Handbags and Gladrags Page 5

  It was all so odd, I was actually starting to feel a bit worried about her. It was totally out of character for Nelly to miss shows, however bad her hangover was, but I certainly wasn’t going to ask her po-faced boss where she was and draw attention to her absence.

  Apart from that – and periodic flashbacks to the events of the night before which made my insides loop the loop – it was a normal day in the abnormal world of high fashion. We were in a permanent rush to get to each show slightly late, which was then always an hour late anyway. We had no time for lunch, but had to go instead to three showroom appointments with hideous minor fashion labels which advertised in the magazine.

  As the orange-faced, fire-haired PRs – it was a particular look that Milanese women over fifty seemed to go for – gushed and cooed over Bee, who loved that part of her job, I had to pretend to be ecstatically excited by their ghastly clothes. I would then select, with great enthusiasm, a royal-blue trouser suit, a purple mohair trapeze coat and a white shirt, which was the only thing I would ever actually use in a shoot. It was just a matter of getting them one picture a season, the essential editorial credit which would keep them sweet until they chose which magazines would benefit from their next advertising spend.

  And that was one of the funny things about my job. Because while all of us who worked on glossy magazines passionately loved clothes and making beautiful pictures, that unspoken exchange of editorial credits and advertising cash was what really kept the whole high-fashion publishing industry rolling along.

  It was a well-known secret on Chic that Bee kept a master list of advertisers and each month, when the magazine came out, she had Nushka go through it page by page and make a note of every editorial mention and picture credit each fashion and beauty advertiser had racked up. Then Bee could check that none of them were being under-serviced by editorial. If they were, she would make us shoot something of theirs in the next issue, nonnegotiable. These paybacks were never ever openly discussed – and Bee would have blankly denied it went on to anyone who asked her – but it really was that structured behind the scenes.

  Most of the time it was OK, but for some of the labels it was very hard to find anything we could bear to use in our shoots and I knew it weighed very heavily on Frannie’s conscience having to write about beauty products she didn’t really think were great.

  ‘I just think of that reader,’ she told me once, screwing up press releases and aiming them at a bin on the other side of her office.

  ‘She’s me, ten years ago. Sitting in a wee house in Broughty Ferry, reading Chic and believing every feckin’ word and dreaming of being beautiful and glamorous and saving up from her Saturday job stacking bloody shelves in bloody Tesco to go out and buy some overpriced bottle of shite, that doesn’t even work, or thinking she needs three-hundred-pound shoes to be happy. I can’t stand it sometimes.’ She looked at me and laughed. ‘And then I get invited to a suntan lotion launch on Harbour Island and suddenly I don’t mind so much. Isn’t that weird?’

  Frannie assuaged her conscience by writing as much as she could about emerging designers and beauty products she really did believe in, by banging the drum about organic cosmetics and by holding regular sales of the truckloads of fabulous free beauty samples she received, for the Chic staff. We really appreciated the chance to buy gorgeous make-up at cut prices, because we all earned pretty crap money, and Frannie felt better after donating the funds raised to a women’s refuge.

  Our relatively meagre salaries were another of the great ironies of the fashion world. We all had to look perfect all the time to uphold the magazine’s public image, but none of us could really afford the designer clothes we featured in its pages. And not only were we expected to wear them, they had to be that season’s pieces. It was fashion death to wear anything older than six months – everyone would know – unless it was ten years old and could be passed off as ‘vintage’.

  So we relied on discounts; buying wholesale; generous Christmas presents; the invitation-only sales when the PRs sold off the season’s press samples (another reason to make sure you stayed no more than a model size ten) and on freebies from designers thrilled with a great picture.

  But most of all we had to rely on our innate abilities to sling together a great look with one key designer piece, some Top Shop and Zara bargains and bits and bobs from Portobello market. And then there were our credit cards, of course. The fashion editor’s flexible friends.

