by Jane Lythell
‘Hello, Ron, Liz Lyon here. We need to talk tonight. We need to set the date for the job as a matter of urgency. Please call me on my mobile as soon as you get this. Thank you.’
Later, I made mugs of tea and carried one through to Flo.
‘Did you put sugar in, Mum?’
‘One level spoon, like you always say.’
‘Rosie’s given up on sugar altogether and I’m going to try.’
I sensed she might want to talk but all evening I’d been looking forward to watching Douglas Pitlochry do his bulletin. I sat on our sofa and put on the television. He has this way of raising his eyebrows as he finishes linking into a story as if to say ‘take a look at this, it’s so interesting.’ I noticed again what good shoulders he had and how well his jacket fitted him. Flo wandered in and joined me on the sofa.
‘You don’t normally watch this channel,’ she said.
It was true, I didn’t, but I hadn’t expected her to notice and could feel my face getting hot. I wondered whether to tell her about my date. She is fiercely loyal to her dad and usually hostile at the idea of me dating anyone. I had always kept Todd well in the background and decided not to say anything now. At the end of the bulletin Douglas looked into camera and said thanks for watching and gave a crooked smile and I found myself smiling back at the screen foolishly.
9
StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge
I’d left Flo in bed and reminded her to leave herself plenty of time to get the noon train from Paddington. As I walked to the Tube I realised I’d got ten days ahead of me completely on my own and a date on Thursday. It was a good feeling and there was a spring in my step.
Julius was due back tomorrow and I kept the meeting as short as possible. Fizzy rang me as I got into my office. She sounded excited and asked me to come over to hers, preferably that evening, as she had an idea she wanted to discuss with me as soon as possible. She wouldn’t be drawn on what her idea was but urged me to come over so I said I’d pop round after work. With Flo away I could go out every evening if I wanted to.
I went down to get a coffee from the Hub and saw Henry, our senior floor manager, queuing in front of me.
‘Got a minute, Liz?’
We took our coffees outside to the back of the studio because Henry wanted to smoke. He is one of the last smokers left in the station and occasionally I will bum a cigarette from him. He offered me his packet.
‘Oh, go on then,’ I said, and he lit my cigarette.
Henry is tall, well over six feet, and has a solemn almost severe face, but when he smiles his face is transformed and becomes wry and mischievous. He’s in his mid-forties and I always think he looks like he should be in a Western; the kind of seasoned man who would ride into a town and sort out the bad guys, like Gary Cooper in High Noon, my dad’s favourite film. He doesn’t say a lot but he is someone you can trust in a crisis. He wasn’t smiling as he took a deep drag of his cigarette and squinted at me as the smoke escaped from his lips.
‘What’s eating Ledley?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘This morning he complained that I didn’t bring the guest in early enough.’
‘No?’
‘Yes, chewed my ear off, in the studio too.’
Henry is our most experienced floor manager and an absolute rock. I’ve never known him bring a guest in late unless we’ve had a problem getting them out of make-up. I could see why Ledley’s rebuke had rankled. And the fact that Ledley had done it in earshot of the camera and sound crew was not on.
‘Bad move! That’s not like Ledley.’
‘Not like the old Ledley,’ Henry said wryly.
‘Don’t let it get to you. You’re the best,’ I said.
We smoked in silence and drank our coffees. There was an outside broadcast truck parked in the yard and we watched an engineer working on it, lying on one of those trollies on wheels that go under cars. He wheeled himself out and stood up.
‘It’s buggered,’ he said.
He started talking to Henry about suspension and engines and they might have been talking Klingon as far as I was concerned. I said goodbye and headed back in.
*
As I had expected, the crook builder Osborne did not call me back last night nor did he call me this morning. He’s avoiding me and I’ve had enough of his games. At lunchtime I logged into my home account and got up the form on the Brennan Investigations website. I typed:
I would like to trace the address of a builder called Ron Osborne. I paid him a deposit of £1,000 in February to build new French doors. He has failed to undertake the work. His company is called Ron Osborne Maintenance UK Ltd. I need his address so that I can serve legal papers on him.
I typed in his mobile number and his email address and ended my message:
Can you help me with this?
The cavalier way he kept postponing my job had made me feel helpless and now I felt elated to be taking some action. Two hours later I got a response from Brennan Investigations:
Thank you for your email. I have made some preliminary enquiries and believe we will be able to locate the subject in question.
The cost for this trace would be £125. If you wish to proceed then I can pass you over our bank details and invoice for payment and then we can proceed to locate the subject.
My heart started to beat fast at the words ‘proceed to locate the subject’. It sounded all very skulduggery and thrilling. Was it worth spending a hundred and twenty-five pounds to get back my deposit? I wrote back.
Please do send me your bank details.
I am happy to pay the fee of £125 if this is the final figure. And can you please confirm that this fee only becomes liable if you successfully trace the subject?
Back came an email immediately.
I can confirm in the unlikely event we are unable to locate the subject I will give you a full refund.
As soon as the transfer is complete we can proceed with the trace. I would hope to return the info before the end of this week, all being well.
He had listed their sort code and bank account number.
