Jemima J. (16 page)

Her mother wants to walk down the street with Jemima and feel immeasurably proud, she wants to soak in the admiring stares, bask in her daughter’s beauty. What she doesn’t want is what she’s got. A daughter she loves, but of whom she’s ashamed.

Because at this moment in time Jemima’s mother tries her damnedest not to take her daughter shopping. She tries to avoid the pitying stares of shopkeepers, the humiliation of having to shop in plus-size stores, of people staring at them walking down the street.

Jemima’s mother loves Jemima, deeply, as only a mother can love her daughter, but she wishes Jemima looked different. If Jemima’s mother could have seen the picture Geraldine has just constructed, Jemima’s mother would have wept.

“And how’s your social life?” my mother finally asks.

Should I tell her I had a drink with the most gorgeous man in the country last night? Should I tell her I’ve met the most gorgeous man in America on the computer? Should I tell her about the photographs?

“Fine,” I say finally. “It’s fine.”

“So what else is new?” says my mother, who always ends the conversation this way.

“Nothing, Mum.” I say what I always say. “I’ll call you next week.”

“All right, and well done with the diet. Keep up the good work.”

I put down the phone and pull the picture of myself out of my bag. Careful not to let Sophie and Lisa see it, I make cups of tea for all of us then go upstairs and lie on my bed, and gaze at my picture for a very long time.

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”YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!!”
says the e-mail on my screen.
“I couldn’t believe it when I got your picture, you said that I was too good to be true but you look like a model! I didn’t even know English girls could look that good! I’d really love to hear your voice, how would you feel about chatting on the phone? I understand if you don’t want to give me your number, but I’ll give you mine. Maybe you can call me later today. 310 266 8787. Hopefully I’ll hear from you later, JJ. Take care. Brad, xxx.”

“Well,” says Geraldine, standing behind Jemima reading the words.

“Well,” I echo, feeling incredibly guilty. “That’s another fine mess you got me into.”

Geraldine laughs. “It’s not a mess, it’s fun. The only way it could become a mess would be if he wanted to meet you, and he’s so far away I’m sure that will never happen. So, are you going to phone him?”

“Why not?” Nothing to lose. “I’ll give him a call later.”

“I bet he’s got a sexy voice,” says Geraldine. “As long as he doesn’t punctuate every sentence with ‘like’ and ‘really.’ ”

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I laugh. “You are so cynical, Geraldine, I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“I may be cynical but you, my dear Jemima, are an innocent, and that’s why you need fairy godmothers like myself to keep your best interests at heart.”

“Ben Williams, please,” says a voice at the end of the phone.

“Speaking,” says Ben, cradling the phone in one shoulder and looking through a pile of papers on his desk.

“Hello there,” says the girl, sounding young, sounding like someone not very important. “This is Jackie from London Daytime Television.”

“Oh hello!” says Ben, attention suddenly riveted to the voice on the other end of the phone.

“I’m Diana Macpherson’s secretary. We got your application this morning and Diana was wondering when you could come in to meet her.” As Jackie says this she’s looking at Ben’s photograph, and laughing to herself because she made a bet with Diana that his voice wouldn’t be nearly as sexy as his face. She’s laughing because she is wrong. Boy is she wrong.

“Oh!” says Ben. “That’s fantastic!” Calm down, he tells himself, play it cool, this doesn’t mean anything. “Well, things are a bit quiet this week, when do you want to see me?”

“We’ve had thousands of applications and we’re trying to see the people on our shortlist as soon as possible. Any chance you could pop in this afternoon?”

Any chance? Any chance? Ben will create the chance. “This afternoon’s fine. Would three-ish suit you?”

“Three-ish would be perfect,” says Jackie, making a mental note to reapply her makeup after lunch. “Ask for me at the main reception and I’ll come and get you.”

“Do I need to bring anything?” asks Ben.

“No,” she laughs. “Just yourself.”

Ben puts down the phone and looks around him. Shabby, he thinks. This room is filled with shabby desks, shabby computers, and people in shabby suits. Soon, he thinks, I will be work
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ing in television, where everyone is smart and stylish, where I will never again have to deal with the daily grind of the
Kilburn Herald.

Careful, Ben, remember that old expression, don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, but then again, if you received a picture of Ben you’d interview him too.

If the truth be known, had it not been for Jackie, Ben Williams would not have been seen. It is true that London Daytime Television received thousands of applications, and it is true that most of them went straight to Personnel, where they were sorted out into three piles: Yes, No, and Maybe.

Ben, however, was clever. Ben addressed his envelope directly to Diana Macpherson, so his application bypassed Personnel and ended up on Jackie’s desk. Jackie has had a few of these applications, for there are several potential television presenters who possess as much common sense as Ben Williams, but none of the others has caught Jackie’s eye in the way Ben did.

Jackie was pushing them all into an internal envelope to send straight up to Personnel when she spotted Ben’s photograph, and as soon as she read his letter she went to see Diana.

“Diana,” she said, walking through the doorway, for this is television and the formalities normally associated with the hierarchy of blue-chip companies do not exist here. “I think you should look at this.”

“Not another bloody job application,” said Diana. “Send it up to Personnel.”

“Actually,” said Jackie, sitting down and drawing her legs up under her, “actually I think you should have a look at this.”

“You fancy him then,” smiled Diana, reaching first for the photograph. “Mmm,” she said, licking her lips. “I see exactly what you mean.”

Diana Macpherson is a tough woman, as she would have to be to reach the position of executive producer on a show as big as
London Nights.
She is also single, and happens to have a particular penchant for pretty young boys like Ben. Diana
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Macpherson is a rough diamond
‌
—brought up on the wrong side of the tracks, she was the only girl from her seedy neighborhood to win a scholarship to a good girls’ school, and then go on to university.

