by Rosa Temple
I moved up close again, looking over his shoulder at his reflection as he looked at me.
‘Well you play it very well,’ I said.
We stayed like that for several seconds. I could feel my body gravitating towards his and I could feel heat coming from him. He never blinked or changed expression. I shook my head, snapped myself out of my trance.
‘I hope Inez will be on hand to do your tie,’ I said. ‘I think you should take it.’
‘Take what?’ Anthony shook his head, too, as if coming out of a reverie.
‘The suit, silly. And the shirt and tie. I think Inez will love it.’
‘I do.’ Inez’s voice was bright and cut through the sepia-coloured atmosphere that had somehow been conjured up in the downstairs floor of Crouch Brothers Suits. Both Anthony and I swung around in shock to see her standing there in a fluffy angora sweater and skinny jeans.
‘Hi, darling.’ Anthony went to her and held her arms as he kissed her cheek. She looked at me. ‘What brings you here?’
‘It’s my day off, Ant,’ she said. ‘I told you I’d meet you for lunch. Did you forget?’
Anthony tutted. ‘I guess I did. I’m sorry. It’s just that Magenta and I have been so busy with the party and everything else.’ He looked to me for affirmation. I nodded. ‘Well we’re done here. Let’s get lunch. Magenta, do you –?’
‘I’m sure Magenta has plans,’ Inez cut in.
‘Me, I, yes,’ I stuttered. ‘As a matter of fact I do. Why don’t you slip out of that, Anthony? I’ll handle the payment and take the suit back to the office for you. Then you two can get off.’
Anthony went in to change and left Inez and me trying not to make eye contact with each other.
‘Getting pretty cold now,’ I said, desperately trying to sound natural.
‘Well it is almost winter, Magenta. One should expect cold weather.’
What I hadn’t expected was the icy feeling that hit the cramped space in her presence. I grabbed Anthony’s suit and credit card and ran up to the sales desk as quickly as I could. I saw them walk arm in arm out of the shop and caught the backwards glance Inez gave me just before the door shut.
I realised that perhaps Inez did see me as a threat after all. If she felt threatened then she must be insecure in her relationship with Anthony and I wondered why that could be.
Chapter 13
Launch day had finally arrived. The small, basement wine bar I’d hired was packed with fashion buyers, fashion journalists and photographers from everywhere I could get a positive RSVP. I’d gone overboard on the invites, knowing that at least forty per cent of invitees never show up even when they’d RSVP ‘yes’. But this party was an exception. Everyone showed up and I wished I’d gone for a bigger venue.
Dotted around were male models in both smart and casual wear, each sporting a Shearman man bag. My only note to them was not to get drunk on the moving trays of champers. They all behaved and were polite and obliging when interested parties stopped them to admire and inspect the bags.
‘This is brilliant, Magenta.’ Ebony tapped my shoulder. My younger sister had arrived in a long, dark cocktail dress and, at my strict instruction, had gone around telling everyone that she was from Harrods and that they were very interested in the new-look Shearman bags.
‘It’s all thanks to you for getting me the job,’ I told her.
‘I got you the interview.’ She grinned. ‘You got the job and you’re doing great.’
‘You think so?’
‘Magenta, are you crazy? Look at who’s here and look how many people are clamouring around Anthony.’
‘Poor guy,’ I said. ‘He’s out of his depth. I should go over and help him.’
‘No, you should let his girlfriend do that.’
‘But she doesn’t know anything about the business.’
‘But she won’t let go of his arm even if you do go over.’ Ebony gave me a look. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you noticing him from across the room.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ I pulled a face.
‘I know you too well.’
‘Well the “me” you know so well should just calm down and get over him already.’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself, only …’
‘Only what?’ I said, slowly.
‘Well I couldn’t help noticing the way he’s been looking over at you, Magenta.’
‘Seriously?’ I snatched a furtive look across to Anthony and Inez. ‘No. Those two are joined at the hip.’
