Gabrielle flinched, then looked at Tom curiously. He wore a broad grin. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to berate you for it,” he said. “I think it’s wonderful. Because you never even loved him. Never loved me. I never actually lost you, do you see? Because you were never mine …”
Gabrielle looked at him sadly, then she lowered her eyes. “I thought I loved him,” she said. “At first, I mean. But I didn’t. And you were so like him. … I couldn’t find myself in you at all. Not one little bit.”
Tom nodded. “Thanks, Mum. You know, that’s the best piece of news I’ve had all day.”
And with that, he stepped out of his mother’s house and walked purposefully toward his car.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sal read and reread the e-mail she’d just composed.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your message. I’m going to say no, if that’s okay. I’d love to have a drink with you. I really would. But now isn’t really a good time. I need to sort a few things out with Ed. So I hope you’ll understand?
Sal
Sighing, she highlighted it and pressed “delete.” “I need to sort a few things out with Ed” sounded so trite, so depressing, like someone in a soap opera deciding to work at her marriage. She wanted to write, “I love my husband more than anything in the world and I can’t believe I actually kissed you,” but she couldn’t do that either— Jim was so keen, he’d e-mailed her just a couple of days before to say that he couldn’t stop thinking about her, and she was about to break his heart. Sal wasn’t accustomed to breaking people’s hearts, but she was fairly sure that there was a good and a bad way to do it.
No, if she was going to turn Jim down, she would do it face to face. She wouldn’t hide behind platitudes and impenetrable messages. She was not a coward. If she was going to disappoint Jim, if he was going to feel dreadful and lonely because of her, then the least she could do was to tell him face-to-face.
She stood up and slowly made her way to Jim’s desk. He was on his own in a bank of four desks—his colleagues in meetings or making coffee.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly.
He grinned. “Hi!”
“It’s about that drink,” Sal began. “I don’t think I can make it, I’m afraid.”
Jim nodded solemnly. “Okay, not to worry.”
Sal frowned. She had expected a bit more than that. “It’s Ed,” she said. “Our marriage, I mean. You know, I do love my husband, and …”
“Yeah, I got it. Husband. Working at it. It’s cool.”
Sal stared at him. “Actually, it isn’t cool,” she said hotly. “You kissed me. You turned me into someone who is unfaithful to her husband. And I wanted to say, categorically, that I’m not that kind of person.”
“And that’s fine. Look, to be honest, I kind of got that idea anyway. And I’ve sort of started dating Stacey in finance.”
Sal boggled at him. “But we only went out a few weeks ago! I thought you said you couldn’t stop thinking about me?”
Jim grinned. “I couldn’t. But then I got to know Stacey a bit better, and …”
Sal shook her head in disbelief and walked back to her desk. She didn’t know whether she was relieved or insulted. Probably both.
But mainly relieved. Because she knew categorically that no one could love her like Ed did. No one could make her smile, or ache, or laugh like he did, because no one else knew her like he did. And if Jim had helped to remind her of that, then she wished him and Stacey well.
Although she probably wouldn’t tell Ed. He had this idea now that she was a femme fatale, and she didn’t think it was her place to destroy that particular fantasy.
“Have you seen this? What am I saying, of course you have. But have you read it? Have you seen what a great plug they’ve given us?”
Magda, who never let her voice betray a hint of enthusiasm unless she absolutely had to, came running into the hospice, grinning ear to ear and clutching the latest issue of Hot Gossip magazine.
“Jilted television star Kate Hetherington saves hospice from destruction and says, ‘I’m stronger now, and I wish Penny and Joe well,’” she read out. “They mentioned the hospice on the front cover! And that photograph!”
Kate cringed. She still couldn’t quite believe that her little interview had been splashed across the front of the magazine like that, but even she had to admit that the photograph looked pretty good. And, far from the hatchet job that she’d fully expected Heather to do on her, she came across amazingly well. Perhaps a little bit more torn up about the whole Joe-Penny thing than was strictly the case, but she could live with that. All day people had been giving her thumbs-up signs in the street. A bus driver grinned at her and told her that she should find a nice British lad, like his son.
