Falling Off Air

by Catherine Sampson

  “You should take the job,” he said eventually.

  “It's not me,” I grumbled. “You know it's not. I don't want to be some sort of policeman, going around slapping wrists when people step out of line.”

  “Someone's got to do it, and better you than some twenty-year-old with a nose ring through her brain.”

  “Can't do it anyway,” I told him. “Paula Carmichael's death will be top of the EGIE agenda, and the police seem to think I'm a prime suspect.”

  He laughed at that, thinking I was joking. I wished Finney could have seen him.

  “Anyway,” he said, when he'd sobered up, “Paula Carmichael's death is right off the agenda. Her husband's retracted his statement, at least the stuff about the Corporation.”

  “What?”

  “The lawyers were onto his statement the moment he made it. Then the director paid him a visit to express his condolences: flowers, gifts for the boys, everything. While he was there he pointed out a few of the finer legal points, reminded Carmichael how expensive it would be to fight a libel charge and, hey presto, he backed off. He made a statement this afternoon saying he was very upset when he spoke to the press yesterday, and he'd been mistaken to say Paula had been upset by the documentary. Indeed, she'd been flattered by their interest. The lawyers are double-checking it as we speak. It'll be all over the bulletins.”

  I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled slowly.

  “Great,” I said, “first the Corporation humiliates his wife, then him.”

  “Rubbish,” Terry protested. “The documentary about Paula Carmichael was never aired, no one ever saw it.”

  I frowned.

  “That's the documentary she made with Adam?”

  “Strictly speaking, it wasn't even a Corporation project,” Terry explained. “It was a Paradigm production, you know, the company Suzette Milner set up, but it was commissioned by the Corporation, and Suzette hired Adam to do the presenting.”

  “Really?”

  Terry nodded without comment. They weren't the best of friends, Terry and Suzette, so I didn't say what I was thinking, which was that Suzette had played that particular card close to her chest when I had seen her on the morning after Paula's death.

  “So was Paula Carmichael depressed or wasn't she?” I tried to clarify. “What's her husband saying?”

  “The man's a mess,” Terry said. “He probably doesn't know what he's saying himself.”

  He leaned forward and turned on the car radio to see whether there was any mention of Carmichael's retraction on the news. There was none. “Still being digested by the lawyers, then,” Terry commented. The weather forecast predicted a sharp drop in temperature the next day and hazarded to speculate that autumn would now continue its more normal path downward into colder temperatures. We made the rest of the journey in silence. For the past year I had hardly set foot outside south London, and now, as dusk settled, I gazed out on the grandeur of the Thames and at the fairy-lit bridges. It didn't look like the city I lived in.

  We pulled up outside the Grosvenor House Hotel.

  “Nice frock,” Terry commented as I clambered out.

  I humphed. It felt all wrong, as though there'd been some horrible mix-up and I'd got someone else's clothes on. I couldn't believe I'd ever felt comfortable in anything but boots and jeans and layers of T-shirts and sweaters. I hadn't worn a dress since the third month of my pregnancy. The one I'd dug out of my wardrobe for this evening was navy silk, cut just above the knee, high at the throat, very simple. It hung looser on me than it had before, I guess I'd lost more weight than I'd realized. I'd wrapped a light woolen shawl around my shoulders. I waited as Terry handed the car keys to the valet, and saw Maeve arriving. She was clearly worried about that drop in temperature, because she carried a fur stole over one arm, like a lapdog.

  Inside, people had gathered in the bar and I saw that Maeve was in her element, networking like a fiend. She caught sight of me, saw with obvious relief that I was out of my jeans, and beckoned me over, introducing me to a rickety old man in a cummerbund.

  “I'm grooming Robin for the new ethics post,” she told him, patting at my silk-clad shoulder like a cat. “So you see, we are responding to your concerns.”

  The old man had sharp eyes, and they gave me an appraising glance before returning to Maeve.

  “We put the mink on your back, my dear,” he said in a shaky voice, “so you'd better be, don't you think?”

