KERRY BARRETT was a bookworm from a very early age and did a degree in English Literature, then trained as a journalist, writing about everything from pub grub to EastEnders. Her first novel, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, took six years to finish and was mostly written in longhand on her commute to work, giving her a very good reason to buy beautiful notebooks. Kerry lives in London with her husband and two sons, and Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes is still her favourite novel.

Readers Love Kerry Barrett

‘A thoroughly enjoyable read!’

‘Fantastic book, really loved reading it’

‘Loved it! The best yet!’

‘Gripped from start to finish’

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Also by Kerry Barrett

The Could It Be Magic? Series

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

I Put a Spell on You

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

I’ll Be There for You

A Spoonful of Sugar: A Novella

A Step in Time

The Girl in the Picture

The Hidden Women

The Secret Letter

The Forgotten Girl
KERRY BARRETT

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Kerry Barrett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008216047

Version: 2020-03-09

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Readers Love Kerry Barrett

Also by Kerry Barrett

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

Chapter 1
2016

I was nervous. Not just a little bit wobbly. I was properly, squeaky-voiced, sweaty-palms, absolutely bloody terrified. And that was very unlike me.

The office was just up ahead – I could see it from where I stood, lurking behind my sunglasses in case anyone I knew spotted me and tried to speak to me. I wasn’t ready for conversation yet. The building had a glass front, with huge blown-up magazine covers in its windows. In pride of place, right next to the revolving door, was the cover from the most recent issue of Mode.

I swallowed.

‘It’s fine,’ I muttered to myself. ‘They wouldn’t have given you the job if they didn’t think you were up to it. It’s fine. You’re fine. Better than fine. You’re brilliant.’

I took a deep breath, straightened my back, threw back my shoulders and headed to the Starbucks opposite me.

I ordered an espresso and a soya latte, then I sat down to compose myself for a minute.

Today was my first day as editor of Mode. It was the job I’d wanted since I was a teenager. It had been my dream for so long, I could barely believe it was happening, and I was determined to make a success of it.

Except here I was, ready to get started, and I’d been floored by these nerves.

Shaking slightly, I downed my espresso in one like it was a shot of tequila and checked the time on my phone. I was early, but that was no bad thing. I had lots of good luck messages – mostly from people hoping I’ll give them a job, I thought wryly. I couldn’t help noticing, as I scrolled through and deleted them, that there was nothing from my best friend, Jen. She was obviously still upset about the way I’d behaved when I’d got the job. And if I was honest, she had every right to be upset, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. I was sure she’d come round.

I stood up and straightened my clothes. I’d played it safe this morning with black skinny trousers, a fitted black shirt and funky leopard-print pumps. My naturally curly blonde hair was straightened and pulled into a sleek ponytail and I wore a slash of red lipstick. I looked good. I just hoped it was good enough for the editor of Mode.

A surge of excitement bubbled up inside me. I was the editor of Mode. Me. Fearne Summers. I picked up my latte and looped my arm through my Marc Jacobs tote.

‘Right, Fearne,’ I said out loud. ‘Let’s do this.’

I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee or a cheerleading squad waiting for me in reception (well, I was a bit) but I did think that the bored woman behind the desk could have at least cracked a smile. Or she could have tried to look a tiny bit impressed that I was the new editor of Mode. Mind you, if this office was anything like my old place – and I was pretty sure all magazine companies were the same – there would be a never-ending stream of celebrities, models, and strange PR stunts (last Christmas we’d had mince pies delivered by a llama wearing a Santa hat, and that was one of the more normal visitors). Perhaps a new editor was terribly run of the mill.

‘Here’s your pass,’ she said, throwing it across the desk at me. ‘The office is on the third floor, but you’re to go up to fifth first of all to meet Lizzie.’

I was surprised. Lizzie was the chief-exec of Glam Media, the company that owned Mode along with lots of other magazines. I knew I’d have to catch up with her at some point today but I thought she’d give me time to meet my team, and find my office first.

Lizzie was waiting for me when I got out of the lift. The bored receptionist must have told her I was on my way.

She was in her early fifties, petite and stylishly dressed, with a cloud of dark hair. She was friendly and approachable, but she had a reputation of being ruthless in pursuit of profit for the company. She scared the bejeesus out of me if I was honest, but she’d been very nice when I met her at one of the many interviews I’d done to get the job. Now she smiled at me and shook my hand.

