'Whadever,' Mercedes deadpanned. And Lisa nearly combusted. Mercedes had been to New York for two days. Two days! And she had a New York accent.

Last of the non-managerial staff to arrive was Trix, contributing considerably to the strong, aromatic mix.

'Cod above,' Mrs Morley exclaimed, showing an unexpected tendency to play to the gallery. 'This, ahem, plaice plaice stinks.' stinks.'

'Ha ha,' Trix said scornfully.

This triggered a ton of fish puns.

'You smell fish-ious, Trix!' Kelvin exclaimed.

'Oh, don't carp,' Ashling soothed.

'Shoal-ong, best if you go home,' Mercedes surprised everyone with.

Kelvin proved to have quite a gift for it. 'Salmon chanted evening,' he sang, his arms outstretched, 'you might meet a stray ayne ger.'

'Here's another song for you!' Boring Bernard got things right, for once. Pulling up the collar of his shirt, and despite his red tank-top and suit trousers, he attempted a little jive. 'Hake, rattle and roll! I said, hake, rattle and roll In strolled Jack, hands in pockets, wreathed in smiles. 'Morning all,' he said cheerfully. 'D'you know, this place is a shambles.'

Trix turned to him. 'Jack yeah, I know, Mr Devine to me they're all making fun because I smell of fish. They're singing songs about it.'

'What kind of songs?'

'Go on,' Trix instructed a discomfited Kelvin. 'Sing for our glorious leader.'

Kelvin reluctantly obliged.

Jack grinned.

'And you,' Trix said to Bernard.

Bernard did a very half-hearted reprieve of his earlier show-manship.

'That's not very good,' Jack said.

Trix nodded smugly.

'I've a better one,' Jack surprised everyone. Then strutting with surprising grace towards his office, he sang loudly, 'I'm a SOLE man. Bababopbabop. I'm a SOLE mah-han.'

The office door closed, but they could still hear him making faint trumpet noises within.

Everyone exchanged astonished looks. 'What the hell's up with him? him?'

'Am I herring things?' Trix could hardly speak. 'Was he singing ?' She stopped in alarm. 'Shite, even I'm doing it now.'

Ashling's face drained of animation. She'd only just remembered the drunken relationship advice she'd given to Jack on Friday evening. 'Oh God,' she groaned, covering her hot cheeks with her hands.

'Am I that bad?' Trix looked hurt. She expected a slagging from most of the others but not from Ashling.

Ashling shook her head. She could smell nothing now, it had all been wiped out by the tide of mortification. She had to apologize.

'This office is a state.' Killjoy Lisa began to impose order. 'Kelvin, can you gather up the empty bottles, and Ashling, can you wash the cups?'

'Why should I? I always wash them,' Ashling said vaguely, too trapped in the horror of what she'd said to Jack Devi Christ, she'd even called him JD!

This jolted Lisa into astonished silence. She glowered threateningly at Ashling, but Ashling was miles away, so she turned viciously on Trix. 'Right then, fishgirl, you you do them.' do them.'

Astounded at being spoken to thus by Lisa, who'd treated her up to now as most-favoured, Trix mulishly, resentfully clattered the cups on to the tray, treated each of them to half a second beneath a running tap in the ladies', then pronounced them washed.

Ashling waited for everyone to settle down to work before she trembled across to Jack's office, the nerves around her knees jumping.

'Morning Miss Fix-it.' Jack was almost skittish as he welcomed her in. 'Is it cigarettes you're looking for? Because I'd kind of intended last week's to be a one-off. But if you insist...'

'Oh no! That's not why I'm here.' Then she stopped, abruptly snagged by his tie. It was covered with bright yellow Bart Simpsons. He didn't usually wear such frivolous ties, did he?

'So why are you here?' His dark eyes twinkled merrily at her. Funny, his room didn't seem as brooding and gloomy as it usually did.

'I wanted to say that I'm very sorry for giving you advice on your relationship on Friday. There was, ah...' she tried for a light-hearted smile, but it came out as a bloodless rictus instead. 'There was drink taken.'

'Not a problem,' Jack said.

'Well, if you're sure '

'You were right, you know. Mai is a lovely girl. I shouldn't be fighting with her.'

'Well, er, grand.'

