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envied its lavish budget. And as an ambitious journalist with a wide freelance portfolio, no sick pay, holiday or pension provision, no access to a trust fund and a dependent brother, Tamara could not afford to turn down this opportunity.
    She had fretted that her reply, which she’d typed within seconds of seeing Lyra’s message flashing on her computer screen, had been perhaps too effusive—“… I’d LOVE to do her!!! … I SO much admire! … I’m THRILLED to be part of!! … Amazing magazine!!! … Fantastic writers!!! …” Did the editor of
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prefer an aloofness in her contributors that matched her own? Could this explain Lyra’s failure to respond to that message, or to reply to any of Tamara’s subsequent messages or phone calls? Was it possible that, as with men, one could be
too
enthusiastic?
    As a weekly fixture at
Psst!
, Tamara was a “regular casual,” with the job security of a day labourer on a dodgy building site. But as long as she was useful and enjoyed the patronage of
Psst!
’s editor, she had an income and a desk to sit at for four days a week, Monday to Thursday, leaving her three days to find freelance work elsewhere. She had written pieces for
Monitor Extra
, the paper’s daily features section, known as Me2, run by the hollow-eyed adrenaline junkie Johnny Malkinson. These pieces were chiefly lists, ring-rounds and vox pops, but she was getting a reputation—extending beyond
The Monitor
to an encouraging number of copy-hungry magazines and papers—as a reliable supplier of humorous low-cost fillers.
    Tamara had done her time—three months—as a junior reporter on
The Sydenham Advertiser
, before moving on to become an adaptable contributor to professional and corporate newsletters, including
Inside the Box: The Voice of the Cardboard Packaging Industry; Glaze: The Chartered Institute of Food Stylists’ Quarterly;
and
The Press: Trade Paper of the Laundryand Dry Cleaning Industry
. She had graduated to hobbyists’ house journals, addressing weekend mountaineers, ballroom dancers and budgerigar enthusiasts, switched to general consumer magazines—
Glow
and
Chicks’ Choice
—and eventually worked and wheedled her way as a freelancer into news sections, features pages, diary columns, travel sections and weekend supplements on many national and regional papers, tabloid and broadsheet. The process had equipped her with a diverse knowledge base, giving her a familiarity with the advantages of aluminium ice axes and polypropylene pants, the relative merits of carbon tetrachloride and perchlorethylene, the difference between the mambo and the merengue, and the correct spelling of Melopsittacini.
    In the course of duty, she had travelled business class and seen the world. In Mexico City, where she had been sent to report on Expo-Pack1995, she enjoyed frozen daiquiris and three days of furtive sex with a big-box retailer from Nebraska; in San Diego she had fallen in love, painfully unreciprocated, with an Italian photographer while covering a three-day Salad Styling Workshop; and in Mauritius she went deep-sea diving for the first—and last—time during an avian veterinarians’ conference on the treatment of clinical megabacteriosis. She took pride in her professional versatility and, reflecting on her “regular casual” role at
Psst!
, saw her working life as a mirror of her love life—she was playing the field, having fun, and felt no pressure to commit until the right publication came along and made an attractive offer. Only then would she be prepared to consider a serious, more monogamous working arrangement. If only Tim Farrow, editor of
The Sunday Sphere
, had delivered, she would be looking at a satisfactory resolution on both fronts. But he had proved a serious disappointment.
    She must not think of Tim. It would ruin her mascara. She had sobbed for a fortnight and needed to move on, and up. The
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commission was timely. One door closes, another opens.