Prime Time (8 page)

Roger patted me on the shoulder. ‘Anything we can do?'

Charlotte was brisk. ‘I'm going to take her out, get a few more drinks down her, and if she's still a misery after that I'll bring her back here for the night.'

Roger grinned. ‘Jolly good – there's always a much better breakfast when we've got guests.'

‘You should count yourself lucky you get breakfast at all,' said Charlotte, digging in her handbag. ‘Can't find my damn lighter now either.'

‘It's on the microwave – with your keys.' Roger crossed the kitchen and picked up both. ‘Are you sure you're not hormonal too?'

‘You'd be wearing the frying pan if I was.' Charlotte took the items from him and kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you, love.'

She turned and looked at me. ‘Come on, you get some slap on and let's get out of here. She's feeling old and ugly,' she added to Roger.

‘You look fine to me,' said Roger gallantly.

‘Not that he'd know,' said Charlotte. ‘He fancies the most peculiar women. Have you called that cab yet?'

‘What did you mean?' I asked, when we were settled at a table in Greens, a bottle of Frascati in the cooler in front of us. ‘That Roger fancies peculiar women?' I made my voice light and cheery. ‘He doesn't fancy anyone but you, does he?'

Charlotte laughed. ‘Oh, it's an old joke. I've told you before about the girl he was going out with before he met me. Very odd-looking woman. And you know that weather girl on the local news – the one with the weird eyebrows? He thinks she's pretty – always going on about her. He's got no taste whatsoever.' She grinned. ‘Except in marrying me, of course.'

‘He's a lovely bloke,' I said, taking another mouthful of wine. ‘Oh God, am I slurring? How undignified. Don't you think we are getting a bit old to drink this much?'

‘What's age got to do with it? You're getting obsessed. Roger's all right, yes. I'm pretty lucky. Bloody infuriating at times, but aren't they all? Though, you know,' she said, suddenly thoughtful, ‘he's been a bit funny lately.'

‘Has he?' I could feel my heart beating harder. ‘In what way?' What was I going to say if she said he'd started buying lots of new clothes and slapping on the aftershave. If he'd got a gold medallion or was waxing his chest …

Charlotte swirled her wine about and considered. ‘I don't know, really. Sort of very nice.'

‘He always seems nice to me,' I said carefully, wishing I hadn't had so much to drink and praying I wouldn't seem over-interested. ‘What's so different?'

‘I'm not sure. He's a bit distracted, yet unusually helpful and accommodating. I mean, Roger's usually so useless around the house. Yet he's suddenly started putting things in the dishwasher and he brought me tea in bed the other morning. Quite unnerving, really!'

I looked at her in alarm. Was this Roger's guilty conscience manifesting itself? Was she going to come to that very conclusion any second? Would she want to know what I thought?

But she was laughing. ‘I should capitalise on it while I can and get a new handbag out of him. And Becky could do with some jeans. We'll probably have a massive row tomorrow and it will all be back to normal.'

‘Perhaps he's just appreciating you more. Perhaps a colleague at work is going through a divorce or something,' I said wildly, ‘and he has suddenly realised how lucky he is to be happily married.'

Charlotte looked sceptical. ‘No, I think it's more likely he's trying to butter me up for something. He's in line for a really big bonus at work if nothing changes between now and Christmas. He's probably wondering how he can go about buying himself a new Jag instead of taking me on the holiday to St Kitts I've set my heart on.' She frowned. ‘What is odd, though, is –'

She stopped as a familiar figure floated across the floor toward us.

‘Darlings!'

Charlotte smoothed back her hair. ‘Clive!'

Clive posed for a second in front of us, to allow us to take in his pink silk shirt, skinny black Armani jeans and Italian leather shoes. As usual, a cloud of expensive scent wafted around him. Then he bent down and kissed Charlotte on both cheeks before twirling toward me and taking my face in his hands. He rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed happily.

‘I hear that you, my sweet, were a triumph …'

Chapter Eight

In all the worry about Roger I'd forgotten about the programme. But if I'd thought about it at all, the idea had been for me to watch it on my own – possibly with a cushion over my face – and then, if it was fit for public consumption and I was able to bear it, to have a second viewing of the video later with Stanley and Charlotte and her kids, so we could get all the jokes over in one go and then put it behind us.

But thanks to Clive, Charlotte was having none of it. She was waiting on the doorstep when I got back from the school run armed with a bag of croissants and a blank tape. ‘I've set the kids' machine at home of course and Roger has programmed the hard drive, so we should have it twice but, just in case, we'll record it here too. I said I'd take it to the next PTA meeting – Carole was in hysterics when I told her what had happened.'

‘Thanks,' I said crossly. ‘I didn't want anyone to know, really.'

‘Come off it – in a town like this?' Charlotte laughed. ‘All those yummy mummies like to pretend they spend their lives whisking up fairy cakes and arranging Baby Princess manicures and extra maths lessons but really it's wall to wall daytime TV. They start with Randolph and go straight through to
Bargain Hunt.
Everyone was bound to find out.'