  Maeve laughed, a tinkling, nervy sound, and when he moved away, she patted the offending skin as though scolding it and whispered in my ear, “He meant they pay my wages, nothing more.”

  “Maeve, what do you mean you're grooming me?”

  “Well, I should have said you're grooming yourself,” she said, with another tense giggle. “Great haircut.”

  I took a deep breath. It crossed my mind that the redoubtable Maeve might be dabbling in illicit substances.

  “Maeve, I can't take this job, it's just not me. I just want to make programs.”

  She looked at me pityingly, then.

  “Maeve,” I tried again, sotto voce, unwilling to make a scene but suddenly overwhelmed by the urgency of the situation. “I'm guaranteed a job on return from maternity leave …”

  “And a rather long maternity leave it's been, hasn't it?” she threw back at me, waving her hand and flashing a smile at someone I recognized but couldn't place. “Besides, we've offered you a job. Now it's time to decide what your priorities are. Just don't embarrass me, Robin. I can't afford to have that happen.”

  Frustrated and angry, I stood and watched as she moved off through the crowd, air kissing anyone and everyone who crossed her path. At one point she lunged for a young man in a tailcoat only to realize at the last moment that he was a waiter. A media crowd is almost pathologically sociable. I could see a couple of uniformed hotel staff trying to usher people into the ballroom, but my colleagues were like a bunch of children in the playground, unwilling to go and sit down in the classroom where they'd have to stop chatting with their mates.

  I'd lost Terry, but then I saw him deep in conversation with one of his old cronies, heads together, backs fending off casual socializes. I spotted Suzette on one of the high chairs by the long black bar. Her back was to me, but I could see her face in a mirror. She was wearing a little black dress and pearls, with her long blond hair scraped back in a severe chignon and her face pale and clean of makeup. I waved at her, and she spotted me in the mirror and turned to mouth “Monday” at me, and I gave her a thumbs-up. Perhaps Suzette was the way out. A partnership in Paradigm productions would give me the creative freedom I craved, and I liked her; she was bright and serious and very thorough. She had a great visual sense and huge reserves of enthusiasm. We had worked together a couple of years ago on a series about schools, and we'd got on just fine. We could do it again.

  I saw Jane, then, on the arm of the Corporation's political editor Quentin Browne and caught her eye. She was a picture of Chinese chic, wearing a tailored red cheongsam split to the thigh. Jane is tall and not at all willowy, so it was not what you would call a subtle outfit, especially when almost everyone else was in shades of black. She winked at me and wiggled her substantial hips against Quentin, who turned to her and kissed her full on the lips. I must have looked astounded, because when she emerged from his embrace and saw my face, she laughed out loud. I could hear her raucous bellow from where I stood, and her date put his hands over his ears and said something to her which made her laugh more. It appeared there were many things I'd missed in my seclusion.

  Jane was working her way through the crush toward me when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned, expecting Maeve again, my heart sinking. Then I stood stock still while my heart did something else entirely, and my jaw dropped.

  It was Adam. Why hadn't I anticipated exactly this? I cannot say. Except, perhaps, that I had erected such substantial barriers in my head against him that I had assumed they had actual physical existence. Somewhere deep in my
psyche I must have thought he could not actually get close to me, not to my head, not to my body.

  “Hi,” he said. “Are you talking to me?”

  He smiled and it was a smile from the bedroom and the breakfast table. My heart twisted. That smile would warm my lonely hours. The kids would love that smile. He would seduce me. All over again. He would let me down. All over again. This time he would let us all down.

  “In principle,” I said slowly, “but actually I have nothing to say to you.”

  For an instant his smile faded, and I could see that behind it he was nervous. That was fine by me. Let him surfer. He cleared his throat.

  “How are Hannah and William?”

  I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “You know their names.”

  He had the grace to look sheepish.

  “Suzette told me.”

