A Compromising Position

by Carole Matthews

  The hum of noise is getting gradually louder and finally curiosity forces me out of my bed. I pad over to the window, pull the curtains back and it’s one of those gorgeous crisp winter days with a sky of the purest baby blue broken only by a few fabulously fluffy cottonwool clouds and the dark slender fingers of the trees reaching up towards them. I stretch and give thanks for the morning and all that is good. Perhaps Cara was right, after all. Life could be an awful lot worse.

  No, it couldn’t. My eyes snap open sharply as I focus on the hubbub outside our house. This is a disaster. A total, utter disaster. I think Cara should have painted her manhole gold some considerable time ago, because what it has attracted to our door is not good. Not good at all.

  ‘Cara!’ I shout. ‘Cara!’ I can hear the panic in my voice. My psychic friend certainly didn’t manage to foretell this little lot.

  It would seem that the world’s press has taken up residence outside Cara’s cottage. There are men and women huddled into their coats on this cold and frosty morning, dozens of them. They bear pads, pens, tape recorders, video cameras, sound booms. You name it, they’ve got it. There are even three mobile television units parked along the street, which is extremely reckless because this place has more parking attendants per square inch than anywhere else in the world. They are all flirting with yellow boot territory. The journalists and camera crews are chatting amiably amongst themselves and someone is passing round tea. This is unbelievable. Equally unbelievable is the fact that my knees are holding up. They’ve started to wobble at a truly scary rate.

  ‘Cara!’

  Just then, I spot my friend struggling down the road. She has her head lowered and is battling through the throng of people. She’s clutching a batch of newspapers to her chest and when she gets to the front door of her house – her own house – she is nearly engulfed by the mob. I hear her grapple with the keys and I dash to the top of the stairs.

  The front door flies open and she is catapulted inside and then leans on it to stop anyone following her. She sags back against the door. ‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ she says breathlessly. Which for Cara is pretty strong stuff. And then she looks up at me. ‘Oh, Emily,’ she cries.

  I run down the stairs. ‘What? What?’

  ‘This is terrible,’ she says.

  I’ve sort of gathered that. I grab the pile of newspapers from her and lower myself in a state of near catatonic shock to sit on the bottom step of the stairs. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  I’m front-page news on the Sun, Daily Sport and the Mirror, reunited with my Saucy Santa image. Oh my God, what do I look like? I scan through the stories on fast-forward. They make Declan sound like some major sleaze-ball setting up in competition with the Playboy empire and they make me sound like some sex-crazed slapper. I have only made page three of the Daily Mail and I would be thankful for small mercies, but they have printed the dressing-gown shot too, under the heading ‘Squalid Sex-Games for Tarty Teacher to the Stars’.

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ I say.

  Cara is wide-eyed with horror. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Ooo,’ I say sarcastically. ‘I’m not sure. I could just slit my wrists now. Or I could take ever-increasing doses of arsenic and prolong my death.’

  ‘Be serious,’ she says.

  ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

  Cara comes and sits down next to me. ‘This can’t be as bad as it seems.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘how come you nipped out to get all these?’ I flick through the newspapers again, feeling increasingly desperate.

  ‘I heard the story on the radio when I got up,’ Cara admits, ‘and thought I’d better find out how bad the damage was.’

  Pretty bad, I should say.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’

  ‘I thought they might have gone by the time I got back.’

  ‘Oh, fat chance of that,’ I snort. ‘You’re in the profession yourself. You know that they’ll be here until they get their story.’

  ‘At least you don’t have to try to get into work,’ she says in an effort to comfort me. I suppose in the scheme of things, being merely suspended from my job could be viewed as a positive step.

  ‘You wait,’ I say. ‘It will only be a matter of time before the phone rings and I’ve got the sack.’

  The phone rings. Cara and I stare at it.

  ‘You get it,’ I say.