‘Great to have you on board, Fearne’ she said. ‘This is a time of big change for Mode.’

‘I’ve got loads of ideas,’ I said, following her down the corridor to a meeting room. ‘I can’t wait to get started.’

She gave me a brief smile over her shoulder.

‘Great,’ she said again.

Except she didn’t really mean great, I quickly discovered. She meant, yeah good luck with that, Fearne.

It turned out that Glam Media was worried about Mode. Really worried. I’d looked at the sales, of course, and seen they weren’t as good as they could be but I hadn’t really grasped just how much trouble the magazine was in.

‘The problem is the competition has really raised its game,’ Lizzie explained as I stared out of the big window in her office and tried to take in everything she was saying.

‘Grace?’ I said. It had been a fairly boring, unadventurous magazine called Home & Hearth until it was bought by a new company and had loads of money pumped into it. Now it had a new name, it was exciting and fun, and it was stealing lots of Mode’s readers.

‘So the finance department have redone your budgets for this year,’ said Lizzie. ‘To reflect Mode’s sales.’

She slid a piece of paper across her desk and I stared at the figures she’d put in front of me in horror.

‘I can’t run a glossy mag on this budget,’ I said. ‘How am I supposed to pay for fashion shoots? Or commission writers?’

Lizzie shrugged.

‘Times are tough,’ she said. ‘That’s all that’s in the pot.’

‘Can’t I have some of the website budget?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Digital budget is separate,’ she said. ‘The website’s going very well. Advertising and readership are both up. It’s the magazine that’s in trouble.’

I looked at her, suddenly realising where this was going, and why my predecessor had been so keen to leave her job.

‘Are you going to close Mode?’ I asked.

She stared back at me.

‘Nothing’s decided yet.’

‘But it’s possible?’

Lizzie looked at a point somewhere past my ear.

‘Print isn’t working,’ she said.

‘But Mode is an iconic brand,’ I said desperately. ‘It’s been going since the sixties. It was the first ever young women’s glossy. You can’t close it.’

Lizzie still didn’t look me in the eye, but she did at least assume a slightly sympathetic expression.

‘We’d still have the website,’ she said. ‘It’s not ending, it’s just changing. Mode will still exist – just in a different form.’

‘A glossy mag is a treat,’ I said. ‘People will pay for that.’

She shrugged.

‘Would people lose their jobs?’ I asked, suddenly realising this didn’t just affect me.

‘That’s also possible,’ she said.

I put my head in my hands. This was a nightmare. My dream job was collapsing around my ears.

Lizzie took a breath.

‘Fearne, we took you on for a reason,’ she said. ‘You’re a great editor with a good reputation.’

I forced myself to raise my head and smile at her. That was nice to hear.

‘But you’re also known for being cut-throat,’ she carried on. ‘We all know you’re single-minded and determined. That you don’t let anything get in the way of success,’

I nodded slowly. I wasn’t sure I’d use the word ‘cut-throat’ but I was definitely single-minded.

‘We know you won’t let emotions or sentiment get in the way of doing your job.’

Oh.

‘You brought me here to close the magazine?’ I said, as I worked it all out.

Lizzie had the grace to look slightly shame-faced.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Close it or make it work. Take back some of the sales we’ve lost to Grace.’

I looked at the budget again. With the figures she’d given me it was obvious which option she wanted. I could barely cover the staffing costs with this amount of money – and I had no chance of booking top photographers or paying for big-name writers. It was an impossible task.

‘How long have I got?’ I said. ‘How long do I have to make Mode pay?’

Lizzie looked a bit confused. She’d clearly not considered this.

‘Six months?’

I swallowed.

‘Give me a year,’ I said, wondering how on earth I managed to keep my voice steady when I was so terrified by the task that lay ahead. ‘I need a year to have a proper go at this.’

Lizzie looked at something on the papers in front of her. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed.

‘Nine months?’ she said.

I shrugged.

‘Is that the best you can offer?’ I said. She nodded.

‘So if I can increase sales enough in that time, you’ll let the magazine carry on?’ I said.

Lizzie nodded again.

‘If you can make it work on the new budget, then we’ll reconsider,’ she said, sounding incredulous that I was even thinking about it.

‘Great,’ I said, faking excitement when all I felt was despair. ‘Nine months is more than enough.’

