Woman of the Hour

by Jane Lythell

  There was such a heaviness inside me. I picked up my favourite photo of Dad, dusted the frame carefully, kissed his face and put it back by my bed. He had not lived to see Florence. She knows nothing about her granddad except the stories I tell her. There are so few people we truly love in our lives. I would call Mum to see how she was doing on this saddest of days.

  CHAPTER TEN

  StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

  Julius was back chairing the morning meeting. I was still thinking about what Simon told me about seeing him come out of that hospital. If it wasn’t Steven he was visiting then what was he doing there? The meeting was an ordeal because Julius and Bob both said that they thought the feature content of the show had been weak and they discussed their criticisms at some length. I was seething and kept waiting for Fizzy to say a few words in support of me but she stayed out of the discussion while the men held forth as they love to do. I felt then what I have often felt during my years at StoryWorld; an assertion of male power and a closing of male ranks.

  There’s a place in every organisation where key decisions are made and it’s a place I cannot go. I’ve been in many a manager’s meeting and sometimes I’ve even chaired these discussions. And then, when it comes to the moment of decision, I am left out in an obscure way as if that moment has already taken place somewhere else. And that somewhere else is the gents’ toilet or, more precisely, the executive gents’ toilet.

  One night I gained entry. I had been working late and the building was empty. I walked past Julius’s corner office and saw the locked door of the executive gents’ toilet with its security button pad on the wall. I knew the code and on impulse I tapped in the four numbers and opened the door. An overhead light came on as I walked in. It was large and bright with an abundance of white tiles striding up the walls and there was the gurgling of water. I looked around. There were three pristine urinals in a row and three cubicles and three washbasins. On the wall were three Dyson hand dryers. Three! No one had to wait here to dry their hands. I used one of the cubicles, flushed it, washed my hands and used one of the dryers. I looked into the mirror. I was the image of a successful executive woman but oh, my fearful eyes.

  With Simon away and Molly and Harriet over at St Eanswythe’s hospital with the crew, it fell to me to go through the viewers’ emails with Betty to select the ones for discussion. We did this in my room and I sent Ziggy to get Betty her usual hot chocolate. Just as Gerry had done, Betty was also angling for the station to buy her some pastel-coloured outfits.

  ‘I found these on the Jaeger site. They’d fit the bill nicely, wouldn’t they?’ she said.

  She had printed off images of two blouses, one in an apple green and one in a shade of peach. To my eyes they looked matronly and they cost a hundred and twenty pounds each.

  ‘Don’t you have any light-coloured tops at home?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that would be smart enough to work on camera.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Julius’s Great Pastel Colour Edict was costing the station dear. Betty said she had come up with the idea of running a themed discussion for the next few weeks which she wanted to call Focus on Life Crises.

  ‘Life Crises? That sounds a bit ominous,’ I said.

  ‘Hear me out. Good things as well as bad things can throw people into crisis. Getting married, having a baby, moving into your first house. These are all nice events but they stress people out.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, thinking about the move to our flat in Chalk Farm. I recalled feeling empowered that Flo and I would have our own place but also fearful at the huge mortgage I was taking on.

  ‘And then there are the difficult life events which most of us will go through at some point in our lives. I’m thinking here of divorce, of facing redundancy or retirement and of bereavement.’

  I nodded. Losing my dad had been my first and my worst life crisis, far worse than my divorce from Ben.

  ‘I get letters on these topics all the time and I feel I don’t do them justice. So my idea is to run with this as a theme for several weeks, with letters on a single topic each week.’

  She sat back in her chair and looked at me.

  ‘Will it work with you doing a whole session on a single topic? We usually cover at least two topics a week to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s the whole point. There’s a lot to say on each of these areas.’

  I couldn’t pinpoint why the idea was making me feel uncomfortable or why I was resisting her. We were going through a bad patch, ever since the John of Sheffield incident. These were all important areas to discuss. Betty gave me a steely look, the kind of look I imagined she would once have given a prisoner who was misbehaving.

  ‘I want to go deeper this time,’ she said.

  Simon is better at managing Betty than I am.

  ‘OK, let’s give it a go,’ I said.

  We turned to the mound of emails on my desk which Ziggy had printed for us and divided them into subject piles.

  Todd called at lunchtime. I haven’t seen him for several weeks. We arranged to spend Saturday night together as Flo would be in Portsmouth with her dad. We agreed to meet at his flat in Balham. It was on one of our first dates in Balham that I had talent-spotted Ledley. We had gone to his Jamaican restaurant, the Caribbean Shack, for dinner, had drunk rum punch and eaten his celebrated Brown Stew Fish. I had watched how Ledley moved around his small cheerful eaterie and made his customers laugh.

  ‘He’s a legend in Balham,’ Todd said.

  I got Ledley’s details as we were paying the bill and told him I’d be in touch. Todd and I walked back to his flat arm in arm. He told me something then which made me want to go on seeing him. He said at night when he walks home, if it’s late and dark and he sees a lone woman approaching him on the street, he makes a point of crossing the road so that she has the pavement to herself.

