Wildfire

by Susan Lewis

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘He told me he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then believe him.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  Jolene got to his feet and went to pour them both more wine.

  ‘This won’t go any further than these four walls, will it, Jo?’ Rhiannon said as he handed her a glass.

  ‘On my honour, no,’ Jolene answered, his lashes casting spiky shadows over his cheeks as he blinked. ‘And I’m sorry if some of the things I said hurt you, but I wish to God someone had done the same for me when I needed it. Three years I wasted believing he would come back to me, that somehow things would work out, partly because my so-called friends assured me it would and partly because I just couldn’t make myself accept that life would let me feel so much for one man and then snatch it away. But it would, and it did.’

  ‘It seems to have worked for Lizzy,’ Rhiannon said, her lips stiffening as she tried to hold back the tears.

  ‘Lizzy’s a different story,’ Jolene answered. ‘Andy’s got no other ties. He’s free to love her and she’s free to love him.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess one of these days you’ll meet someone who’s free to love you.’

  ‘It won’t be the same.’

  ‘Of course it won’t. It’ll be a compromise. Life is always a compromise. Lizzy’s giving up London to be with Andy; you’ll give up your dreams of Max to be with whoever.’

  Rhiannon’s heart twisted inside her and she turned away quickly before Jolene saw the tears fill her eyes. ‘It makes me so angry,’ she said a few moments later.

  ‘Life is meant to make you angry,’ Jolene laughed. ‘Its whole fucking raison d’être is to piss you off.’

  Laughing too, Rhiannon said, ‘I meant, I make me angry. I feel so pathetic, moping about here trying to get a focus on my life and failing to think about anything but him. I pretend I’m thinking about other things, but I never really am. I keep having conversations with him in my head and it’s driving me nuts. I’m supposed to be starting that bloody music quiz on Monday and all I can think about is smashing Mavis Whatsit in the face for being the only one to offer me a job when I always thought I’d have job offers coming out of my ears, should I ever find myself in this position, which I never dreamt I would.’

  ‘Oh, tell Mavis Whatsit to go fuck herself,’ Jolene snorted and with a typical Jolene flop of the wrist he wiggled back to the sofa and sank into it. ‘You don’t need her,’ he said when he realized Rhiannon was watching him and drawing a semicircle with his chin, he turned to look the other way as he elaborately crossed his legs, then let his eyes slide back to hers.

  Rhiannon was watching him carefully. ‘What are you saying, Jolene?’ she asked. This was a Jolene she knew, a Jolene who liked to beat about the bush with his gossip and huff on his nails while his audience tried to second-guess him.

  ‘I’m just saying, you don’t need her,’ he repeated.

  Then what do I need?’

  He nodded, then pursing his lips thoughtfully he said, ‘What you need is to tell her to go fuck herself, before she tells you.’

  Rhiannon’s heart turned over. ‘Are you saying that she’s withdrawing her job offer?’ she said.

  ‘What I’m saying is she’s got no job to offer.’

  Rhiannon’s head dropped into her hand. ‘Jolene, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m just not up for this. You’re going to have to come to the point.’

  Jolene tutted. ‘Her show’s being axed,’ he said. ‘She’ll find out tomorrow.’

  Rhiannon’s eyes were round as she lifted her head and looked at Jolene. ‘Are you sure?’ she said, fighting back the panic. She had to have this job, she just had to. Not only for the overdraft, but for something to focus her mind on before she lost it completely. ‘Who told you?’

  Jolene grinned. ‘My lips,’ he whispered, sealing them with a finger. ‘But it’s a fact. Mavis Lindsay and her moozak for morons are strangers in the night.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Rhiannon murmured, looking distractedly about her. She went to sit on the edge of a chair, put her glass on the table and placed her hands on her knees. She looked about to spring up again, but remained where she was as her mind raced along the empty roads ahead and her heart twisted with fear. ‘What’s happening to me, Jo?’ she whispered. ‘I feel like someone’s put a curse on me. First Oliver, then my job, then Max, now my job again. How much more can go wrong?’

