The Cinderella Reflex (12 page)

She stood up shakily.

“Tess!” Andrea put her hand on Tess’s arm. “Sit down,” she commanded. “We can work this out. Helene!” Andrea appealed to her once more but Helene had a stubborn set to her mouth and didn’t look in the mood to change her mind. Tess brushed off Andrea’s hand and rushed for the exit, half expecting Helene to call her back, to tell her that the whole thing had got out of hand and they would talk about it again tomorrow.

But she reached the door and Helene had still made no move to stop her. She pushed it open and blinked into the early evening. A fine drizzle of rain had started. Tess stepped out onto the pavement, bending her head against the misty droplets. She could hardly believe what had just happened. She was out of Atlantic 1 FM!

Helene stretched out on a day bed at Spa Fantastic, propped up on a giant cushion. With all the drama at work she had almost forgotten about her Ten Years Younger project. Sara had texted her late last night to remind her she was booked into the hotel today and after the debacle with Tess Morgan she was glad to get away for a couple of days. But now that she was actually here, it all felt a bit spooky.

She had read up on all the latest treatments available and frankly, they sounded terrifying – ranging from needles being stuck in your face to chemical peels that would leave your complexion raw and red for days before the new, younger skin would allegedly put in an appearance. So, she’d opted for all the pain-free treatments instead.

She looked around the room, at the dimmed lights and flickering candles. Multi-coloured tropical fish were swimming aimlessly from one end of a huge aquarium to the other and weird whale music spilled from the speakers on the wall. The other six loungers, resplendent with huge white cushions and fluffy comfort blankets, were empty.

Helene’s nerves were still frayed over the Agony Aunt of the Airwaves debacle, and the fact that she had somehow managed to sack Tess. She didn’t want to think about it but the silence at the spa was unnerving. She pulled out her mobile to see if she had any messages. She half expected to see a text from Tess, asking for her job back. That would have allowed her to agree magnanimously and everything could be back to normal before anyone realised anything about it. But there were no new messages.

She felt someone standing behind her and looked up to see the manager who had greeted her earlier, shaking his head reprovingly at Helene’s phone.

“What?” Helene snapped. “Are you afraid it will disturb the fish?” She shoved the phone into the pocket of her fluffy dressing gown, pressed her head back into the cushion, and ordered herself to relax. This was her chance to get de-stressed, detoxed and distracted from the toxic atmosphere at work and she wasn’t going to waste it.

So far she’d had a Reiki session, a Hopi ear candle treatment and was now waiting to get something called a Sole to Soul holistic experience, which involved a foot massage and some weird chanting. Sara had organised it, but how it was supposed to make her look ten years younger was anyone’s guess. And the real irony, Helene reflected ruefully, was that she now felt about a hundred instead of forty.

She felt so wound up that when she closed her eyes, instead of visualising a perfect white Caribbean beach, as the therapist had instructed her to do earlier, all she could see was the agony aunt slot playing across her mind like an unwanted film.

How had it all happened, Helene wondered, giving her shoulders a little shake. How had she, Helene Harper, self-confessed control freak, let it all happen? She cast her mind back over the sequence of events. First up, there had been the call from Cindy. Helene had been expecting her to call, was waiting to plug her through to Tess. But when she had heard her ‘problem’– which mirrored Helene’s life so neatly – she had been dumbstruck.

It had been Richard’s idea to use Cindy in the first place. Helene’s eyes narrowed as she tried to piece it all together. The night before the agony aunt slot was due to air she and Richard had finally got some time together. It was the first uninterrupted evening they had spent together since all the changes had taken place at work and Helene had been determined to make the most of it. Richard had dropped in to her apartment unexpectedly around seven, and naturally, they had gone straight to bed. Richard had been ebullient, Helene remembered, giddily optimistic about the future.

Afterwards, he had been all over Helene, even insisting on cooking for her. He had whisked up his speciality dish of linguine pasta with asparagus sauce, which Helene had interpreted as a very encouraging gesture indeed. As they shared a bottle of wine, Helene confided that she was worried about the agony aunt slot.

