Boot Camp Bride

by Lizzie Lamb

  She resisted the urge to clear her desk and focused instead on rearranging items of stationery in serried ranks, like war game figures. She sighed. News of her dismissal would put a damper on the Montague family Christmas and bring a whole load of recriminations down on her head. Her parents’ censorious faces swam into focus; they’d been dead against her becoming a journalist in the first place. With her double first in Languages and Politics, they reasoned, she could become a political lobbyist, a parliamentary research assistant, a translator at The Hague or coach foreign students desperate to enter a top-notch English university. Taken a second or even third degree - gained her doctorate; she had the mental capacity for it, they were constantly telling her … but her heart wasn’t in it.

  She wanted the thrill of the scoop, the lure of the exclusive. She longed for danger, the knowledge that she was on the trail of the BIG ONE. Why, even Sam Walker at his most acerbic had recognised she had a nose for a story, an instinct for sensing when the great white whale was about to surface and everyone else was headed off in the opposite direction following a false lead. Maybe that was the reason he’d overlooked some of her minor gaffes since she’d joined What’cha! Shrugged off Vanessa’s complaints about her copy, which she knew was better than anything the other interns handed in.

  Equally, Sam knew that she was the only reason Poppy came to work every morning when she’d rather be off eventing or hunting with her mother. However, that was another story and Charlee pushed it to the back of her mind. She knew that one day she would make her name and earn the respect of her peers. Then she’d no longer be the add-on in the Montague family. The menopausal baby who’d arrived unexpectedly after four strapping boys and announced her presence with a squalling red face and a shock of white-blonde hair. To them, she’d always be ‘Shrimp’, the runt of the litter - but it was time she rewrote her entry in the family bible.

  She snapped out of her reverie when a couple of party poppers went off at close range. Their contents shot through the air and came to rest on her head, draping her in multicoloured dreadlocks. Charlee glared at the two post boys who swaggered in wearing Santa hats making a racket with party blowers.

  The post boys were flirty, impudent and rather overdid the whole cock-e-nay geezer act in an attempt to make the day-to-day grind of their job bearable. Usually Charlee gave as good as she got; but today she wasn’t in the mood for their Del-Boy-Meets-Chas-and-Dave routine.

  ‘You’re here a bit bleedin’ early, ain’t cha, Charl.’ One handed her a stack of jiffy bags. ‘Don’t want to overdo it, you’ve gotta save your energy for dancing wiv us tonight at the knees-up. I’ve been practising my Salsa, just for you.’ He laid a hand over his heart like a lovelorn swain and danced a few steps.

  ‘Sure. Whatever,’ Charlee responded unenthusiastically and started to rip open the jiffy bags

  They noticed her mood straightaway: ‘You are going, ain’t cha?’

  ‘Dunno. It’s complicated,’ she gave a half-hearted shrug.

  ‘Yeah. We ’eard.’

  Their exchanged look confirmed her worst suspicions. Her hours of gainful employment were drawing to a close. The post boys knew everything that went down at What’cha! They eavesdropped shamelessly as they made their way round the building and were very good at stringing pieces of seemingly unconnected gossip together to make a story. They spread rumours faster than the Ebola virus.

  ‘Upset Chief and his mate, didn’t cha?’ He nodded towards Sam Walker’s office. ‘Don’t worry, Charl. You know Chief. He’ll give you a bollocking and forget …’

  ‘Not this time,’ she cut in, unable to draw any comfort from their words. Sighing, she took the rest of the mail from them and pretended to deal with it. Getting the message, they gave one last toot on their party blowers and trundled the mail cart down the corridor towards the Features Office. No doubt to gossip about her to a more than receptive audience.

  Not this time … the words haunted her.

  She’d humiliated the guest of honour and let down the magazine. It didn’t get any worse. Pressing the palms of her hands onto the desktop, she practised some deep breathing exercises. However, being as she’d quit yoga after two sessions, she wasn’t entirely sure how one attained spiritual enlightenment in under ten minutes. The best she could hope for was a state of despair underwritten with mild terror.

