It Started With... Collection. Miranda Lee

a nice smile—not the sort of smile used before delivering bad news.

      ‘Hello,’ she said brightly when Jessie walked in. ‘You’ll be Jessie Denton.’

      ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Jessie replied, her palms still distinctly sweaty. ‘I’m a bit early.’

      ‘Better than being late. Or not turning up at all,’ the blonde added ruefully. ‘I’ll just give Karen a ring to let her know you’ve arrived. Karen’s Mr Wilde’s PA,’ she explained. ‘Just take a seat over there for a sec.’ And she motioned towards one of the seats that lined the waiting-room walls.

      ‘Jessie Denton’s here, Karen,’ she heard the receptionist say quietly into the phone. ‘OK… Yes, I’ll tell her.’

      By the time she looked up, Jessie had sat down, leant back and crossed her legs, doing her best to appear cool and confident. Inside, she was a bundle of nerves.

      ‘Mr Marshall hasn’t finished with the other applicant yet,’ the receptionist informed her. ‘But he won’t be long.’

      ‘Mr Marshall?’ Jessie choked out, her legs un-crossing as she jerked forward on the seat. ‘But…but…’

      ‘Mr Wilde is overseas at the moment,’ the receptionist cut into Jessie’s stammering, and before she could recover from her shock. ‘Mr Marshall is in charge while he’s away.’

      ‘Oh. I see. Right.’ Jessie took a deep breath and leant back again, exhaling slowly. Crazy to think that this Mr Marshall was her Mr Marshall from Friday night. Marshall wasn’t such an unusual name. On top of that, her Mr Marshall was an accountant. What would an accountant be doing running an advertising agency, even temporarily?

      ‘My name’s Margaret, by the way,’ the receptionist went on breezily. ‘We might as well get to know each other. I probably shouldn’t be saying this but I think you’re more Mr Marshall’s cup of tea than the girl who’s in there now.’

      ‘Why’s that?’ Jessie asked.

      Somewhere on the floor a door banged.

      ‘Judge for yourself,’ Margaret murmured.

      Just then this amazing creature swept down a corridor into the reception area.

      The first thing that struck Jessie was her bright orange hair, which looked as if it had been cut with a chainsaw. A rusty chainsaw.

      The second was the myriad gold studs and rings that adorned her starkly white face. Ears. Nose. Lips. Eyebrows. Chin.

      Lord knew what other parts of her body had been pierced. Possibly a great many.

      Thankfully, the girl was clothed from head to foot so Jessie could only speculate. Her style, however, was a combination of grunge and gothic and the garments she sported looked as if they’d been rescued from a charity bin. The kind they used for recycled rags.

      ‘Tell Harry Wilde to contact me when he gets back, if he’s still interested,’ the escapee from the Addams Family tossed over her shoulder as she marched across the floor in her ex-army boots. ‘I wouldn’t work for him down there if he was the last man on earth. He knows absolutely nothing about the creative soul. Nothing!’

      The moment she was gone Margaret looked over at a wide-eyed Jessie and grinned.

      ‘See what I mean? I think you’re a shoo-in.’

      Jessie could not believe that fate had been so kind to her. ‘I sure hope so. I really want this job.’ She simply couldn’t go the rest of her life being a waitress.

      The reception phone buzzed and Margaret picked it up. ‘Yes, Karen, I’ll send her down straight away. And don’t worry, he’ll like this one. Your turn,’ she said with an encouraging smile to Jessie as she hung up. ‘Down to the end of that corridor. Go straight in.’

      Jessie gulped, then stood up. ‘Er—just one thing before I go. Do you happen to know Mr Marshall’s first name?’

      ‘Sure. It’s Kane. Why?’

      Jessie could not believe how relieved she felt. For a moment there…

      She shrugged. ‘I knew a guy named Marshall once and I was a bit worried this might be the same man. Thankfully, it isn’t,’ she muttered, and Margaret laughed.

      ‘We all have one of those somewhere in our past.’

      True. But the trouble was this one wasn’t far enough in Jessie’s past. He was only a couple of nights ago, and could still make her tremble at the thought of him.

      Her nerves eased a lot with the surety that the Mr Marshall about to interview her wasn’t Curtis Marshall, married man and sexily irresistible hunk. She also couldn’t deny she felt good that her competition had turned out so poorly. Clearly, Nicholas from Adstaff hadn’t given carrot-top the same conservative-dressing advice he’d given her. Or if he had, she’d ignored him.

      The door at the end of the corridor led into the PA’s office. It wasn’t quite as colourful as Reception, but still very nice and spacious and modern. Karen herself was nothing like Jessie had expected Harry Wilde’s PA to be. She was forty-ish. A redhead. Pleasantly plump. And sweet.

      ‘Oh, thank you, God!’ she exclaimed on seeing Jessie. ‘Did you see the other one?’

      ‘Yes. Um. I did,’ Jessie admitted. ‘But to be honest, people like that are not unusual in the advertising world. She probably sees herself as an artiste with a certain avant-garde image to uphold.’

      ‘We don’t hire avant-garde artistes here,’ Karen said wryly. ‘We hire people with lots of innovative ideas who know how to work. And work hard. Now, did Margaret happen to mention that Mr Wilde’s away right now?’

      ‘Yes, she did.’

      ‘Good. Then you’ll understand why I’m doing part of your interview. Mr Marshall is an excellent manager and motivator, but he has no background in advertising. I’ve been with Mr Wilde a good few years and I know what he likes in an employee. I’ve already had a good look at your résumé, and I was impressed. Now that I can see you in person, I’m even more impressed. If you could just show me your portfolio, please?’

      Jessie pulled out her portfolio and handed it over. She’d included samples of the best work she’d done over the years, plus mock-ups of ads she would like to do, if ever given the chance.

      ‘Mmm. This is excellent. Michele is going to be pleased with you. Michele will be your boss. She’s one of our top executives. Her assistant quit last week after they had an altercation over his lack of motivation. He’s been having a lot of time off. A drug problem, we think. Anyway, she needs a good graphic artist to step into his shoes straight away. She has several things that need to be finished before the Christmas break. On top of that, she’ll be going off on maternity leave in the middle of next year. She’s having another baby. When that happens, we’re hoping you’ll be able to fill in for her. I gather from Adstaff that you do have ambitions to become a creative designer yourself, is that right?’

      ‘It’s my dearest wish. The sample ads at the back of my portfolio are my own original ideas. They’re not actual campaigns I worked on.’

      ‘Really. I hadn’t quite got that far.’ She flipped over some more pages of the portfolio, stopping to stare hard at one of the pages. ‘Is this one of yours? This white-goods magazine ad,’ Karen said, holding up a page.

      ‘Yes, that’s one I made up myself.’

      The page had a vibrant blue background to highlight the white goods. In the middle was a dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, surrounded by other smaller kitchen appliances, all in stainless steel. Draped across the three taller items was a very glamorous Mae-West style blonde, her evening gown white with a very low neckline, her scarlet-tipped fingers caressing the appliances. Above her were the words, ‘It’s not the appliances in your life but the life in your appliances,’ a parody of Mae West’s famous comment, ‘It’s