The Making of Mia

by Ilana Fox

  As Jo left the office that evening at nine – her usual time – she wondered how much longer she could face doing demanding twelve-hour days. Jo knew that Joshua’s workload was imposing; yet she seemed to do much more than the usual grunt work. Along with typing and filing, Jo organised Joshua’s diary with military precision. She arranged meetings, kept the distributed minutes, and ensured that Joshua’s housekeeper knew when he would require a home-cooked meal. Jo made sure he was informed of current affairs, arranged tickets to premieres and club openings, and kept a diary of staff birthdays. Jo was so methodical that Joshua’s life ran smoothly, but keeping track of her boss’s life took up so much of her time that her own personal life dwindled to nothing. There was no time to work out, shop for healthy food or look after herself properly.

  Jo knew her personal life was turning into a mess, but part of her didn’t care. She loved being so close to the action. The only problem was that the harder she worked, the less time she had to think about how she could start writing for the magazine, and she seemed to be treading water, not moving forward. She wanted to be coming up with ideas and running the magazine with Joshua, and she didn’t want to keep on being the quiet chubby girl who made coffee for meetings. She was better than that.

  At the weekends Jo slept, daydreamed about being William’s girlfriend, and forced herself to prepare ideas for the magazine. As she looked through the notebooks of ideas for articles and features that she had written while she was at school she realised how woefully naïve she had been. Had she really thought that aged sixteen she was ready to take on the industry and bombard the world of journalism? Jo laughed to herself. Her ideas, while creatively brilliant, lacked commercial knowledge, and the sixteen-year-old Jo hadn’t realised she needed to work out how to make features about capsule wardrobes make money. Still, she was learning. Journalism college could never have given her the experience of sitting in on a shareholders’ meeting while taking minutes, or joining the weekly editorial meetings where she wrote down everyone’s ideas.

  ‘We should do a whole feature on how to get boyfriends to dress like the men in Sex and the City. You know, like Mr Big in his expensive suits?’ Lizzie said in the next editorial meeting excitedly. ‘I’ve seen a hot new model called Rupert who would look great in Ozwald Boateng.’

  Jo laughed quietly to herself. It was a shit idea, and Madeline agreed.

  ‘Lizzie, this is a women’s magazine. What about your ideas for female fashion?’

  Lizzie consulted her notes hurriedly. Jo watched Hannah and Araminta exchange a bitchy look.

  ‘I thought we could go to some obscure European festival, call the piece “Slovakia/Estonia/Romania Rocks”, and really go for the heavy bangle look that is just so gipsy hot right now. The models could stand in front of the stages, and they can look all wild and romantic, with their curls blustering in the wind. We could even get one of those Romany caravan things, too. And get some little indie bands to be in the photographs.’

  Madeline looked excited. ‘Lizzie, that’s a fabulous idea. I love it, it will inform our readers about places they’ve never heard of with bands that they may have done.’

  ‘And it can be done on the cheap, too, as it hardly costs the earth to get to these funny little countries,’ Joshua added. ‘Well done.’

  Lizzie blushed with pleasure, and Jo made a note that Joshua Garnet liked ideas that didn’t cost much. It may have seemed obvious considering he was the publisher, but so many of the journalists didn’t seem to worry about how much they were costing the magazine. They just cared about getting their freebies from the designers and goody bags at launch parties. Jo watched Joshua carefully as they offered ideas about reviewing the hip new hotels that were popping up in New York, and plans to go to the Bahamas to shoot the summer fashion spreads. Jo noticed that Joshua didn’t say ‘no’ to any of the concepts, but his eyes didn’t sparkle either. Jo could tell that Joshua Garnet no longer wanted Gloss to be the best women’s magazine in the UK. He wanted it to be the best magazine, full stop. And she was going to come up with some ideas to help him do just that.

