Her rise had been meteoric. The slick interrogator emerged from her like another person. She had simply accepted her opportunities. And they’d all praised her judgment and sense. Then the tall poppy syndrome. It still stung when they imputed her integrity. She’d answered them with more certainty. But it had been like picking over stepping-stones in a deadly stream. The Pixie had shed her private tears, but in public she gave them nothing — nought.

“What you need in here is a good mirror Georgio,” she enunciates in the rounded vowels of her elocution. Then playing to her persona, that tickles him pink. “How can I be your glamorous TV host when you don’t even have a mirror?”

The Pixie had shed her private tears, but in public she gave them nothing — nought.

“I will buy you one with those winking lights, Signora.”

“That will never do, Georgio,” she counters in her warm hectoring voice. If he saw her makeup room he’d soon change his mind about showbiz glitz.

Pity those sages hadn’t deliberated on her judgement in another sphere of human endeavour. Monsieur Hare and Monsieur Tortoise.

Monsieur Hare, first off the blocks, sweet, sweet, Dazzer, beautiful jet black hair, insincere emeralds for eyes. Researchers say people with green eyes are misunderstood. They’d been cadets and rising stars together, almost twin, linked in the public’s mind. Dazzer and Pix. Then they had discovered his journalistic short cuts and he had fallen away while the Pixie’s star had risen. Of course, he had blamed her. Unfair recriminations delivered from the misunderstood eyes. Look, there was competition between them. It may have accounted for some of his journalistic excesses. But that was no excuse. Dear Dazzer, if only he’d been less of a ninny, blaming everyone but himself. And damn, she’d waited for him to straighten out. But he’d wallowed in his self pity. When he’d finally picked himself up and braved the ladder again, she’d lost interest.

Max had warned her against in-house tangles. But had she listened? No. So along tootled Monsieur Tortoise — Martin — a reaction to the first? — with his rimmed glasses and dandruff and his briar pipe and his moth-eaten column like the moose at the Empire Club. Yet she could have settled for that stuffiness, for that slow and steady, had there been just one mitigating quality. But what you saw was what you got. He had come up on her insidious, like a cancer. Though, at first, she had found that honesty refreshing in her bitch world. It had brought her reassurance. Had she found a Max substitute? Oh, how she missed Max.

But Monsieur Tortoise was over the Friday night, — night, seven thirty, evening for God’s sake, she’d fronted his flat wanting to whisk him away for a meal and a good chat after a grim week. Found him in his UGG Boots and flanneys ready for sleep. And he meant sleep, not bed.

Anyway he’d drifted off to Perth, the new frontier, the excitement state, met some plain Jane and they were stupendously happy bored stupid together. Monsieur Tortoise was wowing them in the west. She chuckles. Ole Marty had always brought out her cruel streak.

She checks her watch. These working brunches, people dawdling in late. It was unprofessional, rude.