Having It All

by Maeve Haran

  Suddenly Liz realized how much she longed to talk to someone who would understand, who wouldn’t think she was a freak or a madwoman like Mel and Britt did. And even David.

  ‘That’d be terrific.’ Liz dipped a finger in the delicious sauce. ‘OK. I’ll pull myself together and go and see how Confessions of a Sex-Starved Magazine Editor is getting on.’

  ‘Tell them lunch is ready, would you?’

  Liz walked through the French windows into the garden. There were shrieks of ecstasy from the paddling pool at the far end of the garden as Gavin splashed the children. Mel sat smiling dreamily into her glass, obviously wondering what her toy boy would have in store tonight. Britt, lounging on a rug, was laughing up at David in a wicker chair.

  ‘Right, you lot, out. Lunch is ready,’ she called to Gavin and the children.

  ‘Come on, David.’ Britt began to pull him up. ‘Let’s go and see what Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’s got out of the store cupboard.’ They both collapsed with laughter.

  Comparing Ginny with Beatrix Potter’s houseproud hedgehog was so blisteringly accurate and yet so utterly cruel that Liz found herself glancing round to see if Ginny could hear. She was standing on the back step. She couldn’t have missed it.

  Furious with the two of them, Liz ran down the garden and scooped Jamie out of the paddling pool.

  So she missed seeing how, just for a fraction of a second, Britt brushed against David as he got up. And she didn’t notice the look of excitement that crossed David’s face as he wondered if the come-on was deliberate.

  But Ginny did.

  CHAPTER 9

  Damn! There were no parking spaces within half a mile of Waterloo Station and Liz was already late. She was supposed to meet Ginny from her train at eight-thirty. Their table at Mon Plaisir was booked for half an hour’s time and they’d be pushed to make it. She’d just have to park down by the river and walk.

  ‘Could you spare a pound for a cup o’ tea, missus?’

  Just as she turned into the underpass leading to the station Liz was accosted by an Irishman who looked like tea was low on his list of favourite beverages. Since when had a cup of tea cost a pound, Liz wondered, delving in her bag for some coins, unless you bought it across the river at the Savoy?

  She hadn’t gone another ten yards before a second man approached her, then another. Beginning to feel annoyed as Ginny would be starting to worry, she walked faster. But as she hurried down into the underpass she realized there was something unusual about these last two. They weren’t the old dossers familiar in every city. They were young. Not so different from any other teenagers.

  Turning the corner, into the wide open space under the roundabout, she stopped in amazement. She’d seen Cardboard City on television, but ludicrously enough, though she ran a TV company, she’d never encountered it before in reality.

  She saw at once how it earned its title. Even though it was so early hundreds of homeless people, young and old, were bedding down for the night, building makeshift homes out of cardboard boxes. The old hands had fashioned elaborate shelters like small houses, draping blankets over the top to serve as roofs.

  A small group of old men and teenagers searched through a pile of worn overcoats, just delivered by a charity to serve as blankets for those who had none. Someone had lit a fire next to one of the concrete pillars holding up the roundabout and it glowed incongruously, as though it belonged not here in this soulless wasteland but in the cosy grate of some Edwardian villa.

  For a moment Liz couldn’t believe she was in England. Brazil maybe, or some poor banana republic but not London, less than a mile from the House of Commons and Buckingham Palace.

  And as she hurried past, eager to reach the reassuring bright lights and piped music of the station, Liz was stopped in her tracks by the most pathetic sight she’d ever seen. It was a bed made out of two old mattresses stacked on top of each other. But unlike all the other makeshift beds covered with tatty sleeping bags and filthy old coats, this one was perfectly made up with threadbare sheets and blankets neatly tucked in and a pillowcase stuffed with newspaper. Next to it was an upturned cardboard box, a rough and ready bedside table.

  Out of all this hopelessness and devastation someone had tried to create a little home, a haven of their own against all the odds.

  As she stumbled up the steps to the station, Liz felt her eyes stinging with tears and she knew one thing for certain. Metro TV would have to do something to help these people.

