Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Which made her at once think of football and Oliver Valentine, which took her instantly, wretchedly, straight back to Jack Valentine, which made her feel hopeless and sad. There were so few nice, normal men on the planet, and, depressingly, so very many Simons.

  Chapter 25

  Stick with it, thought Jack. That was the thing. A routine was comfortable and familiar. Routine didn’t invoke much in the anxiety department. Didn’t change, didn’t tax, and didn’t make demands.

  When he’d got back from the hospice he had sat straight down in the middle of the lounge floor and tipped out all his files for the book. In fact, THE book, because it said so in bold marker pen on the side of the box. He didn’t remember having written the words. An act of confidence, he supposed, from more optimistic times. Whatever. It was a joke, any idea he might have had about getting it finished soon. That simply wasn’t going to happen, and he just had to accept it.

  But finish it he would, if not this year than next. It wasn’t much of an ambition. Wasn’t an ambition at all, really. Not now. Now it was more of a need. That he’d finish it, get it published, do whatever it took. Just so he could put those precious words on the flyleaf: for my father, with all my love.

  The file had all still been there when he set off for the studios the following morning. Sorted and organised, looking like business. Looking like he might yet make something of it. Filling him with hope that he actually could.

  ‘You’re wanted,’ Hil announced as soon as she saw him. She nodded. ‘Upstairs. By the boss. One-fifteen.’

  While Jack was busy getting his show out, he didn’t think a great deal about this summons. Which was for the best, he decided afterwards, or he might just have got straight back in his car and gone home.

  ‘I’m not going to waste your time with small talk,’ Graham said. Which told Jack he wasn’t going to like what he was going to hear next. He was getting used to this.

  ‘My contract,’ he said.

  Graham nodded, looking sad. Jack wondered how many years of this sort of meeting had sculpted the sincerity he could see writ upon his face. But he liked Graham. He wouldn’t want his job.

  ‘As you know, we’re making some pretty big changes.’

  Jack nodded too.

  ‘One of which is with the daytime schedules.’

  ‘And my show’s axed.’

  Graham sighed now. ‘You got it, mate. I’m sorry.’

  Jack shifted in his chair and crossed his legs. He thought Graham probably genuinely was sorry. They went back a long way, he and Graham. Back to the day when he’d sat in this very office, probably only days after someone else had sat in it, hearing the same news he was hearing now.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s life,’ he said simply. Because it was.

  But Graham was still grimacing. ‘We’re giving the slot to Patti,’ he added quickly, as if anxious to have his worst news hitch a ride with the first news, the better to minimise the pain. ‘Quotas, you know. That sort of thing. A change of emphasis. The Target Listener and all that.’

  Jack shrugged. He did know. This was how things worked. He wasn’t even surprised, once he thought about it. Why wouldn’t they give the show to Patti? She was a vibrant and talented broadcaster. In her twenties, leggy, and, intermittently at least, blonde. He made a big show of smiling in a nonchalant manner.

  ‘Hey, I can take it,’ he said. ‘In fact, the timing’s about perfect. I was thinking it was perhaps time for a new challenge. Easy to get stale.’

  Graham looked relieved. ‘I’m glad you said that,’ he answered. ‘Because actually, potentially, there is some rather good news, too. Sport Scene.’ This was a show Jack had at one time presented on Saturdays. Till he’d got Valentine’s Day. Did he really want to take that up again? It felt like demotion. Stupid, but it did.

  ‘What about it?’ he said. ‘Is Connor moving on then?’ Connor, who was thirty and on a roll and ambitious. A little like he’d been. Full circle. C’est la vie.

  Graham grinned. ‘Of course not! No, I mean how do you feel about taking over as producer? They’ve not quite crossed the I’s, so don’t broadcast this one yet, but Brian’s moving over to ITV Wales.’

  Brian had come to them from television in the first place, following a move down from London five years back. They’d been lucky to get him, and they’d known they wouldn’t keep him.