“That’s your trouble, Helene,” Richard teased, kissing her on the forehead. “You worry too much.”

“But I want it to go well,” Helene fretted. “Maybe I should have arranged for someone to ring in?” She looked at the clock. “I wonder is it too late to get someone now?”

“It’s never too late, Helene,” Richard said jovially, pouring himself another glass of wine. Helene looked at the half-empty bottle. She had barely started hers. She sipped some while she watched Richard punching some numbers into his phone. He looked at her. “Relax. I’ll deal with it.”

Helene heard a female voice on the other end and Richard took the phone out to the hall. When he returned, he told her everything was sorted. A woman named Cindy, who he described as an out of work actress, would call in to the show the next day and she’d have a problem. Simple.

Relieved, Helene had finally allowed herself to relax. She and Richard had gone back to bed and he’d stayed much longer than normal. At one stage she even thought he was going to stay the night but at the last minute he insisted he had to go home. But everything had seemed absolutely fine. Better than fine.

And then, the very next morning, all hell had broken loose. Helene had been so preoccupied with Cindy’s ‘problem’, and why the hell it had been about a love triangle involving a married boss, and whether Richard was making some sort of passive-aggressive point
,
that she hadn’t paid any attention to the caller who had turned out to be Jack McCabe.

She had thought he was a random caller and put him through as absent-mindedly as she would anybody. Next thing she knew Tess Morgan was barging out of studio leaving the caller hanging on in mid-sentence. And then – just as she was trying to find out from Sara what the hell had happened – Richard had come storming into the studio, asking why had Helene allowed Jack McCabe to go on-air without informing him?

“He hasn’t signed on the dotted line yet, Helene! Didn’t you think it
important
enough to tell me he was about to go on-air?”

She had never seen him like that before. Looking at him, in a full-on temper tantrum, with his complexion all red and his eyes sort of bulging she had been afraid he might have a heart attack there in front of her. She had been that concerned for him. But then he had hissed at her, “I cannot stress how important it is that Jack McCabe buys in, Helene. I just hope you haven’t blown it!”

“Actually, I was listening to Cindy, and her interesting problem about having an affair with a married man,” she snapped. “Did it remind you of anyone, Richard? Us perhaps? Did you tell Cindy what to say?”

Richard looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Of course I didn’t. She’s an
actress.
She made it up.”

“Well, I think it’s a great big coincidence that Cindy would just happen to phone in with that particular problem,” Helene said stubbornly.

“Helene!” Richard threw a warning look at Sara, who was all ears, her head swivelling from Richard to Helene and back again, openly staring at them as it dawned on her that her boss and her boss’s boss were having an affair.

“Great! Bloody great!” Richard snapped. He turned on his heel and left, slamming the studio door behind him.

Helene settled back shakily into her chair. She was acutely conscious of Sara stealing sidelong glances at her and knew it was only a matter of time before it was all over Facebook, Twitter and whatever other hideous social networking site had been invented in the ten minutes since Helene had last looked ... unless Helene could come up with a way of silencing her assistant. That’s when she’d had the idea of offering her the producer job she’d wanted for so long. Tess Morgan’s job. It had only been a fleeting thought. Helene would never have gone through with it if she hadn’t gone to Ryan’s. She had left a message on Richard’s phone, asking him to meet her there but he hadn’t shown up. And she had become so stressed that she drank the whole bottle of wine she had ordered for them to share. She had then spotted Tess Morgan acting as if nothing at all had happened and something in her had snapped.

Now, of course, she realised she had acted way over her pay grade. She didn’t actually have the right to fire anyone. She was surprised Tess hadn’t figured that out by now. She was probably going to sue her for wrongful dismissal! Helene wiped her forehead with one of the white towels piled up beside her and picked up a leaflet from the table – anything to distract herself from the torture of her own thoughts.
The Spa Fantastic is where top people come to relax and be
pampered
, she read.
A sumptuous oasis of me time, a place to renew and
revitalise.