The truth was, she was happy. Really, truly happy, and she’d done it herself. No prince had kissed her and no white steed had whisked her away, and the strangest thing was that she wasn’t looking for them anymore.
“I’ve just come off the phone from our editor at Channel Three,” Magda continued. “And guess what?”
Kate raised an eyebrow in response.
“They want you to present!”
Kate shook her head. “No way.”
“You have to! You’re the face of the show now!”
Carole, who’d been watching the conversation with excitement, nodded in agreement. “Oh, you’d be wonderful! Oh, what a super idea!”
Kate shook her head again. “I’m not a presenter,” she said. “And anyway, I’m too busy working out layouts and color schemes and agreeing fabrics and materials.”
“That’s the point,” Magda said immediately. “You’re a new breed of presenter. A presenter who knows what she’s talking about and can do as well as tell.”
Kate sighed. “I’m not doing it,” she said in exasperation. “I don’t even like appearing on television.”
“That’s a shame, because Channel Three says it’s a deal breaker,” Magda said, shaking her head. “And I’d hate to have to cancel this whole thing. Especially now that Furniture City has said it will provide new beds and sofas for every room.”
“A deal breaker?” Kate narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
“And Carpets R Us is giving us carpets and laminate for the bathrooms. …”
“There must be someone else,” Kate pleaded.
“Brand-new bathroom fittings from Bathrooms Your Way …”
Kate sighed. “Fine,” she said, defeated. “I’ll do it. But when you get letters of complaint, you’ll have yourself to blame.”
“I’ll go and tell them the good news,” Magda said happily. “They said they’d want you to appear on Morning Chat, too, which I said would be fine. Okay?”
“Morning Chat?”
“You’ll be great!” Magda grinned, and Kate smiled weakly.
“Now, everything going alright here, is it?” Magda continued as she walked out of the room. “Still ready to start filming on Thursday?”
Kate nodded. Thursday would see them filming the hospice as it was, interviewing some of the residents, and filming Betty in hospital just before she went under the knife to have a lump removed from her breast. It was going to be a long day, but Kate was confident it would all come off okay. She’d been wary about letting the cameras film Betty, but Betty herself had thought it was a wonderful idea and had refused point-blank to even consider saying no.
The residents were very excited, too. Gareth was experimenting with hairpieces, head scarves, and hats, whilst Lysander was exploring fabrics that were soft on sensitive skin, easy to wash, and could adjust to fluctuating weight. Phil had a team of builders working for him, and the whole project was due to be completed in ten weeks. Kate had even ensured that during the major building works, residents would be put up at a local hotel for free, where they would be pampered with beauty treatments for the women and so-called grooming treatments for the men—exactly the same treatments but with a slightly more masculine ring.
“
You should be very proud of yourself,” Carole said with a little smile as she checked over the plans one final time. “You’ve done this all yourself, you know.”
Kate looked at her and frowned. “Hardly,” she said. “I barely did anything.”
“Now, that’s not true.” Carole pursed her lips. “You’ve done nearly everything. And you’ve also given the residents hope. Something to get excited about. That’s quite an achievement, you know.”
Kate smiled and blushed. “It’s nice of you to say so,” she said. “But I think, actually, I’m the one this whole thing has given hope. I used to think I was just waiting for someone to save me, to make everything okay. But in the past couple of weeks, I’ve realized that I can do that myself, you know? Be my own hero.”
“Of course you can,” Carole said, then smiled, her eyes twinkling. “Plus, you’re going to be a television star now. And there’s no better revenge than success, is there, dear?”
Kate looked at her in amazement. “This isn’t about revenge!” she cried, but then giggled conspiratorially “You’re right, though. Penny isn’t going to be happy. She isn’t going to be happy at all.”
