Stop at Nothing

by Tammy Cohen

  ‘Shall we find a pub and go for a drink?’ Nick asked when we were outside, the rain falling more heavily now on the grid of mini-fountains that rose up out of the concrete of the square.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. After the incriminating photo that had been sent to Phil, I couldn’t contemplate going into a pub again in the afternoon. ‘I need to get back to feed the dog.’

  I didn’t add that I wanted to check up on Em too.

  When we said goodbye outside King’s Cross station, he stepped forward to kiss my cheek as I leaned in to give him a hug, so we collided clumsily, but when I moved away my shoulder felt warm where he’d touched it.

  On my way home from Bounds Green station, I called Kath.

  ‘I knew it,’ she cried, when I told her how well the date had gone. ‘I’m off to google wedding hats just as soon as we hang up.’

  Then she wanted a blow-by-blow account. What did I wear? Where did we meet? What were my first impressions?

  ‘I was a bit late getting there, so he was already waiting for me.’

  That was the first time I’d remembered about Frances. Excitement at being with Nick had all but swept her from my mind.

  ‘Actually, it was Frances who made me late. I told her about Nick and she got it in her head that he might actually be Stephens. She thought the timing was too coincidental.’

  ‘Paranoid much?’ asked Kath.

  I laughed.

  ‘She was just watching out for me. I think she thinks my whole family need protecting 24/7.’

  Kath was quiet for a moment. Then she sighed.

  ‘You know, Tessa, personally, I worry this Frances might be getting a bit too attached to you and Em. But in this particular instance, I have to concede she might just have a point.’

  Last night, after Henry was in bed, I made a list of everything you’ve taken from me. My home with the sunshine-yellow kitchen walls that everyone had tried to dissuade me from but made my heart sing every morning when I got up. The job I loved, special-needs coordinator. Well, I didn’t always love it. Some days, when I was explaining to desperately worried parents why the latest cuts meant we had to axe their daughter’s one-to-one help, I didn’t love it. But I was bloody good at it and it made me feel like I was worth something. Matt. How I was the only one he’d allow to see him wearing glasses, the tops of his arms where they were so wide and when they went around me I felt protected from everything. He worried he was getting fat, but I loved the sheer breadth of them. The more the better. When I went to see his body, I focused on the tops of his arms, so I wouldn’t have to see his face and know that it was him.

  My list was never-ending. Feeling safe in my own home, feeling free from the guilt that woke me in the night gasping for breath, my chest crushed with it. Feeling able to trust my own judgement.

  After I’d written my list I stared at it for a long time. Then I took my pen and crossed out the heading where I’d written Things You Took from Me and changed it to Things I Let You Take.

  26

  By the time my stint of holiday cover on Silk magazine arrived, I was feeling more positive than I had in ages.

  Though I hadn’t yet seen Nick again, as he’d been in California giving a keynote speech at a conference at UCLA, we’d been messaging back and forth and had spoken a few times on the phone. Each conversation went deeper than the last, both of us peeling ourselves slowly apart like the layers of an onion until I found myself viewing my everyday life through the prism of Nick’s eyes, always conscious of how I could work up a random encounter into an anecdote or describe a thunderstorm or a particularly fine view. Every time we had contact I came away with fresh hope, and it was only those long, sleepless night hours that saw me pulling that hope out of shape until it resembled something else.

  I was happy to be going into a magazine office again. I’d spent so much of my adult life in that environment that entering into the building through the revolving doors felt almost like coming home. I was wearing a suit from my editor days and, though it was tighter than it had once been, I still felt the confidence from its tailored lines and every one of its tiny tucks and seams.

  I didn’t yet have a security pass, so I had to wait down in reception for someone from the magazine to bring me up. I waited five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.

  ‘Can you call up again to make sure they know I’m here?’ I asked the receptionist, worried about being late on my first day.

  She was new from the last time I was in this particular magazine building. I did some mental calculations and realized with a jolt that it was nearly a decade ago.