  Jolene shrugged. ‘You’ve got a roof over your head,’ he reminded her. “Course, you won’t have that much longer if you can’t pay the rent,’ he added pensively.

  Rhiannon’s eyes flashed as she threw him a look, then picking up her wine she began pacing the floor. ‘I’ve got to find a job, Jo,’ she said. ‘Why can’t I find a job? I’m more qualified than most of those jerks out there will ever be, so why can’t I find a bloody job?’

  ‘Because you’re a threat,’ Jolene responded. ‘You’ve had your own programme, a really successful one too, so no one wants you coming in stealing their thunder, do they? Or showing them up for what talentless shitheads they are. Besides, what the hell are you doing pissing about trying to find a job? You’re not an employee, you’re an employer. You’re the ideas person, the one who makes the heart beat.’

  ‘I’m also the one who needs to earn some money,’ Rhiannon retorted. ‘And fielding fresh ideas about the place doesn’t ease an immediate problem with the cash-flow. Besides which, maybe you’d like to tell me just where I’m supposed to be getting these ideas from?’

  Jolene pulled a face. ‘You’ve never been short of them before,’ he reminded her. ‘What’s so different now?’

  ‘I was never having a confidence crisis before,’ she snapped.

  ‘There you are!’ he declared with a flourish of his hands. ‘An idea! You can do a series on mid-life crises.’

  ‘I didn’t say mid-life,’ she retorted. ‘I said confidence.’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it?’

  Rhiannon eyed him nastily, then despite herself she laughed.

  Jolene’s eyes widened with approval. ‘You look like hell,’ he told her, ‘but the smile helps. Anyway, confidence, mid-life, call it what you want, separate them if you like, you’re the expert, not me. But if you’re asking me I reckon it would make a damned good series. I mean, everyone experiences some kind of crisis at some point in their lives, don’t they?’

  Rhiannon’s eyes were steady as she looked at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, they do.’

  ‘So why not focus in on them?’

  Rhiannon’s expression was starting to turn to one of outright suspicion. ‘I’ve had this conversation before,’ she said, struggling to remember when and who with.

  Jolene grinned.

  ‘Well come on,’ she prompted, ‘enlighten me.’

  ‘You had it with Morgan and Sally Simpson on February the twenty-sixth 1992,’ he informed her.

  Rhiannon blinked.

  ‘Lizzy was there too,’ he continued, ‘and I took the minutes.’

  Rhiannon was shaking her head in amazement. ‘You’re something else, do you know that?’ she laughed. ‘It was one of the many meetings we had when we were trying to come up with an idea for a series, before we finally hit on Check It Out.’

  ‘Well done,’ he congratulated her. ‘And In Focus very nearly won.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, as it all came flooding back to her. ‘Health In Focus. Scandal In Focus. Divorce In Focus. Europe In Focus. Jobs In Focus.’ She went on, reeling off more and more of the ideas she remembered being bandied about during that long-ago meeting. Then her eyes rounded. ‘And Crises In Focus,’ she said. ‘We discussed a separate six-part series for that, didn’t we? Mid-life was one. Infertility was another. Loneliness. Sexuality. Confidence. And death.’

  ‘Bingo!’ Jolene grinned. ‘So what are you waiting for?’

  Rhiannon sat down. Her eyes were half-bright, half-concentrated with excitement, her pulses were racing. This was just what she needed, t
he challenge of getting something new off the ground, of channelling her energy into something constructive and absorbing, something that, if it worked, would help rebuild her confidence and take her mind off Max. A quick panic suddenly struck at her heart. The thought of moving forward without him, of focusing her life on something that had nothing to do with him, felt so disloyal that the temptation to abandon the idea right now was almost overwhelming. But she couldn’t allow herself to do that. No matter how much it hurt, she had to force herself to let go and get on with her life. She remembered what Jolene had said, that it had been three years before he had stopped hoping and believing, and here she was, just two weeks after it had happened to her, being presented with a way through that, if nothing else, would at least help keep her sane.

  ‘Do you have the minutes of that meeting?’ she said, looking at Jolene.

