She walked through the double doors and down the cream corridors lined with giant-sized magazine covers, until she reached an unsmiling redhead behind a computer.
‘Is he busy?’
‘Go straight in,’ replied the woman, not looking up from her computer screen.
William Walton’s office was unlike anything else Cate had seen in the Alliance building. Interior-designed at great expense, it was decked out in walnut wood and shades of taupe instead of the usual Formica and magnolia walls that everybody else had to put up with. The man himself was sitting behind a wraparound leather-top desk. His self-possessed presence filled the room. Powerfully built, with wiry black hair, Walton’s expensive bespoke clothes masked the fact that he had got to the top the hard way. The very hard way. When, twenty years ago, the young William had beaten thousands to win a scholarship to Yale, he had assumed it would pave the way to privilege. He was mistaken. The doors to American society’s elite were still very much closed to a boy from the southside of Chicago and, instead of spending his summers making contacts in Connecticut country clubs, he was forced to fight his way through the mailrooms of Grey’s and Ogilvy & Mather to achieve the status he craved. But he had made it. Power and privilege, he’d learned, were things to be won by hard work and cunning, not born or bought into. All of which explained precisely why William Walton was looking at Cate Balcon with such distaste.
‘I wanted to see you as soon as you got in,’ began Walton. ‘I hear we have a few problems.’ Walton paused, his dark, feral eyes sizing her up. He’d seen her before, of course, and read about her in the society pages she seemed to monopolize along with her sisters. But alone and face to face for the first time, Walton was impressed despite himself. She might not be a patch on that actress sister of hers, but Cate Balcon was still a knockout. The firm, slightly sulky rosebud mouth, the wavy, dark-golden hair flowing over that elegant neck. And then there was the curvy body, no doubt considered plump by the stick-thin Zone-dieted women he’d dated in Chicago, but when he imagined it naked and wet under his shower, her plump lips round his cock, swallowing him whole … He stopped himself and shifted in his seat, motioning her to sit in one of the hard black leather chairs in front of him.
‘As you know, Cate, magazines are a business,’ he began.
She nodded hesitantly. ‘Of course. I had lots of compliments in New York about how we’ve really improved the magazine. The advertising is looking very promising.’
William didn’t seem to notice what she was saying as he flicked through an issue of Class with what looked suspiciously like disdain.
‘Magazines are a business,’ he repeated. ‘And I was brought into Alliance to improve that business. They are not simply entertainment, they are a commodity, and to be honest with you, Cate, I don’t think the numbers Class is selling at the moment really warrants the investment.’
Cate immediately realized that this was not going to be a friendly, ‘How were the New York shows?’ catch-up. She needed to do some firefighting.
‘With respect, we’re showing a definite turnaround in circulation,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘If anything, William, since I arrived at Alliance, we’ve improved the Class business by at least fifteen per cent. We’ve stopped the circulation rot and improved advertising volume and yield.’
‘I wouldn’t call a hundred thousand sales a month show-stopping business,’ interrupted Walton tartly, throwing the magazine down on the desk.
‘Well, it’s not the News of the World, no. But it’s better than both Tatler and Harper’s,’ said Cate.
Walton steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and regarded her coolly. Cate Balcon was clearly no pushover. But then neither was he.
‘I suspect, however, that the magazines you mention all have a cover for their April issue.’
The hairs on Cate’s neck began to tingle. She could practically see Nicole Valentine’s smile as she whispered into Walton’s ear. She squeezed her nails into her palm and decided that she’d fire Nicole this afternoon and hang the consequences.
Cate took a deep breath. ‘So someone’s told you about Jennifer. I just heard about that this morning, too. It’s not ideal, but it happens. I’ve actually got something in reserve,’ she said, her cheeks flushing lightly at the deliberate lie. But Walton wasn’t watching. He’d got up from his seat and had turned his back on her to stare at the London skyline, absently rolling a golf ball around in his palm.
‘I am not interested in the micromanagement of your magazine, Cate,’ he replied flatly. ‘A picture of my grandmother could go on the cover if you could guarantee me sales. What I am interested in is revenue. I think Class should be a more mass-market, more profitable magazine. I don’t want to be outselling Tatler, I want to be outselling Glamour.’ He turned back towards Cate and banged the golf ball onto the desk. ‘I want to be outselling everyone.’
Cate was used to being bullied by her father – she’d put up with bullying then and would put up with it now.
‘A fine ambition, of course,’ she said evenly, carefully smoothing down her skirt. God, she was shaking, she thought, looking at her hands. She hated confrontation and tried to imagine what her sister Camilla would do in her shoes.
‘But you’ll be aware that Class magazine is not published on a mass-market model. We are advertising rather than circulation driven, and I think you’ll need a massive repositioning of the product to change that.’
He looked at her, smiling cruelly. ‘Exactly, Cate, exactly. So you’ll understand completely what I’m about to say.’
The bile was beginning to rise in Cate’s throat and she was finding it impossible to open her mouth to speak. ‘Which is what?’ she finally croaked.
Walton wasn’t to be hurried. He’d pictured scenes like this every time he’d been humiliated by a toffee-nosed Ivy-Leaguer in college, and he always enjoyed every second of revenge when it came. He walked around his huge desk, perched on the corner and looked down at Cate.
‘The Honourable Catherine Balcon,’ he said with a superior smirk, and Cate shivered, sensing that the fatal blow was about to be delivered. ‘While it’s obviously wonderful to have someone of your high profile editing one of our titles, I have to wonder what it really brings to the party. If Class is going to be more populist, more popular, I need someone at the helm more in touch with the Great British Public. Not someone whose daddy owns a castle.’
‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ retorted Cate angrily. ‘My background has nothing to do with whether I can be a good, commercial editor or not. And anyway, if you got to know your employees better, you’d find out that I’m not the out-of-touch aristocrat you clearly think I am!’
Walton took in the long curvy legs hiding under the navy wool pencil skirt and actually began to regret the missed opportunity of getting to know Cate Balcon better. ‘You’re just not my person for the job, Cate,’ he said coldly. He stood up and briskly walked back to his seat. ‘I have immediate plans for Class magazine,’ he continued, already starting to flick through his mobile-phone menu for the number of his lunch date. ‘And I’m afraid that you’re not going to be part of them.’
Cate stared at him, her head starting to feel dizzy. It had all happened so fast. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘In plain Queen’s English, Miss Balcon, you’re fired. With immediate effect.’
Cate felt paralysed. She was unable to move from her chair.
‘On what grounds? That my DNA is wrong?’
Walton didn’t seem to hear. His attention had already wandered to something