Foursome (24 page)

I wait until William has gone up to the girls’ attic room and Isabel is putting the kettle on, and then I say, ‘Actually, everything isn’t fine.’

She looks all concern for me. ‘Bex, what is it? It’s not Dan?’

I launch straight in. For both our sakes I just have to get this over with as quickly as possible.

‘Luke’s married.’ Well, there’s one way to break it to her gently.

Isabel looks at me, confused. ‘What?’

‘Luke. He’s still with his wife. Rose saw them together in Highgate.’ I hesitate and then deliver my sucker punch. ‘Holding hands.’

‘When?’

‘Last week. That’s where she recognized him from. Do you remember she said…? Anyway. He lives near her sister.’

Isabel sits down. ‘No, she’s got it wrong. It must be his wife’s new boyfriend. Luke said she had a new boyfriend.’

‘I don’t think so, Izz.’

‘But…’ she says, ‘how can he still be with her? I see him three or four times a week…’

‘But never overnight or at weekends…’

She looks up at me as she takes that in. There’s no denying it makes sense.

‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘How could I be so stupid?’

‘He’s very convincing,’ I say, sitting down next to her. ‘He had us all fooled. If you think about it, though, he had it all worked out. His job means that he works late sometimes so his wife isn’t going to question it when he’s not home till ten thirty. He travels a lot and who’s to know if he has a woman holed up in his hotel while he’s away? He couldn’t have kept it up for long, though.’

‘But he came over to yours. Why would he risk that if it was such a carefully worked-out operation?’

I’ve been thinking about this overnight. I couldn’t sleep, of course. ‘Because I think he really likes you. And I don’t think that was ever part of the plan.’

‘I’ve been so stupid,’ Isabel says. ‘So fucking stupid.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘It’s hardly your fault.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘but I encouraged you. I told you to go for it. I told you he’d be good for you.’

‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘I’m meant to be seeing him tomorrow night. What shall I do?’

‘I don’t know. I’m all out of good ideas. But I’ll come with you, if you want, if you decide to go ahead and see him. I’ll stand in your corner and cheer you on. Although I can’t guarantee I won’t feel like I have to tell him what I think of him.’

‘Is it better on the phone or in person?’ she says. ‘Obviously I can’t phone him today – he always told me he’d call me at the weekends, so he could do it when Charlie wasn’t around. He said until I’d met Charlie properly he didn’t want him wondering who his dad was talking to. It sounds lame now, doesn’t it, but it made sense at the time. I thought he was such a nice bloke to be so worried about his son like that.’

‘Well, if you see him, there’s a danger he’ll win you round somehow, after all, we know now how manipulative he is. But if you phone him you risk him putting the phone down on you before you’ve said all you want to say.’

‘I need to see him. I want to see the look on his face when I tell him I know. And I want him to have to explain himself.’

She decides to leave the arrangements as they are – that they will meet at half past six in the little bistro up the road. I offer to come again and she says no, she’ll be fine and, besides, she doesn’t want to alert him to the fact that anything’s wrong before the time is right.

‘I might just tell him I’m going to go back to Teddington with him to stay the night, see what he does,’ she says. We spend a few minutes coming up with more and more elaborate revenges we could take on Luke, which seems to cheer her up until she suddenly seems to take in exactly what this all means and her mood crashes.

‘Why are you crying?’ Nicola demands when she comes in looking for something.

‘Because I told her Justin Timberlake was gay,’ I say, and Isabel manages a smile.

‘He’s not, is he?’ Nicola asks nervously. Nicola loves Justin Timberlake. Natalie, on the other hand, is more a Rhianna girl.

‘No,’ Isabel says, and laughs. ‘He’s not is he, Rebecca?’ She gives me a look.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I was just teasing.’

‘Well, don’t,’ Nicola says sharply. ‘It’s mean.’

I spend most of the day round at Isabel’s while she alternately feels fired up and then torn down. At one point she says, ‘Oh no, I told Alex I’d moved on forever,’ and I can’t decide if she’s upset because she doesn’t want him to think she’s still not over him or if she’s wishing she hadn’t turned him down so finally. I start to worry that she’s going to decide to go back to him after all, a knee-jerk reaction to her latest disappointment, but I decide to say nothing. I’ve said enough, really, on the subject of Isabel’s relationships.

