Having It All (12 page)

The strain was killing her. If he didn’t call by tomorrow she’d shred the Janet Reger knickers she’d bought specially and post them to him.

Men and women understand each other so well, she thought ferociously. I see it as the beginning of thirty happy years together, to him it’s a one night stand.

And it wasn’t as though he could have lost her number, she didn’t even have that sop to her dignity. He worked for
Femina
, for Christ’s sake! And anyway, she’d
left it on his answering machine. Twice. Maybe, in retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea. On the other hand, Mel, with the optimism born of knowing ten available women to every
available man, decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and conclude he must be away. Irresistibly her finger snaked towards the dial.

Maybe she’d better leave just one more tiny message, just to be on the safe side.

After three rings his answering machine clicked on.

‘Hi,’ said Garth’s voice, ‘this is Garth. I’m not in at the moment but please leave a message after the tone.’

Mel thought for a second. Something nice and subtle. Nothing too over the top.

‘Hi, Garth, this is Mel. It’s seven o’clock and I
am
in, so if you’d like to come over and ravish me, feel free. Byeee.’

‘This series on homelessness, Liz,’ Conrad poked the script with his pen as though it were some unpleasant object a cat had deposited on the boardroom table.
‘It looks deeply boring and very, very expensive.’

OK, thought Liz, here we go. She’d been in the job for two months now and every week she ended up fighting with Conrad to get him to agree to anything more demanding than a gameshow or an
entertainment spectacular. She was beginning to think Britt had been right: he’d only brought her in for window-dressing and now that Metro was up and running he was beginning to find her
simply a nuisance.

She’d always known she’d be in for a battle royal over this series. But it wasn’t as though she were continually trying to foist serious programmes on to an unwilling audience.
Some of her entertainment projects were turning out to be spectacular successes, and Metro’s viewing figures were enough to make the most hard-bitten advertiser glow.

But this was one project she was determined to make.

Ever since that night when she’d seen Cardboard City for herself she’d known Metro had to campaign against this scandal on its own doorstep. But she had to persuade Conrad too. And
not just for the sake of the people she’d seen that night but for herself as well. This was a battle she had to win. And be seen to win. She looked at the five Heads of Department sitting
round the table. Like the rest of the staff they wanted to know who was in charge. She or Conrad. And they needed to know soon.

‘Come on, Conrad,’ Liz decided to start with charm. ‘We’re doing enough gameshows to keep the advertisers in paradise. We have to think of our image as a caring company
too. Have you actually seen what it’s like down there?’

The memory of that pathetic bed had haunted her for days.

‘There are thousands of people condemned to live like tramps out on the streets down there as though London’s some shanty town. Young people, not down-and-outs, people who’ve
just had a bit of bad luck, all living in cardboard boxes! And not in São Paulo, or Mexico City, but in Westminster! A mile from the mother of bloody parliaments!’

‘And have you seen these pathetic losers for yourself?’

Liz didn’t see the trap she was falling into in time. ‘Yes. Yes I have. I went to Waterloo to meet a friend and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like the Third
World.’

‘Ah ha. Now we have it. Our newly elevated Programme Controller steps briefly out of her chauffeur-driven Jaguar . . .’ he paused as a nervous titter rippled through the room.

You bastard! Liz thought furiously. I didn’t even want a bloody Jag!

‘. . . and she stumbles into hell for five painful minutes before withdrawing to the Savoy or Covent Garden and then wants to tell the world like Lady Bountiful about the hardship she
encountered. Well, you’re too late, sweetie. The world already knows about Cardboard City and it doesn’t give a flying fuck. It’s on the news virtually every month. Or maybe
you’re too busy bathing baby to bother watching the news these days? Nobody cares any more. It’s old hat. And you want me to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a series the public
is bored with already?’

The patronizing tone in Conrad’s voice made her want to kick him. ‘Well they shouldn’t be bored! It’s too important for that. And they wouldn’t be, not with the way
we’d
do it,’ Liz snapped angrily. How dare he imply she was too caught up with motherhood to do her job? ‘We’d make it really come alive for them!’

‘And how would we do that?’

