Name & Address Withheld
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Authors: Jane Sigaloff
Name & Address Withheld
JANE SIGALOFF
was born in London and, despite brief trips into the countryside, she’s always been a city girl at heart. After studying history at Oxford University she entered the allegedly glamorous world of television, beginning her career as tea and coffee coordinator for Nickelodeon U.K. After she progressed to researcher and then to assistant producer, her contracts took her to MTV and finally to the BBC where she worked for over three years.
Since 2000, Jane has enjoyed a double life as a part-time P.A., which has given her more time to write and feel guilty about not going to the gym. She lives in London with her laptop and ever-expanding CD collection. She has never consulted an agony aunt.
Name & Address Withheld
is her first novel.
Name & Address Withheld
Jane Sigaloff
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You wouldn’t be holding this book if it wasn’t for the incredible support and encouragement I’ve received over the years, and I’d like to thank everyone who has stood by me through the thick (and not-so-thin) versions.
Naming a few names, special thanks and love must go to: Susie, Anthony, Peter, Paul and Omi—for years of unconditional love, support (emotional and financial), for believing in me and for never being disappointed that I didn’t get a real job. Carole Blake—for picking me out of the slush pile, continued encouragement and for never doubting it would happen (or not telling me if you did!). Also to Isobel and the whole team at Blake Friedmann. Sam Bell at Red Dress Ink—for seeing what the others didn’t and helping Matt realize his potential. Kate Patten—for all your invaluable advice on everything, for endless cups of tea, mutual appreciation and for such happy days at no.95. Charlotte Cameron—for spectacular sounding-board properties, wise words, SoCeLo, mix tapes and martinis. Louise Hooper—for high-energy positivity and fast-talking since 1979. Melissa Andrewes—for pedantic proofreading and for encouraging me to exercise. Alice and Stuart Morgan—for the temporary roof over my head and boundless enthusiasm. Chris Gore—for so much support at the outset and for almost as many pizzas as I got rejection letters.
Many thanks also to: Steve, Jan, Tanya, John and Tracy Arie, Gemma Brown, Elton Charles, Camilla and Sue Codrington, Sarah Cohen, Marten Foxon, Mary Ann Graziano, Mandy Key, Hilary Love, James Meikle, Fred Metcalf, Mandy Moore, Siobhan Mulholland, Patsy Newey, Notting Hill and Ealing High School, The Parises, Sandy Paterson, Chris, Lavender, Laura and Alice Patten, The Smails, Julia Stones, Annabelle Tym and Lizzie Tyrrell.
And finally, to the creators of
Sex and the City
and
The West Wing
—for making British winters a little less gray.
For Edward & Dora
Contents
chapter 1
W
hy is it that we always want what we can’t have? It doesn’t matter whether it’s that Prada bag, Nike’s latest offering to trainer culture, Jennifer Aniston’s hair, Jennifer Aniston’s husband, George Clooney or the senior school sweetheart; there are times in our lives when we think—no, we know—that life would be complete if only we had the item in question. By the same token it is a human failing that we rarely realise what we do have until it is no longer ours to keep. Both have happened to me more often than I would care to remember.
Mark was all I ever wanted between the ages of fifteen and sixteen. My school exercise books were littered with his name, hearts with our initials carved by my lust during double English and, most importantly, our percentage of compatibility which I once worked out to be eighty-four per cent. A miscalculation. I should have spent more time paying attention in maths. When he finally asked me out the week after my seventeenth birthday—because, I now fear, he had asked everyone else out already—I thought I was going to burst with pleasure. It was a match made in heaven—I had the soft-focus daydreams to prove it.
For five weeks it was the real hand-holding thing. My months of background research paid off and I had all the right answers to his questions and all the right cassettes in my collection. I was In Love. Then the object of my misplaced affection stole my virginity before chucking me publicly and unceremoniously just before the end of term. My life ended as quickly as it had begun. I wept and fasted, and wept and fasted some more. Then came the hunger and I ate like never before. My adolescence would certainly have been less traumatic without him, but I would have laughed in the face of anyone who’d tried to tell me at the time. Adult lesson # 1 learned; the hard way…
‘There you go, love. Have a nice evening.’
Lizzie looked up from the magazine. She’d been so busy checking her weekly column for mistakes that she’d momentarily been transported back to her teens. A fist of nerves settled in her stomach as she realised that she’d arrived at her destination.
Four hundred people were expected to celebrate Christmas and a successful first year in which City FM had been put on the radio map and, as the station controller Richard Drake liked to tell her, as their newest recruit she was an important part of that. Lizzie wished he was there to remind her just once more for the record as her self-confidence temporarily vanished and she fought an increasingly strong urge to melt into the Soho crowds and disappear. Just because it was a work do, it didn’t mean that it was supposed to feel like an assignment, and she couldn’t help feeling that anything referred to as a ‘do’ should always be a don’t. There was, of course, the develop-a-mysterious-24-hour-bug tactic, but from previous experience Lizzie knew that two painful hours at the office party were worth their weight in nights out on the beers for the rest of the year.
