Page 1 of The Love Hack

ONE

Has anyone ever thrown up all over your desk before, Marion? I asked my boss silently. Thought not. Well, there’s a first time for everything. Maybe right there next to the vase of tulips.

It was 10.30 on a Monday morning, and it was fair to say my week wasn’t getting off to the best start. My hands, clasped tightly in my lap so Marion couldn’t see how much I was shaking, were cold and slippery with sweat. My mouth was so dry it felt like my tongue was made of cotton wool. My eyes were prickling with tears – and not from the sunlight slanting through the blinds half-covering the window.

I felt like I was fighting for my life – or at the end stage of a computer game where any second the screen would go blank and ‘GAME OVER’ flash in front of my eyes.

All I could think of was the worst case scenario: I’d be out of work, unable to find another job, overdue on my rent, having sold all my stuff, and eventually get thrown out on the street. And I’d have to find another home for Astro, because there was no way he’d put up with sleeping rough like in A Street Cat Named Bob. Astro had many admirable qualities, but toughness and resourcefulness were not among them.

Me neither, come to that.

‘Lucy?’ Marion, my line manager (at least, my line manager for now), asked gently. ‘You seem shocked by this. Did the letter we sent you last week not explain the situation clearly enough?’

Well, it had, of course. It had been placed on my desk, right in the centre of my keyboard where I couldn’t possibly have missed it, with my first and last name typed clearly on the envelope. I’d shoved it into my backpack, pushing it right down to the bottom underneath the plastic box that had held my lunchtime sandwich, below the cardigan I kept in there for when the office heating played up and the trainers with the broken laces that I hadn’t got around to replacing.

I’d read it later, at home. At least, I’d peeled back the flap of the envelope, slipped out the piece of crisp A4 paper and seen four words: ‘At risk of redundancy.’

‘This is a very hard decision for us to make,’ Marion went on. ‘Believe me, we’ve done everything we can to keep the print edition of Fab! going. It’s my baby, as I’m sure you know, and I know that the tech column is yours. But circulation has been declining steadily over the past three years. The Covid lockdowns hit us hard, and levels of commuting still aren’t even close to what they were before. And if people aren’t using Tube stations then they’re not picking up the mag. And if the mag isn’t getting into people’s hands, advertisers don’t want to spend money on space. You understand that, don’t you, Lucy?’

I nodded mutely.

‘Strategically, we’ve had to make tough decisions,’ Marion went on. ‘We’ve had to look at the overall state of the business, and future-proof it. Other people’s jobs would be on the line otherwise. The whole survival of the business is at stake.’

Do they always say this? I wondered. And what do they expect people to say back? ‘Of course, I completely get it. The survival of Radiant Media is far more important than me being able to pay my rent and feed my cat. Don’t you worry, Marion, I’ll take one for the team.’ As if. Said no one in my situation, ever.

‘What will happen, though?’ I managed to ask. ‘To Fab!, I mean? To my column?’

Marion looked down at the leather folder in front of her, resting innocently on the glass surface of the boardroom table. She didn’t need to consult her notes – she knew what they said. For a second, I felt almost sorry for her. Then I went back to feeling sorry for myself.

‘Fab! will be transitioning to online only,’ she said. ‘Max! too. The men’s magazine has taken just as much of a hit as we have. We’ve got to find efficiencies. Cutting print and distribution costs is the big one, but there are others, too. The magazines’ – at least, the publications’, the e-zines, as they’ll become – readership is distinct, but there’s a lot of content they have in common. The nightlife pages, the arts coverage, and of course the technology content – our readership will be as well served if those are shared across the two publications – portals, as they’ll become.’

So that was that. Fab!, the magazine I’d worked on for three years but still felt a little thrill of pride when I saw someone reading on the train, when I smelled the freshly printed pages and saw my name on the masthead: Technology Editor, Lucy Masters, was no more.

My job was as good as toast.

‘I know this is a lot to take in, Lucy.’ Maybe Marion had guessed that I could hardly hear her over the rush of blood in my ears. ‘Do you have any questions?’

‘I… You said… I mean, there’s still going to be a technology editor, right? For Fab! and Max! together? I could do that, surely?’

Marion shook her head, pursing her lips with what looked like genuine regret. ‘Lucy, if I could give you that role, I would. Believe me. But Ross McEwan, who as you know is your opposite number at Max!, has been in the post four months longer than you have. We’ve had to adopt a strict first in, last out policy. It’s the only way to ensure fairness for everyone.’

Ross McEwan. I knew the name, obviously. I’d probably even seen the guy at Christmas parties and away days and the whole-company strategy breakfasts that had taken place on a quarterly basis for a year or so, and then fizzled out. But for the life of me I couldn’t picture his face. He was probably one of the ones with bad teeth and a patchy beard, I thought unkindly.

But I was in no mood to #bekind, a slogan that had been all over the pages of Fab! for the past couple of years.

‘There have been other roles thrown into the mix,’ Marion was saying. ‘Fashion and style, for instance, will still be kept separate across the two publications, so those section heads will retain their roles under the new structure, and besides…’

She looked at me and smiled benignly. And I could see her point. There I was across the table from her in my jeans and hoodie and glasses, my hair scraped back in its usual ponytail, not a scrap of make-up on my face. A spot was threatening to break out on the side of my nose and my nails were clipped short and unpainted as they always were. I looked about as much like a potential fashion and style editor as Astro, my cat. Probably less so.

‘I wouldn’t want to write about fashion and style,’ I admitted.

‘Look, Lucy.’ Marion closed her folder and put down her pen, resting both hands on the glass surface of the table as if she was reaching out to me, or making a confession. ‘We don’t want to lose any of our people. Especially not good people who have been with the organisation a long time. If it were possible to keep everyone, we’d do that. I’d do that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve fought and fought for every single member of the team. We just couldn’t see a way around this.’

‘Are you sure?’ A new tone had come into my voice, no longer calm-ish but almost pleading. ‘Are you sure you’ve thought of everything? Could there be another way? Couldn’t Ross and me…?’

‘We considered a job share arrangement of some kind. But it would mean both of you losing half your income, which would obviously not be ideal. And when we put the idea to Ross, he was very clear that he didn’t feel it would work for him or for Max!’

‘I understand that,’ I said. ‘But maybe… something else?’

---