Magda saw Penny before Penny saw her. Magda had a sixth sense for that kind of thing; she always knew when there was going to be trouble. She knew when a show was about to fold, knew when the chief exec was about to call her up, and even knew when a check was going to be bad. People said she wasn’t much good at trust, but Magda found that her sixth sense was a survival mechanism. At times like this it came in very handy.
Nipping along the hallway to the door of the hospice, she blocked Penny off before she could stride in and start trouble.
“Penny,” she said, with the halfhearted enthusiasm she reserved for meetings like this. Like bumping into people at parties who had shafted her or whom she had shafted. They would both smile, share one or two meaningless comments about the wine or the hosts, then move on and bitch about the other for the rest of the evening. “How nice to see you. How have you been?”
Penny stared at her. “Sod how I’ve been. Just what the hell is this all about? There’s no one in the office, and I found this on my desk.”
She held up Magda’s letter informing her that the current series of Future: Perfect had been terminated early owing to production issues and that the jury was still out regarding its medium-to-long-term future. In the meantime, Magda and the directors of Footprint Production thanked her for her contribution and wished her well in the future.
“And I had a bugger of a time finding out where you all were, too,” she continued frostily. “If it wasn’t for my driver and Kate’s puke-inducing interview in Hot Gossip I’d probably never have found you.”
“Ah, yes,” Magda said. “You see, the thing is, with you gone for so long, the show was untenable, so we axed it.”
“You axed a program, just like that? Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, you said Channel Three was interested. Interested in me, incidentally. I am the show, Magda, and you know it.”
Magda smiled. “Actually, they said they wouldn’t go near Future: Perfect. Said you didn’t fit with their channel’s family values. But they loved Kate’s hospice idea. Commissioned it for a Saturday-night series.”
She watched with some satisfaction as the blood drained from Penny’s face, and smiled reassuringly at her. “Now, my boss was a bit upset about your absence and started talking about lawyers and things, but I explained that you had personal issues and that you needed some time off,” she continued, “so you’re okay on that front. Of course, Future: Perfect’s been terminated, but viewing numbers were already low, so we switched to reruns for the rest of the series. They’re doing surprisingly well. Bit like Mozart, isn’t it? Not famous till you’re dead!”
Penny stared at her. “Mozart was very famous,” she said haughtily
“Must have been thinking of van Gogh, then,” Magda said, undeterred.
“And this is Kate’s little hospice program, is it?” Penny asked, her voice still bitter but without the fight that was there before.
“That’s right,” Magda said cheerfully.
“On Channel Three?”
“Great, isn’t it?”
“And you don’t need a presenter? A celebrity with real resonance with the viewing public?”
Magda smiled. “We do, as a matter of fact,” she said cruelly, watching Penny’s face light up. “And luckily, we’ve got one. Kate’s a natural, you know. Everyone thinks so. And the great thing is that she really knows what she’s talking about, too. Anyway, lovely to see you, Penny, but must get back. See you around, eh?” She stood, looking at Penny and making it very clear that her only direction of travel was back the way she’d come.
“We’ll see about that,” Penny said, her eyes flashing. “Yes, we’ll just see.”
As soon as she’d gone, Magda dug out her mobile and called the office. “Louis, cancel Penny’s driver will you? No, right away. Cheers.”
30
Joe was staring at the television when Penny got back to her flat. There, right in front of him on some morning talk show, was Kate, talking about her new show as if she’d been doing it all her life. The diminutive Kate was on a talk show—a talk show that had singularly failed to invite him and Penny on, even though her publicity guy had called them like a million times. And he was sitting on Penny’s sofa watching Kate. The world had turned upside down.
He’d thought it was a one-off when he saw her on the front cover of a magazine. He assumed that she’d decided to have her five minutes of glory and had just been relieved that she hadn’t made up any horrible stories about him or made out that he was challenged in the bedroom department. That’s what girls usually did when they kissed and told.
