‘Well, I worked pretty hard for those.’
‘I know, I’m not saying … Look, Clare. These boys, they’re not like you. This is their thing. Their chance.’
‘But …’ She could feel herself wavering.
‘And if we’re gonna do it. We need to do it. I don’t want to blow it, you know?’
‘Look,’ she said, feeling a little cross. ‘I’m not really sure why I said yes, Dan. I mean, I’m no rapper. And I’ve got a reputation – a serious job.’
‘Look,’ he said, gently. ‘If that’s what you’re worried about, don’t. You don’t have to be Clare on stage, you can have a persona.’
‘What, like Beyoncé?’
‘A bit more like Ali G!’
‘Thanks a lot!’
‘No, I mean, unrecognisable from your normal self. You’ve already got a fake name. We can make you look like a different person.’
‘Well, maybe, but …’
‘My sister, Nadia; she does make-up and that. She could make you up so you look like a totally different person.’
‘I suppose I could.’
‘Then what would it matter? It’s just a couple of rehearsals. And a night out at the theatre. Nobody’s gonna see you. Unless we win … but you know …’
He was right; that possibility was a long way down the road.
‘OK,’ she said with a sigh, her guilt getting the better of her as usual. ‘I can’t do tonight – I really can’t. But I’ll try to meet you tomorrow after lunch if you’re free?’
‘Thank you,’ his voice was pityingly grateful. ‘Seriously, thanks Clare.’
She pulled up in front of her house and looked at it for a moment. Was she privileged? Their home wasn’t impressive, particularly. But their 1930s semi, with its big bay windows, was roomy and had cost a fortune.
‘Toby,’ she said later, trying to decide which pair of earrings to wear for their evening with Hatty and Bill. ‘Do you think we’re privileged?’
‘Where has that come from?’ he asked, his eyes widening. ‘Has someone written something about me? Not that bitch from the Daily Mole?’
‘No … No, I’m just thinking, you know. We’re pretty lucky, right?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And OK we didn’t come from wealthy backgrounds, but our families were OK. And we got chances – the chance to work hard.’
‘Sure …’ he said, peering closely at himself in the mirror and smoothing down his eyebrows with his index finger.
‘And now, tonight, we’re going around to a TV star’s house for dinner.’
‘True.’
Their eyes met silently. It sounded pretty privileged when you put it like that.
Before she could think any further, she brought up Dan’s number on her phone. Wondering what she was getting herself into, she typed ‘Sorry for the wobble. Will definitely see you tomorrow.’
When she looked up again her eyes locked with Toby’s in the mirror. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no one.’
‘But Mum! Why do I need a babysitter? Alfie’ll be here!’ Katie whined when Clare told her that Angela from two doors down was going to pop round while they were out.
‘Because you’re only twelve. And because not only is Alfie only fourteen, he’s … well, he’s Alfie,’ Clare said, nodding at her son who was sitting slumped on the sofa, headphones on, laughing at something on his phone. ‘He wouldn’t notice if the house burned down.’
‘But I would! I’d notice!’
It wasn’t the most reassuring of reassurances.
Once Angela had arrived and already started on the plate of biscuits they put out for her, Clare and Toby climbed into his car and pulled out onto the dark road.
It had been ages since they’d gone out together like this. All those late evenings, all those meetings. It wasn’t just Toby, she realised. She’d started to bring work home – had let it bleed into the evenings and the weekends.
Both of their jobs were the kind that could expand and keep on expanding until you weren’t sure where the job ended and life began. The email you just had to answer; a call from a client in the evening. Bags full of folders.
It wasn’t just Toby not seeing her, she realised. They’d stopped seeing each other.
‘Nice to be going out,’ she said into the silence.
‘You sure?’ he said, his hand briefly leaving the wheel and hovering near to his mouth for a moment. ‘Even to Batty Hatty’s?’
‘Don’t,’ she said, feeling guilty that she’d laughed at the label once. ‘It’s … well, you know. She’s OK, isn’t she? You said she’d helped you.’