‘We’d send our own reporter down there to live there, really live there, penniless as the rest of them and film him with a hidden camera. He could tell us how it feels to be at the
bottom of the pile and at the same time we’d see some sights that would move even you, Conrad.’

‘My dear girl,’ Conrad said silkily. ‘You should be in politics, not television.’

It was no good. She could see he’d already made up his mind. Nothing she said would make any difference. People said he was hoping for that ultimate accolade – dinner at Number 10.
And he wouldn’t get that if he embarrassed the Government by showing the Third World on its doorstep.

‘Having given the idea due consideration’ – he smiled wolfishly – ‘I think the idea stinks.’ Conrad pushed the script away from him with his pen as though it
really was giving off the unsavoury odour of poverty and failure. ‘So we’re dropping it. I’ve decided to give the money to another department.’

He turned and smiled at Claudia. Liz had heard they were back together. They’d clearly been plotting this, and taking in the look that passed between them, she could guess where.

Liz could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on her. They knew as well as she did that this was a direct challenge to her authority. She had to act, make him back down somehow or her
credibility would be in tatters. The story would be all round the building by lunchtime. She might as well just clear her desk and get out.

‘That’s a pity, Conrad,’ she said quietly.

‘Oh yes, Liz. Why’s that?’

‘Because I happened to bump into Ben Morgan of the Independent Television Commission at a press do the other night.’ She smiled round at the assembled group. ‘Ben Morgan, you
may recall, gave Metro its licence. And he has to make sure we fulfil our obligations.’ She turned back to Conrad. ‘He was talking to the media correspondents from the
Guardian
and the
Sunday Times
. They were asking him how he’d make sure that Metro kept its promises about making quality programmes. Ben said he’d be keeping a keen eye on us and he
asked me what we
were
planning.’

Liz took a sip of her coffee. It was cold, but she wanted to make Conrad wait.

‘And what did you tell him?’ Conrad tried to hide his irritation.

‘That we’re ploughing a great deal of money into a hardhitting series on homelessness. He was absolutely riveted. It’s an issue he feels strongly about.’ She put down her
coffee cup and looked at Conrad. ‘His son ran away from home at sixteen, got into heroin and ended up living in Cardboard City. I suppose it gives you a bit of a personal view on these
things. He can’t wait for the series to come on air.’

Liz tried not to acknowledge the twitching faces she saw around her. Conrad got up and walked from the room, Claudia in tow.

As soon as the door was closed there was a round of applause. Liz smiled. She’d won Round One. But it was a dangerous game she was playing. She
had
bumped into Ben Morgan the
other night. But he’d been too busy to talk about specific programme ideas. And as far as she knew his son was a hale and hearty youth who lived at home in stockbroker Surrey being waited on
hand and foot by his doting parents.

Am I really Mrs Tiggy-Winkle? A pathetic little creature trying to build a nest to shut out reality? Ginny picked up a tiny bed and put it back in Amy’s doll’s
house. Amy always took the furniture from every room and dumped it in a pile in the sitting room. Carefully she put the bed back in the bedroom and looked for the wardrobe. She put it back in its
proper place and rummaged through the pile for the tiny dressing table, then the chest of drawers.

Usually she found this a soothing job, restoring order to this tiny world, but today Britt’s comment kept coming back to her, taking all the pleasure out of it.

What was she doing for God’s sake? Tidying a bloody
doll’s
house? She picked up the furniture from the bedroom, threw it on to the floor and walked out of the room.

The house was unnervingly quiet. Ben was at school and Amy having her nap. The silence when a child was sleeping was so deep it was almost eerie. She supposed it must be because you actually
listened to it, your ear tuned to the slightest sound.

She couldn’t get Britt’s words out of her mind. Maybe Britt had a point. Perhaps she did need something else in her life. But what? Something part time perhaps? There was no way she
wanted to get like Liz, pulled in so many different directions that she never had time to enjoy any of them. Her customary cheerfulness returned. She’d start thinking about some possibilities
right away. Then she remembered the other thing that was worrying her. The look that had passed between David and Britt. It was probably nothing. Ginny knew she wasn’t well versed in the ways
of the sophisticated world. All the same she shivered. Maybe her little world here wasn’t so bad after all.

