I Heart Christmas (32 page)
Things had started off so well. I’d sat Grace in the armchair with an old copy of the magazine, a pad and the closest thing I had to felt-tips – a Sharpie marker and a highlighter – and had gone back to my desk to review the fashion pages. The next time I’d looked up, she’d given herself a David Bowie makeover with the pens and shredded the magazine. Before I could even get to my feet, she was off, tearing around the office and knocking over anything she could get her hands on. At first I thought she was tired and then I put it down to acting out because her mum had stuck her with me for the afternoon. Within three minutes, I decided she was clearly mentally imbalanced and needed electroshock therapy.
‘Help me?’ I begged. ‘Every time I get near her she screams.’
‘Oh, I figured that was you,’ Cici cooed, waving at Grace who had sat herself in my chair and was happily spinning in circles. Not that I could call her for that, I obviously did it every time the office was empty. ‘I thought maybe you were just super excited about that holiday sweater spread.’
‘Well, I was,’ I admitted. ‘But most of the screaming was the baby.’
‘Hey, honey.’ She tilted her head to the side and smiled at Grace. Grace stopped gnawing on the heel of my Choo and smiled back. ‘Want to hang out somewhere fun?’
Of course. It made sense that they would have a kinship – they were both completely mad and dead set on destroying my designer footwear.
Cici held out her hand and Grace clambered out of the chair to take it, gathering up her colouring in as she went.
‘Bye, Anala,’ she said as they sailed out of my office together. I held my breath and counted to ten, waiting until they had locked themselves in the tiny meeting room, and then ran to the toilet. My bladder couldn’t take all this stress. Or the four cups of coffee I’d drunk already.
Post-pee, I immediately felt better. Now, to conquer the fashion pages and get the magazine sign-off back on track.
As soon as I found the fashion pages.
I scoured my desk, searching underneath my keyboard and my mouse pad, even getting on my hands and knees to look underneath, which seemed a bit like overkill when the entire bloody thing was made out of glass, but still, you could never be too sure. I just couldn’t work out where they could be. There wasn’t enough room in my office to swing a cat, or at least a very nice Alexander Wang handbag, as Jenny had proved the first time she came to visit and did just that. She broke a mug and knocked over a massive jar of Skittles. I couldn’t have nice things. But that wasn’t the pressing issue at that exact moment. The pressing issue was that ten pages of magazine had completely disappeared from my desk in the three minutes I had taken out to have a wee. This was why we needed Jesse. To stop me from going for a wee whenever I felt like it.
Maybe, I thought in desperation, just maybe Cici had come in and taken them back, thinking I was finished. I looked over to her desk but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t in the meeting room either.
‘Megan,’ I said, running over to the door and pasting an unconvincing smile onto my face. ‘Did Cici give you the fashion pages?’
‘Nuh-uh.’ She shook her head and tapped her watch. ‘Did you give them to her?’
‘No.’ I was reluctant to admit I couldn’t find them. I really didn’t want an arse-kicking. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Should I reprint the fashion pages?’ Megan clearly had one priority and one priority only. ‘I’d need to get Chloe to go over them again.’
‘Let me have one more look.’ I ducked my head back into my office. Maybe they had fallen off my desk during Grace’s explosive exit. ‘And can you see if you can drag Cici up from whatever crack in the floor she’s fallen into?’
It wouldn’t be difficult to lose Cici – she was so skinny she could easily get stuck behind a filing cabinet or something – but it seemed really unlikely that Grace would be so hard to find. Between the trail of sticky handprints and the banshee-like wailing-slash-maniacal laughter, she was usually a bit of a giveaway. Satisfied, or rather desperately freaked out, that the pages were in fact no longer in my office, I went back to ask for them to be reprinted. Yes, it was going to be embarrassing but it was still going to be better than Megan coming into my office in five minutes to beat me with a massive stick.
‘I’m really sorry but I’m going to need those pages again.’ I attempted to woo Megan with my shiniest smile, showing almost all of my teeth, and another gingerbread man but for whatever reason she wasn’t reacting. In fact, she looked more freaked out than I did. So I pulled the second gingerbread man out from behind my back. Still nothing. This girl had a heart of stone.
‘Uh, Angela, did you tell Cici to take that little girl out someplace?’ she asked, an incredibly hopeful look on her face.
