Best of Friends (62 page)

“Don’t worry about Brian,” he said. “He’ll get over it. He’d have to find out sometime. Besides, the Seven Two Seven Network guys are really keen—the news has obviously got out.”

“But nothing has been agreed,” Abby protested. “Nobody’s shown us a contract or anything. It’s not as though the job is in the bag.”

“True,” admitted Mike, “but I happen to know that they’ve audi-tioned three other people for the job and none of them was any-where near as good as you. Inside information,” he added happily. “They even talked to Candy whatshername, although I believe she was hopeless—too brittle.”

Abby couldn’t resist a satisfied smile. So Candy had gone for the same job and performed badly? Abby’s mother might have taught her that it was wrong to find pleasure in other people’s misfortune, but today she just couldn’t help it.

“Are they going to make us an offer, then?” she asked Mike.

“I’m meeting the producer and the executive producer for lunch tomorrow when I get back and if they don’t make us an offer, I’ll go into a milliner’s shop and eat all the stock,” Mike said, sounding justifiably self-satisfied. “We could look for big money, you know.”

Abby thought of where big money had got her in the past. It had moved her family out of Gartland Avenue, where they had been happy, despite everything. It had bought them this glorious old house, a house where they were now miserable and which they were now going to have to sell. Money had brought nothing but trouble to the Barton family. Or perhaps it wasn’t the money, after all—having it had merely highlighted problems that had been there all along. Either way, cash didn’t solve everything.

“Look, Mike, I’m not out for huge money,” she said. “If Tom and I do get divorced, obviously I’m going to need to make a rea-sonable living. But I’m no Ivana Trump. I don’t need a fortune to spend in designer shops.” She could sense Mike’s hesitation even over the phone.

“Abby, don’t forget that you’re the bigger earner in your marriage. Tom would be perfectly within his rights to look for alimony and a settlement from you.”

Abby laughed mirthlessly before she could stop herself. “Mike, you’ve never met Tom and it’s clear that you really don’t know that much about him,” she said. “Tom would rather live in a box than take a penny off me.”

“Sorry,” Mike apologised. “I didn’t mean to interfere. That’s your business.”

The following day was Monday and, despite the fact that she should have been jet-lagged after her flight from Florida, Abby woke early and felt full of energy. She got up, made herself a fruit smoothie, and then went for a speedy four-mile walk, listening to the radio on her Discman as she went. She got back at half-past nine, fresh-faced and energised, expecting to see a sleepy Jess emerg-ing from her bedroom. But Jess was already up and she didn’t look in the least sleepy.

“Dad phoned looking for you,” Jess said grimly.

Abby didn’t know why but she had a feeling it was bad news. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

“Some journalist phoned him a few minutes ago looking for a comment about how the two of you were getting a divorce,” Jess said. “Someone rang here too, but I let it go to answerphone.”

Abby’s heart sank into her trainers. That was all she needed. She’d bet a month’s salary that Roxie was behind this. The vengeance of a woman scorned was nothing to the vengeance of a commissioning director who saw a TV presenter getting the better of her. Who else could have revealed the status of their marriage? Roxie might not have known about the split for definite, but she was obviously sufficiently furious to act on the basis of strong ru-mour. It would be just her style to let the information slip out to a journalist when Abby was back in the country.

“Dad thinks you tipped them off because the new show is com-ing out and you’ll be looking for publicity,” Jess added slowly.

Abby was horrified. “It’s not like that, Jess,” she said. “You know I’d do anything not to hurt your dad. Before we went away I had an interview with a journalist and I was so anxious that the news of our separation would get out that I lied through my teeth. I don’t want people to know any more than your dad does.”

She felt terrible to see the caged look on Jess’s face. The happy, open expression that her daughter had worn throughout the holi-day was suddenly gone. It was back to real life. She sighed. A chat with Jess would have to wait. She started to dial Tom’s number.

Tom answered the phone on the first ring. He sounded rattled and immediately launched into an attack: “How dare you talk about our private lives to all and sundry? I suppose you’re desper-ately trying to publicise your stupid television show, but I don’t want my name dragged into it—or Jess’s name either. You can find some other way to get yourself into the papers. How did they get the number, anyhow?”

