Bad Friends (22 page)

He still didn’t speak.

‘Seb!’

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘I’m not saying that. But – it’s just – a little extreme to think I’m trying to kill you. You must see that, don’t you?’

I found my shirt and tried to grin but it was shaky. ‘Okay. Maybe you’re right. I’m just a bit – wound up at the moment.’

‘I can’t believe you’d think I want to hurt you,’ he said quietly, contemplating me. ‘Why would I want to hurt you, babe? God, if anything, I think –’ His voice faltered.

‘What?’ I stopped buttoning my shirt up and looked at him.

‘Nothing.’ He walked over to the balcony and opened the doors properly. The trees outside were festooned with tiny fairy lights, the sky as black as treacle beyond.

‘Tell me what you were going to say,’ I prompted quietly.

‘If anything, I think you’ll be the one to hurt me,’ he said, staring out into space, almost talking to himself now.

‘Why? I don’t understand.’ I wrinkled my brow, suddenly chilly in the December breeze.

There was a long pause.

‘Because you’re on the rebound.’

‘I’m not.’ I was defensive. ‘Of course I’m not.’

‘Aren’t you? It’s just –’ at last he turned back to me, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you, Maggie.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I gazed at him, stupefied. ‘Are you?’

‘Yes. I think I am.’

‘Blimey.’

‘Yeah,’ Seb said, stepping nearer, ‘blimey. It wasn’t really on
the cards, was it?’ He reached for my hands and pulled me gently towards him.

‘I suppose not,’ I mumbled.

‘And the trouble is, I think – I think it’s beyond my control.’

He put his hands on either side of my face and I didn’t flinch this time. He raised my face to meet his and then he bent and kissed me. I felt myself start to relax as his lips met mine. My heart beat faster again, but this time it wasn’t with fear. I looked into his eyes and they were so dark, I still wasn’t used to such very dark eyes. And as I tried to decipher what lay beneath the surface, Seb ran a hand down my cheek and down my neck and on down, on down … He pushed me back onto that enormous bed and ripped the few shirt buttons undone that I’d just done up, and I gasped – but it wasn’t a gasp of fright this time. I kept trying to read his face as he stared down at me, as he slid his hands behind my back and undid the bra I’d just done up. He pulled his own T-shirt off impatiently and I dug my hands into his tousled curls and then I put my hands on his bare chest and the pulse there, it felt like it was too fast, as if he was being consumed by something I didn’t understand. And I knew that if this was ever going to work, I had to let myself go too.

I slept the sleep of the dead that night. I didn’t dream, I didn’t stir at all until reception rang around seven, saying they’d been asked to wake me. Seb was already gone, a note on the snowy pillow next to me.

I lay in bed for a second staring up at Cupid’s little face as he grinned down at me knowingly. The thought came to me that last night was the first time I’d had sober sex in a very, very long time; and then, gradually, as sleep finally dissolved, I remembered Seb’s murmured confession. The fact he’d said he loved me. Slowly, luxuriously, I stretched, and then, very slowly, I smiled.

When I got to the studios Renee and Charlie were already in the green room gorging themselves on Danish pastries meant for the guests. Renee looked pointedly at her Cartier watch.

‘A tardy mind is a lardy mind,’ she said tartly, and popped the final corner of a croissant into her ladylike mouth.

‘You just made that up, surely, Renee.’ I sloshed coffee into a
cup. Now they had caught Joseph, I could concentrate on securing my freedom. It had been a long time coming.

‘I certainly did not.’ She delicately dabbed vividly cerise lips with a starchy napkin. ‘Ma used to say it to my da every Friday when he brought home the wage packet.’ Her voice dropped into a tragic monotone. ‘Before he went and drank it all down at Boyo Dyffd’s.’

‘Before he came home and beat Ma black and blue, was it?’ I added sugar and smiled sweetly at Renee’s startled face. ‘Before you shouldered every chore, bringing up your thirty-five siblings single-handedly while also going down the mine?’

