Woman of the Hour (10 page)

‘Julius, you’ve met Florence before, I think?’

‘Yes, hello, Florence. This is my brother Steven.’

Steven, who was in his thirties and had Down syndrome, smiled shyly at us. He was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that looked expensive.

‘Hello, Steven,’ I said.

Flo squealed in excitement: ‘Oh look at that!’

She was pointing at a bright green snake which was coiling itself with infinite grace down a twisted bare branch. Steven moved right up to the glass case.

‘I like him. He’s pretty.’

‘He’s a great colour, but I’m glad he’s behind that thick glass,’ I said.

‘I like snakes. I’d like to hold him,’ Steven said.

‘Have you been to Penguin Beach yet?’

‘We saw them feeding the penguins. They eat raw fish,’ Flo said.

‘Buckets of it,’ I said.

Steven was clapping his hands in excitement and hopping from foot to foot.

‘Oh, please can we go see the penguins, Nige?’

‘Yes of course, that can be our next stop,’ Julius said.

I had forgotten that Julius was born and raised as Nigel. We all shook hands quite formally and I watched them walk out of the Reptile House. Julius was holding Steven by the hand and I found the sight of their retreating figures moving.

Now, as I headed back towards my office, I spotted Flo sitting with my team. She and Harriet were flicking through a magazine and chatting. I’d forgotten that Flo was coming into StoryWorld. She had been on a school trip to Tate Modern up the river and we’d agreed she would come here afterwards. She and Harriet were poring over a fashion spread in which members of the public are photographed in the street and their outfits are ranked for style appeal. I saw another side of Harriet. She was being friendly to Flo and talking to her as an equal, not in any way as a schoolkid, and Flo was loving it.

‘I need twenty minutes to clear my emails and then we’re out of here,’ I said.

I went into my room and Flo stayed outside with Harriet and the team.

Gourmet Pizza, Gabriel’s Wharf, South Bank

I decided it would be nice for us to eat out for a change so when Flo and I left StoryWorld we walked along the river. There were blue and white lights strung in the trees. We reached Gabriel’s Wharf and she spotted the red awning of Gourmet Pizza and wanted us to eat there. A patio heater was blazing over the outside tables so we sat down and watched the people strolling by the river. Flo was raving about Harriet.

‘I love the way she does her hair. Did you see those tortoiseshell combs she was wearing?’

‘She does have lovely hair,’ I said.

‘But it was the way she styled it, Mum, did you see?’

‘Yes, it was very pretty. Let’s order, shall we?’

I handed Flo one of the large menus and we read the pizza toppings out to each other.

‘It has to be Quattro Formaggi for me,’ I said.

‘You always have that.’

‘I can’t resist all that melted cheese. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more comforting than melted cheese. What about you?’

‘I’d like the Pollo Cajun please.’

We made our order.

‘I love the way she dresses too,’ Flo said.

‘She is very stylish, but maybe she dresses a bit old for her age?’

‘No, Mum. Not at all. She’s got the look.’

Our drinks arrived. I’d ordered a glass of red wine and Flo had diet Coke.

‘She was telling me about this new music place in Camden, the Cat and Mouse. It gets the best bands and she goes there and there was a piece about it in the magazine.’

‘I wouldn’t have had Harriet down as a person who went to gigs.’

‘Well she does. And she knows the best places to go.’

It seemed that Flo had a new role model and it made me think of Harriet in a slightly different light. She had taken the trouble to talk to Flo. Maybe she had a kinder side to her.

Chalk Farm Flat, 11 p.m.

After Flo was asleep I made myself a large mug of tea and sat looking out at our little garden. I bought outdoor lights for it last weekend and they’re on a timer. They look so pretty twinkling along the walls. I had opened the French doors and I heard the cry of a fox in the garden next door. It is a strange, shrill, anguished sound, almost a shriek. And I could detect that unmistakable pungent smell on the air. I worry that the foxes might attack Mr Crooks, but he’s a pretty belligerent beast and can probably look after himself.

