Strictly Between Us

by Jane Fallon

  ‘They’re just stupid,’ I said, embarrassed at being elevated to hero status so quickly. ‘You don’t have to come to Warehouse with me, by the way. I don’t even know if there really is a sale on …’

  But Michelle had already linked her arm through mine. ‘Let’s go and have a look anyway. I’ll buy you a Coke to say thanks.’

  And the rest, as they say, is history.

  3

  After Bus-gate Michelle and I were inseparable through school. We even lived together after we left college, until we each bought our own tiny places in a fit of would-be-grown-up, late-twenty-something angst. We had both landed in our chosen careers young – me in television, Michelle in marketing – so by this point we were starting to earn enough to crawl onto the bottom of the property ladder with the help of 100 per cent mortgages, postage-stamp-size properties and areas where people weren’t only scared to go out, they were scared to stay in.

  The reason I ended up in the TV industry is down to her by the way. Or, really, her dad. I always thought it was the most glamorous thing ever that Mr Franklin – Julian as he eventually forced me to call him, even though I resisted as long as I could – worked for the BBC when we were growing up. I used to imagine his days filled with glamorous encounters with stars, long lunches and glasses of champagne. Of course, I know better now – apart from the long lunches that is. You try raising anyone at the BBC on the phone between midday and three thirty.

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, by the time we were about to graduate he had moved to Channel 4. Michelle steadfastly refused the foot on the bottom rung that he offered her. She wanted to do something on her own, she said. She didn’t want people to say she had only been offered a job because of who her dad was. I, on the other hand, didn’t even think twice. It was hard enough to get a job as it was, let alone in an industry you would have killed to enter. Let them say I was nepotized. I couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

  Julian had looked a little taken aback.

  ‘Oh. Would you like to?’

  ‘I’d bite your arm off,’ I said. ‘Figuratively, of course.’

  Miriam – Michelle’s mum – had laughed. ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘All I can do is open the door,’ Julian said. ‘What you do after that will be up to you.’

  ‘That’s all I need. I won’t let you down, honestly.’

  So, I started as a gopher and, eventually and with Julian’s blessing, worked my way up, moving on to bigger and better things. If he was disappointed that it was me and not his daughter who was his protégé he managed not to show it. Years later, when I told him I was setting up Castle, I saw his eyes go a little misty and I knew that he was proud of me.

  Anyhow, the point of me telling you all this is that this is how I met Patrick. He works in TV, too, but as a commissioner. That means he sits in an office and decides who to give the company’s money to. He’s like one of the millionaires off Dragon’s Den, but it’s not even his own fortune he’s playing with. These days he’s the big boss at the Home Improvement Channel – a humungous fish in an extremely tiny unloved, slightly smelly pond – but when we met he was the deputy deputy assistant something or other at Channel 5 and I had gone in to pitch him an idea for a new series. I forget what it was now. He didn’t go for it. He didn’t even like it enough to pass it up to his bosses actually.

  I have to confess that for a brief moment when we first met I fancied him. He fits my ideal physical profile. Tallish. Angular. Icy blue eyes. He’s stupidly good looking. Stupidly in the sense that when you get over the initial impact it becomes very apparent very quickly that he’s not in the least bit attractive. He’s way too aware of his looks, of the power they have. He’s a classic mirror watcher.

  The tiny crush I had completely withered and died the day I went in for a second meeting with him a while later. I’d been looking forward to it. I was planning on batting my eyelashes at him across his desk. The office runner – a timid girl who was probably being paid expenses only for the privilege of the experience – had brought us coffee. Patrick took one sip of his and practically spat it out.

  ‘God, that’s disgusting,’ he said, scowling.

  The runner – who no doubt had a crush on him herself – looked crestfallen.

  ‘Do you want me to make you another one?’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ he said imperiously. ‘I’m not going to drink this shit.’

  I was embarrassed, didn’t know where to look. The runner went to pick up my mug, too, but I put my hand out to stop her.

  ‘Mine’s fine, thanks.’

  Patrick snorted. ‘Let her get you a new one. It’s what she’s for.’

  No way was it possible to have a crush on that man after that.

  When I saw him hone in on Michelle at an industry party – I had taken her as my plus one – I’d tried to warn her that he was a bit of an arsehole, but she was smitten in an instant. And to be fair, so was he. I had bumped into him with a series of perfect tiny blonde girlfriends by this point, so I should have known she’d be his ideal type. I bit my tongue. Rule number one of any good friendship: never criticize their choice of partner. They might end up marrying them. And, unfortunately, she did.

  I’ve always thought she could have done better in all honesty. OK, so he’s good looking, he’s successful, he loves her. But he’s a bit of – actually make that a lot of – a knob. I’ve seen that Little Prince side of him many times over the years. With waiters or shop assistants or cleaners. People he clearly thinks are beneath him. It’s ugly but I suppose I’ve got used to it. God knows what that says about me. As for Michelle, she doesn’t even seem to notice. Even five years on she’s blinded by love.