  ‘I’m a big fella and I think I can look intimidating, so I get out of the way.’

  ‘That’s such a good thing to do.’

  I squeezed his arm and I knew I was going to sleep with him. His flat is above a greengrocer’s and there’s a smell of cabbage as you walk up the narrow staircase to his door. Inside it’s rather basic because Todd doesn’t care about home comforts; he’s the kind of man for whom home is where he hangs his hat, though he does possess a huge state-of-the-art TV for watching sport with one big easy chair positioned in front of it.

  That first date was over two years ago. As I put down the phone I realised that our relationship has hardly evolved at all since then.

  I spent the afternoon clearing my backlog of admin, checking expenses and assessing proposals from independent production companies. I researched possible courses for Ziggy which would start her on the path to becoming a digital technician. It was strange not having any of my team sitting outside my office. I was locking up when Molly came back from the day’s shoot. She dumped her rucksack on her desk.

  ‘You’ve had a long day. Where are the others?’

  ‘Zig is helping out in reception and Harry had to get away early.’

  ‘How did it go with Naomi?’

  Molly turned a glowing face to me.

  ‘It was amazing. She’s so brave and so inspirational. I think you’re going to love it. Do you want to see the rushes now?’

  ‘I need to get home. We’ll watch them tomorrow. And Dirk, how was he?’

  ‘He was excellent too; showed us his prosthetic leg and it’s kind of high-tech and made specially for him. He said he’s determined not to go into a wheelchair. I made sure we got lots of cutaways as he strapped on the leg. I think Simon will like what I got.’

  ‘And the ICU nurse?’

  We had got permission from Connie Mears to interview an intensive care nurse who worked in the unit at St Eanswythe’s as there was no way we would be allowed to film in there on the day of the broadcast.

  ‘Another winner, I think.
I don’t envy her that job. Every case in that unit is life and death.’

  ‘Well done, Moll.’

  Chalk Farm flat, 7.45 p.m.

  The Paige influence continues. Janis told me tonight that Flo has asked her to get in some oven chips. I have always had a down on oven chips. I tapped and popped my head round the door and Flo was talking to one of her friends on her mobile so we just waved at each other and I backed out of her room.

  As I was seeing Todd on Saturday night I hand-washed my best red satin bra and knickers. I bought this expensive set a few weeks into my relationship with Todd and when I brought them back to the flat I sneaked them into my bedroom as if I had done something a bit illicit. They were in a fancy bag with ribbon handles and wrapped in swathes of tissue paper and I pushed the bag under my bed. Later that evening, when Flo was asleep, I had stripped off, unwrapped them from their tissue paper and put them on. I stood and looked at myself in the long mirror. The bra pushed my breasts up nicely. Just wearing them made me feel sexy and made me want to have sex. The door opened and Flo walked in.

  ‘Mum!’

  I was instantly embarrassed and grabbed my dressing gown and pulled it on.

  ‘Why did you buy those?’

  I was actually blushing.

  ‘Even mums need a treat sometimes.’

  She sat down on my bed and pushed the tissue paper onto the floor.

  ‘I had a nightmare,’ she said.

  *

  Ben called at nine and said Flo can come down on Friday night. We had a civil conversation with no reference to our last row. One of my lasting regrets is how I behaved towards him when he started to struggle against his addiction to poker. He tried to talk to me about it early on. He came back late one night looking awful. He must have had a big loss. He slumped at the kitchen table and I asked him what was wrong, where had he been?

  ‘I played a game of poker and I lost a bit of money; a lot of money.’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘Too much,’ he said.

  I felt frightened then.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He looked so lost and I had no idea how to help him. But the time I feel most ashamed about was months later when his addiction was escalating. He came home ashen-faced and by then I knew what that meant. I had seen our latest bank statement and the amounts of money he was withdrawing were excessive. I was out of my depth. How could you get a grown man to change his behaviour? I recall that I didn’t feel a shred of sympathy that time, just anger.

  ‘You’re jeopardising our entire future with this crazy, stupid game!’

  I pulled the bank statement out of my bag and held it up to him. He wouldn’t look at it; he turned his face away.

  ‘Look at these sums.’ I was jabbing my finger at the withdrawals listed on the statement.

  ‘You’ve changed, Liz. You’ve changed so much since we got together.’

  ‘Of course I’ve changed. I’m a mother now.’

  ‘We used to have fun. You used to have time to do things with me.’

  I could not believe that he was shunting the blame onto me. We hissed horrible, bitter, damaging things at each other because Flo was asleep down the hall. That was the time I should have sat down with him and said he needed help and that I would support him through it.

  The last thing he said that night was that I had always held something back from him and that stung because I knew it was true. I did hold a bit of myself back from Ben. We are never so vulnerable as when we love. I felt I could never love a man totally, unconditionally and without holding something back after my dad died, because losing him had been so terrible. The only person I give unconditional love to is Flo.