  ‘Really?’ Jack’s brain began whirring in an altogether unsavoury way. Was that why Allegra’s show hadn’t been commissioned? Because Brian’s had? What a bloody irony that would be. He wondered which big name he’d managed to poach for it. Then stopped wondering, abruptly. He realised he didn’t care.

  Graham was nodding. ‘You’d make a good fist of it, mate. You know you would. But take some time to think it over. No hurry.’

  No, thought Jack, no hurry at all. He rather wished time would just stop.

  ‘Coo, get you!’ said Patti when he returned downstairs. She was flicking through the brochure for the Cardiff Bay development that Charlie Jones had given him, and it occurred to him that either she didn’t know what had just happened or she was making a fine job of pretending she didn’t. The former, he judged. The former, he hoped.

  He scowled at it now. ‘You can bin that,’ he told her.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’

  He hadn’t the energy. Not today. ‘Because nothing.’

  She laughed at him. ‘You’re not getting enough, Jack.’

  ‘Enough what?’

  ‘Enough sex.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right. I can see it in your eyes. Tell you what. You wanna come clubbing with me later?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said again.

  Patti poked him. ‘You old saddo.’

  He nodded. ‘You got it.’

  He wasn’t that old, but he was sure as hell sad.

  ‘I want to apologise.’

  It was almost five-thirty, and Hope had not seen anything of Simon since the night of Kayleigh’s party. Madeleine, having spoken to him, had decided to have him work at home for a couple of weeks. It was year-end, so this was perfectly reasonable. There’d been emails, of a ‘ variety, but no phone calls, no contact, no nothing. It was a relief having him gone from the office. She supposed he was licking his wounds.Hope. VAT receipt for this? Can you clarify?’

  But this afternoon he had arrived for some meeting with Madeleine and now everyone else had gone and they were alone in the office. He sat down heavily on the chair on the other side of her desk.

  ‘You don’t need to, Simon,’ she said levelly. ‘It’s forgotten. I’ve forgotten it. OK?’

  He seemed to wince. Straight away, she realised this was the wrong thing to say. Or the right thing, perhaps. She must stop being kind to him.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you should,’ she persisted. ‘If we’re going to carry on working together, you must.’

  He managed a smile. A tight and halting affair, which made his face, already pasty under the striplight, look like a wax mask.

  ‘Just like that, eh?’ he said. There was no sarcasm in his voice, only sadness.

  Hope put her pen down.

  ‘No, Simon. Not just like that. Look, I’m sorry too. I feel awful about it. What else can I say to you?’

  He didn’t answer. His face was a picture of perfect misery, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. He remained sitting, as if uncertain whether there was anything further he needed to add. Then he stood up.

  ‘And I wanted to let you know I’m looking around,’ he said finally. Horribly sadly. ‘So don’t worry. You won’t have to feel awful for too long.’

  There was no malice in his voice, but, even so, as he walked out of the office she had to bite her lip to stop herself calling after him, taking him to task about what exactly he meant. She hadn
’t done anything wrong. He had. So how come his words made her feel so guilty? Hope felt her whole body slump in her chair. She didn’t want to be part of so much hurt. It hurt her, too. She sat for several minutes with her face in her hands, and felt utterly wretched and alone. It didn’t matter how much she told herself it wasn’t her fault, that this wasn’t her doing, there was still someone out there wretched and unhappy and suffering and the cause was irrefutably herself. It felt like an impossible weight to have to carry, and she didn’t feel up to the job.

  She didn’t mean for Jack Valentine to be in her head again. She just wanted someone to give her a cuddle. Was that so much to ask out of life?

  Chapter 26

  She’d known the day was coming, of course. It was written in her diary. He’d even phoned the office yesterday, to re-confirm the time. Yet when Hope first entered the conference room she had to steady herself against the door frame to stop herself fleeing the place and jumping on a bus to Land’s End. There was no question of trying to fight it. Here he was and she was utterly, hopelessly in love with him. But she didn’t know what to do about it, because she wasn’t joining any queues.

