All this information has given the police the new line of enquiry that it was a random and drunken incident.
Brenda was charged by Inspector Philips and released to the care of her waiting parents.
“What will happen to her, Peter? Will she go to prison?” Susan desperately hopes that she will not. She might have been a damned nuisance but the adverse publicity would get worse for Susan if that happened.
“I doubt it.” Inspector Philips said. “She will have to appear in court and the charges are serious enough. But when the case comes up they will take it in to account that it is a first offence and that it is all tied up with her personal problems. The court will probably ask for reports to be prepared. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“What about Dave?” Susan came in.
“Dave will be fine, I’m sure. There is a police report to the prosecutor, I gather, but we are going to be sympathetic. We are not recommending charges. He is likely to be diverted from prosecution, probably on the proviso that he continues in his psychiatric treatment.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Susan said and she and the Inspector both knew that the reason for her view was nothing to do with Dave Ramsey’s welfare. “I suppose the so-called affair will be used by Brenda’s defence as the reason for lenience?”
“Probably. There’s not much that can be done about that, I’m afraid. One thing I have found out. Brenda is deciding to divorce Dave Ramsey. Her parents took her from the station straight to their home. Apparently, she will go back to her flat just as soon as Dave agrees to move out – and not before. ”
Susan watches in the days following her conversation with Inspector Philips for the press report in the City Tribune about Brenda’s court appearance. All that is reported in that paper is that she was convicted and that a further date was set for reports. There is no mention of Susan’s name.
But Susan has not reckoned on Sarah King. The young journalist from the tabloid does her stuff and another chapter in the Ramsey-Blakely saga hits the front page of the Journal Daily, this time drawing on the defence lawyer’s anticipated plea in mitigation. But Jonathon reassures her that the word of a tabloid is small beer. She should say nothing and ride it out.
Events slow down after this. There is time for her to reflect and for her to realize that it is not, after all, the end of the world. She has survived and she has her job. She might have a dark cloud hanging over her - but she feels that the worst is over.
Life at work settles quickly enough and she has more sympathy than anything else from the people with whom she works. Many of her colleagues think there is something quite praiseworthy in so stoically riding out the storm brewed by the gutter press. She has won something in the estimation of several. Some, though, are embarrassed. Mike Moss enjoys her discomfort – there is no other way to describe his arrogance towards her.
If there is an analogy to describe this time, it is that it is like having an elephant in the room at work. Everyone knows the elephant is there and no one refers to it. But it is a busy office, there are programmes to produce and today’s main gossip soon gives way to other demands and to what is happening in other people’s lives. She knows the focus is off her when the latest events on last night’s programme are once again the main topic of office conversation. And the other main area of gossip in the papers is still rumbling on weeks after the Susan Blakely story has faded - the gay and lesbian accusations that are flying around the University and the city. Susan ducks and weaves when the editorial team want to pick up the story and feature it on ‘Live Tonight’. She finally persuades them to plan what she calls a more measured feature on the impact of new anti discriminatory employment laws. This will take time and by then, she calculates, Linda and Jane will be old news. She does not want to meet her closest friend in the TV studio hot seat.
If Brenda is humiliated at the first court appearance, by the time of the appearance for sentencing she is well briefed by her solicitor to a plea that makes something of a victim of the poor wife who has been so publicly betrayed. She is sorry, too, for what she has done but it was an act born of the deepest distress. It was perhaps an understandable way to behave in the circumstances. In extenuation her solicitor is able to say that her impulsive acts in deceiving the police and leading her husband to confess to a crime he did not committ were unpremeditated - she had no idea at the time of how serious her actions were.
She is placed on probation for one year. The Journal Daily rolls the story again. Susan is named again.
The only good news in all this for Susan is that Brenda does not bother her any further. She and Linda hear through University channels that Brenda manages to keep her job. This does not please Linda but she is not about to make any representations about it. Susan is cited in the divorce papers and she continues to deny any involvement with Ramsey. At the end of the day, it is Ramsey’s word against her. She has little compunction in lying. The Ramsey divorce will still go through whatever she says. The last that Susan hears of Dave Ramsey is a letter from him her thanking her for being instrumental in the forthcoming end of his hopeless marriage. She passes the letter to Inspector Philips, a clever move on her part, she reasons. This is just what someone who was dragged into someone else’s fantasy should do.
Weeks after the car attack, the police still have no idea what line to follow as far as their enquiries are concerned. The case stays open - that is all. And Linda still has no idea who ‘outed’ Jane and her. Neither does Susan.