The deed is done. I have transferred the amount and hired a private detective to do a trace. I felt so excited that I wanted to call Douglas Pitlochry and tell him there and then. But I stopped myself; I would tell him on Thursday when I met him.
*
I left the station at five and headed for Fizzy’s house in Pimlico. Loida opened the door and Fizzy was standing in the living room rocking Zachary in the crook of her arm. She smiled when she saw me and as I bent over to kiss her on the cheek Zachary grabbed my necklace and wouldn’t let go. His little fingers clung to the beads – he had a strong grasp for a small baby. Fizzy was laughing at his antics.
‘What a boy I’ve got,’ she said.
Loida stepped in and extricated my necklace and Fizzy handed Zac over to her.
‘Time for his bath,’ Loida said fondly as she carried him out.
‘Would you like a glass of prosecco, Liz?’
‘Are you having any?’
‘No, sadly, I’m sticking to elderflower and rose pressé. Alcohol gives me an appetite and I’ve a way to go yet.’
She put her hands on her waist and squeezed.
‘Several inches still to shed by September.’
Fizzy is a person who sets great store by how people look and she needs constant reassurance about her appearance.
‘You look fabulous, Fizz. You should have seen me two months after having Flo. I was a zombie in a dressing gown. I’ll have the same as you.’
She poured the pale pink sparkling drink into champagne flutes and we clinked glasses. I took a sip. The bubbles fizzed in my mouth and the taste was perfumed, like a scent caught in a drink.
‘Now I know I said there’d be no photos of Zac shown on screen but I’ve been thinking about it. It’s not unreasonable for the viewers to want to see Zac, is it? I mean, they sent me all those toys and bootees and shawls,’ Fizzy said
.
As well as all the toys, we had received loads of hand-knitted baby clothes after Fizzy had announced her pregnancy on air. Looking into camera, she had confessed to the viewers that she was going to have the baby as a lone parent as the father was married. She had said she deeply regretted her mistake in getting involved with a married man and that part of her life was over for ever. Her on-screen act of contrition, which had infuriated Julius, had done the reverse with our forgiving and generous audience and the knitted baby clothes had started to arrive from all corners of the UK. We had donated these to refugee camps in Calais and further afield and we were still getting a trickle in to the station.
‘They have been amazingly generous. They love you,’ I said.
‘So I had this brainwave. I’m going to hire a top portrait photographer to take a mother and baby shot of me and Zac. I want the man who did Prince George.’
‘Wow...’
‘I want something extremely tasteful. And I’m willing to share the best shot on StoryWorld – only one photo and it won’t be broadcast anywhere else.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you like it. I think it gives the viewers something back without anyone being able to accuse me of cashing in on my baby.’
‘Absolutely; the sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned. There is tremendous interest in Zachary.’
‘Maybe we should hold it for my first day back?’
‘Good plan. We could get the photographer in too,’ I said.
It amused me that Fizzy wanted the royal photographer for this but then Zachary had been born into the mad world of celebrity royalty. Fizzy took a sip of her drink.
‘There’s something else...’
She hesitated and gave me a thoughtful look as if she was weighing up how much to say. I waited.
‘I’ve also come to the realisation that Bob has a right to see Zac. He’s been a total shit, of course, but Zac is his son. I can’t let him near the house for obvious reasons.’
‘No, I can see that.’
She put her glass down delicately on the coffee table and turned her body towards me.
‘Liz, would you do me a huge favour and host a meeting between us at your flat? He could go there incognito, you see.’
I was startled at her suggestion and reluctant to go along with it. Being the go-between would make Bob hate me even more. It would reinforce his view that I had influence with Fizzy and easy access to Zachary which he was being denied. I gave her a brief rundown of what had happened at the awards ceremony.
‘What an idiot. Blabbing about me at a place heaving with TV folk,’ she said crossly.
‘That’s what I thought. And I think this would be like throwing petrol on the flames.’
‘I know you have issues with him. I know he’s been rude to you, but I thought you’d see that he does have a certain right.’
I was casting around for a diplomatic way to say I couldn’t host their meeting when I remembered that Fizzy’s birthday was coming up soon.
‘I’ve got another idea which might work better. Let’s get you in on your birthday and we’ll have a small party in the meeting room. We’ll invite staff to come along and see Zachary. All the teams have been asking about him. We’ll lay on tea and cake and it would be the most natural thing in the world for Bob to drop by. There would be safety in numbers.’
‘Maybe. Yes, I guess it could work, but not on my birthday. I’m taking Zac to Burnley on my birthday. Granny’s on her last legs.’
Fizzy came from Burnley and her family still lived there. Her grandmother was a fearsome Baptist who was now in the last stages of dementia.
‘We’re leaving for Burnley on Saturday. Let’s do it this Friday,’ she said.
‘Fine by me.’
‘I’m sure Martine will help you organise it. And champagne with the cake, please, not tea; after all, it is a celebration,’ Fizzy said.
From another room we heard Zachary start to cry and as his wail got louder Fizzy got up.
‘Don’t go. Stay and have some supper.’
