Agent Provocateur (17 page)

‘I’ve never seen you so rattled.’

‘There’s always a first time.’ Although they are sitting on the sofa, and the fish are happily swimming in front of them, Grace is swinging her leg and fiddling with her hands. She is clearly disturbed by events. Eddie is seeing a new side to her and it actually makes him think that maybe she is more human than she lets on. He shouldn’t feel happy when she is miserable, but he does a bit. She has proved to him that she needs him over the last few days, and this makes him feel pretty good.

The following morning Betty wakes up with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She looks round the room; everything is the same. The striped yellow and white wallpaper, the large wooden bed, the pale blue curtains and duvet. Everything is exactly the same as it was yesterday, but it isn’t. Because today she may not have a job. Fiona sounded so angry on the hundred or so messages she left.

She looks at Johnny, sleeping beside her. His hair stuck slightly to his forehead. His arm hooked over his body. His breathing, quiet but audible. He is truly beautiful. She kisses the top of his head gently. She may not have a job but she will always have Johnny – of that she is sure. This makes her realise that she will always be better off than Grace the marriage wrecker, because she has an unwreckable marriage.

It is early, but she knows that sleep isn’t going to happen, so she gets up and makes a cup of coffee. She will go into the office to face Fiona, although Fiona won’t be there much before nine thirty, so there is no rush. She also has the party to prepare for that Saturday night – Johnny’s party. It means so much to him that she will not ruin it. Even if she is sacked from the job she loves so much, she will make it the best party ever for the best husband ever.

She thinks back to her first meeting with Grace. How had their relationship deteriorated so fast? She didn’t like her before she met her, but she had once interviewed a woman who would only sleep with married men and she’d managed to remain civil. Betty wonders if she has been too childish, but then she shakes the feeling off. Grace is a woman that every woman should be wary of. She has merely told her exactly what she needed to hear. With luck, Grace will think next time she is destroying someone else’s marriage.

She makes a cup of coffee for Johnny and takes it upstairs to him. She almost feels sorry for Grace, because despite her sugar daddy, and the fiancé that abandoned her, she blatantly has no idea how to love.

Grace wakes and hears him snoring gently next to her. She gives him a tiny nudge and it wakes him. ‘What?’ he says.

‘You were snoring.’

‘I was?’

‘Yeah. Sounded like an earthquake.’

‘Could you make me some coffee?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I do have to go to work.’

‘Fair enough, and I did keep you up moaning for hours last night.’

‘I could say something about that, but I won’t.’

‘Good bloody job. You know what I mean.’ Grace stops and bites her lip. ‘Eddie.’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. I do appreciate it, you know.’

He gets out of bed and kisses Grace on her forehead. ‘Any time, Grace, any time.’

Betty looks haggard as she goes into the office. Despite all the reassuring pep talks she has been giving herself, she still feels sick with nerves. She wishes she had never set eyes on Grace and she is unsure how she is going to get out of this mess.

‘Fiona wants to see you.’

Betty smiles at Hannah although she is clearly grimacing. ‘Right.’

‘Betty, what have you done? She’s been screaming for you, and I did try to call.’

‘Sorry, Hannah. I’ve been a bad, bad girl. Anyway, I’ll fill you in later. For now I’d better go to my execution.’ She swipes her arm across her neck and manages a smile.

‘You’d better hurry up.’

‘I’m on my way.’ She dumps her coat on the chair with her bag and goes up to the headmistress’s office. She knocks before she goes in but doesn’t wait for Fiona to respond. She opens the door, feeling nervous. It does unfortunately remind her of being a schoolchild and that is something else she blames Grace for.

‘Hi, sit down.’ Fiona’s face does not betray anything. But then she never does. She has the same expression on her face when she is happy or angry, which infuriates all her staff. Betty sits down.

‘I had an interesting call yesterday.’ Fiona stares straight at Betty, who flushes and looks away. ‘Nicole, the boss of Grace Regan, our very lovely case study, said that not only did you insult her, you also sabotaged a potential client.’

‘I think sabotage is a bit of a strong word.’