  Thinking back to everything that had passed between herself and Fonseca-Ffinch, Charlee decided there was no point going into the meeting spoiling for a fight. It was her stubborn, combative streak that had got her into trouble in the first place. No. She’d have to take full responsibility for acting unprofessionally and offending his lordship - no matter how much it stuck in her craw. Sam Walker’s punishment, when it came, would be swift and harsh.

  But maybe - if she swallowed her pride and grovelled low enough - she’d get away with a verbal warning. Momentarily, hope fluttered in her chest and then reality kicked in. Who was she kidding? Fonseca-Ffinch was man of the moment; she was an intern. No amount of slick talking was going to get her out of this one.

  Of course - now it was too late, she remembered everything about him. His reputation as the photographer who captured the zeitgeist: the politician with the rent boy, the celebrity snorting coke at his daughter’s wedding, and the stand-off between police and G8 protestors last summer.

  Through his connections - she’d read somewhere that his parents were career diplomats - he had an access to the rich and famous that other journos could only dream of and weep over. While they had to settle for pushing telephoto lenses through the bars of remote controlled gates and the second best shot, he commanded the front page and earned colossal syndication rights.

  Now there was this book: The Ten Most Dangerous Destinations on the Planet, which had received glowing reviews in most of the Sundays. The book she’d refused to spend her hard-earned cash on was being hailed as ‘one man’s mission to bring hope to the hopeless’.

  Because of his experiences in the Amazon, he’d chosen to devote himself to improving the lot of the people there. The very tribe, as Charlee had learned from yesterday’s article, who’d found him unconscious on the bank of a piranha-infested stretch of the Amazon, carried him to their village and brought him back from the brink of death. She burned with shame as she recalled how she’d derided them with a smart-arsed remark: ‘Now that’s what I call an extreme makeover.’

  Using his advance, he’d established a fund to provide a hospital boat to ply the long stretch of the Amazon and bring much needed medical aid to the people who lived there. The journalist who’d written the piece in the colour supplement had added to Charlee’s wretchedness with every well-chosen word. "Fonseca-Ffinch is an antidote for all that is cynical and self-serving in the world; a template for those who give so freely of their time and money to help those less fortunate. He has travelled the road to Damascus and the scales have fallen from his eyes".

  How had she put it?

  Oh yes: ‘I’d be astounded that anyone would part with thirty quid for a book like this.’

  She deserved to be fired - instead of planning her defence, she should write her resignation and leave it on Sam Walker’s office desk. Jump before she was pushed. Charlee groaned as her mood swung between belligerence and despair. Fonseca-Ffinch was in danger of becoming a living saint, whereas she …

  The hands of the office clock made a large clunk as they reached the top of the hour and Poppy Walker strolled into the office wearing a shearling coat and a pair of to-die-for boots, looking just like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday, one of their favourite films. She was carrying two coffees in a cardboard holder and almond croissants wrapped in a napkin. She gave Charlee a worried look and then put the drink in front of her.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ Charlee said unconvincingly. The aroma of coffee wafted over to her and the croissant shed its delicious flakes on her desk, making her stomach rumble.

  ‘
’Course you can. You’re the condemned prisoner the original hearty breakfast was created for. Get that down you, girl. You don’t want to face Chief on an empty stomach, do you?’

  They pulled a face, both well aware of Sam Walker’s volatility and Charlee’s spirits plummeted even lower. Within the confines of this building, Walker was God Almighty, with a team of shit-hot, hand-picked subs acting as his vengeful archangels. When he called you into his office, you were never sure if it was for a decapitation or a pat on the back. He kept his staff in awe of him, his daughter Poppy included.

  ‘What mood’s he in?’ Charlee asked Poppy. It’d been through her persistent lobbying that she’d landed the job in the first place and she felt she’d let Poppy down, too.

  ‘Strangely calm.’ Poppy frowned as she took the lid off her cappuccino and stirred the coffee with a pencil. ‘He’s been shut up in his study all weekend. Mostly on the phone to his old Fleet Street cronies. Mummy was furious because we had friends staying over and he hardly passed the time of day with them. Then Rafa … ’

  Charlee frowned. She didn’t want to hear, read or learn anything more about Rafael Fonseca-Ffinch unless it was that he was leaving the country, for good! There was a loud bang on the office door and both girls started, Charlee spilling coffee all over her white shirt. Poppy leapt away from her. That coat looked like it would need dry cleaning at least once a week and coffee stains are pretty unforgiving.