I have the impression that Fizzy does not have many women friends and must feel lonely at times. Her life has revolved around her career and her men. She has the money and the celebrity but few friends and no privacy and she relies on Loida a great deal.
I called Flo who told me she had arrived safely in Portsmouth and had installed herself in what used to be Ben’s bedroom. She sounded reasonably cheerful. The trip to the hotel on the Isle of Wight was still on and they would be going on Friday and staying till Sunday.
‘Did you know that’s where Granddad proposed to Granny, in the garden there?’ she said.
‘No, I didn’t. How lovely.’
Fizzy came back after five minutes.
‘Loida is so much better than me at getting him off to sleep,’ she said.
Supper was a small salad with goat’s cheese drizzled with balsamic vinegar but no oil. We ate this off pretty plates in her dining room. This was followed by low-fat frozen yoghurt with a handful of blueberries. The yoghurt tasted thin to me. I was missing the dairy richness of ice cream. The whole supper made me think of the sacrifices on-screen presenters have to make every day to keep their figures and to live up to a camera ideal. Fizzy was a new mum yet she was making herself eat a low-calorie diet. Not for the first time I was grateful that I was a behind-the-camera person. We could hear Loida moving around the house but there was no further sound from Zachary.
‘Does he sleep straight through already?’
‘Oh no, he’ll wake up some time before midnight for another bottle. Then he will sleep for about five hours.’
‘That’s pretty good, you know. How will you cope with that when you come back to work?’
‘Loida’s staying on and she’ll do the late and early bottles. When I’m back at work I have to be in bed at ten at the latest to get my seven hours’ sleep.’
‘I’m sure. And you feel OK about coming back in two weeks?’
‘I have to, and I’m ready for it.’
We moved back to her sitting room and after a while we agreed we should open the bottle of prosecco after all. By our second glass we were drifting into more confessional territory.
‘Are you on your own now, Liz? Didn’t your man go back to Oz?’
‘Todd, yes, last autumn and he won’t be coming back. He’s hooked up with an old girlfriend in Sydney.’
‘Shame, he was an attractive man.’
I nodded and drank some prosecco which I was enjoying more than the elderflower and rose pressé.
‘He was never my man in the full sense of the word. We dated for two years but he never got fully involved in my life. He never got to know Flo, for instance.’
‘That was your choice though?’
‘Yes. She’s loyal to her dad and I don’t see the point of introducing men into our lives unless it’s the real thing,’ I said.
‘Ahh, the much talked about “real thing”...’ She leaned back against the sofa and tucked her knees under her. ‘I’m not sure I believe in the “real thing” any more.’
There was wistfulness in her voice and as I looked at her I thought she’s about to be thirty-nine and she’s on her own, with a baby, working in a fiercely competitive industry. We have more in common than we did before Zachary was born.
‘They never leave their wives, you know,’ she said.
She was thinking about Bob but also about Geoff. I wondered why she was attracted to married men if she wanted to have someone more permanent in her life. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps what she really wanted was to have the attention but not the commitment.
‘It’s strange, but when you’re a teen or in your twenties you really think that meeting the right man is going to complete your life. But it doesn’t work out like that, does it? Well, it didn’t for me. You have to be prepared to create your own life,’ I said.
‘What you’re saying is that men are a disappointment,’
she said as she drained her glass.
I laughed but it was a sad laugh.
‘Definitely a disappointment; the only man who never disappointed me was my dad and he died when I was twenty-three.’
The image of Douglas Pitlochry’s face flashed into my mind and I knew I wouldn’t mention him.
Chalk Farm flat, 11 p.m.
It was late but the prosecco and our conversation had had its effect and I made a mug of tea, opened a packet of ginger nuts and googled Douglas Pitlochry. He has a Wikipedia entry and I munched my way through the biscuits while reading that he is forty-seven and was born in Perthshire in Scotland. His family had a small farm there which was sold when he was seven years old and the family moved to England, to Norfolk, where his father became a farm manager. I know Norfolk because my dad’s last job was at the university there and I thought it seemed a strange move from Scotland to East Anglia, from mountains to flatness and fenland. I wondered what the story behind that was. He went to school in Norwich and the first newspaper he worked on was the Eastern Daily Press. He made the switch to broadcasting via local radio followed by a stint at Anglia Television where he was spotted and elevated to his role on News Nine. He had been married for twenty-one years to a Claire Cooper-Pitlochry. They were now separated but not divorced. They had a son called Stewart who was twenty years old.
I clicked onto the images button and photos of Douglas filled my screen. I spent a lot of time looking at these, thinking, What sort of a man are you? I have always thought him clean-cut and wholesome-looking rather than handsome but I liked the openness of his face.
Next I looked up Claire Cooper-Pitlochry – that name was a mouthful. There was less about her, no Wikipedia entry, but a few references and I gleaned that she ran an online business called Claire Cooper Interiors. There was a link to a Mail Online article which claimed that she had left Douglas to go off with a man who ran a safari park, of all things. I clicked on her images link and several pictures of a thin blonde woman with straight hair and a long fringe looked out at me. She was attractive but it wasn’t the friendliest of faces. She’s nothing like me at all, I thought, as I made myself put the biscuits away and finally got ready for bed.