‘My sainted mother was a – a – saint, I’ll have you know, Maggie.’

‘Renee, with you as a daughter, I don’t doubt that for a moment.’ I sat so heavily beside her, her own drink slopped out and spotted her pink linen top. ‘Whoops! I’m sorry.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ She glowered at me. ‘I’ll have to change for the show now.’

‘I’m not sure pink’s your colour actually, so it’s probably a good thing.’ I bit into a
pain au chocolat
with gusto. Everything in the room suddenly became absolutely crystalline, as if it had all been washed by super-jets and polished afterwards. I’d had an epiphany; I could almost hear the angels singing.

‘Maggie!’ Charlie’s voice held a warning note. ‘Have you been drinking?’ he hissed, and I wagged my finger at him.

‘Silly boy. At this time of day? Of course not.’ I licked the chocolate off my fingers lasciviously. ‘Now, shall we get on? Have you been through the guest-list?’

Renee was staring at me like I was something disgusting on her shoe. ‘Of course I’ve been through the bloody list.’

‘No need to swear, Renee,’ I rebuked her mildly. ‘You have got a bit lazy recently.’

Donna rushed into the room. ‘We’ve already got one dropout and the driver outside Melanie Adams’s flat has been ringing for half an hour but there’s no answer.’

‘Typical,’ said Renee, glaring at me as if I’d planned the whole thing. ‘This is bloody typical.’

‘Renee, we always have no-shows; it’s hardly a surprise, is it?’ I remembered the days when a missing guest had utterly panicked me; recently I just felt glad that people had the sense not to turn up.

Sally burst through the door, her round face flushed. ‘The Scottish lads have gone and done a bloody runner from the hotel.’ She stuck her pencil behind her ear. ‘I thought they were a bit too good to be true. Willing to dump each other on air but prepared to share a hotel room first.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, not again. All this bloody free-loading pond-life.’ It was Charlie’s turn to glare at me now. ‘I said we should have done a pre-record.’

‘You didn’t. You said it wasn’t edgy enough, actually.’ I cocked my head like an irritating budgerigar. ‘You wouldn’t want everyone at home to think something was true if it wasn’t, eh, Charlie?’

Donna was eyeing me like I was mad. ‘So what do you want me to do?’ she asked, one hand on hip.

‘Wheel in the standby.’ I finished my pastry calmly and poured myself another cup of coffee. ‘It’ll all be fine. Renee’s been around so flipping long she could do it standing on her hair extensions. You’re an old pro, eh, Renee? In every sense of the word.’

There was a crash of crockery as Renee stood, Sally desperately suppressing a snigger in the corner, Donna’s head snapping back and forth as if she were watching a tennis rally at Wimbledon.

‘That’s
it
, Charlie!’ Renee was so scarlet now her face clashed with the stained pink top. ‘I’m not doing the show until this – this hussy apologises.’

‘If hussy means the marvellous fuck I had last night,’ I stirred my coffee, ‘you’re not
that
far off the mark, Renee. Shame you can’t get one.’

‘Shut the hell up, Maggie,’ Charlie was shouting now, ‘for Christ’s sake.’

‘Yes, shut up!’ Renee flounced to the door. ‘Shut up – and get one of the girls to sit up front. And get that lovely Joe’, Renee always favoured the few male members of staff, ‘to my dressing room. Now. He can help me go through the script.’

My high suddenly felt not quite so soaring. ‘The lovely Joe’s been nicked, actually, Renee.’ My veneer cracked just a little.

Renee and Charlie both turned in horror. ‘What are you talking about now, you stupid girl?’

‘Nicked. As in arrested.’

‘What?’ Donna asked, aghast. ‘Why? What the hell did he do?’

‘You know,’ I said pensively, standing up, ‘there’s nothing like the buzz of live TV, is there, folks?’

