by Jemma Harvey
When Catriona had gone she remarked bitterly: ‘He gives her his credit card when they’re not even together any more! Why don’t I meet men like that? A couple of the credit-card companies are getting really nasty, threatening legal action. I saw a lawyer last week. I could lose the house.’
‘Bugger.’
‘And it isn’t as if I’ve been running up the debt any more lately. I don’t seem to care about clothes the way I used to. It’s just that the minimum payment’s got so big, I can’t always manage it.’
‘How have you been managing?’
‘I took out a bank loan. Against the house, you know? The Loans guy fancies me a bit, so . . .’
We lapsed into a silence heavy with financial gloom.
‘At least we’ve got some good news for Lin,’ I said.
But when we called round for coffee on Sunday, she had other matters to think of.
(That was the second thing that happened.)
‘Is there anyone outside?’ she demanded when she admitted us, peering into the street with unaccustomed paranoia.
‘No,’ I said blankly.
And Georgie: ‘What’s the problem?’
‘It’s Sean.’ Her voice had an unusual edge. ‘Bloody Sean. He paid a private detective to trace Ivor, and last night he got drunk and went round there and beat him up. He was arrested but they’ve released him, and now he’s making statements to the press. I’ve had the Express and the Sun on the phone already.’ I saw the receiver was off the hook in the living room. ‘He has to go and prove his stupid machismo! It wasn’t as if anything happened to the twins. And now it’ll be in the papers, the whole story, and they’ll be pestering me and the children – it’ll be worse than when Garry died.’
‘Good for Sean’s image, though,’ Georgie said pensively. ‘Beating up a paedophile will always be popular with the crowd. Revives his bad-boy aura while making him look like a hero at the same time.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Lin said with rare cynicism. ‘This wasn’t about punishment, or revenge, or anything like that. That was just the excuse. This was about Sean. He’s always been selfish and thoughtless and – and thick. He didn’t care about me and the children. He just wanted to act tough and look good. I could kill him.’
‘That really would get you in the papers,’ Georgie said wryly.
‘We’ve just seen Catriona,’ I interjected with an abrupt change of subject. ‘Andy called off the wedding.’
Lin stopped in mid-fume. Her expression jolted – and froze. ‘What?’ she whispered.
‘Mutual incompatibility,’ Georgie said. ‘He didn’t like her new image. At least one of our best-laid schemes didn’t gang aft agley.’
‘He didn’t tell me,’ Lin said. ‘He hasn’t even called. I expect . . . he thinks it’s none of my business.’ But her expression didn’t think so. Her expression said it was very much her business.
‘He must have had a lot to sort out,’ I suggested, by way of palliative. ‘I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon.’
‘What did she say? Did she tell you—’
But what Catriona might have told us was never established. The doorbell rang, and Lin reverted to panic mode. ‘It’ll be Them,’ she said with a distinct capital letter. ‘Don’t answer!’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ Georgie said. While Lin fled into the kitchen, she went to the door, and I heard her sliding effortlessly into PR mode. ‘ . . . a nightmare experience . . . profoundly traumatic . . . need for privacy . . . your consideration much appreciated . . . no further distress for children . . . case sub judice . . .’ From the tenor of the response, it seemed to be working. But even though she closed the door without a fight, we knew the problem wouldn’t go away. If the columnists found out how easily Ivor had invaded Lin’s life, they’d be staking out the moral high ground within a week. She’d be pilloried . . .
As long as no one told them. But we’d reckoned without Sean. After years of being ignored, he was riding high on a wave of fresh publicity, gushing like an oil well in a succession of interviews. I doubt if he thought about the implications of what he was saying, when he explained how Lin had invited a man she barely knew to live in her home. He was just anxious to present himself as a conscientious father and supportive ex-husband – not an easy task in view of his record. But it was Lin who got the fallout. The pundits saw an issue, a chance to pontificate and condemn – and they pounced.
Chapter 13
There is no Chapter 13. It’s like the thirteenth floor in skyscrapers, which gets left out. We were in enough trouble, without throwing in a Chapter 13.