27

Lorna is all dressed up and ready for the big lunch. I’m still keeping out of her way although I’m desperately curious to know how it goes. She’s being unbearably smug and self-important around the office and she makes sure she drops in something about ‘lunch with Heather and Niall’ at least every ten minutes in her conversations with Joshua or Melanie and the orders she barks to Kay. She still seems a little unstable to me, a bit manic. I hear her telling Melanie about the ‘brilliant’ weekend she had, which seems to have involved clubbing and eating out, shopping with friends and, rather randomly, bowling. I know she’s lying. I know she will have spent the whole two days holed up in her flat, hoping vainly that Alex would swing by on a white horse and sweep her off her feet. Actually, I don’t expect she would have cared what colour the horse was.

I’m hoping that she remembers Heather’s agenda, which is to find a more highbrow project, something where she can show off her brains as well as her beauty. Not too highbrow, obviously. Just something where she can maybe say something without having to have it written for her once in a while. Lorna’s only role in the lunch, really, is to stop Heather committing to something she’ll later regret and to keep reminding Niall how great she is, how talented, how smart. And, let’s not forget, how popular. (Her current shows,
Celebrity Karaoke
and
High Speed Dating
, pull in more than seven million viewers each, taking twenty-eight and thirty-one per cent of the audience share respectively;
Heat
apparently sells five per cent more copies than usual when she’s on the cover, etc.) I have all the facts and figures memorized if she wants to hear them, but I don’t want to go in there to be insulted by her, so I write what I think is relevant on a piece of paper and give it to Kay to hand to her.

‘Tell her you compiled it,’ I say. ‘That way she might take some notice.’

‘I already know all this,’ she apparently says to Kay when she looks at it, but she folds it up and puts it in her pocket anyway.

About forty minutes after Kathryn’s audition for
Nurses
, just as I am putting on my coat, I get a call telling me that she has got the job. It’s a year’s contract, a rare bit of stability in an insecure world. I pass the details on to Kay, gutted that I can’t tell Kathryn the good news myself.

As (bad) luck would have it I am just going out to get some lunch as Lorna is getting in the lift. I think about saying, ‘It’s OK, I’ll walk,’ but that would be such a pointed and obvious insult that I decide I can’t. We stand there in silence, both counting down the floors from five to ground, willing it to go faster. As she steps out I decide to take the moral high ground and I say, ‘I hope it goes well.’

She manages to say thank you, which, I suppose, is something. I follow her out on to the street, deciding that whichever way she walks I’ll go the opposite, so we’re not doing that awkward ‘walking down the street pretending we don’t know the other one is right there’ thing. She turns to the left and, just before I step out I hear her say, ‘Oh my God,’ so I look to see what she’s seen and there’s Alex, standing there, leaning against the window of the shop next door.

‘Oh, hi,’ he says, and then he sees me, and he looks straight past Lorna who has stopped dead still, and he says, ‘Rebecca.’

‘What do you want?’ I say. I can see Lorna’s bottom lip trembling and tears are welling up in the corner of her eyes. It’s like that moment when you know a toddler is going to kick off because he’s dropped his ice cream and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

‘To talk to you. About Isabel.’

Lorna is rooted to the spot, waiting to hear whatever it is that he has to say to me. All I can think is that she needs to get going if she’s going to get to the Ivy on time.

‘I don’t have time. Neither do I have anything to say to you, to be honest. Come on, Lorna, I’ll walk with you.’

She doesn’t move and Alex doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. I can’t just walk off and leave them there; I need to know she’s going to get to where she needs to be, so I end up standing there too, waiting to see what will happen next.

‘Alex…?’ Lorna says.

He looks at her briefly then turns back to me and says, ‘She told you that I asked her if I could come back?’

I nod and Lorna lets out a gasp like an over-acting soap opera extra.

‘And I meant it,’ he carries on regardless. ‘I’ve realized that these past few months… It’s all been a mistake, a big old clichéd mid-life crisis, if you like. I had always had a thing for you… always thought I was in love with you I guess…’

I cannot believe this man. Right in front of him is a woman whose heart he has well and truly broken and he’s barely even noticed she’s there. And not only is she there but she’s very obviously falling apart.