I strolled out of the green room, letting the door slam behind me. None of them saw my hands tremble as I lit a cigarette on the fire-escape, as I fumbled in my bag for my dad’s old hill-walking flask. But, shaking or not, there was plenty more vitriol where that had come from. 

Charlie was tapping furiously into his BlackBerry as I re-entered the green room, relieved that Renee had vanished into make-up to be pacified by Kay.

‘Are you
trying
to get the sack?’ Charlie snapped at me.

‘What do you think?’ I replied evenly.

Donna burst in. ‘I’ve got her, Charlie. She’s in a cab now. I didn’t even have to offer her money, she was so keen.’

‘Thank God!’ Charlie said.

‘Who?’

‘Your friend Fay Carter,’ he muttered.

I groaned. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’

‘Well, can you do any better?’

‘But who’s she going to dump? She’s already bloody single.’

He had the good grace to look a little abashed. ‘She’s going to be our expert.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

I looked at Donna; at how desperate she was to salvage the programme, the doomed
Dumped
show, and I realised that I really had to do what I should have done months ago. I felt Charlie watching me. ‘I’m going to go, Charlie.’

‘Donna, go and meet Fay’s cab,’ he said.

‘Okay, boss.’ She rushed off.

‘Maggie, I need you,’ he implored. ‘You have to get this off the ground.’

We stared at each other.

‘You owe me this much. After everything –’

‘I owe you nothing,’ I hissed. ‘And you damn well know it. There’s nothing left to give, anyway.’

Sally appeared with our first guest. We smiled our disingenuous smiles before Charlie grabbed my arm and forced me into the corridor.

‘Was that true about Joseph Blake?’

I nodded grimly.

‘What exactly has he done?’

‘Ow!’ I shook him off. ‘That hurts. He mounted a one-man campaign of terror against me, that’s what.’

‘Really?’ Charlie frowned at me as I rubbed my arm crossly.

‘Yes, really. That break-in, various nasty texts, funeral flowers, missing things, it was all him apparently.’

A spotty young researcher called Cheryl came panting down the hall. ‘Maggie, your dad’s been on the phone. He says have you got the dog?’

My stomach hit the floor. ‘What?’

‘He said two things –’ She was painstaking in her thoroughness as she tried to remember exactly what she’d been told.

‘He said – one,’ she ticked it off on her fingers, ‘more flowers
have arrived for you at his house. And two, he said have you got the dog?’

I stared at her, uncomprehending. Not daring to comprehend.

‘Sorry.’ Cheryl looked really worried. ‘He said you’d understand.’

The show was due on air in twenty-five minutes when I found DI Fox’s number and rang him from an empty dressing-room. He sounded uncomfortable.

‘Maggie. I was about to ring you actually.’

I felt a sudden tightness in my throat.

‘Why?’

‘I’m sorry, but we’re just about to release Blake.’

I leaned my burning head on the dressing-table.

‘Maggie? You still there?’

‘Just about,’ I muttered.

‘I thought you should know. There’s just not enough evidence to tie him to the first break-in, I’m afraid. Not a single fingerprint, nothing. Nada.’

‘Are you sure? And he has – he’s been in jail all night?’

‘He’s been in custody, yeah. And he swears you gave him the keys to fetch your bag from the flat. We can’t charge him.’

‘Well, he’s lying,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘Could he have made any phone calls? Like to order more flowers? He couldn’t have nicked my – my dog?’

‘Your dog?’

‘He’s –’ I felt that constriction in my throat again; I swallowed hard. ‘He’s vanished. It’s probably nothing. He’s probably just harassing next door’s poodle.’ I wished I believed that.

‘Right. Well, Blake’s been in the cells all night. No access to a phone or a dog.’ He was almost brusque. ‘Anything else I should know about?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Maggie –’

I snapped the phone shut and rushed into the green room to retrieve my coat and bag. Renee stalked past me, head in the air, followed by an extremely obsequious Charlie.

