She grunted an affirmation and grudgingly gathered up the sheaf of paper, stapling the top right-hand corner and dumping it on an in-tray already several centimetres high.
‘Might as well close that window too,’ she shivered and pulled a fluffy purple cardigan tight over her shoulders. ‘I thought it’d be warmer this week.’
I placed the mugs on her desk, and brought the window down with more force than I intended resulting in a loud bang. Maggie tutted. I ignored her. ‘They say it might turn nice for the weekend.’
Maggie cast her eyes through the windowpane at the fluttering leaves of the sycamores. A plastic bag whipped up from the street and caught a branch directly outside. ‘If only the wind would drop.’ She grimaced and came back to me. ‘How are you going?’
I plucked out my standard response. ‘Coping with it,’ I told her.
She accepted that without further comment. ‘Have you been to the house yet?’
She was referring to my mum’s. ‘I thought I’d wait until I saw Dan.’
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. ‘He’s not turned up then?’
I shook my head. I was still livid that he hadn’t been at the funeral. That was another reason why I let off so much steam that night at the club. But beyond the anger there was concern. Or perhaps it was the other way round?
Yesterday I’d nipped into Mum’s hospice to fetch the last of her belongings and had seen one of the day shift nurses, Sally. Her husband, Michael, had once worked at Dan’s school and Mum had known Sally socially prior to her last illness. Not well, but enough to pass the time of day. We had wondered if that might make it awkward but her familiar face reassured Mum. We’d had a chat and she, too, asked about Dan, reminding me that Mum had a key to his flat on her keychain and suggesting that I pop into his place to check it out. We’d phoned endlessly and I’d knocked on his door with no joy, trying to find him before Mum … well, before things came to a head.
‘He’ll need your support more than ever now,’ Sally said. She was a homely woman, with an immense bosom, and an extraordinarily generous nature. I guess you have to be when you’re in that job.
‘I know,’ I had said and promised to go there.
‘And,’ she said. ‘Please do me a favour. I was talking to Doctor Jarvis about Dan going off like this. He said it’d be an idea to check his medication. Can you bring back a bottle, if there’s a spare somewhere, and he’ll have a look? Just to be sure.’
I had told her I would and was planning on swinging by his place after I’d finished up here at Mercurial.
‘Oh dear,’ Maggie was saying though her voice kept steady. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
I could be upfront with Maggie. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to check his flat later. To be honest I’d rather talk work.’
‘Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything, yeah?’ Maggie straightened herself out and put on her professional head. The set of her jaw was firm and ready for business. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Fire.’
I tasted the coffee and removed my notebook from my bag. ‘You mentioned another Essex Girls’ piece?’
I’d been fascinated with our regional stereotype for a very long time. Firstly because, as a grey-eyed, raven-haired Essex chick, I adored the leggy, booby, blonde ideal. Surrounded by Barbies and Pippas from an early age I’d cottoned onto the fact that this was the generally accepted notion of beauty. I couldn’t believe it when, as I made more excursions beyond the county’s limits, I discovered it was considered vulgar and stupid and a lot lot worse. The realisation left me feeling cheated and rather annoyed.
Later, as I left the borough I’d lived in all my life to venture North for uni, I found that not only being a joke, mentioning my home county often resulted in humiliation and embarrassment. My surname, Asquith, which I thought sounded a little posh, however did little to temper the constant barrage of wisecracks that I faced, as an Essex Girl called Mercedes, and as a consequence I shortened it to Sadie. Most people called me by that name these days, apart from my dad who stubbornly stuck to my full moniker. Anyway, the whole Essex thing was as exasperating as it was formative and as a consequence of this battle I went on into journalism, ‘to get my voice heard without shouting’, as my mum used to put it.
Although I didn’t relate the writing to my county or my gender I kept an edgy, working-class feel to my tirades. Luckily, people liked them and I was able to make a living from my rants.
Returning to my roots, Maggie indulged me and published a series of articles in which I challenged the negative connotations attached to the stereotype of the Essex Girl.
‘Essex isn’t like other counties. Its daughter isn’t like those of Hertfordshire, Herefordshire or Surrey,’ I had written. ‘She isn’t demure, self-effacing or seeking a husband. She’s audacious, loud, drops her vowels and has fun. Like Essex itself, the Girl is unique. It’s about time we showed some filial pride.’
Got a good reception, that one. Circulation went up. Maggie commissioned another one, and another, then another.
In an attempt to trace the etymology of Essex Girl my last feature harked back to the dark days of the witch hunts and examined whether there was a link between Essex’s reputation as ‘Witch County’ and the genesis of Essex Girl. The two areas collided and, after further consideration, I concluded that there was and readers and commentators alike had not stopped filling up the web forum ever since.
Many comments spilt over into other sites, forums, newspapers and magazines. Positive or intensely outraged, Maggie didn’t care how they reacted, just that they did. ‘This is the kind of thing Mercurial needs. It’s getting our name out there into a broader market. We need more, and I’ll up your rate. Just give me something good and meaty,’ she’d said on the phone a couple of weeks back.
So here I was, with something perhaps a little on the sketchy side, but definitely spicy.
Maggie took a tentative swig of her coffee then blew on it. ‘Go on then – spill it. What you got for Mama?’
‘Okay.’ I flicked open my notepad and traced my notes to the relevant entry.
‘I’m delving deeper into the witch hunts. You know this book deal? Well, I’m churning up a lot of good stuff. I think I can funnel some articles over to you.’ I glanced up to catch a reaction. Maggie was nodding, her tongue licking her top lip, so I ploughed on.
‘Why did Essex lose so many women to the witch hunts?’
Maggie snorted. ‘Did we? It’s a long time ago. Some people might say “so what?”’
I leant in to her. ‘Yes, we did. Significantly more. It’s the sheer volume that warrants attention.’
Maggie picked up the biro and took a drag on the end. ‘You didn’t go into that in your last article did you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, it was more about the witches themselves and the qualities they shared with the contemporary Essex Girl …’
Maggie cut in. ‘Yep, yep. They “were poor, dumb and ‘loose’ as in not controlled by, or protected by men”.’ She was quoting my article. I got her point – she knew it back to front. ‘So why exactly did it happen then? To the extent it did here? I assumed that Essex and its inhabitants already had a reputation for being thick, flat and uninteresting?’
I coughed. ‘No, not at all. Up until the witch hunts, Essex was seen as the “English Goshen”.’
‘I last heard that word in Sunday School. Fertile land and Israelites. Now don’t go all religious on me, Sadie. We’re not the Church Times.’
I