But life moves on. Susan works hard over these weeks, coming into the public eye as much as possible, driving her interviews with challenging and penetrating interpretation. She spares no one the acerbity of her wit. Attack is a good form of defence against the Sarah Kings of the world. They are small beer by comparison with her standing in the media world. With nothing if not laconic humour, she exposes hypocrisy, double standards and distorted reasoning. She builds quickly on her already significant reputation as a formidable woman to be reckoned with. Her studio audiences still love her. The ratings stay high. She gives a couple of personal interviews to a Sunday magazine, allowing herself to be described as a force to be reckoned with. But she ensures that her profile is of a softer and quieter person when she is away from the job, one who likes peaceful evenings and weekend walks by the sea. The inference is that she is a solitary person and certainly not the type to be seduced by unwanted sexual overtures. If anything, she muses to herself, the glare of publicity has heightened her public profile and cost her little except anxiety. Or so she likes to think.
And she enters a new phase of her life. Alberto is true to his word and returns to the city from Rome, makes contact with her and charms his way back into her life. It is like being courted in traditional style and for several evenings, the two of them eat out and talk and behave as if the earlier sexual encounter did not happen. He woos her, there is no other way to describe it, and the rage that she saw in him on that evening at the hotel is, somehow, dissipated. He does not ask to sleep with her and neither does she offer. They finally talk about the way that they met and how they each behaved. He wants her to know that he regrets that very much. He was keen to see her again; he tried to contact her and then was in the city when the accident happened. He could not stay away from the hospital. He knew that she had a fiancée, but he wanted to have a chance to spend time with her before she finally married.
It is not until this conversation happens that she tells him that the relationship with Bill has ended. He sits and looks at her, waiting for more information. All she says is that it did not work out. She leaves him to draw his own conclusions, dismissing her time with Bill as ‘not right for her’. She laughingly tells him about how Bill returned her clothes from his flat to hers, all neatly folded and tidily dispatched by courier. That is not her type of man.
Alberto smiles and agrees that he can see that. They make love that night at her flat and she finds herself entering a new, mutual sexual experience with him, one that leaves
her wanting more. She is in a new relationship, for the first time with someone who started out as an anonymous sexual encounter. It is a good feeling as if, without much being said, she is with someone who understands.
She tells Linda of course, but there is an almost imperceptible distance between them now. There is less of the ‘me thou’ communication between them at the moment. They are certainly exchanging information about their lives and about the events that are unfolding for each of them because of the publicity and the accident. But Susan is aware of a lack of closeness. For her part, she knows that her life is moving on and that she is letting that happen quickly as an antidote to stopping to think too much. Linda is the more reflective of the two of them and more wanting to dwell and focus on what happened. This is not Susan’s way and she feels, on any occasion when that kind of conversation happens between her and Linda that she wants it to finish. If she is honest with herself, she knows that she is also still guilty about the accident and believes that somehow it will still turn out to be connected to Dave Ramsey. She finds it hard to face the sense of responsibility that therefore carries for Linda’s injuries. And the exposure of the lesbian friendship might well never have happened but for the accident. But that is a thought that she dismisses. It was too big to contemplate.
But they keep in touch, Linda and she, and she senses that Linda wants the friendship to continue but needs some space herself. Susan supposes her recounting of her sexual aberrations and the fallout from them will have put quite a strain on Linda. Linda has been a stalwart but has quite enough on her plate in her sexual and emotional crisis over Jane without Susan’s crises coming at the same time.
And apart from anything else, Susan’s energies are focussed on Alberto. That, by definition leaves less time for Linda. She hears nothing of Bill until the programme producer suggests a live review of the new legal system of solicitor-advocates, the system that is the focus of Bill’s developing career. She agrees, pleased to have the chance to interview Bill and to have a moment of power over him. To her surprise, she hears via her TV team that he and other leading members of the legal profession agree that they will appear.
She rings him. Will he have a coffee with her before they meet in the context of the programme and the TV Studio? Of equal surprise to her is the fact that he accepts her invitation.
She looks at him when he comes into the coffee house, carrying another grip of small possessions she left at his flat. She feels nothing except a sense of sadness for something gone and something near to pity for the tidiness of the man. If this had been Alberto, the clothes and toiletries would have been put in the bin, she is sure of that.
She soon understands that he is here to have his say, to clear the air and to set his stall out for the programme to come. Bill knows the power of the press only too well and he is quite upfront with her – he wants the programme to go well in the interests of his profession and without their previous relationship getting in the way.
He is cool and serious and there is no hint from him of any regret for the relationship they have left behind. If anything, there is a degree of anger towards her and distrust as to the nature of the programme that she and the producer are envisaging. His primary concerns are his reputation and his future and he talks openly about this.