‘You’re right. Just joking. But, yeah …’
They drove on, listening to a radio discussion on the pros and cons of recycled loo roll. Sitting in the – ridiculously comfortable – leather seats, Clare began to relax. Darkness had fallen and the street lamps glowed orange in the gloom. Watching them, leaning her head on the window, she remembered sitting in the back of her parents’ car, aged about five, watching the lights on the motorway flash past on the way back from somewhere or other. It was oddly soothing.
Hatty Bluebottle’s London residence was more modest than Clare might have expected. She’d only seen Hatty on TV in the past and she’d struck her as someone who’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
Clare had imagined some sort of four-storey white townhouse – the kind you see in TV dramas; so impossibly expensive and immaculate that the most an ordinary person could do was drool and dream.
Instead, Toby pulled up in front of a tiny terrace of yellow bricked Victorian houses in Farringdon. Still probably easily into the millions, but somehow homely and modest at the same time.
After about half an hour of back and forthing, Toby managed to squeeze his car into the tiny space outside. ‘Residents’ parking,’ he said. ‘Hatty said she’d give us a pass.’
‘Great,’ she said, climbing out of the car.
The Hatty who opened the door looked a world away from the intimidating figure Clare remembered from her TV heyday. In place of the suit and blouse combo she’d sported on screen, she wore some floral leggings, a mis-matched blouse and had grey hair that stuck up like a bird’s nest. In fact, she looked like an actual, real human being.
‘Well hello!’ Hatty said, with more enthusiasm than she’d ever had on Morning Briefing, or 99 Questions. ‘Lovely to meet you. You must be Clare – Toby’s always talking about you!’ She grabbed Clare’s head between her man-sized hands and planted a large kiss on each of her cheeks.
‘Hi, Hatty,’ Toby said, before he, too, was swooped and engulfed in a perfume-clouded welcome.
‘Bill is in the dining room,’ said their host. ‘The kids are both out this evening, thank god. Not that you can call them kids these days of course – they both think they’re far more grown up than they really are. Thirteen is the new thirty, or so it would seem.’
‘Know the feeling,’ Clare said, smiling in spite of herself.
Perhaps the evening wasn’t going to be too bad after all.
Chapter Fourteen
It was almost fifteen years since Clare had last had a hangover.
She knew that, because it was the day she’d taken a pregnancy test and discovered Alfie was on his way, after which she’d duly given up her two-glasses-a-night-but-make-it-three habit. And she had never really developed a taste for alcohol afterwards. These days she was like a teenager. A couple of sips, a grimace, and she was on to the Diet Coke.
It was good, really. Great for the waistline. But she did miss the gentle oblivion she used to feel after a couple of drinks.
Toby, however, had had no such enforced abstinence.
Which meant that after one of their rare nights out, she was usually up and about with no qualms, while he lay in bed
in a wretched state of his own making.
This morning, the first sound that pierced her consciousness as she lay half-comatose in bed, was a deep, pitiful groan.
‘Toby? Everything all right?’
She turned over to see her husband sitting up, head in hands, face a little on the grey side.
‘Are you going to be sick?’ she asked, suddenly filled with adrenaline. The last thing she wanted to do was scrub alcohol-scented vomit from the duvet this morning. ‘Do you want me to get a bucket?’
‘No. It’s not that.’ Toby allowed one slightly reddened eye to peek out from between his fingers. ‘I mean … I’ve felt better. It’s just … last night. Did I really?’
‘Yes, Toby. You did.’
‘Oh, fucking hell.’
‘Which bit?’
‘What do you mean, which bit?’ he said, his hands falling from his face in horror and his voice jumping up an octave in panic. ‘There was more than one bit?’
The first thing they’d been offered at Hatty’s was an ‘aperitif’ – basically a shot of something sticky, sweet and alcoholic. Toby – more of a beer drinker ordinarily – had clearly underestimated the kind of power this sort of snifter had and had gone back for seconds, and thirds.
