Chapter 11
Olivia had always suspected that ‘conference’ was too grand a term to describe the daily editorial meeting that takes place in newspapers across the country, or what remains of them, and now that she is finally in it, all her suspicions are confirmed.
If the word ‘conference’ typically means a gathering of large numbers of people in one place to discuss a shared interest, then the morning meeting fails on most counts, containing, as it does, a dwindling number of section heads all fighting with each other over terrible ideas they are paid pitifully to pretend to give a toss about.
‘I’d like everyone to know that Nina and Li— I mean Olivia – are going to be joining us from now on,’ says Stephen, sitting at the head of a large oak table, the type that probably costs more than her annual wage.
The room contains eight men and now, thanks to Olivia and Nina, the grand total of three women, though Mary, the assistant editor, doesn’t really count, owing to the fact she’s basically risen to the top by refusing to have a personal life and adopting the same insidiously misogynistic views as all the other men in the room.
‘Nina, as we all know from her blockbuster first column on Saturday, is the new voice of women on this paper. And Li—’ Stephen corrects himself, ‘I mean Olivia – is going to be the Anniversary Architect, in charge of all our birthday celebrations. Although you should also know that she’s writing one last feature which involves “speaking her truth”’ – he does quote fingers in the air – ‘so there’s no need to take anything she says today too seriously. ’
‘That snark is a bit rich coming from a man who’s held the title of “letters editor” for fifteen years,’ says Olivia, smiling sweetly.
Andrew’s face begins to turn beetroot red, or more beetroot red (his nose has always had the unhealthy glow of an all-day drinker about it), as he struggles to compute this combination of feminine charm and hostility.
‘Doesn’t your job just involve reading post and printing out the less mad and angry ones on the letters page?
If a woman did that job they’d be called a secretary. ’
Nina sniggers and attempts to pass it off as a cough.
‘No need to get your knickers in a twist,’ says Andrew. ‘Although I’m probably not allowed to refer to your knickers without finding myself cancelled.’
‘The frisson of cancellation is what counts for excitement nowadays, old boy,’ says Hugo, the thirty-something comment editor whose proudest achievement to date seems to be his admittance into a members’ club that doesn’t allow women.
Olivia rolls her eyes and decides not to waste any more of her energy on this conversation.
Plus, she needs to be a bit careful. She is the main breadwinner in the house, and a job is extremely useful when it comes to paying a mortgage.
Even if it is a job you don’t want, haven’t asked for, and that might actually have broken several employment laws, given the way it was handed to you.
She decides instead to stay quiet, a powerful, self-imposed silence.
She sits and thinks about the version of her who existed before she met Rose, the one who felt genuine pain in her stomach at the thought of being on someone’s bad side.
It was visceral, the sensation she’d always had when there was a possibility someone might be cross with her – it pushed out all other feelings and thoughts and plans for the day, threatening to swallow her whole, like heartburn.
Her only means of survival had been to defuse the situation and make sure that everyone was happy with her, by desperately fawning, and throwing compliments around like confetti.
She loved everyone’s ideas (even though she didn’t), she adored that dress (even though she hadn’t even noticed it), she really enjoyed that joke (she hadn’t).
Seeing the glow on someone’s face as they received her compliments gave her a thrill that more than made up for the fact she didn’t mean them.
That others liked her was way more important to Olivia than whether or not she was behaving in a manner that meant she actually liked herself.
She picks up a biro from the table and starts chewing it in the hope that it will distract her mouth from getting her in serious trouble.
She tries to avoid accidentally drawing on her own face and listens to the men in the room wang on about immigration and the tyranny of wokeness and the upcoming Euros, the recent injuries of several French players apparently the kind of important news that really matters.
Olivia, for the sake of her cortisol levels and her blood pressure, slips into a sort of catatonic state, almost meditative – similar, she imagines, to the vows of silence that monks are forced to take for weeks on end as they enter the Buddhist faith.
It’s only when she hears Andrew discussing a famous singer in her sixties who has been stalked and followed by paparazzi on her holiday, hunted down until they could get a picture of her in a bikini, that she snaps out of it.
‘She’s deluded,’ she hears Mary say, as she looks in disgust at the cover of a downmarket tabloid, which has pictures of the singer holidaying on a yacht splashed across it.
‘As a woman of a similar age to her, I don’t think this is a good look, and I think there’s loads of us out there who would agree.
We don’t want to see it.’ Mary screws up her face in distaste.
‘I reckon a piece by another woman saying this would go down a storm online.’
Stephen nods. He has been given permission to be misogynistic by this token woman, and so he is happy. ‘Nina, maybe you should write a column on why you’re sick of seeing famous older women parading around showing off on holiday? But make it kind of sexy, and non-judgemental.’
‘Right,’ gulps Nina. ‘I was actually thinking more along the lines of a piece about how great it is that once you get older, you no longer care what anyone thinks of you?’
Stephen shakes his head, still grimacing at the pictures.
