Confessions: A Secret Diary

With special thanks to Tom Easton.

Title PageDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-SevenMore about MischiefCopyrightAbout the Publisher

Chapter One

‘Every now and then you should sleep with someone considerably less attractive than you.’

Shelley looked up at Briony across their cluttered, back-to-back desks. ‘Er … what?’ She hadn’t really been properly listening to her friend twittering on, but sometimes Briony said stuff you just couldn’t let by. ‘Why?’

‘You’ve got to give a little bit back,’ Briony said, flicking over the pages of a magazine. ‘Haven’t you heard about that Random Acts of Kindness movement?’

‘Yes, but that means buying someone a cup of coffee, or helping an old lady across the road,’ Shelley pointed out. ‘Not yanking your pants down at a Star Trek Convention and shouting “Get it here, Scotty!”’

Briony was about to say something else but Shelley held up a hand.

‘What’s up with you?’

‘I’m totally bricking it.’

‘About the announcement?’

‘Of course. How come you’re so chilled?’

Briony shrugged. ‘Que sera, sera.’

Shelley bit her lip. The office was wired tighter than Joan Rivers’ face. A general e-mail had been waiting for all the staff that morning from the Chief Operating Officer of West End Magazines, their parent company, requesting their punctual presence at eleven o’clock for an important announcement about the future of FemaleIntuition, the magazine Shelley had been working on for nearly four years.

Shelley tucked her unruly brown hair behind her ears and picked up a Styrofoam coffee cup, clutching it in two hands as though she feared it might escape. ‘Do you think Kate’s sick or something? She’s been so quiet lately,’ she said.

‘Don’t be a div, Shell,’ Briony said, rolling her eyes. ‘She ain’t coming back.’

‘Isn’t coming back,’ Shelley corrected. She could never let a grammatical slip go by. She knew it was sad, and was convinced she’d end up alone, with a dozen cats, writing letters to the Guardian admonishing them for typos and punctuation clangers.

‘She’s been given her P45,’ Briony said.

‘You don’t know that,’ Shelley replied.

‘So why is there a padlock on her office door?’

Shelley looked over at the glass office Kate had been in for two and a half decades. The office must have had cutting-edge décor back then, glass and steel everywhere, midnight-blue carpets, pastel vertical blinds, open-brick walls. Female Intuition had been the first London magazine to give computers to all the editors.

Now the décor looked shabby, many of the vertical blinds were lying horizontally amongst the mouse droppings on the faded carpet, and Shelley sometimes wondered if her computer were one of the original ones handed out – it was practically steam-driven.

Shelley sort of knew it must be over, but didn’t want it to be true. Kate Hurley had given Shelley her first job in journalism, straight out of university, or at least her first job writing for magazines, which is not necessarily the same thing. She’d been editor here at Female Intuition for as long as anyone could remember and was legendary in the business.

‘I need a drink, fancy anything from the kitchen?’ Shelley asked.

‘I have a splitting headache,’ Briony replied. ‘Get me a strong coffee would you?’

‘Coffee’s not good for headaches,’ Shelley replied.

‘Who says?’

‘Everyone says. It’s a diuretic, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t give me any of that Scientology crap; get me a double-strength aspirin and a triple espresso.’

Shelley wandered off to the manky little kitchen to get the drinks. She passed Freya Wormwood’s desk on the way back and the Fashion and Lifestyle Editor looked up, catching her eye. Though pretty, and with a figure to die for, Freya made the mistake of going with whatever hairstyle was currently in vogue, regardless of its suitability for her. Freya currently sported an enormous fringe that made her look a little like the Dulux dog.

‘Not nervous are you, Shelley?’ Freya asked in that sly, sardonic voice she used with people she felt threatened by. Other women, to be specific. Shelley glanced at the myriad photos of her perfect boyfriend, Harry, on her desk, so many it looked like a shrine.

‘No,’ she replied, trying not to sound defensive and failing. ‘What would I have to be nervous about?’

Freya looked away, but not before Shelley caught the beginnings of a smirk on her face. Freya was one of those women who claim moral superiority simply because they have a boyfriend when you don’t. Not that anyone in the office had ever been allowed to meet the saintly Harry. Briony suspected he didn’t exist and the photos in the frames had already been there when she bought them.