By the time they’d sat down to dinner, his face had been flushed and his eyes alight with a kind of excited abandon.
‘So Hatty, tell me,’ he’d slurred over the lamb shank, ‘who do I have to sleep with to get a slot on prime time.’
Thankfully, Hatty had laughed it off. ‘Well, certainly not me,’ she’d said. ‘The only reason they promoted me, I think, is to get me off the screen. Nobody wants to look at a middle-aged has-been.’
Clare had seen a flicker of something behind Hatty’s smile.
‘You don’t really think that, though?’ she’d said. ‘I mean, you were great. I used to love your bulletins.’
‘Ah, but you’re not the target demographic, you see,’ Hatty had replied, making little quotation marks with her fingers. ‘They told me they’d recognised my talent and thought it would be better used off-screen. But I knew what they really meant.’
‘Oh. Didn’t you say anything?’
‘No, I suppose I quite fancied the chance of producing. Thought I’ll show them! And I do like it. It’s going well. Just – well, unfortunately no matter how good the ratings are, they’re always quick to praise someone else for them.’
Toby had shifted uncomfortably.
‘You’ll have noticed?’ Hatty had said, turning to him. ‘It’s always “Good job, Piers” or “The figures are great, we must feature more animals!” They don’t seem to take into account the mug who chooses the segments or selects the topic.’
‘Oh,’ Toby had said, looking at Hatty as if for the first time. ‘I didn’t realise you felt …’
Hatty had sipped her wine. ‘Sorry,’ she’d said. ‘Had too much of this. You’ll have heard, though. They call me Batty Hatty at work – like I’m some mad lady who ought to be confined to the attic.’
‘Yes, but you know, I don’t think you are batty at all. In fact, I’ve always admired you for being so ordinary,’ Toby had declared clumsily.
‘Really?’ Hatty had raised an eyebrow at Clare over the table, and she’d shrugged embarrassedly and poked Toby firmly in the ribs.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he’d said, looking at his wife and entirely missing the point. ‘You’re both ordinary. Both of you.’
Later, after yet another little ‘palette cleanser’, he’d begun to talk to Bill, and Clare had relaxed a little. Hatty had started to regale her with stories of the old days when she’d read the news. ‘The guy I read with’s still on screen, of course,’ she’d said.
‘That’s so unfair,’ Clare had said. ‘You know, I know how it feels to be overlooked …’
She’d been about to confide in Hatty in a way she hadn’t even with Toby, when she’d overheard a snippet of Toby and Bill’s conversation.
‘Do you think,’ Toby had been saying, ‘I should get my bags done?’
‘Your bags?’
‘Yes, you know. I’m trying to get more … screen time. And just wondering …’ Toby had shifted his head around to give Bill a better view of his face, helpfully pulling the skin under his eyes taut.
‘Oh dear,’ Bill had said, his intelligent, sober eyes alighting on Clare for an amused moment before turning his attention back to Toby. ‘Well, I’m probably not the best person to advise …’
‘Have some wine, Clare?’ Hatty had asked, a bottle teetering over Clare’s empty glass.
‘No, no. I’m fine,’ she’d said. ‘Definitely the designated driver tonight.’
The two women had exchanged a look of mutual sympathy. ‘Yes, sorry. I didn’t realise that cherry liqueur was so strong,’ Hatty had said.
‘And I’ve heard that more and more men are getting their lips done,’ Toby had continued, pursing his into an exaggerated kiss shape and looking quizzically at Bill. ‘What do you think? Is less more? Or is more more? Too sexy? Or just sexy enough?’
There had been a silence, before Bill coughed into his hand and said, rather quietly. ‘I’m sure, it might be … only it’s not quite my specialism you see.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ Toby had blushed. ‘Sorry, I thought Hatty said you worked in plastics.’
‘Ah, well … not quite.’
‘What … what is your medical specialism out of interest?’
‘Classics,’ Bill had replied, chuckling slightly. ‘My qualification isn’t so much medical as literary. I’ve got a doctorate in classical literature.’