As the taxi pulled away from the kerb, having deposited its perfumed payload on the pavement, a familiar ringing noise caught her attention. Saved by the bell? She prayed it was an emergency. Nothing life-threatening, just party-threatening.
Lizzie rummaged for her mobile, which for several rings eluded her grasp despite the smallness of her bag.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s nearly quarter to ten, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t you be paralytic by now?’
Lizzie smiled. It was Clare. Best friend, flatmate and chief party outfit adviser.
‘I’ve literally just got out of the cab.’
‘Well, hurry up and get yourself to that bar. It’s one thing being fashionably late, but if you leave it much longer no one will even remember you were there at all. Just remember you’re gorgeous, witty, intelligent, beautiful and sober…well, relatively…an inestimable advantage at this stage of the evening. You’ll be able to impress them all by still being capable of pronouncing words of more than one syllable. Leave your nerves in the cloakroom and get yourself a drink.’
‘Thanks. I will…’ A few ego-bolstering words of support and Lizzie’s attitude had done a U-turn. ‘And thanks for all your top fashion advice earlier. Thank God for you and your wardrobe.’
Way back, B.C. (before Clare), Lizzie had endured a couple of outfit
faux pas
. Now she was practically a D-list celebrity she couldn’t afford to rock any boats with her choice of partywear.
‘No problem. Couldn’t have you rocking up in pin-striped skintight stretch drainpipe jeans!’
‘Listen, you, that photo was taken in 1984. Anyone who was anyone had a pair. Probably even Madonna.’
Clare ignored her. Her job was done and, besides, she had a restaurant to run.
‘Lots of love…catch up with you in the morning for a debrief.’
Lizzie snapped her expensively compact mobile shut. Giving herself a sultry smile, she pulled her shoulders back, instantly adding breasts to her outfit, and despite the newness of her shoes managed to sashay the requisite twenty metres to the door retaining both her composure and the full use of both ankles.
‘Lizzie Ford.’
Sullenly the bouncer checked his list before slowly unhooking the rope that stood between her and the rest of the evening. While the stretch of red curtain tie-back cord at mid-calf level wouldn’t have stopped anything—with the exception, perhaps, of a stray sheep—from getting in if it really wanted to, it was all about the image of exclusivity. Judging by the relief Lizzie now felt at being on the right side, it was working.
She smiled amicably at a couple of semi-familiar faces as she swept—well, stepped—into the party, which was already in full swing. Parties had been much more fun when she could waltz up to people who knew nothing about her, might never see her again, and didn’t know where to find her. Now, with her own jingle and her own show, she had forfeited her right to anonymity.
Matt hated big work parties. Pressure to look good. Pressure to provide jocose and scintillating conversation even if the person you were talking to had nothing of interest to contribute. Pressure to network… It was no wonder that people ended up incredibly drunk, determined to start digging their own professional graves by discarding all tact and diplomacy and fraternising with people that they were normally—and often for good reason—intimidated by.
He spotted Lizzie the minute she walked into the busy bar. He knew who she was. Listener research showed that she was already one of their most popular presenters, and thanks to Lizzie Ford an agony aunt with sex appeal was no longer an oxymoron.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
was outstripping its rivals in the ratings, and she brought a unique blend of understanding, sympathy and the odd soft rock track to their airwaves. Rumour had it she was going to be a big star. Watching her work the room, he had no reason to doubt it.
What he really needed was a night in, a pint of Ribena, a balanced meal and a video. But instead he was pouring yet more beer and canapés down his iron-coated alimentary canal. To make matters worse the bloke opposite him had been boring him rigid for the last ten minutes.
Here was a graduate with high hopes who hadn’t yet had his enthusiasm dampened by a few years in the workplace, and Matt knew he should have been flattered by the attention. After all, he’d only wanted an insight into the ‘creative wizard’ that was Matt Baker. He’d never been called a wizard to his face before. Maybe it was time to invest in a pointy hat, or at least sew a couple of stars onto his Ted Baker shirt. Matt smiled to himself. Unfortunately this was interpreted by his co-conversationalist as a green light to continue. Matt was barely listening. His eyes were fixed but not focused.
Professionally it had been a good year. On the domestic front it was becoming easier and easier to forget that he had a wife. Five years down the line they shared a mortgage and a bathroom, but little else. He’d always known she craved success. Ambition was one of the things he’d found so attractive about her. A fiery determination, which he had no doubt would pay off, and a professional self-belief that could be incredibly intimidating whether you were her bank manager, her boss or just her husband. But now it felt as if he was irrelevant. Last season’s must-have accessory. Taking a swig of his beer, he willed his intoxication to move on to the wildly happy mad-dog phase. Alcoholic introspection was not conducive to the festive spirit.
Lizzie went through the motions and, her inhibitions soon buried at the bottom of a glass, worked her way round the room air-kissing, hand-shaking and nodding enthusiastically. Once she’d made contact with Richard Drake, done the small talk thing with the other big bosses, pretended to be interested in the station’s main advertisers and concentrated on saying the right things to the right people at the right time she made a beeline for her producer, Ben, and joined the rest of her production team—who were apparently intent on sweating away the remaining hours on the dance floor.