Chapter Text
“I’ve got something that might interest you,” Rupert strides into Andy’s office, tossing the file onto Andy’s already paper strewn desk and plonking his portly frame down in the chair on the other side, “New instructions. Just come in. Thought you might fancy second chairing me on this?”
Andy looks up, interest piqued, and pulls the file towards her, reading out loud the client’s name, “Stephen Tomlinson.”
Rupert likes Andy. True she is easy on the eye, but she has a manner about her that is refreshing. A quick mind and eager to learn, conscientious, all good qualities for a junior. But she carries an extra quality, one he seldom recognises in his more jaded colleagues. Compassion. He likes having that reminder working alongside him. For him compassion has become something of a layer he’s learnt to paint on when he can work it to his lawyerly advantage, but for Andy, still starting out, it runs deep and genuine.
“It’s got the lot. High profile. A fault based divorce in the offing. An abundance of assets - properties, stock options, trust funds, off shore interests, foreign properties. A contested pre nup. Step children. The lot.”
“Cool,” Andy replies, opening the folder, “High profile you say ?”
Rupert nods.
“I don’t recognise the name…”
“Maybe not his. But the wife, Andy. Miranda Priestly,” he sits back and stretches his arms in a self satisfied manner.
“Miranda Priestly ?”
“Oh Andy. Where have you been ? Editor In Chief of Runway magazine ? Pretty much the most powerful woman, no, person, in the world of fashion ?”
Andy smiles and shrugs, “Not really my thing.” And it isn’t. Andy at work is able to hide her lack of fashion interest behind an acceptably sombre tailored pant suit and plain coloured shirts. Remembers, and recalls the relief at, being told that a lawyer should not stand out for how they look, that it’s what you say and your argument that should create the lasting impression. But at home, the minute she walks through the door, it’s comfort clothing, baggy loose trousers and a well worn tee shirt. Matches the ratty sofa Nattie left her with before she decamped to Boston, unable to cope with an Andy who seemed to spend all her, Nattie’s, free time either in the office or buried beneath a pile of papers on said sofa.
“Well. I suggest that you not only read the file but maybe do a little google research before our client meeting. 9.30 am Monday. We need to be the top of our game on this one,” Rupert rises to leave, turning back and leaning over the back of the chair, with a gentle wink, “Enjoy your weekend.”
***********
It’s pouring with rain when she leaves the office, the file stuffed into the worn leather satchel she carries as she hurries towards the subway station. It’s already well past rush hour and most of the commuters are already either home with their families or crowded into end of week bar meet ups, embracing the few days of freedom permitted them before the treadmill starts over again. As Andy hands over the change at the newspaper stall in return for the latest edition of Runway, she muses that this wasn’t quite what she expected life to be when she came to the Big Apple. She seems to have lost the few close friends she had in the separation from Nattie. She doesn’t think it was anything she specifically did, but she admits to herself it was most likely neglect. Friendships need to be nurtured, fed. She really needs to do something to rectify this. But being a lawyer takes effort. Demands time. All your time. At least it seems to.
She gets a seat without too much trouble, opens the magazine’s front cover, and flicks through the pages. They are glossy, full of perfectly lit, perfectly dressed, perfectly made up, perfect women. Fashion house names she is vaguely familiar with. She pauses on the page headed Letter from the Editor, and more specifically on the small thumb nail photo beside it. A striking face. Patrician. Defined cheek bones, a sharp nose, intense cool blue eyes, and a shock of short silver white hair complete with a pristine coiffed dipping wave of a fringe. Striking indeed. The wife. Miranda Priestly.
*************
The fridge is unsurprisingly bare, of anything nutritious anyway. Well, when did she last go shopping ? Take out delivery it is then. Whilst she waits for the arrival of her Thai noodles for one, she opens a bottle of red wine. It is Friday evening after all. She settles on the sofa, her laptop open, perched on her lap. The file itself sits unopened on the table – she’ll go through that later over the weekend, diligently preparing her chronology, a schedule of assets, a list of questions to be asked, but for now she sits back and trawls the internet to get a flavour of the couple she’ll be dealing with. The magazine lies open at the foot of the sofa, next to her thick socked feet.
She’d really like to start with googling Ms Priestly, but a strange loyalty that reminds her she is instructed by the husband, steers her to type in the words “Stephen Tomlinson”. The entries that immediately pop up are all in connection with his wife. Articles that show him accompanying her to this gala, to that event. A consort. She lingers over the photographs. Miranda Priestly. Striking, she thinks again. Then corrects herself. Stunning. And such presence.
She is staring at one such image when the doorbell goes signalling the arrival of her meal, and she is forced to tear herself away. She has established merely that Mr Tomlinson is something in finance, and is the second husband of Miranda Priestly. Oh, and that he’s quite good at golf having been lauded at his club in the Hamptons for once having scored a hole in one. She has little inclination to investigate him further, and as she sucks up her noodle strands, she finds herself clicking on the links for Miranda Priestly. The note pad by her side is soon filled with the numerous monikers she seems to have been given. La Priestly seems the kindest. Ice Queen. Dragon. Devil in Prada. She imagines her – exacting, no time for anything less than competent, impatient, powerful, stern – and stunningly beautiful. Probably hell to live with, but no doubt she’ll hear all about that on Monday. But undoubtedly fascinating.
It is of little surprise then that when Andy climbs into bed that night and allows sleep to claim her, her dreams are filled with images of Miranda Priestly, a Miranda Priestly who peers at her quizzically, one eye brow raised, her lips pursed.