Woman of the Hour (8 page)

‘Live TV is a tough gig and tempers get frayed. You have to grow a thick skin if you want to work here. Now let’s put it behind us because I want to tell you about the hospital Molly and I have chosen for the OB. It’s called St Eanswythe’s and it is human scale and friendly. Moll did well to find it. I have a feeling this OB is going to be a good one.’

Chalk Farm flat, 7.30 p.m.

When I got back to the flat I expected to find Flo there because on Friday nights, when Flo doesn’t go to Portsmouth to see Ben, we have what we call our Friday night veg-out. I buy pizzas and nachos and ice cream and we get into our pyjamas, slump on the sofa, watch rubbish telly and eat fast food. I look forward to these evenings as a time when I can relax and forget about StoryWorld. But Janis told me that Flo was over the road at Paige’s house. I was fed up that Flo had jettisoned our veg-out without asking me.

‘You’ve seen a lot of her; what do you make of Paige?’ I asked Janis.

‘I’m not sure about her. I wonder why a sixteen-year-old is showing so much interest in a fourteen-year-old,’ Janis said.

‘Yes, I wondered about that. At their age two years is quite a gap.’

‘I think she’s quite knowing and she likes it that Flo looks up to her. It would be good if you met her. Flo is definitely falling under her spell. She couldn’t wait to get over there this evening.’

I decided to do it there and then. I paid Janis for the week and crossed the road and walked up the tiled path. It was a large semi-detached Edwardian house and, unlike most on our road, it had not been converted into flats. I rang the doorbell and waited. Eventually a teenage girl with very blonde hair, almost white, and a stud in her nose opened the door a crack.

‘Hello. Are you Paige?’

She opened the door a bit further.

‘Yeah.’

Her voice was suspicious.

‘Well I’m Florence’s mum.’

They say you make up your mind about people in the first seven seconds and my first impression of Paige was not a positive one. She was dressed in what I would call wannabe rock chic: ripped black jeans and a black top which was slipping off one shoulder. She wore large hoop earrings and looked bored. Flo must have recognised my voice and she came walking towards the door slowly. She looked less than pleased to see me. In fact her face was tight, as it usually is now whenever I encounter her with any of her friends. Paige had not moved from her position on the threshold so I remained on the doorstep feeling distinctly unwelcome. My impulse was to offer an explanation for my appearance but I made myself stay quiet and see who would speak first.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Flo said eventually.

‘Hello, darling.’

Paige moved from guarding the threshold and said: ‘Do you wanna come in?’

She had the trace of an American accent.

‘For a minute perhaps.’

Paige and Flo turned and I followed them into the kitchen at the end of the hall. This was a large kitchen, big enough to hold a table with six assorted chairs around it and a wide dresser against the wall. The room had a scruffy, unloved feel about it. There were wilting chrysanthemums in a vase on the window sill with a full ashtray next to it. A stained roasting tray was lying on the table with a few oven chips in it and two plates smeared with tomato ketchup. The smell in the kitchen was a mixture of fried food, patchouli from a candle that was burning on the dresser and cigarettes. There were also several bottles of spirits on the dresser, vodka, gin and whisky. I was doing that protective mum thing you do, instinctively carrying out an inventory of the room, assessing the risk factors. I looked at the ceiling to see if there was a smoke detector and couldn’t see one.

‘Are your parents in, Paige?’ I asked.

‘No, they’re at work.’

‘Ahh, I see. I wanted to introduce myself. Do you know what time they’ll be back?’

Paige shrugged.

‘Not sure. Think Mum said she was gonna be late tonight.’

I could see all too clearly the appeal of Paige’s house. With absent parents the two girls could do their own thing, cook oven chips and smoke to their heart’s delight. I wanted to get Flo back over the road into our flat.

‘Why don’t you come over to ours? I’ve got pizza and I’m making flapjacks tonight.’

I had made up the bit about the flapjacks on the spot. Flo loves my flapjacks and I hoped I had the ingredients in the cupboard. Paige looked over at Flo who shrugged and looked non-committal.

‘We were going to watch
Vampire Diaries
,’ Paige said.

I could see that Flo was waiting for Paige to decide what they should do. This made me feel even more irritated but I bit back my irritation.