I gathered up my things and stood up, hoping she couldn’t see my legs trembling. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to meet my team now.’

Chapter 2

That may have been a fairly terrible way to start my new job, but as it turned out, Lizzie was a pussycat compared to the rest of the Mode team.

There weren’t many of them – lots of staff had left recently and a few people had gone with the former editor, Sophie, to her new role on a supermarket magazine. The features desk was down two writers, I had no deputy, and the art editor was working out her notice. The words rats and sinking ships crossed my mind, but I dismissed that. I had to make this work. I’d sacrificed a lot for this job.

My office was bare, with a clean desk and a shiny computer. There was no good luck card, or welcoming cup of coffee. In fact, there weren’t even many smiles. I stared round at the stony faces in our planning meeting that morning and wondered if I hadn’t just made a massive mistake.

‘So,’ I said, uber-brightly. ‘What have we got for the next issue?’

I looked at my new features director, whose name I couldn’t quite remember. She was tall and angular with pale skin and fine blonde hair pulled back into a bun – like a ballerina with a bad attitude.

She looked back at me, unsmiling.

‘Veronica?’ I said.

‘Vanessa.’

Shit.

‘Sorry,’ I sang. ‘Vanessa, who’s on the cover this month?’

She named a soap star, Dawn Robin, who was well into her forties and though stylish, nothing like the celebs our readers were interested in.

‘Oh,’ I said, so surprised that manners deserted me. ‘That’s an interesting choice.’

‘It was Sophie’s choice,’ Vanessa said.

I chuckled.

‘You got that right.’

No response. Clearly humour didn’t work.

‘Is the interview done?’ I asked. Perhaps Dawn had said something amazing that we could spin.

‘It’s done, and her PR has approved it,’ Vanessa said. She stared at me as if challenging me to tell her to start again.

For a moment I considered pulling rank, spiking the whole thing and getting a new cover star. But it was early days and I needed the team behind me if I was going to make this happen.

Instead I smiled.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘It’s good to have it in the bag. What about next issue?’

Vanessa made a show of flicking through the pages in her notebook and I forced myself to stay smiling.

‘I’m talking to Sarah Sanderson’s agent,’ she said. I groaned inwardly. Sarah Sanderson was a breakfast news presenter who’d been around for donkey’s years. Maybe it was time to get tough.

‘She’s not the right cover star for us,’ I said. ‘Scratch that. Give the interview to one of the other mags if you like. We need someone younger, sassier, more exciting.’

Vanessa pointedly scored out something on her notebook and gave me a steely glare.

‘Like who?’

I looked round at the tiny team.

‘Let’s have a brainstorming session tomorrow,’ I said. ‘We can line up some really exciting interviews. Anything goes – don’t just stick to actresses and musicians. Think about politicians, sports stars, writers, bloggers – anyone doing anything or saying anything interesting.’

Vanessa scribbled something in her pad without meeting my eyes.

‘Oh and Vanessa,’ I said. ‘I don’t want publicists approving interviews.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Tricky,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘Let them sit in on the chat if they have to, but remember we’re Mode magazine – they need us just as much as we need them. In the future, let’s be a bit sassier.’

Vanessa made a face.

‘Do we have one?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘A future. Does Mode magazine have a future?’

My stomach lurched. I’d been hoping to give the team a boost before I started talking about closures and redundancies. But judging by the grim faces that surrounded me, I had to tackle this now.

I was sitting behind my desk, but now I got up and came to perch on the front instead.

‘Honestly?’ I said.

Vanessa nodded, her pale lips a tight line.

‘I hope so,’ I said.

I took a breath.

‘I have always wanted to work on Mode,’ I said. ‘This is my dream job and I was so excited about it.’

‘But?’ Vanessa said.

‘But things are trickier than I thought,’ I admitted. ‘Our circulation is lower than it’s ever been.’

‘Because of Grace?’ said the art editor – a tiny redhead called Milly.

‘Because of Grace,’ I agreed. ‘They’ve really raised their game, and of course print’s a tricky place to be anyway because of digital. But Grace’s success is proving there’s still a place for glossy mags – we just need to remind people we’re here and we’re the best.’

There was a murmur of voices, but Vanessa wasn’t giving up yet.

‘I heard they want to close us,’ she said, raising her voice so I could hear her over the chitchat.

Everyone fell silent and stared at me.

