I Think I Love You

13

It is purely by chance that Marie takes the crazy woman’s call. She got in early to the magazine this morning with a hangover that made her head feel like an ostrich egg. Vast yet fragile, it might crack at any moment. She successfully transferred her head from her flat to the Golf and then from the car park to the lift and then to her office, over by the window, like someone balancing a crystal goblet on a playing card. Now, she sits at her desk with a large bottle of Evian and a triple espresso, taking alternate sips from each to suppress the nausea. Marie needs to think. But her skull, and the sudden unwanted awareness of her brain, parched and throbbing within it, makes thinking impossible.

Today is the big group editorial meeting at which she is going to have to pitch the success story of her title, Teengirl, against the other editors with their bullshit advertising claims, all strutting their stuff in front of the editorial director. Sasha Harper, the editor of Babe, will be there in her armor of choice: top-to-toe Prada with her trusty dagger, the Montblanc pen. At the thought of Sasha, Marie moans softly and plunges a hand into her desk drawer, groping for aspirin. Inside, her fingers find something squidgy and cool to the touch, and recoil. Opening one eye with great care, Marie sees it is the condom that Babe recently stuck as a free gift on its front cover. Chocolate-flavored condoms for young girls.

Jesus. Everything about that was so wrong. Marie and Sasha are supposed to be colleagues on the same team; between them they dominate the teenage magazine market, which is growing by the day. Marie’s Teengirl focuses more on pop stars, young love and music, while Babe specializes in celebrity gossip, sex and its related problems. Far from supporting each other, the two women have become rivals, probably because the editorial director is the acknowledged guru of their market sector. They vie for the Boss’s approval like sisters fighting over a crumb of praise from a remote father. Everyone calls him the Boss, except Barry, the marketing director, who is an old friend and uses his first name.

Marie had no need of an alarm this morning. She woke feeling wildly alarmed at 4 a.m., three hours after going to bed. Marie’s subconscious allowed her to admit what she would never accept in daylight: she is losing the battle to Sasha. The battle of taste and sex and hard cash. Fourteen-year-old girls increasingly choose to dress like hookers while forty-year-olds dress like teenagers. There is no doubt in Marie’s mind that girls are desperate to grow up quicker. Even nine-year-olds in crop tops want to crash the party. Where once they sought advice on unsightly love bites, the readers now seem to gobble up stuff about oral sex, if gobble is the word she’s looking for.

She groans and pulls the water bottle toward her, pressing its coolness to her temple. Magazines have gotten sexier to keep up with the girls. Or maybe crude mags had made little girls think they should be into sex? Something weird has definitely happened to being female since Marie was a kid with a Duran Duran poster over her bed and a prized collection of trolls with luminous hair, but she doesn’t have the energy or the curiosity to think what. Let someone else worry about it.

Generally, Marie doesn’t answer her phone. Katie, who sits just outside the door, always gets it instantly. So the chirruping receiver is a novelty. It’s still so early—barely eight—that Marie picks it up cautiously. The woman’s voice on the other end of the line, choked with some grievance or emotion she hasn’t gotten under control, alerts Marie to the fact that she should have left the phone ringing. Too bloody late. She’s stuck with her now.

“How old did you say you were?” Marie asks. “I’m afraid this is Teengirl. Yes, TEENGIRL. No, I’ve never heard of that magazine, sorry.”

She listens patiently to the woman’s story, murmurs polite yet noncommittal things, and finally jots down Crazy Woman’s name and her address and phone number, which is outer London.

“Yes, someone will get back to you,” Marie promises. “Yes, I can see how disappointing that must have been. No, no trouble at all.”

Jesus, it’s more like handling a call to the Samaritans than a reader inquiry. At least Crazy Woman sounds a bit calmer by the time Marie puts down the phone. With any luck, that will be the last they hear from her.