I scowled at her. ‘That's not what you said when you were persuading me to do it – you said only about thirty people watched it in the whole country and they included nobody we knew.'

‘I lied,' said Charlotte cheerfully, switching my TV on and squatting down in front of the video recorder. ‘Get the bloody kettle on, for God's sake.'

She was on her second croissant by the time I brought the mugs in. I handed her one and flopped down on the sofa beside her. ‘This is going to be horrendous,' I said.

‘Clive reckons you went down a storm,' Charlotte pushed the bag of pastries toward me. ‘He says you look a bit frightened at first, but they all loved the bit where you started screeching.'

‘What about my make-up? I meant to ask him that the other night. The cheapskates. Didn't he promise me …?'

‘He says he didn't realise they'd stopped doing it. It wasn't cuts – they're going for the more natural look. They like to see when people go all red and blotchy.'

‘Well, that's bloody great,' I began, clapping a hand to my mouth as I saw the graphics that had just appeared on the screen. ‘Oh my God!' I sunk into the sofa as the opening music began and Randolph Kendall loomed large in front of us. ‘They used it all up on him, more like!'

Though actually he looked less orange on screen. Unlike me. I recoiled as I spotted myself hunched in my front row seat – body like a misshapen Satsuma, face positively ashen, and looking as though I'd just been told I had three days to live.

‘Why did I do this?' I wailed to Charlotte, who wasn't listening.

‘There I am!' She jabbed a gleeful finger at the screen. ‘And there's Doris. Look, you can see her grinding her teeth already. Ha! There I am again. That was a terrible blouse that girl next to me had on …'

She kept up a joyful commentary all through Maureen and Jean and Brian, while I cringed inside, waiting for the moment when I would start speaking.

‘Ah! Here you are,' yelled Charlotte as the camera panned in so horribly close you could see the hairs up my nose. My voice sounded strange and my hands were flapping about all over the place but I looked calmer than I remember feeling.

‘I had no idea I pulled all those faces when I speak,' I said in wonder.

‘Oh yes,' said Charlotte airily. ‘You've always looked freaky as soon as you get excited about anything. Hey, look at you now,' she shrieked. ‘Oh my God, Lu – look,
look
!'

My face was contorted into the sort of “snarl like a wolf” expression recommended on the
Save-Yourself-Surgery
video of facial exercises that had been Charlotte's idea of a witty birthday present, and I was waving both arms now.

I turned away and groaned.

‘You tell 'em, love,' said Charlotte, grinning. I looked back briefly as the camera panned into my open mouth, while my voice rose in a crescendo. Back on my own sofa, I blocked my ears and firmly shut my eyes …

The phone rang almost as soon as the credits began to roll.

‘Oh Lord, I hope that's not my mother,' I said. ‘If she's seen it there'll be hell to pay. She'll be saying I should have sat up straighter and why wasn't I wearing a nice navy suit with my hair set?'

But it was Alicia.

‘Did you see it?' she cried, the moment I picked up the receiver. ‘I'm sitting here with Gran – we've been pissing ourselves laughing.'

‘I'm sitting here groaning,' I told her. ‘I can't believe how awful I looked.'

‘You looked cool,' said Alicia dismissively, ‘and I reckon we made a jolly good team. Now, I've downloaded the form for this cookery programme, and filled in most of it. All you have to do is answer your questions and get them back to me – what's your email address?'

‘Oh no, I really don't think –'

‘Yes – go on. They definitely do your make-up on this one – I told you my friend Shirley's been on. And one of you wins five hundred quid – we can split it, whoever it is. Come on Laura – £250 for a few hours and a bit of a laugh.'

‘I don't even know what I have to do.'

‘Well, watch it at 5.30 p.m. – it's funny. I'll phone back this evening.'

‘No, listen. Alicia …'

‘Oh, and Gran says hi. Catch you later.'

‘Where did she get my number from anyway?' I asked Charlotte, as I put the phone down.

‘I gave it to her. Oh bloody hell – look at the time. I'm supposed to be showing someone round a house at North Foreland in five minutes – must scoot.'

She gave me a hug. ‘You TV star, you. Want to come round tonight and we'll watch it with all the kids?'

‘No, not really. I'd rather sit here with my head in a bucket.'

‘I'll see you about six. I'll do spaghetti.'

When she'd gone, I went upstairs to consider the delights the day held. Namely finishing the copy for a double-glazing brochure filled with plastic-looking men in suits pointing at equally plastic-looking white windows while a suitably thrilled-looking family of four stood arm in arm surveying their new heating bills, slashed to a fraction of their normal size, by the installation of Glow-Glass Windows and Doors …

I thought about Alicia as I waited for my computer to whirr into life and yesterday's page to come up on the screen. I didn't want to do any more TV, that was for sure, but there was something attractive about being around young people who still had some drive. I liked Alicia's energy – the way she was bent on success. I remembered Daniel saying it about Emily. With his usual tact and sensitivity, he'd thought nothing of listing his new girlfriend's latest achievements. Telling me how well she'd done, all the top clients she'd had. ‘She's very ambitious,' he'd finished with pride.