Penny had had a bit of a fit about it, calling up the magazine and demanding to know why Kate made the front cover while they were relegated to page forty-five, but he figured she’d get over it.
But the galling thing was that in the last week he and Penny had less and less publicity, while Kate seemed to be everywhere. And she didn’t even have to pretend to be going out with some straw-haired witch to get attention; she just had to talk about some hospice and cancer patients. Man, why hadn’t he thought of that?
For that matter, why the hell had he run off with Penny when Kate, who he had, after all, actually liked, was slowly but surely eclipsing them both?
“The bastards have terminated my contract,” Penny said angrily, before she’d even walked through the door. “Even my driver’s gone. I had to take the sodding tube home, can you believe? Bloody Kate stole my Channel Three contract. She screwed me over.”
Joe rolled his eyes at her and then ignored her. It had become his default reaction to Penny’s outbursts. If he ignored her for long enough, he kind of hoped she might actually cease to exist, like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it.
Still, Kate had a contract with Channel 3? That was interesting.
Penny’s heels clacked along the wooden floor into the kitchen and Joe could hear her picking up the phone. “It’s me. Future: Perfect‘s been cancelled. … I know…. No, can’t sue, they’re threatening me. … I know, I know…. Listen, can you get me into Hot Gossip? I’ll bare my soul about being ousted from a television program that gave so much hope to so many…. Yeah. Call me back.”
Again Joe heard the heels clackety-clacking in the familiar routine that he knew so well. Clack clack to the drinks cupboard, clack clack to the glasses cupboard. Drink poured. Clack clack to the kitchen breakfast bar, and right about now Penny would be lighting a cigarette, the ash of which would not be constrained to the ashtray but would fall on the counter and the floor for the cleaner to clean up the following morning. Penny was a slob, Joe thought with disgust. Penny was a nightmare.
A few minutes later, the phone rang again. Penny picked up. “Yeah, it’s me. So? You’re joking…. They said what? … What about one of the others? …Jesus, Michael, what kind of agent are you? Listen to me. I
want to be on the front cover of Hot Gossip, and I want to trash Kate and her pissy little show, and I want you to sort it for me. Okay?”
There was a pause, and Joe assumed the phone call had ended, but evidently not.
“Seriously?” he heard Penny say. “Look, if it gets me on the cover, then I’ll do it. But I want it in writing.”
There was another pause, and then the clack-clacking started again, this time coming ominously in his direction.
“We have to get engaged,” Penny said flatly, taking a drag from her cigarette. “That’s the only way we’re going to push Kate bloody Hetherington off the radar and get a cover shot. My agent’s going to borrow a ring from Tiffany’s. We’ll get something suitably big so you don’t look like a total cheapskate.”
Joe stared at her. “You are kidding?”
“‘Fraid not, sunshine. This is war, and we’ve got to play dirty.”
Joe looked at her, taking in the drawn mouth, etched-in lines from sucking on a cigarette end day-in, day-out, her dry blond hair, and her angular features, and he shuddered.
“We couldn’t think of something else?”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Newfound love, weddings, babies, and breakups are the only things that get you attention in this world. So, no, we can’t think of something else.”
She clacked back toward the kitchen, and Joe frowned. Breakups. Newfound love. He’d thought of something else already.
“Now, your scars are healing beautifully, and I can see your hair growing back. How are you feeling?”
Tom grinned encouragingly at the young woman in front of him. Far too young for cancer, he thought bitterly. Then he shook himself. No more bitterness, he’d promised himself. This woman was lucky. They’d got the tumor in time and she looked like she was making a full recovery. What did that ridiculous book say? Look for the beauty in all things and point it out to others. Remind yourself of the wonder of nature and life….
“Fine. I mean, you know. Pretty good, in the circumstances.”
The Hopeless Romantic's Handbook Page 23