Marie reaches into her bag and finds her makeup. At the age of twenty-nine and eleven-twelfths, Marie O’Donnell is still young, but old enough to know that youth will not last forever. And youth is what counts in her business. Junior staff who can barely write their names with a stick are now regularly promoted to editors’ chairs since the powers that be have decided that it is no longer good enough to be able to attract readers; the editor needs to be the reader—young, single and sexy. Marie is still single herself. Too busy working and having fun with her girlfriends, whenever she can get away from the office. Like other women of her generation, Marie has told herself that love can wait. Love is out there in a holding pattern, flying around in the wide blue yonder, until the day she radios up to say she has a landing slot available. (This is the cruelest delusion of her generation, the idea that you can dictate to love, can schedule its arrivals and departures. Love has its own timetable.)

With a practiced hand Marie begins to smooth on the new Chanel foundation using the tips of her fingers in light, feathery strokes. Then her favorite coral lipstick. One application with a brush, blot with tissue; then a second application so it will last: the way the magazines taught her to do it when she was the age that her readers are now. So near and yet so far, Marie’s own volcanic teenage years. She wouldn’t go back to being thirteen again if you paid her a million pounds.

• • •

The boardroom of Nightingale Publishing is on the seventh floor, with a spectacular 180-degree view of the river. The Boss is over by the window, wrestling with the new blinds, when he sees Marie come in. The Thames, normally a livid rat-gray, is a strange churny brown this morning, as though someone has poured hot chocolate into it overnight. The road that runs along the other side of the river, guaranteed to be an unbroken metal strip of fuming vehicles, is almost empty. Three red buses move along it like toys being pulled by a string. Beyond, through a gap in the office blocks, is the cathedral. Incredible, the Boss thinks, that after all the years working in this building he has never tired of looking at the dome of St. Paul’s. When he hears a vicar on the radio talking about God’s grace, it’s always the dome that comes to mind.

He turns round to see his staff taking their seats at the long wooden table. Recently the subject of a major redesign, Nightingale’s boardroom is now a symphony in teak and glass, with various chubby figurines set into the paneling in small, spotlit alcoves. Probably got a job lot from some bargain Buddha supplier, the Boss suspects. Total waste of money, but the advertisers expect you to look up to the minute—and they’re paying. If the statues are meant to give an impression of divine wisdom and tranquillity, it’s a failure, he thinks. What the bargain Buddhas most resemble are those Teletubbies, who have just waddled onto kids’ TV.

The Boss sets his pen and notebook on the table and inspects his management team. They’re all here, the group’s editors, sitting on chairs as heavy as thrones. Greg Chisholm, the Tiggerish head of PR who is always three years behind Elton John in his choice of statement specs, is next to Declan Walsh, the creative director. Declan, who was once in a boy band himself, comes off the production line in that factory that manufactures lovable Irish rogues. Between Declan and Sasha Harper sits Wendy, whose magazine is aimed at hassled mid market mums. Bit of a gossipy chatterer, Wendy, but superb at her job.

Opposite Wendy sits the immaculate Louisa Becks, a distant cousin of the queen. Her Better You title is picking up affluent readers among working women who can afford to fund an extended youth that takes in yoga vacations and “me time” spent in the warm embrace of a full-body mud pack. Whenever the Boss talks to Louisa, he gets the feeling that it is she who is granting him an audience, not the other way round. It’s a class thing, he reckons. Despite the Armani suit and the corner office, he is still the blue-collar boy who would only have encountered Louisa’s family home on his paper route.

Next to Louisa, sporting identical buzz cuts and Gucci leather pants, are Gavin and Matthew. The men’s market is more straightforward than the women’s. There are mags for guys who like sports, drink, cars, gadgets, girls and can read—a minority increasingly as specialized as orchid growers. And there are magazines for guys who like sports, drink, cars, gadgets and cannot read, but simply want to stare at girls’ breasts. Gavin does the former and Matthew the latter, and, though the Boss is aware they long to swap, he reckons they stay more motivated where they are.

Marie, the Boss’s favorite editor, looks tired today, her Celtic pallor even paler than usual. As Marie nods and smiles at him, he wonders vaguely if she could be pregnant. If she were, which would win out: her Catholicism or her ambition? He would hate to lose her. She’s the only one who reminds him of his younger self.

