Falling Off Air (9 page)

“Still, worth it all in the end.”

“Absolutely,” I said, thinking: Speed it up here, Terry.

“Well, I was just ringing to touch base,” he said, “and find out whether you've given Maeve's offer any thought.”

“Um, I need more time,” I said. I still intended to turn the job down, but I was afraid if I said that right now Terry was
programmed to try to persuade me and I'd be there all day. I just wanted him off the line.

“Well, you've got a day or two to play with,” he said, “but after that Maeve says she's going to have to open it up.”

“Okay. I'll let you know before then.” Couldn't he hear the impatience in my voice? He could certainly hear the children fussing.

“Meanwhile, do you fancy a night out?” His voice became playful, a fairy godfather offering Cinderella a trip to the ball.
“I've been left with an extra ticket to the awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Saturday, and everyone will be
there. It would get you back in the swing of things, remind people who you are. What do you think?”

I couldn't see the harm.

“The children will love it,” I said, waiting for Terry's sharp intake of breath before adding, “Just kidding. Of course I'd
love to come.”

T
HE awards ceremony required some lifestyle changes. I hired a babysitter—I mean a babysitter who charged an hourly rate that
was the GDP of a small nation, an agency nanny called Erica from Sweden—because I couldn't stretch my mother's goodwill any
further, and Tanya and Patrick had for once screwed up their shifts, so that they were both working at the same time. They
were wondering what to do with their own kids, let alone mine. Erica's main qualifications consisted of a black belt in judo,
which seemed a little irrelevant, and a stellar career at a Swedish nannying academy. I got a haircut, short and sleek. I
got a new subscription to Sky digital television. I'd been economizing for the past few months, but if you're going to work
in television you've got to have access to all the news that's out there and this way I could watch everything from CNN to
China Central Television. I dusted off my mobile phone and charged it up. If I was going to leave my children in the care
of a total stranger—albeit a stranger with impeccable references—at least she could contact me when they choked or knocked
themselves out, as they inevitably would. I even bought myself a new lipstick.

Terry came miles out of his way from Putney to pick me up and tooted his horn outside my door at six-thirty. Terry is nearly
sixty and gay, but he loves to play Prince Charming and take a woman out on a date once in a while. He has the car for it,
a macho four-wheel drive, high off the ground. There aren't many white Range Rovers around. They tend to show the mud, but
Terry's is always spotless.

“Robin, you look wonderful,” he said with surprise as I climbed into the passenger seat. “Maeve said—” He stopped short.

“She said I looked like shit,” I guessed.

“Maeve would never use language like that.”

“Maeve should try getting up a dozen times in the night.”

“She should try getting up to all sorts of things in the night,” Terry said. “She's certainly missing out on something.”

We drove through the streets of south London toward the city center in companionable silence, warm air billowing through the
open windows. I love driving, and four years ago, back in the days when I still indulged myself, I bought a 1990 BMW. It accelerates
like a sports car and does a hundred smooth as cream. I love its understated lean lines, but bits of it keep dropping off
or going wrong and, weight for weight, spares are probably more expensive than solid gold. It had got to the point where I
was afraid to drive it for fear of something else going wrong. I used it to pootle to and from Lorna's and Tanya's, and recently
to and from the police station, even though it was developing some alarming rattles. It was due for its inspection and I knew
it was barely roadworthy and I was dreading the expense, so when Terry had offered a lift, I had grabbed it.

