“Well,” Holly said, ignoring the collective titters around the table, “lately I’ve noticed a homeless girl sleeping on the bench outside our offices.”
“Oh, yes!” Zara, the accessories editor, chimed in. “I’ve seen her, too. Isn’t there somewhere else she could go? After all, emergency accommodation is available.”
Holly looked at her. “That’s true. But I’ve done some research, and the night shelters are crowded, plus there aren’t nearly enough to go around. And with budgeting cuts—”
“Oh, you read something besides Heat?” Mark, staff illustrator and the king of snark, asked her. “Fancy that.”
Holly ignored him and returned her attention to Sasha. “I’d like to talk to her, maybe write a feature on homeless teens in central London. I thought I might shadow her for a couple of days, see what it’s like to sleep on the street and eat out of rubbish bins—”
“Ugh! That’s disgusting,” Padma, the assistant beauty editor, said with a shudder. “No teenage girl wants to read about something like that.”
“I don’t agree,” Holly retorted. “Why shouldn’t the story of a girl living on the streets of London be as compelling to read as — as Rihanna’s latest hair colour?”
“You’re missing the point, Holly,” Padma informed her. “We’re a teen entertainment magazine, not The Guardian.”
“I think it’s a fabulous idea, Holly,” Sasha pronounced. “It’s got edge. Let’s go with it.”
“Er…thanks.” Holly blinked. Although Sasha glared at her like a cat who’d just swallowed a hairball, at least she’d given her approval. Holly had expected a full-on battle with Sasha, not this bloodless capitulation.
“Does anyone else have anything to add?” Sasha asked.
She scanned the faces around the table, but no further suggestions were forthcoming. “Good. Holly’s pitch fits in nicely with the arbitration panel’s demand for more responsible content.” She smiled tightly and added, “Well done, Holly.”
When Holly finally escaped the building, it was just after two o’clock and the bowl of cereal she’d had for breakfast was a distant memory. After volunteering to help one of the interns unpack several trunks from a recent accessories shoot, she’d missed lunch, and now she was ravenous.
She glanced across the street. The homeless girl was slouched on her bench. Holly waved and made her way to the Starbucks next door, where she joined the queue and ordered two coffees with extra cream and sugar on the side and a muffin, studded with currants and dusted liberally with sugar.
Juggling the cardboard tray of coffees and the bagged muffin, Holly crossed the busy road.
“Got you a Venti,” Holly said as she handed over the bag and the tray, “and a muffin. What’s your name, by the way?”
The girl hesitated. “Zoe.” She took the bag and a coffee. “Thanks.” She took a cautious sip. “You work in that office building over there, don’t you?”
Holly took the other cup and nodded. “I write articles for BritTEEN magazine.”
“Articles? Like what?”
“Well,” she said as she perched — cautiously — on one end of the bench, “things of interest to the average teenage girl. Like where to find cool clothes without spending a fortune, boy-band interviews, that sort of thing.”
Zoe snorted. “Girly crap.”
“Some of it,” Holly admitted, and took another sip of coffee. “But we do some harder-hitting stuff, too.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Holly chose her words carefully. “For instance, I pitched an idea just this morning to do a story about teen homelessness in London.”
“No one cares about that,” Zoe retorted. “Especially not the ‘average teenage girl’.”
Annoyed that Zoe was echoing Padma’s sentiments, Holly bristled. “You’re wrong. I think it’s exactly what girls want to know about. What it’s like to live on the streets, how does one manage—”
“One learns to skip-dive,” Zoe interrupted, affecting a posh accent, “and one sleeps on a shelter cot.” She shook her head in disgust. “God, you’re a right prize, you are.”
“What do you mean?” Holly demanded, incensed.
“I mean, what do you know about living on the streets, eh? Your idea of a hardship is probably carrying last season’s bag.”
“That’s not true—”
“And there’s your posh accent, and your clothes.”
Holly stiffened. “What about my clothes?” She glanced down at her paisley-patterned, empire-waist dress.
“You look like you shop at Oxfam. All careless and artsy and ‘I-can-afford-Harvey-Nicks-but-I-buy-second-hand’.”
“Enjoy the coffee,” Holly said tightly, and got to her feet to leave. “And thanks so much for the fashion critique.”
“Don’t get mad,” Zoe said, and shrugged. “I like it, actually. It’s bohemian, mixed-up. Very Alexa Chung.”
“Thanks.” Only slightly mollified, Holly eyed the girl and added, “You seem to know a bit about fashion.”
Again, she shrugged. “I read the magazines sometimes,” she admitted grudgingly. “I study all the designers’ stuff. I know what I like and what I don’t. One day, I want to go to Central Saint Martins and get my degree.”
“Wow,” Holly said, impressed. “That’s quite a goal. Do you want to design clothes? Or do sketch art?”
“Design clothes,” she answered. She glanced down at the safety-pinned T-shirt under her worn leather jacket and back up at Holly, her expression defiant. “This is my homage to the Sex Pistols.”
Holly eyed it and nodded. “It’s good. It’d fetch fifty quid in a boutique. So, tell me, how’d you land here? Why are you sleeping on this bench?”
“Well, I checked, and wouldn’t you know it? Buckingham Palace was booked right up last night.”
Holly pressed her lips together. “There’s a night shelter right round the corner—”
“Yeah, and there’s a queue to get in, and then you risk having your stuff nicked while you sleep. No, thanks.”
“But it has to be better than sleeping here,” Holly persisted.
“Look, thanks for the coffee, okay? I’m fine. I can sleep anywhere.”
Holly set her cup down and reached into her handbag, searching until she unearthed her business card. “I work just there.” She nodded her head at the office tower across the street. “Here’s my card. I’d like to talk to you again. Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“Brill. We’ll have a chinwag and a shop at Harvey Nicks,” Zoe said, and smirked. But she took the card Holly held out to her and thrust it into her rucksack.
That was exactly the sort of smart-arse thing her sister Hannah would say. She turned to go.
Zoe lifted her coffee cup in farewell. “Ta.”
As Holly made her way across the street and back up the steps to her office building she couldn’t resist a glance back. Zoe — if that was her real name — had taken the muffin out, and, after looking furtively around, crammed it hurriedly in her mouth…
For all the world as if she was afraid Holly might come back and snatch it away again.
A stack of mail waited in the slot when Holly