Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (22 page)

‘Well, that's good to hear. OK. As you know I've had a lot of intensive meetings with the story team over the past couple of weeks, and I think we all feel that we've gone about as far as we can down the sex-kitten, glamorous, femme-fatale route with your character, Glenda. So we've decided to send her off in a completely different direction …'

She's looking at me, face frozen, but with her mouth parted in shock, and it flashes through my mind what a great silent-movie actress she would have made. You know, the ones that had captions underneath them in the 1920s: this one would be ‘star feigns horror'.

‘Basically, what happens is this. Glenda finally walks out on Sebastian, sick to the gills of all of his cheating and mistreating her. She loses pretty much everything: her home, car and flashy lifestyle. Times get tough for her, but she refuses to take a penny from her family or
friends; instead she's determined to forge a brand-new life for herself, without being dependent on any man ever again. She's too proud to accept any help from all her old friends and pretty soon, they start to dwindle away.'

‘And then what?' Good Grief O'Keefe asks; the eyes like slits.

‘Obviously she needs money and isn't exactly qualified to do much, so Sam gives her a part-time job in the café, to help get her back on her feet again.'

‘Waitressing? You want Glenda to be a
waitress
?'

This silent-movie caption would be ‘
STAR DOES DEEP SHOCK
'.

‘Nothing so grand, I'm afraid. No, she ends up working in the kitchen and Sam very kindly lets her rent a room in the flat above the café.'

‘Oh dear God, you have got to be kidding me.' (‘
STAR DOES DISGUST
'.) ‘Please tell me this is April Fool's Day.'

‘Listen, Cara, this is a wonderful storyline for you; it's a fantastic opportunity for you to really get your teeth into something meaty. You've played the glamour girl for years, now here's your chance to let the audience see a whole new side of Glenda. There are actors out there who would
kill
for a storyline like this.' I take a breath. I hadn't wanted to resort to this, but now I may not have a choice. ‘Of course, Cara, if you don't want to do it …'

It's unspoken between us. This is what's happening irrespective of whether you like it or not; now, do you want the gig or do you want to leave the show?

A pause. ‘
STAR PONDERS DEEPLY
'.

‘Right then,' she eventually says with a tortured expression on her face, as if she's having an excruciatingly painful bowel movement. ‘But just don't think for one second that I'll be caught dead wearing a hairnet.'

She storms out and I barely have time to catch my breath before Rob Richards comes thundering in, all guns blazing.

‘I don't know what you just said to Cara, but she's downstairs bawling her eyes out!' he shouts at me. ‘That's how you get your kicks, is it? Reducing people to tears?'

It's intimidating and awful when a man shouts at you and I really have to try my best to stay calm. The minute you get emotional in any argument, I remind myself, you've lost. This is going to be dreadful enough without resorting to raising my voice back at him.

‘Sit down, Rob, I have some news for you and I thought it would be better coming from me than from your agent. I feel it's the least we owe you, after all your years here.'

He grunts and sits down and I find myself vowing never, ever, on pain of death by electrocution, to have
a drunken fling with anyone I work with for as long as I live …

I launch into pretty much the same patter I said to Good Grief O'Keefe earlier and he rudely cuts across me.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, show's going in a new direction, blah blah. I get it; it's not a subtle point you're trying to make. Can I please just have the last sentence first?'

Still maintaining the same measured tone, I break it to him, far more gently than he deserves. ‘Both myself and the story team feel that we've come to the end of the road with your character, Sebastian. You have a marriage break-up story coming up in the next few weeks, where Glenda leaves him to make her own way in the world.'

‘Then what?'

‘He tries to persuade her to give the marriage another shot, to no avail, so …'

‘So?'

I brace myself. In his shoes, I'd hate to be on the receiving end of this news too, so I try to make it as quick and painless as possible for him. ‘So Sebastian leaves the country. He sells the house and decides to follow his dream. He buys a vineyard in Provence and makes up his mind to spend as much time there as he possibly can, away from his old life and all the constant reminders of happier times with Glenda.'

Rob just glares at me in mute stupefaction.