  ‘Of course.’

  She smiled and picked up a phone receiver, pressing some numbers.

  ‘Tessa Hopwood is still down in reception for you. Yes, I know. I did tell her. Right. Fine.’

  The receptionist looked up and her smile had dimmed a notch.

  ‘They do know you’re waiting, Tessa. Someone will be down just as soon as they can.’

  The young girl who eventually came down to fetch me was apologetic.

  ‘It’s press week, so things are pretty crazy.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I remember what it was like.’

  ‘You used to work here?’

  ‘Yes, mind you, it was probably about ten years ago now.’

  ‘Wow. I’d just left primary school.’

  In the open-plan office, I was shown to the desk that would be mine for the next week. It was completely clear, apart from a list of instructions neatly typed on a piece of A4 paper.

  ‘Geri left that for you,’ said the girl who’d shown me up, who was revealed to be the current intern, by the name of Skye. ‘So you can get stuck straight in.’

  Geri was the features editor whose place I was taking while she island-hopped around the Caribbean on a press trip. I glanced towards the glass booth where the editor sat. Strange to think I’d once sat there myself, a decade ago, my penultimate job in magazines. Now the door was shut and all the white blinds were down.

  ‘Should I go and say hello to Natalie?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t. She knows you’re here. I’m sure she’ll be out shortly.’

  I turned on the computer, using the password written in my handover notes. The first job was to edit the reviews section, something I could do in my sleep.

  I was nearly finished when Natalie, the magazine editor, finally emerged from her office.

  ‘Sorry, Tessa. I got bogged down in calls. You know how it is.’

  Natalie had once been my assistant, so she knew I knew exactly how it was. Still, I felt a jab of something when she said that. A memory of the life I used to have, the non-stop meetings and snap decisions, the adrenaline rush of press week, the sheer exhilaration of producing a two-hundred-page-plus glossy magazine that a month ago hadn’t even been thought of.

  ‘How’s the family?’ she wanted to know. ‘You had girls, didn’t you? Are they okay?’

  ‘Well, Em’s doing fine. First year of sixth form. And Rosie …’

  ‘That’s great, Tessa, great. I do so admire you. How you’ve looked after your family. And you’re looking so well. That lovely, leisurely freelance life obviously suits you. Now, how are you getting on with Geri’s list?’

  I told her I had nearly finished the reviews.

  ‘Which of the subs should I send them to?’ I said, looking over automatically to where the sub-editors’ bench used to be.

  Natalie laughed.

  ‘God, you have been out of the loop a while, haven’t you? We only have a skeleton staff of subs who have to cover several magazines. A hub. Most of our copy we sub ourselves now. And lay it out too. Please tell me you know how to use InDesign.’

  ‘Of course,’ I lied.

  After she’d gone I had to email my friend Ben, who’d been my old production editor, to ask him to talk me through InDesign.

  The day stretched on. I’d forgotten how long days could be in an office where you didn’t really belong and all the in-jokes passed you by. The sta
ff were overworked. I was shocked by how few of them there were, turning out a magazine that was the same number of pages it had been when there were twice as many people working on it.

  Ridiculously, I found myself missing Nick. I kept thinking of funny comments I would send him later. How he’d laugh when I told him about the features meeting we’d just had where I’d suggested an idea from the list I’d made at home and the deputy editor had made that face people make when they’re trying to let you down gently and said:

  ‘You see, the thing is – no disrespect – but we don’t do features like that any more.’

  They’d got excited about a couple of the others, though, and I’d felt myself growing lighter, like I’d been wearing a heavy coat and had just shrugged it off. I might have been out of the game for a couple of years, but there was still a value to be placed on experience.

  I’d hoped that Natalie and I might go out for lunch, or at least there might be someone to grab a sandwich with. But it soon transpired that most people had brought their own lunches in plastic tubs – lots of spiralized vegetables and fruit salads and nuts and seeds – or else had already bought something from the sandwich man who came around from floor to floor mid-morning. They ate at their desks, assiduously working through lunch hour.

