Prologue
The photo album felt heavy in her hands. She paused, running her fingers over the grain of the leather, feeling its weight. No wonder nobody used these any more: chunky, unwieldy things, stuck under beds or in the loft, shoved to the back of a wardrobe, which was exactly where she had found this one, hidden behind a shoebox full of ticket stubs and half-empty notebooks. And the very idea of photographs! Going into an actual shop on the high street to get them printed, as if they were precious artefacts to be kept for evermore. Whoever had the time for that these days? So self-indulgent. So arrogant. So twentieth century.
A fixed smile on her lips, she flipped open the cover to the first sheet of vellum, worn and lined like an old woman’s skin, the neatly inked title reading: Oxford 1995.
She turned the page, and there they were in their glossy glory, a swirl of primary colours and monochrome, all energy and poses and cheesy grins only slightly dimmed by time. How young and good-looking everyone was! Dated clothes and hair, sur
e, but the smiles were genuine; a little self-conscious, perhaps, but carefree. Yes, that was the word. Like they had nothing to apologise for. Every one of them making eye contact with the camera, looking straight down the barrel, daring you to judge them, daring you to say that they weren’t anything but the young and the beautiful, the nation’s elite, their futures just sitting there waiting to be plucked like a perfect rose.
Her eye was drawn to one photo in particular. It was innocuous really. A group shot at a party. Hundreds, thousands of people had taken snapshots just like this. Young people in some bar, all raising their glasses – champagne bowls, naturally – winking and laughing, mugging for the camera, shouting, ‘Cheese!’, celebrating what? Glorious endings or thrilling beginnings? She supposed the picture represented both.
As her finger traced the face in the middle of the shot, she wondered what Amy had been thinking as she sipped her champagne and grinned for the camera. Had everything been mapped out in her head, her clever post-college plan to scramble to the top already carefully thought out and engineered? Or had it really been a matter of good timing, the right friends and luck?
No one could be that lucky.
She felt her fingers curling, nails scraping across the paper. How could she have looked so happy? she thought, pulling the photo from the page, crushing it in her fist and flinging it away from her, skin crawling from its touch. She tore at the next picture and the next, ripping them from the book, grinding them between her hands, mashing and tearing, a guttural groan coming from deep in her throat. ‘How dare she?’ she hissed, again and again, wrenching out whole pages in twos and threes, dropping them like confetti until there was nothing left to tear. She grasped the thick cover and tried to destroy that too, but it was too thick, too heavy, the leather doing its work, holding its shape. Instead, she flung it across the room with a scream and watched it spin into the corner.
‘Look what you made me do,’ she whispered, her hands twisting in her hair, trying to steady them. ‘Look what you made me do.’ And finally, she began to cry.
Chapter 1
To the untrained eye, it was an amazing cover. Glossy and glamorous, it featured a hot new Hollywood actress and was crammed with tempting cover lines: ‘Online dating guide’, ‘Orgasms 100% guaranteed’, ‘Autumn style must-haves’. All the buttons were pressed, everything the young and fashionable urban woman could possibly desire. And yet editor Amy Shepherd knew it was a disaster.
‘Does she look so miserable in all of her photos?’ she said to the woman hunched over the computer screen. ‘Come on, Gem, there has to be something.’ Gemma Carling was the best art director in magazines – that was why Amy had poached her from Condé Nast six months previously – but even she couldn’t work miracles.
‘Photoshop only goes so far, Amy,’ she said. ‘I can shave off a few pounds, get rid of spots, but I can’t make the bitch any less gloomy. You remember what her agent said.’
Amy nodded. ‘Carly doesn’t do smiling.’
Landing Carly Zima for a cover shoot had been a major coup for Verve – a boost the magazine badly needed. Back in its 1990s heyday, Verve had been a byword for kick-ass feminism, a style bible for self-assured young women who knew what they wanted: sex, career and fashion – all three, all the time. Amy could remember the days when stars would come into the office personally, courting the staff, taking them out to dinner, desperate to feature in its pages. But that was a long time ago, and it was becoming harder and harder to get an exclusive on anything.
‘No chance we could do a reshoot?’ Gemma’s voice was hopeful, but they both knew the answer. Part of the reason for her moody face was that Carly had done the photo shoot under duress; she had been forced to participate by her sponsors. So yes, she had turned up. Six hours late, sure, but she had come. Clearly she had believed that was the end of her part in the matter. No amount of coaxing from top fashion photographer Emile Noir could get her to show any amount of Verve’s trademark sassy confidence.
‘She looks like her dog’s just died,’ said Gemma.
Gallows humour. It was a big thing in magazines these days. If they didn’t laugh, they’d cry.
‘Amy?’
She looked up to see her PA, Chrissie. She was holding up a phone, jiggling it slightly. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but you asked me to remind you about your twelve thirty meeting?’
‘Oh crap.’
Amy stood up and grabbed her ever-present desk book. ‘Look, I know we’re flogging a dead horse here, Gem,’ she said. ‘But see what you can do about giving it CPR?’
Gemma gave her a grim smile. ‘Sweet talker.’
Amy glanced at her watch and broke into a run, her heels clacking, Chrissie trotting along beside her. ‘Conference room, twenty-third floor,’ the PA said, handing her a sheaf of printouts. ‘And don’t forget you have a lunch at Tanjerin, one o’clock.’
‘Thanks, Chrissie, you’re a life-saver, as ever.’
The lift to the executive floor of Genesis Media was empty, giving Amy time to check her make-up in the mirrored walls. There were faint lilac semicircles under her eyes, but it was no surprise that she looked exhausted. She had been in the office particularly early that day, leaving home before Tilly, her livewire five-year-old, had even stirred, making sure her husband David would hold the fort until their nanny Claudia arrived at seven o’clock.
The rest of the day had been spent reading through dozens of pages of editorial, crossing out and rewriting in the margin like an angry teacher, liaising with HR about her junior fashion editor, who had been caught bunking off work when she was supposed to be on appointments, and dealing with dozens of irritating emails relating to everything from paper stock to Tilly’s new school uniform. Amy knew that there were tougher jobs out there – she wasn’t going down a mine or flying off to a war zone – but still, she felt physically and emotionally fried.
The lift bobbed and stopped. As the doors stuttered open, Amy was out and down the corridor, pushing through the double doors of the boardroom with the barest glance at her watch. Only three minutes late: acceptable. Douglas Proctor was a stickler for timekeeping and cut no slack for creative types. In fact, he clearly thought they were a hindrance to the smooth running of the organisation, but he tolerated Amy. Or had so far.
The incoming MD of Genesis Media was standing at the window, back to the room. He was currently the company’s chief operating officer, but was being promoted due to the imminent retirement of Genesis chief William Bentley.
‘Ah, Amy,’ he said, turning. ‘Sit down. I thought I’d ask Denton to join us this morning.’
She smiled at the slim, suited man at the table, even thought she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Denton Scoles, finance director, chief bean-counter at Genesis Media and arch-enemy of creativity, represented everything that was wrong with magazines right now. Ever since his arrival twelve months earlier, he had overseen two huge rounds of editorial redundancies, claiming that an overworked hub of a dozen subeditors and designers could work across Genesis’s twenty titles, and had famously nixed the annual Verve Christmas party for being ‘unproductive’.
‘Is William not joining us today?’ Amy said, immediately regretting her remark. Douglas’s cool gaze told her that the new order had already been established and that their genial boss had not been invited.
‘How’s the October cover looking?’ he asked, not bothering to reply to her question.
Amy didn’t dare tell him they might have to reshoot.
‘Just making the final tweaks, but we’re very excited. I think it’s going to sell well.’