‘Look, Rob, I know this is hard for you to hear, but the good news is that we're not killing off your character. Maybe in a year or two Sebastian could come back to the show. I'm not ruling anything out for the future of this character and neither should you.'

There's an awful silence. I'm studying his face, waiting for the volcano to erupt, when without warning he picks up the cappuccino on my desk and hurls it at me. He misses, but destroys a bundle of scripts I had spread out in front of me. ‘You're nothing but a
bitch
!' he roars. ‘Who do you think you are, firing me?'

It's a terrifying display but, somehow, I keep cool. ‘Rob, I told you, you're not being fired, we're just sidelining your involvement in the show for the foreseeable future and, to be quite honest, if you think behaviour like this is doing you any favours, you're mistaken.'

It's getting harder to stay composed as he's standing right in front of me now, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘You have
no show
without me, do you realize that, you blow-in? What am I even doing here, listening to you? You're only a dried-up, frustrated old
spinster
.'

And he's gone. I slump back into the chair and really have to fight back the tears. After a few minutes, there's another, gentler knock on the door. I look up, although I'm still trembling. It's Suzy.

‘Are you OK?' she asks me, genuinely concerned. ‘God, that was awful. How
dare
Rob Richards speak to you like that? You could hear the shouting from the other end of the office. You could have him up for harassment for that, you know.'

‘Oh, Suzy, let's just be glad he's gone. God, I really hate my job sometimes. Do you think I might get lucky and that they'd transfer me back to current affairs? Fallujah would be a breeze compared with this. Right now I'd happily welcome any war zone as if it were an all-inclusive stay at the Ritz-Carlton.'

‘I don't blame you. Do you want anything from the canteen?'

‘Not unless they've started serving fun-sized packets of morphine to go.'

I'm just beginning to breathe normally again when the internal phone rings.

Philip Burke.
Oh God, what does he want?

‘Amelia,' he says, gruff as ever. ‘Can you come up to my office, please? Immediately is good for me.' He doesn't even wait for me to reply, just hangs up.

Five minutes later, I'm knocking on the door of his office, which is the penthouse, three floors above mine.

‘Get in here,' he says, so in I troop.

It's a fabulous, spacious room, with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides and a panoramic view of, well, the car park mainly. I've only ever been here once before, when the station first gave me a contract, all of
ten years ago. People only ever come in here to be either hired or fired and I'm just wondering what Philip has in store for me when I notice that he's watching an episode of
Celtic Tigers
on the monitor beside his desk. It's the episode which was broadcast last night, which is the first one I had a hand in. He's analysing it so closely that he doesn't even seem to notice that I'm actually standing right in front of his desk.

I, however, have dealt with quite enough rudeness for one morning, so I do a loud ‘ahem, ahem?'

He motions at me to sit down, but doesn't lift his eyes from the screen.

‘Wow, Philip, the Zapruder film wasn't studied that closely.'

He laughs, puts the show on freeze-frame and looks up. ‘Great, Amelia, there you are. I'm just watching the show and I have to say there is a marked improvement.'

‘Thanks. That's good to hear.'

‘Are you OK then? You're not going to flood the floor with tears on me, I hope?'

I look at him quizzically, wondering how he knew I was shaken. I thought I was putting on such a good act of ‘I'm a producer, I get shouted at and abused every day of the week, I'm well used to it; in fact, in a warped way, I kind of enjoy it.'

‘I just had Rob Richards in here telling me what happened, or rather his side of what happened.'

I stand tall, determined not to let someone like Rob Richards and his bully-boy tactics get to me. ‘It got ugly, Philip, I'll be honest. He didn't quite throw furniture at me, but wasn't far off it.'

‘I see, I see,' he says, his full focus on me. ‘He came the heavy with me too. Said that no one in the show was more popular than him and that he had a following.'

‘Well, I'm sure both of them can visit him at home.'

He snorts. ‘In fact, I'm half expecting Cara O'Keefe to come barging in any second, hot on his heels, to see if she can flirt her way out of this one.'

‘And long may she rave.'

