Woman of the Hour (29 page)

Yours as ever,

Saul Relph OBE

Flo’s disastrous night had pushed my email to him right out of my thoughts. His wording was cold again and the last thing he wanted was for me to make a formal complaint against his precious Julius. I kept my response short.

Dear Saul,

I too have been giving this much thought. It was a frightening experience but on reflection I have decided not to pursue this matter any further.

I would be grateful if this remains entirely confidential between you and me for the sake of future working relationships.

All best,

Liz

StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

He did it again. John from Sheffield charmed Fizzy and charmed our viewers with his tale of life at the single-parent frontline. I think his appeal is that he talks so authentically and it is such a change from the celebrities and politicians who say what they think our viewers want to hear. We’ve been getting loads of tweets and emails and Julius opened the meeting by saying that was what StoryWorld was all about, airing real-life stories that other stations might overlook but which gave our viewers an insight into the things that mattered to people. He was briefly eloquent on the subject and I saw Bob’s face darken. But that is the game Julius always plays. He builds one of us up one day and moves his favour to someone else the next day to keep us all feeling insecure.

He stood up and gestured to Martine and she walked into the meeting room carrying her laptop. She is a trained first-aider and Julius had invited her to talk to us about our responsibilities. I’m sure he had done that to make her feel important and we were all expected to go along with it. She had prepared a PowerPoint and started to talk through the slides and it was dull.

‘Now it’s important that each one of you nominate a team member to be a first-aider. I will train them up over the next three months,’ she said.

I knew it would look rude to walk out on her presentation but this had to be the moment to get into his office. I stood up, clutching my stomach.

‘Terribly sorry, Martine, but I have to leave for a few minutes.’

She looked daggers at me.

‘Bad stomach,’ I gasped, hurrying out of the room.

I had perhaps ten minutes at most. Julius would not tolerate longer than ten minutes on first aid. The meeting room has windows on all sides so I had to make a detour as if I was walking to the Ladies and then I walked through the newsroom, down their stairs, back up the stairs on our side to reach his office from the other side. Three minutes gone already. His door was unlocked and I was in. It was weird how transgressive it felt to be in there on my own. I scanned his desk and there were orderly piles of running orders and sales figures and no memory sticks. His desk had six drawers; three on each side. The top one on the right had pens, paperclips, a stapler and a man’s fancy manicure set. The second one down had a pad and a sheaf of expense forms. The third one down had a pair of cufflinks, a few name badges and at the back a stash of memory sticks. I scooped them up. They were all silver and black, standard StoryWorld issue. I was starting to sweat as I put them back. The top drawer on the left had a wedge of index cards with what looked like a speech handwritten on them. The middle left drawer contained a pile of StoryWorld photos and some foreign coins. The bottom left-hand drawer wouldn’t open. I got down on my knees and tugged at it. It was locked. He hadn’t locked any of the other drawers and I was sure the purple memory stick was in there.

‘What are you doing?’

Martine was standing in the doorway and I was on my knees by his desk.

‘Looking for my earring,’ I said.

Thank God I’d had the sense to prepare a story.

‘Your earring?’

My face must have been bright red as I stood up and hers was a picture of suspicion. I tried to sound normal.

‘When I saw him on Friday; I was wearing my favourite turquoise—’

‘You didn’t see him on Friday.’

Her voice was cold.

‘For Christ’s sake, Martine, don’t give me third degree. I love those earrings and—’

‘I thought you had a bad stomach.’

‘I do, but then I remembered my earring and—’

‘And it was more important than listening to me. You’re expected back in the meeting,’ she said and her voice was icy.

We had never got on that well but I knew that today, by missing her talk and being caught under his desk, I had burned my bridges with her.

Mid-morning, Fizzy came to my office and closed the door firmly behind her. I was glad she had sought me out but could tell by the determined set to her face that she was not happy.

‘I’ve come to a decision,’ she said.

She probably did not even realise it but she brushed her right hand across her stomach as she said: ‘I’ve booked myself into a clinic for a termination.’

I nodded.

‘Don’t try to dissuade me, Liz.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Thank you.’

We looked at each other and I wanted to hug her but the team were sitting outside and would have seen it and thought it was odd. And, though she was holding herself together, a hug might make her start to cry.

‘Can I do anything to help?’

‘You’re the only woman I’ve told and I was wondering if you’d come to the clinic with me?’

I reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Of course I will.’

‘You’ll need to be away from here at least half a day. I’m going to drive there and I’ll need you to drive me home after, you know, afterwards.’

Now she did look as if she might cry.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if we used taxis?’

‘God no! I’m not going to let any taxi driver take me there and sell the story to the tabloids.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

After she left I wondered why she hadn’t told Martine. And then I realised it was because what Martine knows she relays straight back to Julius.

*

In the afternoon I took the Tube to Tottenham Court Road and walked to the Soho offices of a major talent agency. It had taken me weeks to get a meeting with their top booker, who is known in the business as the Tarantula. She has a roster of film and TV A-listers and my task was to persuade her that StoryWorld was the place to promote her people. She kept me waiting outside her office for thirty-seven minutes. I hate it when people do that; they are saying that their time is more important than your time. I was feeling disproportionally sad that Fizzy had decided to have an abortion. When I was a student, in my second year, I got pregnant by a fellow student at my college. We’d had this immature on and off relationship and the pregnancy was an accident. We were twenty years old and we weren’t committed enough to each other or ready to go through with having a child together. We had both panicked and agreed it would mess up our degrees and our futures so I booked in for an NHS termination at the earliest opportunity. We split up for good about four months later and I thought I was OK about it. The strange thing is, I’m not even over it now, twenty years later. It has left me with an ineradicable sadness. Occasionally I have a sense of my unborn daughter – it is always a daughter in my mind – looking over my shoulder at Flo. I realised how invested I was in the idea of Fizzy going through with her pregnancy and with us taking on her critics together. But Bob had prevailed, her fears had prevailed. People say it is the woman’s choice but is it really? It’s hard to proceed if the father is against the pregnancy. Now she needed me to be supportive of her decision.