Chapter 14
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by
From this day to the ending of the world
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day.
SHAKESPEARE: Henry V
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.
TYPING EXERCISE
Lin had never liked the publicity attendant on her marriage to Sean and subsequent relationship with Garry, but at least it had rarely been critical of her personally. What followed Sean’s statement to the press was something else. The imminent court case offered some protection, more theoretical than actual, and the tabloids had the decency to leave Meredith alone, but once they learned that, on the strength of a few weeks’ romance by e-mail, Lin had invited a paedophile into her home, there were plenty of voices ready to swell the chorus of condemnation. At best they called her a fool; at worst, criminally irresponsible, a bad mother who shouldn’t be allowed to keep custody of her children. One or two suggested Sean should be their guardian, but when questioned on the subject he backtracked hastily, having no wish to be saddled full-time with a brace of pre-teenage boys. He rang Lin to make a grudging apology for the mud he’d stirred up, while Garry Grimes’ mother emerged from seclusion to rake up old grievances against her late son’s girlfriend, thus keeping the story going with fresh ‘revelations’. Lin took to disconnecting the phone whenever she was at home, and once again Georgie and I were there as much as possible, fighting off any hacks who tried to doorstep the place.
At Ransome, the entire company did everything possible to protect her. A Blitz mentality developed, and inevitably barriers came down. One evening in the pub Georgie was waylaid by a persistent journo who had heard she was close to Lin. With a brief apology to her neighbour, she helped herself to his pint – G&T being too small for her needs – and emptied it over her would-be interrogator. The journalist retired, his enthusiasm somewhat damped, those in the vicinity applauded, and Cal, who had been watching, stepped in when she offered to replace the beer.
I noticed he had forgotten to be aloof and was chatting to her with animation and the old familiar glow in his eyes. We left early to return to Lin, and Cal kissed her on the cheek by way of goodbye. I felt hopeful, but Georgie was curiously down.
‘He doesn’t want to love me,’ she said. ‘He thinks there’s no future in it. But there’s no such place as the future. It’s always in front of you, always receding, and you never get there, and then one day you’re dead. There’s only the present. That’s where we live. You can’t live in the future. You can’t plan for anything. You can only take what comes.’
‘Don’t you think he might see it that way too?’ I said.
‘How can he? I was the one who complained, because I wanted a future for us. It’s my fault.’
I wasn’t sure what to say to this, and did my best to make the right kind of noises, but Georgie wasn’t listening.
‘Everything’s m
y fault,’ she continued sombrely. ‘It all started with those three wishes. We were doing fine till then. But I had to go around trying to make wishes come true, and now we’re up to our ears in shit. If I hadn’t gone looking for a cardiac millionaire I’d probably still be with Cal. If I hadn’t told Lin she could find her One True Love on the Internet she’d never have met Ivor. At least you came out of it okay, but—’
‘As long as I don’t try to be a sex goddess,’ I said firmly. I’d consigned the flame-red dress to the back of my wardrobe and resolved never to wear it again. (Well, not for ages, anyway.) ‘I’m glad I’ve lost weight and I dress better, but that’s all. Looking sexy doesn’t suit me.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Georgie, diverted from her private abyss of self-blame. ‘You can look sexy without having to go the whole hog. There are degrees of sexiness. Mostly, it’s down to how you feel. If you feel sexy, even though you’re covered from neck to ankle you can exude a sort of aura.’
‘I don’t want to exude anything. It makes me sound like a bad case of environmental pollution.’
‘I think you should have a new dress for Jerry Beauman’s party . . .’
‘No.’
‘Something more restrained.’