Was that the must-have quality now? To be ambitious? To make something of yourself, as Daniel had put it.

Once, it had been enough to earn sufficient funds to pay the mortgage. To have a child. Daniel had been promoted every few years since his initial days of filing and form-filling in the civil service but he'd always just accepted this as the natural order of things. He'd never shown any particular excitement or hunger to be elevated up the ranks. He'd take the odd exam, come home and tell me he'd been put up a grade. I'd say well done, and we'd both agree the extra money would be useful and we'd turn on
EastEnders
. There was no talk of ambition then.

In fact, when Stanley was a few months old and I still couldn't stop crying and had sat at my computer trying to write an ad campaign for Mike, tears dripping, feeling as though the copy was in a language I couldn't understand, it was Daniel who'd phoned Mike and said I wasn't ready to be back at work.

‘We'll manage,' he'd said to me. ‘The money isn't worth you putting yourself through this. You're looking after our baby – that's more important than any sort of paid job.' No mention of ambition then either.

But now, he was impressed with career, money, status … fame?

‘She's made something of her life,' he'd said accusingly. The implication being that I hadn't. I had sat back and done the same job writing brochure copy for the same clients for ten years, driven back and forth down the same roads on the same school runs, gone to the same supermarkets and now I was 42, with the same face looking ever more ravaged, and nobody would employ me now even if I did want to get on a ladder. It was all rather too late …

‘Why are you watching this?' asked Stanley in surprise, coming into the sitting room at 5 p.m. to find me in front of the TV.

‘One of the women I was on the other programme with wants me to go on it with her.'

Stanley raised his eyebrows. ‘Cooking?'

‘I might win some money.'

‘Can I have the new iPhone if you do?' Stanley looked hopeful.

‘It might not be
that
much money,' I said hastily. ‘But who knows,' I added, giving him a small wink as his face fell again. ‘We've got a couple of months till your birthday.'

I smiled at him, thinking that if I could make the £250 I could offer to pay for the handset and Daniel could provide the swingeing monthly payments for the contract they'd make us have. After all, Stanley did need a better phone now he was at secondary school; the old one of Daniel's he carried in case of emergency was on its last legs, and why shouldn't he have the latest gadget for once?

Maybe it would give him a bit more street cred with the other kids –make them treat him like one of the gang. The more I thought about it, the more the idea took hold. If I went on the TV programme I could try to win the money for my son. It would only take a few hours, after all, and he deserved something nice. I'd do it for him. For Stanley …

‘Come off it,' said Charlotte that evening as she strained the pasta. ‘You've got the TV bug. Stars in your eyes! You just fancy yourself on the box again.'

‘It might be a bit of fun.'

‘Can I come?'

‘I don't know, Alicia is sorting it. But in the meantime, I've got to fill in all these bloody forms.'

Charlotte put a large, steaming bowl on the table and picked them up.

‘An amusing anecdote? The shepherd's pie against the wall again?'

‘It was lasagne, and no thank you. Something funny, it says.' I looked at her desperately. ‘What's happened to me that's funny?'

‘What about that time you fell asleep with your head in the trifle?'

‘
No
.'

‘Or when you got locked in the loo at Janice's hen night. Now that
was
funny–'

‘Not for me it wasn't – I was in there hours.'

Charlotte waved a hand. ‘Just make something up.'

‘Like what? And, oh God, look at this one: What is your greatest achievement?'

Charlotte considered. ‘Forcing someone to marry you?'

‘Getting rid of him again,' I corrected sourly.

‘Look,' said Charlotte, putting a pot of parmesan cheese and a pile of cutlery in front of me, ‘you just need to make yourself sound as though you can say something witty when asked. If you sound like a dreary old divorced housewife they won't touch you with a barge pole.'

She sat down opposite me and picked up the pen. ‘I'll fill it in – you lay the table and get the wine open. I always find a glass of vino inspiring in these situations.' She looked at the paper in front of her. ‘Who would you love to have dinner with?'

‘You. That gorgeous young bloke who's on
Strictly Come Dancing
. I don't know.'

‘We'll say Jeremy Paxman – they won't be expecting that. Say you go weak at the knees when the
Newsnight
theme tune comes on.'

‘But I don't …'

‘What would you spend a million pounds on?

‘Um, er, I'm not sure. Maybe a bigger house. Stanley's bedroom is a bit small …'

Charlotte wrote rapidly. ‘Diamonds, fast cars, loose men, and a boob job. What is your favourite party trick?'

‘You can't talk about boobs and I haven't got one.'

She thought for a moment and then bent over the paper once more. ‘Playing – the – spoons.'

‘Charlotte!' I squeaked. ‘Come on – I can't do that.'

Charlotte looked up and sighed. ‘It's a
joke
,' she said wearily. ‘Remember jokes?'