The Making of Mia (16 page)

Joshua looked doubtful. ‘I doubt our advertisers will like that.’

‘But our readers will,’ Madeline said, her eyes glowing. ‘Lucy, this is a brilliant idea, absolutely fantastic.’

In the corner Jo struggled not to jump for joy.

‘Lizzie, scrap your fashion idea about Paris couture, I want you to concentrate on what the high street is offering, and to
scour charity shops for bargains. We’re going to give the whole magazine an x-factor theme. Araminta, I want to see real-life
pieces abut girls with the x-factor, and, Charlotte, make sure the beauty is affordable and in keeping with Keira. Perhaps
offer solutions on how to get the look that Keira will sport next without even knowing it. We need someone to be the girl
from the street …’

Madeline’s eyes swept over the room, and she lingered briefly on Jo before settling on Helena, who looked fit to burst.

‘Helena?’ Madeline said, with a hint of amusement in her voice. ‘Something tells me you’d like a stab at this?’

Helena beamed at Madeline. ‘I think I’d be perfect at it, actually,’ she said in her haughty voice. ‘I have the looks, I have
the body to wear any type of fashion, and, really, how hard can this be?’ She leant forward and spoke directly to Madeline.
‘I always thought that it would be quite easy to be like Keira Knightley,’ she said in a confident voice. ‘Why, if the girls
made me over properly I could be the blonde version of her.’

Lucy let out a snort of laughter and hid it with a coughing fit. Madeline looked over at her, and Jo wondered if she was trying
to grin through the stiff mask of her face. ‘Lucy, I need you to co-ordinate this piece with Helena. Helena needs to write
it from her perspective, but I need this freelancer to write the lead article, give some background into what the x-factor
is … Who did you say came up with this idea again?’

Lucy caught Jo’s eye but remained calm. ‘She’s called Olivia Windsor,’ Lucy said, using the fake name that Jo had suggested
to her earlier, ‘and I worked on a local paper with her after I left journalism college.’

‘Well, I want her in here,’ Madeline said.

‘She’s based in New York at the moment,’ Lucy said smoothly. ‘She freelances out there. But I’m sure she’d love to come in
next time she’s in town.’

‘Fine,’ Madeline said, and she turned back to her notepad. ‘Now, Lucy, if you could ask Olivia if she could—’

‘Now hang on a minute …’ Joshua interrupted, and Madeline whizzed round in her chair to look at him. ‘This is all well and
good but you’re not thinking straight. Chanel are taking four pages in this issue, and they’re not going to like being placed
next to bargain-basement fashion.’

Madeline held his gaze. ‘But they are going to like the boost in circulation of what I predict will be our bestselling issue.
Our readers have lipstick-lesbian crushes on Knightley so I’m going to get her on the cover. With no clothes on. So who wouldn’t
want to buy it?’

Lucy looked at Jo with wide eyes – she had never seen Madeline so animated about anything.

‘And how are you going to do that?’ Joshua said easily, looking at his wife. ‘Are you going to phone Keira up? Offer her a
diamond-encrusted eye-patch she can wear in the next
Pirates
film?’

Madeline shot Joshua a scornful look. ‘Of course I’m going to phone her up, don’t be ridiculous.’ She turned back to the rest
of the editorial team. ‘We need to get cracking, so everyone come up with your new outlines by the end of the day and present
them to me before you leave for the evening. Lucy, it’s time we promoted you to joint features editor with Araminta.’ Lucy’s
mouth dropped open, and Araminta shot Madeline a sour look. ‘Thanks for the meeting, everyone, well done.’

Jo sat frozen in her chair as the editorial team filtered out of the meeting room. She felt like she was in a dream, and she
couldn’t believe that one of her ideas, something she had come up with in ten minutes late one evening while surrounded by
take-away cartons, was going to alter the whole of the next issue of
Gloss
.

Lucy sat back in her chair and waited until everyone apart from her and Jo had left the room.

‘Now do you believe me when I say your ideas are good?’

Jo looked at her, dumbfounded, and didn’t know what to say. A small voice in the back of her head told her that she had known
she was good enough all along.

