Vanity Read Free Page A

him on the cheek.
    â€˜What was that for?’ He smiled at her.
    â€˜Nothing really. Just thinking how happy I am that everything’s worked out like it has.’
    With the
crema catalana
came balloon glasses half filled with ice and
hierbas
, the potent local hooch made, as its name might suggest, from mountain herbs.
    â€˜So how are things in the men’s magazine world?’ Andy asked Mark and Simon, who worked alongside Damian on
Stadium
, the men’s ‘style’ magazine that liked to think it had more substance than the rest. Simon and Damian were columnists, which involved churning out variations on a superiorly misogynist theme, month after month. Mark was the art director, which gave him so much opportunity to ogle naked female flesh you’d think (erroneously) that he could take it or leave it by now.
    Andy’s career – he was an investigative reporter for one of the better respected broadsheets – earned him grudging respect from Simon and slight resentment from Damian, who had always harboured ambitions in that direction himself. Still, as Simon said, the perks and parties at
Stadium
more than made up for a little professional jealousy. Or at least they used to.
    â€˜Not great, to be honest,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a bloody drag. Sales have been hit badly by the recession. The downmarket rags –
Nuts
and
Zoo
and now
Front
; did they really need another one? How many boobs does the Great British Public need? – are cornering the market.’
    Bella nudged Andy.
Stadium
was not exactly what you’d call a boob-free zone, though the boobs it showcased tended, with the odd honourable exception, to be smaller. Classier, you see.
    â€˜Well that whole bespoke ethos is a bit anachronistic at the moment, isn’t it?’ said Sam, one of the honourable exceptions, in her husky voice, earning a look of surprise from Simon. ‘You should see your face! I’m not that thick, you know, and I’ve been reading
Stadium
cover-to-cover ever since I first appeared in it. I like to keep up on Marky’s job.’
    Sam had taken up glamour modelling to pay her way through London University, where she was studying philosophy and psychology. She and Mark had met on a shoot. Fond though Bella was of Mark, she reckoned Sam was streets ahead of him intellectually. But she was young and easily impressed and Mark was seriously sexy, in a brawny, doltish sort of way. Today he was wearing tight white jeans and a scarlet racer-back vest top, revealing rippling biceps, triceps, pecs and lats in all their worked-out glory. To say nothing of the vast packet. His head was shaved, his smile crooked. When Bella first met him (long before she experienced the full – ahem – thrust of his lust), she’d had her doubts as to whether he was Arthur or Martha.
    As if to prove the point, he laughed and kissed Sam way more explicitly than manners dictated, groping her left tit and shoving his tongue down her throat. Bella remembered what it was like kissing him and reached for Andy’s hand, flushing suddenly.
    â€˜Ugh, get a rrrrroooom, please,’ said Natalia, shuddering. Sam pulled away from Mark and laughed.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said. ‘He does get carried away sometimes. Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, surely all that handmade suit and expensive trainers stuff just doesn’t cut it when people can’t even pay their mortgages?’
    â€˜It’s aspirational luxury though.’ Simon stuck stubbornly to his guns. ‘People need things to cheer them up when times are tough. Just look at the Busby Berkeley movies of the thirties.’
    â€˜Are you comparing
Stadium
to Busby Berkeley movies?’ Bella laughed. ‘Not sure what your emphatically
not gay
metrosexual readership would make of that.’
    Simon laughed too. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s too depressing to discuss on such a lovely day, anyway. Are you working