Foursome (14 page)

‘She just went up and talked to her at a party,’ Kay continues. ‘That’s so cool.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Isn’t it?’

I take Kay round to the Red Lion for lunch and I ask her if she has any questions so far. She does and they’re all quite insightful and the kind of thing you ought to ask, so I’m feeling good that I backed the right horse. I’m enjoying the fact that I can mould her into my ideal co-worker. (‘Don’t ever let the phone ring more than three times. In fact, while you’re still learning the ropes the most useful thing you can do is answer as many calls as you can, get a feel for who’s calling and why.’) Kay is so happy to be back at work, so grateful for the opportunity, so keen to do well that she absorbs everything I throw at her, like a Vileda super mop. I’m careful to be fair. I make it clear to her that we share the chores and the responsibilities. I’m not trying to dump the jobs I don’t like on her just because I probably could. She already gets the rough end of the deal by having to work for Lorna.

Lorna is poking about in reception when we get back, which always makes me nervous. She looks at her watch.

‘You need to stagger your lunch breaks in future,’ she says, looking at Kay. ‘You can’t both be going out together; someone needs to be here at all times to man the phones.’

‘Oh,’ Kay says, and looks worried.

‘My fault,’ I say cheerily. ‘I checked with Melanie and she said it was fine because she wasn’t going to be going anywhere.’

‘Well, you should have let me know,’ she says grumpily.

‘Yes, I suppose I should,’ I say, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘Oh well, never mind. No harm done.’

If Kay wasn’t there, we would probably have a row about now. Her accusing me of being insubordinate, me hurling accusations at her that would include being patronizing and high handed. As it is she merely mutters under her breath and retreats to her office to prepare for the big meeting.

Heather seems nice enough when she comes in, although she does that thing where she’s very friendly until she realizes I am only a humble assistant and then she switches to polite but disinterested. I make her a cup of tea while she is waiting for Lorna to get off the phone and I hope that she isn’t put off by the wall of photos of people she probably doesn’t even recognize who make up our clients.

The meeting clearly goes to plan. Heather reiterates her decision to sack her current representation and join us. Once she has left, Joshua produces a bottle of champagne from somewhere and insists that we all sit in his office and have a glass to celebrate.

‘Don’t get ideas,’ I say to Kay, smiling. ‘This doesn’t happen every day.’

She laughs and Melanie asks her how she’s enjoying it so far.

‘It’s great,’ Kay says. ‘I think I’m going to love it here.’

Silently I hope she’s right.

18

It’s a relief to have Nicola and Natalie already causing havoc in the flat when I get home. It will give Dan something to focus on other than his fight with Alex. He was very down all weekend, preoccupied. Tonight he won’t have the luxury of being able to brood because he’ll be forced into playing Mousetrap or boxing on Zoe’s Wii Fit.

Isabel has already been and gone, dropping the girls off into Zoe’s dubious care and racing back round to Liverpool Road to prepare for her date. Luke is taking her to Nobu and then – I am in no doubt that Isabel is hoping at least – back to hers for the big moment.

I send her a text – ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’ – and she calls me almost immediately and says, ‘I’m terrified.’

‘Just lie back and think of England,’ I say, and she laughs.

‘I haven’t been naked in front of anyone other than Alex since I was, what? Twenty?’

‘I’ve seen you naked.’

‘You know what I mean. I don’t look like that any more. I look like a forty-year-old woman who’s had twins.’

‘That’s because that’s what you are. What’s wrong with that?’

‘It’s just… it doesn’t all look as good as it used to.’

‘Luke has kids, doesn’t he? Presumably he coped with having to see his wife with no clothes on after she had them.’

‘They’re separated, remember?’

‘Isabel. If you are going to tell me that Luke left his wife because he didn’t fancy her any more once she had children, then I am going to forbid you from ever seeing him again.’

‘No! Of course not. I don’t know what I mean. I’m just nervous about… you know… doing it.’

‘Listen to yourself. You’re a beautiful, funny, intelligent, successful woman. He should be so lucky.’

‘I know, I know. I’m pathetic.’

I’m not letting her off that easily. ‘Don’t you think he’s feeling nervous too? I doubt he’s in the same shape he was when he was at college, but do you care? No. And neither does he about you. And if he’s that shallow that he’s put off by the odd stretch mark then he’s not worth knowing. OK?’

‘Yes. OK.’

‘Try to enjoy it. It’s meant to be fun, remember.’

‘Fun. Yes. I’ll try to keep that in mind.’

‘Go and have a glass of wine before you go out. And call me as soon as he’s left in the morning. The minute he leaves, OK?’

I find myself thinking about it a lot later on. Not Isabel and Luke having sex. That would be weird. Not to mention that I have no idea what Luke looks like so I would have to make up my own image, avatar-like, to project into the picture. No, I can’t stop myself from wondering what it would be like to be with someone other than Dan. Now, at my age. I know exactly what Isabel meant when she said she was nervous, despite my giving her a hard time about it. It would be so exposing, so much more revealing and potentially humiliating than when we were young and confident. But also thrilling and daring and invigorating. Not to mention the ego boost, that someone had looked at you now, exactly as you are with all your wobbly bits and lines round your eyes, and thought, Phwoar.