Usually I love to be driven as much as to drive, to be free with my thoughts, gazing out the window as the world passes by.
Tonight I could not completely relax. I was flailing in a pool of unease. I took some comfort from Terry's presence at my
side. It was easy to make fun of him, he did it himself all the time, but it was people like Terry, talented, creative, collegial,
who still gave the Corporation a gilding of style. Old school and Oxbridge educated, with a passion for hand-embroidered silk
waistcoats and a halo of curly gray hair around an otherwise bald head, Terry had made his way easily up the Corporate ladder.
Then he'd hit a ceiling because he didn't have the raw ambition to make it right to the top like Maeve. In the Corporation
he was comfortable, relatively safe. His creativity had become stifled by a career in management, but out in the raw competition
of the independent producers someone like Terry would have been ripped limb from limb. I had always assumed he would sit out
his career at Maeve's knees, perfectly content. Then I remembered what Jane had said and wondered how long Maeve would have
knees for Terry to sit at. It was strange, I thought, that Terry should be happy to sit just this far up the ladder, making
no apparent effort to climb. Meanwhile Jane, Suzette, and Maeve were driven by red-hot ambition to go that extra step. And
me? What was I driven by? There had been ambition, as strong as Jane's. I had banished it for the past year, but I could feel
it lurking, and I feared that if it had lost none of its heat, its return would condemn me to a life of frustration. Could
I tame my ambition so that I would not be constantly torn between my children and my work?

“Penny for them,” Terry said.

I shook my head.

“It's weird being out and about without the children. Nice but weird.”

“You'll go mad if you don't work, Robin.” He said it softly.

I sighed.

“I have to work or we'll starve. I just don't like the children being with anyone but me.”

“You'll have to get over it.”

“I am aware of that, thank you, Terry.” Silence fell. I felt guilty for snapping at him, but really there was no need for
him to be so damned patronizing.

“You should take the job,” he said eventually.

“It's not me,” I grumbled. “You know it's not. I don't want to be some sort of policeman, going around slapping wrists when
people step out of line.”

“Someone's got to do it, and better you than some twenty-year-old with a nose ring through her brain.”

“Can't do it anyway,” I told him. “Paula Carmichael's death will be top of the EGIE agenda, and the police seem to think I'm
a prime suspect.”

He laughed at that, thinking I was joking. I wished Finney could have seen him.

“Anyway,” he said, when he'd sobered up, “Paula Carmichael's death is right off the agenda. Her husband's retracted his statement,
at least the stuff about the Corporation.”

“What?”

“The lawyers were onto his statement the moment he made it. Then the director paid him a visit to express his condolences:
flowers, gifts for the boys, everything. While he was there he pointed out a few of the finer legal points, reminded Carmichael
how expensive it would be to fight a libel charge and, hey presto, he backed off. He made a statement this afternoon saying
he was very upset when he spoke to the press yesterday, and he'd been mistaken to say Paula had been upset by the documentary.
Indeed, she'd been flattered by their interest. The lawyers are double-checking it as we speak. It'll be all over the bulletins.”

I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled slowly.

“Great,” I said, “first the Corporation humiliates his wife, then him.”

“Rubbish,” Terry protested. “The documentary about Paula Carmichael was never aired, no one ever saw it.”

I frowned.

“That's the documentary she made with Adam?”

“Strictly speaking, it wasn't even a Corporation project,” Terry explained. “It was a Paradigm production, you know, the company
Suzette Milner set up, but it was commissioned by the Corporation, and Suzette hired Adam to do the presenting.”

“Really?”

Terry nodded without comment. They weren't the best of friends, Terry and Suzette, so I didn't say what I was thinking, which
was that Suzette had played that particular card close to her chest when I had seen her on the morning after Paula's death.

“So was Paula Carmichael depressed or wasn't she?” I tried to clarify. “What's her husband saying?”

“The man's a mess,” Terry said. “He probably doesn't know what he's saying himself.”

He leaned forward and turned on the car radio to see whether there was any mention of Carmichael's retraction on the news.
There was none. “Still being digested by the lawyers, then,” Terry commented. The weather forecast predicted a sharp drop
in temperature the next day and hazarded to speculate that autumn would now continue its more normal path downward into colder
temperatures. We made the rest of the journey in silence. For the past year I had hardly set foot outside south London, and
now, as dusk settled, I gazed out on the grandeur of the Thames and at the fairy-lit bridges. It didn't look like the city
I lived in.

We pulled up outside the Grosvenor House Hotel.

“Nice frock,” Terry commented as I clambered out.