  Cara dashes over to the phone and snatches it up. ‘Hello,’ she says. Her hand goes to her throat and she coughs gently. ‘It’s the Headmaster.’

  I stand up and smooth my tatty terry dressing gown down with as much dignity as I can muster and before the Headmaster can speak, I say, ‘I know. I’m sacked.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Adam sat by the window in the Café Blanco, waiting for Laura to turn up and stirring his coffee more than it needed. He never paid for his coffee in here. It was one of the very few perks of being a photographer on a local newspaper. The café was situated in a quiet side alley just off the High Street, nestled between a very arty art gallery which never seemed to have any customers and a property lettings agent who seemed to have more than his fair share.

  Café Blanco was a traditional establishment in this age of faddism, and its primary attraction, apart from the secluded location, was the fact that it produced a fabulous all-day breakfast for under a fiver. Definitely a disappearing art on this High Street. The inside was a cramped affair of French-style beech chairs and the obligatory wooden flooring. Outside it had stainless steel tables and a smattering of patio heaters arranged on the worn cobbles which meant that the British could demonstrate their on-going battle with their weather by sitting outside shivering in all elements, all year round.

  This is where Adam came on his quiet news days and just kicked around, reading the nationals, getting hyper on coffee until his mobile rang and Cara or someone from the office contacted him to tell him that something suitably newsworthy had happened.

  Once upon a time when he was keen, he used to chase after the emergency services just for the hell of it and the hope of a decent story at the end. You could pick up the route of a fire engine from the trail of water it left in its wake as it turned corners. Wasn’t that an incredibly sad fact to know? Adam couldn’t remember the last time a speeding ambulance had raised his pulse. Probably around the same time as a woman had. Now that his ambulance-chasing days were over, he justified this inert downtime as vital mingling with the community. From the gossip he gleaned from the two middle-aged female owners and the young waitresses, he probably produced more headline stories than the news reporters who were now mostly office-bound.

  How he longed for those heady days of inactivity now. Since the breaking of the Emily story, the local rag was in danger of becoming a very serious newspaper. Everyone was chasing round like blue-bottomed flies making sure every angle was covered. He still wasn’t sure, however, that this justified the number of poster-size pictures of Emily that seemed to be appearing on the newsroom wall.

  He stirred his cappuccino and tried to prepare himself for the forthcoming conversation. He’d spent the whole night lying staring at the ceiling, trying to imagine what life would be like with Josh living on the other side of the world. He’d looked at the prices of flights to Australia on the Internet and that was truly depressing.

  Red-eyed and wracked with anxiety, he’d phoned Laura at eight o’clock and had asked to see her. She did not sound happy, but then Laura never did these days. Adam scratched at his chin and wished he’d had time to shave. The smell of frying bacon drifted through the café, but for once he had no appetite. His stomach was a gurgling mass of tension. He hadn’t been able to eat at Luigi’s last night after Josh’s bombshell. Josh, on the other hand, had stuffed his face. The terror of becoming an Antipodean had been assuaged by a plateful of pasta followed rapidly by home-made gelato di cioccolato.

  The door chime her
alded Laura’s arrival. She was tight-lipped and bitter-looking. The woman who used to spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror meticulously painting her face before she would venture out of the door wore no make-up and her hair was scraped back from her face as usual. Sometimes when he saw her, it was like looking at someone he’d never seen before. It was very hard to remember that he’d once been married to this harassed stranger.

  She sat down opposite him and started unbuckling her jacket in the same movement. ‘I don’t have time for this, Adam,’ she said. ‘It had better be important.’

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on, have a coffee,’ he urged. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  Laura’s head snapped up. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  She shook her head impatiently. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a double espresso.’

  Jeanette the waitress pricked up her ears and motioned to Adam that she’d got the order.

  Laura pulled a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and went through the ritual of lighting up.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Adam remarked. ‘You never used to like it.’

