CHAPTER ONE
'Come on, Sarah, get a move on! The plane was due in fifteen minutes ago.' Julie Somerville gave her assistant a harried look over the top of her typewriter.
'Don't panic, it'll only take me twenty minutes to get out there. They won't even have got through Customs. You know how notorious Auckland airport is at processing jumbos,' Sarah Carter replied calmly from the opposite desk.
She hated being rushed. To rush was to risk being unprepared and in her job-that was tantamount to a crime. As editorial assistant on the monthly fashion magazine Rags & Riches she was constantly meeting new people —writers, models, advertising executives—and all expected her to know instantly what they wanted and why, and what Sarah was supposed to be doing about it. Usually she did, thanks to the overstuffed green filing cabinet squatting within arm's reach of her chair.
'Don't say "don't panic" in that maddening way, I think I've earned a good panic!' Julie declared. "While you've been lolling about the city's beaches for three weeks I've been working at shriek pitch. Not only running this mad-house, but also trying to fend off the rumours that Wilde Publications has bought us out with the aim of rationalising their Australasian operations ... by dumping Rags.'
'Well, from today you'll be able to let them do the fending,' Sarah soothed.
'If they don't spend their whole visit stranded at the airport, yes.' Julie jabbed viciously at the keys of her machine. 'I had everything nicely laid on for Thursday. This is going to completely derail my timetable. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when Janey brought in that telex first thing this morning. Damn!' The dark blonde head bent as Julie back-spaced and X-ed out an error in her copy.
Sarah grinned. Julie's nerves were an in-house joke, never in danger of being bent, let alone broken. She loved it when things went awry and she was called on to extract order from chaos, completely confident of her abilities. She was a good journalist and an excellent editor; ambitious, hard-headed, yet possessed of all the elegant femininity expected of a woman who edited a fashion magazine.
'Stop grinning and start moving.' Julie looked up again as she heard the rumble of a filing cabinet drawer. 'What are you up to now?'
'Looking for the file on Wilde's. I'd better know who I'm supposed to be meeting.'
'It's not there—I've got it. Anyway you haven't got time. Indulge your fetish for facts later, all you're doing is greeting them, not entering Mastermind’. Max Wilde you must know, Tom Forest is a fellow director—financial expert.'
'But—'
'Oh my God!’ Julie sat suddenly upright in her swivel chair, china-blue eyes focusing properly on Sarah for the first time.
'What's the matter?' The crack in the clear soprano voice was unnerving.
'Grape! You had to wear the dreaded Grape, on today of all days.'
Sarah looked down at her dress, a short-sleeved shirt-waister with a matching belt. It had been the first thing to hand in her wardrobe, so she had put it on.
'I had vain hopes you might have done some shopping during your holiday.’ Julie rolled her eyes. 'What kind of impression do you thing the Grape is going to make? If only I didn't have this meeting. . . what's the weather like outside?'
'I am not wearing a coat. Not in Auckland. In February,' said Sarah firmly.
'This is the son and heir of a world-famous couturier we're trying to impress here,' Julie wailed. 'He'll be expecting style . . . panache . . .'
'He'll be expecting you,' came the mild reply. 'And we can't all look as good as you do.'
Julie was in her late thirties but with her rippling shoulder-length blonde hair, glowing, peachy skin and lithe figure she could have been ten years younger.
'You don't even try, Sarah. Why don't you—'
The phone on Sarah's desk rang and she snatched it up. Once Julie started on the subject of clothes she could go on for hours.
'It's Keith.' She hugged the receiver to her chest. 'He wants to know if the panic's still on and whether you want to see the paste-ups now?' Keith Moore was their art director. It was the triumvirate of him, Julie, and photographer Mike Stone who were responsible for creating Rags' distinctive, successful, identity.
'Yes and yes. I may as well see them, I seem to be suffering from terminal writer's block here.' She tore the paper out of her typewriter and screwed it up in disgust.
'What paste-ups?' asked Sarah, replacing the receiver.
'We've done a mock-up of the April issue,' Julie explained. 'New ideas for new publishers. We were going to get a dummy printed, but we won't have time now.'
'Isn't that assuming rather a lot? Wilde's may not want to make any changes.'
'We're a little on the staid side, sweetie, you must admit and Wilde Publications isn't noted for its conservatism —nor is Max Wilde. Since I don't think he's coming all this way just for his health it stands to reason he has plans. There's a memo of mine about it somewhere—Janey, don't you ever walk into a room?'
'Sorry.' Julie's young, freckle-faced secretary looked anxiously at Sarah. 'I just rang to check for you about whether the flight from London was on time. It wasn't.'