Page 148 of Guilty Pleasures

‘Everything is going to be fine,’ said Cassandra, smiling confidently. ‘Stop worrying about it. It’s Christmas! Why don’t you all help yourselves to something from the table?’

Jeremy took some champagne. David took the radio.

‘You know I have enough of this stuff myself,’ smiled Francesca politely.

‘Quite,’ replied Cassandra, pleasantly.

52

In the nick of bloody time, thought Cassandra, putting down her black coffee as she read the headline in the Financial Times. She buzzed Lianne.

‘Get me Eileen Donald, I don’t care where she is – just find her. And cancel the ten o’clock meeting.’

Cassandra hung up and read the story again, more slowly this time. So Girard-Lambert had managed to push the takeover through two days before Christmas, she smiled, taking a sip of her coffee. A ‘multi-billion dollar deal’ reported the FT excitedly, singling out Rive as ‘publishing’s crown jewels’. Well, in the nick of time it might be, thought Cassandra, but the timing couldn’t have been better.

She looked up at the magazine flat-plan which was pinned to the wall next to her desk. The February issue was due at the printers the following day. The magazine printed in sections but the cover was due to go to press that evening. Well, there was about to be a change of plan. If Glenda thought she was running simultaneous Georgia Kennedy covers with UK Rive, she could think again.

She saw her telephone flash red and Eileen Donald’s number flashed in the LCD reader. Eileen was Rive’s production manager, the person responsible for making sure everything went smoothly between the text and pictures leaving the Rive office and the magazines rolling out of the printers.

‘Cassandra. Your PA said it was urgent,’ said Eileen in her crisp, efficient voice.

‘It is,’ replied Cassandra, leaning back in her chair. ‘There’s been a change of plan with the February cover.’

‘You’re kidding?’ said Eileen. ‘Cassandra, we print tonight! Has something fallen through?’

‘Quite the opposite,’ said Cassandra coolly. ‘We’ve got hold of something absolutely wonderful.’

There was a long silence down the phone. Eileen was a no-nonsense woman and one of the few people in the company who dared say what she thought to Cassandra.

‘If it’s a new cover, we haven’t a hope in hell of getting it retouched and over to the printers in time for this evening.’

Cassandra pulled the Georgia Kennedy cover from the locked drawer besides her.

‘Eileen, darling, it’s already been done.’

Cassandra smiled to herself. The Georgia Kennedy cover had been ready to go for a month. Every blemish, every line had been removed from Georgia’s face. Her skin tone had been warmed up, her already svelte image trimmed with the power of digital retouching. She looked like a goddess.

‘In that case, it shouldn’t be a problem. Shall I warn the printers there’s another file on the way?’

‘You do that. Oh, one other thing,’ purred Cassandra into the receiver. ‘I need you to arrange an increase in the print-run by one hundred thousand. The issue is going to sell out instantly with what we currently have out there.’

She heard a faint splutter down the phone.

‘I haven’t got time to organize a huge hike in the print-run. What about additional paper stock? Do you know how much extra paper is needed for one hundred thousand extra issues?’ said Eileen with panic in her voice.

‘Just do it,’ said Cassandra with steel in her voice. ‘Borrow from our allocation for next month’s issue if you have to, or take it from Rural Living magazine. They’ll thank you for it when they see this issue.’

‘Cassandra, I’m going to have to get authorization from Greg Barbera for this.’

‘Greg doesn’t need to know. These orders have come from Pierre Desseau, the chief executive of Girard-Lambert – our new boss in case you don’t read the papers. I’m reporting directly to him. If you can’t carry out his orders, then you’d better have a think about what corporate takeovers invariably mean; redundancies, sometimes even dismissals.’

‘I understand,’ said Eileen quietly.

‘And Eileen, Pierre wants absolute discretion on this one. We want to take the industry by surprise with our big splash. Tell no one about the new cover or the additional print-run. And I mean no one.’

She slammed down the phone and glanced into her still-open drawer to see the nasty passport holder sent by Glenda sitting there. She picked it up and threw it in the wastepaper bin next to her desk.

Choke on that, Glenda, she thought smiling, before turning her thoughts to what she was going to wear for the Christmas party.