Obsession (12 page)

It was in the middle of the afternoon, on her fourth trip to the coffee machine, that Alan Fox found her again. ‘Thought I’d come and give you a hand,’ he said.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Corrie smiled. ‘But really, I can manage.’ She stooped to take another cup from the machine and almost dropped it as Alan quite blatantly put his hand on her bottom.

Gritting her teeth, Corrie put the cup on the tray and pushed the buttons for the next one.

‘So you’re new to London,’ Alan said. ‘We’ll have to see what we can do to initiate you, won’t we?’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Corrie repeated, not knowing what else she could say. The next coffee was ready and again she stooped to take it. Again Alan’s hand found her bottom.

I
don’t believe this
, Corrie was thinking to herself,
I haven’t been in the place five minutes and already I’ve found the office proper
.

She took a sideways step away from him, flashed him a quick smile and pressed more buttons. ‘I saw your programme on the Animal Liberation Front the week before last,’ she said. ‘It was very good.’

‘Did you think so?’ he said, his narrow eyes, as grey as his hair, seeming to slide all over her body. ‘Perhaps we could look at it together sometime, I’ll show you how it was put together. You said yourself, you’ve got a lot to learn.’ The
double entendre
gleamed in his eyes as they seemed to rake her face, so deeply that she felt sure the lines on his own were now etched indelibly on hers.

God, is he sleezy
, Corrie was thinking, trying not to curl her lip as she removed her eyes from his moistened lips.

The next cup of coffee was ready. This time he didn’t touch her with his hand, instead he stood behind her and rubbed himself against her.

Corrie straightened abruptly, almost knocking him off balance. ‘Please, don’t do that again,’ she said tersely.

Alan’s nostrils flared. ‘Do what?’

‘Rub yourself against me.’

The blood rushed to his face, turning it purple. ‘You flatter yourself, darling,’ he spat. ‘And let me tell you this, looking like you do you should be grateful anyone would want to,’ and before Corrie could as much as draw breath he stormed off.

For a minute Corrie wanted to cry. Why was everyone so hostile? she wondered. Then quickly pulling herself together she got on with dishing out the coffee.

She didn’t see Annalise again that day and by six o’clock she was exhausted, dazed and in a way exhilarated. The fact that she had been treated like a leper all day she put down to how busy everyone was and started to pack up her bag.

‘Where are you going?’ someone said.

Corrie looked up to see Perkin glaring at her across the office.

‘Well, I thought …’ She glanced at the secretaries’ empty desks. ‘I was going home,’ she said, ‘but if you need me to stay …’

‘I want this voice-over put on the WP,’ Perkin told her, handing her reams of handwritten notes. ‘Luke will need a copy in the studio first thing in the morning.’

‘Of course,’ Corrie said.

By nine o’clock she was the only one left in the debris-strewn office and was still only half way through deciphering Perkin’s handwriting. She could hardly believe that a half hour commentary could take up so many pages. But at least she’d got the hang of the WP by now. She went out to the coffee machine, got herself a drink then came back to start again.

By one o’clock in the morning, feeling as though her eyes were hanging from her head, she had finished. She got up to put Perkin’s notes back on his desk and at that moment the power failed. Within seconds it was back on, but those seconds were all it took. She had forgotten to press the save button – the whole voice over had been wiped.

She wanted to cry, scream, shout, throw the machine out of the window, nuke the electricity board. But taking a deep breath she sat back down again. She finally left the office just after four in the morning. Oswald, the nightshift security man downstairs, called a cab to take her home.

She was back in the office for nine thirty. Perkin was screaming because one of the secretaries couldn’t find the voice-over on the computer. Corrie’s insides went to jelly.
She
rushed over to the secretary, and told her she had stored it under VO.

‘What!’ the secretary screeched. ‘VO? Who told you to put it under VO?’

‘Well, I thought, as it’s a voice-over …’ Corrie began.

‘You’ve created a document called VO?’

Corrie nodded.

