Bad Friends

by Seeber, Claire

  One morning, as I struggled to recover from a night that had culminated in Alex smashing half the crockery when I’d dared to suggest he sober up, Charlie sent a cab for me. Over lunch at The Ivy his approach was almost gentle.

  ‘I’m worried about you, darling.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Charlie’s empathy unsettled me far more than his wrath would have done. I stared at the over-pink langoustine lying plumply on my plate, a peppercorn eye staring up at me reproachfully.

  ‘I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.’ Charlie eyed me over his glass a little like the crustacean was. ‘It was most remiss of me.’

  ‘Didn’t see what? You’re making me nervous.’

  ‘I can’t protect you for much longer, you know, Maggie.’

  ‘Protect me?’ I stared at him. ‘Are you joking? From what?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse. The whole office knows something’s up, darling.’ Charlie helped himself to bread, his hand hovering over the curl of creamy butter. ‘But the minute Lyons notices you’re below your game, you’re finished. You know that.’

  ‘I’m not below my game.’

  ‘Yes you are. Utterly below it.’

  ‘I’ve just been – I’ve had a lot on,’ I muttered, fiddling with the langoustine’s spindly feeler.

  ‘A lot as in bottles of vodka and parties that last all night?’ Charlie finally resisted the bread and butter and lit his cigar instead. ‘A lot as in forgetting to ever eat, or being hung-over every morning?’

  ‘I never party all night.’ I summoned mild indignation with an effort.

  ‘That boyfriend of yours certainly does. Come on, Maggie. We all know everyone canes it in this game –’ I winced at the youthful expression, ‘and that’s fine, as long as you can still deliver the next day. But you’re in serious danger of getting demoted. Or worse, darling.’ Charlie regarded me coolly. ‘Losing your job entirely.’

  I pulled the head off that bloody langoustine so savagely that strange liquid squirted into my eye.

  Charlie puffed his cigar at me. ‘And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Now drink up, there’s a good girl.’

  Despite his apparent concerns for my welfare, Charlie kept the champagne flowing throughout lunch – until the truth eventually did out.

  ‘It’s not just you that’s in trouble, darling – we’re in trouble as a show.’ I sensed how hard this was for the sanguine Charlie to admit. ‘Ever since the appalling Jeremy Kyle came on the scene our bloody ratings have been dropping. We need to totally rethink the brand without alienating our audience, and we need to do it fast.’ He ran a weary hand through his luxuriant hair. ‘I want to steer away from the mud-slinging Kyle does so well.’

  ‘But we’ve been doing it so well ourselves for years.’ I raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. ‘In fact, I thought we started it.’

  ‘Maybe we did,’ Charlie shrugged elegantly, ‘but it’s time to play it differently, darling. The media’s picking up on the depravity of the chat-show in general. We need to use it to our advantage. Take the upper-hand morally, you know.’ He slid his slightly clammy hand over mine. ‘And it’ll give you the chance to prove yourself again. I don’t want people saying I backed the wrong horse.’

  ‘God, for a minute there, Charlie, I thought you actually cared.’ I slipped my hand away.

  ‘I care enough to try to save you from Lyons’s ire.’

  Oh, the dichotomy of Charlie. Smooth as butter, he was the ever-articulate hood who might appear entirely sure of himself – but he wasn’t quite as cool as he made out. I had seen it when he’d been abandoned at the altar the year I’d started at Double-decker. Charlie had laughed it off as a narrow escape, proceeding to bed at least half the office when he returned from his solitary honeymoon in Antigua. But that brief glimpse of humility had forged the bond that had let us work together effectively these past years. For all his debonair suavity, beneath the man-tan, the expensive hair and the royal-blue Ralph Lauren beat the still malleable heart of the son of a bank manager from Sutton – not the impenetrable gold-plated shell of Lord Hee-Haw’s son from the Home Counties, as Charlie would have us all believe.

  And now, as the champagne drained slowly from the bottle, it transpired that not only did Charlie want me to find a new direction for Renee Reveals, he also wanted me to train up Lyons’s nephew Joseph and Sam Crosswell, son of billionaire entrepreneur and TV mogul Dickie Crosswell. Sally would be promoted to deputise for me, and I would hand over the day-to-day running of the show to her until I’d proved to Charlie I’d got my act together. By the time dessert arrived, I felt mortified – but I had little choice, it seemed.