This didn’t sound good.
‘I did not,’ I replied, magazine panic falling, Grace panic rising.
‘Because Chloe said she saw them putting on jackets and taking the elevator.’ Megan pointed over at the fashion desk, basically directing me to blame another messenger. ‘While you were in the bathroom.’
Seriously, a girl couldn’t even go for a whizz around here without the entire world falling apart.
‘Right, I’ll call her.’ I tried to block all images of Cici kidnapping Grace and running off to India to live in a commune from my imagination. Now wasn’t the time for it to be active. Now was the time for it to be very quiet and sit in a corner. ‘And you print out the pages because all this is fine and they’re probably outside getting some fresh air or maybe fetching me a coffee or something and it’s fine.’
‘Maybe they went out to look at the snow?’ Chloe suggested, raising her voice but not daring to stand up.
‘It’s snowing?’ I squealed and ran to the window. Snow! Christmas snow! ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I’ll call her. Me, phone, you, pages, everybody’s happy.’
‘Sure.’ Megan’s eyes widened and her mouth narrowed into a tiny cat’s arse of terror as she clicked away at her computer. ‘Everybody’s happy.’
My phone was ringing as I stepped back inside my office and I grabbed the receiver without hesitation, a) because my assistant wasn’t there to do it for me and b) because I was hoping it was said assistant calling to see if I wanted two or three sugars in my chai latte and not to explain that she had kidnapped my goddaughter.
‘Hello?’ I answered, breathless. ‘I mean,
Gloss
, Angela speaking.’
‘Angela.’ It wasn’t Cici. Not unless she’s gone through a very speedy sex change or possibly been punched in the throat. Oh God, what if Grace had punched her in the throat and run away? ‘It’s Jesse.’
Ohhh. Luckily for him, he was currently much farther down my shit list than he deserved to be.
‘Jesse, I don’t really have time to talk right now,’ I said, speedily tearing through the online address book for Cici’s mobile number. Which of course wasn’t there. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is Christmas Day,’ he pointed out. ‘And I’ll be quick … I wanted to apologise. For not coming in. And the other thing, I—’
‘Then I won’t speak to you tomorrow,’ I said, fingers flying as they frantically typed out an email to Delia, asking for her sister’s number. ‘I’ll see you on Thursday.’
‘I know it was stupid not to come in today,’ he carried on, completely ignoring the stress in my voice. ‘I panicked about Friday and I’m an asshole and I should have known you’d need me when the system was down but then that bitch-faced assistant of yours—’
‘Jesse, I’m not dicking about,’ I snapped. ‘I really don’t have time for this. We’re having to do all the approvals by hand, half the magazine is missing and so is said bitch-faced assistant. So I’ll see you on Thursday, yeah?’
‘Oh, that sounds rough,’ he replied, only not nearly as upset as I might like. ‘But yeah, Thursday.’
‘Hang on.’ I stood up sharply. ‘How did you know the system was down?’
‘Uh, Cici told me?’ he said, the line crackling as he spoke. ‘I’m on the bridge, I’m losing you.’
‘Why are you on the bridge? I thought you were sick?’ I was losing my tiny mind.
‘Obviously I’m not sick. I said I was sick because I felt weird about the whole scene in the cab,’ he explained, beginning to sound a little annoyed himself. Wanker. ‘I feel really bad. Should I come? Maybe I can fix Censhare?’
‘Can you?’ I asked, half hopeful and three-quarters incredibly suspicious. Which made more than a whole but maths was never my strong point.
‘I figure maybe?’
‘Jesse.’ I leaned over my desk, attempting to look intimidating, hoping that it would make me sound the same. ‘Did you fuck up the system on purpose?’
‘How could I do that?’ he laughed, sounding nervous. ‘I’m not even there. Sounds more like something Cici would do, doesn’t it?’
‘Are you in on this?’ I barked. ‘Are you in on this with her? Because I won’t fire you, I will destroy your fucking life. I will literally end you. Christmas or no Christmas.’
And as I said it, I meant it. And the tiny, effeminate whimper down the end of the line suggested he knew I was telling the truth. I knew reading half of the first chapter of
Executive Toughness
would pay off.