Ashling left, feeling perplexingly almost worse than before she'd gone in. As she emerged, Lisa stared hard at her.

Shortly afterwards a courier arrived bearing the photos from the Frieda Kiely shoot. Mercedes tried to grab them, but Lisa intercepted her. She tore open the jiffy bag and out fell a heavy, floppy pile of glossy shots of models with turf stains on their faces and straw in their hair, prancing around the bog.

Lisa flicked through them in ominous silence, separating them into two unequal piles.

The smaller pile contained a picture of a dirty, dishevelled girl wearing a slinky evening gown teamed with muddy wellies, her bare legs streaked with mud. The same girl clad in an exquisitely tailored suit, sitting on an upturned bucket, pretending to milk a cow. And another model in a short, tight, silver dress, allegedly driving a tractor. The larger pile contained airy-fairy shots of girls in airy-fairy frocks dancing about an airy-fairy landscape.

Lisa picked up the much smaller of the two bundles. 'These are just about usable,' she coldly told Mercedes. 'The rest are pants. I thought you were a fashion journalist.'

'What's wrong with them?' Mercedes asked, with menacing calm.

'There's no irony. No contrast. These...' she indicated the pictures of the floaty dresses. '... should have been shot in an urban setting. The same girls with the same dirty faces and mad frocks, but this time getting on a bus or getting money from a cash-point or using a computer. Get on to Frieda Kiely's press office. We're going to shoot this again.'

'But...' Mercedes glowered blackly.

'Go on,' Lisa said impatiently.

Everyone else in the office suddenly found their toecaps very, very interesting. No one could look at the humiliation, it was too horrible.

'But...' Mercedes tried again.

'Go on! on!'

Mercedes stared, then grabbed up the photos and banged to her desk. As she passed, Ashling heard her mutter, 'Bitch,' semi-under her breath.

Ashling had to agree. What was Lisa like? like?

The atmosphere was toxic with tension. Ashling had to open a window, even though the day wasn't warm. Some fresh air was needed to cleanse the ugly mood.

The only person in good form was Jack. Occasionally he emerged from his office, blithely oblivious to the tension, conducted his business, bestowed grins all round, then disappeared again. Slowly the poison dissipated, until everyone except Mercedes felt almost normal again.

At twelve-thirty, Mai arrived. She gave a general greeting then asked to see Jack.

'Go on,' Mrs Morley nodded perfunctorily.

Everyone sat up in glee as the door closed behind her.

'That'll wipe the smile off his face,' Kelvin observed.

Trix almost went around selling hot dogs, so festive and ringside was the air.

But no fighting broke out and they emerged serenely, very much together, Mai smirking beside Jack's bulk as they left the office.

Everyone exchanged startled looks. 'What was that that all about?' all about?'

Lisa, about to leave to inspect the bedrooms at the Morrison for their 'sexiness' factor, was abruptly stricken with privation. She had to sit down and swallow hard to try to dislodge the cold, hard sensation of loss. But what was the problem? She'd known he had a girlfriend. It was just with all the squabbling they'd done, she'd never fully taken it seriously.

Ashling was also a little nonplussed. What have I done? What have I done?

When Lisa booked a taxi to take her to the Morrison, she asked with mild embarrassment for Liam. She'd started doing that lately. She could only suppose that she liked Liam, with all his salt-of-the-earth Dublin chat.

By the time she arrived at the hotel she'd taken her upset about Jack and Mai and reconfigured it into something manageable. Hadn't she promised herself only that very morning that she was going to bag herself a bloke? And that it didn't have to be Jack. Not yet, in any case.

'Where do you want to be dropped, Lisa?' Liam interrupted her thoughts.

'Just up here, at the building with the black windows.'

There was a young man, decked out in a beautiful grey tailored suit, loitering by the front door of the hotel.

'Ah, look, love,' Liam's voice softened. 'Your fella's waiting on you. And all done up like a dog's dinner in a whistle and tie. Is it your birthday? Many happy returns of the day. Or is it your anniversary?'

'That's the doorman,' Lisa muttered.

'Is he?' Disappointment made Liam very high-pitched. 'I thought he was your chap. Ah well. D'you want me to wait for you?'

'Yes please, I'll only be about fifteen minutes.'