  ‘Nepotism’s hardly my thing, Charlie.’ I traced patterns in the cream on my plate. ‘It makes me extremely uncomfortable.’

  ‘You’re hardly in the highest of moral positions right now, my dear Maggie. You’re wasting yourself.’ His smile was positively vulpine. ‘You should be much further on by now. What happened?’

  I shrugged wearily. ‘Love?’ I suggested.

  ‘Love-schmove. You look utterly miserable. Grow some balls, darling. You’re an extremely capable young woman.’ Charlie leaned back to relight the cigar. ‘Sort yourself out and I’ll give you the True Lives documentary strand to produce.’

  ‘Really?’ I eyed him warily.

  ‘Really. It’s all yours. We’re launching the season with a doc about binge-drinking. Right up your street. You have my word as a gentleman, my darling.’

  I wasn’t at all sure Charlie was a gentleman.

  ‘I will sort myself out. I have to say, though,’ I poked at the crust on my lemon tart, ‘I don’t know what it is exactly that excites you so about these two boys. TV should be a meritocracy.’

  ‘Don’t be so boring, Maggie.’ Charlie exhaled his smoke like the old lounge lizard he truly was, and toasted me lazily with his Cognac. ‘See it as a chance to mould this fresh blood. Train these kids up well, blow that smug creep Kyle out of the bloody water – and you’ll reap the rewards.’

  And, for all his cynicism, Charlie trod so softly-softly that eventually I began to spy an escape from the recent depression I’d apparently slipped into. I’d enthuse Joseph Blake and Crosswell’s son Sam with some of the passion I’d started out with; we’d reinvent bloody Renee; I’d show Charlie I was back on track and move on to something I believed in.

  By the end of the meal I was so drunk I actually felt happy.

  I tried to tell Alex about Charlie’s plan and my new charges; I tried to explain that I feared I was on trial, that it felt like starting out again. Alex made a vague pretence of listening but his thoughts were on himself as Malcolm strung him along over the loan – and he was back and forth to Scotland so often that we seemed further apart than ever. Eventually I gave up trying to talk about myself.

  My brilliant plan to play the great mentor collapsed at the first hurdle. Joseph Blake arrived alone on a Monday morning, a few days before Sam, who was still doing good in some Malaysian orphanage. I loathed the idea of Sam already, the spoilt rich kid with a pseudo social conscience – but the arrogant Joseph was something else. He came with a briefcase, a copy of the Telegraph and a bad attitude. I kept waiting for him to produce a monocle.

  Joseph thought he had nothing to learn; in fact, he was ready to take charge from the moment he walked in. He argued with almost everything I told him; he was sulky when I asked him to chill out. He banged on about ‘Oxbridge education setting us up for life’ and wanted to make ‘radical TV’, but had no new ideas. He was a snob and an unutterable old fogey, and, worse, he was supremely unlikeable.

  The following week Sam Crosswell sailed into the office like a bright ship on a stormy horizon. To my everlasting contrition, he turned out to be a really charming kid. Sunburnt and sun-bleached, slightly gawky and befreckled with the broad smile of someone who is genuinely relaxed with themselves, he soon had an admiring flank of older girls circling his desk like brilliant piranhas, wanting to know about catching wav
es in Costa Rica and his dad’s celebrity mates, more than happy to perch on the edge of his desk showing too much thigh and flirt all day. And I didn’t mind because Sam was smart and enthusiastic, not too grand to make the tea or do the photocopying or bash the phone for hours – plus he fielded new ideas all day long: some bad, some actually quite good. It was refreshing to have him in the office, if only to watch the girls pant after him.

  The week after Sam started, the invites to the Vision Awards arrived. I had absolutely no interest in going this year; I’d networked and schmoozed with enough bumptious producers and commissioners to last me a lifetime. More to the point, since my drunken lunch with Charlie, much to my surprise, I was finding the path of abstinence more enticing than I’d believed possible. Award ceremonies inevitably meant copious amounts of anything that took your fancy, accompanied by copious opportunities for making a complete arse of yourself.