‘I didn’t, Angela, of course I didn’t.’ He sounded terrified. Good. ‘Do you want me to come in?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, my fingers rolling up the desk until my hands looked like little claws. At last I felt powerful but not in a good way. More in a ‘kneel before Zod’ way. And I’d seen all the Superman films – it never went well for Zod. ‘Get your arse in here and fucking fix it.’
As I hung up, Delia responded to my email with one word – ‘Problem?’ Instead of replying, I dialled Cici and prayed that she would pick up, hopefully while laughing at me as she walked out of the lift, holding Grace’s hand which still had all of its original fingers. But she didn’t pick up and the lift doors didn’t open and it was almost two o’clock which meant she’d been missing for fifteen minutes and Louisa would be back in two hours and the magazine had to be completely signed off in three.
Merry fucking Christmas.
In my secret, quiet, keep-them-to-myself dreams, I had imagined that Monday might have gone quite well. I’d imagined the magazine going to press without any drama. I’d even fantasised about a bite of a sandwich or something, a little sit-down and three or four seconds to gaze upon my beautiful Christmas tree as a reward for a job well done. It was silly of me really.
Of course I wasn’t going to get any of those things. Of course I was going to be running around Times Square without my coat on because I was too much of a twat to grab it on my way out the office, searching for a psycho blonde who had gone AWOL with my goddaughter and was presumably also holding the fashion pages of my magazine hostage. The magazine pages were replaceable. Megan had already got a fresh set to Chloe, who had only sulked and moaned a little bit, before I’d even run out the door. Replacing Louisa’s daughter, however, was likely to be a little bit more difficult. Yes, there were a lot of blonde children running around Times Square but I felt a bit weird about picking one up off the street and legging it. Presumably because I wasn’t Cici.
I’d left everyone in the office on red alert to call me if the two of them showed up but I’d been running around Times Square in the snow like a headless turkey for nearly twenty minutes and nothing. I’d been to Starbucks but no one had seen them. They weren’t in Toys R Us when I pelted around there at top speed, checking everywhere from the Ferris wheel to Barbie’s Dream House and quietly congratulating myself for all the recon work I’d done in there in the past, even if I hadn’t known it was recon at the time. After that, I found myself stood outside M&Ms World, ready to slap myself. Of course they wouldn’t be in there – that’s where I would go, not where Cici would go. As if she would spend a second inside an establishment that did nothing but celebrate tiny chocolate nuggets of joy. She was an utterly joyless human being. I couldn’t shake the idea that she and Jesse were somehow in on this together, that they had been plotting this all along – to fuck up the magazine and get me fired and then nick off with Grace just to scare me and Lou. There were no lengths that Cici wouldn’t go to once she’d developed a plan – she’d proven that more than once before – and I couldn’t imagine involving a pre-verbal toddler in her schemes would give her that much pause for thought.
With no better idea, I began to head east, towards Radio City Music Hall. The streets were packed, limiting me to an angry hop, sprinting every fifty metres or so before coming to halt behind some old dears in furs, rattling on about kids today. What should have taken me five minutes took almost fifteen and by the time I arrived at the box office I was freezing my arse off and very, very close to tears.
‘Hello,’ I beamed at the attendant on the door, adopting my very best ‘please trust me, I’m British’ accent. ‘My friends are inside and I very much need to speak to them urgently. Would it be possible for me to pop in and grab them?’
I clutched my phone tightly, willing it to ring with good news before I had to do this. The man in the white shirt and red waistcoat regarded me with nothing short of utter contempt before clearing his throat, stepping in front of the door and laughing.
‘No,’ he announced. ‘It would not be possible.’
‘It really is an emergency,’ I replied, pressing my hand into my side to ward off a stitch. Sweet Jesus, I was unfit.
‘No way,’ he answered.
‘I’m not trying to sneak in to see the show,’ I explained, attempting to peer over his shoulder and find another, more sympathetic usher. Possibly someone with a couple of ovaries and a heart. ‘I was looking after my friend’s little girl and she’s gone missing and I really need to talk to her.’
He at least had the decency to look distressed, but clearly more at the thought that I would be allowed to look after anyone’s child rather than the current predicament before he gave his next pronouncement.
‘Sounds to me like that’s a matter for the police,’ he said, not budging. ‘Why don’t you call them?’
‘Because I’m hoping not to need to,’ I said with as polite a smile as I could muster. It wasn’t very polite. ‘And I really, really have to tell my friend.’