It was exactly what Helene had thought she needed. But when she turned her gaze towards the floor to ceiling windows of the spa, all she could see was rain driving through the fields. She could hear the wind howling like a banshee through a small vent in the windows.

“You ready for your Sole to Soul experience?” A girl with an Australian accent appeared beside Helene’s day bed. She had a name badge with
Annie
printed on it pinned to her white therapist jacket. Annie looked unnervingly healthy – a tall and tanned young woman with athletic limbs, big white teeth and an absurdly cheerful countenance.

“I think so,” Helene said with some trepidation. What the hell did a Sole to Soul experience entail? She followed Annie down a dim corridor and into one of the treatment rooms, her spa slippers sinking into the thick pile carpet.

“Just relax,” Annie soothed. She started by pouring oil on Helene’s feet and as the scent of roses filled the room Helene could feel the muscles in her body relaxing. But then Annie began to hum and wave her hands in a weird formation over Helene’s body, stopping at certain parts as if she was listening to something. Helene’s shoulders shot up around her ears, all the tension back again.

“Relax. I’m trying to unblock your chakras,” Annie explained cheerfully.

“My whats?” Helene frowned.

“Your energy points, according to Eastern philosophy. Your throat chakra in particular feels blocked. That means you have a lot to say for yourself but you’ve never really been able to express it. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes, it does!” Helene was amazed. That’s exactly how she felt when she was talking to Richard lately. Unheard. She felt a surge of excitement. “Can you unblock it for me? The chakra whatsit?”

“Not in one session, mate,” Annie replied, thumping her on the shoulders. “And not by me. It’s something I picked up on in India but I’m only a beginner.”

“You’ve been to India?” Helene thought of Matt and all the places he’d been to, and the way he’d marked them out with tiny yellow pins on the map on the wall of the cafe.

“Yeah. It was part of my world trip. This is too.” Annie asked Helene to turn on to her stomach and began to knead the knotted up muscles in her neck and shoulders. It must be the travelling that made Annie and Matt so relaxed, Helene decided.

The thought of her and Richard travelling together came back to her and she drifted into a very pleasant daydream where she was backpacking with Richard in India. She had given away all her designer clothes and she didn’t need any products at all, just a bit of soap and a toothbrush and an old comb because her hair was cut really short.

But then Annie spoilt it by giving her a slap across the small of her back.

“That’s it,” she said. “You’re all done.”

She led Helene to yet another relaxation area, where a tray of mint tea and a single strawberry was set out on a small table beside another heated lounger. Helene settled into it, sipping the tea and flicking through the pages of one of the glossy magazines piled up on the table beside her. After only a few minutes she dropped the magazine listlessly. Jesus, she hadn’t realised spas were so
boring.

She fished out her mobile again and felt her heart rate quicken. Four missed calls! She’d switched her phone to silent while she’d been having the Sole to Soul treatment. Helene stared at the screen. They were all from the same number – Richard’s. She hadn’t heard from him since he’d stormed off in his huff, even though she had texted him several times. Well, she wasn’t going to be available as soon as he decided he was ready to talk to her.

Helene stuffed the mobile unanswered into the pocket of her dressing gown and picked up a silver vanity mirror from the side-table. She pulled her chestnut brown hair away from her face and scrutinised her features carefully. Her eyebrows were artfully plucked, her hair carefully coloured, her high, disdainful cheekbones a distinct genetic advantage. She looked at her long, pale throat, picturing it blocked because she couldn’t express herself.

She spotted Annie carrying a bale of white towels to another treatment room.

“Hey! Can you tell me how I can find out more about this chakra stuff?” she called after her. She felt excited about being able to express herself properly.

“Sorry, I have another client at the moment,” Annie called back.

“Well, can you get me a radio then?” Helene had promised herself a media-free few days, but the whale music echoing eerily through the room was seriously freaking her out.

“I’ll get the manager to look after you,” Annie promised, disappearing into a therapy room. Five minutes later the manager arrived at Helene’s lounger, proffering a personal radio with earphones.

“Is everything to your satisfaction, Madam?”