by Jane Fallon
It turns out to be a blog, not even a newspaper article. Someone’s bitter and bitchy personal opinion safely hidden behind a pseudonym. She breathes a sigh of relief when she realizes it’s not the story she’s been dreading, merely yet another ‘look at poor old Cleo reduced to doing an advert for Satin Silk, well serves her right’ opinion piece. She skim reads it, still surprised to be able to feel hurt on her sister’s behalf.
On the days when she’s not at the library she’s finding that she’s at a complete loose end. She can’t remember what it was she used to do before. It can’t all have been Phoebe-related, not in the last few years anyway. Her life had seemed so busy with … what? Somehow she’d managed to fill all her days with nothing very much and she can even remember moaning sometimes that she was too busy and that she never had any time to herself. She wonders whether she should go full time in the library just to give herself something to do, but that would officially make her a librarian and she’s not sure that’s what she wants to be for the next twenty years of her life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a fine career. Some people go to college with the sole aim of spending their days cataloguing books. It’s what they want. It’s just not her. It was only ever meant to be a part-time filler till she found her true calling.
She doesn’t know why it comes as such a surprise, but she’s suddenly realizing she’s wasted her life. She deliberately sabotaged any chance she had of making something of herself, using Phoebe as an excuse. She hid behind her single-motherhood and her need to take care of her daughter, but now those smokescreens have dissipated. It’s time to find out who she really is.
Phoebe calls. As ever when her daughter’s name comes up on her phone, Abi panics that it’s going to be bad news, so she holds her breath until she hears Phoebe’s upbeat, ‘Hi!’
‘Hi! How are you, sweetie?’
‘Brilliant. We’re in Phuket. How’s things? Did you hear about the advert yet?’
‘No. Nothing.’ It’s been less than a week, but Abi is assuming no news is bad news.
‘You should ring Uncle Jon, find out what’s going on.’
No. ‘Mmm, maybe. I don’t really care.’
Phoebe tells her about the job she’s been doing, working a few shifts in a beach café.
‘When we’ve got enough money, we’re going to move on to Kuala Lumpur and try and get some work there for a few weeks. The plan is to get to Australia by Christmas.’
‘Wow. That’s amazing.’ Christmas, thankfully, seems a long way away. Abi silently decides to check out if there is a local homeless charity who will be looking for volunteers for the big day.
They trade news of Tara and Megan gleaned from emails and texts, and then, all too soon, Phoebe has to go.
‘I love you. Be careful.’
‘Love you too, Mum. Bye.’
She’s in the crime section straightening books on shelves when she feels her phone vibrate. Mobiles are strictly forbidden in the library, but most of the staff keep them in their pockets and it’s not unusual to see something pulsing away in there as they move about their business. She has a surreptitious look at who is calling. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize. Five minutes later she’s out the back in the staff room listening to a message;
‘Hi. This is Felicity from MacMahon Fairchild. I hope this is Abi Attwood. Could you give me a call, please? It’s about Bargain Hunters.’
Abi notes down the number Felicity leaves, feeling stupidly excited. It’s not that she cares about the job – it’s the idea that anyone might think she’s the right person for any job. She’s assuming Felicity wouldn’t be asking her to ring back just to tell her she hadn’t been chosen. There seemed to be so many women at the casting it would take days to let them all down that gently.
She tells Juliet she’s going on her break and then takes her mobile outside to call. Felicity answers almost immediately, sounding relentlessly upbeat. Abi imagines Felicity always sounds relentlessly upbeat.
‘So,’ she says once Abi has introduced herself. ‘We’d like to offer you the Bargain Hunters campaign.’
She doesn’t even wait for Abi to respond. ‘Now I see you don’t have an agent so shall I just email all the details through to you? The shoot is next Monday and Tuesday morning for the TV ad and then Tuesday afternoon for the print campaign. I see you live in Kent, so we’ll put you in a hotel for the night on Monday and pay your train fare. I’ll need you to get back to me before then to confirm that the deal’s OK. Don’t cut your hair in the meantime. Don’t get a fake tan. You’ll also need to email me your measurements. OK? Does that sound good?’
Abi waits to see if Felicity has definitely finished speaking. She’s completely unsure how to react. She has got the job. She, Abi Attwood, is going to be in the new adverts for Bargain Hunters. She knows it’s ridiculous. All she has done is look the part (attractive, approachable, friendly young mum!) and say the line with something approximating sincerity. But the truth is they still chose her.
‘Yes. Great. Thank you.’
She gives Felicity her email address, promising to get back to her once she has checked the details over. She knows there’s only one person who will truly appreciate both the enormity and the hilarity of what has just happened, so she calls Phoebe. Once her daughter has finished screaming with delight, Abi says, ‘I might get all up myself now. I might start referring to myself in the third person and demanding people leave a basket of kittens in my trailer.’
‘Face it, Mum, they’re never going to give you a trailer.’
Abi laughs.
‘I wish I was there then I could come with you. I could pretend to be your assistant and tell them all they weren’t allowed to look you in the eye or speak to you directly.’
‘No, because then I’d have to pay you and I can’t imagine they’re going to be giving me a fortune.’