  June 2003

  Six months later Jo fell flat on her face. She’d spent every evening for weeks – and all of her weekends – working on a portfolio of feature-idea mock-ups. Jo got home at ten at night, ate some fish and chips in front of her old TV – that still couldn’t pick up Channel Five but was good enough to pick up The Osbournes – and then worked on her ideas until two or three in the morning, when her eyes began to blur. Gradually, after filling pages and pages of notebooks, Jo began to form what she believed were fantastic feature ideas – all of which were breathtakingly simple and, most importantly, hadn’t been taken from old copies of other magazines. Jo had watched the editorial team for several months and couldn’t believe that Madeline Turner hadn’t realised that most of the pieces in Gloss were regurgitated articles taken from their competitors. As Jo sucked on a pencil thoughtfully, she wondered if Joshua would give her a job above or below Araminta. If it was above, she’d make it a priority to tell her that she knew most of the pieces she had written were near-replicas of what she had seen in some editions of American Vogue from . And to make matters worse, they weren’t nearly as good as the originals.

  In the daytime, when not following Joshua around or making him coffee, Jo paid attention to how the designers worked. She eavesdropped on conversations about different font sizes and photographs, and sat in on a meeting where Madeline explained, in painstaking detail, exactly what she expected of the French art director, who in return stared sullenly at her and ignored everything she said. As she looked over her copy of the minutes from the meeting, Jo began visualising how her feature ideas would look on double-page spreads in Gloss. She set about ripping up old issues of the magazine to put together collages of what she thought Joshua and Madeline’s concept of Gloss was, and when the pages still looked dull she came up with her own version. Joanne Hill’s interpretation of Gloss was a sparkly mix of fashion, feminism and sophisticated sexual innuendo, wrapped up in a bow of delicious models that looked like they knew about politics as well as pouting. The fashion was erotic and arty, and the articles didn’t patronise – they just informed, inspired and more importantly made the reader think she was the cleverest girl in the country for ‘getting’ the jokes. Jo thought her mocked-up pages were a winner. And now all she had to do was convince Joshua to think the same.

  *

  ‘What’s this?’ Joshua said in a bored tone when Jo nervously went into his office for a meeting. Jo had been Joshua’s PA for eight months and she had waited for her appraisal meeting before striking out and showing Joshua that she was not only better than the journalists on the magazine, but on a par with Madeline Turner. She shifted uncomfortably in her deep-red suit from New Look and some spiked heels that she had stolen from the fashion cupboard when everyone had gone home, and she tried not to feel intimidated. She had deliberately chosen to have her meeting on her twenty-first birthday so it would bring her good luck. And judging by Joshua’s expression, she was going to need it.

  ‘It’s my vision for Gloss,’ Jo said confidently, passing over the portfolio of all her hard work and thinking that a hundred girls would kill for a one-to-one with the Garnet Publishing proprietor. ‘I’ve five double-page spreads that capture the spirit of Gloss as it is, and everything that it should be. And put together, all of these ideas cost less than one current Gloss fashion shoot.’

  Even though she sounded smooth, Jo’s palms began to sweat, and she surreptitiously wiped them on the chair. Joshua picked up her portfolio with interest and flicked through it with a cruel grin.

  ‘Joanne, this is very sweet, but you haven’t got the first idea about magazines.’

  Jo tried not to let dismay wash across her face. She had been fantasising about this moment for weeks and this wasn’t part of the script.

  ‘But I have,’ she said, breaking into a smile to show how her lips were cleverly painted the exact same
shade as the suit. Joshua need not know it was only Rimmel, and not Chanel. ‘I’ve been listening to you and Madeline in meetings and I think I know exactly what you want. If you just look at the ideas, and the figures attached …’

  Joshua closed the portfolio and looked at Jo with a strange, fond expression.

  ‘I’m sure they’re great, Joanne, really, but I think it is best that we leave these types of things to the professionals, don’t you agree? Are you after a pay rise? Well, I must say I respect your approach.’

  Jo tried not to feel defeated and Joshua watched her with amusement.

  ‘Because you have clearly worked hard at impressing me I’d like to give you a two per cent increase. Why not, you deserve it. And why not have a full hour lunch-break? It can be a special treat just for today.’

  Joshua stood up and Jo felt she had no choice but to do the same.