With his back to the window and St. Paul’s just visible over his right shoulder, the Boss asks the editor of Babe to get the ball rolling. Using a Silk Cut cigarette as punctuation, Sasha launches into an impassioned, jabbing speech about how Babe has total ownership of teen sex.

“We own teen sex in the way that PowerPlay owns testosterone,” she says.

According to Sasha, Babe is saturating the teen celebrity gossip market, and with another big push it will soon be market leader.

“We’ve got something really hot coming up on this new girl called Britney,” she promises.

“And where does teen-sex saturation leave good old-fashioned romantic yearning?” asks the Boss with a sardonic smile, which always keeps his staff guessing whether he is joking.

This is Marie’s cue and she leaps in. “Well, personally, I think that girls will always fantasize about boys they regard as heroes and will always want to know about the minutiae of their daily lives. Society may have become more explicit about sex, but the letters I get from girls tell me that their concerns are pretty unchanging.”

“What kind of concerns?” the Boss asks.

“Oh, um, desperate to be loved, my boyfriend thinks I’m ugly, I’m scared my nipples are lopsided.”

Marie is rewarded with a big laugh around the table, and even the Boss smiles.

“Do I detect you fighting a brave, if lonely, rearguard action against premature sexualization, Miss O’Donnell?”

She flushes. “I’m just not sure that my Teengirl reader wants specifics on blow jobs before she’s even had her first kiss.”

She is no longer sure that’s the truth—in fact, she fears the opposite may well be the case—but Marie says it anyway because she wants it to be true. If it isn’t true, what has happened to young girls? They’d started acting like boys, once they were told they were equal, but someone forgot to tell them they weren’t cut out to be male; they didn’t have the heart for it. Or too much heart, perhaps.

“I agree with Marie,” says Gavin. “Puppy love is still out there.”

“And barking mad,” says Declan.

“For me,” Gavin goes on, “the really big trend right now is nostalgia. It’s an end-of-the-f*ckin’-century thing, innit?”

He drops hurriedly into a kind of cockney matespeak to fend off any charges of being a pretentious wanker. It is Gavin’s bad luck that, in the strenuously egalitarian times in which they live, a first in History from Oxford is considered more of a professional liability than a coke habit.

“Fin de siècle,” adds Louisa, almost to herself.

“We’re seeing a lot of acts from the past reforming,” Gavin says. “There’s a huge appetite for ‘The Way We Were’ features in fashion, music, movies, whatever.”

Marie laughs rather too loudly and the others stare at her. “Don’t talk to me about nostalgia,” she says. “I had this crazy woman on the phone first thing. Says she won some big David Cassidy quiz and she asked if she could collect her prize.”

“What prize?” asks Sasha, making sure Marie’s isn’t the only voice being heard. She glances up at the Boss, but he is looking away and frowning at something.

Marie can feel her face reddening under her all-day cover foundation. Stress eczema playing up again. “You won’t believe this, right. A trip for two, the crazy lady and her friend, to meet David Cassidy on the set of The Partridge Family, which ended in like 600 B.C.”

The room explodes in delighted, jeering laughter.

“Whatever happened to Cassidy, anyway?” asks Matthew.

“He still does a show in Vegas, and the odd reunion concert,” says Louisa.

“He was a gorgeous kid,” says Declan. “Remember that nude shot of him on the cover of Rolling Stone? Early seventies? Poor bastard was trying to shed his goody-goody image, but they wouldn’t let their teen idols break out of the box, cos they’re too valuable as they are. How old is our mad lady caller, anyway?”

Marie isn’t sure.

“Well,” says Louisa, “I was a Donny Osmond girl, and David girls tended to be slightly older than us. So, let’s say she’s thirty-seven, thirty-eight.”

“Fokkin’ hell, Louisa,” says Declan appreciatively. “You were a Donny girl?”

She smiles dreamily. “Oh, I absolutely adored him. I played hooky with a bunch of girls to stand outside the Churchill Hotel, where the Osmonds were staying. Fabulous. Candida Hancock got one of his sheets.”

There is a polite but bewildered silence, which is broken by Greg. “Wasn’t Donny the toothy wet one in the purple cap?”