‘Well maybe it’s time for a hip replacement.’ Ebony walked off when she spotted someone she knew and left me in a quandary. There was I thinking I was doing a great job of trying to keep my relationship with Anthony strictly professional and there was Ebony making me think there was a possibility that there could be more.
I quickly shunned the idea when I heard cameras clicking fiercely and saw that Anya had arrived. She was late, as expected, but she’d caused a buzz in the party and all of a sudden the atmosphere was hotting up. I reached for two glasses of champagne from a waitress passing by with a tray and handed one to Anya. She was slinky thin in a tight-fitting, pearl-coloured dress. She kissed both my cheeks, theatrically. I guessed that was for the cameras so I responded in the same majestic way.
‘Great party, Madge,’ she said. Then, close to my ear, ‘Now let’s get drunk. My lover and I have broken up.’ She pulled away with a massive smile on her face for the photographers. I was lost for words. I had to know what had happened. Anya drained her first glass of champagne and was reaching for another. I sipped my champagne while looking over at Anthony. Inez kissed his neck at just that moment so I grabbed Anya’s hand and we headed for the bar for some real drinks.
In times of crisis, Anya and I always took to the single malt whisky, the best in the house, and we didn’t stop drinking until we were either thrown out or could no longer form a sentence. Because it was the launch, I did manage to pace myself so that I wasn’t close to inebriation until the party ended. After a lot of schmoozing, hand squeezing and exchanging of business cards and promises.
Anya left with a male model and a man bag in a taxi. Ebony had gone straight to the airport for a meeting in Paris and Inez had left, quite reluctantly, with Cassandra after Anthony insisted that he and I had some loose ends to tie up at the wine bar.
Even through my whisky haze I could tell that Anthony was pretty close to being wasted himself. He loosened his bow tie while thanking the manager of the wine bar, who went about making sure the place was cleared up so he and his staff could get home.
Anthony stood swaying back and forth, his hands in his pockets, while I gathered the display bags and made sure all the models had envelopes with cheques in them. Once they had finally left I let out a loud but proud sigh of relief. Working for a living wasn’t so bad after all. I turned to find Anthony grinning at me.
‘What is it?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, nothing. I’m just remembering the day we met. I gave you the job as PA and doubted myself straight after.’
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ I said, playfully punching his arm.
‘Well, as I told you before, I just wondered what a girl like you was doing in a place like A Shearman Leather Designs. I mean, the way you were dressed and everything, looking like you have it all.’
The staff in the wine bar were cleaning around us and gradually switching out lights. Anthony walked towards me and stood directly opposite.
‘Well maybe I don’t have it all,’ I said. ‘At least I didn’t when we met. I needed a job.’
‘Don’t tell me, you owe money to loan sharks.’
I laughed aloud. ‘Nothing like that,’ I said.
‘So tell me, Magenta, what is your story?’
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘So there is a story.’ He moved closer, I looked up into his eyes.
‘My grandmother. She passed aw
ay,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes, me too. I loved Nana Clementine. I miss her too. I wonder if she’s watching me fulfilling her dying wish.’
‘Surely her wish wasn’t for you to come and work for me.’
‘You, or anyone come to that. You’ve met all my sisters now. And you might have noticed how, well, how damned dynamic they all are. They’re all exactly like my parents. I was the black sheep. Couldn’t hold down a job for more than five minutes. So when Nana left us all a small fortune in her will, I could only get hold of mine if I held down a job for a whole year.’
Anthony knotted his brow and backed away. Stupidly I’d let the malt whisky do the talking.
‘So you’re only committed to stay with the company for a year? You never told me that in the interview,’ he said.
‘Well, Anthony, you never asked.’
More lights went down in the wine bar so that only the light from the kitchen was seeping into the darkened bar area. We were the only ones in the room. The place still smelled of fine wine, perfume and leather man bags.