A part of me, a part I’d rather not acknowledge, is envious. But I know that if I were her there’s no way I would be taking my own advice. I would be crawling back into my safe shell and not risking the rejection. And, by the way, I am not looking for any kind of a change. I am very happy with the way my life is. I just find it a bit unnerving, being surrounded by all this rampant lust all of a sudden, that’s all. It’s not what I’m used to in my friends. It’s making me feel, what? Inadequate? Boring? Left out?

It suddenly occurs to me that when I met Dan I was so self-assured. Of course, I was also about nine stone. I have a horrible moment of insecurity when I wonder what he thinks about the way I look now, whether he notices that I’ve let myself go a bit or whether he just sees the woman he loves, and embraces all the changes. Whether underneath it all he’s watching Alex and Isabel and wishing he could run off and have wild abandoned passionate sex with someone new. No, I tell myself. Not Dan. He’s probably thinking about how awful it must be to have to remember to hold your stomach in and not to breath through your mouth because you’ve been eating garlic. And I feel the same. I do.

As soon as I have dispatched the kids off to school the next morning – giving Zoe strict instructions to walk the girls right up to the front door ‘and make sure they go through it’ before getting on the bus with William – I call Isabel. I know I should be waiting for her to ring me and I’m taking a chance that Luke might still be there. I’m guessing that she won’t answer if he is. But she picks up on the third ring and it doesn’t sound like she’s in the throes of passion.

‘So,’ I say as soon as she says hello. ‘How was it?’

‘Oh,’ she says, not sounding at all like the earth has recently been moving. ‘It was great. I think. It was all over quite quickly.’

‘The first one always is,’ I say as if I have any idea. ‘You just have to get it out of the way and then, once all the awkwardness about taking your clothes off is over, you can really take it slowly the next time. Right?’

‘That’s just it,’ she says. ‘There wasn’t a next time.’

‘Not even this morning?’

‘He didn’t stay the night. He came back and it was all going really well and then he said that he had to get home. He said he had a meeting early this morning and he needed a change of clothes.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. It would have looked a bit presumptuous if he had turned up for your date clutching a clean suit.’

‘I know. I guess I just felt a little disappointed. I’d built up this whole scenario in my head of me cooking breakfast for him and it really being a chance for us to get to know each other better…’

‘Did you ever actually ask him if he wanted to stay the night? Before you got home, I mean?’

‘No. I suppose I didn’t. I just assumed…’

‘You know what? Maybe it’s a good thing. I can’t imagine facing someone I hardly know over cornflakes and toast in the morning. Especially after…’

She laughs. ‘You’re right. The reality probably wouldn’t have been that romantic. Anyway, he’s asked me if I want to go out again later in the week so I guess it must have been OK.’

‘Only OK?’

‘No. It was better than OK. And next time it’ll be fantastic.’

‘So he didn’t take one look at you with your clothes off and run a mile, then?’

‘No,’ she says coyly. ‘He didn’t.’

‘Do you need me to have the girls again? I’m happy to.’

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Alex wants them to stay at his.’

‘You’ve talked to him?’

‘Of course. Only about logistics. He didn’t mention anything about falling out with Dan. And I wasn’t about to bring it up.’

‘How did he sound?’ I say. Despite all of my angry feelings towards Alex I don’t like to think of him cut adrift.

‘A bit miserable to be honest. Flat.’

‘Well, it’s his own fault,’ I say.

‘Some of it,’ she says. ‘Not everything.’

When we say goodbye I start to feel incredibly sad. How have we got to this stage where Isabel is sleeping with someone new and Alex has had a whole other relationship start and finish? Where Dan couldn’t care less about whether Alex is OK or not? It feels bizarre that all of our shared history, that bond that was so important to all of us, has come to count for nothing.

Despite Lorna work feels like a welcome distraction to real life at the moment and I feel my mood lighten as I go up in the rickety old lift towards our attic rooms.

Kay is already there, kettle on, and we chatter amiably while we wait for the day to pick up speed. She takes a message from Craig who is calling to say he is safely on his way to his script meeting and then I pass Heather over to her so that she can leave a message for Lorna too.

‘What did she want?’ I ask when Kay has put the phone back down.

‘To find out if Lorna has called the BBC to set up a meeting yet.’

‘Blimey. She’s keen.’ Strictly speaking, Heather has to give Fisher Parsons Management three months’ notice and we would have to share commission with them on any new jobs, which we set up for her in that period. In reality it’s a grey area and one that’s notoriously hard to police. Everything takes so long that even if Heather met with the Head of Light Entertainment at the BBC tomorrow (or the Controller of Entertainment Commissioning as I think they are calling themselves these days. I try not to get distracted by wondering how much it cost to replace all the headed notepaper when that change came in) and they offered her her own series on the spot, it would still be months before contracts were signed and production begun. And by that stage who’s to say when that original meeting actually happened? Besides, Heather is under contract to ITV for the next year and a half so it all feels a little irrelevant.