She is a bleached blonde, who at forty-one may not be as young as she used to be, but still turns heads by virtue of her micro miniskirts and mane of hair. Everyone is terrified of her, and few have earned her respect, but those who have have also won her undying loyalty.

Jackie, she respects, because Jackie comes from the same side of the street as Diana, and Jackie is bright. Jackie may be working as a secretary now, but when the time is right Diana will make her a researcher, and from there the world will be her oyster.

“So who is he then? Has he got any TV experience?”

“No,” says Jackie, “but he’s the deputy news editor on some local paper, and he sounds perfect for the news and politics reporter.”

“News and politics? Shame to waste that face on news and politics. Nah, he might be better for showbiz. Then again he might be crap on screen.” Diana sits in silence for a while, thinking.

“Why don’t I get him to come in?” says Jackie. “Then we’ll see whether he’s as good as he looks.”

“Yeah,” says Diana, “I could do with a pretty boy round the office again.”

Jackie laughs, for the last pretty boy around the office went on to become the presenter of his own chat show, thanks to his affair with Diana.

“Go on,” says Diana. “Give him a call and see if he can come in this afternoon.”

But Ben of course doesn’t know any of this, although it obviously won’t be the first time his looks have got him through the door. Ben is far too excited to analyze exactly why he has been chosen to meet the people at London Daytime Television, far too excited to get any work done.

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“Jemima,” he says on the internal phone when he has said goodbye to Jackie. “It’s Ben. Can you meet me for lunch?”

“When? Now?”

“Yup, I’ll see you down there. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“I’ve got an interview,” says Ben as we’re waiting in line at the cafeteria. “Can you believe it? I’m going in this afternoon!”

“That’s amazing!” Of course I’m happy for him, I’m not that bitter, but even as I try to share his excitement I can feel my heart sink. “See,” I say brightly, trying to cover it up as I nudge him playfully, “I told you they’d know you were too good to pass up.”

“I know,” sighs Ben. “But I really didn’t think they’d give me a chance.” His face falls. “Maybe they won’t. Maybe I’ll get on really badly with this Diana Macpherson and that will be it.”

“Do me a favor. You’re being interviewed by a woman? You’re in. All you have to do is charm her socks off and boom, you’re on television.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes.” I nod. “I really think so.”

“Oh God, I hope I get it,” he says.

“You will,” I say, knowing that I am probably right, that the gods will be shining on Ben Williams because of his good looks and easy charm.

We carry our trays to a table and sit down, me with a plate of salad, real salad as opposed to salads swimming in mayonnaise and calories. I’m with Ben, remember? Ben has invited me to lunch, and anyway these last couple of weeks my appetite doesn’t seem to be what it once was.

I know I’ve only lost ten pounds, but I can see the difference already. My clothes are slightly baggier, my trousers no longer cut into the place where my waist should be, nor are they straining at the seams when I sit down.

I had forgotten how good this feeling was. For the time being, the cravings have subsided, and for the past couple of
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weeks I’ve only had a small bowl of cereal for breakfast, and I’ve bypassed my daily bacon sandwiches completely. The smell still gets me every day, but somehow I’ve managed to learn to live with it, not to give in to the temptation.

“Can you imagine if I were on television?” Ben says, looking as if he’s lost in a world of cameras and fan mail. “It would be amazing.”

“I’ve never understood people who wanted to be on TV.” I look at him in astonishment. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters think of the lack of privacy. Suddenly everywhere you go people recognize you and want your autograph or your time.”

Ben grins. “Fantastic!” he says.

“And then,” I continue, rolling my eyes, “there’s the press invasion. I mean, you know yourself what it’s like. As soon as you’re on screen you become public property, and that means newspapers have a license to dig up as much dirt as they can find.”

“Are you suggesting I may have sordid secrets?” says Ben with a grin.

“Doesn’t everyone?” I look at the ceiling thinking I should be the one on television, because I am probably the only person in the world with no skeletons in her closet. “And anyway, they don’t have to be that sordid. Think of the number of times you’ve opened the Sunday tabloids and seen an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend of someone famous spill the beans on their steamy sex life. I’d hate that. All sorts of awful people would come crawling out of the woodwork.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” says Ben. “But I don’t think any of my exes would do that.”

“It’s amazing what people will do when there’s money in it.”

“God, if someone wanted to offer one of my exes money to talk about our sex life together good luck to them. I don’t think they’d find anything interesting.”

I blush, can you believe it? Ben mentions sex, and I blush. Never mind that it wasn’t that long ago I was sitting looking at
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hard-core porn pictures with him on the Internet. Nope, all he does is say the word and I bloody blush. “Oh well,” I say. “That only seems to happen to people who become famous for no reason at all, and I suppose they enjoy all the attention. They probably wouldn’t bother with London Daytime Television reporters.”

“What about BBC newsreaders?”

“Is that what you want to do?”

Ben groans in mock ecstasy. “I would kill to be a BBC newsreader.”

I’m stunned. “Well you are a dark horse. I never realized.”

“There are a lot of things about me you don’t know,” says Ben playfully, as he digs in to his lunch.

“So,” says Geraldine, squeezing in next to us. “Is Jemima telling you about her latest boyfriend?”

“Geraldine!” Shut up! I don’t want Ben to know about Brad. But, on the other hand, if he thought someone else found me attractive maybe he’d start looking at me in a new light. What do you think, worth a try?

“Well?” says Geraldine. “Are you?”

“What boyfriend?” says Ben.