© Carol Marinelli 2009

EMMA had been honest-had even admitted during her telephone interview that she was attending night school on a Wednesday night and studying art and that in a couple of years she was hoping to pursue it full-time.

Everything had gone really well, until the second Evelyn had walked out to greet Emma-and Emma truly didn’t understand why.

She’d prepared so carefully for the interview. Reading everything she could get her hands on about D’Amato Financiers-about their spectacular rise, even in gloomy times. Luca D’Amato had a no-nonsense attitude-there was no secret formula to his success, she had read in a rare interview he had given-just sound decisions and fiscal transparency and the refusal to be swayed by hype. Yes, she’d read up on him and then gone through her favourite glossy magazines and followed every last piece of advice in preparation for this afternoon.

Emma had scoured the second-hand shops and found a stunning-if just a touch tight for her well-rounded figure-pale lilac linen designer suit, had had her thick brown ringlets blowdried straight and smoothed up into a smart French roll, and, horribly broke, she had, on the afternoon of her interview, as one magazine had cheekily advised, gone to the make-up counter at a department store and pretended that she was a bride-to-be and trying out looks for her wedding day.

Her brothers had always teased her about her obsession with magazines and her father had moaned about how many she had bought, but they had been her lifeline. Growing up without a mother, living in a rough-and-tumble house that the little girls she’d invited to come over and play had never returned to, Emma had lived her childhood and teenage years reading the glossies for advice, about friends and bullying and boys.