If Abby was shocked by the depth of his venom, she didn’t show it. She knew that Tom couldn’t forgive her for breaking up their marriage, so it was hardly surprising that he was going to blame her for every-thing that went wrong in the future.

“I didn’t tell anyone about the separation, and I don’t know how they got your number,” she said calmly, although she didn’t expect him to believe her. Roxie must have found Tom’s number in Abby’s contact details in the office. “I like my life private too, and if you think it’s of any benefit to me to have news of our split splashed all over the papers, then you’re wrong.”

“Wrong?” he demanded angrily. “I’ll tell you where I went wrong, Abby. I was wrong to believe in you for all those years. I was wrong to think I actually knew you. I didn’t know you at all. You’re just publicity hungry and you don’t give a damn about me or Jess.”

Abby was about to say that this wasn’t fair criticism but she stopped. Perhaps it was fair. So, she hadn’t told anyone about their separation, and she’d done everything she could to keep it out of the papers. But she had slept with another man; she’d been respon-sible for the break-up. Everything went back to that.

“I didn’t tell anyone anything,” she said, “but if you want to be-lieve I did, you’re entitled to your opinion. You don’t have to make any comment to the papers. I’ll get my publicity people to deal with it.”

As soon as she’d said it, she knew that speaking about publicity people was a mistake. All of a sudden, she’d stopped sounding like Abby Barton, Tom’s estranged wife, and was talking like some Hol-lywood movie star, exactly the sort of person Tom hated.
Her publicity people.

They’d come full circle, hadn’t they? No matter how much she protested to the contrary, Tom would believe that she had turned into everything he hated.

“I’m sorry about all of this, Tom,” she said. “I’ll try and sort it out, but there will be some publicity.”

She paused. It was now or never. Get your retaliation in first: “I’ll get my solicitor to ring you later in the week. We need to dis-cuss formalities like the finances, selling the house, seeing Jess.”

“Fine,” he rapped back.

She hung up and found that her hands were shaking. The phone rang again and she ignored it. She heard the oily tones of a well-known gossip columnist on the answerphone and was glad she had. Her mobile rang lustily and when she recognised her assistant’s phone number she picked it up.

“Hi, Katya. What’s up?” she asked, although she knew the an-swer.

Katya sounded embarrassed. “Well, Abby, em… it’s just that I’ve just had a couple of people ringing me and I didn’t want to bother you because I knew you had just got back from holiday but… well… they seem to know that you and Tom have split up and they want to do stories on it. I didn’t know what to do.”

In the midst of her misery, Abby felt sorry for Katya. She sounded out of her depth. “Who was looking for me?” she asked, opening a fresh page on an A4 pad. “What exactly do they know?”

Slowly, Katya began to fill her in.

Selina phoned next, and Abby could tell that she wasn’t really able to talk freely.

“How are things at your end?” Selina said. “Lots of phone calls this morning?”

“You can’t talk, can you?” Abby asked quietly.

“No, not really,” said Selina cryptically. “I’d love to meet up with you for a coffee but perhaps you could phone our mutual friend and talk about this.”

Mike.

“I will,” Abby replied.

By the time she’d managed to speak to Mike, Abby was aware that this wasn’t just a bad dream. Both Katya and Selina had phoned back with more messages from interested journalists, and one or two had managed to get her home number from somewhere. Still in her sweaty walking gear, Abby sat in the study with the phone beside her and looked at the long line of names now written on her paper.

Mike, who had just stepped off the plane from Paris, said he knew one of the best PR people in the country, Nadia Wilson. He’d contact her and ask her to deal with all the press queries and to try to put a decent spin on the separation.

How could you put a decent spin on a divorce? Abby wondered glumly. But Mike told her not to be so negative.

“This too will pass,” he said, with the air of an all-seeing guru who’d witnessed more break-ups than a divorce lawyer. “Look after yourself, Abby,” he advised. “There’s more to this than presenting your side of the story to the press. You’ve got to look after yourself and Jess. It’ll be very hard on her when she sees the story in the pa-pers. And it’ll be very hard on you too. Why don’t you go see a therapist or a counsellor to get you over the bad part?”

