‘Bonnie, you can’t argue with people on Twitter just because you don’t agree with something they say.’ My boss, Oliver, pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to stifle his fortieth headache since I got into his office five minutes ago.
I sigh. I knew I was going to get in trouble for this. ‘But did you see what he said about that lovely couple’s beautiful wedding? I couldn’t ignore his delusional twuntery – someone had to say something.’
‘He works for The Man Land. We’re in direct competition with them and you know it. By arguing with him, you’ve given him more publicity. Thanks to that little stunt on Twitter over the weekend, he’s gained another few thousand followers who are all laughing at his column with him while laughing at you and our magazine.’
‘Someone needed to call him out. He can’t just go around writing such horrible things about people’s wedding days.’
‘But not someone who works for the other magazine in this battle of the mags thing that Hambridge Publishing have got us embroiled in. Everyone knows it’s them versus us, but it’s meant to be in a professional way. It’s not meant to degenerate into petty insults and name-calling. How you conduct yourself online, even outside of work, reflects back on our magazine.’
‘I use an icon on Twitter. No one knows it’s me.’
Oliver rubs his temples. ‘You use a random photo of a wedding dress, your real name, and your bio says you write for Two Gold Rings magazine.’
‘It’s not a random photo – it’ll be my wedding dress one day,’ I mutter.
I don’t know why I’m trying to defend myself. He’s right. I love writing for a bridal magazine and I do mention it in my Twitter bio. The thousands of people who retweeted my argument with Mr R.C. Art over the weekend know exactly who I work for and the very public battle between us and The Man Land.
I try again. ‘He called the bride a twenty-one-year-old sentient boob job fake-tanned to the colour of an overcooked Wotsit and the groom a seventy-year-old walking bank account sponsored by Viagra!’
Oliver lets out a snort and I frown at him. ‘It’s not funny. He has no right to make fun of their wedding day and publicly humiliate them online. He called it the unholy union of a cross-dressing scarecrow and a taffeta loo roll holder, and I’m still not sure which one was which. It was totally unfair. It looked like a beautiful wedding.’ I scroll through my phone and hold it out to show him a picture. ‘See?’
Oliver glances at it and stifles a laugh. ‘Well, I’ve got to admit I admire the man for his way with words. He’s really hit the nail on the head this time.’
‘Their wedding day is their wedding day. Nothing about it has anything to do with him,’ I snap, yanking my phone back across the desk towards me.
‘Bonnie, you don’t even know these people. It’s not up to you to stick up for them. If they take offence at what he said, let them sue him for libel. Everyone knows this R.C. Art guy writes horrible stuff in his monthly column. It’s tongue in cheek, designed to get a laugh at someone else’s expense. He’s like the Katie Hopkins of weddings. He says controversial things to get a reaction out of the public. The Man Land don’t pay him for his writing, they pay him for the amount of press he gets them. The best thing anyone can do is ignore him, which is not what you did.’
‘He deserved putting in his place. It didn’t matter who he worked for.’
‘But you didn’t put him in his place. All you did was give him a petty, childish argument that he could use as an example of how crazed brides get.’
‘I’m not a bride.’
‘Well, for whatever reason, you have a picture of a wedding dress as your profile photo…’
‘Which is better than him. His profile photo is just two engagement rings with a big “no entry” road sign over them.’
Oliver slams his hand down on the desk. ‘Bonnie, you don’t seem to realise how serious this is. I’ve had the owner of Hambridge Publishing on the phone this morning and to say he’s not impressed would be an understatement. It looks like you were deliberately baiting R.C. Art and trying to draw him into an argument so The Man Land would come off looking worse than us.’
‘That’s ridiculous. If anything, he did it on purpose to make me look bad. He screencapped my tweets and posted them for all to see, and conveniently cut off his original post where he thought it was okay to compare a bride’s make-up to the zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and the wedding guests to Night of the Living Dead. He made it look like I was randomly attacking him by taking out what I was responding to.’
‘You shouldn’t be responding to anything in this situation. This thing between our magazines is a well-known publicity stunt and people are watching what we do.’ Oliver’s face is red and he looks like he’s one step away from banging his head, or more likely mine, on the desk. ‘I don’t care if you stood up for that couple with the best of intentions. You can’t keep fixating on other people’s weddings to detract from your own loneliness, and getting into a slanging match with The Man Land’s high-profile anti-marriage columnist is asking for trouble. Quoting his column and trying to incite your followers against him reflects badly on our whole magazine.’
‘I didn’t try to incite anyone! I just pointed out that there are some twats in the world and most of them have a Twitter account. And what about him? Have Hambridge been on the phone to his boss this morning yelling at him too? He posted screencaps of my tweets and told his followers that I’m the kind of idiot he has to deal with on a daily basis.’