  ‘I’m very happy with your work here, as is everyone else. You don’t need to be doing these types of things to further yourself along the career ladder.’ Joshua handed Jo back her portfolio and Jo took it, reluctantly. ‘You already have the best secretarial job in the company. What more could you want?’

  Jo walked aimlessly through Soho and told herself not to give a damn that Garnet had ignored her ideas. Apart from being the biggest magazine publisher in the UK, what did he know anyway? she thought. All he had to do to become the boss was be born into the Garnet family. And rumour had it his father, Harold Garnet – who had taken a back seat to enjoy his yacht – disapproved of how he was handling things. Yes, circulation at Gloss was up, but some of the other magazines – the less high-profile ones that were not as glamorous as Gloss, yet pulled in four times the advertising – were slowly failing, and there had been talk of redundancies. Jo kicked at an empty can of Coke a tourist had just dropped and yearned to take her heels off. She hadn’t mastered walking in them properly, and her feet were killing her. Still, she thought, it took her mind off Joshua Garnet and his stupid closed mind. She was willing to bet that Harold Garnet would have looked at her portfolio. If he was the man she had him pegged as, she knew that Garnet senior would be on the lookout for anything that could save money and pull in more advertising and sponsorship – not like his son, who could only think about how to scrimp on articles while eyeing up the models on the fashion shoots.

  ‘Jo! Joanne!’

  Jo heard a familiar voice calling her through her haze and she spun round. She had just spotted a tall, broad man standing in front of her before she was embraced in a big bear-hug.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ the man said, speaking into her hair as he held her close to his chest. ‘But I wasn’t sure – not until I got closer! I didn’t think my luck would stretch so far as to bump into you!’

  Jo breathed in the familiar scent of musky aftershave and immediately relaxed, enjoying the sensation of William’s strong arms enveloping her until she realised that he could feel the rolls of fat on her back underneath her cheap red suit. Jo wriggled out of his embrace, and she shyly looked up at him, taking in how William’s dark blond hair had grown longer, how tanned he was from the summer sunshine and how his fitted grey T-shirt didn’t quite hide the muscles of his torso. A mixture of emotions swept through her, ranging from pure, utter happiness to insecurity that William should see her looking miserable and dishevelled. She desperately wished she had bothered to refresh her make-up after her disastrous meeting with Garnet, or that she had used some spray to keep her hair in place in the summer breeze. Despite being slightly longer her hair was at the awkward growing-out stage, and it danced across her face at unwieldy angles.

  ‘Look at your hair!’ William exclaimed, reaching out a hand to affectionately push the hair from Jo’s face. Jo was torn between basking in his affection and not wanting him to touch her because it brought back memories of how close they’d been in Hampshire, and how lonely she was in London. Jo didn’t think she could bear remembering what they had been like at the pub the year before, but William didn’t seem to notice. ‘I barely recognised you,’ he said while looking her up and down, and Jo felt her heart sink. She knew it was her extra weight – and not her shorter hair – which wouldn’t have made her easily recognisable. As much as she loved seeing William, she didn’t like seeing him like this. She imagined she looked like a tomato in her red suit.

  ‘What are you doing in London?’ she managed to croak.

  William gave her a slow, sexy, disturbing grin. ‘I was forced into coming,’ he said, and Jo remembered how much he hated the city. ‘But if this book is going to end up on the shelves of Waterstone’s I have to do what’s best for it, and that means meeting with a publisher who happens to have an office in horrible Covent Garden,’ he said. ‘They’re interested in my book.’

  Despite her reservations about seeing him again, Jo couldn’t stop herself smiling. ‘But that’s amazing!’ she exclaimed, giving William a friendly, awkward punch on the arm. ‘You should be so pleased! I’m so proud of you.’

  ‘It’s a good start,’ he said, modestly. ‘But let’s not talk about it. It’ll jinx it. Look, I have an hour before I need to catch my train, so why don’t we go for a drink? Or are you due back at work?’