  ‘No thanks.’ I shook my head at Charlie when he dropped the tickets on my desk. ‘Not this time. You go.’

  Charlie, on the other hand, had other ideas.

  ‘I want you to represent Double-decker, and I want you to take Sam and Joseph. And keep an eye on Renee.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ I groaned. ‘God, why?’

  ‘Let’s just say we’re keeping Daddy Crosswell and Uncle Lyons sweet.’

  ‘Let Sally take them,’ I implored. ‘Or Donna. All the girls are dying to go. I’m trying really hard to keep on the straight and narrow – just like you said.’

  ‘They’re your responsibility, Maggie, those boys. Don’t let me down.’

  The morning of the ceremony at the Dorchester, Alex rang from

  Glasgow airport.

  ‘Maggie, baby, I’ve completely fucked up.’

  ‘Really?’ I said wearily, tucking the phone under one ear to put my mascara on. It was a hot day, unseasonably so for early June, and my summer dress already felt like a fur coat.

  ‘Tom’s just rung. It’s Ma’s sixtieth today. It had kind of slipped my mind.’

  ‘Oh, Alex, honestly.’ I wished I was surprised. ‘Your poor mum.’

  ‘Help me out, Mag, can you, please? Sorry, hang on a sec.’ He put more money in the beeping payphone. ‘Look, order some flowers from us, would you? My battery’s died and I’ve just missed my flight.’

  ‘I’m pretty busy myself, Alex. We’ve got an away-day and then the bloody Vision Awards tonight.’

  ‘What awards? And I also forgot –’ He paused as the Tannoy announced an imminent departure. ‘We’re, er – we’re meant to be having dinner with them tonight.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Alex. You should have told me before.’ I shoved the mascara back into my make-up bag. ‘You’ll have to go without me. Charlie’s got me over a barrel.’

  ‘Why?’ He sounded like a small abandoned boy.

  ‘I told you, Alex, at least ten times. I’ve got to chaperone these bloody kids and the diva herself. We’re up for Best Daytime Show. Charlie will go mental if I try to wriggle out of it now.’ I didn’t add that it felt like my last chance. ‘I’m really sorry, but you’ll have to go without me. I’ll call your mum.’

  ‘But I need you, Mag, I really do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I always need you, baby,’ he wheedled.

  ‘Alex!’ As usual it was me having to prop him up.

  ‘And I think Pa’s going to come good with the money, so I’ve got to keep him sweet.’ That boyish charm was oozing down the phone now. ‘Maggie, oh my beautiful Maggie,’ he coaxed, ‘you know how much Pa loves you. I can’t go without you. Don’t make me, baby.’

  I could never resist him, that was the whole bloody problem. I pushed down my resentment. ‘I’m not sure about love, Al. ’

  ‘He loves you as much as he loves anyone. He knows when he’s met his match.’ Alex was fighting to keep the edge out of his voice now, and it was that plaintive tone that finally won me over.

  I sighed. ‘I’ll come for a quick drink, okay?’

  ‘I’ll make it up to you, Maggie,’ he crowed. ‘I promise. I’ll pick you up at six.’

  ‘Just don’t get too drunk beforehand, okay?’ I pleaded, but he’d already gone.

  I went to work with a heavy stone in my stomach. I was looking forward to seeing Alex, I always did when he’d been away, hoping for a return to the normality we’d once achieved. But I was painfully aware that once again I’d compromised myself for him. I despised myself for my weakness.

  I spent the day shivering in the air-conditioned conference room of a chichi Covent Garden hotel, drinking cafetieres of gloopy coffee and eating fashionably small bits of fruitcake, brainstorming rubbish ideas. I felt like the great pretender as I smiled blankly at Sam and Joseph and the girls, trying to get enthused while listening to yet another take on the ‘Drop Renee into a situation alien to her’; ‘Swap Renee’s celebrity lifestyle with a crack-addicted hoodie’s’; ‘Swap Renee’s body for that of someone halfway attractive.’

  Around five, I shot home to change, shrugging myself into the beautifully cut Prada suit Bel had steered me towards the week before in Selfridges; and into a rare pair of heels that only served to make me stagger slightly.