‘We have Netflix,’ I said.

Another look passed between the girls. They liked being in that unsupervised house and they knew they would not be able to smoke under my roof. But I was offering nice food.

‘OK,’ Paige said finally.

Before we left the house I reminded Paige to blow out the candle on the dresser. She gave me a strange look but went over and did it.

‘Should you leave a note for your mum saying where you are?’

‘I’ll text her later.’

As soon as we arrived at our flat the girls retreated to Flo’s room and shut the door. Later Mr Crooks came in and yowled at the door until Flo let him in. I put on the oven to heat up and plugged in the earphones to my iPod as I made the flapjack mixture. James Blunt is my guilty pleasure. I love his strange voice and his heart-sick ballads but I know better than to play them out loud in the flat. I greased the baking tin then melted the butter, brown sugar and honey in a saucepan. I use honey rather than golden syrup. My favourite track came on, ‘Same Mistake’, and I sang along to the chorus about it being no good his being given a second chance because he’d just make the same mistake again.

These words resonate strongly with me. I am always attracted to the same type of man and it usually ends in tears. I am more careful these days and am keeping Todd at arm’s length, but it is inescapable how much like Ben he is. Todd worked as a cameraman like Ben, although now he is a director. He is also a man who enjoys taking risks. I took the pan off the heat and stirred in the porridge oats.

The next track was ‘Carry You Home’. I try to bury the memory but it will resurface. Seven years ago I had a frightening experience with Julius. It was the night of the staff Christmas party. StoryWorld make a point of throwing a good bash at the end of the year and the party was held in the atrium which had been transformed into a 1980s-style disco with loud music, flashing lights and lots of booze. I had recently split up with Ben after months of bitter fights. Flo was staying with my mum in Glasgow and I was going to join them in five days’ time for the Christmas break. I had been holding difficult emotions down for months and I was like a pressure cooker ready to blow as I set off for the party.

I remember I was wearing a satin shift dress the colour of blackberries which I’d bought for Christmas. I was hyper all evening, drank too much and later I was dancing with wild abandon to ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘I Will Survive’, getting some of my misery out of my system. Julius was standing at the edge of the dance floor watching me. I saw him and at one point I even suggested he join me. He shook his head but still he watched me. Finally I’d had enough. It was late and I knew I was on the cusp of making a complete fool of myself. I grabbed a glass of water, glugged it down and headed up to my office to get my bag and coat. It was a smaller office in those days which I shared with an assistant producer. Suddenly Julius was standing there at the threshold. He walked in and kicked the door shut behind him.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. ‘I’ve always fancied you.’

I remember feeling gratified at his words and I smiled drunkenly at him.

‘Bet you say that to all the girls.’

‘I mean it. But you’ve always been Miss Untouchable.’

He crossed the room to me fast, grabbed me and kissed me. It was a nice soft kiss at first, our lips making gentle contact and I kissed him back. He slid his tongue between my lips and the kiss became more intense as he moved his hands up to hold my head closer to his. I responded to this kiss too. It was strange and sexy and exciting. I hadn’t kissed another man in a sexual way for over ten years. He ran his hands down from my head to my back and we rocked back and forth still kissing. His hand slid down and reached my bottom and he squeezed me hard, too hard. He started to pull my dress up. We were still kissing and he was breathing fast. I could feel his erection pressing against me. It was all getting too rough and my pleasure was turning to alarm. I tried to pull away from him but he rubbed himself up against me and was almost groaning. As I struggled more he suddenly slammed me against the wall.

‘Come on, Liz. Let’s fuck hard.’

He had got his hand inside my knickers now and he stuck his third finger right up me.

‘You can now,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘You’re a free woman.’

He was moving his finger inside me and then he put his second finger up me too and I was frightened by his roughness and his insistence. I didn’t want to have sex with him. I pulled my face away from his and said as strongly as I could manage:

‘No. No. NO! Get off me.’