  ‘So, Lizzie, what’s up?’ Ginny smiled across the restaurant table at her friend encouragingly. ‘That didn’t sound like you the other day at all.’

  ‘I know.’ Liz smiled wistfully. ‘It’s just that everybody thinks I’m perfect and the truth is it’s such a struggle holding my life together. I’ve always wanted to be a success and now that I am I’m not really happy. It’s crazy really but I just don’t seem to be able to fit everything into my life and have any corners left for me. What with work and children and trying to run the house and see my friends occasionally I’m always exhausted! I just feel there ought to be more to life somehow.’

  ‘Doesn’t David help out now that you’re so busy?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course he does a bit but he’s a man, Ginny, and you know what they’re like! One visit to the supermarket lasts five years in the male memory, and they start saying “But I always do the shopping”!’

  Ginny giggled. ‘I know what you mean. But can’t you cut back on anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. I keep trying to, but there’s so much to do. And somehow you feel you’ve got to be not only as good as a man would be in the job, but better!’

  ‘I don’t know where you get the energy.’

  ‘Neither do I. Sometimes I have this fantasy that I disappear to the cottage and let the lot of them sort everything out without me.’

  ‘But you’d never do it. You’re used to being at the hub of things. You’d be bored to tears.’

  ‘Would I? Would I really?’ Liz looked serious for a moment. ‘I suppose you’re probably right.’

  Mel rewound her answering machine and listened to the tape again. She knew that it was useless, that there was no message from Garth on it, but somehow she had to put herself through another two minutes of fruitless hoping. Maybe it was hiding right at the end and she’d missed it last time.

  Nothing. Zilch. And it had been a whole week since they’d spent that glorious night together. A week of jumping every time the phone went, of washing her hair every morning in case he turned up at the office, and not once going to bed in her make-up but putting it on fresh every day. Instead the phone didn’t ring and she had the curious feeling that if he had come into Femina’s offices, he’d chosen the moment deliberately to avoid her.

  The strain was killing her. If he didn’t call by tomorrow she’d shred the Janet Reger knickers she’d bought specially and post them to him.

  Men and women understand each other so well, she thought ferociously. I see it as the beginning of thirty happy years together, to him it’s a one night stand.

  And it wasn’t as though he could have lost her number, she didn’t even have that sop to her dignity. He worked for Femina, for Christ’s sake! And anyway, she’d left it on his answering machine. Twice. Maybe, in retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea. On the other hand, Mel, with the optimism born of knowing ten available women to every available man, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and conclude he must be away. Irresistibly her finger snaked towards the dial.

  Maybe she’d better leave just one more tiny message, just to be on the safe side.

  After three rings his answering machine clicked on.

  ‘Hi,’ said Garth’s voice, ‘this is Garth. I’m not in at the moment but please leave a message after the tone.’

  Mel thought for a second. Something nice and subtle. Nothing too over the top.

  ‘Hi, Garth, this is Mel. It’s seven o’clock and I am in, so if you’d like to come over and ravish me,
feel free. Byeee.’

  ‘This series on homelessness, Liz,’ Conrad poked the script with his pen as though it were some unpleasant object a cat had deposited on the boardroom table. ‘It looks deeply boring and very, very expensive.’

  OK, thought Liz, here we go. She’d been in the job for two months now and every week she ended up fighting with Conrad to get him to agree to anything more demanding than a gameshow or an entertainment spectacular. She was beginning to think Britt had been right: he’d only brought her in for window-dressing and now that Metro was up and running he was beginning to find her simply a nuisance.

  She’d always known she’d be in for a battle royal over this series. But it wasn’t as though she were continually trying to foist serious programmes on to an unwilling audience. Some of her entertainment projects were turning out to be spectacular successes, and Metro’s viewing figures were enough to make the most hard-bitten advertiser glow.

  But this was one project she was determined to make.

