stayed to finish her wine, sitting at the pretty mosaic table, thinking about the evening. She was disappointed that she wouldn’t be moving to Dublin after all, but there were parts of working at Atlantic that she missed – the buzz of the daily deadline, Sara’s unique take on life, the camaraderie she’d shared with Andrea.

  Thinking about Andrea made her realise that she hadn’t spoken to her friend for nearly a week now. She pulled out her mobile and scrolled down to her number, looking forward to telling her about everything that had happened since. How she had somehow become enrolled on the Chris Conroy Crack Academy for Career Advancement. The ill-fated elevator speech! And, of course, about Jack asking her out to dinner, and the fact she was coming back to the station.

  When she heard Andrea’s voicemail click on, Tess finished her wine and stood up. If she hurried, she’d make the last train back to Killty and she could arrange to meet Andrea for lunch tomorrow. She didn’t want to go back to Chris’s apartment tonight anyway – she could arrange to pick up her things in a day or two. She couldn’t face him quizzing her about why Jack McCabe wouldn’t give her a second chance at the agony aunt slot, and what exactly he’d said at dinner. She wanted to be at home in her own cluttered apartment. She needed time – to organise getting back to work, to figure out how she would make a better go of it this time, to think. Dammit, Tess smiled to herself, she needed me time. Maybe Andrea’s husband, Joe, had a point about that after all.

  She walked back into the restaurant to leave and stopped dead. Because, almost as if her thoughts had conjured him up, Joe McAdams was sitting near the back of the restaurant, his side profile in clear view. Tess automatically looked around for Andrea. It was so unusual they should both be in Dublin on a weeknight.

  She started to walk over to say hello when she stopped short again. A woman was slipping into the chair opposite Joe. She had short dark hair cut in an elfin style. She was dressed in a maxi floral dress and pink cardigan. And she most definitely was not Andrea. Tess watched Joe lean over and interlink his hand casually through hers. There was something wrong about the gesture – something unnervingly intimate and Tess sidestepped out of sight, desperate suddenly for Joe not to see her.

  She was vaguely aware of the waitress looking at her quizzically. “Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  But Tess barely heard her. She was too busy trying to work out who the woman sitting with her best friend’s husband was.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two days later, Tess was sitting at her old desk. She fiddled forlornly with the settings on her computer. Someone had changed all the passwords since she was here last and she had spent the last hour trying to sort them out. And they weren’t the only things to have changed in Atlantic 1 FM. The atmosphere was even tenser than before. An hour ago Tess had spotted Paulina Fox swanning into Helene’s office, and now they were both lurking in the corridor, their heads bent together conspiratorially, as if they knew some top secret everybody else was excluded from.

  And where was Ollie, Tess wondered? This Morning was due to start in just under an hour and she needed to run through the show with him. She was not looking forward to it. Ollie would not like the content of the programme today. Tess looked dubiously at her running order. Helene was coming on to talk about her Ten Years Younger project. And Grandma Rosa was booked in for a Psychic Granny slot – some pilot Helene wanted to try. The content of the show had changed so much since Tess was here last that Sara was already calling it Ollie Lite.

  Tess cast her mind back to her first visit to the fortune teller and smiled. If anyone had told her then that the old woman would have a slot in Atlantic 1 FM she wouldn’t have believed it. What was it that Grandma Rosa had said to her back then? “There are big changes on the horizon for you. There’s a big romance showing here.”

  For a short time, when she’d met Chris again, she’d thought Rosa might have got something right. But she couldn’t call that a romance. She had texted him on the train home to Killty and said she wasn’t feeling well and had to go home. It wasn’t a lie either. On the train home, her stomach lurched each time she replayed the scene in the restaurant over in her mind. When Andrea had returned her call, Tess had pretended there was no coverage and hung up on her friend. Then she’d switched her phone to silent, rammed her headphones over her ears, and listened to loud pop music, trying to f
orget the evening had ever happened. But of course it had, and she was dreading having to face Andrea later today.

  She looked up and saw Ollie marching down to his desk. Tess tried to hide her surprise at the sight of him. He was pale and dishevelled – his shirt crumpled and his trousers baggy, as if they were too big for him. He was clutching a gigantic take-out coffee to his chest and Tess could see a light sheen of sweat glistening on his bald spot.