‘But you look wonderful in red, my darling,’ he was saying. A knowing little smile attempted to cross Renee’s Botoxed face. ‘You’re not going, are you?’ he muttered at me.

‘Looks that way.’

Fay popped her head round the door. ‘Hi all.’ She pattered into the room, wrapped in fluffy blue angora like a little Persian kitten. Her new hair made her look even more ravishing than before, like a gorgeous street urchin. I stared at her jumper. I was sure I’d had one like that once.

‘Maggie, darling, are you all right? I was so worried yesterday.’ She put a hand up to stroke my head and I flinched. ‘Oh goodness, I’m sorry. Is it that painful?’

‘So what exactly have you come to talk about today on this great show?’ I gazed at her, almost fascinated by how much she repelled me now. ‘On this fine display of human culture.’

Charlie coughed loudly.

‘I’m going to talk about my newfound fame and how splitting up –’

‘Dumping,’ I corrected.

‘
Splitting up
’, she smiled at me with pity, ‘with my boyfriend was both extremely painful and also fortuitous. I never would have achieved what I have recently if I’d stayed with him. He was too controlling. You want to take a leaf out of my book, Maggie. Don’t be answerable to men.’

‘Right. Well, good luck.’ I backed out of the room.

‘Oh, aren’t you staying?’ Like she cared. Renee was bearing down on her like some hulking great carrion crow as I escaped.

Charlie followed me into the corridor.

‘This show can run itself, Charlie. I don’t really care any more. I loathe all this so much …’ I gestured to the falsely smiling celebrities whose pictures lined the walls, at the crocodile of
over-excited guests being led into the studio now. ‘You promised me a change and I haven’t got it, so I’m going.’

‘I’ll stick to my promise,’ Charlie said stiffly. ‘Even though what you did in June was unforgivable.’ We glared at each other like gun-slingers in the dirt, trying to assess who’d be fast enough to fire that final fatal shot.

‘It’s funny, Charlie, cos I thought it was exactly the type of thing you’d understand. You’re the most immoral man I’ve ever met. And my only regret is that you think you know the truth about me – and that you abused that so badly.’

Renee swept out into the corridor on her way to the studio. ‘Are you going to apologise for being rude?’ She glared at me.

‘Why would I? You’re a rude old bitch yourself.’

Just in time to catch my words, Sally turned the corner with the two key guests. Eyes wide with delighted shock, she didn’t know whether to rush the couple through or stay for the fight.

‘We work really hard, Renee, and you’re nothing but foul most of the time.’ I warmed to my subject now. ‘As foul as the show. Look at us, paying for some poor sod to have a DNA test. Or encouraging this lot to dump their partners live on air! Fantastic. Let’s hope they don’t all go and top themselves straight after the show. Don’t, will you?’ I implored the shocked couple in the corridor.

‘Maggie –’

‘Get those people into the studio now,’ Charlie snarled at Sally.

‘I’ve lost count of how many times my guests have thanked me,’ insisted Renee.

‘Is that before they have to go home and face real life? It’s all a bloody sham, just admit it.’

Charlie laughed.

‘Fuck off, Charlie.’ I could feel hysteria rising like the tide.

‘For God’s sake, Charles, the girl’s mental,’ Renee hissed. ‘Get her out of here before she scares the guests.’ She gave me a final
filthy glare and swept grandly into the studio to tumultuous applause.

There were footsteps behind me now, light little tappings down the corridor – then a gentle hand on my shoulder.

‘Maggie, by the way, there’s something you should know.’

I turned wearily. ‘What’s that then, Fay?’

‘Do you want to go somewhere private?’ she stage-whispered.

I eyed Charlie dispassionately. ‘No, not really. I’ve got no secrets left, it seems.’

‘Right.’ She looked almost disappointed. ‘Well, it’s your boyfriend, Alex.’