  Ever since that night when she’d seen Cardboard City for herself she’d known Metro had to campaign against this scandal on its own doorstep. But she had to persuade Conrad too. And not just for the sake of the people she’d seen that night but for herself as well. This was a battle she had to win. And be seen to win. She looked at the five Heads of Department sitting round the table. Like the rest of the staff they wanted to know who was in charge. She or Conrad. And they needed to know soon.

  ‘Come on, Conrad,’ Liz decided to start with charm. ‘We’re doing enough gameshows to keep the advertisers in paradise. We have to think of our image as a caring company too. Have you actually seen what it’s like down there?’

  The memory of that pathetic bed had haunted her for days.

  ‘There are thousands of people condemned to live like tramps out on the streets down there as though London’s some shanty town. Young people, not down-and-outs, people who’ve just had a bit of bad luck, all living in cardboard boxes! And not in São Paulo, or Mexico City, but in Westminster! A mile from the mother of bloody parliaments!’

  ‘And have you seen these pathetic losers for yourself?’

  Liz didn’t see the trap she was falling into in time. ‘Yes. Yes I have. I went to Waterloo to meet a friend and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like the Third World.’

  ‘Ah ha. Now we have it. Our newly elevated Programme Controller steps briefly out of her chauffeur-driven Jaguar . . .’ he paused as a nervous titter rippled through the room.

  You bastard! Liz thought furiously. I didn’t even want a bloody Jag!

  ‘. . . and she stumbles into hell for five painful minutes before withdrawing to the Savoy or Covent Garden and then wants to tell the world like Lady Bountiful about the hardship she encountered. Well, you’re too late, sweetie. The world already knows about Cardboard City and it doesn’t give a flying fuck. It’s on the news virtually every month. Or maybe you’re too busy bathing baby to bother watching the news these days? Nobody cares any more. It’s old hat. And you want me to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a series the public is bored with already?’

  The patronizing tone in Conrad’s voice made her want to kick him. ‘Well they shouldn’t be bored! It’s too important for that. And they wouldn’t be, not with the way we’d do it,’ Liz snapped angrily. How dare he imply she was too caught up with motherhood to do her job? ‘We’d make it really come alive for them!’

  ‘And how would we do that?’

  ‘We’d send our own reporter down there to live there, really live there, penniless as the rest of them and film him with a hidden camera. He could tell us how it feels to be at the bottom of the pile and at the same time we’d see some sights that would move even you, Conrad.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ Conrad said silkily. ‘You should be in politics, not television.’

  It was no good. She could see he’d already made up his mind. Nothing she said would make any difference. People said he was hoping for that ultimate accolade – dinner at Number 10. And he wouldn’t get that if he embarrassed the Government by showing the Third World on its doorstep.

  ‘Having given the idea due consideration’ – he smiled wolfishly – ‘I think the idea stinks.’ Conrad pushed the script away from him with his pen as though it really was giving off the unsavoury odour of poverty and failure. ‘So we’re dropping it. I’ve decided to give the money to another department.’

  He turned and smiled at Claudia. Liz had heard they were back together. They’d clearly been plotting this, and taking in the look that passed between them, she could guess where.

  Liz could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on her. They knew as well as she did that this was a direct challenge to her authority. She had to act, make him back down somehow or her credibility would be in tatters. The story would be all round the building by lunchtime. She might as well just clear her desk and get out.

  ‘That’s a pity, Conrad,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Oh yes, Liz. Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I happened to bump into Ben Morgan of the Independent Television Commission at a press do the other night.’ She smiled round at the assembled group. ‘Ben Morgan, you may recall, gave Metro its licence. And he has to make sure we fulfil our obligations.’ She turned back to Conrad. ‘He was talking to the media correspondents from the Guardian and the Sunday Times. They were asking him how he’d make sure that Metro kept its promises about making quality programmes. Ben said he’d be keeping a keen eye on us and he asked me what we were planning.’

  Liz took a sip of her coffee. It was cold, but she wanted to make Conrad wait.

  ‘And what did you tell him?’ Conrad tried to hide his irritation.