  ‘Montague.’ Sam Walker strode past her office without seeming to glance her way. ‘My office. If you please.’ Well, it didn’t please her, but Charlee guessed that wasn’t quite what he meant.

  ‘Chief.’ She pulled herself up smartly and almost saluted.

  ‘And, Montague,’ he paused. And without turning round added, ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’ve done to your hair. But sort it. Now! ’

  Closing her eyes, Charlee groaned and remembered the party popper dreadlocks.

  ‘Sorry,’ Poppy whispered and helped her to pick the last bits of stretchy, multicoloured plastic out of her hair. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘How do I look?’ Charlee asked, seeking reassurance.

  ‘Scared?’ Poppy ventured, apparently not quite grasping the concept of giving moral support to a friend.

  ‘Thanks.’ Wiping her hands down the sides of her skirt, Charlee walked down the corridor and prepared herself for execution.

  Chapter Eight

  An Offer You Can’t Refuse

  Steeling herself, Charlee knocked on Chief’s door. Usually, he shouted: ‘Fuck Off,’ in an aggressive Sarf Lunnon accent and sent hapless staff members scuttling down the corridor until he was in a better mood. Or, he gave a long drawn out: ‘Co-ome,’ like he was the headmaster of a top independent school and you’d been summoned to his office for a caning. This morning it was the latter and, as Charlee pushed the heavy door open, she half expected him to address her as Montague Minor.

  Fixing a bright, optimistic smile on her face, she walked into his office.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Chief?’

  ‘Actually Montague, I don’t want to see you. In fact, I never want to see you again.’ Charlee’s heart bungeed down to her boots and she found it hard to breathe. The last of her chutzpah disappeared when she saw Vanessa - looking for all the world like the boot-faced woman on Dragon’s Den - seated at Sam Walker’s right-hand side.

  Charlee half expected Vanessa to say: ‘I’m out.’ But apparently even she knew that Chief would demand the first (and probably last) word on this matter. So she pursed her lips and settled instead for sending Charlee a scorching look. Charlie knew that Vanessa would relish seeing Sam Walker dismiss her without a reference and would regale anyone who cared to listen with the story of her downfall.

  Charlee’s hopeful smile slipped in the face of such negative vibes coming her way. However, deciding that she wasn’t going down without a fight, she started to present the case for the defence. ‘Chief, if you give me a moment, I can explain …’

  ‘I doubt that very much, Montague. As I say, I never want to see you again.’

  Charlee pretended that she hadn’t heard and ploughed right on. ‘You see, I didn’t realise that I was talking to Mr Fonseca-Ffinch. I thought I was talking to some random friend of the gallery owner’s who’d -’

  ‘Shut it, Montague. We’re not interested in what you thought,’ Sam fixed her with a beady stare. ‘In fact, you’d be better off not thinking at all. Clearly, your brain’s not equipped for the job. As I said - before you interrupted me - I never want to see you again, but for reasons I won’t go into, I’ve been prevailed upon.’

  ‘Prevailed upon?’ Charlee frowned and a little spark of hope ignited deep within her. ‘Does that mean -’

  ‘Which bit of shut it, don’t you get Montague?’

  ‘Sorry Chief,’ Charlee said automatically and earned another basilisk stare. Aware that she’d spoken out of turn, again, Charlee clamped her lips together and cast down her eyes in a convincing show of penitence. But all the while a single thought was going through her mind. He’s been prevailed upon; maybe he isn’t going to fire me, after all.

  ‘That’s better. Remind me, how many languages are you fluent in?’ he asked, coming from left of field. He scribbled some notes on his desk pad in shorthand - a hangover, Charlee supposed, from his days as a Fleet Street hack. The ‘glory days’ as he referred to them, bemoaning the day they moved to Wapping in the eighties as the beginning of the end. Now everyone had smartphones and tablet computers; Sam foresaw the day when the presses would stop running altogether.

