Best of Friends (25 page)

By comparison, the memory of Jay was all glinting sexuality—the promise of something incredible when he touched her. It wasn’t just about sex, Abby tried to convince herself. It was much more: the excitement of being alive, the thrill of being wildly attractive to someone else. When had Tom last spoken to her with such naked longing? He reserved his naked longing for the sixth years to do well in their state exams.

Long-forgotten memories of what it was like to be younger and in love rippled through her. And for Abby, who had felt so old and tired lately, the remembrance of youth was headier than any champagne.

If she did have an affair with Jay, Tom would certainly have to shoulder some of the blame, she decided in her wilder moments. If he’d bothered being a proper, supportive husband, then she wouldn’t even have dreamed of meeting another man.

Nobody need know. It would be a little boost to her ego and then she’d go back to being a mother and wife, because she did love Tom despite everything. And Jay would go back to being in the past. They could still be friends, she hoped, once they’d got this attraction thing out of the way. They might even still have dinner as a foursome, with two of them sharing a secret that would always add a sparkle to their lives. Like a secret batch of love letters hidden in a drawer, there would be something for her to remember in the years to come: the time that she’d dallied with a man from her past.

As to what might happen if everything went wrong, Abby closed her mind to the very idea. Nothing would go wrong. Nobody would ever know. Anyway, she was only meeting Jay for dinner, she told herself.

On Tuesday morning, Abby prepared with care for the trip to Dublin. She packed her sexiest underwear and put on a silky jersey wrap dress in silver grey over a new, utterly beautiful bra-and-pants set for the journey. Lovely underwear would make her feel good, that was all. And anyhow, she had a meeting in Beech at ten before she drove to the airport, and when it came to meeting Roxie and hearing about her latest plans for the programme, Abby reckoned that she needed all the confidence boosters she could get.

The meeting was as tough as she’d anticipated. Roxie had made high-speed progress with her search for new talent for
Declutter.
In just ten days, she’d found eleven possibles and she had summoned the whole team in for a meeting to show them a tape of the candidates.

“Of course, you’ve got to feel happy with whoever we pick, Abby.” Roxie gave Abby her most caring smile.

Yeah, right, thought Abby grimly, convinced that Roxie didn’t give a damn if Abby liked her on-screen partners or not. In fact, Abby believed it would suit Roxie down to the ground if she bailed out of the programme altogether. Then Roxie could hire a couple of twelve-year-olds to do the show and everyone would be happy. The candidates were uniformly young and gorgeous, all with teeth that must have involved second mortgages for their poor parents, and not a wrinkle anywhere. Abby didn’t recognise any of them.

“Have they any television experience?” she asked when the showcase was over and Roxie was midway through extolling the virtues of the last girl, an exbeauty queen who’d worn hot pants and a belly-revealing top for her audition.

“Good point,” agreed Flora. “They all look wonderful but there’s a difference between a simple to-camera test and doing a programme. I didn’t see anyone who’d worked in TV before.”

Score one to the Help the Aged side of the table, thought Abby happily.

But Roxie had an answer for that. “You didn’t have any television experience when you started, did you, Abby?” she asked.

“Er, no,” admitted Abby.

“That was different,” said Stan, coming to her defence. “The show was about Abby because she worked in de-junking people’s homes. She was an expert rather than a presenter.”

Abby shot him a grateful smile.

“Yes, but the team at Beech,
you guys,
” Roxie enfolded Stan, Flora and Brian in the warmth of her praise and left Abby out, “you all helped her learn how to become a presenter. You can do it again.”

“What if they aren’t good enough, though?” insisted Flora. “What do we do then?”

“We’ll find more people for our shortlist,” Roxie replied as if it were very simple. And it probably was when you were someone like Roxie, Abby reflected gloomily. She’d bet anything that Roxie never had a moment’s doubt in her whole life, about work, men, anything.

They sifted through the CVs with photos attached until they all agreed on five final presenters to be given studio auditions, three women and two men.

“As we’re not sure which format to go for yet,” Roxie mused, “we don’t know if we’ll need only one person, or two.”