‘Is that true?’ Milly asked. ‘Are they closing us?’

I thought about lying, but they were all seasoned magazine journalists. I knew I couldn’t fool them.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s not true. But it’s a possibility.’

The chitchat became a hubbub of voices. I let them all talk for a moment, then I held my hands up.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Listen …’

Eventually everyone stopped talking.

‘Okay,’ I said. I closed my eyes briefly and sent up a silent prayer to the magazine gods that I was doing the right thing and that my already depleted team wouldn’t all hand in their notices immediately and leave me trying to save Mode on my own.

‘They’ve given us nine months to turn things round,’ I said. ‘To improve sales, to get our brand out there, to get people talking about Mode again.’

I paused.

‘We’ve got a lot of work to do.’

I spent the next hour fielding questions about exactly what Lizzie wanted (‘I don’t know,’ I said), about what redundancy packages might be on offer (‘I don’t know,’ I said), about how they would measure our success and whether it would just be sales or if it would be profits too (‘I don’t know,’ I said) and how I was planning to make this all happen.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, yet again. ‘But I do know this is a brilliant magazine with a long history.’

I looked round at the team once more.

‘And I know you’re all great writers and editors and designers,’ I said. Vanessa made a face but Milly smiled. ‘I want this to work and I can’t do it by myself, so I need you all on board.’

I thought for a moment.

‘Let’s spend tomorrow afternoon coming up with some ideas,’ I said. ‘Not just cover stars, but let’s think about what we can do to get a buzz round Mode magazine again. Anything and everything you can think of – I don’t care how off the wall the ideas are, but I want everyone here to come up with something.’

I wrapped up the meeting and the team all filed out of my office and back to their desks, muttering to each other – no doubt saying all sorts of rude things about me – and I was alone once more.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said out loud, feeling shell-shocked by my morning. But, I had to admit, being honest with the team had been the right thing to do, even if Vanessa had forced my hand a bit.

Hopefully we could come up with some exciting ideas tomorrow, I thought, leaning back in my chair. I already had lists of cover stars, features ideas and campaigns that I wanted us to try, but I knew that I needed this to be a team effort. I needed everyone with me if this was going to work.

Not for the first time that day, I wished I was still working with Jen. She was such a brilliant sounding board for ideas – and always came up with different approaches and creative ways of doing something.

But I was on my own with this, and I had to do my best.

I spun round in my chair and stared out of the window at the bustling Soho streets below me.

‘I can do this,’ I said out loud. ‘I can bloody well do this.’

‘You can do anything you want,’ a voice said. A very familiar Australian accent that I’d not heard for more than five years. ‘You always have.’

I froze. Then slowly, I turned my chair round so I was facing into my office again.

‘Damo,’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

The huge figure of my ex-boyfriend filled the doorway. His hair was longer than I’d ever seen it, and he was wearing a grey beanie hat on his head. He looked absolutely knackered, very scruffy, and really, really hot. My heart started to beat a little bit faster.

‘What kind of a welcome is that?’ he said, laughter in his eyes. ‘I just came to wish you luck.’

‘All the way from Sydney?’

‘All the way from over there,’ he said, tipping his head in the direction of the team that produced the men’s mag Homme, and who shared our office.

What. The …

He laughed properly at my startled face.

‘Don’t read Homme much, huh?’ he said. ‘I’ve been working here for ages.’

‘Not full-time?’ I said. My voice was wobbly.

‘Nah,’ Damo said. ‘Bit of this, bit of that. You know how it is.’

I did. His lack of focus was one of the things that we’d clashed about when we were together. But now I was grateful that despite the bad luck that had brought him here on the biggest day of my life, his unwillingness to commit to anything was still intact. If he was only freelance, our paths wouldn’t have to cross.

‘But,’ Damo said. ‘I’m actually covering for the art editor for a while. She’s gone on maternity leave.’

Ah.

‘Got to run. Features meeting,’ he said, rolling his eyes and making me wonder how he’d cope with the day-to-day business of life on a magazine. ‘Catch up later?’

I nodded, dumbly, staring at the door as he shut it, then I put my head in my hands. What should have been the best day ever was turning into the worst. The magazine was in trouble, my new team were hostile – at least some of them were – and my ex-boyfriend (and not just any ex-boyfriend, THE ex-boyfriend) had turned up. What on earth was I going to do?