Little Bee

I wept inwardly at the thought of women up and down the country being pleasured by middle managers in shiny-bottomed suits. On the flatscreen, News 24 had panned from the Middle East to Africa. Different landscape, same column of thick black smoke. A pair of jaundiced eyes looking out with the same impassivity Andrew had shown, just before I turned away to leave for work. The hairs on my arms went up again. I looked away, and took the three steps to the window that gave out onto Commercial Street. I put my forehead against the glass, which is something I do when I’m trying to think.

“Are you all right, Sarah?”

“I’m fine. Listen, be a doll and go and grab us a couple of coffees, would you?”

Clarissa went off to our idiosyncratic coffee machine, the one that would have been an in-house salon de thé in Vogue’s offices. Down on Commercial Street, a police patrol car pulled up and parked at the curb in front of our building. A uniformed officer got out on each side. They looked at each other over the patrol-car roof. One of them had blond, cropped hair and the other had a bald patch as round and neat as a monk’s. I watched him tilt his head to listen to the radio on his lapel. I smiled, thinking absently about a project Charlie was doing at his nursery. The Police: People Who Help Us, it was called. My son-it goes without saying-was magnificently unconvinced. At constant high alert in his bat cape and mask, Charlie believed a proud citizenry should be ready to help itself.

Clarissa came back with two plasticky lattes. In one of them the coffee machine had deposited a clear acrylic stirrer. In the other, it had elected not to do so. Clarissa hesitated over which to give me.

“First big editorial decision of the day,” she said.

“Easy. I’m the boss. Give me the one with the stirrer.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then we may never get around to locating your B-spot, Clarissa. I’m warning you.”

Clarissa blanched, and passed me the coffee with the stirrer.

I said, “I like the Baghdad piece.”

Clarissa sighed, and slumped her shoulders.

“So do I, Sarah, of course I do. It’s a great article.”

“Five years ago, that’s the one we’d have run with. No question.”

“Five years ago our circulation was so low we had to take those risks.”

“And that’s how we got big-by being different. That’s us.”

Clarissa shook her head. “Getting big’s different from staying big. You know as well as I do, we can’t be serving up morality tales while the other majors are selling sex.”

“But why do you think our readers got dumber?”

“It’s not that. I think our original readers aren’t reading magazines anymore, that’s all. They moved on to greater things, the same way you could if you’d just play the bloody game. Maybe you don’t realize just how big you are now, Sarah. Your next job could be editing a national newspaper.”

I sighed. “How thrilling. I could put topless girls on every page.”

My missing finger itched. I looked back down at the police patrol car. The two officers were putting on their uniform caps. I tapped my mobile against my front teeth.

“Let’s go for a drink after work, Clarissa. Bring your new man if you like. I’m bringing Andrew.”

“Seriously? Out in public? With your husband? Isn’t that terribly last season?”

“It’s terribly five years ago.”

Clarissa tilted her head at me.

“What are you telling me, Sarah?”

“I’m not telling you anything, Clar. I like you too much to tell. I’m just asking myself, really. I’m asking if maybe the kind of choices I made five years ago weren’t so bad after all.”

Clarissa smiled resignedly.

“Fine. But don’t expect me to keep my hands off his hunky thighs under the table, just because he’s your husband.”

“You do that, Clarissa, and I’ll make you junior horoscopes editor for the rest of your natural life.”

My desk phone rang. I looked at the time on its screen: 10:25 A.M. It’s funny how these details stay with you. I picked up the phone and it was reception, sounding bored to distraction. At Nixie we used reception as a sin bin-if a girl got too bitchy on the editorial floor, we sent her down to do a week on the shiniest desk.

“There are two policemen here.”

“Oh. They came in here? What do they want?”

“Okay, let’s think about why I might have dialed your number.”

“They want to talk to me?”

“They did good when they made you the boss, Sarah.”

“Fuck off. Why do they want to talk to me?”

A pause.

“I could ask them, I suppose.”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

A longer pause.

“They say they want to shoot a porny film in the office. They say they’re not real policemen and their willies are simply enormous.”

“Oh for god’s sake. Tell them I’ll be down.”

I hung up the phone and looked at Clarissa. The hairs on my arms were up again.

“The police,” I said.

“Relax,” said Clarissa. “They can’t bust you for conspiracy to run a serious feature piece.”