‘So you’re leaving me next summer?’ he said.
I let my silence speak for me and kept my head down.
‘I think they want to lock up,’ Anthony said. ‘Shall we?’
The manager of the wine bar stood patiently at the bottom of the staircase as the last of the staff made their way up to the exit on street level.
‘I think we should.’ I still couldn’t meet his eye.
On the street, Anthony waited with me until I was safely inside a taxi.
‘I guess I better not get used to this,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I was looking out of the open taxi door at him, desperately urging myself not to just reach out, pull him inside and ask him to come home with me.
‘Well, Magenta, you exceeded all expectations I had of you. I mean I really thought you wouldn’t stay much past a month but you proved me wrong. Don’t you see? You’re just as dynamic as any of your sisters. You’re a natural at this. You’ll do great things. You have already. And one day you’ll leave. I just have to accept that.’
I said nothing, questioning the way Anthony made no attempt to go home, leaning so far into the back of the taxi, temptingly close.
‘Are you getting in or what?’ The taxi driver lost patience with both of us.
‘I’ll say goodnight, then,’ said Anthony. ‘See you Monday morning?’ He finally stepped away.
‘Yes. See you.’ I feebly put up a hand.
As the driver pulled away I became angry with Anthony. Angry for making me feel guilty about only needing a job for a year and angry because he confused the hell out of me. He was engaged. What was he doing acting as if he were unattached? His face had been just a breath away from mine.
The driver was fast. My whisky buzz caused a swirling of the scene outside the taxi. Then, as the city lights blended into the West London skyline, I wondered if it was just the whisky that made Anthony look as though he was coming on to me – or if he really was.
Chapter 14
The next morning I was due to meet my personal trainer, Lena. Lena was a thirty-something, slimmed-down ex-body builder with short fair hair and amazing cheekbones. We got together for a few hours every other Saturday but I’d had a mostly sleepless night and I wasn’t sure I could drag myself out of bed.
I’d been buzzing with excitement because of the Shearman launch and how amazingly well it had gone. I was also tortured by thoughts of Anya and how she must be coping after breaking up with her lover. I would have to handle that carefully. Anya wasn’t big on sharing her feelings so I just needed to give her time until she was ready. For now, she was probably still curled up around the male model from last night, if she hadn’t kicked him out straight after sex.
Then there was the other biggie. The other reason I hadn’t had much sleep and couldn’t face meeting my personal trainer. I’d had a nightmare in which Anthony’s fiancée, Inez, scaled the building I lived in with her nails, got into my bedroom and told me to leave her man the hell alone.
Concluding that leaving Anthony the hell alone was probably my best form of action I was able to eventually get up, make my usual disgusting protein shake, leave it on the kitchen counter, untouched, and get into my workout gear before meeting Lena.
Lena was a strict trainer. She had started off as Mother’s personal trainer but somehow got passed on to me when Mother took up yoga after the divorce. Needless to say, Mother also continued to pay for Lena’s services and I didn’t have to, so who was I to complain?
Lena was at the Costa coffee shop on the hill, half a mile from my flat, and she had got the drinks in. At this point I should say that Lena and I never actually worked out, not physically anyway. I’d put paid to that crazy notion after the first jog Lena took me on around Holland Park. She could see I was reluctant to get fit and decided to slot me into her diary on a fortnightly rather than weekly basis and used our sessions to give talks about the merits of exercise and healthy eating. She didn’t want me to have a heart attack before I was thirty. She figured she owed at least that much to my mother, who was paying her £75 an hour for her time.
Our healthy chat sessions, for which I still wore full workout gear, as did Lena, ended up taking place at Costa and, once I was able to recite all the major food groups, list off vitamins and their benefits and the best way to work off a muffin top, Lena allowed our conversations to become more personal. We sat and drank coffee and exercised our tongues while thrashing out details about our respective fortnights.