‘I really don’t want to listen to this, OK?’

I go to grab Lorna’s arm and she shrugs me off. We’ve now attracted a little audience comprised of the people who work in the shops up and down the street, which, I’m sure, will do the professional reputation of Mortimer and Sheedy no end of good.

Alex isn’t stopping. ‘But because I knew… I thought… I could never act on it, I put it out of my mind and I was happy with her, I really was. Until… well, you know, it all got too much. But I should have stuck it out – I realize that now. It was as good as it was going to get and everything since has been a mistake.’

‘No…’ Lorna says, or should I say sobs.

Alex finally looks at her. ‘Oh, come on, Lorna, you must have known it wasn’t serious.’

If she wasn’t already crushed, that one lands on her like a ton of bricks and she crumples under the weight. I need to do some damage limitation and get rid of Alex as quickly as I can.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘She listens to you. At the moment she’s saying no, but I know you could persuade her, convince her I’ve changed, that I just want my old life back with her and the girls. I miss my kids, Rebecca. And just think, given time, it could be the four of us again. I know Dan would come round once Izz and I were back together. We could have our little group back, our family. Think how much you’d like for that to happen.’

Actually, what I’d like to happen is for me to punch him right in the face. Unfortunately now isn’t the right time so I just say, ‘I think I should keep out of it. Now just go. Please. Do the right thing for once.’

He hesitates for a moment and then he says, ‘OK. But think about it at least. Everyone deserves a second chance.’

‘Fine,’ I say. Whatever. I just want to get away, or more to the point get Lorna away, at the moment.

Alex makes a move as if to hug me, but I step back. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you soon. See you, Lorna,’ he adds, like he was talking to a vague acquaintance.

He goes, thank God, and I am left with the mess formerly known as Lorna Whittaker. She has mascara all over her face so I get hold of her as if she was a small child and I use a tissue to wipe it off.

‘If you walk really quickly, you can still be on time,’ I say. I don’t know how else to handle the situation other than to try to pretend that everything is normal.

‘I can’t go,’ she says. ‘I need to go home.’

‘No, Lorna,’ I say firmly (bad dog). ‘You have to go to this lunch first. Then you can go home.’

‘I can’t.’

‘OK. The thing is you have to. After that you can go home for a week if you want to, I don’t care.’

‘Rebecca, I can’t.’ I think it might be the first time she’s ever used my name without it being pointed, without her then giving me a dressing down about something or other. ‘Look at the state of me.’

There’s no doubt about it, she does look like a mess. The runny mascara has escaped again and her hair has sunk into a lank helmet in sympathy. I know her statement is more about her emotional well being than whether she looks good or not, but I don’t feel equipped to be the one to have to deal with that now, so I start fussing at her face with a tissue again. She grabs hold of my hand and looks me straight in the eye, which is disconcerting to say the least. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says. ‘You have to help me.’

‘I will. Just get the lunch over with –’

‘No. I’m never going to be able to get through the lunch.’

‘I’ll walk you there. Then you just need to sit there and smile for an hour and a half and kick Heather under the table if it looks like she’s agreeing to something stupid.’

‘I can’t,’ she says again, and I look at my watch. This is madness.

‘Shall I see if either Joshua or Melanie can go instead?’

‘No! I don’t want them to think I can’t cope. You were right, what you said when you came round to my flat, my job is all I’ve got really. I can’t risk it.’

“What, then? I don’t know what to suggest.’

‘You could go instead of me. Say I’m ill again…’

‘Come on, Lorna. Who sends an assistant when they can’t make lunch? It’d be an insult…’

‘OK. Come with me. I can say I’m not quite up to speed because I was off for so long. Please, Rebecca. I’ll be OK if I’ve got some moral support.’

It’s ridiculous. Niall will think she’s got a power complex, taking her assistant to a fairly informal lunch when he would never dream of doing the same. But I don’t know what else to do to get her there so I say yes, fine, let’s go.

On the way she starts talking about Alex. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened to him. We used to be so close.’