“Time enough to talk about that when we’ve done the auditions,” Brian said, hauling himself out of his leather chair. “Better fly, folks. We’ve got a meeting with some people about a new quiz show. Roxie’s idea. Could make us a fortune.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully and smirked at his executive producer.

Abby watched dismally. She could see how valuable Roxie must be to both Brian and Beech. Go-getting, ambitious, ruthless—she was what every television company needed. If there was a power struggle between Roxie and Abby, there was no doubt as to who’d win. The presenter of a show was always dispensable but an executive who could bring in millions in revenue from new programmes was worth her weight in gold.

As there was no point in hanging around anymore, Abby said her goodbyes and left the conference room.

Roxie caught up with her by the lifts.

“Abby, there may be journalists phoning you about the new additions to the show. We’ve put the story out that we’re looking for new talent and, naturally, people want to get your reaction.”

“Naturally,” said Abby. She wouldn’t give Roxie the satisfaction of seeing how jolted she was by all of this.

“I’m sure you’ll fill them in on how thrilled we are at this chance to give the show a boost because it was getting a bit tired,” Roxie went on, her sharp eyes travelling over Abby’s carefully made-up face and stunning new outfit, making Abby hope that her new thick-lashes mascara hadn’t got to the stage of sliding down her face like giant panda markings. “If the new format bumps up the ratings, we’re all happy, aren’t we?”

Abby cast her mind back to the expression she’d used on the episode when trawling through one woman’s shoe collection had yielded the furry corpse of a hamster that had gone missing many moons before. The trick was to look interested rather than disgusted.

“You can count on me, Roxie,” she said, her dead-hamster face firmly in place.

It was only when the lift doors whooshed shut that she allowed her face to reshape into an expression that showed her real emotion: anxiety.

Downstairs, Livia on reception had fan mail for her. A big A-3 envelope filled to the brim with letters.

“Thanks, Livvy,” said Abby, feeling suddenly close to tears at the sight of this collected mass of approval.
Somebody
liked her, even if that horrible bitch Roxie wanted her out.

As she took the envelope a sudden waft of Livia’s perfume made her legs feel weak. Livia was wearing Caléche. Abby had had a bottle of that once, just one bottle in her lifetime, but she could instantly remember when she’d worn it. There had been seven of them inter-railing round Europe, all with plans to split up and see different cities. Abby, her sister, Viv, and Linda from college wanted to see as much of Europe as possible in a month before ending up in Spain or Italy in a yet-to-be-discovered spot that fulfilled the twin requirements of being both cheap and very hot so they could spend two weeks on the beach. Jay, Colm and two other guys from university planned to relax first and then tour, ending up in Amsterdam so they could lounge around in the coffee houses, breathing in both the fuggy, smoky atmosphere and a bit of legal dope into the bargain.

Naturally, none of these great schemes went according to plan. Colm had a thing for Linda, so the guys followed the girls to Paris where they all spent a week, and then the groups split up with Linda, Colm, Jay, Viv and Abby taking a meandering journey towards Italy to sunbathe. Somewhere between Paris and Rome, Jay and Abby ended up sharing a room …

“It’s exciting about the show, isn’t it, Abby?” said Livia. “Selina’s out sick this morning—her sinuses, poor love—but she left a message to tell you she’d phone you on your mobile tomorrow to tell you which papers and magazines want to do a piece on the search for new presenters for
Declutter.
”

“That’s great,” Abby said, taking her fan mail with her. She’d thought she and Selina got on well but perhaps that was changing too. The least Selina could have done was forewarned Abby about Roxie having put the story out publicly. Then, she’d have been able to smile politely when Roxie mentioned it. Abby’s sense of anxiety notched up another level.

She reached McGregor’s Townhouse at just after three, and as she stood in line to check in, Abby realised that she’d never noticed how quiet the lobby was before. When she’d stayed there previously, she usually rushed in and out far too quickly to notice, pausing only to collect her keys or order something at reception. But today, toying with the idea of meeting Jay there, she noticed the lobby was sepulchrally silent, with no Muzak to mask conversations and no lively chatter from other guests.