  Laura puffed the first plume of smoke out of her nose. ‘I spend a lot of my life doing things that I didn’t used to like.’

  ‘It was a comment, Laura,’ Adam said. ‘Not a criticism.’ He could never understand why his ex-wife wanted to make a battle out of everything. Surely they should be able to talk civilly to each other after all this time. It must be exhausting holding a grudge for so long.

  Jeanette delivered the espresso, gave Adam a sympathetic glance and disappeared quickly.

  ‘So what was it you wanted?’ Laura said.

  It was always so difficult to talk to Laura. He just wanted to have a reasonable conversation about Josh’s future and their plans. The fact that he was his father should still involve him in major life changes and he knew she’d view it as confrontational. ‘I talked to Josh last night,’ Adam said. ‘He told me that you’re planning to move to Australia.’

  Laura met his eyes levelly. ‘And?’

  ‘And . . . it would be nice if you’d have talked to me about it.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with you, Adam.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Adam lowered his voice. ‘I’m his father. Josh is worried that he won’t see me.’

  ‘Because you’re such great company?’

  ‘Josh and I are very close and whatever happens, Laura, I’m the only father he’ll ever have.’

  Laura gathered her cigarettes and lighter from the table and pushed them into her pocket. ‘And is that all you wanted to say?’

  ‘No.’ Adam sighed. ‘I don’t want you to take him away.’

  ‘And what about what I want, Adam?’

  ‘We promised each other that we’d bring him up together.’

  ‘We promised each other a lot of things, Adam, and all of them have been broken.’

  For a moment, Adam had a picture of them laughing and smiling together on their wedding day and felt a pang of regret that they were now reduced to talking together in impersonal cafés about their son’s future.

  ‘I’m sorry, Laura.’ He reached out and touched her hand and was surprised that she didn’t pull it away. ‘I never meant things to end up like this. And I think you and Barry are doing a great job bringing Josh up.’ Laura pulled her hand away. ‘That’s not my worry. I’m frightened that I’ll lose him, Laura. And he’s the only thing I’ve got.’

  Laura looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Adam pleaded. ‘I just want to know how far you’ve got. Has Barry got another job out there? Where are you planning to go? Have your visas come through? Or are you still both thinking about it?’

  Laura stood up. ‘This isn’t about Barry. If I go to Australia, it’s just me and Josh.’

  Adam was stunned.

  ‘That’s why I’m not ready to talk about it.’ Laura’s voice softened. ‘This is a big decision for me.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  Laura allowed herself a rueful half-smile. ‘You never did.’

  ‘No,’ Adam said.

  Laura stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her coat and walked briskly out into the cold, leaving the door bell clanging behind her.

  Adam looked at Jeanette the waitress.

  ‘Another cappuccino?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘How do you think that went?’

  Jeanette pushed herself away from the counter and shrugged. ‘It could have been worse.’

  ‘Yes,’ Adam said. And wondered if that was true.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Cara is preparing to go out into the mêlée again. The phone has rung so much we have taken it off the hook and I’ve put it in a bucket with a towel on top so that we can’t hear the disconnected tone.

  ‘Don’t move,’ my friend says as she belts her coat against the elements. She actually looks as if she’s armouring up to go into battle and she may well be. Cara is going to get the cavalry in the form of Adam. ‘He’ll know what to do,’ she says for the hundredth time. ‘Adam will sort this out.’

  And I do hope that she’s right. I’m not sure that I have as much faith in this Adam bloke as she does.

  ‘Wish me luck,’ Cara says as she heads towards the door. My friend’s face never has the healthiest of blooms, because she doesn’t believe in sunbathing, but now she’s looking white with terror.

  ‘Good luck,’ I say and she hesitates only slightly before she whips the door open and plunges headlong into the heaving mass of bodies.

  They all know her name, probably supplied by the kind neighbours, and shout after her as she legs it to her untrustworthy 2CV parked further along the road in a resident’s parking bay beyond the clutches of the double yellow lines.

