by Tess Stimson
I go outside and walk down to the vegetable garden, where I can be certain I won’t be overheard, and pace up and down between the broad beans, my mobile in my hand. Every time I call Caz, it feels like another surrender, the yielding of yet more precious family terrain. Asking her for her co-operation legitimises her role in the parenting of my children. But Bella needs her father to be at the play. Our divorce came at the worst possible time for her, when she was on the cusp of adolescence; every relationship she has with a man going forward will follow the template set by the one she has with Andrew. I don’t want her to grow up attention-seeking and needy because he failed her.
My fingernails dig half-moons into my palms. This woman didn’t even know my daughter for the first twelve years of her life. She broke up my son’s family before he’d even said his first word. And yet now she has a legitimate claim on them, a half-share of their precious, swift-flowing childhoods. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve lost my husband to this woman, but the thought of her mothering my children cuts straight through to my soft underbelly.
I pull up her number, but to my relief, the call goes to voicemail, and I hang up without leaving a message. I’m still seething over the fact that Caz will be the one celebrating Bella’s big night with her, and I remind myself firmly that this isn’t about me. Andrew will be there for Bella, which is all that really matters.
When I go back inside, Bella has disappeared upstairs, leaving her plate of untouched cheese on toast on the table. Tolly is crawling around on the floor, trying to feed his sausages to Bagpuss.
‘Leave him alone,’ I scold, rescuing the cat and depositing him on the ancient, hair-covered sofa by the back door. ‘He’ll be sick if he eats those.’
‘I’ll be sick if I eat them,’ Tolly says.
‘They’re hot dogs, not sausages. You like hot dogs.’
‘No, I don’t. They look like willies.’
‘Bartholomew!’
Tolly giggles, covering his mouth with dimpled hands that have yet to lose the fat of babyhood, his brown eyes dancing with mischief. I try to hold my stern expression, but it’s impossible. Tolly scrambles to his feet and launches himself at me full throttle, and we tumble back onto the sofa, laughing, as Bagpuss leaps out of the way. My little boy snuggles into my lap and I stroke his wild mop of russet curls, filled with overwhelming love for my son. Tolly, my unexpected, glorious autumn baby, squeaking in under the wire just before I turned forty.
I’d never expected to have another child after the problems I had with my first pregnancy. I’d had two miscarriages before Bella was conceived, and then my waters broke at just thirty-five weeks. After seventy-two hours of stop-start contractions and drugs and exhortations to push, to pant, to breathe, to give it one more try, I was finally rushed into theatre for the emergency C-section I should have had two days earlier. Bella was absolutely fine, a healthy six pounds two ounces; after her initial check-up, she didn’t even have to go to the NICU. But I’d lost a lot of blood, and all that pushing and trying had all but torn me inside out. No more babies, the obstetrician warned. Not that it was likely to happen anyway.
I had a healthy, beautiful baby girl in my arms, and whenever I felt a lingering sadness at the rabble of children I’d never have, I only had to look into her deep blue eyes to be overwhelmed with gratitude for what I did have.
And then, five years ago, I skipped a period. I didn’t pay it too much attention at the time; the Post was undergoing some major restructuring – for which read redundancies – as it attempted, like every other legacy media institution, to compete with online news sources, and what with everything else that was going on in my life, my stress levels were through the roof. But then I’d missed another cycle, and suddenly I couldn’t stand the smell of eggs. My silhouette went from Olive Oyl to Jessica Rabbit overnight. I had been thrown a miraculous lifeline, just at the moment I thought I’d drown.
I’d known from the beginning the odds of a successful pregnancy were stacked against me. My age and previous history didn’t bode well, and then I started spotting at ten weeks. My obstetrician insisted I give up work, and rest as much as possible. Leaving the Post had been a risk, even for just a few months, with so many jobs being cut and hungry young freelancers willing to work for half the pay and no benefits; but I didn’t hesitate. All that mattered was my baby. And somehow I managed to keep Tolly safe. I reached my second trimester, and then my third. Everything looked good. The baby seemed healthy, all my scans and tests came back normal. I got to thirty-five weeks, then thirty-six, and thirty-seven.
