by Jane Lythell
‘Put this on your tum, it might help.’
She lifted a tragic face towards me.
‘Thanks, these are the worst cramps I’ve ever had.’
‘Poor baby.’
I sat down on the edge of her bed.
‘Things aren’t so hot at work at the moment,’ I said.
‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘They’re cutting all the budgets and some of the reporters will have to leave.’
She looked alarmed.
‘You’re not going to get the sack, are you?’
I had forgotten how much of a catastrophist a fourteen-year-old can be.
‘No, not me; but it shook me up all the same. It’s a difficult time to be made redundant; two months before Christmas. And there aren’t the jobs in TV out there.’
‘Is Harriet staying?’
‘For the time being she is. She’s on a three month trial.’
‘I like Harriet.’
Flo wriggled down under the duvet clutching her hot water bottle.
‘I wish I could have my Doc Martens before Christmas.’
‘Honestly, Flo, I just told you people are losing their jobs and you want a pair of hundred quid boots early!’
She looked aggrieved.
‘I want to go to sleep now.’
I hurried out of her room and closed her door too sharply.
‘Now who’s slamming doors?’ she shouted from her bed.
My feelings for her are often this weird mix of irritation and love.
I got the ironing board out and started to press Flo’s school shirts. Ironing calms me. When hers were done I started on my tops. Red is my colour, usually the darker shades: burgundy, aubergine and crimson. I occasionally splash out on something scarlet; usually when I’m feeling excited or happy. When I started going out with Ben I was on a high and I bought myself a bright red leather biker jacket. God, I loved that jacket. It was the most I had ever spent on an item of clothing and now it’s tucked away at the back of my cupboard. I’m not light-hearted enough to wear it at the moment.
I sat in bed later and wrote a long email to Todd which was mainly about what was going on at work. I made no reference to Harriet’s allegations though it was the thing that was worrying me the most. Nor did I mention the death of Naomi Jessup from cancer. I told him I was missing him too and I was. Having him in the background of my life during the last two years had brought me more comfort than I had realised. I have all these people relying on me who I have to guide and comfort but no one other than Fenton who I can turn to. But that’s just the way it is. My mum would say that I made my bed and I have to lie on it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge
Betty had decided to discuss the two happier mum and baby letters which surprised me. Baby talk is not Fizzy’s thing but this morning she made an effort to engage with the advice Betty was giving.
‘A new baby can feel like a thunderbolt in your life, a complete transformation of what went before,’ Betty said.
‘A nice thunderbolt though?’ Fizzy asked.
‘It’s like a watershed; life before baby arrives and life after. It changes you.’
I wondered for a moment if Fizzy was getting broody and I felt vaguely sad for her because at thirty-eight and without a settled relationship I doubted if she would be a mother now. The item finished and I went out to thank Betty. She told me she had written back to the depressed mum saying she most definitely was not a monster and enclosing a list of forums that offered support to mothers with post-natal depression. She is good like that.
*
I caught the Tube from London Bridge and arrived at Ledley’s café in Balham around one. He was in a buoyant mood and took me upstairs to his flat. He had prepared us a large platter of jerk chicken with rice and peas on the side. Ledley doesn’t drink but he wanted me to have a glass of rum punch. Slices of orange and a large cherry floated on the top of my drink.
‘This is gorgeous. So what did you want to discuss?’
He smiled broadly.
‘I’ve been offered a deal by a food manufacturer. They want to use my name on a marinade. They’re gonna call it “Go Luscious with Ledley”!’
‘That’s terrific news.’
It was a long name for a product but maybe long names were in vogue.
‘You can use it with meat and with fish. They told me it’s gonna be stocked in supermarkets and they want me to front up their ad campaign.’
‘That’s great, Ledley.’
‘Yeah, and they’ve asked me to come up with ideas for giveaway menu cards and I thought I should clear it with you.’
There had been that trouble with the cooking oil product placement and it hovered in the air between us.
‘Sounds brilliant and the more coverage you get the better. But we will need to be careful that we don’t use your marinade on the show.’
Ledley looked disappointed.
‘What, never?’
‘We have to keep a clear line between editorial and advertising,’ I said.
He picked at the chicken on his plate.
‘Are you having a launch?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, they’ve got big plans for a launch.’
‘Fantastic. We’ll get Fizzy and Gerry along to that and there’s no harm in you mentioning the launch on air, only the once, mind,’ I said.
*
When I got back to StoryWorld I put in a call to Julius to tell him about the Ledley deal. In the past I would have walked down to his office and told him face to face, but not now. He said fair play to Ledley and our conversation was over quickly. Outside my room I saw that Harriet was typing on her laptop. She peered at her screen and chewed on her nails and her whole demeanour was troubled. I came out of my office.
‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.
She turned a strained face to me and immediately I thought about Julius. Had they had an encounter while I was out?
‘I’m struggling with this brief,’ she said.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Brad Robinson, Friday’s guest. I don’t know why we’re interviewing him.’
