Lisa twitched with fear. This had never happened before. Though they’d always negotiated off ratecard, designers and cosmetic companies had been falling over themselves to take out full-page ads when she’d been editor of Femme. And as everyone in magazines knows, the income generated from selling ads is far in excess of that garnered from cover-price sales. At least it should be. If companies can’t be persuaded that a particular publication is the right vehicle in which to advertise their product, it goes under. Panic swept up Lisa in a prickly wave. How would she ever live down the failure of a stillborn magazine?

‘It’s early days,’ she tried.

Reluctantly he had to shake his head. It wasn’t, they both knew that. Before Colleens editorial staff had arrived, Margie had been doing pre-production work for over a month: interested advertisers had had plenty of time to bite. Lisa burned with humiliation. She wanted this man to respect and desire her and instead he was bound to think she was a failure.

‘But don’t they know… ?’ she couldn’t stop herself from blurting.

‘Know what?’

She tried to reformulate and couldn’t. ‘Know that I’m the editor?’

‘Your name carries a lot of weight,’ Jack said, tactfully, and when she saw how unpleasant he too was finding this, it soothed the sting. ‘But new marketplace, new audience, no track record…’

‘I thought you said that Margie was a Rottweiler. That she could persuade God to place an ad.’ When in doubt, blame someone else. A motto that had served Lisa well thus far in her career.

Margie’s great at getting ads from Irish companies,’ Jack explained. ‘But the London office is handling the international cosmetic and fashion houses.

‘Where are we at?’ he asked. ‘What kind of definite features have we? We need to throw a couple of bones to the London office, for them to show the potential ad-placers.’

Lisa’s face was a white mask as she searched around in her head. Definite features! She’d been in this fucking job less than two weeks, thrown in at the deep end, in a strange country. She’d been knocking herself out trying to get a handle on things, and already they wanted to know definite features!

‘Just a rough idea,’ Jack said, with heartbreaking gentleness. ‘Sorry to do this to you.’

‘Why don’t we all go to the boardroom for a progress meeting?’ Lisa suggested, an unresponsive wobbliness about her knees. And to think that everyone thought editing a magazine was glamorous. It was the most terrifying, sleepless-night-inducing job, with no certainty, no respite. Just trying to make the figures every month. And as soon as you’d strained and sweated yourself to the limit to do so, you had to turn around and start all over again. All you were was a glorified salesman. In an attempt at dynamism she swept from Jack’s office, but her leg muscles were pulpy and she had a sheen of perspiration above her lip. ‘Boardroom, everyone, now!’

All the people who didn’t work on Colleen sniggered, delighted that they weren’t being bollocked.

‘Right then.’ Lisa played for time by giving a terrifying smile around the boardroom table. ‘Perhaps you’d all like to tell Jack and me what you’ve been doing for the past two weeks. Ashling?’

‘I’ve sent out press releases to all the fashion houses and –’

‘Press releases?’ Lisa asked, sarcastically. ‘Is there no beginning to your talents?’

Dutiful sniggers issued from Trix, Gerry and Bernard.

‘So punters are going to pay £2.50 to read Colleen’s press releases? Features, Ashling, I’m talking features! What have you?’

Bewildered by her aggression, Ashling gave her salsa report. As she described the lesson, the teacher and the other pupils Lisa relaxed slightly. This was good. Encouraged by Lisa’s nodding, Ashling enthused about the club that had been on after the lesson. ‘It was great. Proper old-fashioned dancing with lots of body contact. It was actually very –’ For some reason she hesitated over using the word with Jack Devine in the room. He made her so uncomfortable. ‘Very sexy’

‘And the romance factor?’ Lisa asked, cutting to the chase. ‘Did you meet any blokes?’

Ashling squirmed. ‘I, um, had a dance with a man,’ she admitted.

As everyone squealed and fell over themselves to get details, Jack Devine watched her through half-closed eyes.

‘It was only a dance,’ Ashling protested. ‘He didn’t even ask me my name.’

‘You got photos of the club,’ Lisa said. It wasn’t a question. At Ashling’s nod, she went on, ‘We’ll do a four-page spread on it. Two thousand words, asap. Make it entertaining.’

Clammy dread flushed down Ashling and she would have given anything to still be working at Woman’s Place. She couldn’t write. Toiling hard at the boring stuff was her forte, she was really, really marvellous at it, and that had been the basis Colleen had hired her on. Couldn’t Mercedes write it, or one of the freelancers?

‘Problem?’ Lisa twisted her mouth sarcastically.

‘No,’ Ashling whispered. But her guts seized in fear as she realized she was in over her head. Joy would have to help her. Or perhaps Ted – he had to draft lots of reports for his job in the Department of Agriculture.

Next on the agenda was Trix’s column on an ordinary girl’s life. The first one was on the perils of two-timing. On what a pain it was to be in bed with one boyfriend and for another to call to the house and for your mother to let him in. It was funny, outrageous and entirely true.

‘Good Lord, Patricia Quinn,’ Jack shook his head in amusement. ‘I’ve been living a very sheltered life.’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Trix exclaimed. ‘Him and me Ma in the lounge watching Heartbeat, and me trapped in the bedroom with the other one, making excuses not to leave. I aged ten years.’

‘And that’d make you what? Twenty-five?’ Jack’s eyes crinkled with laughter.

Ashling looked at him in a type of sour wonder. Why is he always so horrible to me? Why isn’t he ever amused by me? Just as she concluded that perhaps she simply wasn’t amusing, she caught sight of Lisa’s face. A lambent determination and hard admiration. She fancies him, Ashling realized, and her stomach flip-flopped. If anyone could lure Jack Devine away from the exotic Mai, Lisa could. What must it be like to have that kind of power?