Lena had a lazy boyfriend who thought it was okay not to look for work, not to shower all day, and not to cook or clean. He didn’t get that she’d broken up with him two months ago and that she had been selling and clearing out small items of his property bit by bit in an attempt to make him move out. He was content to sit in front of the television in his last pair of boxer shorts, asking how he could leave now that she’d thrown out his shoes.
Lena would sit with me during our sessions concocting ways to murder him, get rid of the body and not have his disappearance lead back to her. Needless to say, she’d watched masses of CSI (LA, Miami and New York), but still she hadn’t come up with a conclusive plan.
As for me, I sounded out my problems with Lena when Anya wasn’t around. And I had a few to get off my chest.
‘Ooh, I need this,’ I said, grabbing the espresso cup before I even sat down opposite Lena.
‘Heavy night?’ Lena looked up over her newspaper. ‘Ugh,’ she said pulling a face on inspecting me closer. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’
‘Thanks a lot; I didn’t get any sleep,’ I protested. Lena folded her paper away after commenting on the politician, still in the news since the summer, since more scandalous stories about him had come to light.
‘You seriously look as rough as this guy,’ she said pointing at the politician who was trying to cover his face and escape the photographers. ‘Don’t tell me you’re having a worse time than him.’
‘Well, I’m not sure what he’s been up to but I’ve definitely been having my ups and downs,’ I said, settling in to tell Lena all about the launch and what happened afterwards with Anthony.
‘Mm.’ Lena considered everything I’d said for a moment. ‘You know what I’m going to say, right?’
‘No. What?’
‘Leave,’ Lena almost shouted. ‘Leave Shearman Leather thingy before you make a total arse of yourself. Your boss is taken. Move on or move out.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ I pleaded.
‘Look, I know about your Nana Clementine’s will and why you have to work. But there are other jobs. You’d only have lost a few months; you can start again somewhere else.’
Find another job? Yes, that could have been an option but the truth was I’d invested a lot of time and effort into trying to get the company on track. It was working. I was getting a buzz out
of it and I wanted to see it through.
‘All I have to do is be strong,’ I said. ‘I can do it. You’re right, Anthony is spoken for and I shouldn’t lust after him, even if I do suspect that the feeling’s mutual.’ I remembered the lingering yet confusing way he’d looked at me.
‘That makes it worse,’ said Lena. ‘Besides, you’ve had to be strong before. Remember Hugo?’
As if I could forget.
Summer ended and Hugo was about to leave the country. He put his offer of my leaving and going with him to me one last time.
‘But you’ll be back,’ I’d told him. ‘And while you’re away we can write, phone. Maybe I can see you in my breaks.’
‘It’s not as easy as that, Magenta,’ he’d said, his eyes boring into my very core. ‘The band only has a few confirmed tour dates; after that we’ll be winging it mostly. Picking up gigs where we can and a few other odd jobs I’d imagine. I won’t be coming back to London. I plan to stay away and see what comes up. After the tour I won’t know where I’ll be. I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I just wanted to be doing whatever that was, wherever in the world, with you.’
He was close up to me, holding my hands, blotting out the busy bar we’d been sitting in for most of the evening, having the waitress come up to us numerous times, asking what we’d like to drink and ignoring her. Tears streamed down my face. I was afraid to walk into an unknown future with a man I’d known less than a few days and who I knew I’d fallen hopelessly in love with. But it was the hopelessness that worried me. What if he didn’t feel the way I did? And if he did, what if it wore off and he left me stranded in the middle of nowhere halfway across the globe?
I couldn’t do it. I had to say no. Nana Clementine had been right. Taking off like that was Hugo’s dream, not mine. He should go and live his dream while I figured out where I fit in the world. The eighteen-year-old Magenta wasn’t brave enough to follow Hugo. The eighteen-year-old Magenta didn’t even know what she wanted with her life. Ten years on and that hadn’t really changed.