‘So you react with dignity, poise, and silence. Trolls go away if you don’t feed them. You served him a seven-course meal with extra dessert. You may as well have called him a poo-poo head, blown a raspberry at him, and ran and told your favourite teddy bear. Actually, on second thoughts, that might have been a more mature way to deal with it.’
‘R.C. Art,’ I grumble. ‘What kind of a stupid pseudonym is that? It sounds like a school class, which is fitting given his level of maturity. He probably looks like the offspring of a flying monkey and Yoda. No wonder he hides behind a picture and uses an alias. He’s probably a bitter and twisted old man who’s so bitter and twisted because he’s too horrible to have ever found anyone to marry him. He wouldn’t be so nasty if anyone loved him, would he?’
Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose. Again. ‘Says the woman who has a wedding dress but doesn’t have a groom to go with it.’
‘I don’t have the wedding dress. I’ve only paid a deposit and it’s on hold for me at Snowdrop – you know the little bridal boutique tucked away near Marble Arch?’
‘No. I’ve been divorced for four years. Oddly enough, I have no knowledge of bridal shops and nor do I want any.’
‘You run a wedding magazine!’ I say, wondering why I expect anything different from a man who has the Ambrose Bierce quote ‘Love is a temporary insanity curable only by marriage’ printed on the wall above his desk.
‘I edit a wedding magazine. I rely on you and your colleagues to provide the content. I’m just counting down the days until I retire and never have to read another comparison between napkin rings or essay on wedding favours ever again. Only three years and ninety-three days to go now. What I really don’t need is to have to find another job at this time of my life if we lose Two Gold Rings, which we are going to at this rate.’
‘We won’t. The Man Land prints nothing but sexist, unfunny drivel. Two Gold Rings has been going for decades and thousands of brides have turned to us for all their wedding-planning needs. It’s good versus evil. Love versus misogynistic sarcasm. There’s no way they’re going to win.’
‘They have a much bigger online following than us, and a lot of men agree with their views. I’m one of them. I completely agree with R.C. Art when it comes to marriage. It’s the worst mistake anyone can ever make. People spend thousands of pounds on a day that will ultimately end up destroying their lives. If he wants to make fun of that, well, good on him. Obviously we couldn’t publish that kind of thing in Two Gold Rings, but I always thoroughly enjoy a sneaky read of his column. He’s very funny.’
‘He’s rude and cold-hearted. People’s wedding days are special. They’re in love. They’re happy. It’s the best day of their lives. How can anyone be so cynical that they agree with that anti-marriage idiot?’
‘Bonnie, you’re a sweet, naive, hopeless romantic. You’ve never been married, and judging by the soppy things you write, you still think Prince Charming is going to ride around the next corner on a big white horse. When you’ve come out the other side of a messy divorce, your opinion might change. To me, R.C. Art sounds like a guy who’s been burnt by love and now uses his column to help other men avoid the same fate… Which brings me nicely back to why I called you in here.’
Back to the Twitter spat. I should’ve known my boss wouldn’t let me get away with it. I stupidly believed he might be pleased with me for sticking up for a couple who didn’t deserve to have their beautiful wedding day lampooned by a deluded prat for his own entertainment.
‘I’ve got a very angry boss, Bonnie. You know what Hambridge have done with this stupid battle of the mags thing. Pitted their two worst-performing publications against each other in what they hoped would provoke a spirited public reaction to save their favourite, and they’ve been met with, well, mild indifference would be putting it kindly. There are no public petitions, no protests, no Twitter hashtags to save Two Gold Rings. It’s up to us. We have to sell more copies than The Man Land this quarter and bring in more revenue, and if we don’t then we can all kiss our jobs goodbye, and Two Gold Rings will be no more. Two advertisers have already pulled full-page ads from next month’s issue because they don’t want the association with us. Over twenty thousand people have RT-ed the screencaps of your argument that he posted. I have no doubt that more advertisers will pull out and more readers will go to pick up a copy and remember what they saw on Twitter and put it down again.’
‘I was only doing what I thought was right,’ I say, wondering just how much trouble I might be in here. The magazine is teetering on the edge of destruction, and I’ve made it worse. I should have just ignored R.C. Art – I know that – and now I’m, what, the ‘troublesome’ reporter? I feel sick. I’ve never been troublesome in my life.
‘I know.’ He pushes his hand through his curly grey hair with a sigh. ‘But I think that, given the circumstances, it might be a good idea if you just… weren’t here for a while.’
‘For a while…’ I repeat. ‘You’re suspending me?’
‘Oh, good Lord, no.’ He laughs. ‘And give you a paid holiday as a reward for dragging our name through the mud of the Twittersphere? No chance, especially now that we need all hands on deck to outdo The Man Land next month.’
‘What, then? Work from home?’
He rifles through his in-tray, suddenly looking positively gleeful. ‘Have you ever heard of Edelweiss Island?’
‘Like the song in The Sound of Music?’ I ask, feeling my ears perk up. ‘No, but it sounds nice. Should I have heard of it?’