  She plastered what she hoped was a friendly, workaday smile on her face and took her place next to Mr Babbage at the table. Jack, who had evidently slipped in with Madeleine while she’d gone off to photocopy an extra agenda, was sitting opposite her and smiled back with similar urbanity. Yet there was something unreadable in his expression. She busied herself with her notes.

  The meeting – which was to be their last before the day itself – soon stilled her frantic pulse. There was just so much to do. Still the warm-up aerobic session to be finalised, the St John’s Ambulance stand to be organised, a consignment of cereal bars for the goody bags to chase up and a new batch of race numbers to get printed. And the timings, of course. Item five.

  ‘So,’ Madeleine was saying, ‘my feeling would be for us to convene at the main gazebo at five-thirty, latest, you think? By then we should have assembled and warmed up the runners, and it’ll give us time – sorry, Jack time, to –’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Jack, flipping through the pages of a bulky black diary he had on the table in front of him. ‘It was starting at seven, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, six,’ said Madeleine equably.

  Jack consulted a page and glanced across the table at her. ‘I have seven here.’

  ‘You do?’ said Madeleine. ‘Oh.’

  ‘That’s the old time,’ said Hope. ‘Remember?’

  Jack turned, still smiling nicely. ‘Oh? Remember what?’

  He was looking straight at her.

  ‘We had to change it, didn’t we? The police.’

  ‘What about the police?’

  ‘There’s a concert at the CIA that night. They won’t close the roads after seven. It was all in the email.’

  Jack’s eyes hadn’t left her face. ‘What email?’

  She felt her face fall. ‘The email we sent you about the time change.’

  ‘Doh,’ said Mr Babbage, cheerily. ‘I thought things were going too well!’ He picked up a fruit shortcake and started munching on it.

  ‘Is it a problem?’ asked Madeleine.

  ‘What email?’ Jack said again.

  ‘The email I sent you,’ said Hope, becoming flustered, riffling through her memories. She had sent him the email. And followed it up.

  But he was shaking his head. ‘I definitely didn’t get an email from you.’

  ‘Well I certainly sent one. I did ask you to confirm, but when I spoke to your secretary –’

  ‘I don’t have a secretary.’

  ‘Whoever she was, then.’

  Madeleine looked from one to the other. Then back at Hope, somewhat pointedly, the ‘whoever she was, then’ hanging between them all like the breasts of a lap dancer at a tea party. ‘Is it going to be a problem, Jack?’ she asked again.

  He closed the diary and pinched his fingers together over the bridge of his nose. He looked tired.

  ‘Well, yes it is, frankly. I’m in London that day. I had planned on getting back for six-thirty.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Babbage, reaching for a second biscuit. Jack shot him an irritable look. Hope had never seen Jack look irritable before.

  Madeleine switched on her brightest and most apologetic smile. ‘I’m so sorry, Jack,’ she said smoothly. ‘It’s entirely our fault. We should have followed it up more carefully. Bit hectic round here right now, as you can imagine.’ She glanced at Hope, waiting for her to follow suit with platitudes and kittenish smiles of appeasement. Which Hope dutifully did. Madeleine clasped her hands in front of her. ‘I’m sure we can work around it. Your contribution is very valuable, Jack, but I know you’re a busy man. If the worst comes to the worst, we can always have someone else start the race and you can come in and do a big closing speech or something instead.’

  Jack was shaking his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Hold off for the moment. I’ll see what I can do first, OK?’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Jack,’ said Madeleine warmly. She batted her lashes at him. ‘Are we forgiven?’

  ‘Forgiven,’ agreed Jack, and Hope could feel his eyes on her. She kept her own trained on the biscuits.

