In the toilet, having deposited the plant next to the sink, I stared at my sweating face. There was a smear of blood on my cheek, which I wiped off with a paper towel. Despite a spot brewing on my chin, I thought I looked pretty good. Maybe it was the nap. Undoing another button on my blouse, I pouted at myself like one of those young things on Instagram. Hot to trot, @Clover_Hendry_TV.
Back in my office, Petroc was leaning against the desk eating a pot of Bircher muesli. I put my newly watered succulent next to the monitor.
‘Well, that was unexpected,’ he mumbled, waving his spoon at me. ‘Are you having some sort of breakdown? Like when you turned forty and started flossing all the time? That’s what I told Monty. Everyone’s having them, apparently. Delayed fall-out from the pandemic. He’ll probably pay for therapy, if you like.’
‘I don’t need therapy,’ I replied, rifling through my drawers. ‘I need him to get off my back.’ At the bottom of the filing cabinet, there was a sign someone bought me as a Secret Santa Christmas present. Stalking to the door, I hung it outside: ‘Piss Off, I’m Working’. That should do it. Except I had no intention of working. Or even being there. I had to get away, right now. It was imperative. I picked up my bag.
‘Somewhere you need to be?’
I nodded, getting out an elastic band to tie back my matted hair. ‘Going shopping. And for lunch. And maybe an art gallery.’ BIG BABY. There was an Art Andra exhibition in Clifton, which I’d wanted to see but hadn’t. Why hadn’t I? I couldn’t remember. If I wanted to go, why didn’t I just go?
‘Seriously, what’s going on? You’re crazy. You’ve never done this before.’
‘You’re right. I’ve never been to an art gallery during office hours. Vince is always telling us to think outside the box. Maybe I’ll have an amazing idea for a show.’ I shouldered my bag and gestured for him to get out of the way.
‘I’m going to call Robbie and tell him you had a funny turn.’
‘Tell him he’s making dinner tonight.’ I brushed past him, blood thundering in my ears. There’s a bit in the Twilight series when Bella Swan becomes a vampire – that was the last book I managed to read, before I started The Blind Assassin – where everything feels heightened to her, like nothing in the past was real and this was the first true moment of existence. Something electric flowing through my veins, out the tips of my fingers, charging me. My head doesn’t hurt, I’m not tired, or anxious, or embarrassed, or vaguely melancholy. I don’t feel the urge to make a to-do list. I just want to eat a burrito, and see a sculpture of a massive fibreglass baby. If anyone tries to stop me, there’ll be hell to pay.
I feel fine. I feel like a vampire. Invincible. Deadly.
4
Before today, my chief aim in life was to avoid a scene, at all costs. I’ve always been frightened of them. Of confrontation, fuss, unpleasantness. My wedding day, for example.
Robbie proposed in a lackadaisical way, seventeen years ago, in the bathroom of a Travelodge near Milton Keynes. I was washing out the toothbrush holder because it was made of glass, and I figured we could put wine in it, even though it was more of a thimble. There was a bottle chilling on the window ledge outside – it was impossible to get through an evening in that bleak limbo of a room without sustenance of some kind. We were in the Travelodge because I was doing some godawful job in Bletchley Park, and Robbie thought he’d come along for the ride as there was a Roman villa near there he wanted to visit. He was excited about his impending trip, and probably got carried away.
‘I thought we might get married,’ he said mildly, idling in the doorway watching me scratch at the limescale on the bottom of the glass.
I was so surprised I nearly dropped it. And then instantly worried, as is my wont.
‘Has Rose put you up to this?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘No, were you expecting her to?’
I rinsed, mulling. The last time I’d seen my mother, she’d told me to dye my roots and then quoted some study about women’s fertility dropping off a cliff edge at thirty-five. Given I was still in my twenties at that point, this seemed precipitous in every sense. It wasn’t that she particularly liked Robbie; she just thought he was suitable husband material in the same way she believed any man on the street would make a fine spouse for a desperate case like me. Odd that my mother, a bitter divorcee, would still be such an ardent proponent of marriage when her own floundered so spectacularly, my father running off to Spain with a woman he met at a conference on wind engineering. Yet she retained her faith in the institution, in what it would provide for me. I suppose it was a compliment, in a way, that she thought it was still a possibility. She’d already given up on my sister Maz, who’s three years younger than me, because she’d decided to go to agricultural college, which my mother considered akin to entering a nunnery in terms of marriage prospects.
Thinking about my mother distracted me from this, my first proposal. And last, I assumed, because I figured I was going to say yes, or this mini-break could turn really awkward. Of course, we might divorce, and I might get another proposal at a later date, so technically it might not be my last proposal, although I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to marry me with a failed marriage under my belt, possibly with kids in tow, not to mention my bristling mama Rose.
‘Do you need some more time?’ Robbie had a quizzical expression; he knew me well enough by that point to guess my thought processes.
‘Sorry,’ I said, dashing the image of me as a not-dashing divorcee. ‘I was just thinking it through.’
‘And?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said, and he gave me his grandmother’s ring, which was an emerald set between two diamonds. The emerald was rectangular cut, which is called an emerald cut, so it was an emerald emerald. When Robbie told me that I tittered, which isn’t really the correct response to being presented with an engagement ring. Afterwards, I found out rectangular is cheaper than round, and though I don’t want to cast aspersions on Robbie’s grandfather’s generosity as a suitor, it wasn’t quite what I would have chosen. But as an heirloom it was free, which was good because we were saving for a flat and I didn’t want him spending our deposit at Tiffany’s. Or, knowing Robbie, bidding for some artefact at Sotheby’s. I did – do – love him a lot because he was – is – the opposite of me, which balances things out. I need a lot of balancing; he’s a heavyweight in husband terms.