  I don’t really know what to do with myself now, so I go upstairs and get showered and dressed, making sure that all the curtains are closed between my bedroom and the bathroom in case any particularly intrepid photographer should decide to point a long-range lens in my direction. I feel totally neurotic about my privacy and wonder how Madonna and Michael Jackson cope with their lives.

  I feel better now I’m washed and scrubbed. I’ve had some tea, but can’t manage any breakfast, so I sit and switch on the daytime television. This is a luxury I can’t say I’ve enjoyed previous to my infamy. I watch Kilroy, Garden Invaders and Supermarket Sweep all punctuated by shouts from the journalists outside of, ‘Emily! Emily! Emily!’ through the letterbox. Then I turn over to Richard and Judy and find them discussing my bottom. Their researchers are probably among the people trying to ring my bucket. Richard and Judy are holding up all the day’s newspapers in turn. I want to switch it off, but am drawn by a masochistic and morbid curiosity to view my own life in this way. Will this never end?

  I’m very pleased to say that Richard and, in particular, Judy, are very sympathetic to my plight. This could be because Judy was once splashed all over the dailies having accidentally popped out of her blouse at a prestigious awards ceremony. These are sad times when Judy Finnegan’s exposed baps in a lacy bra makes front-page news. But there it is.

  They are going to have a phone-in later on about me and I wonder whether I might ring in just for the hell of it. No one has yet mentioned that I have lost my job over this or that I am up to my eyeballs in debt due to my scheming bastard boyfriend. They are more concerned with the fact that it is possible to do all sorts of wicked things on the Internet now and I have to agree. They might be even more concerned if they knew the fallout. Another thought occurs to me. My mother might well watch Richard and Judy. I’ve told my parents nothing of this. How are they going to cope with seeing their daughter’s rather festive bottom paraded all over ITV? They won’t have seen it in the newspaper, because they buy The Times and I’m pretty damn sure I haven’t made the
front page of that. If I have, then the world is truly off its rocker.

  I think my next job is to ring them and confess all. I wander over to the phone and rescue it from its ignominy in the bucket and put it back in its cradle.

  It makes me jump by ringing immediately. The answer-phone clicks in and records a message from the Daily Mail asking me to ring their Femail Editor. The call is quickly followed by ones from the Sun and the Mirror in exactly the same vein. And, as I suspected, from someone called Annabelle who is a researcher for Richard and Judy, practically begging me to contact her. Look what a media expert I am already!

  I’m just about to consign the phone to the bucket again when it rings again and a rather cultured voice starts to speak. ‘Hello, Emily. You must be terribly tired of the phone by now. But if you’re there, I would like to help you. My name’s Jonathan Gold and I’m a publicity agent.’ I don’t know much about publicity agents. We don’t generally have much to do with them in the hectic, celebrity world of teaching, but he’s the only one I’ve ever heard of. He sounds very calm and in control. ‘Together we can handle this pressure and turn it to your benefit. When you’re feeling up to it, give me a call.’

  And I don’t know what makes me do it, but as he reels off his telephone number, I scrabble for a pen and write it down on the back of my hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘Where’s Adam?’ Cara said, her voice rising in panic as she noted his empty desk.

  ‘Behind you.’ Obnoxious Chris pointed across the office and sure enough Adam was sauntering towards her. Chris turned back to his group of henchmen and sniggered. Cara could have cried with relief. She didn’t think she’d ever been quite so pleased to see anyone.

  Coming into the office was a nightmare. There were pin-ups of Emily plastered everywhere just to spite her, she was sure. Everyone seemed to be staring at her and pointing behind her back as she walked past. It was as if she’d been branded by association with Emily. They were probably imagining Cara running round in a French Maid’s outfit or dressed up in head-to-toe PVC like Michelle Pfeiffer as Cat Woman. Poor Emily, she could only imagine how her friend must be feeling.