Paradise City Read Online Free Page A

had to be shelved. A local MP had written to Esme to thank her in person. Dave hadn’t publicly acknowledged her success, but she had detected a slight thawing in his attitude towards her. She’d been thrilled.
    But now, after a year and a half of Freedom of Information requests on how many chocolate HobNobs Cabinet ministers bought for hospitality purposes and Googling consumer-friendly research studies from American universities, Esme was starting to tire of it all. She had one half-baked notion for this morning’s conference about the rise in popularity of semi-naked charity calendars. They were everywhere, she’d noticed of late: middle-aged women with their baps out hiding their private parts behind a giant milk urn to raise money for some worthy cause. Esme had a hunch that the National Association of Nudists, a humourless organisation she’d dealt with in the past, would be unhappy about this. They’d probably think it wasn’t taking nudism seriously enough. She was sure she could whip them up into some kind of newsworthy frenzy.
    Other than that, the story cupboard is bare and she’s almost at work. She alights onto High Street Kensington and looks up at the art deco Barker’s department store building, squinting as she always does to see if she can find her desk through the narrow, slatted windows. She waves at the security guard because she never remembers his name, then swipes her pass over the electronic entry gates and takes the escalator to the first floor.
    Looking down, she realises she’s forgotten to take her trainers off.
    ‘Shit.’ Esme hates the thought of anyone seeing her like this: half-formed and unprofessional, like a mismatched extra out of Working Girl (perhaps her favourite 1980s film, in a closely fought contest with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ). She struggles to get her heels from her canvas bag before the final step of the escalator. At the top, she changes shoes quickly, slipping her stockinged feet into a pair of mildly uncomfortable patent-leather courts from Marks & Spencer and putting her dirty white trainers back into her bag. She hopes no one notices. But then, glancing up at the mezzanine balcony where everyone goes for their fag breaks, she sees someone staring at her. It’s Dave, shaking his head at her through a fug of cigarette smoke. The management had tried to move the smokers outside after the ban but no one had taken any notice and, in the end, they’d admitted defeat and built partitions on the balcony to pen everyone in. You could always tell what time of day it was according to how much smoke the enclosed balcony was holding. In the morning, it was a gentle mist of grey. By lunchtime, the smoke would have acquired its own twisting logic, pressing against the glass like freshly shorn strands of sheep’s wool. By evening, the balcony was a choking-hole filled with toxic dry ice.
    Esme gets to her desk and logs on. Sanjay is already at his seat, directly opposite her, his face half obscured by the large Mac screen.
    ‘Morning, sunshine,’ he says, without taking his eyes from the computer. ‘Nice weekend?’
    ‘Yeah, thanks, um . . . what did I do?’ Esme puts her jacket on the back of her ergonomic chair, adjusted by Occupational Health to precisely the right height in order to avoid repetitive strain injury. ‘Can’t remember. But it was nice, whatever it was. You?’
    Sanjay nodded.
    ‘The boyfriend was over from Rome,’ he said. ‘We stayed in and watched Breaking Bad because we’re exciting like that.’ He sipped from a giant Starbucks cup. Esme knew it would be a Green Tea. Sanjay had given up caffeine for a new year’s resolution and was still sticking to it with all the puritanical zeal of a Mayflower pilgrim.
    ‘Have you got stories?’ he asked.
    She shook her head.
    ‘Me neither.’
    There was a special rhythm to Sunday newspapers. Tuesday mornings were tense and mildly fractious as everyone tried to cobble together something for