  Oh, and the reason Patrick ended up as one of the Home Improvement Channel’s head honchos by the way? Michelle’s dad, Julian. He’s now the Chairman of a company that owns a whole slate of cable channels. He’s Rupert Murdoch without the millions or the scandal. And who better to entrust one of those channels to than his beloved son-in-law? And why not? It’s the next best thing to Michelle taking an interest. He knows he can rely on him. Knows he’ll do a good job.

  I still don’t much like Patrick if I’m being honest (‘Really?’ I hear you shout. ‘You’ve just had sex with him, haven’t you?’). But he can be good company. He’s funny. He’s smart. He can just be a bit entitled. More than a little pleased with himself. He makes Michelle happy, though, and that’s the main thing. And I’ve never questioned whether or not he loves her. Until recently that is. Recently I’ve started to have my doubts about him. Suspicions even.

  And that’s where this all started. Somehow my suspecting that he might be up to no good has led to him being up to no good. With me.

  Fucked-up doesn’t even come close.

  So, Michelle and Patrick, happily married, blah blah blah. A couple of months ago, though, I picked up an odd whisper at work. Someone I was talking to about a new show idea that we were going to try and sell to the Home Improvement Channel made a joke about how we should send Lucy in to pitch it (Lucy is tall, thin, pretty and only twenty-six. Maybe this is the reason I dislike her so much).

  ‘Patrick Mitchell’d probably commission it on the spot,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, genuinely confused.

  ‘He likes them young and pretty, apparently.’

  I was so taken aback I didn’t say anything at first and then, annoyingly, Ian rushed in saying, ‘I’m sure that’s not true, he’s married to Tamsin’s closest friend,’ so I never got the chance to ge
t to the bottom of it.

  I dismissed it then because our business is full of rumour and gossip and you have to listen to every piece of news you’re given through a hundred denier bullshit filter. Especially if it’s about the commissioners. It’s like any other line of work. People love to have a go at the bosses. I do it myself and then I have to remember that in my own small world I’m also a boss, so I try to curb myself.

  Then it happened again. Different person, same sort of comment. And again. It started to become hard to ignore. I tried asking around, but everyone would clam up the moment they remembered that Patrick was my friend’s husband. They would change the subject and start savaging another unsuspecting target. Someone I had no vested interest in. So, for a while I did nothing. To be honest I couldn’t really believe it was true. Admittedly Patrick could be a bit of a flirt, but if you sentenced everyone on that basis then the cheaters’ prison would be full to overflowing. Plus I always thought it came with the job. Networking, schmoozing, flirting, what’s the difference really? It’s all just a way of getting what you want.

  So I tried to convince myself it was just idle speculation; there was no hard evidence to back any of it up. And besides, it was none of my business. Unfortunately that last argument really didn’t resonate with me, but I kept repeating it to myself anyway. I put up a sign in my mind: KEEP OUT. Every time I got the urge to say something to Patrick or, God forbid, Michelle about what I’d heard I would try to visualize it. Sometimes with a little man hammering it into the ground.

  I confided in Bea quite a lot at this time. Have I already told you how much I love Bea? She’s hands down the best assistant I have ever had, and I’ve had a few. With a couple of them I ended up being way too matey, so in the end I could hardly bring myself to ask them to photocopy a document because I was so worried it would come across as demeaning. A couple of others brought out the cold, hard Devil Wears Prada ice queen in me. I have no idea why. One I was downright petrified of. The first few times I asked her to do something she pulled an expression that implied I’d suggested she clean the toilet with her bare hands, and after that I could barely get up the courage to talk to her. God knows what she did all day but it wasn’t anything to do with me. She didn’t last long. Of course I was too scared to fire her, so I bigged her up around the industry and eventually, mercifully, someone poached her. Good assistants are like gold dust.

  With Bea, somehow, everything has fallen into place. Right from the moment she walked into the interview I knew we’d be a good fit. She didn’t say ‘Totes amazeballs’ for a start, like the girl who was in before her. Nor did she announce that really she was just filling in time before she got a ‘proper job’.

  ‘Tried that,’ she’d said, smiling expansively. ‘I spent six years working in banking, comparing myself to my contemporaries, worrying about how quickly I could work my way up, and then I realized I hated everything about it. Now I just want to do something I think I’ll enjoy and not even think about where it might lead later.’

  ‘So why TV?’ I had asked. One of my standard questions.

  ‘It’s creative. There’s a product coming out at the end, not just another row of numbers. I like the idea of being part of a team all trying to achieve the same thing – even if I’m only a tiny part. I think it would be satisfying.’

  It was a done deal before she even left the room. I actually chased her out to the lift and offered her the job on the spot after Anne Marie and I had quickly agreed we were never going to find anyone better.

