A Proper Family Holiday Read Online Free

much point. Davina had already turned back to her computer screen as if to signal that the conversation was over. It was left to Chelsea to work out how to put the damage right without offending the actress or the artist.
    ‘What was she offended by?’ Chelsea asked in vain hope of an easy answer.
    ‘All of it,’ said Davina. ‘I know you can do it, sweetheart.’
    So, instead of going home just after five, as she had planned, Chelsea went back to her desk. She spent the next hour and a half on the phone to Eugenia’s PR, who explained in great detail exactly the image Eugenia hoped to convey with this ‘in-depth’ portrait in Society . Unfortunately, the list of things that could not be mentioned was far, far longer than the list of attributes and achievements Chelsea was allowed to write about. For example, Chelsea could not mention the three mega-grossing slasher movies that had catapulted Eugenia to fame, despite the fact that she’d only appeared in one other film. Admittedly that other film was a great film, but Eugenia’s three-line part was generally considered to be its low point. Neither was Chelsea to mention Eugenia’s love affair with the director who cast her in that three-line part. Or her brief early marriage to an adult-movie star. Or her current relationship with a huge Hollywood name widely rumoured to be gay. Chelsea should not mention Eugenia’s religious conversion (lapsed Methodist to fervent Scientologist). Or her nose-job (which she had to have because she was born with a deviated septum, not because she’d sniffed it to pieces with cocaine). Chelsea should not mention the landlord who had sued Eugenia for wrecking his Hollywood condo while on a drug binge, and she should definitely not go anywhere near Eugenia’s shoplifting conviction (as she had been confused into leaving a boutique without paying by the store’s fire-alarm test). In short, Chelsea should not mention anything that made the young starlet slightly more interesting than the average cookie-cutter LA blonde.
    ‘I will need approval,’ the PR finished.
    ‘Of course.’
    Chelsea could see why Eugenia (or rather her PR) had been upset by the original piece. It was snide, and where it wasn’t snide, it was damning with faint praise. But there was the added problem that the artist who had written the piece to form part of a whole issue based on the theme of ‘art and beauty’ had an even bigger ego than Eugenia. How to change his words without him actually noticing …
    ‘He won’t notice,’ Carola, the assistant fashion editor, assured Chelsea when they met in the staff kitchen. ‘He won’t read it. I very much doubt he wrote it in the first place.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Serena. ‘Don’t you remember what happened when someone moved a comma in that haiku he wrote to celebrate the Olympics?’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Carola. ‘That was bad.’
    ‘Thanks, girls,’ said Chelsea. ‘You’ve been really reassuring.’
    ‘You’ll be OK. You just have to make it so good that he won’t want to say it’s not his own work. Come and have a drink when you’ve finished?’ Serena suggested.
    Chelsea had a feeling she was not going to be finished before last orders.
    She delivered a first draft of the rewritten piece to Eugenia’s PR within an hour. The PR sent it back covered in red edits. Chelsea made herself another cup of tea and started again. The second draft fared no better. Meanwhile, the office emptied out. Carola and Serena went for their traditional Friday-night cocktail at Browns, where they hoped to bag themselves a couple of hedge-fund managers, except that all the hedge-fund managers were in private jets on the way to their supermodel wives in the South of France. Davina, the editor, swept past in a cloud of Chanel at seven without even saying goodnight, on her way to a Michelin-starred dinner somewhere. The lowly intern left as soon as Davina was safely out of sight. Soon Chelsea was alone