  His eyebrows arched. ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ he smirked and whisking them out of his bag he dropped them on the coffee table between them. ‘Oh, and just to get you even more fired up,’ he said, ‘Merv “the Machete” Mansfield has recently axed just about everything in sight, with the exception of Check It Out. Meaning that your baby has been allocated another six slots a year and Merv is overseeing the new title sequence himself.’

  ‘Bastard!’ Rhiannon spat.

  Jolene grinned. ‘We start transmission next Thursday, by the way. The first programme’s on Policing the Internet.’

  Rhiannon’s mouth tightened.

  ‘Everything we’ve got in the schedule so far has come from either you or Lizzy, or was approved by you when you were there,’ he told her. ‘That’s not to say no fresh ideas are coming forward; you chose the team, you know they’re more than capable. Trouble is, Morgan and Sally aren’t. I mean, those guys couldn’t make a decision if it came in a Fisher Price start-up pack. They’ve lost it, Rhiannon. They were good once, but they can’t hack it any more.’

  ‘Are you expecting me to do something?’ Rhiannon said bitterly.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. Merv the Machete’d rather axe the programme than see you back on it. The trouble is Homer and Marge are killing it anyway, and by the time Old Merv catches on to the fact it’ll probably be too late.’

  ‘Homer and Marge?’ Rhiannon said.

  ‘Morgan and Sally. The Simpsons. Oh, never mind, you clearly aren’t tuned into Satellite,’ Jolene said.

  Admitting her failing Rhiannon said, ‘So who have they got fronting the programme?’

  ‘They’ve exhumed somebody from the old Panorama days to get them through the first few programmes,’ Jolene answered. ‘In the meantime they’re auditioning like mad and scaring themselves witless. They don’t know what the audience wants today and Lizzy’s a hard, if not impossible, act to follow. The rest of the team are still taking a crack at it, the way they always did, but Lizzy was the one who fused it all together, as you know, and the fuckwits are trying to find someone just like her.’

  ‘They’ll never do that,’ Rhiannon commented. ‘They’d do better to go for someone totally different. Anyway, it’s no longer my concern.’ She paused as the truth of that hit her and wondered if a time would ever come when she could utter those words and mean them. ‘What I need to concentrate on now’, she continued, ‘is getting a workable structure together for In Focus, then deciding who to approach with it.’ She sighed. ‘The problem is, how am I going to live meanwhile?’

  ‘I thought Homer and Marge gave you squillions when they paid you off.’

  Rhiannon’s eyebrows arched. ‘Not quite,’ she replied. ‘And Oliver left me with quite a lot of unpaid bills.’

  Jolene’s expression told what he thought of that. ‘Can’t you get some development money from somewhere?’ he suggested.

  ‘Maybe, but it takes time and I’m broke right now. No, what I need is a way of earning money that will enable me to develop a new programme – and . . .’ Her eyes suddenly opened wide and she looked excitedly at Jolene. ‘. . . I might just have come up with the solution,’ she said.

  Jolene’s head jerked back in amazement. ‘Do the government know about you?’ he muttered.

  Rhiannon laughed. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘how do you think Homer and Marge would respond if I very discreetly offered my services as a consultant?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Very discreetly, they’d probably bite your hand off.’

  ‘Float it past them tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell them it was my idea. Make it look like yours, that way they’ll be coming to me, rather than me to them, and I’ll be able to negotiate a higher fee.’

  ‘Ruthless,’ Jolene grinned, rubbing his hands.

  There was a good deal more colour in Rhiannon’s cheeks by the time she walked Jolene to the door and considerably less fear in her heart. At last she was starting to see her way through, she was taking up the reins of her life and setting it back on track with the same spirit and energy that had always driven her before.

  ‘You feel like a divine visitation,’ she told Jolene as he kissed her goodbye.

  ‘If you’re pregnant it’s nothing to do with me,’ he cried.

  She laughed. ‘You know, I was losing it before you came here tonight. I was going under, I’m sure of it. Things don’t look quite so bleak now.’

