by Jessica Hart
Which she wasn’t. Clara put a bright smile back in place just to prove it.
She didn’t do crying. She did singing, dancing, joking. She did anything that would stop her thinking about how much it had hurt when Matt had left, about the rawness of her heart and the loneliness she tucked away deep inside her.
‘Why did he bother taking you to Seville if he was going to end things as soon as you got home?’ Simon asked after a moment.
‘He didn’t want to spoil my birthday,’ she said. Even now, the memory of that awful evening made her wince. ‘He was being kind. He did really like me, he said. If it hadn’t been for Sophie, we could have been happy together, he said. It was just that as soon as he’d seen her again, he’d known that he loved her still. Sophie was the love of his life, he said, but he wanted us to stay friends.’
‘And are you friends?’
‘Oh, well, you know how it is,’ said Clara, super-casual. ‘Life’s just one hectic social whirl. There’s television to be watched and analysed in depth, nails to be painted, magazines to be read… Allegra and I have to keep up to date with all the latest fashion disasters and celebrity news. It’s a wonder we have time for work at all!’
‘I take it that’s a no,’ said Simon sardonically.
‘We’re not not friends,’ she said. ‘It’s just that our lives have gone in different directions.’
Matt had married Sophie and was blissfully happy, and she had been left on her own.
‘We keep in touch,’ she added, very slightly on the defensive. ‘I know about the baby. And I’m glad for him.’
She was.
‘There would have been no point in us staying together if he was in love with someone else,’ Clara said, just as she’d said to herself so many times. ‘We’d have both been miserable.’
‘You seem happy now,’ said Simon after a moment.
‘I’ve got a lot to be happy about.’ Clara drained her champagne with a sort of defiance and set the glass back down on the table between them with a click. ‘I’ve got my family, I’ve got friends. I’ve somewhere to live and a job I love.
‘Actually, it was the job that made the most difference to me,’ she told Simon. ‘I’d never had a career before. I used to dream about starring in a musical, maybe going to Broadway, but I wasn’t dedicated enough, and the truth is that I wasn’t good enough either. I did a couple of tours with a third-rate company, and got the occasional job doing ads, but it wasn’t exactly starry stuff, and even that dried up and I had to keep myself going by waitressing and temping. So when Matt left me I fell apart, and it felt as if I had nothing. It was Ted who saved me.’
‘Ted?’
‘You’ll meet him in Paris. He’s the director, and brilliant at it too. He also happens to be one of my best friends. I was an absolute mess, but Ted mopped me up, and when MediaOchre Productions had a vacancy for a research assistant he bullied me into applying for it. He said it was time I tried a proper job, and the fact is I’ve loved working there. I’m much better at making arrangements and pulling together all the loose ends on a project than I am at dancing.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Simon dryly, clearly thinking about her performance at St Pancras.
Clara ignored that. ‘I’m a production assistant now, and I want to be a producer, and eventually work in drama. That’s my dream, anyway,’ she confessed.
It was a dream that kept her going, and filled the awful gap Matt had left in her life.
‘Roland Richards—he’s executive producer and owns MediaOchre—promised me a shot at producing a programme if we could get Romance: Fact or Fiction? made.’
‘Oh, so that’s why you kept hassling me?’
‘Well, yes.’ Clara looked contrite. ‘But I do really think it’ll be a great programme,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s just that I love this job, and I’ve never made a success of anything before now. I can’t imagine feeling for anybody else what I felt for Matt, so I’m determined to focus on my career now, and this programme is part of that and a step towards what I really want to do.’
‘It’s unwise to invest emotion in a job,’ said Simon disapprovingly. ‘It’s not logical.’
‘Not everything can be decided by logic,’ Clara protested.
‘It would be a lot better if everything was,’ said Simon. ‘As soon as people start substituting emotion for clear thinking, that’s when things go wrong. It all gets muddled and messy. If everyone understood that all relationships are at heart economic ones, there would be a lot less agonising.’
‘That’s rubbish!’ said Clara. ‘You can’t reduce love to economics.’
‘You can dress it up all you like in hearts and flowers, but the reality is that economic imperatives drive the way we think, the way we behave, and the way we feel.’
Simon leant back and regarded Clara over the rim of his glasses. ‘Take you and this job that you “love”. You wouldn’t do it if it didn’t give you an income that means you can pay for the basic necessities of food and shelter, would you?’
‘I have to earn my living, sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love what I do,’ she objected.
‘What exactly do you “love” about it?’
‘Well, there’s the opportunity to meet charmers like you,’ said Clara sarcastically before she could help herself.
‘But you only want me because you need my cooperation to get the programme made and, if I’ve understood the situation correctly, if you don’t get the programme made, the future of MediaOchre Productions is at risk. No MediaOchre Productions means no job for you, no matter how much you love it, which means no income, which means you’ll be struggling for your essentials again. So we’re back to economics.’
