The Cinderella Reflex (31 page)

“Tess! Come back!”

“What is it now?” She turned around wearily.

“
I did it, Tess!
I got the gig!
It’s My Show
is mine …
I won the contest!
” Chris punched the air with his fist. “Ollie Andrews was bloody right to be so worried last night! And I bet he had one hell of a hangover this morning!”

Tess stared at him.
Chris
was going to be the new star of Atlantic? Chris, with his devious behaviour and questionable morals had swooped in and stolen the prize from right under their noses? Suddenly she was outraged at the injustice of it all.

“But we worked so
hard,”
she wailed. “All of us. And it was all for nothing.”

He stared at her. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been telling you these past few weeks? Working hard at your job keeps you in that job. You’re supposed to be working on getting your next position.” He gave her a pitying look. “Keeping your head down and expecting someone to come and reward you is the classic good-girl mistake, I’m afraid.”

Tess supposed he must be right, because there he was, the victor, sitting with that smug, self-satisfied smile on his face, and here she was, whining about life being unfair and sounding like a victim again. But somehow she didn’t care any more. All the office politics was making her head hurt.

“Well,” he was looking at her expectantly, “say something!”

“I don’t know what to say,” Tess said honestly. ‘
Fuck
off’!
’crossed her mind but she honestly felt too drained to get the words out.

“Try congratulations,” Chris suggested. “Because it’s important we get on together. I may as well tell you now – I’ve asked for you to be my producer.”

Tess looked at him with incredulity for several seconds.

“You’re joking?”

“No. Why would I be? You know what works and what doesn’t work on that show. I’d be mad not to look for you.”

“And I’d be mad to allow myself to come within ten feet of you ever again, Chris Conroy.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that,” he said innocently.

She didn’t bother answering. Instead, she walked away, finally letting the door slam shut on another chapter of her life.

Chapter Twenty-One

Helene stared balefully at the radio. The weird wallpaper music reminded her of her visit to the spa, before Richard had fired a torpedo into her life. The music was a temporary replacement for the
This Morning
show, because Ollie hadn’t been seen since he’d been summoned to a meeting with Jack McCabe the morning after the launch party. It was a sign of the new, meaner atmosphere at Atlantic 1FM. Richard may have given Ollie a warning shot for getting drunk at the party but that would have been the end of it. This time, there had been a brief announcement that Ollie was gone on an “extended break” and that Chris Conroy, the rank outsider who had scooped the
It’s My Show
contest from underneath all their noses, would soon be hosting his own, “hot new show”.

According to Sara, Tess Morgan hadn’t even realised Conroy was in for the gig. Helene shook her head in disbelief at Tess’s naivety. But then, was she in any position to judge other people’s gullibility, considering how her own life was going? She gripped the yellow pencil she was holding more firmly and tried to concentrate. All her life she had worked out her dilemmas in this fashion, on a plain sheet of paper. She would list pros on one side, cons on the other. Then she weighed the lists up, added on what her gut instinct was telling her to do and – there it was – a decision she trusted, and one that she rarely veered from once she’d made it.

But now her tried and trusted method wasn’t working. Helene shrugged her shoulders, trying to unknot the tension in her muscles. The night of her birthday had been the strangest of her life. She had checked into the hotel and sat in her single room in dazed silence, trying to piece together how her life had started to unravel. But she was still too shocked to work it out and she went through the motions of her well-practised bedtime routine like a zombie: taking off her make-up, doing her stretches, brushing her hair one hundred times like her grandmother had instructed her when she was a little girl and which she had carried out every night of her life since.

It was when she finally lay down on the strange hotel bed and tried in vain to go to sleep that she rememberedthe envelope Richard had left for her. She stared into the dark, wondering whether she should open it. She switched on the bedside lamp and pulled it out of her overnight bag which was next to the bed.