  I nodded. I couldn't help noticing that heads were turning, that people were watching. Too many people knew our history for this to be between the two of us. Suddenly I needed it to end. I turned to walk away, but he grabbed my arm and didn't let go. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jane step toward us, but I shook my head.

  “I've been thinking,” he said, moving closer, lowering his voice. “I was a jerk …”

  He still had my arm, and he held up his other hand to fend off my interruption. I could smell his soap. I could smell booze too, and guessed he'd been drinking for a couple of hours already. He looked thicker around his chin, almost jowly, and right at that moment he was displaying none of his old devil-may-care charm.

  “I'm not saying we can go back,” he hurried on. “I'm just saying could I see them sometime, could I help out, maybe financially? I feel bad …”

  “Too late,” I hissed back at him, my face burning. I twisted my arm out of his grip.

  “Oh for God's sake, Robin, they're my children as much as yours.” He was getting angry now, moving his weight from foot to foot, his face too near to mine, and with a broadcaster's voice any whisper is a stage whisper. Everyone was getting this loud and clear. “You can't keep them all to yourself forever. I just didn't want the whole domestic deal.”

  I wanted to hit him then, or shout at him—something about domestic deals and love, and how one didn't work without the other—but I didn't, because even in the white hot fury of the moment I was too ashamed of my own bitterness to share it with the world. That was for his ears only. That was for later. Right now I just needed to shut him up.

  “Adam,” my voice was barely under control, but I leaned in close so that the material of his suit brushed against my skin. I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke in his ear. “I want to talk to you too. I want to talk to you about Paula Carmichael and why my name and the names of my children are in her little book, and then perhaps you can explain it all to the police.”

  He stepped back from me as though I'd slapped him, his face white, eyes wide. Then he turned on his heel and was gone.

  Chapter 7

  YOU'RE going to hate this,” Jane warned me on the phone the next morning. “I'm only telling you because someone's got to, and you'd rather it was me.”

  It was Sunday lunchtime, and Jane was calling from Quentin Browne's flat, where she was reading the newspapers over eggs and bacon. She didn't volunteer that they'd only just got up, but I could tell from her tone of voice. Quentin had picked up an award for some news story or other, and there's nothing like a prize to tickle a man's fancy.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sitting down?” I was standing by the breakfast table. The children had just finished eating and we were having a competition to see whether I could clean up the floor before they ate all the bits off it.

  “Just get on with it.” I knew I was being short with her, but we weren't all languishing in a postcoital haze.

  “Okay. I'm reading the diary section of the Chronicle. Here goes. ‘At a glittering awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel last night, broadcaster Adam Wills picked up the Nice Try award for romantic melodrama. The great and good of broadcasting were treated to the spectacle of Wills chasing after his old flame, award-winning producer Robin Ballantyne, and practically throwing himself at her feet. Ballantyne, who had two children by Wills and is said to be deeply bitter about Wills's failings as a provider, gave him the brush-off and left him looking distinctly silly. After hounding him for money for the past year, it seems she is now the one playing hard to get.’ That's it.”

  For an instant I was speechless, and then it burst out of me, “Playing hard to get?” I was furious. “Hounding him for money? Where did this come from?”

  “It didn't come from anywhere.” Jane sounded taken aback. She tried to calm me. “They've just invented it. You know how these things work.”

  “I've never asked him for a penny,” I ranted on. “I don't want a … a provider. I …” but I couldn't carry on.

  “Robin, this is just silly. I didn't mean to upset you. You should be laughing …”

  “Why, Jane, are you laughing?” I snarled and hung up.

  I rang the Chronicle then and demanded to speak to the editor and told him that I'd sue him for libel unless he printed a retraction. I should have known better. It's a new newspaper and it sells itself as the prime purveyor of political and media gossip in the capital. It is written in tabloid style but it gets most things at least broadly right, so that what starts out as gossip in the Chronicle is often picked up by the heavyweight papers. Its circulation has boomed because it appeals across the board, and because no one can afford to dismiss it.

