Chapter 3
Dixon Astley (aka Dickwad Ghastly) had offices on the upper floor of one of London’s most sought-after buildings. When first constructed, it had garnered headlines for its unusual shape, and the fact that the light reflecting off it had burned the paintwork on someone’s Bentley. It was her boss’s car (Simone worked for the Dickwad half), and he’d created the headlines in the first place, seeding the entirely fabricated story to a press eager to pour scorn on the edifice and its occupants. Instead, they had inadvertently created more publicity for the business than several thousand pounds of advertising could have achieved. The company could well afford the premises and the car, operating as it did at the most lucrative end of the Public Relations spectrum. Dickwad was responsible for pure-play PR on behalf of uber-wealthy organisations and individuals, raising their carefully crafted profile through events, stunts and grand gestures. The other side of the business, presided over by Ghastly, existed to wipe away any trace of negative stories that might already have surfaced on clients. They erased information where possible, and where not, flooded the internet with benign propaganda about them, undertaking such algorithmic alchemy that only the positive stories would rise to the top of the search engines. There’s a joke in SEO that if you want to hide a dead body, you do it on page two of Google. This was the purpose of Dickwad Ghastly. So broken were the Directors’ moral compasses that they offered to neutralise the negative publicity the Bentley story had garnered, but only in return for a five-year-long rent reduction from the building owners. But that was not before every possible acquaintance of Dickwad could have read the original story, and therefore known that he now had a Bentley and a plush office in the city’s hottest (pun intended) new postcode.
Simone stepped out of the lift and into a human fish tank, with floor to ceiling views of architecture far more elegant than the space-age dustbin she’d just shot up. No sign of the directors yet, so there was still time to slum it with a coffee pod before she got started.
‘Look at what the cat dragged in.’
Just what she needed. Oliver Young-Ward was already in the kitchen, gazing at his reflection in the glass-fronted fridge. His name couldn’t have been more appropriate: he was thirty-three, but looked more like a brattish ten-year-old caught in the crossfire of a grow-ray gun. He had permanently narrowed eyes, like he was constantly weighing up what use you might be to him, and a cowlick fringe that pointed in the wrong direction, because the rest of him had never done as it was told, so why should his hair bother? His pasty white ankles were bookended by deck shoes and cream chinos, in the back pocket of which was a rolled-up copy of The Spectator.
‘Do you ever actually read that, or is it to warn passers-by that you’re a right-wing, pro-hunting, polo-playing aristocrat who’s secretly insecure about his moral legitimacy?’
She’d seldom hated anyone in her life, but Oliver Young-Ward was a genuine nemesis. He was Hannibal Lecter to her Clarice; kryptonite to her Superman; dogshit to her Kurt Geigers.
‘You look like you’ve just come off the set of Ten Years Older,’ he said.
‘Put a cork in it, Ollie. Or would a silver spoon be more appropriate?’
He was a perfect specimen of the upper classes, the kind to whom life had come as easy as his pecker doubtless did, hunched over a soggy biscuit at the boarding school where he’d failed to learn anything – except how to be a grade-A asshole.
‘Heard you were out with Finchley last night,’ he said. ‘Do you reckon you’ll get it?’ His voice was steady, but his eyes betrayed his concern that she might.
Her stomach turned at the thought of what had gone down on her doorstep, but it would be worth it – just – to get one up on Oliver. He had arrived at the company eighteen months previously, utterly lacking in experience, but with a familial connection that secured him a position she’d slaved to attain. He’d failed to make any kind of impression, except one of a man trying to talk with a tongue three sizes too big for his mouth, until his father-in-law, high up in a chemical company, had needed to bury a story about a cancer-causing pesticide capable of drifting thousands of feet from where it was applied. Since then, the father-in-law had channelled a steady stream of business their way, just as his chemical company had channelled a steady stream of deadly compounds the way of an unsuspecting public. Nepotism was alive and well and shitting all over her potential promotion parade.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ollie. ‘I’ve got Papa coming in shortly. Got a contact in government to float my way. And you know how lucrative those contracts can be.’
Not what she needed to hear this morning.
‘Doesn’t it ever bother you that you rely on your family for your career?’ she asked.
‘Come on, Little Bo Peep,’ he sneered. ‘You’re not so pure. I use my connections; you use these.’ He gestured to her boobs. ‘We’re not so different, you and I.’
‘We’re nothing alike.’
‘I know you. A working-class kid trying to break the confines of her social stratum. Wanting to mix with the big boys, but crying foul when they do grown-up things.’
He leered at her. Did he know what Finchley had done? But no, that was impossible.
‘The only thing you crave more than money is status,’ he said, ‘whereas I have both and a desire to keep hold of them. Same same.’
He was wrong. She just wanted the money. She’d had to make her own way in life, and having come from nothing, she knew all too well how easily you could return there.
‘Anyway,’ said Ollie, suddenly bored of her presence, ‘Papa is going to be here in ten minutes, just time for Nora to grab me some proper coffees.’
‘Nora has work to do for me this morning.’
‘Is it to book you a facial? You really do need one.’
‘Perhaps she can get you a new aftershave whilst she’s at it. That Dior Halitosis for Men just isn’t working for you.’
It was a lame comeback and Oliver knew it. He slithered away, whistling.
Her period was due any day, which meant she was even more sensitive to his barbs than usual, but was she guilty of using her sexuality to get ahead? Was there something she’d done last night to warrant Finchley’s actions? Could she have gotten away with walking away sooner? Her experience suggested not. But what about the clothes she wore that accentuated her body rather than shrouded it? And the make-up she applied because it made her feel more confident. Was that being deliberately provocative? Or was it just using to her advantage what little advantage she did have? And wasn’t the point that, even if the entire male population had a boner for you, you still had agency over which boners you chose to engage with? Wasn’t it the guy’s responsibility to keep it in his pants until such a point at which you made your wishes clear? Surely anything else was a symptom of their weakness, not confirmation of her abusing her so-called ‘power’.
Come to think of it, though, she’d definitely not exhibited any such power over that Jasper guy this morning. He had been entirely resistant to any such charms that Ollie claimed she was exploiting. Fuck it! She was too hungover to be contemplating feminist code. She was good at her job – better than good. She’d worked harder than anyone there to earn her place on the next rung of the ladder, and if she so happened to have an appearance that people noticed as much as her professional capabilities, so be it. Even so, Ollie casting shade meant he was clearly rattled that the dangled carrot of a promotion was swinging in her direction. Because, make no mistake, if the deal with Finchley did come in, she was a shoo-in for director. The only thing to do was to not let him get to her.