Conrad sat opposite Liz in the Michelin-starred restaurant he’d chosen with such care and smiled expansively. The meeting with Panther Running Shoes had gone
terrifically. He could even forgive her for that business over Ben Morgan yesterday.

Everything had gone just as he’d planned from the moment the helicopter Panther sent for them had picked them both up and taken them to the company’s HQ in Swindon, where they had
spent the morning tying up the details of the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of British television.

To Conrad’s delight, Panther had agreed to pay £3 million for the privilege of sponsoring Metro’s new sports quizshow. And since Conrad had exaggerated their production costs
somewhat, there’d be a healthy profit in it for Metro; also, if he was discreet, for him personally. He certainly needed it. Some of his other concerns were looking decidedly seedy. Of course
it was just a short-term measure. A small loan until things perked up.

He looked over at Liz and smiled. After the Cardboard City business he’d been nervous she might play the virgin protecting her honour and screw the whole deal up. Instead she’d
handled herself brilliantly. Tony Adams, Panther’s Chief Executive, had been eating out of her hand. She’d even talked him out of asking for a credit every ten seconds. Of course she
didn’t know the real production costs, but there was no reason why she ever should.

He watched Liz for a moment as she ordered her meal, listening politely to Tony Adams’s stories. He could see the man was attracted to her. But then a little sexual chemistry never did
business dealings any harm. And he had to admit she really was a very good-looking woman when she made an effort.

All right, so he
had
brought her in as window-dressing, intending to run the company himself, and lately she’d been so troublesome he’d wondered whether it mightn’t be
wiser to pay her off. But now he wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t a bad foil for him. He had the financial nous and the ability to be a complete bastard, she had the integrity to soften the
blow. And the staff adored her. Even this motherhood crap was getting them a lot of interest.

We’re not a bad combination, he thought, refilling her glass. Not bad at all. He looked around him at the almost obscene opulence of the restaurant with its gilded ceiling and rococo
statuary and leaned towards her, dropping his voice.

‘This may not be the most appropriate place to tell you, but I’ve decided to go ahead with the homelessness series. I’m giving you three hundred thousand.’

Liz couldn’t believe it. That was fifty more than she’d requested! She tried to take it coolly but she couldn’t prevent a grin from spreading across her face. She’d
won!

In her excitement she didn’t notice the head waiter looking at her anxiously or see him whisper to the hat-check girl to get her coat.

‘Mrs Ward . . .’ He stood at their table, clearly not relishing his task. ‘Your pilot wants you to go out to the helicopter. There’s an urgent phone call for you from
London.’

Liz jumped up and followed him. She could tell by the way his face tried so hard to betray no emotion that it had to be something serious.

‘Nurse, can you tell me where my son is?’ Liz tried to keep the hysteria at bay. Hysteria wouldn’t help Jamie. ‘He was knocked down by a car this
morning.’

Unconsciously the nurse looked at her watch. Five p.m. Mrs Ward had certainly taken her time. But then they saw it all in this hospital; women who abandoned their babies or wouldn’t feed
them, feckless mothers of sick children who preferred to go out drinking instead of bothering with visiting time. This was a new one on the nurse, though. The executive whose schedule was too busy
to fit in her injured son. She glanced at Liz’s expensive suit, cashmere coat and hand-tooled briefcase and decided she preferred the down-trodden mums who spent visiting time in the pub. At
least they had an excuse.

Liz saw the disapproval in the nurse’s face as she checked her lists and wanted to hit her. Blast the woman! Didn’t she understand that Liz was dying inside? That ever since
she’d got that phone call two hours ago from her hysterical secretary who’d been trying to hunt her down all morning, she’d moved heaven and earth to get here?

‘Children’s ward, third floor.’ The nurse turned her attention to the next visitor.

‘Is he all right?’

The nurse looked at her watch again pointedly. ‘No idea, dear. You’ll have to ask the ward sister.’ Too distraught to wait for a lift, Liz ran up the stairs two at a time and
found herself facing a forest of incomprehensible signs. MB1. MB3. John Hazelbury Ward. No mention of the Children’s Ward, and no one to ask. Fighting her panic she ran down the endless
corridor past cardboard boxes piled high with disposable kidney bowls and catheters, fighting back her tears of desperation. Finally, there it was in front of her.