Harriet had a point. Brad Robinson is an actor in a long-running soap but there was no real reason to be interviewing him this week, except for the fact that his wife left him recently in the most public way to go off with a younger man on a rival soap. The tabloids had been running the story all week, as they do when they scent pain and humiliation in a celebrity life. I had been approached by his agent to have him on the show. I’d asked if we could talk about the marriage breakdown and she’d said approach it discreetly and don’t make it the first question. Harriet said she didn’t know how to phrase a question that would allow Fizzy to do this.
‘You start off with a question about his soap role and how it has developed over the years; maybe even run a clip of his finest hour when he won an award,’ I said.
‘I saw he’d won an award. It was ages ago though.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was a storyline about his character fighting alcoholism and it was powerful stuff. Then you put in a question like: You’ve had years of being in the spotlight, Brad, but have the last few weeks been especially difficult? That gives him an opening if he wants to talk about it.’
‘But what if he doesn’t?’
‘I think he’s coming on our show precisely to get sympathy from the viewers but he doesn’t want to look too overt about it,’ I said.
Harriet nodded slowly.
‘So it’s a kind of game?’
‘Sort of...’
I had a guilty pang as I recalled that last week Gerry had analysed the breakdown of Brad Robinson’s marriage from an astrological point of view.
‘He’s the wronged party here. I don’t think he’ll dish the dirt on his wife but I’m sure he’ll reveal his torment,’ I said.
‘I see. OK.’
I didn’t want Fizzy bawling her out over her brief again.
‘I will. Thanks for the help.’
There has been a significant change in Harriet’s behaviour. I’ve noticed that she stays physically close to the team these days. She lunches with Ziggy or Simon most days and there is no more of her roaming around the building which she did when she first came here. I hope I’ve done the right thing by staying quiet about her allegation. Yet again Julius is getting away with his vile behaviour. Molly looked up at me.
‘Liz, Naomi’s funeral is next Tuesday. I’d like to go and her mum said they’d be happy for me to be there. Can I take a half day’s leave?’
‘I wouldn’t hear of you taking leave and it’s a credit to you that they want you there.’
It was around four when I got a call from Gerry. He has got into the habit of checking in with me regularly since he broke up with Anwar.
‘Liz, did you get my script?’
I could tell from his voice that he was feeling low.
‘Yes thanks; it’s a good topic.’
His topic of the week was about how resilient different star signs are when confronted with emotional difficulties.
‘Glad you liked it. You know we Pisces are the most sensitive in the Zodiac,’ he said.
‘How are you doing?’
‘I can get through the weeks OK, work and stuff you know, but the weekends are absolute torture. Everywhere I go I see couples doing stuff together; being happy together.’
I recognised that feeling, the conviction that other people had made a better job of relationships than I had and the sense of failure.
‘You’re bound to feel like that for a while but it won’t last.’
‘Doesn’t feel like that.’
‘I’ve been there. I promise you there comes a point when you start to feel good about being on your own rather than trying to make a relationship work that just couldn’t.’
‘I’m so sad. We did have our good times, you know.’
His loneliness was thrumming down the line at me and I wondered if I should offer to see him on Saturday as Flo was due to be in Portsmouth with her dad. He’s a friend as well as a colleague and the split was recent. But I didn’t suggest it. My reserves of compassion had run dry and I needed a weekend on my own with no demands from anyone.
*
Two hours later I locked my office and saw Harriet in front of me heading home. She reached the top of the stairs and was walking down to the exit as Julius was starting to walk up. They saw each other and she stopped in her tracks. Then she continued down the stairs with her face turned conspicuously away from him. This was the woman who when she arrived had been skipping down to his office at every opportunity and who showed boundless confidence. Now she looked positively cowed by his proximity. They passed each other without a word and he continued up the stairs, though more slowly. He saw me standing at the top and our eyes met and held. He knew I had seen their encounter on the stairs and I was at a loss at what to say.
‘Good night’ was all I could manage to gasp out.
Something has happened between them. There can be no doubt about that.
Chalk Farm flat, 7.30 p.m.
When I came out of Chalk Farm Tube the wind was up but at least the rain had stopped. There’s a red-brick Victorian church at the bottom of our road which has stood empty for years. As I walked past tonight I saw a sign saying that the church was going to be developed into flats. I gazed up at the building which has always dominated this area. It has arched windows running down both sides and a huge wooden door covered with graffiti. I wondered if the developers were going to pull the church down or transform it internally and leave the exterior intact. I didn’t like the idea of the church being demolished.
Flo was on the phone and went into her room as I came in. I put three sweet potatoes in the oven to bake and phoned Fenton for an update on her relationship with the sexy detective. Things have progressed and they are going away this weekend for three nights in Amsterdam. She sounded happy and excited.
‘We’re getting the Eurostar and Bill has found us a hotel right on the canal.’
