The Cinderella Reflex (2 page)

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 and Ollie was sprawled on the one 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 was 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 would be reporting on it.”

“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 1 FM. 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 blurb? Ah yes, here it is!” Helene separated a pink sheet of paper 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?” Helene glanced on down the page, “Blah blah blah ... well, we get the idea anyway.” She tossed the leaflet to one side and 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 slammed 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?” Helene 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 doodled ‘Get Sara to do it,’ on her notepad and leaned it towards so Tess 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!” Sara 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. Would you like me to do some research on it, Helene?” she asked kindly.

“You can give Tess a hand,” Helene muttered.

“Now. Can we have your ideas for the week please, Andrea?”

Andrea looked panicked. “I don’t have anything nailed down at the moment. But,” she added hurriedly as Helene’s features darkened, “I do have a few ideas floating around in the ether!”

“The ether?” Ollie cut in. “That’s the place to have them all right!”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Ollie!” Helene admonished him. “We must all be positive together now! We are losing listeners but we can turn it around! Can’t we, people?” she looked around the faces at the table. Nobody said a word.

Then Ollie spoke. Or rather shouted.

“HOW can we turn it around? HOW?” His face was flushed and his brown eyes were bulging. “Will we get more listeners with Andrea’s ideas – out in the ether? Or with Tess’s stories about pooper scoopers? As for your idea, Helene! How to look Ten Years Younger! That is just a ruse to get a freeloading weekend and I am so stressed right now I could do with one of those myself. But how is it going to improve my figures?”

“Your figures are not my only problem, Ollie,” Helene said coolly.

“You can say that again, lady!” Ollie jumped to his feet. “And trying to look ten years younger won’t help your problems either! Try ten decades. Ten decades of the Rosary that is!” And with that Ollie stormed out, nearly taking the door off its hinges as he slammed it behind him.

Inside the room there was complete silence. All Tess could hear was the ticking of the wall clock. She focussed hard on her notebook, pretending to be reading over her notes.

Finally Helene broke the silence. “So!” she beamed around the room. “That was a frank exchange of ideas! Lots of creative tension – that’s good! That’s what we need to turn this station around, folks. And now I have another meeting to attend to. You can all go now.”

As Tess stood up to leave she could hear Helene clicking and unclicking the top of her biro compulsively – the only outward sign that Ollie’s tantrum had rattled her in any way whatsoever.

Helene strode out of the office and into the street, stumbling slightly as her stiletto caught in a ridge on the pavement. She blinked in the sunshine, not quite sure where to go. After Ollie Andrews had belittled her in front of her staff like that, she’d had to invent a bogus meeting just to get out of the office. Damn Ollie, she seethed. She had brought him into Atlantic 1 FM and now she found herself in the peculiar position of having to defend someone she had come to despise.

It had all been so different when she’d poached him from a rival local radio station, luring him over with the promise of a glittering career. But that was five years ago, when she, like everyone else, had thought the station was going national. Now it was becoming clearer that that wasn’t going to happen and Ollie was holding her responsible. Helene had told him to his face that he was as much to blame himself. More, in fact. He was meant to be the shock jock, courting controversy and building publicity and listeners in equal measures. Well, he was shocking all right, she thought darkly. Shockingly awful.

He annoyed Helene on an almost daily basis, alienated the rest of the staff and – this bit was the most important – aggravated the hell out of the listeners. Ollie insisted on mixing heavy current affairs with a mad mix of music – from country to middle of the road, light opera, and on the days when he was feeling particularly bad-tempered, a blast of heavy metal could be heard thumping out of the studio.

This Morning was the flagship programme for Atlantic 1 FM and as each set of figures showed that his show was collapsing Ollie had become more needy, more panicky and perversely, more arrogant. He had taken to phoning Helene at all hours of the day and night with demands and complaints and whinges.

A gust of wind whipped Helene’s long dark hair across her face and she started to walk towards the coast road. Killty was a seaside town on the commuter belt for Dublin and was populated with young couples starting their families and wealthy retirees who frequented the health food stores and alternative treatment centres that were scattered along the main street. The town was big enough to be anonymous if that’s what you really wanted – and Helene did – but she liked how the people still seemed to be interested in each other and she often found herself eavesdropping on the friendly banter in the shops and cafes.