She stared at the oblong shape for ages. When she finally looked inside she found a birthday card with
To the One I Love
emblazoned across it. Inside, she found an around-the-world-ticket, with her name on it and a cheque. She scanned the accompanying note.

Sweetheart,
he had written in expensive, black-inked pen,
I know you always wanted to travel, and I thought this would be a good time for you to get your wish.

Helene stopped reading, her brow crinkled up with confusion. Why had Richard still left this for her, even after she had told him she was pregnant? How, exactly, did he expect her to use an around-the-world ticket now? The answer came to her in a flash of unwanted insight. It was because he was determined that nothing would interfere with his pay-off money from Jack McCabe. Not even her. Especially not her! He probably figured she would have an abortion and use theticket to get over it. The hurt hit Helene with such force that she had to squeeze her eyes shut against the pain.

She leaned her head back against the headboard, wondering how she was ever going to get over this. She had to force herself to finish reading Richard’s note.

I am enclosing enough money to cover your hotel and living expenses and I’ll try to arrange for your job to be kept open for you. When you come back in six months’ time, I will have severed all ties with Atlantic 1FM and I’m sure we will resume our romance then. 

All my love always, 

Richard x

Helene let the letter flutter out her hands. Richard wouldn’t have known when he was writing this that in six months’ time she would have a belly like a whale. The thought of him coming around to resume their romance when she was in that condition started her giggling. But it was a high-pitched, nervous snigger that turned rapidly to tears and the more she thought about the situation the more hysterical she became. The best-laid plans, she thought wearily, finally drying her cheeks with a corner of the duvet. Too exhausted to worry any more she pulled up the crisp hotel covers, turned off the unfamiliar lamp and breathed into the black darkness, in and out, in and out, until miraculously she managed to block everything out and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When she woke up she found she’d slept a straight six hours and a curious sense of calm had descended upon her. Over breakfast, she phoned to arrange to have the locks on her apartment changed. Not that she expected Richard to bother coming back any time soon. But it was the only thing she could think of to wrestle some small piece of control back into her life. Since then she had gone through each day on automatic pilot, and it was only when she saw Richard arriving at the relaunch party with Louisa that she had been jolted back to the painful reality that she really was on her own now.

A sharp, breaking sound jolted Helene back into the present. She looked down, startled at the sight of her yellow pencil, snapped into two halves. She had been holding it so tightly she had broken it. Disgusted, she threw the pieces onto her desk and stood up. Nothing in her life was working. She walked out into the open-plan office, trying to distract herself from her troubles.

Andrea was busy at her computer and, as Helene drew alongside her desk, she could see she was browsing through a website called
New Nannies.

“Looking for a Mary Poppins?”

Andrea jumped guiltily and swirled her chair around to face Helene. “Sorry – I know I shouldn’t be doing personal stuff on company time but I need to arrange childcare urgently.” She broke off and looked at Helene keenly. “Are you okay? You look a bit pale.”

Helene looked at Andrea absently. “Oh yeah … I’m fine.” She was staring at the computer screen. “Em … how difficult is it – to get good childcare?”

Andrea laughed hollowly. “How long have you got? Possibly easier to get the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle.”She went back to scrolling down the pages.

“Oh,” Helene said in a small voice.

Andrea looked up sharply. “Are you sure you’re okay, Helene?”

Helene turned away before Andrea could see the panic in her eyes. “I’m just a bit hot. I think I’ll just go out for a breath of air, actually.”

Helene turned and practically ran out of the building. She stood on the pavement, fighting off a fresh wave of nausea. She was having morning, noon and night sickness now. She pulled out a tissue, held it over her mouth and forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. Until now, she had been too distraught over Richard to give much thought to the practical nuts-and-bolts problems of her pregnancy. Like childcare.

