‘Remind me to drop you a line about next weekend? Aggie is desperate to have you round again.’
Minnie rolled her eyes. Agatha was Jasper’s wife; the pair of them had been obsessed with Oliver ever since he managed to get Kylie to host the Firehouse Awards in 2016. They regularly invited him to their Chelsea townhouse for dinner parties, or ‘salons’, as Oliver would call them.
‘Toodles all!’ and the ringmaster was off.
‘Right, off to work, everyone,’ said Minnie, walking briskly out of the room with Annabelle’s heels clacking behind her.
Oliver, still seated, turned to Rose.
‘Did you have fun last night?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, bit tired.’
‘Ha. Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you leave a party with a major pop star.’
‘What?’
‘I heard you left the party with him.’
‘What? From who?’
‘I never reveal my sources,’ he replied, zipping his mouth together with his fingers.
‘He just dropped me home, that was it.’
‘Oh, don’t be a dick, Rose. He shags everyone. I know at least four women in syndication who he’s fucked.’
‘Nothing happened,’ she replied sternly.
Oliver scoffed: ‘Right, of course not. You’d just be the only human on the planet to turn Milo Jax down.’
Rose plugged in her headphones and walked out.
Firehouse used to have a red list of talent that was banned from working with the company in any capacity under any circumstances. It had been created by a former editor of MODE – Mabel Marbles – who had an ongoing booking at the Priory so the company could send her there whenever her drinking went over the line, which it often did. Mabel had created the list after someone invited the male model she’d been having an affair with to a Cartier party she was hosting. When he arrived, he tried to kiss her in front of everyone. Mabel’s husband left shortly after.
Over time, though, whisperings about the list, who was on it and why, started to get a little too loud around the building. Eventually, part of it was published in Private Eye. Rose wasn’t working at Firehouse at the time – but Minnie had come into the private members’ club that afternoon and told her about it after her third martini.
After that, the list had to go. At least in written form; everyone who worked at Firehouse could probably still recite the names. And Minnie kept a secret handwritten version in her desk drawer just in case anyone needed to know who was banned from Firehouse events. Very few people knew about the handwritten list outside of the press office. In fact, it was probably just Jasper, who would often barge in to have a peek at it from time to time, the two of them gossiping about any new additions.
Reasons for going on the list varied. They could range from arriving at an event hungover to throwing a tantrum because of being served instant coffee on set instead of freshly ground. Rose considered it a little ironic since members of Firehouse staff did both of these things regularly. Back in the day, the list was mostly made up of actors and musicians. Now, it was heavily populated by influencers.
Someone had been put on the list after she threw up on a Miu Miu sample dress mid-blow dry – her publicist claimed she had an intolerance to hot air (specifically when it was near her face) despite the fact she’d already admitted to going out the night before. Another red-lister went into a K-hole at a black-tie dinner to celebrate the June issue of Intel. She had been escorted out through the kitchen so as to avoid the paparazzi at the front but one snapper managed to get a shot of her passed out in the arms of her bodyguard. Her team relentlessly badgered Minnie into telling the press she was just jet-lagged.
Rose reviewed Minnie’s handwritten list at her desk (no one was allowed to take it outside the press office). Having memorised a few of the names, she started to browse articles with headlines like ‘Fashion Influencers to Follow Now’ and ‘Influencers You Need to Know About’. She wrote down the names of everyone featured who was under the age of 35, had over 500,000 followers and wasn’t already on the red list. She reviewed the remaining accounts, checking for anything Minnie would deem off-brand, which, in addition to selling charcoal toothpaste, included promoting fast-fashion sponsorships, reality TV stints and grammatical errors in captions. People who were constantly posting about ‘something exciting’ they couldn’t talk about yet and started every video by saying ‘hey guys’ in the exact same intonation also had to go.
‘Rose, can you get me those names by the end of the day, please?’ asked Minnie from behind her computer, which was diagonally across from hers.
‘Yep, sure, I’m just printing it off now. It’s a bit short.’
‘That’s fine. We only need to pitch a few people. Commercial will get the rest. Have you listed that @cosmoclara one?’
Rose checked her screen. ‘Yep, she’s on there.’
‘Great, Jasper mentioned her at lunch. His daughter is a big fan and she’s got millions of followers. Apparently charges £10,000 for a sponsored post. Obviously, we can’t afford that. So do what you can.’
‘I’ll get her, don’t worry.’
‘I know you will. You got us Milo Jax, you can definitely get us someone whose name starts with a symbol.’
At home, Luce was lying on the sofa, fast asleep, body curled into the foetal position. A box of tissues was on its side next to her. The Holiday was playing on the TV, which had been put on mute.
Rose shuffled in next to her, gently touching her forehead. Luce stirred and made a moaning sound.
‘Hey. What happened?’ asked Rose.
‘It’s over,’ Luce mumbled. ‘We ended it this morning.’
‘Oh, babe, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thanks,’ she replied, sitting up and rubbing her eyes, which were red and swollen. ‘I can’t believe we lasted three years, to be honest.’
‘Yeah, I mean, me neither,’ Rose replied, wrapping herself around her housemate.
George and Luce had always had a volatile relationship. They’d both cheated on each other (Luce with a colleague, George with an ex-girlfriend). Luce came clean when it happened, George continued to lie until Luce found naked photos of the ex on his phone. At first, he denied it. Called her ‘crazy’ and insisted the photos were old. Then the ex-girlfriend drunkenly rang Luce on a night out and told her how George had fucked her over his dining-room table at least four times during their relationship.
Somehow, they managed to stick it out for a few months after that, though Luce never really forgave him. The next break-up happened after a blow-out argument when they were in Sicily. George flew home two days early and Luce had a brief fling with an Italian man named Marco who may or may not have been in the Mafia. They got back together again a few weeks later.
Rose always took news of Luce and George’s break-ups with a pinch of salt.
