The Cinderella Reflex (2 page)

But, for now, she needed a break.

Ten minutes later Tess was staring at her reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink in the cramped Ladies’ room. Her skin was flushed red and two stains of damp showed darkly under the arms of her white shirt. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, blowing out a sigh. Maybe she’d train for something else. She was good at sketching. And she’d always enjoyed taking photographs. But that only made her thoughts turn to her sister, the super-successful designer in London. While Verity had been busy turning the dream she’d had since she was eleven into a reality, Tess had been drifting from one temporary job to another and from one country to another until finally she’d ended up back in Ireland again.

And now she was in a job that made her feel like a square peg in a round hole. Or a fish out of water. Or some other metaphor that she couldn’t think of right now. She winced. She could hear her parents already. “You have to settle at something, Tess. You’re
thirty.
Look at Verity, and how well she’s doing. That’s because she stuck at something.”

Tess’s mobile bleeped and she pulled it out of her bag, her stomach twisting in case it was Ollie or Helene summoning her.

U free for lunch? Zelda’s in ten? A.

Tess brightened. Andrea McAdams, her friend from college, was the reason she was working at Atlantic 1FM in the first place. She had been at home living with her parents for exactly three weeks when Andrea had emailed her about this job. Three weeks in which she had felt as if she’d never left home. So, when Andrea had told her there was an opening at the radio station where she was working as a reporter, Tess had grasped at the offer like a starving person, convinced she could make a success of it. She had a journalism degree and a few freelance bits and pieces on her CV – stuff she’d done in between the beach-bar jobs and the office jobs and the looking-after-children jobs that had paid for her travels around the world. How hard could the gig be?

Only a living nightmare, she had to concede now.

She was supposed to be Ollie’s boss but, unfortunately, Ollie thought he was the boss of everyone. And Tess couldn’t help wondering if Ollie sensed how scared she was of displeasing him.

Travelling like an itinerant had given her amazing experiences she’d remember forever but had also left her with an alarming financial situation, an overwhelming impulse to ‘catch up’ with her peers, and a major crisis of confidence when things went against her. Which they seemed to do on an almost daily basis since she’d arrived here six months ago.

Already she’d overheard Ollie complaining about her to Helene.

“She doesn’t have what it takes, Helene. Face it!” he’d barked, his face taking on that puce hue that appeared whenever he was even angrier than normal.

“You’ll just have to suffer on, Ollie,” Helene said flatly. “I don’t have time to find someone else right now. Besides, Andrea recommended her – and she does have a journalism degree.”

“Journalism degree? She doesn’t have a clue!” Ollie exclaimed.

“Well, she’s bound to get better. She just needs more experience.”

“She’s thirty! She should have experience. Can’t you get me someone better?”

“I’ve told you. I don’t have time. Give her another three months and I’ll reconsider then.”

After that, Tess seemed to make one mistake after another. Now with the post-mortem meeting looming she knew lunch was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Regretfully, she tapped out her reply.

Working through. Too much of a backlog. See you this afternoon.

She hit send and went off to unpack her plastic box of sandwiches and fruit and settle down to figure out how she was going to defend herself this afternoon.

As soon as she pushed open the door to Helene Harper’s office Tess knew that lunch had done nothing to improve Ollie’s temper. Several chairs were clustered around the battered brown table that Helene persisted in calling a conference table. Helene hadn’t arrived yet but Ollie was sprawled on the chair just inside the door.

“Afternoon,” he muttered, barely looking up from his newspaper.

Tess gave him a cursory nod and picked a chair at the opposite end of the table. She flicked her notebook open and started doodling, trying to ignore Ollie ignoring her.

The door opened and Helene arrived. She flung her purple pashmina on the back of a chair and dumped a mountain of newspaper cuttings and press releases onto the table. “Are we the only ones here?” She pursed her lips and glanced at the wall clock just as Andrea arrived.

“Sorry I’m late.” Andrea sat down beside Tess. She looked flustered. Her normally perfect auburn bob was dishevelled and her trademark red lipstick smudged, as if she had attempted to touch it up and then realised it was just too late to bother. “Unforeseen circumstances,” she added breathlessly to Helene.

