‘Over here.’ He waved her towards a bed and folded his long legs into a crouch. To show willing, Lisa half-heartedly hunkered beside him.

‘Mind your suit.’ He extended his arm protectively. ‘Don’t get muck on it.’

‘What about yours?’

‘I couldn’t give a feck about mine.’ He turned and gave her an unexpectedly mischievous smile.

Up close she saw he had a tiny chip from one of his front teeth. It added to his maverick air. ‘If I get enough grass-stains on it, it’ll have to go to the cleaner’s and I won’t be able to wear it tomorrow… And wouldn’t that be terrible?’ he asked drily.

Lisa laughed and, just for the hell of it, moved her head closer to his. She watched his pupils narrow and dilate through several expressions – confusion to interest to extreme interest back to confusion and then blankness. It took far less than a second. Then he turned away and asked, ‘Is that coriander or parsley?’

One of his locks of hair was winding around itself into a curl. Lisa wanted to put her finger in and spring it.

‘What do you think?’ he asked her again.

Feeling as if they were speaking in code, she looked at the leaf in his hand. ‘I don’t know.’

Between his thumb and forefinger, he crumbled the leaf, then held it to her face. Intimately close. ‘Smell,’ he instructed.

Her eyes closed, she inhaled, trying to breathe in his skin.

‘Coriander,’ she said in triumph. She was rewarded with another smile from him. His mouth went kind of curly at the corners…

‘And there’s basil, chives and thyme,’ he indicated. ‘You can use them for cooking.’

‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘I can sprinkle them on my takeaways.’

There was no point pretending to him. The days of being bonkers-besotted and wanting to cook for her beloved were long gone.

‘You don’t cook?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t have time.’

‘That’s what I keep hearing,’ he said.

‘Does, er, Mai cook?’

Big mistake. Jack’s face went back to being closed and broody. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘– At least not for me,’ he added. ‘Come on, let’s go.

‘So what do you think of the house?’ he asked, once they were back inside.

‘I like it,’ Lisa lied. It was the best place she’d seen but that wasn’t saying much.

‘It’s got a lot of things going for it,’ Jack agreed. ‘The rent is decent, the area is nice and you can walk to work.’

‘That’s right,’ Lisa said, with a darkness that puzzled him. ‘And I could save myself £1.10 each way.’

‘Is that how much? I wouldn’t know because I’m usually in the car myself…’

‘Which is £2.20 a day.’

‘I suppose it must be…’

‘£11 a week. Taken over the course of a lifetime, it comes to quite a lot.’ At Jack struggling to maintain an expression of polite interest, Lisa broke through to lightness. Laughing, she told him about her experience with stingy Joanne. Then she told him about the other terrible places she’d viewed. About the man in Lansdown Park who had given his pet snake the freedom of the living-room, the house in Ballsbridge so untidy it looked as if it had just been burgled.

‘Well, you can move in here straight away,’ Jack offered.

He stood up and began the awkward jingling of change in his pockets that Lisa recognized of old. It was what men did as they tried to pluck up the courage to ask her out for a drink. She could see the struggle in his eyes and his body was coiled as if he was about to launch into something.

Get on with it, she urged silently.

Then his eyes cleared and all tension seemed to fall away. ‘I’ll drop you back to your hotel now,’ he said.

Lisa understood. She sensed that he was attracted to her and she also sensed his reservations. Not only did they work together, but he was involved with someone else. No matter. She’d work her mojo on him and overcome his objections. She’d enjoy it – making Jack fall for her would take her mind off all her grief.

‘Thank you for finding me somewhere to live.’ She smiled sweetly at Jack.

‘It’s a pleasure,’ Jack replied. ‘And don’t hesitate to ask for whatever you need. I’ll do everything I can to make your move to Ireland easier.’

‘Thanks.’ She flicked him another flirty little smile.

‘You’re far too busy and too important to Colleen to waste your time viewing flats.’

Oh.

Curled on a chair, Lisa lit a fag and stared out of the hotel window on to Harcourt Street. She was bothered by mild guilt. So mild it was barely there, but the fact that it existed at all was worthy of comment. It was that bloody Ashling. She’d been so pathetically surprised when Lisa had nicked her idea.

Well, tough, that’s the way it goes. That’s why Lisa was an editor and Ashling a dogsbody. And Lisa had been terrified, absolutely craven when Jack had told her the advertising situation. Fear always made her treacherous and ruthless.

At the moment the initial bowel-clenching terror had somewhat abated. Her brand of pushy optimism meant she was encapsulated in a bubble of hope where it seemed reasonably possible to generate all the advertising that was needed. Nevertheless, the fact was that Lisa’s ass was the one on the line. If the magazine bombed, Ashling’s life wasn’t over and Lisa’s was, simple as that. OK, everyone thought she was a bitch, but they had no conception of the pressure she was under.

With a long sigh, Lisa exhaled a plume of smoke – the memory of Ashling’s shocked face needled her, made her feel mildly shitty.

She’d always been able to control her emotions before. It had been easy to subjugate them to the greater good, that of the job. She’d better regain her grip.

16

Daily, invitations to press launches arrived in the post – everything from new lines in eye-shadow to openings of shops – and Lisa and Mercedes ruthlessly shared them out between them. Lisa, as editor, got first refusal. But Mercedes, as fashion and beauty editor, had to be allowed to go to a good few too. Ashling, Cinderella-like, stayed behind to mind the shop and Trix was way too far down the feeding chain ever to stand a chance of going.

‘What happens at a publicity do?’ Trix asked Lisa.