The secretary turned to Perkin. ‘Well you’ve got your commentary, Perk, but she’s only gone and wiped …’

Corrie never did find out what she’d wiped since Luke Fitzpatrick came in then and Perkin shouted at the secretary to get printing. The secretary gave Corrie a filthy look and Corrie went off to her desk.

Her second day turned out to be even worse than her first, mainly, she told herself, because she was so tired. But at the end of the day, when she watched everyone go off to the wine bar for a quick drink before transmission, and she wasn’t invited, she had to admit that her difficulties were mounting. Nevertheless, she assured herself she didn’t care that she wasn’t invited, besides which, she couldn’t have gone anyway since she had an appointment with the estate agent who was coming with her to the studio to measure up for a blind.

The front door to the studio was at the top of an iron staircase which ran up the side of the Victorian house where the studio was situated. When Corrie arrived Nicholas, the agent, was hauling a step-ladder up to the front door. Corrie was glad to see him for when she’d first met him he had been extremely friendly, and she was much in need of a friendly face right now. But Nicholas seemed impatient with how long she was taking with her tape measure, and when Corrie tried to make conversation he answered in monosyllables, clearly preoccupied with something else. When they were leaving Corrie invited him for a drink. He refused, saying he had to dash off somewhere, so she was left to wend her way back to Regent’s Park, through a rush
hour
that seemed endless. She looked at the faces around her on the tube, wondering where they were going and who they were going home to. She imagined their cosy homes, the nights out they might be planning, and felt the loneliness seep into her heart.

When she got home she turned on the TV to watch the TW programme, then called Paula to tell her about her first couple of days, making it all sound a good deal more successful and exciting than it really was. She didn’t want Paula to worry, and besides, her pride wouldn’t allow her to admit that things were heading rapidly down the road to disaster.

Beth was crying in the background, so Paula was distracted enough not to pick up the despondent note in Corrie’s voice. She did ask, however, if Corrie had spoken to Luke Fitzpatrick yet, but Corrie hadn’t. She was able to confirm that Annalise was right, though. Luke Fitzpatrick was even more gorgeous in the flesh than he was on TV. This seemed to satisfy Paula, and since Beth’s wails had grown even louder, she had to ring off.

The next morning there was a production meeting. Corrie sat on the edge listening intently to everything that was said and making notes. When it was over Bob, the exec. producer, called her into his office.

As Corrie got up from her chair she didn’t see Alan Fox behind her until it was too late. She bumped into him, knocking the cup of scalding hot coffee he was carrying all over him.

‘Cunt!’ he seethed.

Corrie gasped.

The secretaries giggled.

Corrie turned away quickly, damned if she was going to apologize now, and went into Bob’s office.

‘It’s customary, Corrie,’ Bob began, ‘for the research team to stay in the office to watch transmission. Your absence was noted last night.’

Corrie’s cheeks blazed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, ‘I didn’t realize. It won’t happen again.’

‘Good.’

‘Is that all?’ she said, when he didn’t continue.

He sighed. ‘No. I’m afraid it’s not.’

Corrie’s heart churned. Whatever else he had to say she knew she wasn’t going to like it.

‘I know you’ve only been here a couple of days,’ he said, ‘but several people have already remarked on your attitude. Personally speaking I think you’re doing a grand job, it’s not easy dealing with all those egos out there, but try to remember your position – and have a little more respect, eh?’

Boiling with indignation Corrie managed a brief, though polite, ‘Of course,’ and left the office.

– 6 –

SIX WEEKS LATER
things still hadn’t improved. Annalise was the only one who spoke civilly to Corrie, but Annalise was rarely in the office. She was either out filming, closeted in the edit suite or at home recovering from a hangover.