I remembered our day at the zoo again. The first animals I had taken Flo to see were the wolves. I had made a point of this because when Flo was tiny she was terrified of wolves. She had seen the evil wolf Maugrim on a TV series of
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
and his long pointed nose and sharp teeth had horrified her. From that point on Maugrim had become Flo’s bogeyman; the scary thing under the bed. It had taken years of me telling her that wolves were actually good animals to counter this fear. Even on our day at the zoo, the day we met Julius, she had held my hand tightly as we watched the wolves roaming their enclosure.

OCTOBER

StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge

I chaired the morning meeting and I think Bob was put out that Julius had asked me to do it instead of him. The show had been a bit flat and Fizzy was complaining about the quality of guests she’d had to interview that morning.

‘I can’t spin gold from straw,’ she said.

I book the interview of the day so I was being criticised here. I told Fizzy that I had secured Ashley Gascoigne for next week and this perked her up no end. His latest TV series is getting huge audiences and there is a Twitter storm about his appearance after every episode.

‘Can we show the clip where he strips off and washes in the river?’ Fizzy said.

This scene had gone viral on YouTube and had even ousted Mr Darcy’s wet-shirt moment. I watched Bob for a reaction but he gave nothing away.

‘It is one of those scenes you can watch again and again, isn’t it, so yes, let’s screen it,’ I said.

Now Bob did react.

‘You know if we were saying this about a scene involving a half-naked woman you’d both be up in arms in a shot.’

When Bob is irritated his Burnley accent becomes more pronounced. Unlike Fizzy he has clung to his northern identity. Fizzy and I laughed at him, united.

I went downstairs to meet Gerry in the staff café. He was clearly despondent and I bought him a cappuccino and a pain au raisin because he said he needed sugar and bugger the diet. He had printed off his predictions for the week ahead and he showed these to me. As well as the predictions he always has a topic of the week where he uses astrology to analyse a particular subject. This week his topic was financial compatibility in couples. There was a dark edge to every one of his forecasts and also to his topic.

‘Oh dear, looks like we’re all in for a bumpy week,’ I said when I had read his script.

‘It goes like that sometimes.’

He unrolled his pain au raisin and popped a large piece into his mouth.

‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

He chewed on his pastry and said in a low voice, ‘Trouble with Anwar.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘His bloody family keep asking for money all the time and he’s an actor, for chrissakes! You know how little they earn. I think the average salary for an actor is something like three thousand a year. But they think he’s rich and they expect him to send money every month; a substantial amount of money.’

‘He’ll have to say no.’

‘But he won’t, Liz. It’s what I’ve said again and again and we had another big row about it. I pay the mortgage, I buy the food, I pay for our holidays. I’m happy to do it, but why should I keep funding his whole bloody family?’

He tore off another piece of pastry and chewed furiously. Now I understood why Gerry drove a hard bargain over his fee and his expenses. Anwar must be a drain on his resources. Fizzy and Bob walked into the café and sat at their usual table by the window. Gerry noticed me noticing them.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he said.

‘What are you thinking?’

He gave me a sad smile.

‘It’s always sex or money, isn’t it? And when the planets are aligned the attraction is irresistible.’

I often forget that Gerry believes in astrology.

I had an ideas meeting with the team at noon and Simon was pushing to do a story on the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of
The Lord of the Rings
. Anniversaries are the staple of TV stations and we scan lists of them to see if there is anything we can turn into a TV story.

‘It’s the second biggest selling novel of all time. I thought we could screen clips from the films and I’ve found this academic who knows all there is to know about Tolkien and Middle-Earth,’ he said.

‘We’ve had some bad items with academics. They don’t seem able to communicate their ideas within the time,’ I said.

‘We’ve had two awfully boring ones that I can remember,’ Molly chipped in.

‘But this guy is so good. He doesn’t go in for jargon at all and he communicates really well,’ Simon said, flashing an irritated look at Molly.

I wondered if Simon was a Tolkien fan as he was fired up about his idea.

‘Check the film clip situation. If we can get the clips I could see it working,’ I said.

Molly then told us, reluctantly, that Naomi Jessup, the cancer patient she wanted to interview for the outside broadcast, had taken a turn for the worse.