As I walked back into the station Simon was on his way out.

‘I’m off to see Dirk. I thought maybe we could do a follow-up story on him. Get him in with Fizzy. See how he’s coping with his prosthetic leg. He told me he’s in the gym most days building his upper body strength and he sounded positive.’

‘Good idea. Maybe he’s another John. He’s a brave man. Most of us would crumble after what he’s gone through.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘I had a meeting with the Tarantula. She’s very good at making you feel like you’re a bit of shit on her shoe.’

‘Did you get any guests from her?’

‘Not a single A-lister. She offered me a couple of faders who need exposure.’

‘She’s evil,’ he said.

Ziggy was sitting on her own at the team desks. She told me Molly had gone to a book launch in Piccadilly. It was the moment for me to talk to her about the screen test.

‘Can you pop into my room?’

She looked alarmed as I closed the door and she hovered in front of my desk.

‘Sit down, Ziggy.’

She perched on the edge of the sofa and I leaned against my desk towards her.

‘Now I don’t want you to get upset. Harriet told me about the screen test.’

Her head drooped and her cheeks flamed. After a long pause she whispered: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘
I’m
sorry because I know you’re both worried about it.’

She was looking down on the carpet.

‘Is that why she’s away?’

‘She’ll be back tomorrow,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers her. I thought she might leave, you know, because of it.’

‘She is very upset about it.’

‘He lied,’ she said.

‘Julius?’

‘Yeah; he told me I would get a chance to use the equipment, help with the sound recording, you know.’

‘But that didn’t happen?’

‘No.’

‘So you took part in it?’

She looked up at me, stricken, and I wanted to know what was on that screen test so much.

‘Won’t you tell me what’s on it?’

‘I can’t. I swore to Harry I wouldn’t say a word.’

She was wringing her hands in her agitation. I couldn’t push her; I knew what it felt like to have a shaming secret.

‘Please don’t get upset. I promised Harriet I would get hold of the screen test and destroy it.’

‘Did you get it?’

‘I’ve tried and it’s impossible to get into his office. Martine is a Rottweiler. She caught me this morning under his desk!’

‘I’ll get it for you,’ Ziggy said.

‘No! I can’t let you do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘You could get into big trouble.’

‘No one notices me. I don’t count.’

‘Oh, Ziggy, of course you count.’

‘I’m invisible to people like Martine.’

She was saying she was at the bottom of the food chain at StoryWorld and that was true.

‘And I want to help Harry.’

‘I’m sure you do but if you get caught... No, Ziggy, I can’t let you do this.’

‘But you tried to get it.’

‘I can bluff my way out. I have reasons to go into his office. You get caught and they’ll have you marched out of here and I won’t be able to do anything about it.’

‘I’m a runner. It’s my job to go in and out of offices with packages. I do it all the time.’

I sat down on the sofa next to her. ‘This feels all wrong,’ I said.

‘Please. You said we were a team. You said we had to support each other.’

I was touched that she had remembered my words.

‘You know it’s on a purple memory stick?’

She nodded.

‘I think he’s locked it away in the left-hand bottom drawer of his desk. That was the only one that was locked. He’s hiding something in there.’

‘So I’ll have to pick the lock,’ she said.

I was on the Tube going home and it was a second late night at the station; I have got to start putting Flo first. I was consumed with curiosity about what was on the screen test. Harriet and Ziggy will not talk about it and Julius is keeping it under lock and key. I realised I had recruited Ziggy, the most vulnerable member of my team, to do a job of breaking and entering.

During my walk home I wondered if I was doing a wrong thing for the right reasons. We were planning to steal something from his office. Sure, I wanted to help Harriet and Ziggy, but I also wanted to have something on Julius after all these years. Was that my true motivation?

StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

At the morning meeting I had good news to report. Ledley’s food advertisers are on board and StoryWorld will get a nice chunk of ad money from them in January. Julius thanked me formally.

‘We need more of these kinds of tie-ups,’ he said.

‘And we’re holding the launch of Ledley’s marinade in our atrium in December. I’d appreciate it if senior managers would attend and show their support for him,’ I said.

Bob looked stony-faced as Fizzy exclaimed: ‘Go, Ledley.’

‘Thanks, Fizzy, I’m asking Gerry and Betty along too.’

*

Harriet was back with the team today. She had applied make-up to her bruise and although I could detect a trace of purple beneath the concealer I doubted if anyone else could. She popped her head round the door.

‘Hello.’

‘Come on in,’ I said.

She closed the door and I felt an impulse of warmth towards her.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh, I’m fine physically, thanks. But I can’t stop thinking about the screen test. Did you manage to get it?’

‘Not yet, but we’re going to.’

She looked doubtful at that.

‘Won’t you tell me why it worries you so much?’

‘Please don’t ask,’ she said.

I didn’t press her because I still felt indebted to her. I asked her about the Cat and Mouse instead. I wanted to know what kind of place it was.

‘It’s kind of a dive from the outside but they get the hot bands there.’

‘Not a place for fourteen-year-olds though?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Thank heavens you were there and you intervened. I can’t thank you enough, Harriet.’

‘How is Florence?’

‘She’s OK but that girl she was with has dropped her.’

‘Teenage girls can be very cruel.’

‘It’s good to have you back and I’d like you to research a fashion expert for the show.’

I had decided it was time to give her some real responsibility, and fashion was her thing. She looked incredulous and then delighted.

‘I’d love to do that, thank you so much.’