  I decided not to bother with lunch. Without a security pass, if I’d gone out, I’d have had to call someone down to escort me back up, and I couldn’t face it.

  I forced myself to get back to work. To my delight, Natalie had told me the magazine was sending me out later in the week to do a celebrity interview. The celebrity in question was Ingrid Blackwood, a Hollywood actress who’d narrowly missed out on an Oscar earlier in the year. I knew the interview would have been hard to secure so I was flattered that they’d given it to me and determined not to let them down. I’d called up every in-depth interview with her over the last four years and was busy working through them, making notes on the line of questioning I was interested in pursuing and the possible angles I could take.

  When my phone pinged some time later I had a momentary surge of hope, thinking it might be Nick, until I realized it wasn’t my email alert but my Facebook Messenger.

  I pressed my eyes closed when I saw the name in bold on the left-hand side of the page.

  James Laurence Stephens.

  I took a deep breath in then opened them again and clicked on the message.

  You bitch. Suspended from footie thanks to you, bitch.

  I won’t forget.

  I stared at the screen. At first I was furious with the coach for giving away that it was me, but when I calmed down I allowed that Stephens might just have worked it out on his own.

  I kept re-reading the message. I won’t forget. Such a strange thing to say.

  Then it hit me. He was couching it in language that wouldn’t leave him open to charges of threatening behaviour.

  But, make no mistake about it. I knew what he was saying, what he was doing.

  It was a threat all right.

  27

  Though Stephens’s message disturbed me on a fundamental level, I didn’t have time to analyse what it meant. Work was so full on, and I was having to catch up on all the new technological advances as I went along, which took up all my brainpower.

  I hadn’t realized until I went into the office how much I felt like I still had something to prove. That I was still relevant. That I still had some status, outside of my house and my children.

  The morning of my big interview with Ingrid Blackwood I’d changed clothes so many times that in the end Em had stood in front of my bedroom door and forbidden me to go back in. ‘You look fine,’ she’d said, eyeing up the navy-blue suit and silk fuchsia top I hadn’t worn in two years. ‘For God’s sake, Mum, you used to do interviews like this all the time. You know what to do. You’ll be brilliant. Just relax.’

  But still I felt jittery in the office, making my last-minute preparations.

  ‘Does anyone have a spare dictaphone?’ I asked the features department in general. ‘I thought mine was working but looks like the batteries are dead.’

  Skye gave me a look of confused concern.

  ‘You do know you can record on your phone, don’t you?’

  After she’d shown me how, and then shown me again because I promptly forgot the first set of instructions, I went on to my email.

  Since when can you use a phone to record interviews? I asked Kath and Mari. If you want me, I’ll be out stamping around the tundra with the rest of the dinosaurs.

  I’d already told them how nervous I was about this interview and complained about the paltry fifteen minutes I’d been allocated. I’d given them the name and address of the hotel where it was taking place so that they could go on to Google maps and work out exact timings of how long it would take to get there. They knew how important it was to me to get this right.

  Twenty minutes before I was due to leave for my interview I slipped off to the loos. I’d brought my entire make-up bag with me so that I could apply full war paint. It wasn’t as if I was trying to compete with Ingrid Blackwood, who was one of those impossible flawless beauties with cheekbones you could light matches off and huge, luminous green eyes. It was more that I was trying to give myself every advantage. Like in a battle. Make-up was the armour which would give me the confidence to go into that room and shake her hand and do the job I was being paid for.

  Plus, naturally, I hadn’t slept so I needed to cover the deep maroon shadows under my eyes. I’d run out the previous lunchtime and bought a concealer I couldn’t really afford that came in the world’s smallest pot. ‘Ounce per ounce, this stuff must be more valuable than gold,’ I’d said to the woman in the make-up department as she rang up the bill. ‘The price we women pay for beauty,’ she’d replied with a sigh.