‘Really? But you did lose her potential business?’

‘Sort of.’ Betty begins to squirm.

‘She threatened to sue.’

‘She won’t.’ Betty prays that she won’t. It is one thing to annoy Grace, but quite another to annoy Grace’s boss, whom she hasn’t thought about at all. She feels even more uncomfortable.

‘How do you know? Betty, she is furious with us, with the magazine. Because of you and the way you behaved. What on earth were you thinking?’

Betty is catapulted back into childhood, when she was always in trouble for things. That was what happened when you were ugly and awkward. The pretty, confident girls would only speak to you to get you to do things for them that no one else wanted to do. The humiliation still burns. ‘
Betty
,
go
and
steal
a
lipstick
for
us’, ‘
Betty
,
go
and
buy
us
some
fags
,
don’t
be
so
wet’, ‘
Betty
,
go
and
put
a
drawing
pin
on
Miss’s
chair
.’ Of course Betty did all these things, and more because she thought, just for a minute, that it might make her accepted, and it might make her popular. Of course, it never did, and she always got caught, got into trouble. The line, ‘What were you thinking?’ said by a thousand different people for a thousand different reasons is tattooed on her memory. It will never ever go ...

‘Betty, are you with us?’ Fiona’s sharp tone snaps her out of her daydream.

‘Sorry.’ She is not sorry, but she is not feeling very bold. ‘Fiona, I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s just that she’s so awful. I saw her in action. The men she was supposed to be testing didn’t stand a chance. Not only is she stunning but she dresses like a high-class hooker. Then she flirts for England. If a man had never ever been unfaithful in his life, he would be with her.’

‘So you’re saying that any man would fall for her?’

‘Yes, which is why what she is doing is immoral.’

‘What about Johnny?’ Fiona is glad she remembers his name correctly. She is so averse to talking to anyone about marriage that she had to retrieve it from the back of her mind.

‘Not him, no way him.’

‘Betty, you’re not making any sense. You hate this woman because even if a man wasn’t unfaithful he would be with her, but Johnny wouldn’t be.’

Betty flushes crimson. ‘Johnny is different. But other men aren’t as strong as him.’

‘Don’t give me that bull. Betty, if a man wants to cheat he wants to cheat. Johnny is not an exception. He is not unique. You can’t apply one rule to him and then another to the whole of mankind. Grace is hired by women to see if their husbands are cheats. Most of them are. But she is only hired by women who are suspicious and usually have reason to be suspicious.’

‘She acts like a tart and she enjoys wrecking marriages.’

‘She said that?’

‘Not exactly, but you should have seen her when the man we were testing propositioned her. She looked so smug. His wife was sitting at home waiting to hear if she still had a marriage or not and Grace was smiling. Happy. She just made me so mad.’

‘Right, but this is all personal and you were supposed to be doing a job.’

‘I know.’

‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

‘She made me get involved. She chatted up this man while his friend tried to chat me up. It was awful. He had too much saliva and it was pouring down his chin, and he had this smirk which made me feel sick. I swear he was a psycho. I could have been killed.’ Betty hopes that her vast exaggeration of the truth does the trick.

‘Rubbish. It sounds like fun.’

‘Well, it wasn’t. She just did it to humiliate me. And it worked. This man was drooling, and he tried to touch me and, oh, it was so horrible and she could have stopped it but she didn’t.’

‘So I guess the lecture to the potential client was your idea of revenge.’

‘I guess.’ Betty is so sure that she is right, but it just isn’t coming across that way.

‘I don’t know what to say. You have worked here for years and you’ve always been the most reliable writer. Your work is always good. But now, well, I just don’t understand what happened.’

‘She hit me.’

‘She did? Hard?’ Fiona is tiring of the conversation.

‘Yes, hard. Fiona, I can’t explain it any more. We just didn’t like each other from the word go. She told me that she thinks all men are cheats and I told her that I didn’t agree and it went downhill from there. Fiona, I’ve got some good stuff here, and I’ve done loads of research. We could salvage a story from what we’ve got.’ Betty conjures up hope.

