‘What are you going to wear to your sister’s party?’ asked Liz from wardrobe, who was a genius at both ironing and working out where a particular shirt needed a hidden nude popper because it had been made for a woman with AA-cups.
‘I have a grey sheath dress,’ said Toni, who normally looked at her hair from all angles but this afternoon, couldn’t summon up the interest in such a thing. ‘It’s simple.’
‘That one from Zara?’ Liz had a microscopic knowledge of what was in the shops at any one time. ‘It’s a bit day-timey, isn’t it?’
‘It’s my sister’s night,’ Toni pointed out. She had planned her plain outfit because she knew how easy it was to outshine other people at their events if you were in any way famous. If anyone was going to suck the oxygen out of the room, it was her mother. It would not be Toni. Worrying about that family drama seemed insanely banal now. Who was the woman who had put so much thought into a dress?
Toni closed her eyes, and prayed, something she rarely did.Please let me get through this, whoever you are up there. Just keep me going until I’m in the car and can relax again.
Toni wasn’t sure who she was praying to. Unlike her sister, she didn’t believe in any divine beings or have any faith in mystical symbols, ankhs, or dangly things made of tin in the name of random goddesses. But if there was anything up there, Toni fervently wanted it to help her.Please let me get through this.
By 6.20 p.m., making her way across the studio’s car park, Toni felt about a hundred years old.
Her mind was racing, so much so that she barely noticed the heavy-set man nearby.
‘You made me look like a moron yesterday!’
The man loomed in front of her. A tall muscular man who looked angrier than he had been the previous morning on the radio station: Gerry Lanigan, possessor of a company with no women in managerial positions.
He’d picked the wrong day to hijack her, Toni thought grimly.
‘Don’t creep up on people, especially not women,’ she snapped. ‘And what are you doing here?’
He loomed closer. Toni’s sense of unease rose.
‘I’m here for you, bitch,’ he hissed.
‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ Toni fired back.
He was calling her a bitch? Really?
‘I didn’t make you look like a moron: you did,’ she said, failing to keep the contempt from her voice. ‘You know you have no women executives. Why go on a radio show to argue that you do?’
Even as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake. This big angry man shouldn’t be here. He’d clearly been waiting for her. He looked enraged, his face red with anger and she was suddenly aware of how physically strong he was. For all that she was a tall woman, her stature had nothing on his musculature. He was angry and frightening.
Determined not to let him cow her, Toni nevertheless moved back a step. She’d been in the public eye long enough to know that people didn’t always behave coherently. She didn’t think Gerry would go so far as to hit her but then, you never knew. Her fingers found the side button on her watch. She had an SOS number programmed in – it rang the local police. Her fingers touched it, but she didn’t press the button.
‘You have no business trying to make me a laughing stock,’ he said furiously. ‘I run a bloody successful company and I don’t want do-gooders like you whining that there aren’t enough bloody women in it. You’ve damaged me and my company with your whining, you bitch. Women don’t understand business. You’re nothing but a jumped-up bitch who thinks she has power. You have no power. Real power is money. I can destroy you, and I will.’
The threats did it. That and the mention of money. Rage flooded Toni’s body. After last night, she felt as if she had nothing to lose. Everything was being taken from her and this bastard was trying to threaten her? How dare he?
Years of training fled Toni’s brain. All the lessons she’d taught herself about thinking before she spoke just vanished. Along with the lessons about how men were physically stronger than women and the danger that this implied.
‘I called you out because you’re like so many fucking men,’ she hissed furiously. ‘You think you can pretend to be one thing and really be another. I’m fed up with all of you, all the smarmy businessmen pretending to employ and care about women. When I know it’s all bullshit.’
Her eyes were glittering with rage now.
‘I know exactly how many women people like you actually employ. You pretend you like women but really, you hate us,you fearus. I have news for you, Gerry Lanigan. I will bloody well destroy you and your fellow misogynists. I’ll enjoy it, I’ll be laughing as I do it. I’ll be doing it for all the women you’ve discarded in your bloody company because they made the fatal mistake of not being bloody men! You have no idea who I know and how easily I can let everyone see what a self-satisfied pig you are. All I need to do is a bit of research and you and your precious company are finished. Finished,’ she repeated in case he hadn’t got the point.
‘Ha!’ Gerry looked triumphant. Toni stared at him – she didn’t understand. Until he held up his phone.
‘Gotcha, Ms Cooper, you fucking bitch. Got what you really think of men in that last bit!’
Toni felt the rage haze leave her and she looked at his phone. She recognised the recording app.
‘That last little bit will play very well, bitch. I wonder who I can sell it to or whether it’s worth going to Epsilon or your own TV company with it?’
He leaned over her, frighteningly close so that she felt the fear again, and breathed, ‘Fuck you.’
