Eight people sit around a large oval table, heads turned to face a TV screen at one end of it. Photographs spool. Pictures that Olivia has been in the office searching for since 7 a.m. Celebrities on the red carpet. Celebrities at product launches. Celebrities doing their grocery shopping. All pictures Cressida has asked Olivia to source for the daily two-hour meeting, and today, like most days since she joined FASH, Cressida doesn’t seem to like any of them. Everyone is silent, expectant, bored. Waiting for the new site editor to say something directional. Faces on the wall, onto which Cressida had pinned inspirational photos of supermodels and slogans like #iwokeuplikethis, #fashun and #airportswag, also watch, waiting, silent, expectant, uninspired.
Optimistic Alex tries to break the ice with chit-chat.
‘Cressida, do you have a sore throat today?’
‘What?’
‘Well, you’re wearing a neck scarf. And a very nice neck scarf it is too.’
Cressida looks at Alex and curls a plump top lip to reveal truculent teeth.
‘No. It’s just a scarf,’ she snaps. ‘I work in fashion.’
Liz looks meekly across the table at Maya, who gives her a reassuring smile. Since Cressida started, Liz, who Maya worked so hard to get out of her shell, seems to have crawled back into it.
Cressida studies a supermodel on screen. Lips pout and a finger twists.
‘The thing I have trouble with…’ she says profoundly, as if she is about to say something full of insight and zeitgeist, ‘is when does a dungaree become a jumpsuit?’
When did dungarees become singular? In fact this is something that has crept into the FASH vernacular in recent weeks. A striped trouser. A red lip. A colour-block heel. Maya makes a note to herself to bring back plurals.
No one answers. Maya looks around and wonders when people stopped laughing in their morning meeting. Their team get-togethers used to be joyful.
‘OK move on, next picture.’
Olivia fluffs up her fiery mane and scrolls through.
‘I’m not getting anything from these, Olivia. We’re meant to feel inspired to translate these looks, but none of these correlate with me. I mean, who even is she? I’ve never heard of that celebrity.’
Olivia’s tired face jolts awake.
‘She’s in a reality TV show our girls love,’ Maya interjects.
‘Urgh. So common,’ Cressida spits, as she continues to twist thin strands of honey-blonde hair around her forefinger.
Did Cressida just call our customers common?
‘Next!’
Maya feels the weight of tension and ill feeling in the room, so she opens her laptop for distraction, to look through today’s drop of new clothes for editorial inspiration while the team keep looking through paparazzi pictures on the screen.
Bored, miffed, disgruntled. Maya glances left then right and realises no one either side of her can see her screen, so she types ‘James Miller’ into Google.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.
A filmmaker, an author, an architect. None of whom are her James Miller. Maya knows from his email that James Miller is Art Director at MFDD, which she googled at the time and saw was an advertising agency, but now she can’t find anything else. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. Clearly not for that James Miller anyway. A few online charity donations that may or may not have been from him but nothing else.
Cressida and Olivia are talking but Maya doesn’t listen. She’s wondering why she’s bothering to look up a guy who’s not interested.
Forget about him.
‘What was that?’ laughs Cressida.
‘Mosheeno, the new store opening last night, I’ve got lots of pics of models there in totally wearable looks,’ says Olivia, clinging onto the lifeline as she drags an arrow to a small blue folder on the big screen.
‘You mean Moskeeeeeno, right?’ Cressida looks disgusted.
Olivia’s face burns as red as her hair.
‘An easy fashion mistake to make,’ says Alex kindly. ‘I still think Versace rhymes with face.’
Cressida looks down at her notepad, flabbergasted, and shakes her head.
Maya wonders whether the James Miller and Kitty Jones who donated £50 to Dominic Kennedy’s London marathon fundraising page three years ago might be Train Man and his girlfriend.
That’s it. He’s in love with someone called Kitty Jones and I feel sick.
*
‘Darling, I’m not going to the party, I can’t face seeing them. If Catherine is there with that new man of hers I will feel outraged and sick just at the sight of them. What treachery! It’s so upsetting. I’m not going. Your father can go on his own if he must.’
James sits at his desk having another hushed conversation. He doesn’t think he’s spoken to his mum in three years as much as he has in the past three weeks, but it’s been surprisingly comforting.
‘Mum, it’s OK. I’m OK. I’ll get through it. Don’t take it out on Mary and George. You should go to the party, they’re your best friends.’
‘Darling, I just can’t. Mary is embarrassed enough when she sees me in the street, I don’t want to make matters worse.’
‘What about Dad? He’d want to go, he’d want you to go. All your friends are going, you’d really miss out. None of our mates want much to do with Kitty, don’t let any more friendships fall apart because of what happened between us. I’ll be fine. Look, I’m going to have to get back to work, I have a meeting in five minutes. I told you about the promotion yes?’
‘Yes you did and I’m so proud of you. Well done darling.’
The plus side of heartbreak is that lately MFDD has seemed like a sanctuary to James. Focusing on products that either wash, condition or remove women’s hair suddenly doesn’t seem so pointless.
‘Well I say go to the party, have fun, and if you see Kitty and… him… just smile politely and talk to someone else. And lace their vol-au-vents with arsenic.’
‘Oh sweetheart, you are awful! Well I’ll think about it. I’ll see what your sisters say. They were meant to be going too.’
‘Sisters?’
‘Well, Petra is practically your sister too now they’re married.’
James laughs. How far his parents have come.
‘I have to go. But go to the party, say happy birthday to Mary from me, and tell Dad, Fran and Petra that I’ll come home in a few weeks. I just don’t really fancy a trip back to Kent right now.’
‘I know. I understand. You look after yourself. You are eating aren’t you?’
‘Yes Mum. Got to go.’
‘Bye darling. Love you.’
‘You too, Mum.’
James hangs up the phone. He doesn’t have a meeting. He doesn’t have to go. But he is sick of going around in circles and thinking and talking about it. About her. He’s sick of sitting at home getting stoned and imagining what Simon looks like. He’s sick of wondering whether Simon was in his bed while he was working in South Africa. He’s sick of returning home from work and looking in their wardrobe to see if today was the day Kitty came for the rest of her stuff. He’s sick of it and just wants to run away from it all.