She thought back to all the times she had been annoyed with Andrea’s childminding crises. The time she couldn’t cover an assignment because one of the children – Helene couldn’t remember which one – had a bit part as a sheep in the school Nativity play. And the morning Andrea had missed the planning meeting altogether because the toddler was having night terrors. Why couldn’t her bloody husband take up the slack once in a while, Helene had often fumed, and not always silently. She had always felt that if women wanted equality in the workplace then they shouldn’t be looking for special privileges all the time.

“How hard can it be to organise your life so you’re not lurching from one childcare crisis to another?” she’d actually asked Andrea once.

Well, she would find out the answer to that one soon enough. If she’d won
It’s My Show
, she might have managed. She wouldn’t be working such long hours. There would be back-room people like Tess to organise the programme for her. She wouldn’t have to make fifty decisions a day, a feat that had once filled her with a sense of her own power but now simply made her feel faint. In fact, she could barely make up her mind what shoes to wear these days. And now she was expected to cope with having a baby on her own?

Was there something she could have done to keep Richard? Perhaps if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with winning the contest she would have been more attuned to his mood. She might have sensed his decision to leave her and somehow found a way to pre-empt it.

But Helene knew she couldn’t afford to spend too much time in the land of what-might-have-been. The reality was that Richard was gone and she was going to have to cope on her own. Get used to it, Harper, she told herself sternly.

A taxi pulled up by the kerbside and Paulina Fox stepped onto the pavement. She was dressed in a lemon linen suit, teamed with high black wedges and her ash-blonde hair was tied back in a neat chignon. She looked calm and carefree, as if the chaos that was reigning inside Atlantic 1FM had nothing to do with her.

“Paulina!” Helene called. Ever since the news had broken that Chris had won the contest, she had been trying to get an explanation, but all her phone calls had gone unanswered.

“Hi …” Paulina looked at her warily.

“I need to talk to you.” Helene pushed herself away from the wall.

“About what?” Paulina kept on walking and for a fraction of a second Helene thought she was going to ignore her completely.

“About why some outsider won the contest!” Helene hissed.

“Let’s take it inside, so.”

Paulina pushed open the doors to the radio station and strode along the corridor so swiftly Helene had to practically run to catch up with her. By the time they reached her office, she was having trouble breathing.

She sat down heavily and stared at Paulina.

“So?” she challenged.

“I’m sorry, Helene.” Paulina didn’t bother to sit. She loomed over Helene, fiddling with the catches on her briefcase. “I know how much it meant to you.”

“I doubt that!” Helene snorted. “So: what has this Chris Conroy got then?”

“Let’s see. He’s on the radio and TV every other week as a commentator. He’s a former foreign affairs correspondent.”

Helene frowned. “What I meant was – what has he got that qualifies him for his own show?”

Paulina arched her eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s constructive to go down that path.”

“Well, d’you know something? It’s not all about what
you
think, Paulina.” Helene slammed both her hands onto the desk. “I want to know. I
deserve
to know.”

Paulina’s eyebrows went even higher. “Fine! So, let’s see. As I was saying, Chris Conroy is confident, outgoing, with a brilliant CV. He’s coming in from the outside so there is a sense that we’re getting something new and fresh. And he’s very, very hungry for success.”

“But I am confident and outgoing and …” Helene tried to remember the list of winning qualities Paulina had just recited, “… and hungry! Actually,” she looked at Paulina meaningfully, “you wouldn’t believe just how hungry I am right now.”

“Of course you are. Lots of people are. Ultimately, I suppose it’s what I said we were looking for from the beginning. Chris Conroy has the X-factor.”

“Oh, come on!” Helene shook her head in disgust. “What a red herring that is!”

“If you take my advice, Helene, you won’t waste too much of your time analysing why he got it and you didn’t. Move on.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Helene snapped.

“I suppose it is,” Paulina said it easily. “So I’ll say it again, just so you understand. Chris Conroy is the winner. It’s over. Look for the opportunity here.”

“Yeah yeah, every cloud has a silver lining, look on the bright side, dah de dah de da,” Helene said bitterly. “So what’s happened to Ollie?”