  ‘Look,’ he said, once the room had emptied and Madeleine, who was rolling her eyes at Hope behind Jack’s back, had pulled the door shut behind her. ‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You didn’t upset me.’

  ‘I think I did.’

  Hope shrugged. ‘OK, then, yes. You did upset me.’

  She knew she sounded haughty, but she just didn’t know how to be with him any more. She wished she didn’t have to see him at all. He was grinning at her now. ‘Secretary, eh? Chance would be a fine thing.’

  Hope began gathering up the agendas. ‘Look, I did email you. And I also spoke to a woman, and I expressly asked her to get you to call me if there was any problem with the new time, OK? And you didn’t.’

  ‘Well, of course I didn’t. I didn’t get the message, did I?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine.’ But his look said otherwise, and for a fraction of a moment she wondered if he was going to say something about her own track record of not getting messages, but he didn’t. She blushed, nevertheless. She felt suddenly tearful. He picked up the last of the agendas and handed it across the table to her. ‘When was this, anyway?’

  ‘When I was there doing the interview last week.’

  ‘So why didn’t you just come and ask me?’

  Hope slipped the pieces of paper between the covers of her file, and closed it with a snap. ‘I tried to. But you were off out having lunch with someone, I believe.’

  She hadn’t realised there would be anything so pointed in her voice when she started to say this, but it had come along for the ride. He’d clearly heard it. He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘“Off out”?’

  ‘Off out.’

  He looked irritable again. ‘Oh. Right. Which makes it my fault you didn’t get the message to me then, does it?’

  ‘Look, I left a message in the confident expectation that it would reach you. Because I was told it would. But it didn’t. That’s hardly my fault.’

  ‘Which makes it my fault?’

  ‘No! But that doesn’t mean it was my fault, OK?’

  How was this happening? How was she standing here feeling so cross with him? It wasn’t his fault any more than it was her fault, but it wasn’t her fault. And now she’d evidently rattled him.

  ‘Look,’ he said, his habitual good humour gone, it seemed, for good. She’d never seen him so short-tempered. ‘You left a message telling me to get back to you only if there was a problem, right? Which, I’m sorry, but is frankly a cock up waiting to happen. If you’d left a message asking me to confirm either way, then this wouldn’t have happened. That’s all.’

  His eyes flashed turquoise darts at her.

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said.r />
  He rolled his eyes. Then pushed both hands across his forehead and up over the top of his head.

  ‘Right,’ he said coldly. ‘My cue to leave, I think.’ He raised one eyebrow fractionally then nodded again.‘Tell Madeleine I’ll call her.’

  And he left.

  Damn her, damn her, damn her, he thought, as he nosed out into the late-afternoon traffic. He had been so looking forward to seeing her. It didn’t matter that he’d already as good as cocked it up with her. Didn’t matter that she hadn’t been in touch. He knew that if he could just see her face-to-face that he’d be able to tell straight away how things really were. See beyond her pronouncements that she didn’t want to see him. Get some hint of whether there might be any point in – Jesus! He slammed his palms against the steering wheel. Was this God’s doing, or something? God’s way of punishing him? But for what? Just what had he done to deserve all this crap? He felt seriously fed up. More than that, he felt justified in being seriously fed up. Which was novel. Forget the endless pep talk he kept giving himself. He should just let himself feel fed up and be done with it, and stop pretending he was happy when he wasn’t. A red Fiesta cut him up at the Gabalfa roundabout, and then proceeded to get in his way.

  ‘Fuck you too!’ he roared. Which should have made him feel better. But as he drew level he could see the driver was an elderly lady, so he only felt worse.

  He checked the time. He was supposed to be collecting Ollie from Lydia at six-thirty, to take him to a friendly over in Grangetown. It wasn’t much past four. There was nothing to rush home for. He had purposefully left an end-of-the-day window in his diary in case there’d been a chance with Hope, but now it was fit for little other than jumping out of. Decided, he signalled right instead of left at the next junction, and headed back to the studios.