  Fortunately for my own personal national debt, there wasn’t any time to go shopping that day because after our appointments we had to spend ages out at the Fiera, the only Milan show venue worse than the old factory wasteland. The Fiera was a vast exhibition centre, just far enough from the centre of town to be annoying, that consisted of a hideous labyrinth of escalators and artificially lit, low-ceilinged and badly ventilated spaces, divided up by ugly exhibition stands. I hated the Fiera with a serious vengeance. It made me feel suffocated.

  Worst of all was getting to the weird cavernous halls in the centre of the vast maze, which involved heaving crowds of impatient people, in uncomfortable shoes, many of them smoking, passing through very narrow spaces. I lived in fear of being trampled to death under a stampede of Christian Louboutin’s red soles, or having my face mutilated by cigarette burns. I’d already had a hole singed in the sleeve of my favourite Alberta Ferretti coat by somebody else’s bloody ciggie. In a no-smoking area, of course.

  Adding to the frustration, the shows always seemed to be scheduled so there wasn’t quite enough time to go back into town (meaning: shopping) between them, but just enough to make hanging around and waiting inside abject torture. The Fiera made me feel more tired than anywhere else on earth.

  The best thing that had ever happened to me out there was standing right behind Anna Wintour once in the queue for the loos. I had felt close to greatness for those few moments. Apart from the celeb-watching opportunities, the only respite was a secret café hidden away in one remote corner of the building, which only the British press seemed to know about. It had a great Seventies interior and even some windows, providing the luxury of natural light and a few trees to look out at.

  I normally escaped to that haven with Nelly and Frannie – making sure to brush off Bee, Alice and Beaver first. We’d sit on the slatted wooden staircase, drinking espresso (me) and chomping on delicious salami panini (Nelly and Frannie). Forced to be out at the Fiera for hours that afternoon – covering minor advertiser shows that Bee and Alice weren’t bothering with – Nelly’s unexplained absence was particularly distressing. Frannie was feeling so sick she’d gone back to the hotel, so I had no one to hang out or giggle with. I’d actually nodded off in La Perla, as my lack of sleep began to catch up with me.

  But despite my weariness, I still didn’t feel any sense of remorse about what I’d done the night before. Not even when Oliver – that was my husband – called me up.

  ‘Hey, Mrs Fairbrother,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Hello, Mr Fairbrother,’ I said, genuinely pleased to hear from him. ‘It’s going beautifully, thank you. How about you?’

  ‘Totally cool, actually. I went to a great new restaurant last night, in Brick Lane. Laotian-fusian food. Marnie Stallinger did the interior. It’s fabulous. I think we should seriously look at moving to E1, it’s the new Notting Hill. What have you been up to over there?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ I lied. I couldn’t believe how easily it came to me. ‘Riding around in a limousine, staying in a five-star hotel, eating in great restaurants, a little designer shopping and an A-list fashion party. It’s been really tough.’

  Ollie chuckled, he loved what he thought of as my glamorous life. Well, it was pretty glam really, on the surface.

  ‘Bought anything?’ he asked. Ollie was almost as interested in my wardrobe as I was.

  ‘Yeah, I got some fabulous boots from Prada, quite loose with big chunky heels on them. Sort of like biker boots, but much more expensive.’

  ‘Oh,
I love those,’ said Ollie. ‘I saw them in The Sunday Times Style section. They’ll look great on you with a short skirt. Phwooar.’

  I giggled.

  ‘What was the party?’ said Ollie.

  ‘Antonello Ferrucci. It was a riot. Jacko was there. He directed the make-up for the show.’

  ‘Wow, he really is hitting the big time. I’ll have to get on to him again about signing up with Slap. “Paul Toussaints for Slap.” It sounds great, I like the alliteration. He’d be mad not to do it. Let’s go over to New York and work on him, when you get back from this trip. I need to see what’s going on in New York anyway, so I can justify it all on expenses.’

  That was my Ollie, always looking for a business opportunity, meaning an opportunity to further his career and an opportunity for him – and me – to have a good time at the company’s expense. Mind you, the company he worked for could afford it.