Mike was always surprising her, Abby realised. He really did worry about her well-being, and not just about his twenty percent.

“You’re a good man,” she said, grateful for his support.

“You mean I’m a good man for an agent,” he joked back. “I’m a shark, really, you know that, Abby. Let’s face it, if you have a break-down, what’s twenty percent of nothing?”

When they hung up, they were both laughing. But Abby’s cheer-fulness vanished when she went into the kitchen and found Jess sit-ting at the kitchen table, staring gloomily into an untouched bowl of cereal.

“I know this is hard for you—” began Abby.

“Hard for me?” Jess cried, not letting her finish. “You’ve no idea how hard it is for me. You don’t understand the slightest bit. Or how hard it is for Dad, for that matter. You know how proud he is—how’s it going to look to everyone in his school when they’ve read that you and he have split up because you went off with some-body else?” Her voice cracked.

“They won’t know that,” Abby said in horror. “All they know is that we’ve split up. We’re hardly going to tell them why.”

But Jess was right. That was a fresh worry—that some enterpris-ing reporter would work out that adultery had ended the Bartons’ so-called perfect marriage. Even worse, what if Jay came out of the woodwork to say that he was the third person in the Bartons’ split? Abby paled at the thought. She looked at Jess to find her daughter watching her intensely, as if she knew exactly what was going on in Abby’s mind. It was a look of disgust.

“Don’t hate me, please, Jess,” begged Abby tiredly. “Please don’t hate me. We’ve got to stick together to get through this. I didn’t want this to happen, you know I didn’t. Please try and understand a little…”

Jess got up, emptied her untouched cereal into the bin and threw the empty dish and spoon into the dishwasher. She stormed out of the kitchen and Abby knew there was no point in going after her. Not long afterwards, she heard the front door slam.

Television certainly worked in mysterious ways, Abby realised. In-stead of being put off by the news that their as-yet unsigned new chat show host’s private life was going to be splashed all over the pa-pers with grisly details of her marriage breakdown, the 727 Net-work were even keener to sign up Abby.

“It’s the human element,” explained Nadia Wilson, the high-priced PR lady Mike had hired to take care of Abby at this difficult time, and who had insisted on coming over straight away to talk to her new client. “You’ve got the right touch of empathy now. They’ll be queuing up to appear on the show because you’ve been through the mill yourself. Stars like being interviewed by people who can see things from their side of the fence. That’s why the Seven Two Seven Network don’t want to hire the usual nineteen-year-old supermodel who’s never been in love or had children or done anything. They want you: Abby Barton, real woman, mother, and soon-to-be divorcée. Everything you’ve been through adds pathos and human emo-tion to the whole story. And,” Nadia grinned, “the publicity won’t be bad for the show. Let’s face it, everybody is going to know about it now. The chat show, that is.”

Nadia was nothing like Abby had expected. She’d imagined that a high-flying PR person who masterminded publicity campaigns for the rich and famous would be a scary dame with a heavy eyeliner habit, long manicured talons and sharp designer suits. Instead, Nadia was a serene woman in her late thirties, who didn’t need make-up to emphasise her shrewd dark eyes, and who looked as though she’d just dropped into a meeting on her way back from the grocery run. Her uniform consisted of jeans, a simple white shirt, flat boots and a man’s diving watch. Her long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“Saves trouble in the morning,” was Nadia’s explanation of her uncomplicated wardrobe choices. “I just get up and put on a pair of jeans and another shirt. Simple.”

Nadia’s straightforward approach to life also extended to public-ity. She advised Abby to do one big interview where she actually talked about her marriage breakdown.

“Ostensibly the talk will be about
Declutter,
and leaving Beech, along with the new TV chat show. But you have to mention the break-up,” she counselled. “Nothing too much but enough to get the reporters off your back. If we do the interview with a tame newspaper, then they’ll let us see the copy before they go to print. Copy approval is everything. Everyone else will rip your quotes off from that interview but at least you’ll have given your side of the story and be able to emerge with some grace.”

Abby, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, stared at Nadia. “What about Tom?” she asked. “When does he get to give his side of the story?” It seemed so wrong that people would want to hear her view but not Tom’s. Not that Tom wanted to talk to anyone about his private life, but that wasn’t the point.