  The thing about Bea is that she’s a grown-up. Yes, she’s smart and could probably handle a more senior position, but she has the sense and maturity to realize that she doesn’t have the experience yet. She’s happy to do her time. Unlike a lot of the younger PAs I’ve had (Bea is thirty-one, the others ranged from twenty-three to twenty-eight, and I think those few years make all the difference) she understands that this isn’t a race.

  I don’t even let myself think about what will happen when she decides to move on. I’ve asked her to let me know well in advance so that I can bring someone new in early and she can train them to be her clone. It’s not going to happen for a while yet. When she started she told me she was happy to do what she was doing for three years and she’s only just had her first anniversary. I’m already scheming about what position I could create that would make her stay and move up the ladder with us. For all I care she could have my job and I’d stay and work for her, that’s how much I rate her.

  I’ve always felt that I can ask her to do anything. At the beginning I kept it strictly to office business, but as we got to know each other better and she made it clear she was happy to look after every aspect of my life if I needed her to, I started to feel OK with her collecting my dry cleaning, making bikini-waxing appointments, once nipping round to my old flat to take Ron for a walk when I had to work late. When I went on a rare date a while ago she even went to Westfield and bought Spanx for me. Nothing is too much trouble. She never complains, never does that slight eye-roll thing that Lucy has down to a T whenever Ian asks her to go the extra mile. Her whole ethic is about making sure I’m supported and that any pressure that can be taken off me is taken off, leaving me to get on with my job.

  Plus, we’ve become friends. We’re allies. We often take twenty minutes out to have a coffee or a walk round Brook Green and chat about whatever’s going on. She’s become a great sounding board and I’d like to think I’m the same for her. She’s very discreet. I never feel like I have to bite my tongue in case something I say ends up in the wrong hands. Like I said before, she’s a grown-up.

  So, it was inevitable that I would find myself confiding my fears about Patrick to her. She’s never met him, but she knows his name, of course. There are only a handful of commissioners that we deal with – basically each of the broadcasters has one person who commissions all their factual entertainment programmes, and during their tenure they become the most important people for programme-makers like me to suck up to. Then they leave and go back to being one of us in an instant. Worse off often, if they’ve pissed off a lot of people during their reign. Instant karma.

  We were huffing around Brook Green. My latest half-arsed attempt to get fit. This was my third day of bringing my trainers into work and attempting to ‘power walk’ for half an hour at lunchtime. Previous form dictated that after two more sessions I would forget I’d ever started. Bea had agreed to accompany me and was barely breaking a sweat while I was already regretting the fact that I hadn’t brought a clean top to change into later.

  ‘Don’t listen to gossip’ was the first thing that came out of her mouth.

  ‘I don’t. Not usually. It’s hard to ignore when it’s about a friend of yours, though.’

  ‘Have you noticed how people almost always gossip upwards. Because they’re jealous. Or they’re bitter that they’re still doing a shitty little job while someone else has done well for themselves.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that it’s all on a similar theme. It feels like too much of a coincidence. Slow down a bit.’

  She ignored my request. ‘That’s because every time someone passes on a piece of gossip they big it up. It makes them feel important. So then it spreads like a virus.’

  I stopped. Seemingly for dramatic effect, but really so I could catch my breath. Trust me to start exercising when it was eighty degrees out.

  ‘Shit. I wish I knew if there was any substance at all behind it.’

  ‘Ignore it and it’ll go away, that’s my advice.’

  ‘Just do me a favour and keep your ears open, will you? Everyone cla
ms up when they realize he’s married to my best friend.’

  ‘OK,’ Bea said, setting off again. I fell in beside her. ‘But I still say you shouldn’t listen to any of it.’

  ‘I know. I won’t. I just want to know what “it” is.’

  Since then she’s reluctantly reported back the odd thing but, of course, none of it’s substantiated. All along the same lines: Patrick Mitchell can’t resist an attractive woman.

  Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but look at him a bit differently. I’d notice a flirty gesture. It started to bother me how often Michelle would suggest I come over or we go out, because Patrick was at some do or other. I know there’s a certain amount of socializing that comes with his job, but I got it into my head that he was making up excuses to go out without Michelle tagging along. See, this is the problem with gossip and conjecture: it makes you misinterpret every little gesture. Patrick wasn’t being any different to usual but suddenly everything had a significance. And I got a little bit obsessed, I won’t lie. I felt as if I had to protect Michelle like I’ve always protected her. I couldn’t be myself when I saw them together any more.

  I know it’s not easy to see how I got from this state of righteous indignation to having sex with him myself. Of course it isn’t. It makes no sense to me either. But the next thing that happened was what galvanized me into action.

  Bea and I were eating lunch in my office, chatting idly about nothing much in particular.

  ‘You didn’t get a chance to ask around about Patrick Mitchell, did you?’ I asked when we’d exhausted our other conversation. I hadn’t wanted to put Bea on the spot, but I’d been dying to find out if there was any fresh news.

  Bea was quiet.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s probably not true,’ Bea said, taking a big bite out of her brie and cranberry baguette. That woman never seems to need to watch what she eats.