  Ollie was the managing director of a fantastically groovy and successful independent cosmetics brand called Slap. It was the make-up everyone wanted to be seen to be using – celebs were always listing Slap’s mascara as the thing they would pick up if their house was on fire and that kind of thing – and Ollie had played a large part in getting it to that status. He really was terrifically good at his job.

  So good at it, that he had managed to keep it discreetly quiet that Slap was actually a division of cosmetics giant Eudora Lorimer, a massive international corporation, almost like the civil service, which he had been with since he first left university. The other company he had applied to be a management trainee with had been Marks & Spencer, but I only knew that because his mother had told me. He wouldn’t have liked anyone to have known that. Not even me.

  Ollie and I had met six years before at the Christmas party of Gorgeous magazine, where I had been working as a junior fashion editor, before I got the job at Chic. All the big cosmetics company PRs and marketing people were invited, but Ollie was the one everyone wanted to see.

  Good looking, in a Hugh Grant-ish kind of cool public schoolboy way, with a good sense of humour and beautiful manners, he was truly popular with all the beauty editors he had to schmooze to get his products into their magazines. In fact, most of them were throwing themselves at this rare creature – a straight, single, well-dressed man, of good income, who not only knew the difference between Marni, Mani and Armani, but cared about it too.

  The night we met was the first proper office Christmas party I’d ever been to. Up until then, from the time I’d left college, I’d worked as a freelance stylist for ultra-cool independent style magazines from which I received very little remuneration, but stacks of credibility credits.

  I was also in demand to style off-schedule fashion shows for up-and-coming young designers during London Fashion Week and to do pictures for catalogues, which was what brought in enough money to live off. So while I had plenty of work, I had never really been part of an office set-up before.

  I had taken the job at Gorgeous, which was a lipstick, looks and luuurve magazine, much more mainstream than the ones I normally worked for, to have some financial security and to get experience of organizing and going on exotic fashion location shoots. Since I’d joined the mag I’d already been to Morocco, Jamaica and Mexico, chasing the sunshine and light you need to shoot summer clothes for the spring issues, which was always done in the dead of winter to fit in with printing schedules.

  I had swiftly learned how fashion editors were able to manipulate the complications of a glossy magazine’s production cycle – all the pictures had to be ready at least four months before the magazine came out – so that they could spend as much time as possible in fabulous sunny places.

  When I met Ollie that December night in London, I had just come back from the Yucatán peninsula, where we’d been shooting the new spring looks for the March issue. I was very brown, my hair was seriously sunbleached – with a little help from my favourite John Frieda products – and I was wearing a white strapless dress, with armfuls of Mexican silver bangles I’d bought on the trip, and silver stiletto sandals. Yes, that meant no tights in London in midwinter, an act of personal bravery I considered my professional duty. True fashionistas never wear stockings, except for occasional fishnets.

  Ollie had popped up next to me at the drinks table quite early in the proceedings and then hardly left my side for the rest of the evening. I could see people – female people – glaring at me from all around the room, but I didn’t care. I’d recently been dumped by yet another photographer boyfriend in favour of a seventeen-year-old Ukrainian model and my ego needed a boost from a handsome chap in a Richard James suit, a Paul Smith shirt and Gucci shoes.

  I don’t remember much of what Ollie and I talked about that night, but like I say, I always remember the styling details.

  Unlike my sluttish behaviour with Miles, I hadn’t gone to bed with Ollie the night I’d met him. I’d fancied him all right – he was good looking, there was no doubt about that, and I liked his clothes, which was an essential part of sexual attraction for me – but there was something so overwhelmingly confident about Ollie that piqued the contrariness in my nature. I just wasn’t going to make it easy for him. He was clearly used to women falling around him with their tongues lolling out and I was just not going to be one of them.