‘No, that’s not the one for big numbers, Nina.
If Mary is thinking this as a fifty-something middle-class woman, then there will be loads of other people out there thinking it too.
Surely we need to listen to all women, and not just the ones who hold beliefs of neoliberal feminism?
Isn’t that what a proper truth-telling news organization should be doing, instead of simply kowtowing to popular opinion? ’
‘Well, I think—’ Olivia starts to speak, but is cut off by Hugo.
‘I have a good piece actually on how neoliberal feminism is hurting the women who need help the most,’ he says, stroking the bumfluff on his chin seriously, ‘and how rich, privileged Western women have forgotten their counterparts in places such as Afghanistan and Yemen.’
Olivia gapes. What would Rose say if she were here?
She’d probably summon all her strength to upend the big oak table, covering the likes of Andrew, Hugo, Mary and Stephen in their coffees.
She would point out how incredible it was that their utterly irrelevant thoughts about a woman’s body had managed to morph into a discussion about how modern women were responsible for systemic oppression and abuse.
Rose would take each and every one of these turgid tossbags to task for their toxicity, for their entitlement, for the absolute fucking arrogance of believing that anybody would actually give a shit about their view on this woman’s swimwear choices.
She’d probably say something pithy like: ‘Is there an age where women should stop wearing bikinis? And if so, would you mind clarifying what that age is, so I can inform all the world’s women and they can make a note in their diary accordingly?
Twenty-fifth birthday: do not wear bikini any more in case it offends Andrew Grey, the greasy-bearded letters editor of The Morning newspaper who is so overweight his belly is currently poking out from under his shirt? ’
Olivia smiles to herself, and then is suddenly hit by a flashback of Rose, taking her to task for a piece she once wrote about how boring Kate Middleton’s fashion choices were, and how much she preferred Harry’s then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy.
Olivia had been shocked that Rose would even know about the piece – it had been written way back in the mid-noughties – and then she was shocked by the irony of writing such a mean-spirited little article just to appease her boss, without any thought for the wellbeing of the women she was writing it about (as if they read The Morning, she told herself).
Olivia wonders where Rose is now. Who Rose is, more to the point.
‘OK, Liv, you’re not holding back today.’ Stephen’s nasal voice penetrates her brain and shocks her back into the moment. ‘So what do you think Nina should do the column on?’
Holy shit, she said that last bit out loud. Andrew is ferreting around trying to tuck his shirt in across the table from her.
There’s a part of her that knows she should stay quiet.
That she should rise above it all and carry her feelings to a book club meet-up or a spin class, or any of the other sanctioned places where women go, in groups, to vent the rage they fearfully store up in their everyday lives.
But there’s also a part of her, a part that suddenly feels important, that knows that if she doesn’t correct him now it will always, always be like this.
She will spend the rest of her life simmering with fury while smiling sweetly, and nothing will ever, ever change.
‘I think Nina should write a piece about the madness of a world where a sixty-year-old woman wearing a bikini is deemed shocking enough to make the front page. She should write the piece about how nuts it is that you’ve just spent somewhere close to twenty minutes pointing out the grossness of this woman’s body, given that you’re grown men – and women,’ Olivia turns to Mary, ‘who should know better. But mostly, I think Nina should do the column on whatever she damn well wants to, because you’re paying her to write her opinions, not yours, or Andrew’s, or Mary’s.
Furthermore, you’re paying me to be the Anniversary Architect, not to tell you what other people should write.
And by the way, it’s Olivia,’ says Olivia, reaching across the table for Nina’s notepad.
‘Sorry, Nina,’ she says, tearing out a piece of paper and writing her name in block capitals on it, before holding it up and showing it to the room.
‘O-L-I-V-I-A,’ she spells out. ‘Not Liv. Not L-I-V. O-L-I-V-I-A.’ She shakes her head.
‘Honestly, I’ve told you this quite clearly already this morning, not that long ago, in terms that, had anyone used them to me, I would have listened to.
And not only would I have listened, I would also have burned the information into my brain because there’s nothing less terrifying than the possibility that I might do something to even vaguely upset someone.
Pathetic, isn’t it? Because meanwhile, you’ve already forgotten what I said, despite being the Oxbridge-educated editor of one of the biggest newspapers in the country, a man who is on speaking terms with the prime minister. ’
Olivia pauses for a moment, enjoying with a mixture of horror and relish the speechless faces of her colleagues.
‘Or maybe you just don’t deem it important enough to take into consideration,’ she says, standing up and heading in the direction of the door.
‘Either way, it’s a pretty damning indictment of the culture at this esteemed organization as it enters its centenary year.
’ She bows and curtsies as she says this, goes to exit, feels a blast of air from outside come flooding into the glass box as she turns the handle and pulls the door towards her.
‘Leaving so soon?’ sneers Hugo.
‘I’ve been working here twenty fucking years, Hugo,’ she says, sticking her middle finger up and turning on her trainer-clad heel. ‘I’d hardly call this soon.’