‘Who cares? It’s an experience.’
‘Exactly,’ Abi says firmly. ‘And it’s about time I had a few of those.’
She can hardly wait to get home to read Felicity’s email. It has popped up enticingly on her phone, but the attachment wouldn’t open so she’s had an agonizing day of clock watching. She tells Juliet her news and she reacts as if Abi has just been cast as Lady Macbeth at the National, and announces it to everyone who comes up to get their books scanned. To be fair they’re all very kind and no one says, ‘What’s Bargain Hunters?’ or, ‘That sounds ghastly,’ although Abi is sure more than a few of them think it.
On her walk home (she refuses Juliet’s offer of a celebratory drink in the pub, so keen is she to get home to her PC) it strikes her that Jon must have been involved in the decision-making process somehow. He is the boss, after all. She can’t imagine he sat down and trawled through the tapes and photographs, but, presumably, at some point, one of the people in charge of the Bargain Hunters campaign would have said to him, ‘This is the person we want to use,’ and asked him to sanction that choice. Whether he had an opinion about their decision or not is irrelevant. There’s no doubting he must have thought about her for a minute. There’s no doubting she’s occupied a space in his mind, however tiny, for a few moments. A nanosecond. She wonders if he’s told Tara and Megan.
Felicity’s email couldn’t be more obtuse if it tried. Abi is blinded by Basic Studio Fees and TVRs and percentages for this and that. It looks like an algebra test paper. She sits staring at it for a while, wondering what she is meant to make of it. There’s a whole separate sheet of figures that seem to relate to the print campaign for posters and point of sale. On the bottom of each sheet is a number that seems to be a total of sorts. It’s not a huge amount of money – the whole thing comes to less than £1,500, but it still seems like a fortune to her for two days’ work. She tries to think when she’s ever had a spare £1,500. That would be never.
The second time she reads it, it makes no more sense than the first. She decides she should probably just accept whatever is on offer. There’s no way they
are going to be ripping her off. Well, not too badly anyway. She goes to get a large glass of wine and then reads through it all again carefully. Just in case there’s a catch. A random clause that might mean she ends up with nothing. She potters around putting pasta on to boil and assembling a tomato and olive sauce. By the time she comes back to her computer with her meal in one hand and her glass in the other, there’s a new email in her inbox. She looks at the sender’s address: jon@macmahon_fairchild.com. Her heart nearly stops.
She’s almost afraid to open it. It’s the first she’s heard from Jon since she left London nearly two weeks ago. He must have asked the girls for her email address. Even though she knows it will have something to do with Bargain Hunters, the timing alone makes that clear, she can hardly bring herself to open it.
Congratulations! It’s our standard deal, but we always try it on a bit with the first offer. Tell them you want the buyout to be for an agreed number of TVRs only and that you want a three-month restriction on the print campaign. They’ll check with me and I’ll say yes. That way you’ll get paid again if we keep running them. But don’t tell them I told you that. See you at the shoot. J
Abi laughs. So he has been thinking about her. He bothered to find out her email address and send her a message. Even better is the last line: ‘See you at the shoot.’ He’s going to be there.
She sends a message back. She tries to keep it to the point, friendly but businesslike.
Thank you. I will. Very exciting. Hope you’re all OK. Send the girls my love.
She composes another email, this time to Felicity, laying out, in as humble terms as she can – she doesn’t want to piss her off – what Jon has told her to say. She briefly wonders what she’ll reply if Felicity asks her what number of TVRs would be acceptable, because she doesn’t even know what TVRs are. Hopefully they’ll just suggest something and she’s already decided she’ll agree to whatever it is. She imagines they go through this with every offer, much more so when agents and managers are involved. She sends the email before she can change her mind.
Then she sits up way too late into the night waiting, just in case Jon replies to her message. (There’s no reason for him to, there’s nothing to reply to, but he might anyway. She chastises herself for not asking him a question that he would feel obligated to respond to.) He doesn’t.
28
She can’t remember when she’s ever been up this early in her life, but here she is on the 5.08, oversize coffee in hand, trying to stay awake because there are works on the line and she has to change trains at Ashford. If all goes to plan, she should get to the Bargain Hunters shop in Hackney where they are filming for the day just in time for her call at eight. The train is deserted. No one else is foolish enough to be travelling at this hour.
Felicity came back with a counteroffer, following Abi’s email to her, and didn’t seem to have taken offence at all. There is now a cap on the mysterious TVRs (she looked it up and it means ‘television ratings’ and refers to the aggregated amount of people who might see the ad when it’s shown on various different channels – she’s still none the wiser, really), and a three-month limit on all print adverts, after which time she’ll be paid more if the campaign is a success and still running. She accepted readily, sent her measurements (praying that there wouldn’t be a reason for Jon to have to see those. She had thought about lying, shaving a few centimetres off her hips and thighs, but that would slightly defeat the object), and arranged to swap her days at the library. They are putting her up tonight at the Jury’s Inn Hotel on Pentonville Road. She laughed when she saw that, imagining Cleo’s outrage if anyone had suggested that she stay somewhere like that when she was on a job.
