‘Your house?’ Petroc’s church conversion has been a millstone.
He sticks out his lower lip. ‘We’ve found bodies.’
‘You what?’
‘Not like that. Graves, you know. In the garden. Graveyard. Whatever.’
I put a hand on his arm. ‘Is it going to be difficult?’
‘We’re going to need God to step in and sort it all out.’
‘I’m sorry. For everything.’
‘I know you are.’
‘I’ve got to go. You’ll do your bit?’
‘With panache, as ever. Go on, do your thing.’
And off I go, to save the day.
40
‘Who wrote this?’
He was waving a print-out in Beatnik Media’s open-plan office, drinking coffee from a mug that said ‘rock and roll through and through’. He had very thick blond hair that stuck up in all directions in a way that could have been accidental or by design, it was hard to tell, and he wore his incredibly well-cut suits casually mussed, like James Bond after chasing down a villain. I’d seen him around Beatnik at various points, always doing something while he was doing something else – talking on the phone as he got in the lift, making notes as he ate a sandwich, tying his tie (carelessly) as he asked a PA to book him a table. He was all over the place.
In meetings, he would bring in work and sit unashamedly getting on with it while the managing director, a mild-mannered, harassed bloke called Martin, ploughed through projections and commissioning opportunities, boring us all rigid. I liked that about him, that he didn’t care, and wished I dared do the same. There was a restless air of glamour about him, a flippancy and a sense that everything was a joke, and I liked that too, at the time.
‘Who wrote this?’ he asked again.
I caught sight of the show’s title on the paper. ‘Me. I wrote it.’
A lowly researcher, busy casting Bump in the Night, writing treatments on the side for their head of development, because I wanted to please everyone and couldn’t say no.
He looked down at me, sitting at my desk, studiously going over my locations. ‘Finally,’ he said. ‘We have someone around here who can string a sentence.’
The treatment I’d written was for a show he was trying to sell, a kind of climbing competition for amateur mountaineers, in various exotic locations around the world. It was a cool, if expensive, idea and I’d written it up in a tongue-in-cheek tone that I hoped would tickle him. I felt my cheeks grow warm, and focused on a Norfolk barn conversion whose owners had discovered that a farm girl hanged herself there two hundred years ago. It was an interesting story but, as my producer Sharon had asked, ‘What are we actually going to see, unless there’s a skeleton still dangling there?’ It was a problem I had yet to solve.
‘Climb Every Mountain is a fun title,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure about the connotations. Makes me picture wimples and warbling. Can you rethink? Apart from that it’s great. Do you want to come to the pitch with me?’
And there it was; a foot in the door. I’d never been invited to a pitch before – they were not for the likes of humble casting researchers. That was another winning thing about him, he wasn’t remotely interested in hierarchies or who earned what – it just didn’t concern him. He was a well-respected executive producer, but I’d seen him talk to interns, admin staff, canteen staff, in exactly the same way he talked to Martin. Off-hand, charming, like we were all in on the joke.
We got a cab to ITV, and talked the whole way there, about his show and mine. He chuckled until he pinched tears out of his eyes when I told him about a poltergeist in Cardiff that turned out to be a squirrel trapped in a chimney, and he had several useful suggestions for upping the ante in the Norfolk barn. In return, we discussed the mountaineering competition, the problem of litter on Mount Everest, his own plan to climb it one day. By the time we arrived at the channel we were both breathless with laughter and ideas. I felt charged, energized, and it carried me through the meeting with the forbidding commissioner who eyed me as though I was a frozen corpse on the south face. Such was the force of his personality that we left with development money to research the project further, and when he suggested a celebratory drink after I didn’t think anything of it. There wasn’t anything in it – we had a glass of champagne in a nearby hotel bar and, when we’d finished, he saluted me, said ‘Nice work, Ms Ashton,’ and I left, heady from the fizz and the thought that I’d done well. After that he called me ‘Four-Leaf’, said I brought him luck, took me under his wing, just like I’d imagined someone might. And he was the perfect gentleman, until he wasn’t. Until the joke wore thin, and I realized it was on me.
As a woman, you always worry about someone coming up on you in dark alleyways, surprising you from behind, a hand over your mouth to stop you screaming. And you’re taught how to avoid it – hold your keys or an alarm in your hand, don’t tie your hair back, tell a friend where you’ll be, don’t wear that, watch your drinks. It’s all on you to prevent it, to see it coming, stop it. But sometimes it’s not an alleyway and it’s not a sudden surprise. It’s right out in the open, gradually, insidiously, worming its way in until you’re stuck with your back against the wall. And, like everything else, you feel it’s all your fault.
Everything was a joke to him, even the worst, most terrible things. Nothing mattered, and no one. Not the mightiest CEO nor the lowliest intern. Certainly not little Four-Leaf Clover, always so obliging, so ready to please.
I saw him on the guest list almost immediately this morning, eyes snagging on that horribly familiar, skin-prickling name that sent my headache off the charts, pounding away, making me groan with the pain of it. Back from America, invited to our screening, in case he wants to buy the format, take it across the pond, make Vince millions. I’d always known it was a possibility that I’d run into him again, that the box would be opened and the curses would spill forth. But I’d managed to put it off for so long and persuaded myself it was better this way – just try to forget it happened, move on with your life, keep your head down, the plates spinning. Sometimes I thought I’d managed it, but the email proved otherwise.
But for a nail the shoe was lost,
But for a shoe the horse was lost,
But for a horse the knight was lost,
But for a knight the battle was lost,
But for a battle the kingdom was lost.
All for the want of a horseshoe nail.
But for my mother my nerve was lost. But for my nerve, my career was lost. But for my career my ‘no’ was lost. But for my ‘no’ my world was lost . . . All for the want of a loving mother, all for the want of trying to please, pandering, putting everyone else’s needs first. Rose got her thorns into me, ensured I was compliant, and that other people could continue the process. Over and over again, until I reached my limit.
And the headache intensified, increasing to a pitch where I couldn’t bear it any more, had to do something, anything to take away the pain, make it go away. So I took the drugs, and got knocked out, and since then something has been unhinged, flapping madly, directing me, telling me what to do, what camera angles are needed, writing the script for this day, this day when I take back the kingdom.
* * *
After leaving Bigwig in the cloakroom with an accommodating attendant, I barrel back into the main bar area and run slap-bang into Vince.
He folds his arms. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
I don’t have time for either. There’s a call sheet in my head and we’re on a tight schedule.
‘The good news?’
‘The good news is I’m saving money because you’re not getting any kind of a raise. And the reason you’re not getting your raise is because of the bad news. David pulled out.’
