Bad Friends (26 page)

When I reached the car, I locked the doors and put the stereo on loudly. The gorgeous strings of Vaughan Williams’s
The Lark
Ascending
, normally so uplifting, only accentuated the fact that I hadn’t felt so desolate for such a very long time. Not since that day in June when Alex and I had ended it; the day I’d climbed onto the coach. I listened to the music for a moment, staring blankly at the damp brick wall beside me, watching water suddenly spurt from a broken pipe below the arched roof. Then I laid my forehead on the steering-wheel and wept. I cried until no more tears would come – until finally I dried my eyes and, grim-faced, picked up my phone to make a call.

In the summer, Alex’s drinking had hit an unknown precedent. Bowed down with stress at work, setting up the new office in Glasgow, arguing with his partner Patrick about funding, when Alex began to drink, he often appeared unable to stop – or, at least, unwilling. When Patrick decided to pull out of the Glasgow deal, Alex asked Malcolm for a loan in a last-ditch attempt to both salvage the new office and include his father in his life. To Alex’s huge surprise and joy, Malcolm actually seemed to be considering it.

With Alex splitting his time between work, familial hang-ups and alcohol, there was little of him left for me. I’d invested everything into my relationship – but it was an investment that was no longer paying many dividends. Without even realising, I’d let my own career flounder while I’d got sidetracked; initially by trying to stop Alex’s excessive drinking, and, when that failed, by being slowly, inexorably drawn in. The old adage ‘
if you can’t
beat ’em, join ’em
’ was like a gong sounding in my empty head.

Why do women so often feel they have to fix their men? I should have asked myself firmly. Unfortunately, though, I’d lost my self-awareness. I was heart-sick: heartily sick of trying to get Alex’s attention and failing to reach him, sick of all the nights I went to bed alone. But somehow I just got ever more entrenched in misery; until I was on a constant knife-edge. It was only a matter of time before I fell.

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 waves 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.’