Lindsey Kelk - I Heart London

Gloss going, we had a small office in the Spencer Media building and some office equipment, and he had reluctantly agreed to support my visa application, but that was where it ended. There was no free ride in the Spencer family. Not if you saddled yourself with a foul-mouthed British girl who knocked out a member of your family at a Christmas party while dressed like a slutty Santa. It was a long story, but Cici totally had it coming. Delia agreed. Often. I didn’t have a sister but if I did, I’d want one like Delia. Kind, thoughtful and cleverer than anyone who had ever been on The Apprentice . I did not want one like Cici. She was the Ursula to her Ariel, the coffee cream to her hazelnut whirl. Pure evil. But she was out of the picture. At least she hadn’t actively tried to ruin my life for the last couple of months so that was nice. It was just as well, I had been busy.

At last, we were ready to go. We had a killer dummy issue, we had a business plan that made sense, we had writers on standby, we even had a retailer lined up to distribute for us. We just needed advertisers. And to get advertisers, we had to get Grandpa Bob to include us in the annual Spencer Media sales conference. Delia was convinced it was a lock, but I wasn’t so sure. Yes, he’d stayed all the way through our presentation without nipping out to the loo or anything. And he’d only picked up his iPhone once; and there was no way he’d been on it long enough to be playing Fruit Ninja. Unless he was very good. Which he probably was.

‘So you have a retailer on board?’ he asked Delia.

‘ Trinity ,’ she confirmed. ‘As you know, the second largest women’s fashion retailer in the US.’

‘And you’ll be distributing through them directly?’ he asked Delia again.

‘We will,’ she nodded.

‘And is she actually barefoot?’ He cocked his head in my direction.

Ohhhh.

‘She is,’ Delia confirmed. ‘But she’s also a very good writer, a fantastic creative planner and an absolute asset to your company.’

I tried not to blush. Shucks.

‘Even if she is a little eccentric.’

I couldn’t really argue with that. Even if it did take the edge off her original compliment.

‘I know I’m going to regret asking,’ Bob said finally, turning to face me, ‘but what did happen to your shoes?’

‘Well, I was at my friend Jenny’s house −’ As soon as I opened my mouth I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop − ‘and I’d been borrowing her shoes, but she was just a big drunken weeping mess and she made me take them off—’

‘You don’t have shoes of your own?’ Bob interrupted. ‘I don’t follow …’

‘Maybe if we just deal with questions about the magazine right now?’ Delia suggested. ‘And let Angela’s shoe situation resolve itself. Do you have any questions about the business plan?’

Bob looked at Delia, at me, and then his phone. ‘No. It was very clear and concise.’

Delia beamed. ‘Any questions about the creative?’

‘None at all. You know more about that market than I do.’

‘So any questions at all?’ She straightened the collar on her sky-blue shirtdress. ‘Now’s the time to ask them, Grandpa.’

The stately, grey-haired media magnate leaned forward and rested his elbows on our glass conference table. ‘In all honesty, Delia, I just really want to know why she isn’t wearing shoes.’

Delia sat back, rubbed her forehead and gave me a quick, sharp nod.

‘So …’

‘That wasn’t scary at all,’ I said, spinning round and round in my office chair after Bob had left the office. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘It’s fine.’ Delia stretched her yoga-toned arms high above her head. ‘He’s going to say yes. There’s no reason for him not to. I have a good feeling.’

‘I’m glad someone has,’ I said grimly. I didn’t have any good feelings. I only felt like I had dirty feet and a craving for bacon. ‘Then why didn’t he just say yes?’

‘Don’t panic, Angela − I know my grandpa,’ she said. Her confidence was somewhat reassuring. ‘He never says yes on the spot. He likes to think about things, weigh up his options, but we’ve given him every reason to say yes. Besides, I know he wants me on the magazine side of the business. It’s not like Cici is proving herself heir apparent to the business when he retires.’

Despite a lifelong ambition to work in publishing, Delia had avoided Spencer Media until we started working on Gloss due to her batshit mental sister already working at The Look magazine. But while Cici’s ambitions only reached as far as stealing from the fashion cupboard and ruining the lives of British freelancers ( cough − me − cough ), Delia actually wanted to succeed. On the surface she was a blonde, Upper-East-Side WASP princess, but underneath she was a fiercely ambitious uber-genius. She was basically Serena van der Woodsen with the brain of Rupert Murdoch, and she had enough self-confidence to make Lady Gaga look like she was a bit down on herself. God help anyone who got in her way.

‘I just can’t cope with the idea of this not working out.’ I laid my head on the cool desk and peered at my iPhone. Ooh, some peas needed harvesting in my Smurf Village. ‘If he doesn’t go for it, then the last six months have been for nothing.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Delia said, enunciating each word with a clarity and confidence I couldn’t even try to feel. ‘Look, why don’t you take the afternoon off? There’s really nothing we can do now until he gets back to us.’

‘I was going to try to talk to Mary about some new features ideas,’ I said, twisting the emerald ring around my finger. Mary Stein, once we were officially off the ground, was going to be our editor. I was sort of surprised she’d agreed to it if I was being entirely honest. Mary and I had worked together on my blog when I’d moved to New York and I’d been nothing but trouble but I had a feeling she was itching to get off the blog and back onto a real magazine. That said, until we had full funding, she was still working on TheLook.com , but she made plenty of time to bitch out my ideas as often as possible. I loved her dearly. ‘And I could do with looking at the website plans again.’

Delia smiled at me across the office. ‘Do you realize you always do that when you’re nervous about something? Twist your engagement ring?’

‘I do?’ I looked down at my diamond and emerald sparkler and felt my frown turn upside down. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘It’s cute,’ she grinned. ‘When you’re stressed, that calms you down. Bodes well for the future, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’ It was a nice thought. ‘I’m probably just terrified of losing it, though.’

‘Speaking of engagement rings, I have something for you.’ She pulled a thick glossy magazine out from her beautiful Hermès Birkin and tossed it across to my desk. It landed with a pleasing thud and spilled open on a page full of amazing wedding dresses.

‘What is this?’ I said, turning to the front cover. ‘How do I not have this? I have all the magazines.’ I did. There were so many stacks of glossies in my apartment, I’d started using them as coffee tables. It was all part of my wedding-planning procrastination. If I had the magazines, at least I was sort of trying.

‘It’s actually British,’ Delia explained. ‘I wore some of the designer’s pieces when she did regular couture, but now she’s doing bridal. They’re amazing. I put a Post-it on the page you should look at.’

Regular couture. As if there were such a thing. I opened the magazine randomly to a painfully beautiful spread of painfully beautiful models wearing painfully beautiful wedding dresses. I ran my fingers over the glossy paper and tried to pretend I wasn’t barefoot and wearing a borrowed jumper because I’d effed-up one shirt already today. How was I ever going to manage in a wedding dress?

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