‘As long as you're all right,' he says, giving me the final once-over, then swivelling back to the TV and switching the ‘Play' button on the remote. It's a very dismissive gesture so I take the not-so-subtle hint and head for the door.

He doesn't even bother saying goodbye so I don't either. Philip Burke's people skills – or lack of them – are no concern of mine, thankfully.

I'm almost gone when he stops me.

‘So, don't you want to know what I said to Rob Richards?'

I turn around, but he's still engrossed in the TV. ‘What?'

‘I may not be as witty as you, but I am proud of this one.'

‘
Dead Man Walking
?' It's lame, but it's the best I can come up with …

‘No, I told him to go home and wait for a phone call from the Royal Shakespeare Company. That's the best performance I've seen him give in years.'

I'm still so shaken by the day's events that I'm only too delighted to accept Caroline's sweet suggestion to leave work early and pop in to her for a glass of vino on the way home. I really need to be around happy, normal, non-actor-type people right now. She opens the door and wordlessly hands me a lovely, chilled glass of Sancerre.

‘Angel from on high,' I say, taking it gratefully.

‘Thought you could use a bit of alcoholic fortification,' she says, leading me upstairs to the drawing room. ‘If I wasn't pregnant, I'd join you. My darling babies have a sixth sense and start acting the maggot in direct proportion to how exhausted I am.' Just then, murderous screams can clearly be heard from the playroom. ‘See what I mean?'

Then Ulrika, the Norwegian nanny, shouts upstairs to us, ‘I so sorry, Caroline. I tell Joshua it velly rude for him to pick his nose and he smack me on the head.'

Caroline looks at me in weary exasperation. ‘You don't ever need to have kids, you know. You can just have one of mine. If my son persists in picking his nose, he'll end up with nostrils bigger than the port tunnel. Please give me news about life in the outside world. Anything to distract me from the fact that I'll shortly have to go downstairs and cut chewing gum out of Emma's hair. Hubba Bubba too, the stickiest kind. Believe me, I know these things.'

I fill her in on the day's events, sparing no detail. Caroline is suitably shocked, particularly at Rob Richards's shouting-roaring, bully-boy carry-on.

‘Can you
believe
him? Yes, it's awful for him to be written out of the show, of course it is, but there's absolutely no need to take it out on you. If he was here now, I'd tear strips off him. And this is not what you needed, you know, not after the shock of Tony Irwin at the weekend …'

She chats on and I'm thinking how she's just so fab, like a mother tiger protecting her cubs, whenever any of her friends are being got at. Which is quite a lot, if I'm being honest.

‘Let's just say I'm glad it's all over and I'd trade places with you any day,' I say, sinking into the deep, cushiony-soft armchair and taking a big relaxing gulp of vino.

‘Be careful what you wish for,' she says with a wry smile. ‘May I just remind you that while you were all
having fun and games in Dromoland Castle, I was stuck here trying to scrape jam out of the inside of the DVD player. Joshua's latest trick.'

Suddenly I feel guilty. ‘Hon, were you OK on your own over the weekend?'

‘Oh, you know, I missed you guys. I was exhausted. I missed Mike. But then he goes off on these conferences and plays eighteen holes a day, so at least one of us is having a whale of a time. Besides, would you blame him for needing a break from this house? Rachel says I should have a sign on the door saying “Twinned with Beirut”.'

More screeches from downstairs.

‘You'll notice I'm choosing to ignore that,' she goes on, visibly wincing. ‘I need the adult chat too badly. Ulrika is great, though, she even stayed over Saturday, so at least I managed to have a lie-in. You have to understand that to a parent, that's the equivalent of winning six numbers on the national lottery. Oh, and guess who came to see me yesterday? Asking for you very fondly?'

‘I'm too punch-drunk with tiredness to guess … Oh, wait a sec, it has to be Damien Delaney.'

‘Got it in one. I think he really likes you, Amelia. He says he's going to call you this week to arrange the tea date so you can meet his mum.
Do not
roll your eyes up to heaven,' she goes on, suddenly switching to her cross Mummy voice, the way only parents can. ‘I thought we
agreed you were going to give this guy a whirl. A proper whirl.'