At thirty-eight weeks, I was dropping Bella off at school when I collapsed in the middle of the playground. Had it not been for the quick thinking of another parent, a doctor who recognised the signs of pre-eclampsia, both Tolly and I would almost certainly have died.
There’s very little I remember about the next ten days. I have a few hazy memories of the ambulance ride to hospital, of sirens and lights and Andrew, white-faced, rushing along the corridor as they wheeled me into theatre, gripping my hand so hard I thought he’d break my fingers. Tolly had been hastily delivered via Caesarean, safe and well, but they’d struggled to stabilise me as my blood pressure soared and my blood refused to clot properly. At one point, as my organs started to shut down, the doctors told my parents and Andrew to prepare for the worst. He even brought Bella in to say goodbye. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her, a twelve-year-old child, facing the loss of her mother.
Andrew’s face was the first thing I saw when I regained consciousness. He was fast asleep in the chair next to me, his head pillowed on his wadded-up jacket, still holding my hand as if he had never let go. He looked drawn and grey and ten years older than when I had last seen him.
He opened his eyes as I stirred. ‘Louise?’
If I had ever had any doubt that he loved me, it vanished then. I had only ever seen him cry twice before: at the death of his mother, and the birth of our daughter. ‘Don’t try to speak,’ he’d said anxiously, leaping up and pouring me a cup of water from the jug beside my bed and holding it to my lips. ‘They had to intubate you. Your throat will feel sore for a while.’
‘The baby—’
‘He’s fine. At home with Min. She’s been looking after him while I’ve been here with you.’ He sat on the bed next to me and took my hand again, mindful of the IV line taped to the back of it. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said thickly. ‘Oh, God, Lou, don’t ever do that to me again. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you. I love you so much.’
The room had suddenly filled with medics, checking charts and monitors and IV bags, making adjustments and tapping away on iPads, frowning in concentration. I’d leaned back against the pillows while they’d bustled around me, smiling exhaustedly as Andrew kissed the back of my fingers. Our son was safe. Our children wouldn’t have to face growing up without a mother. Our family had survived, and we’d be stronger than ever because of what we’d been through together. Everything was going to be OK.
A week later, Andrew left me.
Chapter 5
Caz
My right heel snaps as I step off the escalator at Sloane Square. I pitch forward, arms windmilling as I try to keep my balance. ‘Goddammit!’
The tide of commuters shows no mercy. I hobble to the side before I’m mown down, leaning one palm against the wall and hingeing my knee behind me to check my heel. It’s totally fucked. Even if there was a heel-bar nearby, which there isn’t, and I had time to wait for them to fix it, which I don’t, the heel hasn’t come unglued, it’s completely snapped in two. There’s no way it can be repaired. These are my sensible M&S granny shoes, the ones I can actually walk in. Now I’m going to have to spend the rest of the day teetering around in the four-inch stilettos I keep at work for date nights with Andy.
I hitch my bag back onto my shoulder and stumble unevenly down the King’s Road. I haven’t even had my first coffee and my day has already gone to shit. First the invitation,
plopping onto our doormat this morning like a giant embossed turd, and now this. Bloody Celia Roberts. She probably jinxed me with some kind of voodoo spell over the invite involving chicken feathers and the blood of virgins.
AJ is waiting anxiously for me in reception. He falls into step with me as I swipe my card through the chrome barrier and head towards the elevators. ‘Where have you been?’
Grumpily, I jab the lift button. ‘Jesus. It’s not even eight. Where’s the fire?’
‘Patrick’s doing his best to contain it. You’ll see when you get to the conference room.’
‘AJ, I’m not in the mood for games.’
‘Tina Murdoch’s here.’
I look up sharply. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. The client meeting’s not till next week.’
‘Tina brought it forward.’ He peers down at my shoe. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Don’t you read Vogue? Uneven heels are going to be huge next season. You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull to get these.’