‘So just email Lorna all the details you have, including the time of the call. And then file the email somewhere. Don’t delete it.’

Kay nods, taking it in.

‘And, if it’s important, deliver it verbally when you get a chance too.’

If she wonders why I am hammering the point home so violently, she doesn’t say. I just want to make sure she’s covered herself.

Later, when Lorna comes in – the twenty-five minutes late that has become her custom these days – looking watery eyed and lank haired, and hyped up on disappointment and lack of food, I hear my protégée deliver the two messages in person and I’m glad my lecture hit home.

At lunchtime, while Kay is out getting a sandwich and doing some shopping, I answer another call from Craig.

‘How did it go?’ I know that he’s been a mess of excitement and anxiety in the run-up to his first real commissioning meeting.

‘Great,’ he says. ‘Except that the script editor mentioned that they’d never heard back from Lorna about my fee so I still don’t have a contract.’

Really? What is going on with that woman? I try not to sound as exasperated as I feel. ‘There must have been a mix up. I know she was trying to call them,’ I lie. ‘I’ll get her to try them again today and we’ll get it sorted. Don’t worry.’

‘Only Hattie, that’s the script editor, she said they can’t go ahead if it’s not all agreed. Just in case Lorna turns round and asks them for a fortune or something. I told her I’d write it for nothing…’

‘It won’t come to that. She’s on the phone at the moment, but as soon as she gets off I’ll talk to her and one of us will call you back, OK?’

‘OK,’ he says reluctantly.

I wait a few minutes but Lorna’s line is still engaged so I send her an email marked ‘Urgent!!!’. I watch for her light to go out to tell me she’s off the phone, but after fifteen minutes it’s still lit up. It occurs to me that she might be doing her trick of sitting there with it off the hook again so, even though I could wait for Kay to come back in thirty-five minutes’ time, I decide that for Craig’s sake this needs to be dealt with now.

I steel myself to approach the closed door of her office. I listen outside for a few moments, but I can’t hear her talking so I knock and wait for her to tell me to come in. Silence. I knock again. I’m sure I would have heard her if she’d gone out, and her coat is still hanging on the hook in the hall. I knock once more and then open the door. Lorna is at her desk, tears streaming down her face, eyes swollen.

‘What?’ she says aggressively. I notice that her phone is lying on her desk again. I decide to try to ignore the state she’s in and just act businesslike. She clearly didn’t want me to see her like this. I tell her about Craig as briefly as I can.

‘I spoke to the producer,’ she says defensively. ‘I said he’d accept the minimum.’

‘Well, maybe someone there messed up. They obviously didn’t make a note or pass it on or… whatever.’ I just want to get out of the room as quickly as I can. ‘Perhaps you could ring them and put it straight? Craig’s terrified they’ll get someone else to write it.’

‘Fine,’ she says.

‘OK. Good.’ I start to retreat, but it’s incredibly hard to ignore someone who seems to be having some kind of nervous breakdown right in front of you, however much you dislike them so, before I can stop myself, I say, ‘Are you OK?’

‘Next time,’ she says, ‘if you knock and you don’t hear me say come in, then don’t come in.’

‘You’re the boss,’ I say sarcastically. That’s the last time I try to be nice.

When I get back to reception I see the light by her phone line go off and on again. I know I shouldn’t, but I flick the switch that allows me to listen in on her call and I clamp my hand firmly over the mouthpiece so she can’t hear me breathing. Someone answers the phone with the words ‘Reddington Road’ and Lorna asks for one of the producers by name.

‘Kate,’ she says as soon as she’s put through. ‘I’m so sorry. I completely neglected to call you back about Craig Connolly. I know he had his script meeting this morning and I just wanted to confirm that, of course, he’ll do it for the minimum. He’s just thrilled to have the break.’

‘Great,’ Kate says. ‘I was worried there was a problem there for a moment. Especially as he had already had to miss the story conference…’

‘He was ill,’ Lorna jumps in. ‘But he’s very confident that he’s up to speed with everything and he’s raring to go. And, again, I can’t apologize enough,’ she adds. ‘It’s entirely our fuck-up. To be completely honest, I didn’t get your message, but anyway…’

‘No problem,’ Kate says pleasantly. ‘I’ll get Emma to send the contract out today and you tell Craig he should just get on with it.’

I wait for Lorna to hang up before I put my phone down too. I assume that when her light goes on again she’s calling Craig to tell him the good news, but I decide to call him myself later to reiterate it. Just in case.

I can understand why she didn’t want to admit to me that she had messed up but her behaviour seems so extreme. I know that, lazy as she can be on occasions, her promotion means everything to her. It’s given her the status she’s always wanted and I can’t believe she’s going to mess it all up now. Can this all still be fallout from her bust-up with Alex? Did she really believe they were going to get married and have babies and live happily ever after? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. Alex is an attractive and funny man. He was professing his love for her within about five minutes of their starting to go out. Why wouldn’t she believe him? Why wouldn’t she fall in love with him back? Just because I know that he was stringing her along doesn’t make it any less real for her.