  ‘Five - six if you include Portuguese.’ She faltered, her pulse was racing as she wondered where this was leading and how honest she should be. ‘Although my Mandarin isn’t quite up to scratch,’ she admitted candidly.

  ‘Well, luckily you ain’t being asked to act as a tour guide on the Great Wall of bleedin’ China, so we’ll gloss over that - shall we?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Speak Russian?’

  Charlee thought of coming back with a sassy: ‘dobraye utro’ - good morning - but upon catching his expression, thought better of it. Banking down her curiosity, she wondered exactly where this conversation was leading. The Moscow office? The salt mines? She’d entered the room expecting to be fired. Instead it looked as if Chief’s Machiavellian instincts were on overdrive, and she could smell a story in the air.

  She recalled what Poppy had said about him not coming down to dinner the previous evening, about Fonseca-Ffinch being in their house. Had that something to do with his attitude this morning? Had something reawakened the newshound in him?

  ‘Montague. A simple yes or no. I’m waiting.’

  ‘Yes, I speak Russian,’ she replied quickly.

  ‘And can you read their alphabet?’

  ‘I can read, write and translate Cyrillic script, yes.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t milk it, Montague. No one’s asking you to translate the fuckin’ Rosetta Stone.’

  Sam Walker’s bark was worse than his bite and cringing or sycophantic members of staff irritated him, so Charlie added for good measure: ‘The Rosetta Stone is written in hieroglyphics and Demotic Greek, Chief.’

  He searched for something scathing to add, finally settling for, ‘Don’t be a smart arse, Montague, this isn’t a job interview. You’re in trouble and don’t forget it.’ Then Vanessa coughed and they exchanged a pointed look, after which they glanced over Charlee’s shoulder and to her left. Charlee shivered. What had they seen, the ghost of interns past? She dismissed the idea as ridiculous, but even so, a shiver of prescience made the hair on the nape of her neck rise like the hackles on a dog.

  Then a familiar voice chimed in. ‘Although, Sam, in a way this is an interview, isn’t it?’ Charlee spun round on one foot, saw who was sitting in the chair behind the door and groaned. She was unaware that she’d groaned out loud until he came back with, ‘Lovely to see you again, too, Chelsea.’ He stood up and extended his right hand. Charlee looked at him, at it, susp
iciously. Was this a trap? Surely, he hadn’t gone to all this trouble to organise a reunion because he wanted a return match of rock, paper, scissors.

  ‘My name,’ she hissed through clenched teeth, ‘is Charlee.’

  ‘Your name is anything Mr Fonseca-Ffinch wants it to be, Montague,’ Vanessa snapped. She gave Charlee a little shove in the back and pushed her closer to Fonseca-Ffinch. ‘Manners, Montague.’ Forced into a corner, Charlie extended her hand and shook fingers with him. A full hand clasp was out of the question, if, as she suspected, he was responsible for her losing her job. She also remembered the shock of electricity which had passed between them on Friday night and didn’t want to experience it again.

  ‘Mr Fonseca-Ffinch,’ Charlee greeted him. With her back turned towards Vanessa and Sam she was able to glare at him as much as she dared.

  ‘Young people, Rafa, honestly …’ Vanessa simpered, coming round to his side of the desk. Then, as if realising she’d made herself sound like some ancient maiden aunt she hastily smoothed down her business suit - this season’s Burberry Prorsum - and gave a seductive little wriggle.

  Then she was at Fonseca-Ffinch’s side - noiselessly, like a shape shifter. But he neatly sidestepped her, offered her his vacant chair and then he and Charlee were standing in front of Chief’s desk.

  ‘I want to speak to you,’ he began, and then glanced between Vanessa and Sam Walker. Clearly, what he had to say was for her ears only.

  ‘Look. I’m sorry about the other night. I didn’t know you were someone important.’ Even as she said it, Charlee couldn’t help her lip curling slightly, which gave lie to her words. ‘I thought you were …’

  ‘Never mind all that, now, Montague. Ffinch wants someone to help him out on an assignment and - Gawd help us - has asked for you. Specifically.’

  ‘Me?’ Charlee gave him a suspicious look. Chief pulled a wry face.