‘So what are you saying? I’m not allowed to enjoy my job?’
‘Not at all. I’m saying when you talk about having a dream, you should ground it in economic reality, not in waffly concepts like “loving” what you do.’
‘Well.’ Clara felt quite huffy. ‘So what’s your dream? Or is dreaming too illogical for you?’
‘Dream is a very emotive word. I’ve got goals and ambitions, certainly.’
‘Like what?’
Simon eyed Clara across the table. She had shrugged off her jacket and, above the red jumper, her eyes looked bright and brown, like a robin’s. All at once he found himself remembering the softness of her scarf as he unwound it, the downward sweep of her lashes, the fresh fragrance that drifted up from her hair.
Things he didn’t usually notice at all.
It was odd. Taken feature by feature, she wasn’t particularly pretty, but there was a quirkiness about her that was quite appealing, he supposed. She was nowhere near as lovely as Astrid, of course. Astrid was coolly elegant, even serene—except when she was being swept off her feet by passionate Italians—while Clara was all colour and movement. Astrid would never have made an exhibition of herself in the middle of the station concourse, that was for sure.
Clara reminded Simon uneasily of his mother, who had the same impulsiveness, who gave exactly the same impression of being on the verge of doing something crazily illogical. Even Clara’s face was full of movement. The edges of her mouth, her cheekbones, her lashes, even the corners of her eyes seemed to be tilting very slightly up
wards, as if she were on the point of breaking into a smile. It annoyed Simon that he kept watching her, waiting for it to happen.
Not that there was much sign of her smiling right then. She was leaning forward, her expression combative, as she waited for him to answer her question.
‘What are your goals?’ she insisted.
That was easy. ‘I want people to understand the economic forces that shape their lives. I want them to have access to financial systems that help them to help themselves,’ he said. ‘That’s what the micro-finance projects are all about.’
‘But that’s general,’ Clara objected. ‘I was thinking about personal goals. What do you want for yourself?’
Simon adjusted his glasses, annoyed to find that he had to think about it.
‘Financial security,’ he said.
‘That’s it?’ She stared at him. ‘Not love? Not happiness?’
‘Security is the basis of everything else,’ said Simon. ‘That’s enough for me.’
Pointedly, Simon turned his attention back to his computer, and to his relief she fell silent. He allowed himself to hope that she’d lost interest, and made a show of looking up the markets, but the truth was that he was unsettlingly aware of her still. There was a warmth and vibrancy to Clara that made the very air around her shimmer.
He frowned at the thought. It wasn’t like him to be so fanciful. He ought to be able to ignore her easily. If only she didn’t ask such awkward questions! Now, instead of focusing on his laptop, he was thinking about what he really wanted, and what was the point of that?
Simon had never doubted it before. Ever since his father’s death, he had preferred figures to people. Figures made sense. They stayed still so that you could grasp them. They didn’t veer off course illogically, or plunge from one ridiculous situation to the next the way his mother did. They weren’t reckless or disturbing. They were safe.
Astrid had made him feel like that. She wasn’t alarming or demanding. She never insisted on talking about their relationship or knowing what he was feeling. She never wittered on about goals or looked at him as if he were somehow deficient for not wanting to take risks.
Perhaps it wasn’t a very exciting goal to stay as you were, Simon thought, vaguely defensive, but once you had what you wanted, once you had everything under control and no one could throw your world upside down, why keep on striving for more?
* * *
It was pouring when they arrived in Paris. Ted was there already, with Steve the cameraman and Peter on sound. ‘They’re doing establishing shots,’ Clara told Simon in the taxi to the hotel.
‘What the hell is an establishing shot?’ Simon was still in a bad mood. He had made it clear that he wanted to work but, instead of sitting and reading quietly, or working herself as Astrid would have done, Clara had left him to it, and gone wandering off. Before he knew what had happened, she was sharing another glass of champagne with an American couple and a businessman from Lyons, and they were all getting on like a proverbial fire in a match factory.
They were too far away for Simon to hear their conversation, so he couldn’t even complain that they were disturbing him, but he was aware of them laughing all the same. It was obvious that Clara was having a great time, and was clearly not the slightest bit bothered that he was too busy to talk. All in all, he hadn’t managed any work at all, and now it was raining!
The entire trip was turning out to be a disaster, he thought grouchily.
Clara was explaining about establishing shots, as if he really cared. ‘They’re location shots,’ she said. ‘You know, the Eiffel Tower, to signal to the viewer that we’re in Paris and general views to give a sense of place. I had a message from Ted, who said the weather wasn’t too bad this morning, so they’ll be glad they came early.’