  “A retraction of what?” he challenged me. “He chased after you, you gave him the brush-off. Dozens of people were watching.”

  “I've never asked him for a penny.”

  “We only have your word for that.”

  “So whose word do you have for what you wrote?”

  He almost laughed in my face then, and told me I couldn't expect him to say who his “news sources” were, but that if I wanted to put my own side of the story in his newspaper, he'd be happy to print it.

  I wanted to scream at him, but I'd already made things bad enough, so I hung up instead.

  The day passed in a blue cloud of depression and the children caught wind of it and whined. Nothing would please them, and to tell the truth I was only partly with them. I made sure they were fed and clean and clothed, I even tried to entertain them, but my thoughts were in another place, with Adam. I thought I'd got rid of him for good and now he was insinuating himself back into my life, even into my dreams.

  After our public row at the Grosvenor House Hotel I had left, waving away Terry's offer of a lift, just climbing into a taxi and going. I needed to be on my own, and for once I didn't care about the fare. I paid Erica and sent her home, very pissed off. She'd just been settling into a video and was looking at another three good earning hours ahead of her. While she was putting her coat on and phoning for a taxi I bent and kissed the twins, almost hoping one of them would wake up and I'd have to cuddle them back to sleep. When Erica was gone I went back downstairs and switched on the television. I watched mind-numbing shows until midnight, then forced myself to turn it off and go to bed. I read myself to sleep with the light on. I did all I could, all in all, to stop myself thinking about Adam while I was conscious. Then, the moment sleep hit, I dreamed about him.

  You can't repeat a dream and have it make sense, but this one had woken me at four with the deepest feeling both of sadness and of foreboding, as though my subconscious was not only chewing over the past but preparing me for something monstrous to come. In my dream Adam and I lay together, naked, and I could feel his skin, his arms around me, his long legs tangled around mine, his warm breath on my neck. I had come home, I was at peace and yet, somehow, I was outside my dream. I say this because I was capable of identifying this sense of peace, and because I felt a deep sense of loss and betrayal because I knew that this sense of peace was a false one. In the dream, I moved in the bed and bumped into another
body, a lifeless dried-up thing, naked too, and sexless. I screamed, and Adam reached toward me, but instead of drawing me to him he shoved me away and off the bed. Then I was standing, looking down, and Adam reached out to the naked sexless thing and caressed it, and it seemed to come alive at his touch, its wizened hand stretched out to Adam. Its eyes opened and it laughed at me, mouth wide and toothless, blood seeping from its gums. I awoke then, feeling physically sick. I sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes, my head hanging down, then I switched on the light, went to the bathroom, and doused my face in cold water. I looked in the mirror, and for an instant I saw the creature looking back at me. I shook my head, and stared into the mirror again, gazing into my own eyes, dissolving into myself.

  “Get a grip,” I muttered and turned away.

  I went for a walk on Wimbledon Common with my mother. It was cold, as promised, and it seemed colder still in contrast to the heat of the past few days. The children were wrapped up like Michelin men, two sets of eyes peeping out from between scarves and hats. Ma was horrified that I had so much as caught sight of Adam. The fact that we'd exchanged words positively distressed her. When she heard what I was thinking, she looked as though she were about to explode.

  “But you're doing so well without him, Robin,” she protested. “You don't really think you need him, do you?”

  “I don't need him and I don't want him, but I can't just think of myself. The children are going to need some sort of father figure …”

  “For what? What could he possibly provide that you can't?”

  “William will need a role model,” I said vaguely. “Hannah …” In truth, I wasn't quite sure what it was that they would miss, since I'd had no father myself after the age of four, but Tanya's Patrick seemed to do a good job of it, in between working night and day to stave off bankruptcy. I tried again. “Look. I need to go back to work. My savings are gone, we have to live, and if I'm going to work I need other people to help me out. I'm going to need nurseries, babysitters, and that's all going to cost money too. Maybe I have to say okay, I give in, you can help me out.”