  A stab of sympathy for him took Tess by surprise. The takeover was hard on all of them, but probably it was most difficult for Ollie. If, or when, he got axed, it was going to be a very visible humiliation. And since her agony aunt debacle, Tess knew what that felt like.

  “Morning, Ollie!” Tess said cheerfully, determined to start over on a new, more positive footing.

  “What’s good about it?” Ollie pushed a lank lock of hair out of one eye. “You’re back.”

  Tess felt her positivity evaporating, to be replaced by a cold fury at Ollie’s dismissive attitude. She felt like shouting, It’s not as if people were queuing up to work with you! Jack McCabe had to take me out to dinner and practically beg me!

  “So. What have you got for me this morning, then?” Ollie sat down, took a deep slurp of of his drink and turned on his computer.

  “We have Helene at the top of the programme – she’ll be talking about her efforts to look ten years younger – remember she talked about going to that top spa?” Too late, Tess remembered that that had been the meeting where Ollie and Helene had their big bust-up.

  “Who cares whether that old bat looks ten years younger or not?” Ollie didn’t bother looking up from his screen. “It’s not as if she’s a celebrity!”

  “Well, she’s coming on the show, nonetheless.” Tess tried to make her voice sound steely. She was determined not to be subservient this time around. Chris had given her express instructions to avoid what he called ‘status-lowering signals’. These included hand wringing and self-grooming gestures, apparently. Tess looked down at her fingers and saw they were locked together so tightly her knuckles were glistening bone white. She prised them apart and laid them flat on the desk to prevent herself from committing the next cardinal sin of touching her hair.

  She opened her mouth to tell Ollie about the second item on the morning’s show – the Psychic Granny. But no words came out. Tess swallowed. She guessed Ollie would be bitter about the Ollie Lite tag and how Jack McCabe was driving down the content of the station to reach a more popular audience. He would not appreciate a fortune teller coming on his show. Still, what could she do? Helene had booked Rosa – when Tess had arrived this morning it was a fait accompli.

  Suddenly she remembered one of Chris’s techniques for getting on at work. The mirroring technique, he’d called it. Tess tried to recall what he’d said. “Subtly mirror a difficult person’s body language and they will instantly warm to you.” That was it! Tess stole a glance at Ollie. He was still staring at his computer, his eyes bulging slightly, his mouth turned down in a disappointed slope, one shaky hand on his coffee container and the other God knows where. Tess suppressed a sigh. She was supposed to mirror that?

  Still, she’d have to try. Tess stared hard at her own computer, pretending to study something on the screen, watching Ollie’s every move surreptitiously from under her lashes. Each time Ollie took a sip of coffee, Tess obediently took a swig from her own mug. Every time he sighed – which was every twenty seconds – Tess too let out a long-suffering sigh. When he blew his nose on a none-too-clean-looking hankie, Tess fished a paper tissue out of her own handbag. Ollie finally looked up.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” he snapped.

  “What?” Tess asked innocently, the tissue halfway to her nose.

  “What? You’re sighing every twenty seconds.” Ollie sighed heavily again. Tess wondered fleetingly if Ollie had become clinically depressed since she’d seen him last. She took another deep, mirroring sigh. “We have the Psychic Granny for our second item. She’s the ... um ... fortune teller.”

  Ollie’s eyebrows met in a belligerent frown on his forehead. “That nutcase who rang you on your fiasco of an agony aunt slot?”

  She took a deep breath. Flatter them into submission – that was another of the techniques. “Yes. Her. But if there’s anyone in the world who can make this item interesting – it’s you, Ollie.”

  Tess stopped. She hadn’t intended to sound quite so saccharine. He would hear how insincere she sounded and turn on her! But then, as if by magic, his whole body seemed to change in front of her eyes. His sat up straighter and his features lost their look of perpetual defensiveness.

  “D’you really think so?” He sounded so hopeful that Tess felt a stab of guilt for wilfully misleading him. She nodded dumbly.

  “And what makes you think that, exactly?” Ollie peered across the desk at her. Tess bit her lip.

  “Because ... of the depth of your experience? And the fact that you’re er ... naturally good with people? And ...” Tess wracked her brain for more improbable compliments. Then she realised she didn’t have to. Ollie was on his feet and making his way around to her desk.

  “Let me see what you have on the old charlatan!” He sounded positively jovial now. He stood behind her, one hand brushing her neck as he peered over her shoulder. Tess tried not to flinch.