Briskly, Lisa tested the bounciness of the Morrison's beds, the crispness of the sheets, the size of the bath it was big enough for two the amount of champagne in the mini-bar, the aphrodisiac foodstuffs available from room service, the CDs in the room and, finally, the handcuff opportunities. All in all, she concluded, you could have a very nice time here. The only thing that was missing was the right man.

Returning to work, her eye was caught by a huge billboard advertising a new ice-cream called Truffle. She was going to the launch that very evening. Then she noticed the magnificent man on the poster, his ravishing mouth wrapped around a Truffle, his eyes glazed with what was meant to be lust, but could just as easily have been achieved with a couple of Mogadon.

I'd love to have sex with him.

God, she realized, I'm turning into a sad old spinster. Fantasizing about a photograph. The sooner I get laid the better.

35.

The launch party for the new Truffle ice-cream started at six that evening. Because it was basically a choc-ice, it had no Unique Selling Point, in a marketplace crammed to capacity with products boasting USPs. So the manufacturers were pelting money at it, holding the launch in the Clarence and luring journalists there with promises of champagne. It promised to be a fairly glitzy affair.

'Want to come?' Lisa asked Ashling.

Ashling, still uncomfortable after the way Lisa had humiliated Mercedes, was about to refuse, then decided it would kill an hour before her salsa class. 'OK,' she said, cautiously.

Before they left, Lisa went to the ladies' to do her hourly check on her appearance. Sweeping a cruelly appraising eye over her slender, tanned reflection in a white Ghost dress, she was pleased. This was no misplaced arrogance. Even her worst enemy (and competition was stiff) would have acknowledged that she looked good.

She'd want to, she admitted. She worked hard enough at it. She was her masterpiece, her life's work. Not that she was ever complacent about her appearance: she was also her own harshest critic. Long before it was ever visible to the naked eye, she could tell when her roots needed to be done. She could feel feel her hair growing. And she always knew even if the scales and the tape-measure disagreed when she'd put on even an ounce of fat. She fancied she could hear her skin stretch and expand to accommodate it. her hair growing. And she always knew even if the scales and the tape-measure disagreed when she'd put on even an ounce of fat. She fancied she could hear her skin stretch and expand to accommodate it.

She paused and narrowed her eyes. Was that a line she saw on her forehead? The merest whisper of a hint of a wrinkle? It was! Time for another Botox injection. She was from the attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence school of beauty therapy. Get it before it gets you.

Touching up her already perfect lip-gloss, Lisa was finally ready. If she didn't pull this evening, it wouldn't be her fault.

It turned out that both Kelvin and Jack were also going along to the Truffle shindig. As Truffle was sponsoring the new drama series on Channel 9, Jack was reluctantly playing the corporate game.

'And what's your excuse? Which of your many magazines are you going to cover it for?' Lisa sarcastically asked Kelvin.

'None. But I'm in the mood to get stotious and I'm skint after the bank holiday.'

Lisa flinched at the mention of the awful, endless bank holiday. Never again.

As soon as they arrived. Lisa disappeared into the well-dressed, rowdy throng, Kelvin made straight for the bar and Ashling circled the room cautiously. She knew no one and couldn't get too drunk because of her salsa class. And she must must go to her salsa class, it was only the second lesson, way too soon to be skiving off. Occasionally through the crowds she spotted Jack Devine uncomfortably trying to be backslappingly jovial and failing miserably. Lack of practice, she deduced. go to her salsa class, it was only the second lesson, way too soon to be skiving off. Occasionally through the crowds she spotted Jack Devine uncomfortably trying to be backslappingly jovial and failing miserably. Lack of practice, she deduced.

Somehow she ended up standing beside him, on the edge of things.

'Hello,' she said nervously. 'How are you?'

'I've a headache from smiling,' he said grumpily. 'I hate these things.' Then he lapsed into muteness.

'I'm very well too,' Ashling said, tartly. 'Thank you for asking.'

Jack pulled a surprised face, then turned to the passing waitress. 'Nurse,' he waggled his empty glass, 'something for the pain.'

The waitress, a young, appealing girl, handed him a glass of champagne. 'One of these every half-hour should do the trick.'

She dimpled prettily and he smiled back. Sourly, Ashling monitored the exchange.