The launch loomed ahead of us, an event of huge significance though we weren’t at all sure what it signified. We anticipated it with dread and also with . . . well, anticipation. As Georgie said, if the party was a catastrophe, it wouldn’t be our catastrophe. Apart from specifying certain people he wanted to invite, Jerry had left the guest list up to her, and Georgie, after an open meeting with practically everyone at Ransome, had decided to ask the whole of London – media, celebs, the lot – in the hope that some of them would come out of sheer curiosity, some for the free booze, and a few because they didn’t realise whom the invitation was actually from. (It was headed: ‘The Staff and Management of Ransome Harber invite you to . . .’ after a brief debate with Jerry, who was tactfully brought to realise the imprudence of putting his own name at the top.) I had contemplated adding Todd Jarman’s name to the list – I was still running on forlorn hopes – but Alistair stepped in first, insisting we include all our high-profile authors living in the area. ‘Time to show solidarity with their publisher,’ he said. ‘We’ve backed them for years; now they need to back us.’ He had clearly slipped into an alternative universe where writer and publisher shared a warm, huggy-huggy relationship based on mutual respect and appreciation. In this world, writers hate their publishers on the grounds that their advances are too small and their efforts at promotion derisory – and, as I’ve mentioned before, publishers despise writers, since they know nothing about books and do everything they can to mess up the smooth running of business. But some might attend the party, if we were lucky. Writers cannibalise pain, preferably other people’s. There were bound to be a few out there who would come, like Romans to the amphitheatre, in the hope of seeing Jerry eaten by lions.
As far as Jerry’s private list was concerned, the refusals were mounting up. In general, people don’t bother to accept (or refuse) an invitation to a launch party: it’s the kind of sprawly, casual occasion when they think courtesy doesn’t matter. But in this case the great and the good clearly wanted it set on record that they weren’t coming – refusal was a gesture, not a mere social decision. Of course, arguably, so was acceptance, but we didn’t have so many of those. All we could do, as Georgie put it, was to trust that, in theatrical parlance, it would be all right on the night. ‘And if it isn’t,’ she concluded, ‘it doesn’t matter, because it’s not our fault. Jerry was the one who wanted the bloody party, after all. If no one shows up, there’ll be more Bolly for the rest of us.’
Bearing this in mind, anyone at Ransome who had anything to do with the project was preparing to turn out – ‘It’ll flesh out the crowd,’ Georgie said, ‘if there is a crowd’ – plus a good few extras. I slipped an invitation to Cal, in case Georgie hadn’t, and later that day he arrived at my desk, plainly in a state of indecision.
‘I’ve had a couple of these,’ he said. Aha. ‘No one’s ever bothered to invite me to a launch before.’ He had a point. You don’t usually invite staff: they just go. Or not. But this was – unfortunately – a special occasion.
‘Everyone’s getting them,’ I explained. ‘We’re trying to rally people round. Let’s face it, we could well be the only guests.’
‘I thought perhaps Georgie . . .’
‘This isn’t personal,’ I lied. ‘This is for the company.’
‘Balls to the company,’ Cal said, looking startled. Corporate morale wasn’t a big deal at Ransome. Publishers tend to take it for granted that it’s a privilege to work for them; they don’t think their employees need regular encouragement.
‘Okay, then it’s for your colleagues. For everybody who worked on the damn book. You did the dust jacket, didn’t you?’
‘’Course, but . . .’
‘Show – solidarity.’ I borrowed from Alistair’s vocabulary. ‘It’s just a party. You used to be a party guy.’ I decided to take the bull by the horns. ‘Is it us – is that the problem? Georgie – and friends? Don’t you even like us any more?’
‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve always liked you, and as for Georgie . . .’
‘Did that blonde really fill the gap,’ I said, ‘or did she just – temp?’
He made a half-grimace, gave part of a head-shake, a fraction of a shrug. ‘You know it’s hopeless.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said with sudden energy. ‘It’s only hopeless if you think it is. Love is special. Love is worth the effort. You could make it work if you both really wanted to. You’ve had plenty of time to dwell on the difficulties: all you have to do is come to terms with them.’
‘Georgie doesn’t want to,’ he said, ‘does she?’
‘Ask her.’