September 2003

When the magazine hit the streets the editorial team celebrated the x-factor issue of
Gloss
being an instant hit. Joshua opened bottles of Veuve Clicquot to toast the fact that he’d ordered a reprint of that issue,
and Jo overheard Madeline telling someone on the telephone that because of the x-factor theme, circulation had tripled. Even
though Jo was used to hearing the advertising sales team embellishing the circulation figures to sell advertising space, Jo
knew that Madeline’s figures were true. Even Harold Garnet sent an email from his yacht in the Bahamas to congratulate the
team on their success. Nobody thought for a moment that the shy, overweight girl in the corner was the brains behind it.

When Jo took a copy of the magazine home with her she sat on her floor and stared at the cover, letting silent, joyful tears
gently slide down her face. Without her this issue of
Gloss
wouldn’t have an exclusive interview and fashion shoot with Keira Knightley, the hilarious article where Helena unintentionally
proved that the x-factor couldn’t be faked,
and more pages of advertising than any other issue of
Gloss
had carried. Jo bit into a bar of chocolate and tried not to feel glum that it wasn’t Jo Hill who had become an instant success
at
Gloss
, but Olivia Windsor.

‘Try not to think about it,’ Lucy said over the phone that night. ‘You’ve made a mark on the magazine and you’re well in there
now.’

Jo didn’t smile. ‘But how am I going to get paid?’ she asked, ‘or what happens if Madeline wants to phone Olivia up, or wants
to fly her out to London, or …’ her voice trailed off. She wasn’t sure she could be Joshua’s PA, write as Olivia Windsor,
and keep up the deception at work. She was exhausted.

Lucy’s voice sounded triumphant down the phone. ‘I’ve sorted it all out. One, your money is being paid directly to me as Garnet
Publishing won’t pay invoices in dollars, and apparently “Olivia’s” bank in the States won’t accept English cheques. Two,
Madeline won’t need to phone Olivia up, as it’s the job of the features editor to do that. And three, Olivia can’t be flown
out because she’s too busy freelancing,’ Lucy finished with a flourish.

‘Do you really think this will work?’ Jo said quietly down the phone.

Lucy laughed. ‘Babes, it already is working. Now listen, I need your bank account details as I have a hot two thousand pounds
just desperate to be transferred to you, and I also need five feature ideas for the meeting tomorrow morning.’

Jo looked through her notebook and began to smile. She could do this. She was going to do this. ‘No problem,’ she said breezily.

‘Good,’ Lucy said. ‘And, Jo, make sure they’re as good as the last one.’

March 2004

‘And what has Olivia Windsor got for us today?’ Madeline Turner asked Lucy, who was sitting at the meeting table with sheets
of paper stacked neatly in front of her. As Lucy read out the list of Jo’s ideas in a clear, confident and cut-glass voice,
Jo realised just how lucky she was that she could count Lucy as a friend. Lucy’s eyes glittered under the palest blue eyeshadow
as they skimmed ‘Olivia’s’ list of features, and her lithe body was dressed in a Prada slate-grey shift dress that highlighted
her long neck and limbs. Jo turned to Madeline to gauge her reaction to her newest ideas and her heart flipped when she spotted
the editor looking impressed. Even though she had been writing for
Gloss
for months it still gave her a buzz to see Madeline nodding in approval.

‘Tell Olivia that I’d like to run the piece about women’s fashion adopting masculine lines for the July issue, but I’d like
the article about DIY fashion for this month, along with the “how women can have it all” piece. Thanks.’

Lucy shot a quick look at Jo, and Jo tried to focus on the minutes she was meant to be keeping. It was hard – her brain was
already racing on how she’d compose her pieces.

Jo had been writing as Olivia Windsor for nearly eight months, and her bank account was beginning to look healthier. Lucy
suggested that Jo start her own company so that her freelance cheques from
Gloss
could be made out to a
company name rather than going through her, and Jo spent most of her next pay packet on an accountant who created Platinum
Consulting for her. The finance division of Garnet Publishing duly made out their cheques to Jo’s company after ‘Olivia’ sent
them a letter on Platinum Consulting headed paper, and Jo watched her bank balance grow. She transferred what she needed to
her current account on a monthly basis, but the rest of the time she imagined the golden pound coins given to her courtesy
of
Gloss
multiplying in a vault. For the first time in her life she had over £25,000 in savings, and it felt good.