‘Oh, classics … I thought …’
‘Which bit do you remember?’ Clare asked now, carefully watching Toby’s face.
‘The … did I … I mean, I didn’t mention, you know, procedures?’ he asked, lowering his voice as if by saying the word quietly he could make it go away. ‘I’ve been thinking about …’
‘Well, yes. But I’m sure Bill …’ she trailed off. There was no way she could make this sound any better.
‘But did I say something about getting my lips done? About … being sexy?’ he asked. ‘I was reading about the procedure yesterday … but maybe … did I dream that bit?’ he said, hopefully.
Clare toyed with the idea of telling him a lie. Who would it hurt, after all? But then, he had to be prepared for whatever comments or humorous anecdotes Hatty was going to regale everyone with in the Monday meeting.
‘It’s probably best not to think about it,’ she said at last, watching him bury his head in his hands again.
It was kinder not to mention the things he didn’t remember about the night, she decided, sipping her hot black beverage. The fact that he’d shared his idea for doing a piece about alien abductions; the moment he’d lifted his shirt and asked them whether they thought he had a paunch, and when he’d tried to show off his non-existent limbo skills by attempting to slither under the breakfast bar, putting his back out in the process.
This morning, Katie was already in the kitchen, plugged into her phone and lost in a world where YouTubers with enormous eyebrows shared their ‘style secrets’. Clare looked at Katie, so unaware of her own natural beauty and completely taken in by these women with faces so full of poison they were probably toxic.
‘Hey,’ she said, tapping her daughter on the shoulder. ‘You know you don’t need any of that stuff, right?’
Before Katie had time to answer, or even scowl, Toby burst into the kitchen in his boxer shorts. ‘Seriously Clare, though,’ he said. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Dad!’ cried Katie, horrified. ‘You’re in your pants!’
‘Just call her. Apologise.’
‘Put some trousers on!’
‘What? Speak to her?’
‘Or a dressing gown, at least!’
‘Ye
s! Give her a call.’
‘Oh, I give up!’ Katie flounced out of the kitchen in disgust.
‘On … on the phone?’
‘Yes! Tell her you’re sorry, that you drank too much, that you’re embarrassed and that you’d like her to come to ours at some point to make up for it.’
‘Hatty? Come here?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just … you know … I was hoping …’ he sank into a chair. ‘What if this was my chance to impress someone on the decision-making team? I mean, I know it was only Hatty. What if I’ve completely blown it?’
She felt sorry for him then. And for Hatty, too. ‘You haven’t. Just call her.’
An hour later when they were absolutely sure that the majority of ordinary people would be out of bed and able to cope with a phone call, she stood beside Toby as he nervously dialled Hatty’s number.
‘Hello. Yes. Hello,’ he said. ‘Yes, Toby. Yes, yes, I know. Thank you. Thank you for the lovely, eh, meal and …’ He paused, listening. ‘Well, yes a little worse for wear … Really? Well that’s nice of him. Look, I’m sorry if I was a bit over the top, you know. Rude. Last night. Hello? Hello?’
Toby turned to her then. I think she’s hung up, he mouthed, his eyes wide with terror. Then. ‘Oh! Thank goodness. I thought … Yes, I was saying sorry. Sorry I messed up. Oh! Thank you. Very nice of … Thank you. OK. Goodbye.’
Coming off the line, he gave his wife a thumbs up. ‘Think we’re OK,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. She said it’s the first time a man has thought to apologise to her in about a decade. I think she was joking.’
Clare wasn’t so sure. ‘Well, that’s great! See, you’re back in the game!’ she said.
‘Well, not quite,’ he said, his face suddenly changing as he turned and charged into the downstairs loo.
Chapter Fifteen
As she pulled up outside the church hall later that afternoon, Clare realised she had butterflies.
She’d told Toby she had to pop into the office to pick up some forgotten files after lunch; he’d offered to come with her for the drive, and she’d had to turn him down. ‘I won’t be long,’ she’d said. ‘But I might pop into Steph on the way back.’
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