  ‘That we’re ploughing a great deal of money into a hardhitting series on homelessness. He was absolutely riveted. It’s an issue he feels strongly about.’ She put down her coffee cup and looked at Conrad. ‘His son ran away from home at sixteen, got into heroin and ended up living in Cardboard City. I suppose it gives you a bit of a personal view on these things. He can’t wait for the series to come on air.’

  Liz tried not to acknowledge the twitching faces she saw around her. Conrad got up and walked from the room, Claudia in tow.

  As soon as the door was closed there was a round of applause. Liz smiled. She’d won Round One. But it was a dangerous game she was playing. She had bumped into Ben Morgan the other night. But he’d been too busy to talk about specific programme ideas. And as far as she knew his son was a hale and hearty youth who lived at home in stockbroker Surrey being waited on hand and foot by his doting parents.

  Am I really Mrs Tiggy-Winkle? A pathetic little creature trying to build a nest to shut out reality? Ginny picked up a tiny bed and put it back in Amy’s doll’s house. Amy always took the furniture from every room and dumped it in a pile in the sitting room. Carefully she put the bed back in the bedroom and looked for the wardrobe. She put it back in its proper place and rummaged through the pile for the tiny dressing table, then the chest of drawers.

  Usually she found this a soothing job, restoring order to this tiny world, but today Britt’s comment kept coming back to her, taking all the pleasure out of it.

  What was she doing for God’s sake? Tidying a bloody doll’s house? She picked up the furniture from the bedroom, threw it on to the floor and walked out of the room.

  The house was unnervingly quiet. Ben was at school and Amy having her nap. The silence when a child was sleeping was so deep it was almost eerie. She supposed it must be because you actually listened to it, your ear tuned to the slightest sound.

  She couldn’t get Britt’s words out of her mind. Maybe Britt had a point. Perhaps she did need something else in her life. But what? Something part time perhaps? There was no way she wanted to get like Liz, pulled in so many different directions that she never had time to enjoy any of them. Her customary cheerfulness returned. She’d start thinking about some possibilities right away. Then she remembered the other thing that was w
orrying her. The look that had passed between David and Britt. It was probably nothing. Ginny knew she wasn’t well versed in the ways of the sophisticated world. All the same she shivered. Maybe her little world here wasn’t so bad after all.

  Conrad sat opposite Liz in the Michelin-starred restaurant he’d chosen with such care and smiled expansively. The meeting with Panther Running Shoes had gone terrifically. He could even forgive her for that business over Ben Morgan yesterday.

  Everything had gone just as he’d planned from the moment the helicopter Panther sent for them had picked them both up and taken them to the company’s HQ in Swindon, where they had spent the morning tying up the details of the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of British television.

  To Conrad’s delight, Panther had agreed to pay £3 million for the privilege of sponsoring Metro’s new sports quizshow. And since Conrad had exaggerated their production costs somewhat, there’d be a healthy profit in it for Metro; also, if he was discreet, for him personally. He certainly needed it. Some of his other concerns were looking decidedly seedy. Of course it was just a short-term measure. A small loan until things perked up.

  He looked over at Liz and smiled. After the Cardboard City business he’d been nervous she might play the virgin protecting her honour and screw the whole deal up. Instead she’d handled herself brilliantly. Tony Adams, Panther’s Chief Executive, had been eating out of her hand. She’d even talked him out of asking for a credit every ten seconds. Of course she didn’t know the real production costs, but there was no reason why she ever should.

  He watched Liz for a moment as she ordered her meal, listening politely to Tony Adams’s stories. He could see the man was attracted to her. But then a little sexual chemistry never did business dealings any harm. And he had to admit she really was a very good-looking woman when she made an effort.

  All right, so he had brought her in as window-dressing, intending to run the company himself, and lately she’d been so troublesome he’d wondered whether it mightn’t be wiser to pay her off. But now he wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t a bad foil for him. He had the financial nous and the ability to be a complete bastard, she had the integrity to soften the blow. And the staff adored her. Even this motherhood crap was getting them a lot of interest.