“He’s wearing awfully well,” says Louisa loyally. “Fantastic on Terry Wogan.”

“I was sort of a David fan,” Wendy says cautiously. She’s wary of revealing her exact age among younger colleagues, but she feels some ancient memory begin to stir inside her, like a hibernating animal that senses spring has come again. In fact, Wendy Petrie of Margate, as she then was, attended two Cassidy concerts at Wembley, the twin peaks of her adolescence, and, for eighteen feverish months, she went to sleep every night with the David Love Kit under her pillow.

“He had the most loyal fan base of all,” she continues, “bigger than Elvis or even the Beatles. My mate Paula still says she married a man called David Connor because he was American and had the same initials.”

Marie is looking at the Boss. He’s always so hard to read. What the hell does he think of them prattling on about shit like this? She isn’t even sure how old he is. Early forties? She knows he got divorced from some City high-flyer and that he made a mint years ago when he sold the proprietor on the idea of a new music mag aimed at teenage girls. Marie guesses that her employer might not be quite what he seems. Some men wore suits as if the suit defined who they were; the Boss wore his like he was just loaning his lean frame to the suit until he got a better offer. He reminds Marie of some actor, if only her poor bruised brain could fish up the name. In that Michelle Pfeiffer film she loves, The Fabulous Baker Boys. It would come to her.

“The thing about the teen idol,” Louisa is saying, “is he morphs through time. The boys’ faces and names change, but the emotional need they fulfill, well, that never changes.”

“I think,” the Boss says at last, so quietly that they all have to shut up and listen to be able to hear him. It’s an old schoolteacher’s trick. “I think that we may be able to do something with this. Huge potential identification among David Cassidy fans and anyone else who remembers their own tender feelings for a pop idol. I suspect this is one for your readers, Wendy. Has our crazy woman got a name, Marie?”

“It was unusual, foreign. Petra, I think.”

He nods and squiggles a note in his notebook. “Right, how about we get Petra in, give her the complete makeover treatment, then fly her to Vegas for a Cassidy show, line up a meeting between the two of them. Fix that with Cassidy’s people, will you, Greg?” It’s a command, not a question.

“Sure. Hey, I love it,” says Greg, waving his specs in the air. The cherry-red frames are the size of cheese plates. “It’s like one of those Japanese soldiers comes out of the jungle and he doesn’t know the war’s been over for forty years. Real time-capsule stuff. The tabloids will love it. ‘Mum Claims Teen Idol Prize. At Long Last Love!’ ”

“So, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball,” exclaims Matthew.

“Yeah, only twenty-five years late and two stone heavier,” says Marie, whose own faith in Prince Charming is in a bad state of repair.

“Great human interest,” smirks Declan, “so long as Crazy Woman isn’t some bunny boiler who thinks Daaay-vidd is going to tear off her Country Casuals and jump in the sack with her.”

“Shut up,” says Marie, suddenly feeling protective of Crazy Woman. The woman’s voice had had a serrated edge of despair to it.

“And the friend,” says the Boss, who is pursuing his own train of thought, far away from the others now. “The long-lost friend, she might be good value. I wonder if we can dig up the Cassidy quiz.”

His bewildered underlings make respectful noises and start to pick up their files and their cigarettes.

Marie is grateful now that she answered the phone. Declan was right; they just have to hope that Crazy Woman is presentable, not too many cat hairs. Airbrushing can work wonders these days, but there are limits. And David Cassidy, she’d forgotten about him. Is he sane and nice, or damaged goods like so many of those poor bastards who found fame young?

The Boss holds the boardroom door open for her. They walk together down the corridor in silence until suddenly he says, “You know, Marie, there’s a lot to be said for the midlife crisis. People are often at their best during a crisis. You see who they really are.”

Marie laughs, not sure if that’s the correct response. If she didn’t long for the Boss’s admiration, she might be less insecure.

Through the swing doors up ahead they see the head of marketing approaching.

“Hi, Baz, can I see you in my office for a minute?” the Boss says.

Barry gives Marie an ironic little wave, using just his fingertips.

“Sure,” he says. “No problem, Bill.”