She arrives at the shop right on time, having splashed out on a taxi from Charing Cross. She hangs around outside watching people bustling about, all totally focused on what they’re doing. Bargain Hunters in the flesh looks every bit as stylish and sophisticated as you might imagine. They already have two hundred shops nationwide, Felicity explained to her, with a strategy to open fifty more over the next couple of years. Abi has to admit it’s a principle she approves of. She wonders where the nearest branch to Deal is.
Eventually someone appears from the crowd and says, ‘Abi?’
Abi nods, smiles. The woman holds out her hand. Abi recognizes her from the casting although they never got as far as introductions then. ‘I’m Carmel the director. I know you haven’t done this before. Are you nervous?’
‘Terrified.’
‘Well, let’s get you some breakfast and into make-up. It’ll be a doddle, don’t worry. Lisa! Lisa will look after you.’
Carmel hands Abi over to Lisa who turns out to be a runner and who takes her straight into a back room where a make-up artist has set up. She doesn’t have a moment to even worry about what is happening, because by the time she’s had her make-up done and scoffed down an egg roll it’s time for wardrobe and then, once she’s suitably dressed as an attractive, approachable, friendly young mum (in a pale pink T-shirt and A-line skirt) there’s no getting out of it; it’s time for her to go and do what she’s being paid to do.
Everyone is so friendly, but Abi feels sick with nerves by the time she’s taken out into the shop and shown her position at the till. Someone brings over the two kids playing her children, a boy and a girl aged about five and seven. They both seem far more at home than she is. What is she doing here? She’s never felt comfortable being on show. She feels ridiculous standing there with the lights and the cameras and the huge crew of people all waiting to film her. Carmel introduces her to the woman playing the shop assistant and then says, ‘Right, let’s have a rehearsal.’ Abi breathes deeply, tries to stop herself from passing out. She looks around, no sign of Jon. Thank god. Now she’s here she doesn’t think she could get through it if he was watching.
They run through the whole thirty-second scenario several times. Even to her untrained ears the lines coming out of her mouth sound fake and overacted. Every time she messes up she stammers and blushes. She feels as if she might cry. Eventually Carmel takes her aside.
‘None of them are taking a blind bit of notice of you,’ she says, putting her arm round Abi. ‘They’re only thinking about their own little area, how do the lights look or do we have the microphones in the right place. You could say anything and I swear no one would even register it. So just try to relax. We cast you because you look the part and we believed you when you said the words and that’s pretty much all that matters. Don’t act – just be natural.’
Abi nods. Tells herself to concentrate. She’s here now; she just needs to get through it. They do it again and again and it gets easier and easier when she realizes that what Carmel said is true. No one reacts when she messes up – they just throw in helpful suggestions about technical things she doesn’t understand. They try different staging and moving the props around, and by the time Carmel announces it’s time to do the final checks and actually start shooting the thing she feels, if not completely relaxed, at least able to get through it without making a fool of herself. So what if she looks ridiculous? Who cares?
By lunchtime she’s dizzy from the lights and the heat and the amount of times she’s said the same thing over and over, but at least it seems as if they’re getting what they want. Carmel seems happy.
Abi is sitting on the shop floor eating a salad and chatting to the shop-assistant woman (‘I was the woman in the plaster cast in the injuredatwork.com ad – did you see that one? Oh, and I was in one of the Iceland ads. Not featured, just in the background, eating profiteroles …’) and actually quite enjoying herself – if nothing else it’s going to make an entertaining anecdote to tell Phoebe – when Jon suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts making his way across the room towards her.
She stands up, praying she has no lettuce in her teeth, willing the shop-assistant women to go away and leave them on their own. She has a split second to take him in before he reaches her. He looks well. He looks like Jon. For which r
ead, in Abi’s mind, he looks gorgeous. She stutters a hello.
‘Abi.’ Jon holds out his arms and gives her a hug. ‘How is it going? Are you hating it?’
She nods, smiling. ‘Every minute.’
There’s so much she wants to ask him that she doesn’t know where to start.
‘Thank you, by the way, for this.’
‘Oh, it was nothing to do with me. Well, they showed me the tapes of three people they were interested in, you included, and I might just have nudged them towards you a little. But you got on their short list on your own.’
‘Well, I appreciate it. How’s …’ she starts to say, but then she hears someone calling for her and it’s time to go back and repeat the whole process all over again, only this time with the camera in a different place.
‘Oh, you’re coming to dinner tonight, by the way.’
She starts to protest. She has no desire to see Cleo. Ever again.
‘Thanks, but I’m shattered …’
‘The girls would be devastated if you didn’t. It’s all they’ve talked about for days.’
Shit. ‘OK. Thanks. I don’t know what time …’
‘Whenever,’ he says. ‘You’re family – you don’t need to make an appointment.’
Even though it’s only been a couple of weeks, Primrose Hill seems like a different place. It’s not just that the trees are now almost completely bare or that the hill has lost most of its lush green carpet, it’s as if she’s looking at it from an outsider’s point of view again, partly in awe, partly with a detached cynicism. It’s hard to believe that for a few short weeks it felt like home.