  “Right, er ... let’s see ... here it is.” She passed him the two-page brief she had written earlier for the Psychic Granny slot and watched nervously while he read it through impassively.

  “You’ll be able to handle her better than I could. I mean, as I said, you have so much more experience, Ollie.” She sounded a bit desperate now. But Ollie looked up, his eyes shining with something unfathomable.

  “You’re absolutely right! Of course. This fortune-telling lark is a load of old codswallop, but you know, I do have the experience and the talent to make anything interesting. I’ll see you in studio shortly.” He walked off, calling over his shoulder, “Watch and learn, Tess. Watch and learn.”

  Tess sank her head into her hands as soon as Ollie left. It had been that easy? She remembered the months of turmoil when she’d tried to manage Ollie with logic and rationale and failed miserably. And all she’d had to do all along was to flatter him? She felt a fleeting sense of resentment for all the effort she’d wasted but she shrugged it off. If this was what she had to do to keep Ollie Andrews sweet, so be it.

  “‘If there’s anyone in the world who can make this item interesting – it’s you, Ollie!’”

  Tess looked up in surprise at the sound of Andrea’s voice, mimicking her.

  “‘I’m sure you’ll be better able to handle her than I could, Ollie,’” Andrea continued, a nasty note in her voice. “‘You have so much experience.’”

  Tess flushed. “It’s this mirroring technique that I talked to Chris about,” she tried to explain. “It ... er ... really works.”

  “Apparently so.” Andrea gave a wintry smile and turned her back on her. Tess stared after her in panic. Had she found out something about Joe? Or that Tess had been in the same restaurant that night and hadn’t told her she’d bumped into him? A quick glance at the clock determined that she didn’t have time to find out. This Morning was about to go to air and she had no choice but to turn around and follow Ollie.

  He was sitting in the soundproofed part of the studio, bent over a newspaper, and he didn’t look up when she arrived. Helene was nowhere to be seen. And neither was Grandma Rosa. Tess took her seat on the other side of the glass window and glanced down at the running order, trying to figure out what she could open with if neither of them turned up on time.

  She was reaching for her contacts book when Sara arrived, a breathless Rosa in tow. “Helene’s been delayed in a meeting so we’ll have to start with Psychic Granny,” she explained, already leading Rosa in and settling her down opposite Ollie.

  Tess exhaled quietly. She had been expecting Sara to be in a major sulk today because Tess’s arrival back at w
ork meant that Sara’s promotion had been short-lived, but here she was, being completely professional about it, making sure the guest felt comfortable.

  She had to smile at the sight of Rosa. She was wearing a black and white dotted gypsy-style scarf tied jauntily around her neck, and her huge hooped earrings dangled almost to her shoulders. She had replaced the purple hair with a violent shade of red and she was expertly shuffling and cutting her deck of tarot cards. Ollie darted a nervous look out to the control room at Tess.

  “Helene is a bit late,” she explained on the talkback system. “So we’re going to start the show today with Psychic Granny.”

  Ollie looked mutinous, so Tess added, a bit jadedly at this stage. “But you’ll know how best to handle it, Ollie.” This flattery was becoming exhausting, she thought, pressing her cheeks into her hands. She held her breath for the final few seconds before the show began. And then, just as the familiar signature tune for This Morning started up, Tess heard a rustling behind her.

  She turned around to see Helene had arrived. Without stopping to explain or apologise or even to greet Tess, Helene barged breathlessly through the studio door, plonked herself down on the chair beside Rosa, and clapped the headphones over her ears.

  “I’m here,” she announced needlessly. Tess flipped the talkback switch again.

  “Ollie! Go back to Plan A. Start with Helene now that she’s here!”

  Ollie sighed peevishly, but nodded in agreement. Tess breathed a final sigh of relief and sat back in her chair. They were On. Ollie was happy – or as happy as Ollie could be given that he was Ollie. Helene’s Ten Years Younger journey would be a hoot. And the Psychic Granny was bound to get lots of reaction.

  Not a bad start for her first show since she’d come back. This time around, Tess decided, she would cultivate a healthier attitude towards her job. Today, instead of being hyper vigilant for things going wrong, she was going to trust that everything would go really, really well for a change. And that was the last Zen-like moment she had all morning.