‘No way. I want a real profile of a real honey trapper and Nicole has told us in no uncertain terms that Grace is not a part of it any more. Which leaves us with a problem.’

‘You want me to find another honey trapper?’ Hope starts to fade.

‘No.’

‘Oh, right. Well, what then?’ Hope turns to fear.

‘Apologise.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Not to me, to her. You have to apologise to Grace and get her to agree to finish the story. I realise that this will probably mean we have to add on a bit of extra time, but that’s not a problem.’

Betty is white; she feels faint.

‘I can’t do that. Fiona, why don’t you put someone else on the story? They can talk her round. There is no way that she will ever accept me again.’

‘That’s what I thought at first, but then I realised that she will – if you persuade her you really are sorry and you mean it. Be sincere. Beg. Do whatever, but, Betty, you are going to finish this profile if it’s the last story you do.’ Fiona’s face looks the same as always but her voice conveys that she means business.

‘Or?’ Betty’s fear is wrapping around her intestines. It is here to stay.

‘Or, I am going to demote you. Not officially, of course, but you’ll be writing the worst features for the rest of your working life. You will cringe every time you see your by-line rather than be proud of it. You will never get a promotion and I personally will ensure that your working life is a misery.’ Fiona smiles after delivering her very calm speech.

‘Don’t you think you might be a bit harsh?’ Betty is truly terrified. And astounded. She cannot believe that Fiona is taking this so seriously. Her job really is under threat.

‘No. I do not. We are this close to being sued and if you cast your crazy mind back you will remember that it was my idea to do this feature and my idea to use Grace. The boss is always right, Betty. You should know that by now.’

Betty realises that there is no way out. Fiona is stubborn, and she assumes Grace is too. She wants to burst into tears, run away, but she’s not a kid anymore and she can’t behave like one. She thinks of Johnny and wonders what he would say. She knows that he would tell her to apologise to Grace and then finish the story. She doesn’t want to be writing boring stories for the rest of her life, nor does she want to lose her job. She knows, however, that Fiona does not dish out idle threats.

‘Fiona, please don’t be angry. I just want to clarify the situation. Either I apologise to Grace and get the story back or you’ll ruin my life. I don’t suppose there is a third option?’ As she says this she cannot look Fiona in the eye so she re-ties the lace on her trainers.

‘No. Apart from quitting. If you want to resign I would be very sad but I’d accept it.’ Her deadpan face makes it impossible to gauge if she is joking or not. Part of Betty is sure that she doesn’t mean it a bit, but there is another part not quite brave enough to find out.

‘OK, OK, so I apologise. But what if she refuses to carry on with the story?’

‘Then you persuade her. Bribe her. Do whatever you have to do. But get her back.’ Fiona turns to her computer screen and picks up the phone, indicating to a very green Betty that the conversation is over.

Grace feels quite strange now she isn’t expecting to be watched. She goes back to wearing a tracksuit and no make-up. She spends an hour watching her fish in the morning after she’s fed them, rather than going straight to the office. When she does go to the office she picks up her emails and arranges her calendar. She has another job that evening. A job that the hateful Betty will not be attending. She smiles because although she was quite excited about being in print, she feels free. Free from condemnation. Free from the judgemental journalist. She feels bad for Nicole, who she knew was looking forward to the publicity, but then she feels good for herself, because she felt dreadful, insecure and nervous when Betty was around.

She wonders if she has a mark where she hit her. She feels ashamed of that. Betty did push her too far but she hasn’t hit anyone since before she was sixteen years old. To behave the way she did showed an immense lack of control. Ever since she left school, no one has made her feel as bad as Betty did, but she still can’t quite work out why she allowed her to get so under her skin.

She wonders how Betty’s day is going. Then she puts her out of her mind and calls Nicole. She wants to work harder, to make up for any disappointment she might be feeling.

‘How are you today?’ Nicole asks.

‘Better. Thanks for yesterday. I shouldn’t have lost it.’

‘We all do. Anyway, I trust you, Grace, and I know that this woman must have pushed you to make you feel that way.’