‘It’s an island off the south coast of Britain, not far past the Isle of Wight. Calls itself The Little Wedding Island. It’s been a wedding venue for years now, but not a hugely popular one, until recently. A story has leaked about the church on the island – apparently no marriage that’s ever taken place there has ended in divorce. It sounds like a load of old codswallop to me, but people are talking about it, and the talk isn’t going away. Some of the major newspapers have sent journalists there but they’ve all come back empty-handed, so no one’s ever got to the bottom of it.’
‘Oh, that’s so romantic!’ I gasp in delight. ‘A church with no divorces! It must be the most amazing place.’
‘That’s exactly why you’re going there,’ Oliver says with a false grin that’s probably as wide as my genuine one. ‘I can’t be seen to be doing nothing in light of the nonsense on Twitter, Bonnie.’
‘So you’re exiling me?’
‘Only for a little while, and let’s not call it exile. Let’s call it “a sabbatical” with a job to do. Edelweiss Island is the story everyone wants and no one’s managed to get yet. If we get it, we’ll win the battle. This is literally life and death for Two Gold Rings. You don’t have to worry about being suspended or fired, because if you don’t get that article, there won’t be a job to lose by the summer.’
‘I still don’t understand how they can pit us against each other. Our readerships are a totally different demographic and we’ve already got the advantage because women buy more magazines than men.’
‘They don’t care. Hambridge wanted something to drum up public interest. It’s backfired. It’s not the massive boys versus girls publicity stunt they hoped for. Our market is too niche. People buy our magazine when they’re planning their wedding, they get married, and they stop buying it, whereas The Man Land cover everything from controversial news stories, fitness, and DIY projects to book, film, and game reviews. They cater for all types of men with all types of interests. We cater for a very specific group of women who lose interest once a specific date has passed. We’re actually at a disadvantage, which brings me back to Edelweiss Island. Everyone will read an article that really, truly gets to the bottom of these stories about the no-divorce church. Demographic, gender, what pretty wedding dress is on the cover all goes out the window. Getting it will wipe The Man Land out. It will give us respect within the industry no matter how poor our sales are. It will give you major attention with your name on the by-line. Everyone from the head honcho at Hambridge to household-name tabloids want this story. And you are going to Edelweiss Island to get it.’
My stomach ties itself in an even bigger knot than it’s been in since I saw his angry face waiting for me when I got off the elevator this morning. ‘What exactly do you want me to do there?’
‘According to my friend from a newspaper who’s been trying to get the vicar to do a phone interview to no avail, the locals are quite a tight-lipped bunch. You’d think they’d be keen to push this story about the church of no-divorces, but apparently it’s the opposite. With a bit of luck, they’ll be more open to a writer from a bridal magazine than they would to a reporter from a tabloid newspaper. I want you to go there and find out what’s going on. Is the story true? Has the church really never had a marriage that ended in divorce? How do they know? What exactly are the numbers? If it’s true, it could be that they’ve only had two or three weddings there, which doesn’t make it a difficult record to keep. Or is it just a story designed to drum up tourism?’
‘Aw, it must be true. They wouldn’t make that up, would they?’
‘They would if they were selling something. Apparently they offer package deals, like a wedding and honeymoon in one, and according to the only review on TripAdvisor that has since been taken down, you can get your wedding dress and your cake and stuff like that on the island, and they do a discount for getting it all in one place.’
‘It sounds perfect,’ I say, smiling at the thought.
‘It sounds like a business that’s failing,’ he says with a frown. ‘And whoever’s running the joint has invented this story to dredge up customers and increase tourism. You go there and find out if the no-divorce thing is true or not – if it’s real then you can write a lovely story about how romantic it is and our readers will lap it up, and if it’s fake, you can write an exposé about this scam island and we’ll be the first press to reveal the truth about it.’
‘It must be real. They wouldn’t make up something like that. There are records, I bet it could be checked out easily enough.’
‘Do it, then. Check everything out. And for God’s sake, bring me something that the other reporters haven’t been able to find out. Something real. And don’t come back until you’ve got something, either. I want the article on my desk in four weeks. No extensions.’
‘It sounds wonderful to me. I can’t think of a nicer place to be banished to.’
Oliver rolls his eyes and I’m sure the look he gives me is one of pity. ‘Well, I can’t think of anything worse than a whole island of weddings. It sounds tragic. Apparently there are loads of desperate women trying to get married there now, couples travelling from all over the world, convinced the church will somehow stop their marriage ending in divorce. And you had better make this article a good one, Bonnie. At least R.C. Art makes people care. Whether they care because they agree with him or because they vehemently disagree, people respond to him. Write me something that people will respond to, enough people to make copies of our magazine fly off the shelves. Think of how good it will feel when you can say you’re solely responsible for putting R.C. Art out of a job.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve blocked the prat now,’ I say. ‘Believe me, if I never see, hear, or think about R.C. Art ever again, it’ll be too soon.’