He was inflamed. There was no other word for it and still he was fingering me roughly with one hand while with his other hand he was unzipping his trousers. I found the strength to push him away with all my force and his hand came out of me. By now I was half sobbing. I grabbed my bag, ran to the door, wrenched it open and fled to the ladies’ toilet. As I locked the cubicle door I was trembling so hard. He wouldn’t follow me in here, surely? After a while I wiped myself with toilet tissue and saw that there was a trace of blood on the paper. I sat on the toilet seat and wept. Two women came in and I held my breath and listened as they talked and giggled and applied lipstick. The party was still going strong downstairs and you could hear the bass thud of the disco.

I tried to get my breathing back under control and I waited until the toilet had emptied. I slipped out of the Ladies and left the station by the back exit. I saw no sign of Julius and I stumbled along by the riverside until I saw the orange beacon of a taxi. Once in the dark safety of the taxi I let the tears come again and I cried all the way back to Chalk Farm. When I reached my flat I locked and bolted the door. We had just moved into the flat and it didn’t feel like home yet. There were unpacked boxes everywhere and it was all strange and unfamiliar. I couldn’t stop crying so I called Fenton. It was two in the morning but she answered on the fourth ring. She listened as I told her my story punctuated by sobs and gulps.

‘Get the first train down to Folkestone tomorrow, sweetheart. I’ll meet you at the station.’

‘But I’ve got all these boxes to unpack.’

‘The boxes can wait. You’re not going to be on your own this weekend. We’ll walk by the sea and I’ll treat you to fish and chips.’

I did as she said because she was right, I could not face being on my own in the new flat without Flo. It was such a comfort to see her face as I got off the train at Folkestone Central. Fenton has red hair, hazel eyes and a wicked smile. I think of her as a Restoration woman, warm, passionate and brave. She hugged me and took my overnight bag. She lives in a fisherman’s cottage down near the harbour. It’s a two-up two-down and Fenton has made it into such a welcoming little house with its floorboards painted a different colour in every room. I sat in her kitchen as she made us a large pot of tea and slices of buttered toast and Marmite. Later, we walked along by the edge of the sea. Fenton is a great listener and her presence has a calming influence on me.

‘I think you need to report him, love,’ she said finally.

‘I don’t think I can. I must have been giving off mixed signals. I mean I asked him to dance with me!’

‘You’re allowed to ask a man for a dance.’

‘And when we first started kissing I responded. I did. I was enjoying it, but then he got too rough, way too rough. It was horrible but he didn’t rape me.’

‘He didn’t rape you because you pushed him away.’

‘I feel so stupid and so ashamed.’

‘Why are you taking all the guilt onto yourself?’

She had stopped walking to look at me.

‘Come on, let’s sit down,’ she said.

We sat on the pebbles and watched the seagulls wheeling through the December sky. The sea was as grey as the sky and the foam was yellowish-white and scummy like dirty soapsuds as it smashed onto the pebbles. I shivered and Fenton put her arm around me.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to face him on Monday.’

‘I wish you’d report him. But if you’re not going to report him then you need to take the power back. Tell him he was way too rough and he frightened you.’

‘The thought of saying that, of saying anything about it, makes me shrivel inside.’

‘You know a lot of men go on being bullies because they get away with it,’ she said.

She stood up and helped me to my feet.

‘Come on, it’s cold. Time for those fish and chips I promised you.’

They do the best fish and chips down there. We bought haddock and chips and a giant gherkin each, added lashings of salt and vinegar and walked back to the beach to eat them. You’re not supposed to but Fenton throws her leftover chips to the seagulls and braves the disapproving glances from other people. She says seagulls are wild and beautiful and she doesn’t understand why they get such a bad press.

When I returned to work on Monday I was a little stronger after my two days with Fenton. There was no sign of Julius and his PA told me he’d gone off early for the Christmas break. I had to get through three more days at work and I was so relieved he wasn’t around. Then I too locked up my office and travelled on the train for five hours to Glasgow to join my mum and Flo. It was always going to be difficult, our first Christmas without Ben, but I was obsessing the whole time about what had happened between Julius and me. Should I report him? And if I didn’t, how would I be able to behave normally around him? I couldn’t afford to give up my job. My mum is a serious person and I hadn’t been able to confide any of this to her. How could I tell her I’d had a near-rape experience with my boss at the staff Christmas party two months after separating from Ben?