  Jo shook her head and decided she wanted to spend more time with William regardless of how she looked. It was so comforting to see a friendly face, and she wasn’t sure she could let him walk away. Not yet. ‘I’m allowed extra time today,’ she said, trying not to think about the long boozy lunches she knew the editorial team had, and how much of her lunchtimes were spent with spreadsheets and a thin sandwich. ‘I know a great little greasy spoon just down the road,’ Jo suggested shyly. ‘And it’s not far from my office. If you have the time we could go there.’

  A couple of beautiful girls sauntered past, their arms full of shopping bags, and Jo felt her heart sink. One of them shot William a coy glance, and out of the corner of her eye Jo spotted William blush. As he casually watched them walk away she wanted to drag him into the café as fast as she could. She couldn’t bear being in proximity to model-type girls with perfect bodies, and she hated the inevitable comparison William would draw when he looked from them to her.

  ‘So this is your secret home from home, then?’ William asked as he held the door of the café open for her. Jo smiled weakly and drank in the nicotine-stained plastic surroundings that were so at odds with the bustle of trendy Covent Garden and the glamorous, gleaming Garnet Tower. No beautiful girls would come in here, she thought. She was safe.

  ‘You could say that,’ Jo said, sitting at a small square table opposite William. ‘It’s one of my favourite places. After The Royal Oak, of course.’ She breathed in deeply and took in the smell of frying bacon, cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. Despite all the fashionable coffee houses and tiny, unique cafés that surrounded the office, Jo truly only felt at home in Mattheus’s, with its plastic-coated menus and tired-looking Greek waitress. It was a slice of Peckham in Central London and one of the few places where Jo felt she could relax and be herself, away from the bitchy glares of Garnet Publishing.

  ‘It seems it’s popular with some of your colleagues, too,’ William remarked casually. Jo looked up at him with a jolt, and followed his eyes to where Debbie and Katherine were waving at her with smirks on their faces. They had cups of tea and a shared plate of chips in front of them, and they would clearly be making the chips last so they could watch Jo with her mysterious friend. Jo swore under her breath.

  ‘Er, did you actually want something stronger?’ Jo said to William, trying to ignore the girls, who were whispering to each other while laughing at Jo’s discomfort. ‘There’s a great pub just down the road that Chris Evans and Billie Piper sometimes go to …’

  William looked around the café and stretched, casually brushing his denim-clad legs against hers. ‘This is perfect, and I’m sick of pubs,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not spend my free time in one when I’ve managed to escape The Royal Oak.’ He ordered them two cups of tea from a bleached-
blonde waitress and leant back in his chair.

  ‘Are you sure …?’ Jo said, hoping she might be able to change his mind. She was worried about Debbie. She knew she was the type of girl who wouldn’t hesitate to come over and make a bitchy comment or two.

  William reached across the table and put his hand on Jo’s. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Debbie mimicking his action to Katherine but for a sweet, sharp moment she didn’t care. Her whole body was suddenly on fire and nobody else mattered. She blushed and took a sip of tea.

  ‘We’re OK in here, aren’t we?’ William said softly, leaning closer to Jo. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends but we have so little time and I’d rather spend it sitting down chatting than walking around looking for somewhere to go.’ He looked at Jo anxiously. ‘It’s good to see you, you know. Really good. I’ve missed you.’

  Jo smiled at him, and decided not to tell him that Debbie and Katherine weren’t exactly her friends. Despite their thrilled expressions at having something new to tease her about, Jo genuinely didn’t care what her colleagues were whispering to each other. William’s familiar friendly face and relaxed manner were all Jo needed to block out their audience, and she wondered if William had spent the last nine months pining for her like she had for him.

  ‘It’s good to see you, too. I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch,’ she began. ‘I wanted to talk to you so badly, but I’ve been busy, and—’

  William interrupted her. ‘You don’t need to apologise. When you left it was hard, I won’t deny it. I couldn’t stand not knowing where you were, but I got used to it, and I eventually got over it.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘I mean, it’s not like we were ever together, was it. We were just friends then and we’re still friends now. Right?’