‘She’s really ill but she’s still so keen to do the interview. I think she sees it as her last chance to say something meaningful. We’ve got the crew tomorrow and I’d like to go ahead.’

‘This makes me uneasy, Moll. What will she say? I thought the point of her interview was she felt she could fight the cancer?’ I said.

‘I don’t know exactly what she’ll say, but I feel it could be an important interview. And I’d like to do it very much.’

‘I don’t want us to exploit her.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of exploiting her!’

‘Not intentionally; but what if the interview doesn’t work out and we don’t transmit it? Isn’t that even more unkind than standing it down now? It’s bad enough when we let down members of the public who are fit and well but to let down a dying woman...’

‘Trust me on this one; please,’ Molly said.

When my researchers argue strongly for a story I feel I should trust them so I agreed she could proceed with the interview. Simon handed her a list of questions he had compiled for Dirk, the young man who had lost his leg. Molly read these through.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said.

‘Is Molly going to do the interviews?’ Harriet asked.

It was the first thing she had said at the meeting. She had not offered a single idea or even commented on the others’ ideas.

‘Yes. There’s an art to it and I don’t think you’re ready to do interviews yet,’ I said.

Harriet assessed Molly with sudden interest.

‘You’re on camera?’

‘Doesn’t work like that. I ask the questions off camera and then we piece it together,’ Molly said.

‘And I’ll be doing the edit on the Dirk story,’ Simon added.

Harriet lost interest once she realised that Molly would not be on camera. I had been thinking about how much Ziggy would learn if she could be present at the outside broadcast, but I needed one of my team to be the link person back at the office on the day.

‘I’d like Ziggy to be part of the OB team, if possible. But this means I need one of you to volunteer to stay here in case of emergencies,’ I said.

There was silence in the room. I waited.

‘I don’t mind staying here,’ Harriet said.

‘Are you sure? I’d appreciate it.’

‘No problem.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And can I leave early on Friday? My granny is going into hospital for an op and I’d like to visit her afterwards,’ Harriet said.

‘How early are you thinking?’

‘Around four, if that’s all right.’

‘OK, but you’ll need to make up the hours next week,’ I said.

They left my office. Harriet has been with us for a while now and yet she is still detached from the team and not very interested in our output. I have seen her walking around the building though. I saw her downstairs talking to the camera crew after the show and last week she was over in the newsroom talking to one of Bob’s reporters. The news team sit on the opposite side of the building to us and they use the right branch of the staircase and we use the left. It is symbolic of the gulf between the two teams. I wondered at the time what she was doing over there as she does not strike me as a news person. The bottom line is that she’s in a features team that is under constant pressure to produce items and I need my researchers to come up with ideas, but I was grateful that she’d volunteered to miss the action at the OB.

Julius arrived at the station around lunchtime and as he walked past my room I saw Harriet get up and hurry after him. Intrigued, I rose and moved to my door to watch them. I saw Harriet follow Julius to his office, talking to him as he walked. He nodded to Martine, his PA, and held his door open for Harriet. At almost the same moment Fizzy had come upstairs and was walking towards his office and she saw Harriet going in. Fizzy stopped in her tracks. She turned and said a few words to Martine who got up from her desk. They conferred for a couple of minutes and Fizzy walked away looking cross. I was unsettled by it too.

About fifteen minutes later Harriet returned to her desk, settled herself in front of her PC and said something to Simon. She looked pleased with herself and Molly, sitting opposite, gave her an odd look. I had an impulse to come out and ask Harriet what she had been talking to Julius about. It is unusual for any of my team to have direct contact with him. There’s a hierarchy at StoryWorld and I am usually the conduit for messages from Julius. He knows her father, of course; both he and the MD do, and I know that they count Edward Dodd as an important contact. Also Harriet is one of those people who believe that every door is open to her. Her sense of entitlement is huge. But what did it matter, after all? I picked up my glass paperweight and stood at my window. I held the paperweight in the palm of my hand, then lifted it to eye level and moved it back and forth to catch the light so that the brilliant colours within the glass glowed. And then they blurred as I blinked my tears away.