  Just after six Alex arrived in a black cab, his eyes glittering in a way that alarmed even me. He’d promised he’d knocked the coke on the head last year, but I didn’t like the look of him tonight. He picked up his stack of post from the kitchen table and flicked through it. Then he pulled me into his arms and buried his head in the crook of my neck. His skin was hot against mine in this sultry night, and I felt the butterflies that still fluttered when things were good. The reason I’d failed to walk away yet.

  ‘God, I’ve missed you, Mag,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘You look amazing, baby.’

  He rarely noticed how I looked these days.

  ‘Really?’ I blushed, stepping back, suddenly shy.

  ‘Yeah, really. Come here.’

  In the shadows he pushed my hair back with a kind of rough tenderness, staring at me silently for a moment. A terrible longing suffused me; a longing for what we’d once had. He leaned down and kissed me like he hadn’t in months. I felt myself start to dissolve.

  ‘Oh God, Mag,’ he groaned.

  ‘Isn’t the cab waiting? Your mum will be –’ I tried to concentrate as he pushed me against the wall and kissed me harder.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he murmured, running his hands up my body, ‘I just want to fuck you senseless.’

  ‘Alex,’ I gasped, hearing the cab beeping outside but suddenly desperate for him, for the Alex I had first known, ‘Alex, hang on.’ But I didn’t really mean it. ‘I don’t –’ I bit my lip as he yanked my jacket open, ‘I’m – what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ But he was edgy, slightly manic, his hands insistent as he slid one into my waistband. Pulling at his belt, his own breath was jagged as he tugged up my skirt, his fingers on the bare flesh above my hold-ups.

  ‘God, stockings and the lot,’ Alex muttered, and kissed me even harder, until my lips were almost hurting and I didn’t care any more, I was almost maddened with suppressed desire, desire thwarted recently by his unavailability. I felt a need for him more urgent than I’d ever felt, the ache caused by him habitually ignoring me suddenly as tender as a new bruise. My legs were actually trembling in my stilettos as he yanked me up and shoved me against the sink, fumbling at his own buttons. Impatient now, I reached down to help him as a huge black spider sidled from behind a leaf of the peace-lily on the windowsill. I gazed at it, but I didn’t really see it.

  ‘Oh God, Alex.’ I bit his earlobe gently with my teeth, wrapping my legs around him now. ‘Oh God, I love you –’

  And then suddenly he stopped.

  ‘What?’ I pressed into him quite frantically, past the point of caring. ‘Don’t stop now, for God’s sake.’

  Alex stepped back from me so suddenly that I nearly fell onto my knees, his eyes narrowing as he looked at me. ‘Stockings?’ He stared at me like
he didn’t even know me. ‘For my mum’s party?’

  ‘What?’ I was confused, my mood already plunging. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Why are you all dressed up like that?’

  ‘For you. I was –’ I felt cheapened by his suspicion. ‘I’ve been looking forward to seeing you, you know.’

  ‘Right.’ Alex chewed the nail of his middle finger. ‘And you expect me to actually believe that?’

  ‘It’s too hot for tights.’ I pulled my skirt down and started to button up my shirt, my fingers clumsy. ‘Sorry – what exactly are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m not sure, really, Maggie.’ He stared at me like I was some peculiar stranger. ‘I’m really not sure.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘I could do with another drink, I know that much.’ Then he turned and, pulling his wallet out, cut himself an enormous line of cocaine on the kitchen table.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I hissed.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘I thought you’d stopped all this?’ I shook my head, bewildered.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Maggie, don’t be such a fucking prude. It’s only a bloody line of coke. I bet you’re the only one in your office not bang on it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what. All your bloody media-whore mates.’

  ‘Shut up, Alex.’ I could hear the doorbell ringing now, laughter outside in the street.

  ‘I thought you liked a good time, Mag,’ he snapped, rolling up a ten-pound note.

  ‘It’s not because I’m a prude, you bastard. You know exactly why it is. My mother –’

  ‘Oh, change the record. I know she was doped up to the eyeballs. So what?’ Alex stared at me and then he snorted that enormous line. ‘Fancy one?’ he mocked, and sniffed massively, pushing the rolled note at me. The queen would blanch now if she could see what she was up to, I thought disjointedly.