By now Corrie had discovered the reason behind the secretaries’ animosity. They believed that they should have been offered the job as research assistant and felt that Corrie had come in over their heads. There were times when Corrie was tempted to tell them to have the bloody job, but she managed to bite her tongue and got on with whatever task she had been asked to do. As for the others, Alan Fox, she now realized, was governing their hostility. He was much older than the other reporters, had been in the game a lot longer, fancied himself as a bit of a Romeo, and, due to the fact that he presented the programme when Luke wasn’t around, was treated, and behaved, as though
he
were king pin. Whether it was because of his seniority and track record, or his caustic wit, Corrie wasn’t sure, but it seemed that everyone, producers, researchers and reporters alike, were all apt, like puppets, to dance to any tune he called. And, at the end of the day when he invited people over to the wine bar for a drink, Corrie noticed that no one ever refused, just as she noticed that she was never included.

She lived for the days when he was out on a story, when at least she felt she could breathe. She had now become the butt of his jokes, which were all the more painful for being so subtly delivered that she didn’t always understand them. At least when he wasn’t there people left her alone.

Some of the worst times though were when the office was full, but quiet, and she had nothing to do. Unless Annalise was there she was never included in the conversation, so she had no choice but to sit in her isolated chair staring out of the window of the tower block, gazing down onto the rooftops below and the River Thames. Occasionally she would try to alleviate her acute self-consciousness by reading a newspaper, but it seemed that every paper she picked up was suddenly wanted by someone else. Corrie simply smiled and handed it over. Not for a minute did she give any indication of how much they were hurting her, nor of how sickened she was by the way none of them had the guts to go against Alan. She simply took it, was always polite, then returned each evening to the loneliness of the Regent’s Park flat and cried herself to sleep.

When Annalise was there things in truth weren’t so much better, but at least Annalise was the centre of attention then, instead of Alan Fox. Annalise was so bubbly and lively and outrageous everyone seemed to love her. And no one could blame them for that, since apart from her mischievous sense of humour, refreshing honesty and wit, she had a remarkable capacity for being teased, and an
equally
remarkable talent for making everyone feel quite special.

The strange thing was that she didn’t seem to notice Corrie’s misery at all. She simply behaved as though everything was wonderful, like Corrie was having a marvellous time working for TW and wasn’t life just terrific? Everyone was aware of her relationship with Luke – Annalise did nothing to hide it – but what anyone thought about it Corrie had no idea, she was not privy to office gossip. For her part she did wonder from time to time about the dark circles which sometimes appeared under Annalise’s eyes. Annalise unfailingly attributed them to a hangover, but Corrie wasn’t always convinced, since there were days when Annalise’s intrinsic jubilation of life didn’t quite ring true. Corrie was certain this had something to do with Luke, and wondered what his relationship with Annalise really meant to him – she guessed not as much as it did to Annalise.

She’d never yet spoken to Luke Fitzpatrick, and doubted he even knew she was there. His office, like Bob’s, was off the main production unit, but unlike Bob’s it had no window onto the comings and goings of the team. He wasn’t there every day either, but when he was she loved to watch the way he joked around with everyone, or reshaped their ideas to something that invariably worked better. She liked him, instinctively, mainly because of the way he sent himself up over his popularity with the viewing public. Corrie was astounded to discover that some adoring fans actually sent him nude photographs of themselves, along with shockingly explicit descriptions of what they would like to do to him. When these photographs circulated the office they never reached Corrie, but she knew from the comments and hilarity that not all the photographs were of women. Julia, Luke’s secretary, had the thankless task of replying to his fan mail, popping a signed photograph of
him
into each envelope. Paula wanted one, but Corrie didn’t have the nerve to ask.

For the most part she kept herself to herself and observed everything quietly from the wings. On the whole it was hell, but she had now reached the point where she would rather die than allow herself to give in. She was going to use this time to learn. She was already absorbing all the information that came her way and studying how the programmes were made, from research to transmission. She listened hard to all the production meetings that took place in the general office, and tried to figure out for herself why some things worked and others didn’t. She had started buying her own newspapers to bone up on what was going on in the world, and when the time was right she was going to say to hell with TW and find herself a job in another production company. One where she would be given an opportunity to excel. Where she might even yet rise to the top. And where, please God, she might one day find herself in a position to employ – or not – Alan Fox and his sycophants. Then it would be her turn to watch them suffer. She could hardly wait for the day.