She looked eagerly through the taxi window, apparently unfazed by his unresponsive mood. ‘It’s great to be here at last! Now we just need Stella. She said she wanted to fly, so Roland’s accompanying her. They should be arriving later and you’ll have a chance to meet her before we start shooting tomorrow.’
‘So why are we here so early?’ Simon asked grumpily.
‘You said you wanted to work on the train,’ she reminded him. ‘There’s plenty to do. I’ve got to check the equipment, and block out some scenes with you and Ted.’
‘What scenes?’ he asked in alarm.
‘Nothing is rehearsed, but obviously we need an idea of what you and Stella are going to say,’ Clara said patiently. ‘I’ll just list some bullet points for you to cover when you’re talking. We’ll need to recce some special locations. I’ve done quite a lot of research, but you never really know how good a place is going to look on camera until you actually get there. I can’t wait to see the hotel,’ she added, craning her head as if she could get the taxi to move faster through the heavy traffic on the périphérique. ‘It sounds fab.’
Fab wasn’t a word Simon would ever have used, but even he had to admit that it was a very attractive hotel, tucked into a quiet street near the Luxembourg Gardens. The taxi dropped them by a heavy Parisian door, and they stepped through into a hidden cobbled courtyard and another world.
Inside, the hotel was chic and charming, and it reeked of expense down to the last light switch. A hush of wealth hung over the reception, where Clara managed to look utterly out of place and yet completely at ease.
‘I thought MediaOchre were tottering on the brink of bankruptcy,’ Simon muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he waited with Clara for the lift. ‘How on earth did you afford a place like this?’
‘I negotiated a deal,’ Clara whispered back. ‘There will just happen to be a couple of shots of the hotel in the final edit. You’d be surprised what we can get in return for a bit of free publicity.’
To Simon’s critical eyes, the room was over-decorated, with a flounce too many around the bed, but Clara was thrilled with it. ‘Oh, isn’t it gorgeous?’ she said, opening the bathroom and oohing and aahing at the polished taps, fluffy towels and free toiletries.
Careless of the rain, she threw open the French windows and stepped out onto the tiny balcony. ‘Look, you can see the Eiffel Tower from here!’
Her face was alight as she turned back to Simon, wiping the raindrops from her cheeks, and he was alarmed to feel an odd little clutch in the area of his heart.
‘Oh, this is perfect!’ she said, waving the lime-green cast around. ‘I’m so excited! You can’t get more romantic than this, can you?’
It was just a room to Simon, but he was reluctant to burst her bubble. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said gruffly. ‘Well, if you tell me where my room is, I’ll go and get settled.’
Clara laughed. ‘This is your room! You don’t think they put the crew in rooms like this, do you? I negotiated three lovely rooms for you, Stella and Roland, but the rest of us are in rooms at the back.’
‘That’s not very fair,’ said Simon, frowning, but Clara shrugged.
‘It’s how it is. We’re lucky we’re in the same hotel. Often the talent get a smart hotel, while the rest of us are in some grotty place round the corner.’
‘The talent?’
‘That’s you, in this case,’ she said with a grin. ‘You and Stella.’
He m
ade a face. ‘Look, why don’t we swap rooms?’ he heard himself suggesting.
‘Swap?’ Clara stared at him, and Simon gestured around the room.
‘It’s just somewhere to sleep to me. I don’t care what the décor is like or how fluffy my pillows are. It sounded to me as if you would really enjoy sleeping here.’
‘Of course I would, but—’
‘I don’t care where I sleep,’ he added irritably.
She looked at him closely, as if to check that he wasn’t joking. ‘That’s really generous of you,’ she said, still uncertain, ‘but I’ve hired a whole lot of equipment, and anything Ted isn’t using at the moment will be in my room so that I can check it tonight.’
‘Get it moved here.’
‘Simon, I can’t…’ Clara protested, half laughing. ‘You’re one of the presenters. I can’t put you in a poky room at the back!’
‘You’re not putting me anywhere. I’ve made the decision.’
Unsure quite why he was making such an issue of it, Simon scowled and stomped over to the door. ‘A room like this is wasted on me. I saw the rates downstairs and, no matter how good a deal you got, you’re still paying a lot of money for somewhere to sleep. That’s only worth it if the room is used by someone who will appreciate it, and I won’t. It’s exactly the kind of bad economic practice that I find offensive,’ he added austerely. ‘Squandering money for the sake of it… I refuse to be part of it,’ he said, ending the discussion.
‘Roland would have a fit,’ said Clara, but he could tell she was tempted.
‘Tell him I insisted.’
Brushing her attempts to protest aside, he dragged her back to Reception and made her switch their rooms. A bellboy was despatched with a trolley to transfer all the camera and sound equipment to the room at the front, while Clara and Simon went back to retrieve his case.