  ‘You’re not the type to go under, sweetie,’ he told her. ‘It’s the coward’s way out and whatever else you are, you sure ain’t no coward.’

  Her answering smile was shakier than she’d have liked. Being brave when someone was there and pushing her on was one thing, the prospect of now being left alone with the desperation in her heart and the pressing needs of her body was another altogether. But she had In Focus to think about now, she must remember that and throw herself into it completely.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I almost forgot,’ Jolene said, as Rhiannon opened the front door and they both looked out at the dank, moonless night. ‘Lucy Goldblum has been trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘Lucy Goldblum who used to be with Thames?’

  ‘The very same. She didn’t say what it was about, but you should give her a call. Anyway, got to run. Things to do, places to go and all that. I’ll be in touch.’

  As Rhiannon wandered back into the sitting-room she was smiling and frowning. Lucy Goldblum was someone she knew very well and both liked and admired, for Lucy’s success with the programmes she’d produced for Thames was probably even greater than Rhiannon’s had been with Check It Out. And maybe, Rhiannon was thinking to herself, Lucy wanted to offer her a job. Oh God, it would be so wonderful if that were the case. It would be the answer to all her prayers right now, for not only would it bring some much-needed money in, but Lucy’s would be the very desk she’d want to put her programme ideas on, once they were in working order.

  Turning off the lights behind her, she pushed open the bedroom door and stood for a while in the blue-grey light pooling in from the lamp-post outside. Already she could feel her heart twisting with the need to see him and sinking down on the bed, she covered her face with her hands. This had to stop, and it had to stop now. She had to learn to let go and get on with her life. She had something to look forward to now, something that would focus her mind and take her further and further away from him until he was no more than a fading silhouette on the horizon. OK, it might hurt like hell to think that way, but she had to face it, he was already in the past and it was up to her now to make herself move forward into the future.

  In her Culver City apartment Susan Posner’s face was taut with concentration as she listened to the voice at the other end of the phone. Her pencil was poised over her notepad, her eyes were focused on the few crucial words she’d already written down. In front of her the cursor on her computer screen flashed its impatience to continue. She’d been mid-way through a stinging attack on the Six-Chix, a team of top-heavy, talentless old tarts who were embarrassing themselves nightly in various Hollywood venues, when the telephone had rung. The Six-Chix were now clean forgotten, along with an expos�
� of a crooked theatrical agent, as Susan Posner listened intently to everything her caller was telling her.

  That she was commonly known as The Poisoner didn’t bother her in the slightest. She was more widely read than most in her field, mainly because people loved to read about all the shit in other people’s lives. And the way Susan Posner delivered the shit was compulsive reading. She wasn’t afraid to tell things as they were, or at least as she saw them, and if there were people out there who couldn’t hack it, that was just too bad. She never lied, she was just a creative broker of the truth when it suited. She felt passionately about women’s rights, wrote about them extensively and had, in her way, improved the lot of many more of her sex than most knew about. She trusted very few people, suspected everyone of ulterior and unworthy motives, particularly the do-gooders of the world, and had made it her mission in life to ‘out’ the closet corrupters and fraudsters. As a result, she had won herself more enemies than friends, but gradually people were beginning to realize that if there was a wrong that needed righting, an offence that needed uncovering, or a hypocrisy that needed exposing, then Susan Posner would grasp the nettle with both hands and hold on in there until justice was seen to be done.

  Her call was coming to an end. She’d made several more notes in the last couple of minutes and now she waited for the line to go dead, before throwing the receiver across her desk and letting go a jubilant whoop of triumph.

  ‘Don’t tell me. The Pulitzer,’ Celia, her room-mate, commented, letting her glasses slide down her nose as she looked up from the giant Websters she had balanced on one knee.

  Susan grinned. ‘Don’t rule it out,’ she answered. ‘No, that was an occasional but very reliable contact I have in London, informing me that Max Ramonov spent his honeymoon night with, wait for this, not the blushing bride, Galina Casimir, but Rhiannon the-woman-he-spent-the-night-with-two-days-before-his-wedding Edwardes.’