  I didn’t particularly care about Ollie at that point, let alone want to marry him, but I was still smarting from the betrayal of my last boyfriend and I was nursing a bit of a grudge against the male sex in general. So I decided to teach Oliver Fairbrother, or ‘Mr Perfect’, as I had actually heard women refer to him, a lesson.

  I started by not returning his phone calls. When I did eventually agree to have dinner with him, I cancelled on the afternoon of the date. He sent me flowers and I sent him a short and formal thank-you note – on the magazine’s headed writing paper, as though it was a work thing. It was such fun to tease him.

  Finally, we went out for a drink and that’s all it was – a drink. Well, two drinks at Pharmacy, which was then the place to be seen at. I spent quite a lot of the time chatting to all the other friends I knew in there, to make it clear it wasn’t a big deal to me. Then I went home to Hackney. He was clearly mystified by my behaviour and he started to get totally fixated on me.

  He continued to pursue me with flowers, phone calls and the entire Slap make-up range, until eventually I did have dinner with him. That turned into several dinners over time, plus some movies, exhibition visits and walks in the park – but with quite a few cancellations, unreturned phone calls, emails and texts thrown in – and a chaste kiss was all he got at the end of any of it. I didn’t sleep with Ollie until three months after I met him, when he took me to Babington House for the weekend and I finally succumbed – as I had been secretly dying to for weeks. By that point I honestly think he would have married me just to get me into bed.

  But I have to admit that by then what had started out as a game for me had turned into something real. By the time Ollie and I did get it together, I was fully smitten with him. His reputation as the perfect man really did seem to be justified. He was great company, we shared loads of interests and he clearly really liked women, which is not something you can assume with all men, even the straight ones. He also had the undeniable appeal of his great job and financial security. He had a gorgeous flat too.

  On the Sunday afternoon of that first weekend, as we drove home from Somerset in the late afternoon sunshine, with the top down on his vintage Karmann Ghia, I felt happier than I had since I was ten years old. He was playing Neil Young on the ancient eight-track tape machine that had come with the car – a museum piece in its own right. He went to car boot sales to seek out the cassettes, he had told me, and this was the best one he’d found yet.

  ‘I love this track,’ I said quietly, when ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ came on.

  ‘So do I,’ said Ollie. ‘This whole album is brilliant. I’ve liked it since I was a kid.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said, knowing
that he would have no idea just how much it meant to me. I decided to tell him.

  ‘My dad used to play this music in his studio.’

  Ollie was smiling, he could never get me to talk about my family, so I think he was pleased I was finally opening up. That and a shag in the same weekend. Big progress.

  ‘What did your dad do in his studio?’ he asked, gently.

  ‘He was a painter,’ I said.

  Ollie turned and looked at me quickly.

  ‘Not Matthew Pointer.’

  I nodded. My dad had been quite a famous artist. They had one of his giant canvases in the Tate Modern and I’d go and look at it sometimes, when I felt sad. Like all his works it was made up of millions of tiny brushstrokes and they shimmered with intensity. He wasn’t a super-big name, but people who were seriously interested in modern art had heard of him. I was glad that Ollie had. It meant I didn’t have to explain the rest.

  ‘He died quite young, didn’t he?’ said Ollie, gently.

  I nodded.

  ‘Yeah, he was thirty-eight,’ I said, my voice cracking a bit. I never talked about this stuff, but I was feeling so comfortable with Ollie I suddenly felt that I wanted to.

  ‘I was ten. It was really hard. That’s why I never talk about it, but it’s nice to hear this music because he often played this when he worked.’

  I paused and then felt able to say more, although I couldn’t get my voice above a whisper.

  ‘As long as I was quiet, he didn’t mind me coming in and sitting with him while he painted. I used to love being in there, watching him make those tiny brushstrokes on those huge canvases. To get to the top he’d have to sit on a ladder and I used to hand him up tubes of paint. I can still remember the names of all the colours.’

  ‘What happened?’ said Ollie quietly, giving me a sideways look.

  ‘He just fell down dead one day,’ I said, and that was all I ever said about it, but I remembered it very clearly. I was there.