‘Seriously?’
I love AJ, though he’s never been the brightest crayon in the box. But he seems particularly distracted this morning, and I suddenly notice his eyes are suspiciously red. ‘You all right?’ I ask.
‘I’m fine,’ he says quickly.
‘AJ—’
‘Wayne and I had a bit of a row. It’s nothing, really. Lover’s tiff. Come on, we’d better get a move on. Patrick’s waiting.’
Upstairs, the office has the deserted air of the Marie Celeste. Everyone is already gathered in the glassed-in conference room on the other side of the atrium. Patrick spots me as I change my shoes at my desk, and gesticulates for me to come and join them. I hate open-plan offices.
AJ thrusts a file into my hands and we hustle into the conference room. When Patrick assigned me this campaign, it never occurred to me I’d end up working for Tina. Seven years ago, when she was still working for Whitefish, she almost torpedoed my career. I was her assistant brand manager on Tetrotek, a major client, and we’d been working for months on a new pitch for them. Two days before we were due to deliver it, a rival advertising agency, JMVD, presented a pitch that was almost word for word the same as our own. Assuming we were the plagiarists, Tetrotek defected to JMVD, and there was a searching internal investigation at Whitefish to find the source of the leak.
I’d been the one seen lunching with JMVD’s Business Director twice in the preceding month; lunches Tina had personally asked me to take, and subsequently denied requesting. She deliberately set me up to take the fall to get back at me because she’d found out about me and Andy. Patrick came within a whisker of firing me, and it took me a long time to claw back my reputation and his respect.
‘OK, Caz,’ Patrick says, as I sit down, ‘why don’t you start us off with a general overview of where we are on the campaign?’
‘Well, it’s still early days,’ I stall. I haven’t even had a chance to speak to the creative team yet. I glance at Nolan Casey, our Creative Director, for help, but he’s studiously looking the other way. ‘Once we have a clearer idea as to what Univest are looking for on this—’
‘But you’re the Account Director,’ Tina coos. ‘Isn’t it your job to tell me what I want?’
I’ve had enough of this. ‘As you know, Univest has scored a few own goals recently,’ I say crisply. ‘That business with the sweatshops in India – it got a lot of media play. Then there was the scandal over the paraben-free shampoo, and the recall on the organic fabric softener—’
‘Obviously, that was all before my time as Marketing Director,’ Tina says testily.
‘What you need to do now is re-establish trust,’ I shoot back. ‘JMVD’s policy when they had the account was to ignore these PR disasters and focus on the quality of their brands, but I think they’re wrong. What we need to do is acknowledge the elephant in the room, apologise, and move on.’
‘Apologise?’
Patrick makes a calming motion to Tina. ‘Let’s hear her out.’
AJ nudges me and I open the folder he gave me, fanning a sheaf of bright graphs and pie charts onto the beech conference table. I have no idea what they’re supposed to show, since I haven’t yet had a chance to read them, but no one looks at them; they never do. ‘You’re not the only conglomerate to get caught up in a shit-storm like this. But the more you ignore it, the more the problem festers.’ I tap the graphs as if it’s all right in front of us. ‘After Barclays apologised to its customers for the role it played in the Libor rate-rigging scandal, the problem went away. Toyota, Goldman Sachs, even Facebook – they’ve all used the corporate apology as a means of addressing branding issues, and they’ve all bounced back quickly as a result.’
‘I disagree,’ Tina snaps. ‘If we apologise, all we’ll do is bring attention to the issue and give the story legs. Our brands are blue-chip. We need to focus on their strengths and let these distractions die down.’
How did this woman end up running the marketing division of one of the biggest international companies in the country? She wouldn’t recognise a market trend if it bit her on her flabby, conniving arse.
‘There’s no such thing as blue-chip anymore,’ I say tersely. ‘Your customers are dying off, and the next generation doesn’t have brand loyalty to anything. Social media has changed the landscape. The era of a specific media push around a single theme is over. Brands need to be having a conversation with their customers 24/7 to win their loyalty. And the foundation of any relationship is honesty.’