I humphed. It felt all wrong, as though there'd been some horrible mix-up and I'd got someone else's clothes on. I couldn't
believe I'd ever felt comfortable in anything but boots and jeans and layers of T-shirts and sweaters. I hadn't worn a dress
since the third month of my pregnancy. The one I'd dug out of my wardrobe for this evening was navy silk, cut just above the
knee, high at the throat, very simple. It hung looser on me than it had before, I guess I'd lost more weight than I'd realized.
I'd wrapped a light woolen shawl around my shoulders. I waited as Terry handed the car keys to the valet, and saw Maeve arriving.
She was clearly worried about that drop in temperature, because she carried a fur stole over one arm, like a lapdog.

Inside, people had gathered in the bar and I saw that Maeve was in her element, networking like a fiend. She caught sight
of me, saw with obvious relief that I was out of my jeans, and beckoned me over, introducing me to a rickety old man in a
cummerbund.

“I'm grooming Robin for the new ethics post,” she told him, patting at my silk-clad shoulder like a cat. “So you see, we are
responding to your concerns.”

The old man had sharp eyes, and they gave me an appraising glance before returning to Maeve.

“We put the mink on your back, my dear,” he said in a shaky voice, “so you'd better be, don't you think?”

Maeve laughed, a tinkling, nervy sound, and when he moved away, she patted the offending skin as though scolding it and whispered
in my ear, “He meant they pay my wages, nothing more.”

“Maeve, what do you mean you're grooming me?”

“Well, I should have said you're grooming yourself,” she said, with another tense giggle. “Great haircut.”

I took a deep breath. It crossed my mind that the redoubtable Maeve might be dabbling in illicit substances.

“Maeve, I can't take this job, it's just not me. I just want to make programs.”

She looked at me pityingly, then.

“Maeve,” I tried again, sotto voce, unwilling to make a scene but suddenly overwhelmed by the urgency of the situation. “I'm
guaranteed a job on return from maternity leave …”

“And a rather long maternity leave it's been, hasn't it?” she threw back at me, waving her hand and flashing a smile at someone
I recognized but couldn't place. “Besides, we've offered you a job. Now it's time to decide what your priorities are. Just
don't embarrass me, Robin. I can't afford to have that happen.”

Frustrated and angry, I stood and watched as she moved off through the crowd, air kissing anyone and everyone who crossed
her path. At one point she lunged for a young man in a tailcoat only to realize at the last moment that he was a waiter. A
media crowd is almost pathologically sociable. I could see a couple of uniformed hotel staff trying to usher people into the
ballroom, but my colleagues were like a bunch of children in the playground, unwilling to go and sit down in the classroom
where they'd have to stop chatting with their mates.

I'd lost Terry, but then I saw him deep in conversation with one of his old cronies, heads together, backs fending off casual
socializes. I spotted Suzette on one of the high chairs by the long black bar. Her back was to me, but I could see her face
in a mirror. She was wearing a little black dress and pearls, with her long blond hair scraped back in a severe chignon and
her face pale and clean of makeup. I waved at her, and she spotted me in the mirror and turned to mouth “Monday” at me, and
I gave her a thumbs-up. Perhaps Suzette was the way out. A partnership in Paradigm productions would give me the creative
freedom I craved, and I liked her; she was bright and serious and very thorough. She had a great visual sense and huge reserves
of enthusiasm. We had worked together a couple of years ago on a series about schools, and we'd got on just fine. We could
do it again.

I saw Jane, then, on the arm of the Corporation's political editor Quentin Browne and caught her eye. She was a picture of
Chinese chic, wearing a tailored red cheongsam split to the thigh. Jane is tall and not at all willowy, so it was not what
you would call a subtle outfit, especially when almost everyone else was in shades of black. She winked at me and wiggled
her substantial hips against Quentin, who turned to her and kissed her full on the lips. I must have looked astounded, because
when she emerged from his embrace and saw my face, she laughed out loud. I could hear her raucous bellow from where I stood,
and her date put his hands over his ears and said something to her which made her laugh more. It appeared there were many
things I'd missed in my seclusion.

Jane was working her way through the crush toward me when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned, expecting Maeve again,
my heart sinking. Then I stood stock still while my heart did something else entirely, and my jaw dropped.