‘Sounds romantic,’ I said.
Fenton spends all her time looking after others and she deserves more than anyone to have some happiness. But as I put the phone down I felt a bit bleak. It had highlighted my sense of being on my own. I tapped on Flo’s door.
‘Do you fancy a baked sweet potato?’
‘Mmm, yes please.’
She joined me in the kitchen. She had eaten at five with Janis but Flo is tall and able to eat what she wants without putting on an ounce. She was in a good mood.
‘I got an A for my project on the northern white rhino.’
‘That’s fantastic. Can I see it?’
She went into her room and returned with her folder. She opened it at the last page.
‘Look what the teacher said.’
Her teacher had written at the bottom of the project: This places the plight of the northern white rhino in context and highlights the implications for species survival. Excellent work.
‘Well done, darling. You’ve made me feel very proud.’
The sweet potatoes were perfect, with lashings of butter melting into their orange flesh. I served them with goat’s cheese and broccoli but left the broccoli. It was the warm earthiness of the potatoes I had craved. Fenton once said I cook more comfort food than anyone she knows.
*
It was around nine when Grace called me.
‘Have you heard from Ben this week?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Only he was supposed to come over to eat with us last night and he didn’t show.’
‘He hasn’t told me whether he wants Flo to come down this weekend. Has he got a big job on?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Let her come down on Friday night anyway. Pete and I will meet her at the station. And if he rings you’ll ask him to call me, won’t you?’
Grace sounded worried. After Flo’s casino comment I wondered what was going on in his life. For some reason a memory came to mind of an autumn day when Flo was five and Ben and I had taken her to fly a kite on Parliament Hill Fields. The kite had been my birthday gift to Ben and I’d bought it at a specialist shop. It was a rectangular box kite with one end green and the other end bright red. Ben was determined to get his new kite flying even though there wasn’t much wind that day. To begin with he had held Flo by the hand and they had run down the hill with Ben holding the kite aloft. They couldn’t get up enough speed to launch it even with her little legs pounding down the hill. So I sat on a bench at the top with my arms clasped around her as he laboured up and down that hill until he finally got the kite up into the sky and I cheered and Flo clapped. It’s important to remember the happy times we shared.
CHAPTER TWENTY
StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge
We got through to Friday without further drama. Gerry was in and I went down to make-up to see how he was doing. Ellen was plucking his eyebrows and she rubbed in a little bit of cream to make them lie smooth.
‘Thanks, darling,’ he said.
He swivelled round on his chair.
‘I’ve been telling Ellen I’m going to a luxury spa this weekend. I’ll be off straight after my slot and blow the expense.’
‘Good for you,’ I said.
‘I have more spending money these days, for obvious reasons.’
‘Every cloud,’ Ellen said.
She was in on the drama of Gerry’s life too. There are few presenters who can resist sharing their woes while their make-up is being applied and their outfits titivated.
*
For our lunch Fizzy had booked us into a small private dining room at a club where she is a member. It was in Soho and you would have walked by without knowing it was a club, so unobtrusive was its brown front door. Inside it was all narrow twisty staircases
and dark wood-panelled rooms that could have graced a novel by Dickens. It was just the two of us in a room at the top. The waiter was wearing one of those long white aprons and I asked for a red wine and Fizzy ordered a Virgin Mary. He left the room briefly. When he returned he opened a wooden hatch in the room and our drinks were pulled up by pulley and presented to us on a silver tray.
‘So good,’ Fizzy said, sucking deeply on her straw.
‘Thanks for inviting me here. It’s nice that it’s so private.’
We consulted the menu which was self-consciously retro with dishes like shepherd’s pie with braised turnips and semolina with raspberry jam for pudding. I chose the fish pie and Fizzy asked for an omelette with herbs.
‘We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we?’ she said.
When Fizzy joined the station as a PA I had been a junior researcher.
‘And I’ve always admired how you cope with everything, Liz, especially after you and Ben split up.’
This turn in the conversation was so unlike Fizzy.
‘That’s kind of you to say so.’
‘How do you do it?’
‘Oh, I have my wobbly days, believe me.’
‘You never seem to show it.’
My fish pie was good, creamy with chunks of salmon and cod and the occasional prawn. Fizzy was toying with her omelette. She took one more mouthful and then pushed the plate away from her.
‘You haven’t eaten much. Was it dry?’
‘It was fine. I want to ask your advice but this has to be totally confidential.’
‘Of course.’
She wiped her mouth on her napkin and folded it twice neatly along its original seams then folded it again. I sensed her trepidation and I stopped eating.
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Wow! I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Nor was I.’
She gave me a rueful smile. The thought hurtled into my head that it had to be Bob’s child. I reached for her hand.
‘How many weeks are you?’
‘I’m not entirely sure: seven or eight, I think.’
She touched her left breast and then her right one.
‘But these boys are getting bigger.’
‘Was that why you were sick at the OB?’