Wild Weekend
Page 32
‘What on earth did you want to go out in weather like this for?’ Bel demanded, bustling to the utility room for a dry towel.
‘Money,’ Toni answered.
‘What money?’ said Bel, handing over the towel in exchange for the dripping cape.
‘My money,’ said Toni. ‘Which you are going to give to that bailiff geezer tomorrow. Because, let’s face it, nobody paid a hotel bill here this morning, did they?’
‘Well, of course they didn’t. That’s all over now. What money, Toni? What have you been doing?’
‘This money.’ From one of the pockets of her jeans, Toni extracted a damp roll of notes. She took her stepmother’s hand and folded the fingers firmly around the notes. ‘And I seem to have plenty more. So you can tell the court to sod off now, can’t you?’
‘Toni …’
‘Of course, technically, today is my birthday. I am eighteen today. I forgive you for forgetting, with all that’s been going on. So I am now officially a trustafarian. I am an heiress. Actually, I am totally, definitely, no-problems, no-questions, no-argument – rich. The solicitors wrote me months ago. They paid out last week, because of the bank holiday. Sweet, eh?’
‘Toni …’ Bel’s face scrambled. Her eyes ached. Her breath wouldn’t behave. She was going to cry. But this was all a disaster. She’d forgotten the birthday. The big birthday. And Toni was going to get into trouble.
‘Don’t cry, Mum.’ With more emotion than practice, Toni gave her a hug. Bel burst into tears. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything. I’m happy here now. I like it. It’s cool. I’m going to stay here and finish at college and then go to art school or something. I might have to get married, of course.’
This was too much. Bel let out a howl that brought Garrick into the room at a wobbling canter.
‘I don’t mean like, have to get married. You’re so old-fashioned, people haven’t done that for a hundred years. Honestly, it’s like living in a bloody Jane Austen novel round here.’
‘Well, what do you mean?’ demanded Bel, wondering what would be so wrong with living in a Jane Austen novel.
‘I mean, I might get married.’
‘To that boy. Volvo, whatever his name is. You’re much too young.’
‘Tolvo. I don’t mean big-deal married. Just for a first marriage, sort of thing. If he gets into any hassle with the Immigration. By the way, do you mind if he stays here? Just until he gets a job and can get his own place?’
By all the laws of nature, such as nature was understood in London at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it was inevitable that one day Clare Marlow would be lunched by a television producer. Since that magic Monday when film of her falling off a horse on the hunting field had swept the evening news bulletins and started a political firestorm, she had never been out of the headlines.
She had managed the row over her resignation superbly, grabbing every opportunity, to denounce the government’s policy on so-called responsible land use as nothing but a shamefully corrupt exercise in letting the rich get richer while the poor got shafted.
There really had been something of the Joan of Arc about her, sitting in one TV studio after another with her broken shoulder in a cast, eviscerating the opposition, debunking the jargon, waxing passionate about the degradation of rural culture and the disenfranchisement of the rural population. People were talking openly about the post-democratic age now, all thanks to Clare Marlow.
She seemed to have the political Midas touch, the ability to make events over which she had no logical control start working out in her favour. As if God, or something, was on her side, another big scandal blew up around genetically modified potatoes, which, when fried in oil from genetically modified maize, turned out to give lab rats a whole new kind of cancer. Never in the history of parliamentary debate had anyone ever said ‘I told you so’with as much style as Clare Marlow.
So now, she was something of a national heroine, posing for fashion spreads celebrating her famously windswept elegance, inviting the readers of celebrity magazines into the country kitchen of her lovely home and, of course, working on her first novel. The next step in her public life really was inevitable.
‘I don’t know if you’ve ever watched I’m A Celebrity,’ the producer began. Softly, softly.
‘As in – Get Me Out Of Here? But of course. It was ground-breaking, reality TV, in its day, of course.’
‘Absolutely. That’s why we’re going to bring it back. After we fix a few of the problems with the old format, of course.’
‘Problems?’
‘The main thing was recognition. They couldn’t get real celebrities. It was down to the Z-list by the second series. We think the key is to stick to the A-list. Which means managing the programme rather differently.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Take the mud, for example. It had a tendency just to look dirty. We want a different sort of mud that looks really – muddy.’
‘People had to eat maggots and things, didn’t they?’
‘Oh, you mean the bush tucker challenge? That was actually very popular. With the viewers. We’re keeping that. They’ll be more like grubs than actual maggots, really. Nothing that in the bush lifestyle of the Native Australian would not be considered a normal part of the diet. So what we’re going to do is give every group of celebrities a native guide to teach them what are the wholesome bugs to eat and how to prepare them. But I think the bush tucker thing will only be something that’s voted in for the unpopular contestants. The viewers have to dislike someone enough to make them do that. It wouldn’t be a problem for you. Not at all.’
Clare twirled her glass of water. He was lying, of course, but that was natural. As for mud – well, she could do mud. 1) money, 2) politics, 3) television. It was all working out according to plan.
Copyright
First published in 2004 by Time Warner
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Celia Brayfield, 2004
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