Anyway, as proposals go it was fine, and we drank the bottle chilling on the ledge, passing the toothbrush holder between us as we tipsily planned our wedding. He wanted to get married in the ruins of a priory in North Yorkshire; I wanted an Indian buffet; he wanted a Celtic theme; I wanted a cheese wedding cake; he wanted to source some nice champagne from a French supplier he knew; I liked the idea of a green dress with a bustle. We both wanted to keep it low-key, for us.
But it turned out it didn’t matter what we wanted, because my mother wanted something else. And what she wanted, she got, which was a church near Taunton and a reception at a spa hotel down the road; me trussed up in a meringue with Maz as the world’s most vacant (drunk) bridesmaid. Rose even arranged for a flower girl in a sequined cape – I didn’t know any little girls at that point, being a twenty-something-about-town whose fertility was nonetheless approaching a cliff edge, but she roped in her friend Ginny’s daughter . . . what was her name? Venetia! Sulky little madam, with blonde ringlets straight out of a Boden catalogue.
To be honest, I didn’t really mind any of it, because having decided I wanted to marry Robbie, I was keen to get it done so we could move into the flat we’d found in Essex Road – a fixer-upper with a roof terrace – but when it came to it, I did want to have a nice day. You know, just relax, enjoy the ceremony and then drink the hotel’s inferior fizz. But it went wrong from the very beginning.
On the morning of the wedding, we – Maz, my mother and I – met the vicar for a quick run-through of logistics. Father Stephen was an impatient man of the cloth, anxious to get shot of us so he could fit in a round of golf before the ceremony. My mother was fussing about the flowers – she’d ordered roses with glitter-fringed petals that had made Maz retch behind a pillar – Father Stephen kept checking his watch, and saying, ‘Mrs Ashton, if we could . . .’ and I just wanted it to be over so I could have a hot bath and fret about fitting into my not-chosen-by-me dress. But gradually I became aware of a buzzing above my head, the heralding of the disaster. And I could see then and there how the ceremony would pan out; how it would be mortifying and panic-inducing and protracted, but ultimately just, somehow . . . bloodless. No one would listen to me, and I would just bear it, get on with it, carry on. Sometimes I look down at that clunky oblong on my finger and think: what if I’d kicked up a fuss? What if I’d just stopped it all? Did it the way I wanted, with my Indian buffet and cheese cake and Robbie’s French champagne in the ruined priory? But I never did. I didn’t want to make a scene. Didn’t want to upset anyone. Didn’t want to say no.
* * *
So here we are. Today I’m a vampire, but rather than blood, what I really lust after is some time out. I just want to escape, cut loose, chill. With my newfound powers, I make it out of the office without getting sucked into another pointless meeting about profit margins or compliance. This involves standing behind an enormous yucca to avoid our finance director Elspeth, who wants to cut the editing budget of my show. It’s a £1.2 million pound commission, and we need every penny of it, but she wants to pinch them. Elspeth’s fantasy is that people start working for free; that Red Eye Productions, the company we work for, somehow achieves charitable status, and all our employees are trust fund babies who live in Daddy’s spare flat in Chelsea. A vision shared and fostered by Vince, who once tried to persuade an employee to take a pay cut because her youngest kid had started school and ‘You’re saving loads in childcare.’ He still doesn’t understand why that was unreasonable. The yucca also shields me from Imogen, Vince’s PA, who is wandering around holding a piece of paper. That fucking guest list. I don’t want to know.
Another executive producer, Oswald Phillips, is also on the warpath because he thinks I poached one of his researchers. I didn’t; she just came to me crying because she was sick of him making her stand in a tank of water to test the challenges they were devising for their new gameshow Gamesh-Ow! Because her salary is so low, she’s working in a bar in the evenings to make up the shortfall in her rent, but the manager didn’t like her turning up with wet hair. I referred her to HR, who shifted her onto my production, More Than They Can Chew, which she’s really happy with because she’s going to get to hang out with beautiful people in a beautiful vineyard in Somerset and have her share of the £1.2 million. But Oswald is not happy.
I step out from behind the yucca and hold up my index finger as he approaches. He stalls, confused.
‘Get lost, Oz,’ I say. ‘Quick sharp.’
I’m aware my behaviour is unusual, but it’s like being in a dream where you just go with it. I have a recurring nightmare where there’s an intruder in the vast house I’m staying in, because I forgot to close one of its many windows. I have to go round frantically shutting windows to keep him out, but never question where the hell I am and who put in all those entry points. For the seven years I’ve worked at Red Eye, I’ve been very patient with its most unpleasant and untalented executive. But now, looking back, I can’t quite see why. What did it achieve? It just made him ride roughshod over me, and wasted my time. Now I’m going to close the window in his stupid face.
‘Whatever you’re about to say, save it. Or better still, swallow it. And get out of my way.’
Oz mouths like a fish, and I stalk past, looking for a window to escape from.
‘But . . . but . . .’ he stammers, his face purpling like an aubergine.
‘Button it,’ I say, and make for the lift. Inside, there’s a brief moment of perfect stillness and solitude, before the doors ping open, and I’m faced with one of Red Eye’s lawyers, come to nitpick about some contractual issue.
‘Ah! Just the person I was hoping to . . .’
But the exit is right there – freedom and space and no one bothering me, just fibreglass babies and burritos and maybe a walk in the park. I put the flat of my palm over his hopeful face and push him aside, and then I’m through the sliding doors into Thunderbolt Square, blinking in summer sunshine, gone.