But not as good as it was every time Jo saw one of her articles in
Gloss
. The first time Jo had seen something she’d written in print she’d actually given a loud whoop of joy, but when Joshua had
frowned at her she had forced herself to remain composed, despite her jubilation. Since then Jo had remembered to stay in
control of her emotions, but with more and more features appearing in print she was always on a high on publication day, even
if the name ‘Olivia Windsor’ appeared as a byline rather than ‘Jo Hill’.

Jo was – on the inside, at least – a different person. Not only was she a published writer at the age of twenty-one, but Olivia
Windsor was the envy of everyone at
Gloss
, the talk of all the staff within Garnet Publishing and the hottest new writer to hit the news-stands. Every idea Jo pitched
was accepted, and after only a few months her writing dominated the magazine – ‘Olivia’ was an instant hit, partly because
of Jo’s writing talent, but also because Jo used her editorial-meeting notes to her advantage. If Madeline mentioned she was
interested in a piece on what true love really was, the next day Jo would formulate her pitch. Even though being a PA at
Gloss
was boring as hell, Jo was using it to give her the edge.

As Madeline rounded up the meeting, Jo hurried to make
sure that her minutes summed up everything that had been said, and she rushed through the pages of her notebook checking that
everything was correct. Jo was finding it increasingly difficult to stay alert in the daytime, and as she pretended to pay
attention to what Madeline was saying about an editorial team-bonding session she accidentally let out a long yawn. Joshua
Garnet caught her eye and looked displeased, and Jo spotted Araminta smirking. Shit, Jo thought, as she tried to stifle another
one. She had to try to get an early night tonight and leave her feature on why girls loved boy bands for the weekend.

‘A word in my office,’ Joshua said to Jo sharply after Madeline closed the meeting. Jo froze – had he found out about her
moonlighting? She nervously walked into Joshua’s exquisite corner office, and forced herself to look at her boss rather than
the view of London below.

‘I’m slightly concerned about your commitment to the job, Joanne,’ Joshua began, gesturing for her to sit and speaking to
her in the cold tones she recognised from the meetings he had with the accountants. ‘You seem distracted, you’re making mistakes,
and that yawn in the editorial meeting was, frankly, an embarrassment,’ he said to her, looking her up and down with barely
concealed distaste. Jo guessed that he would have preferred her to dress like some of the girls on the editorial team, or
better still, be a more glamorous PA who was sexy as well as efficient. Jo tried not to feel defensive. She didn’t have any
free time to lose the extra weight that was piling back on.

‘If I was one of those new age human resources types I’d ask if you have something on your mind, if you have personal problems
you’d like to share with me.’ Joshua stared at Jo intently, but before she could speak he continued. ‘But I’m not one of these
namby-pamby liberals and the mere thought of your private life bores me. If you have issues
outside this office sort them out, because your filing has gone downhill and these letters – the ones I was going to send
to the board – are full of mistakes.’ Joshua pushed a pile of letters across his smooth walnut desk to Jo and she saw at least
five words ringed in red. He’d clearly asked another one of the secretaries to go through her work. She hoped it wasn’t Debbie.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Jo began, but Joshua cut her off.

‘In this industry we don’t have time for apologies. I expect better from you, Joanne, and frankly I’m disappointed. You were
hired to be my assistant, and I expect you to assist me, not cause me more problems. You can be replaced in a flash, and mark
my words, if you don’t get up to speed you will be.’ He let his eyes linger on the damp patches appearing under her armpits,
and Jo spotted a small, cruel smile playing on his lips. He was enjoying this.

‘Do I make myself clear?’ he drawled, and Jo burnt red. If only he knew she was his elusive star writer, she thought, with
her fists closed so tightly that her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Jo took a deep breath and forced herself
to keep her voice under control.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, neutrally, and Joshua leant back in his chair and smirked.

‘Good. I thought you’d understand. Now, get me a black coffee,’ he said, and he paused, thinking something through. ‘And while
you’re there why don’t you go and ask everyone on the editorial team if you can make them a drink,’ he said. ‘Circulation
is up, and I think it would be nice if, in future, you helped the team with their creativity by running their errands.’

When Joshua saw the anger flashing in Jo’s bright green eyes he laughed, cruelly. ‘Well, you did say you wanted to be part
of the team.’