Meanwhile, the columnists backed off Lin to stick their dagger-nibs into another scandal, but the damage was done. The photos which had appeared in the press were all either old ones from the files or the blurred sneak-shots of prowling paparazzi, but they were enough to make her so apprehensive she hardly dared go out. One day in her local supermarket she was harangued by a woman she knew only by sight, who called her a disgrace to motherhood, more interested in men than the welfare of her children. A manager rushed to her aid, and she was taken home in tears, but after that she declared she would never go shopping again. The Internet had its uses: she could buy everything online. She couldn’t even face going to work any more . . .
‘Are you going to let the bastards defeat you?’ Georgie demanded. ‘Where’s your fighting spirit?’
‘I haven’t any,’ Lin said flatly. ‘I can’t stand people yelling at me, hating me. It makes me shrivel inside. Not just strangers – people I know well, people I thought knew me. Vee won’t take Meredith any more. She says I should spend more time with the kids, stop g-gadding about. I know I was stupid – I know that – but I don’t gad about, I’ve always, always put the children first. It’s like I’m on trial, not Ivor – like I abused them . . .’
‘Vee’s wrong,’ I said furiously. ‘She’s just being smug and self-righteous and superior – she and all the ones like her. The broadsheet moralists and the tabloids who batten on people’s suffering – and the morons who soak it up to feel good about themselves. People hurt other people – they let each other down – they let themselves down – and then they band together to victimise some poor sod whose little failings are out in the open. It makes them feel good – it’s the real feelgood factor – and it’s horrible. It’s humanity at its most obscene. Like stoning adulteresses in Biblical times. People like to gang up, particularly against someone who won’t fight back. There’s the bully in all of us, but at least we can try to suppress it, instead of – instead of justifying it, instead of saying to ourselves: I’m right – I’m righteous – she’s screwed up – she deserves to suffer . . .’
Lin was clasping my hand, evidently moved by any gesture of af
fection or support these days.
‘Good speech,’ Georgie said. ‘Wish I’d made it. And don’t say—’
‘You will, Oscar. You will.’
The atmosphere lightened. ‘Right,’ Georgie said. ‘First of all, you can go out. You must. You can wear a woolly hat pulled down over your ears and look a nerd; lots of celebrities do that. Or a wig – that might be fun. But you mustn’t become a recluse. For the kids’ sake—’ she found the right button, and pressed it ‘– you’ve got to go on as normal. They won’t like it if you fuss over them all the time. And you can’t give up working: you need the money.’
‘Demmy said I was a bad mum,’ Lin whispered. ‘His classmates told him . . . And Sandy doesn’t say anything, but his teacher told me he keeps getting into fights, and he comes home with bruises, and sulks when I ask how he got them.’
‘Has – has Andy phoned?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘No. I mean, I don’t know. Mostly, I keep it unplugged, and my mobile’s not working, and I don’t check my e-mail any more ’cos people have found out my address, and I get so much hate stuff . . .’
‘Maybe you should call him.’
‘How could I?’
I didn’t push it.
‘At any rate,’ Georgie said, ‘you’ll come to Jerry’s party.’
‘I couldn’t possibly—’
‘You’ll come,’ Georgie persisted, at her most inexorable, ‘because we need you. I need you. We’ll fix you up with a babysitter, someone from a reliable agency if we have to. I’ll find a way to put it on the PR account. But you have to come. You can’t let us down.’
‘I’ve already let my children down—’
‘Oh bollocks . . .’
The launch was at the end of November, carefully timed to start the Christmas season. At Jerry’s insistence, we went to the flat the day before to discuss it in detail. He believed in planning a party like a military operation, something we thought of as overkill although, under the circumstances, perhaps it was necessary. But I suspected the circumstances had nothing to do with it; Jerry was just one of Nature’s super-planners, a control freak who, having temporarily lost his grip on life, was determined to get every aspect of it back on track. The champagne corks would be fired here – the toad would be holed up there – a squad of catering staff would attack the west lounge – guests would be ambushed and stripped of their coats in the lobby – a welcoming line would be stationed near the door – hold until relieved . . .