It was so quiet that if she and Jay tried an “Oh hello! Fancy seeing you here,” everyone within a ten-yard radius would hear and no doubt instantly guess that there was some subterfuge going on. Worse, what if one of the
Declutter
team appeared suddenly and saw Abby heading off with a gorgeous man in tow, a man who definitely wasn’t Tom? Why hadn’t she arranged to meet Jay somewhere neutral for dinner instead of relying on his laid-back “I’ll contact you in the afternoon?”

Panic filled her. Abby checked in and fled to her room, too nervous to worry over what newspaper she wanted with her breakfast and whether she needed an alarm call or not.

She’d been given a junior suite again, but today she didn’t bother cooing over the luxury of the king-size bed or the complimentary bottle of wine placed beside a fat basket of exotic fruit. Dumping her stuff on the bed, she rushed to the phone but its red message light wasn’t lit. No call from Jay. And he hadn’t phoned her mobile either, which had been her chief fear since she’d made the assignation. Every time her phone had rung during the past week, Abby had jumped with nerves. If it rang when either Jess or Tom was present, she ignored it.

“How can you do that?” had demanded Jess, who lived with her phone glued to her ear as she spoke ten times a day with Steph.

“I don’t feel like answering it,” Abby had replied tersely as her mobile squealed insistently from the depths of her handbag in the kitchen.

“And you give out yards to me for not being able to hear my mobile when I’m on the train listening to my Discman,” Jess said accusingly.

Now, Abby sat on the bed and dialled Jay’s number. It was switched off and she got through to his answering service. Nerves made her reckless and she left a message: “Jay, sorry, I think this is a mistake. I know you said you’d get in touch with me in the hotel but it’s too public. The team will be staying here, and what if one of them arrives early? I don’t think I can go through with this. I can’t have dinner with you. I’m married. I’m sorry, really … goodbye.”

She hung up, breathing heavily as though she’d just run up a flight of stairs. She’d actually done it. She’d told Jay she couldn’t go ahead, and there was no doubt that this was the right move. She wasn’t cut out to flirt, let alone have an affair. Practised adulterers probably didn’t feel their stomachs leap with sheer anxiety at the thought of cheating on their husbands. They just jumped into bed with someone and got on with it.
Carpe diem
and all that. Abby, with convent-school morality drilled into her, was too nervy to
carpe
anything.

She slipped off her high heels and swapped her clingy grey jersey dress for the hotel’s enormous towelling gown. Flicking on the TV, she began to unpack, half listening to a chat show as she hung up her clothes. Veronica from Beech’s wardrobe department had provided two gorgeous new tops for this week’s filming: a blush-pink fitted shirt that looked great over jeans, and a funky long-sleeved T-shirt with a fifties comic-strip illustration on the front. Now that she had nothing to worry about apart from the actual show, Abby could appreciate the new clothes.

She must have been mad to think of having an affair, she decided. Mad or off her head. Still, it was all in the past now.

When she’d unpacked, Abby got some orange juice from the mini bar, took some Toblerone as a treat, and sat down on a turquoise-and-white-striped couch to enjoy the TV and the gossip magazines the hotel had thoughtfully provided.

She was halfway through the chocolate when the doorbell buzzed. She opened the door curiously and her breathing stopped. There stood Jay with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a small carrier bag from an upmarket deli in the other. His smile was wolfish and as he lounged against the door jamb, eyeing up Abby in her unflattering robe, she felt her resolve crack.

“May I come in?” he said in a low, dark voice.

“Of course,” she squeaked, scared someone would see him. Inside, he shoved the door shut with his foot, put the champagne down and took Abby in his arms. It was all happening so fast, his face close to hers, his body pressing against hers, and then he was kissing her. It was so different from kissing Tom, that practised dance of years of familiarity. Jay kissed her as if kissing was a form of sex all on its own, his big wolfish mouth devouring hers, his tongue flicking in and out of her mouth, one of his hands cradling the back of her head to pull her closer and closer. And Abby, who couldn’t remember feeling such passion for years from mere kissing, kissed him back, her mouth locked on his, her body jammed up against his and the only thought in her head that they get out of their clothes and hold each other skin on skin before sinking into the bed and making love …