I don’t feel like now is a good time to be talking about this, especially as I can hear the crack in her voice that tells me more tears aren’t far off.

‘Let’s think about Heather,’ I say, trying to sound upbeat and positive, which is anything other than how I actually feel. ‘What kinds of things do you think she should be doing?’

‘We’d even talked about moving in together…’

I refuse to be drawn in. ‘Maybe something like
Countdown
, but at prime time? Or
Crimewatch
? Is that what she wants? I mean, he’s hardly going to ask her to front
Newsnight
, is he?’ I look at her. She’s gazing off into the distance, barely watching where she’s walking, so I carry on before she has a chance to talk about Alex some more. ‘Or does she have ideas of her own? Because that would be where the big money was, wouldn’t it? Owning the formats?’

She shrugs. Luckily it’s a short walk and, just before we turn down West Street from St Martin’s Lane I stop her and give her the once over, dabbing stray mascara with another – this time used – tissue I find in my coat pocket. I just about refrain from asking her to spit into it first.

‘Just smile,’ I say. ‘And nod every now and then. It’ll all be over in about an hour or so.’

Heather is already there so we take a seat in the bar. I’m waiting for Lorna to explain what I’m doing there, but she doesn’t so I say, ‘Lorna asked me to come along because as you know she’s not been well the last few weeks and I’ve been sort of covering for her…’ It’s barely an explanation but it’s all I have. Luckily Heather isn’t really interested in anyone other than herself and the little ripple of excitement her presence is causing among a group of middle-aged women at another table, so she doesn’t really react. In fact, she doesn’t even ask Lorna how she is. I’m grateful for her lack of manners, though, because if she did Lorna would probably tell her and that wouldn’t help matters at all.

‘So,’ I say to Heather. ‘Maybe we should have a quick chat before Niall gets here about what exactly it is you want to do…’

‘I’ve been over and over this with Lorna,’ she says petulantly. Lorna looks at me, wide-eyed.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She said that you want to move on to something a bit more grown-up, a little more substantial. I just wondered if you had any specific thoughts. Because we have a few ideas,’ I add, talking off the top of my head.

‘Well, I don’t see why Terri Sanderson gets all the good jobs,’ she says, naming another young female presenter whose shows aren’t exactly Nobel Prize-worthy.

‘Right…’ I say, with no idea what I am going to say next. Thankfully Niall walks in at that very minute so it’s air kisses all round. I manage to introduce myself and, though he looks a little bemused, he’s polite enough. He and Heather basically only have eyes for each other, which suits me. I sit back and try to relax a bit, keeping one eye on Lorna.

At the table Niall and Heather talk about mutual acquaintances and who’s hot and who’s not right the way through the starter. I have no idea when is the appropriate time to start a conversation about work or who is meant to initiate it. At one point Niall asks Lorna how she is and she stares down at her plate and mutters something about being fine.

It’s all rather awkward, but as soon as the main course is delivered Niall says, ‘So, you’re thinking of leaving ITV?’ and I tell myself to at least concentrate so that I can step in if the conversation takes a wrong turn.

Heather looks at Lorna as if she’s expecting her to chime in at this point, which, of course, isn’t going to happen. I take a deep breath. What’s the worst that can happen?

‘Well, Niall,’ I say, and he almost jumps. I can see him thinking, Who the hell is she again?, but I carry on regardless. ‘Heather feels like she’s being pigeonholed at ITV. Isn’t that right, Heather?’ Luckily Heather nods, so I carry on. ‘She brings in a great audience for them, as you know, so it suits them to keep her doing that kind of mainstream Saturday night, family stuff where it’s all about the ratings.’ I rattle off the facts and figures that I looked up to give to Lorna and he nods slightly impatiently as if to say yes, I know all this already. ‘The thing is,’ I say, in an effort to wrap up, ‘Heather doesn’t just want to spend her time reading an autocue. She’s capable of so much more than that and she’d like to branch out to do other things.’ I sit back. That’s all I’ve got. Really.

‘Like what?’ Niall says. He looks at Heather and Heather looks at me.

‘Um… like…’ I raise my eyebrows at Heather as if to say, ‘This was all your idea, what is it you’re so desperate to do actually?’

She shrugs.

‘… like documentaries.’