I hold her gaze, daring her to contradict me. We both know I’m not talking about advertising.
‘This is why I wanted Caz on this,’ Patrick intervenes. ‘You and I are part of a different generation, Tina. We need to think the way these kids think.’
Tina turns puce, and I think AJ’s going to choke on his caramel frappé. We spend the next hour and a half going around in circles, but Tina’s on the losing side, and she knows it. Challenging her relevance to the next generation was a winning move on Patrick’s part. There’s a reason he’s the CEO, even though, at fifty, he’s an archaeological curiosity in the ad business. He knows people, and that’s what this game is all about.
But my victory is Pyrrhic. I may have won this battle, but I’m still stuck working with Tina. She’s going to fight every pitch I make tooth and nail on principle. The next six months of my life are going to be a nightmare. I can feel a headache coming on at the mere thought of it.
Patrick shows Tina back to the elevator, and I grab a couple of paracetamol from my desk drawer and swallow them dry, then retreat to the bathroom and lock myself in a stall. I love my job; I’ve worked hard to get to where I am. I started here five years ago knowing next to nothing about advertising, having spent the first three years of my career in PR. But I listened and learned; I put in sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks, and didn’t take a holiday for the first two years I was at the agency. Client servicing is demanding; agency heads want more billing; creatives want more time, quick approvals and minimal changes; clients demand everything yesterday. Despite the Tetrotek fiasco, Patrick’s entrusted me with some of the company’s most important clients. I refuse to let Tina Murdoch sabotage everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.
I open the cubicle door, and jump when I see Tina leaning against the washbasins waiting for me. ‘What do you want?’ I ask coolly.
‘I want you off this account.’
I turn on the tap. ‘That’s not going to happen. You heard what Patrick said. He wants me on this.’
She reaches across me and turns the tap off again. ‘You may have Patrick wrapped around your little finger, but you don’t fool me,’ she says. ‘Take yourself off this account, or you’ll regret it.’
I lean on the washbasin as she slams out of the bathroom, my heart thumping in my ribcage. I practise my breathing the way my therapist taught me, trying to calm myself down. I can’t let her get to me. I know what I’m doing, and I’m good at what I do. I can handle this.
My pulse finally stops racing. I straighten up, and smooth my hair back from my face. AJ is waiting right outside the bathroom when I come out, and I mentally resolve to make time next week to get to the bottom of what’s going on with him. He’s the most loyal man I’ve ever met, and he deserves a little kindness. There’s no way I’d survive going toe-to-toe with Tina Murdoch if I didn’t have AJ to watch my back.
‘So,’ he says, as I head briskly back to my desk. ‘Do you have a plan?’
I always have a plan.
ANGIE LARK
PART 1 OF RECORDED INTERVIEW
Date:- 28/07/2020
Duration:- 41 Minutes
Location:- Kingsbridge Police Station
Conducted by Officers from Devon & Cornwall Police
(cont.)
POLICE
And you are Caroline Page’s best friend, Ms Lark?
AL
I’ve known her since we were at primary school together. I’m telling you, she wouldn’t lie about something like that.
POLICE
When was this altercation, exactly?
AL
I don’t know. Three weeks ago? Maybe four. [Pause.] You must have a record of it; Caz reported it.
POLICE
And until—
AL
Not that anyone did anything. Caz warned you what Louise was capable of, but none of you took her seriously.
POLICE
We take all such reports very seriously, Ms Lark. But until the altercation between them last month, there hadn’t been any trouble?
AL
[Laughs.] Are you kidding?
POLICE
No, Ms Lark, I am not. I don’t consider murder a laughing matter.
AL
Look, Caz is no angel. She’d be the first to admit that. Technically, Andy was still married when they hooked up. So, you can imagine, Louise wasn’t exactly Caz’s biggest fan. But the woman behaved like a total bitch over the divorce. She wouldn’t let the kids meet Caz for, like, a year. She just couldn’t let Andy go. If it’s over, it’s over, you know?