Ollie Quain - She Just Can't Help Herself

It was a few weeks after I had finished my degree. I was about to start an internship at my favourite magazine. I’d bought every copy ever published. I was addicted to it from the first issue. I’ll never forget the launch copy. My best friend showed me it. The lead fashion shoot—set in a dilapidated mansion—was a glossy homage to what eventually became known in the tabloids as ‘heroin chic’. The models—dressed in flimsy, sheer, de-constructed fabrics—were draped across broken beds and chairs or lying on the cracked marble floor, as if they were abandoned garments themselves. But the ten-year-old me didn’t look at the pictures and think, ‘Yikes, they’ve had a heavy weekend on the skag …’. I didn’t even know what narcotics were, other than that they could possibly be disguised as fruit pastilles, as my father constantly told me: ‘NEVER ACCEPT ANY SWEETS FROM HER (my best friend’s) FAMILY—THEY COULD BE DRUGS!’

We—my best friend and I—stared at the shoot. She fell in love with the clothes; how everything looked on the surface. I loved what was going on beneath; the way each model was captured by the camera. Each one had a story to tell. But it was a secret.

The receptionist at the front desk puts a call through to the magazine.

‘Good morning, your new intern is waiting in reception. Shall I ask her to wait for you down here?’ He smiles at me from behind his sponge mouthpiece. ‘The Editorial Assistant will be right down.’

‘Ah, okay …’ I feel my purple heat rash spring across my chest. My dream job. This was actually happening. After everything that had happened. Life was about to happen.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ says the receptionist, mistaking my excitement for nerves. ‘She’s new too.’

But she wasn’t new to me. As the lift doors opened, I saw her before she saw me. Unquestionably pretty, petite—almost imp-like—and dressed casually but coolly in ripped skinny jeans, a grey T-shirt and Nike Air Max. Her hair was in a mussed-up high pony tail. I had ironed mine into a poker-straight bob. Typically for her, she looked at my shoes first. She stared at my ‘office smart’ kitten heels as if I had dragged in a rotting animal—no, human —carcass. I used this time to gather myself. It was only a few seconds … it was not enough. But an hour would not have been enough. Nor a day. Nor another year. And it had already been five. She gave me her trademark impenetrable stare. Her face was emotionless.

RECEPTIONIST: Ah, you two know each other? Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?

But it was not nice. Not for me, Tanya Dinsdale. Or her, Ashley Atwal.

Trance-like, she nodded at me to approach the lift. I walked over and got in. The doors shut but she did not press any buttons. I stood by her side. Should I say something? Should I say nothing? No. Yes. I should say …

ME: I don’t know what to s—

HER: (Interrupting. Voice flat.) Have you seen The Devil Wears Prada?

ME: (Confused.) Erm … yeah, of c—

HER: (Interrupting again.) You know that montage? Which loops together the makeover scenes? It starts with the Style Director taking Andrea—the awkward, shy intern—into the fashion cupboard and lending her a poncho? Then she borrows more and more clothes, and as she does she grows and flourishes into a confident, well-rounded member of staff who fits right in? Well, this scene and the rest of the movie—is a pile of crap. It is about as far removed from the reality of life doing work experience on a fashion magazine as you can get … and even further from the reality of what your life will be like at Catwalk. There will be no development of your personal storyline, no actual job to be retained or offered at the end … and you can bet every penny you have—I hear that’s a fair bit these days—that at no point will you be taken into the fashion cupboard by a kindly gay male member of staff to help get your look on point using all the latest designer clothes.

Firstly, you will already be in the fashion cupboard—and trust me, ‘cupboard’ makes it sound far more glamorous than it actually is; it makes the communal changing cubicle in an out-of-town discount-designer outlet resemble Coco Chanel’s Parisian apartment. It has no windows. The iron and industrial steamer are on permanently. Your pores will open up like craters.

Secondly, we do not have any ‘kindly ‘gay male members of staff. All three who work here are caustic. But that said, nowhere near as brutal as the straight women. And as for being tasked with anything to do with the Editor; in respect to her life on the magazine or private world, forget it. You won’t even meet her. In fact, you won’t get as far as that end of the office because you will spend seventy-five per cent of your time in the aforementioned leper’s cave of a fashion cupboard, another ten per cent by the photocopier and the other fifteen per cent tramping round Central London, running personal errands for senior staff. This could be anything from picking up dry cleaning to buying cashew nuts. And if you do, for fuck’s sake don’t buy salted, honeyed or roasted. Plain. Always plain. They won’t touch a modified nut. It also goes without saying that if you consider Anne Hathaway’s kooky fish-out-of-water shtick as endearing … then I suggest you don’t simply keep that opinion quiet, you keep it locked and hidden in a dark vault in the recesses of your mind, never to be unlocked. Remember all of the above and you should be able to last the twenty days you have been pencilled in for. It is essential to note the word ‘pencilled’, as you are only here as it suits us. There is no contract. No cosy back-up from HR. No pay. You are here or not here because we do or do not want you to be. By ‘we’ I mean ‘I’.

She gave me that flickering sideways glance. Because to look at me directly would be giving me too much when she felt I deserved nothing.

ME: You.

HER: Yes. Me. Are you in? Or out?

She raised her finger and hovered it over the button for the fourth floor. Out. I was out. Our relationship was about to be over for a second time. I left the lift and vacated the building. I did not turn round.

This time, it is her who doesn’t turn. I watch the door swing shut as she leaves, then face myself in the mirror. I am wearing a shirt under a jacket with trousers and boots. All Reiss. Not too edgy. Not too conservative. Not too high street. Not too expensive. But not too cheap either. Solid middle-ground shopping choice. Everything in black. A quick glance in my wardrobe and it could be assumed I was a funeral director or a mime artist. Black is the perfect colour for being present but not drawing attention to yourself. You can be there, but not ‘HERE!’. Unless, that is, you were invited to one of those toe-curling-ly cringe Z-list celebrity weddings on a foreign beach, where all the guests are asked to wear white ( and go barefoot).

I breathe in very slowly. Then exhale. And continue to stare. This is me now . Not the me she knew. I am finished with both of them.

‘Hon -eeeeey !’

The only reason I am here flies through the door and gives me a perfunctory peck on the cheek.

‘Noelle! How are you?’

‘How am I? Duh! Not exactly happy. That bitch !’

‘What bitch?’

‘The bitch who interviewed me. Ashley some-one-or-other.’

I realise Noelle has not recognised her. Not surprising. She was a small kid when everything happened. A concerted effort was made to ‘keep her out of it’.

‘Sorry, I got here late. Was at the hospit—’

‘You missed the whole thing?’