Helene sighed. “More domestic drama, I presume? Well, you’re here now at least. So, Ollie, what did you think of this morning’s programme?”

Ollie glanced down to where Tess was trying to make herself invisible. “It was not our finest hour, Helene.”

“No. It wasn’t. But this afternoon I’d like us to talk about improvement. Improving our listenership, improving our programmes, improving
ourselves.
”Helene looked around the table. “You all know from the latest figures that we need to – we
must
–come up with better ideas. Tess, you’ll be glad to know I intend to put this morning’s programme behind us. So – going forward – what are your thoughts?”

Tess swallowed. She had spent the entire lunch hour thinking up ways to justify this morning and now Helene was springing something completely different on her. She looked down at her file. She had spent a large part of Sunday swotting over a pile of newspapers the size of a small country, trying to come up with ideas. But every time she’d notice a story she thought might be worth following up she would remember Ollie and what he’d said about her to Helene and start to question her own judgement. Now she had very little to choose from but she had to try, at least.

She slid a cutting out of the yellow folder in front of her. “I was thinking about doing a slot on how important pets are to people,” she said. “This Sunday supplement feature is all about how some people feel just as bereaved by the loss of a pet as they do with a family member and how they can have them buried in a pet cemetery and …”

Ollie and Helene stared at her in stony silence.

“It would be very popular,” she continued uncertainly. “I mean, pets are very in. All the celebrities have dogs they can fit in their handbags …”

“I wonder if they have pooper scoopers, too?” Ollie asked.

Tess ignored him. “I just think people’s pets are important to them – I mean my auntie says her dog is half-human and –”

Andrea kicked her under the table. They both knew that once Ollie or Helene didn’t like your idea, it was toast. And, sure enough, Helene was raising her hand imperiously – an unmistakeable signal for Tess to stop.

“I don’t think pet bereavement is really us. But I have a great idea myself as it happens. It’s a slot on how to look ten years younger!”

“Now
that
is a great idea!” Ollie Andrews banged his thigh with satisfaction.

“It is, isn’t it?” Helene beamed at him. “I mean, I know
Ten Years Younger
isn’t exactly a new or novel idea, what with every TV programme doing it for years now. But it hasn’t been done on radio!”

And that would be because no one will be able to see the makeover on radio, Tess thought.

“It would,” Helene continued, “be extreme makeover meets positive thinking meets brand-new future!” She looked expectantly around the table for reaction. “Andrea? What do you think?”

“Em … I suppose …” Andrea was momentarily lost for words.

“What do you think?” Helene repeated impatiently. “About extreme makeovers?”

“I suppose it depends on just how extreme you were thinking,” Andrea said cautiously. “I mean, I wouldn’t be prepared to go under the knife or anything like that. Maybe Botox.”

“And who said you would be going under anything?” Helene interrupted her.

“Oh! I thought you meant I should do a personal-experience report.”

“Why?” Helene’s voice was brusque.

“W-w-well, I am the reporter for
This Morning
.” Andrea stammered a bit, uncharacteristically unsure of herself in the face of Helene’s hostility.

“
W-w-well
, we need new voices,” Helene mimicked her. “Your reports haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire lately, if I may say so. No, I thought I could do the
Ten Years Younger
slot myself actually.”

Tess and Andrea exchanged sceptical looks. New voices, my arse. It was obvious Helene had just had some big freebie offered to her in return for a big plug on Atlantic 1FM. But Helene was a disaster on-air.

Tess had seen cases where people walked into the studio appearing to be really coy and shy, and then, as soon as the red light came on, they suddenly became charged with adrenaline and performed to perfection. Helene was the opposite of those people. On the few occasions she insisted on doing a broadcast her face had glowed as red as the on-air light, with a nervous rash spreading all over her face and neck. She’d stumbled through her scripts, her normal acerbic fluency deserting her as she
ummed
and
ahhed
and rambled down all sorts of blind alleys without ever really getting her point across. Nobody ever told her this, of course. Everyone simply tried to discourage her from ideas that would involve her going on-air.