He is bitter about his loss of reputation. His act of generosity in agreeing to front the TV appeal for the car attacker to come forward cost him a serious dent in his reputation. This gave confirmation in the public domain that he was indeed involved with this woman Susan Blakely who ended up at the centre of the ‘sex romp’ scandal. Without that TV appearance, it would have been open to speculation as to whether there was any truth in the Journal Daily article that he was associated with her. Only the few who knew of his relationship with Susan would have realized the full implications. Only those few would have come to know that he had quietly ended the engagement. As it was, although there has been no further reference to him in the press, he has had another couple of journalists try to reach him. He did not lift the phone to them.
And, he tells her coldly, in the legal circles in which he moves, his reputation is now tarnished. It is a guilty by association problem at two levels. Just knowing someone who is the object of public criticism is raising eyebrows. And there will undoubtedly be ribald comments behind his back, based on a similar type of sexual encounter between him and Susan as was described between her and Ramsey. The words of the article still haunt him - ‘lurid and kinky’ He sees his career and the success of the firm Nicolson and Berry about to be put to the test. She owes him – that is the clear message.
Sitting over coffee, Susan watches the man whom she so recently thought she would marry describe to her the end of their relationship from his perspective. Without the existence of Alberto, this might have been difficult for her. Hearing that
Bill’s reaction to Susan’s visit to his office that day was exactly how he felt still stings, even after all this time. That day he felt that he never wanted to see her again. He had to admit to himself that it gave him some pleasure to watch the shock on her face as he made himself clear that it was over between them. Susan does not give him the satisfaction of knowing how devastated she was that day. She just sits there and shrugs slightly, silently remembering her tears by the sea.
But she cannot conceal her look of shock when he announces that his sole purpose in agreeing to the TV programme is to issue a challenge to her in the public domain not to interfere with his new responsibilities in taking forward the solicitor-advocate role. He really has entered the lion’s den to kill any residual damage she might be contemplating. Now he tells her with barely concealed delight – he is also announcing his engagement. He met her at a dinner party - a junior teacher called Kate, the daughter of one of the surgeons at the hospital and his music teacher wife. Kate’s main interests are horses and golf. Before meeting Bill, she spent most weekends at the country house with ‘Mummy and Daddy’. He dated her for a few weeks, and has just asked her to marry him. She said yes.
“Are you in love with her, Bill?” she asks, setting aside a sardonic comment about the eminent suitability of the match for social climbers like Bill.
But she enjoys the moment. It is Susan’s turn to gloat. He cannot reply. Instead, he talks about how happy they are. And when is the big day to be, she asks, letting her tone of cynicism pervade the question. It will be in about a month’s time.
“Careful, Bill,” she augurs, “Or there will be talk that it’s a shotgun wedding.”
He gives her a withering look. They will honeymoon in Portugal after a wedding ceremony in the city Cathedral. They intend to tour and to stay in paradores – neither of them likes beach holidays. He rubs it in, wanting to see Susan’s reaction. If she does react to anything it is privately to the fact that Bill talking in terms of ‘we’ is grating on her. She needs to court more indifference herself. Perhaps it was a mistake to be seeing him and to be contemplating this programme.
But she turns the talk back to the business of all that, seeing her opportunity to toy with Bill as she does so, Bill returns to the subject of the programme and the issues as far as he and the QC are concerned.
Jeremy Parkhurst advised Bill that there was now a slow groundswell of opinion amongst advocates that the clear division between solicitors and themselves within the justice system should be changed. To hold on to that groundswell, the changes need to be brought in slowly, and without any rush that could tip opinion in the opposite direction. The government is anticipating a successful election, and that they will be returned. It will then progress the proposals into legislation during the next term.
And Susan can help or hinder that. And she can help or hinder his career. Whether she will, she has yet to decide.
But she leaves him with the clear impression that it will be a balanced, straight forward debate and that everyone, Bill included, will have opportunity to put their arguments forward. And it will be strictly professional, she tells him
, eyeing him closely.
She holds the power here, and she knows it. But she has connected with some feelings of her own for this man who could have become her husband and she has a shrewd suspicion that he still feels strongly about her. She is inscrutable, though. She has no desire to rekindle anything between them. It is over and she has Alberto. She leaves him outside the coffee house, an intimate stranger to her, no more than that.
As these thoughts pass through her head, she turns her mind almost immediately to the taxi drive to the airport and her scheduled flight to Rome, where she will spend a long weekend with Alberto - a much more fascinating lover and companion. She will be her own best judge about how to handle the programme nearer the time.
Just as she is about to turn and hail a taxi, Bill seems to think of something else to say. She waits, conscious that she is now running tight for time if she is to clear the afternoon build-up of traffic and to make her flight in comfort. He looks at her and for a second, it is the look of Bill who had once loved her.
“Did you ever love me, Susan?”
She hesitates but comes close up to him.
“Yes, Bill. I did. In my way.”
They kiss, the kiss of fond sadness. And then she is on her way.
Exposure Page 29