  The interviews were taking place in a suite in a hotel in Chelsea, tucked down a residential street a brisk ten-minute walk from South Kensington station. The journey by Tube was hot and uncomfortable. There had been a signal failure earlier and now the platforms were packed with disgruntled people, all believing their own delayed appointments took precedence over everyone else’s. Two trains came and went, too packed to board. Those of us on the platform waited by the open doors, glaring at the passengers inside, willing them to get off so that we could squeeze on.

  When I finally pushed my way into the third train, I found myself wedged into the corner by the door, hemmed in on all sides. As I stood pressed up against the glass partition, a familiar burning sensation spread out from my stomach, anxiety crawling all over me like a rash. And now came the fire, shooting up into my back, my neck, my face, until I was one mass of heat. I shrugged off my jacket and stared fixedly out of the window, trying to quell the panic, and to pretend that I was oblivious to the clamminess of my forehead and back.

  I emerged into the daylight, crumpled and damp, the silk top I’d so painstakingly selected that morning looking like a wrung-out dishrag. I was also late.

  There was a taxi idling outside the station so I jumped in, even though the journey only took a few minutes. Then I was out and hurrying up the steps and into the gloom of the lobby, which was decorated entirely in black with accents of orange, and where a publicist was standing watch, her expression pinched and anxious.

  This threw me. Normally on these occasions, there’d be back-to-back interviews arranged, which invariably overran, so you’d expect to be kept waiting, sometimes for hours. I’d been depending on having time to dash into the loos to reapply my smudged make-up and then to sit quietly and go over some of the questions I wanted to ask.

  Instead, I found myself being shepherded up the thickly carpeted stairs and along a muffled, darkly panelled hallway, eventually coming to a halt outside a door at the very end.

  The publicist, who reminded me a little of Frances with her glossy, swinging hair and her English-rose complexion, knocked tentatively at the door.

  ‘Come,’ said a woman’s voice.

  We ente
red a small living room which was all done out in grey, with grey walls and a grey sofa, complete with grey-and-gold velvet cushions and heavy grey-and-cream brocade curtains. There was a doorway, the door just ajar, through which one could get a glimpse of the corner of a four-poster bed festooned with satin drapes and piled with throws and pillows, also, naturally, in grey. There were lots of pleats. Lots of gathers.

  Lots of grey.

  Facing the sofa with its velvet cushions was an armchair. And sitting in it was one of the most beautiful women in the world.

  The thing about film stars, women particularly, is that they’re always so much less substantial than they appear on screen. Ingrid Blackwood starred in movies where she usually portrayed powerful women, certain of their own agency, but in person she was slight and fragile. When I shook her hand it felt limp, as if the effort of raising it to mine had left it quite exhausted.

  I smiled broadly. It was always so essential to make eye contact as soon as possible, to at least pretend that this was a normal interaction between two human beings, here to have a chat.

  ‘I hope you’re enjoying our weather,’ I said, indicating the clouds outside, grey to match the decor.

  She smiled wanly, and I reflected that I was probably not the first person that day to have made the same anodyne comment.

  ‘Just reminding you,’ said the publicist, ‘you have less than fifteen minutes. We’re on a very tight timetable and you were a couple of minutes late.’

  The reproach stung.

  ‘Right. Let’s get started, then, if it’s okay with you.’

  Ingrid nodded her assent and sat back down on the chair. She was so slender the cushion didn’t even seem to depress under her as she sat. Her trademark long dark hair was pulled up into a thin ponytail, and her face was pale and make-up free, the features so fine it was as if they’d been painted there with the most delicate of brushes by an eighteenth-century miniaturist. She had on a baggy white T-shirt over black jogging pants rolled up at the bottoms to reveal legs that looked as if you could snap them in half like twigs, and surprisingly long bare feet which she pulled up underneath her.