But today, she was fired up with enthusiasm and would not be deterred. She was rummaging through the enormous pile of papers she had dumped on the table, her voice getting higher as she spoke.

“Let me explain. The Spa Fantastic is keen to get more publicity and they’ve offered us a weekend of
Ten Years Younger
treatments! Now where did I leave their brochure? Ah yes, here it is!” Helene pulled a pink brochure from the pile in front of her and began to read: “
‘The Spa Fantastic Experience can make you feel ten years younger. In this oasis of Me Time you can take a break from the stress of day-to-day living. Take the time to be pampered with our fully trained
therapists. Have a four-handed hot stone massage . . .
’”

Four hands? What the hell does that mean, thought Tess.

Helene glanced on down the page, “
Blah blah blah
 . . . well, we get the idea anyway.” She looked around the room for reaction.

“How is it going to work on radio?” Tess ventured. “I mean, nobody will be able to see the result of the makeover.”

No one answered, so Tess tossed out an idea.

“Maybe we could run a competition? We could ask the listeners to email us as to why they feel they need to look ten years younger in the first place? We could get a very interesting debate going about why our society is so obsessed with youth. It would be great material for us and the contestants would feel rewarded for listening to
This Morning
.”

“Excuse me?” Ollie sat up straighter in his seat. “Since when did listeners need a reward to listen to me?” he asked icily.

“I meant a bonus,” Tess amended hastily.

“I’m sure you did!” Ollie turned to Helene. “I think it would be best if I did the
Ten Years Younger
slot myself, Helene.”

“And how would that work?” Helene raised an eyebrow. “You interviewing yourself about your experience at the spa? I think not, Ollie.”

“It’s me the listeners are interested in!” Ollie persisted. “Maybe we could go together, Helene?”

Helene threw the Spa Fantastic Experience brochure down on the table with considerable force. “I am going to do it, Ollie. By myself. That’s the end of the discussion. Tess! Can you get on the case and set it all up for me? The weekend at the Spa Fantastic will be just the start. For instance, Botox. Does anyone know if it hurts much?” She looked directly at Ollie’s suspiciously smooth forehead.

Ollie narrowed his eyes, but didn’t respond.

Helene shrugged. “Tess, find out if Botox is painful!”

Andrea wrote ‘
Get Sara to do it
,’ on her notepad and leaned in towards Tess so she could read it. Tess hid a smile. Sara, who still hadn’t shown up, would have the beauty industry thinking their product name was being heard by hundreds of thousands of listeners instead of simply hundreds, purely by virtue of her snooty attitude.

At that moment, the door opened and Sara burst in. Helene went through the same routine she had with Andrea, looking at the wall clock with a pained expression. But Sara just put on her most stuck-up impression.

“Bloody traffic. I simply couldn’t get parking. You’d want to be driving, like, a Smart car to get parking in this town. And Daddy wouldn’t put up with that at all – he says it would make him the laughing stock of the golf club if he bought me one of those!” She slipped into one of the seats and looked expectantly around the room. Her pale-blonde hair fell in an expensive cut around her exquisite, heart-shaped face, and her outfit, Tess calculated, probably cost the equivalent of six months’ wages.

Helene muttered something under her breath, but she seemed almost embarrassed to be chastising Sara. Yet she’d practically bitten the head off Andrea earlier. Tess sighed. No matter what treatments they drummed up for Helene, none of them were going to make her ten times nicer. When was someone going to come up with a serum for that, she wondered.

Helene turned to Sara. “We’re thinking of doing an item on
Ten Years Younger
. Do you have any ideas about that, Sara?”

“Me?” A bewildered look passed over Sara’s beautiful face. “Why would I want to know anything about looking ten years younger? I mean, if I looked ten years younger, I’d only look about twelve. I already have trouble getting served drink unless I have ID with me. Of course,” she looked around the room thoughtfully, “it’s probably a good idea for the rest of you.” Then she asked kindly, “Would you like me to do some research on it, Helene?”