‘Totally.’
The conversation had made Ginger feel even more disillusioned with her own sex.
Between Liza, Charlene and now, Carla Mattheson, it appeared as if sisterhood and feminism were just slogans for T-shirts and not for real life.
Finally, fifteen minutes after she’d summoned the team to the conference room, Carla stopped the flirt show and stood up: tall, sinuous, looking superbly good in her cobalt blue skirt, and a pale blue jersey blouse that had, yup, Paula was right, the definite outline of something that was undoubtedly called ‘Ultra-Plunge – Defibrillator for stunned males costs extra’.
Ginger knew she would never have that aura of potent sexuality around her, but if she did, she hoped she’d use it for good instead of evil.
The editor came past the team and said hello to a few of them. Not to Ginger. She’d met him four times but he probably couldn’t recognise her in a police line-up.
Good move, Ginger, she told herself sourly.The ‘all-black to hide your extra weight’ look is really working out for you.
Then came Zac, who said hello, by name, to everyone.
‘Ginger, how are you doing?’ he said.
‘Great, Mr Tyson,’ she said, channelling cool professionalism.
‘It’s Zac,’ he said, smiling, and if her heart wasn’t so bruised, it would have skipped a beat. Paula was right: he was sizzling hot.
But this was his patented charm offensive. Ginger had watched him use it on Carla moments before. And now Carla was watching her, with an arched eyebrow.
Ginger gave him a nod and turned to the front of the room as the meeting started.
It quickly turned into a bloodbath.
Nothing anyone had written was any good and all the ideas they’d come up with were hopeless – according to Carla.
A sick four-year-old with a temperature of 100 degrees had stopped one reporter from making a ten-minute interview slot with a singer who was in town promoting a forthcoming gig.
‘Nobody else could go?’ asked Carla in her silky-smooth voice, the voice of the class bully waiting to pounce.
Paula was right: it would be impossible to nail her for any sort of bullying as it was all so subtly done.
‘It happened so quickly ...’ said the reporter, a harried mother-of-two.
‘Your husband ...?’
‘Works too.’
‘Buthedidn’t give up a vital interview to get to the school and get your kid?’
Carla’s tone made it clear that having children was for morons and that women with progeny either needed house husbands or to stay home and not interfere with her work.
Nobody in news had tracked down Callie Reynolds, who was hiding while her husband was on the run from the police for his part in the fraud of the century. Millions were gone, millions.
‘Let’s do a piece on women betrayed by men,’ Carla said, eyes glittering. ‘You.’ She pointed at Fiona, recently transferred over from news, ‘You do it. Do you think she was in on it?’ Carla went on, daring them to answer back. ‘She looked like a rich bitch.’
‘She didn’t when the photographers cornered her outside her friend’s house,’ said Ginger. She’d felt sorry for the woman – she’d looked haunted, betrayed. Ginger knew that look all too well.
Carla’s eyes narrowed.Trouble ahead for me, Ginger thought.
The health and fitness writer was sick for the third week running.
‘So much for the benefits of a vegan diet,’ said Carla bitchily.
Worse, the health and fitness reporter’s job included editing and correcting the many spelling mistakes in the weekly column of a well-known fitness guru.