  *

  I woke at two a.m. with a pounding heart. I sat up in bed in the darkness as the symptoms of panic built inside me. What had I been thinking of, letting Molly film Naomi Jessup? The sponsor had stressed he wanted inspiring upbeat stories. And Julius would never agree to us transmitting an interview with a dying woman. I recalled he’d had reservations about us broadcasting from a hospital, saying won’t it be all disease and death. I had reassured him it would not be depressing. Molly had been on a high about her interview with Naomi but StoryWorld was the home of cheerful stories. I could foresee a difficult conversation with Molly and cursed myself for letting my heart rule my head.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

  Sal came in to do her look back at the week’s news events and she was wearing a black top. She had draped a yellow and green scarf around her neck, as a concession, I suppose, to jazz it up. I was watching from the gallery and I saw Fizzy’s eyes get very round. The director, sitting next to me at the controls, said: ‘She’s definitely pushing it.’

  We all know you don’t openly defy Julius. Sal launched into her script, which was as funny and irreverent as usual, but there was a manic quality to her delivery. One of her subjects was the furore which had been raging all week about women breastfeeding too publicly in cafés and restaurants. Sal was on the side of the breastfeeders and she poked fun at a commentator who had labelled these women ‘breastfeeding militants’. She did a funny riff on people who make unlikely militants: bird-feeders, pond-cleaners; watercress eaters. We went to the ad break and the floor manager walked over and unclipped Sal’s mic.

  ‘Bye, Fizz,’ Sal said with a wry smile at her.

  Fizzy was shuffling on the sofa as Sal walked out of the studio waving to the camera crew as she went. I rushed out of the gallery and as I got to the studio door Julius was standing there. He would have been watching the programme from his office and had come straight downstairs to confront Sal. He didn’t look angry though, he looked calm. Sal emerged from the studio.

  ‘I’d like you both to come to my office,’ he said.

  I think Sal had been expecting this. We walked behind him up the stairs and along to his room in silence. He opened the door for us and said to Martine: ‘No calls.’

  He closed the door and strode behind his desk.

  ‘Please sit down.’

  I sat down but Sal stayed standing next to me and Julius looked at her for a long moment. I would have quailed under that gaze.

  ‘It is clear that you are not happy appearing on our show,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not happy being told what colours I can wear. There was no mention of colours in my contract.’

  He turned to me.

  ‘How long does Sal’s contract have left to run?’

  ‘Julius, can I say Sal brings something to the show that we don’t get from anyone else—’

  ‘How long does her contract have left to run?’

  He had not raised his voice at all and his quietness was more menacing.

  ‘Five months. But can we take some time out here and not rush into any decision?’

  Julius stood up and flashed me a look that was both icy and contemptuous. He hates to be challenged at any time and he had decided to sack Sal.

  ‘The station will pay you the five months you are owed. Now pack your things and go because you will never sit on the StoryWorld sofa again.’

  Sal actually laughed at this.

  ‘The hallowed StoryWorld sofa; how will I live without it? Thanks for the great material, Julius. Sacking me because of the colour I wear. I can do a lot with that. Bye, Liz.’ And she turned and left his room.

  I stood up to leave.

  ‘Don’t you dare go after her,’ he said quietly.

  I watched Sal retreat from our view as Martine turned a worried glance in our direction.

  ‘Think about it. She may go to the papers and how does it make us look? Sacking her on these grounds?’ I said.

  ‘She’s a stroppy cow and I’m glad to see the back of her. And if the papers cover it, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘For the record, I think you’re making a mistake. She brought a unique voice to the show.’

  ‘Most weeks it wa
s a feminist rant. I doubt she’s as popular with our viewers as she thinks she is,’ he said.

  ‘Her viewer ratings are good.’

  ‘You know, you’re a talented woman, Liz, but you’ll never get to the top if you’re not prepared to stand up to egos like her.’

  ‘After all these years of working here I’m world class at dealing with egos,’ I said, and I left his office.

  Back in my room I was shaking with a mixture of nerves and pride that I’d stood up to him. I was craving a cigarette, which happens when I’m very wound up. I wondered about calling Henry, the floor manager, who is one of the few people left in the station who still smokes. I walked downstairs to find him and I knew that it wouldn’t take long for this story to get out. Sal was our first casualty to the Great Pastel Colour Edict. How ridiculous it all was and no wonder people despised television.

  Henry joined me in a cigarette break at the back of the station. He lit my cigarette and I inhaled deeply.

  ‘Why did Sal do that?’ he asked.

  I felt the smoke going down into my lungs and calming my head.

  ‘She thinks he’s an arse and wanted to stand up to him.’

  ‘We’ve all wanted to do that at times.’

  ‘But why couldn’t she see the whole stupid thing is about his need to be in control? It’s actually quite childish,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a shame. I like Sal and I’m sorry to see her go.’

  ‘Me too. Thanks for the cig.’

  The cigarette had soothed me. I walked back upstairs thinking that the way Julius had sacked Sal, almost Nero-like in his sense of absolute power, reminded me yet again of the need to be vigilant. Childish it may be on one level but I have seen a lot of sackings at StoryWorld over the years and often for standing up to Julius. It is why few of us feel safe working here. I saw Molly at her desk and asked her to join me in my room.

  ‘Do you want to look at the rushes now? I’ve started a rough edit,’ she said.