About That Night

‘Oh, Lola. You didn’t tell me! So no more late-night visits after the show?’

‘Not for a few weeks, no.’ Lola looks up, sharply. ‘You won’t tell Matthew, will you?’

‘If you haven’t seen Ricky – I mean, alone – for a while, then I don’t see how it could be relevant,’ she says slowly, glancing over at her boss. ‘But Lola, I’m not sure it’s as secret as you think it is…’

‘Has anyone from the team said anything to you?’

Elizabeth considers this for a moment. When she’d first gone to discuss her presenter’s bad behaviour on the show with Matthew, he’d asked if Ricky had ‘inappropriately’ propositioned anyone on the team. Elizabeth had said, truthfully, that no one had complained and Matthew seemed very relieved. But she’s wondered a lot since about that word ‘inappropriate’. Was it inappropriate that Lola should phone Ricky late at night, when she ‘unexpectedly’ found herself close to his Kensington house? Or inappropriate that she should accept his offer of a nightcap – and then a bacon butty? Or inappropriate that she should then go back for more at Ricky’s urging? Inappropriate maybe, but definitely consensual. Over the years, Ricky had entertained a number of dalliances – Lola was merely the latest. They’d all lived with it, condoned it, covered for him, even. And Lola is her best friend. No, Elizabeth isn’t about to tell tales about this affair.

‘No, no one from the team.’ (Elizabeth decides that Matthew doesn’t really qualify for this distinction.) ‘Why don’t you go home, Lo? Nothing’s going to happen here. Let’s speak in the morning. I’ve got to see the police again at 10. I’ll call you after that.’

‘Promise?’

‘Of course.’ Elizabeth hugs her. ‘By the way, hon – do you know who Ricky had lunch with yesterday, when he missed our planning meeting?’

Lola bends down to pick up her vintage peep-toes, which she’d dramatically discarded in the heat of the crisis. ‘Oh yes. Didn’t you know? He had lunch with the boss.’

Elizabeth turns to her in surprise. ‘With Matthew?’

Lola nods.

‘Oh.’ She glances over at the whispering two men in the corner of the room. ‘Funny. Matthew didn’t mention it.’

Lola looks at Elizabeth ironically and she smiles ruefully back at her. ‘Yeah, you’re right, hon. Of course, knowledge is power.’ She kisses Lola on the cheek.

‘Will you be okay yourself? I mean, going home to an empty flat?’ Lola looks at Elizabeth meaningfully.

Elizabeth feels her sides constrict and her heart sink as she thinks of the deathly silence waiting for her: the unlit rooms, the unoccupied double bed. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, turning away.

‘Well, if you’re sure. Speak tomorrow. Call me.’ Lola squeezes her hand and leaves.

Elizabeth makes a half-hearted attempt to stash the empty bottles into an already overflowing recycling bin. She realises her silk shirt is clammy and clinging uncomfortably to her flesh. There are some unidentifiable stains on the front of it. She leans against the sofa and runs the shaking fingers of one hand through her fringe – her forehead is damp and strands of dark hair fall wetly on to her cheeks. The waistband of her skirt suddenly feels tight and restrictive; she feels she might have trouble breathing. She catches Matthew looking across at her, his face creased with concern. Kevin leaves the room with a brief nod in her direction.

Matthew puts down his whisky glass and moves towards her. ‘How you doing, kiddo?’

Elizabeth is thirty-five but it’s somehow become accepted between them that he will occasionally confuse her, his most senior female producer, with his teenage daughter Millie. It’s a subtle but useful reference to the power play between them and Elizabeth is perfectly aware why he does it. And equally, she knows that occasionally she finds it comforting to treat Matthew like a dad. For too many long years now, she hasn’t had a dad – and the older she gets, the more she realises what a void this is in her life. She’s genuinely fond of her boss; she indulges all his foibles (as you would a dad) and allows him to tell his celebrity anecdotes uninterrupted, even though she’s heard them a hundred times before. It’s a purely professional partnership but it works well and she’s grown to feel genuinely fond of him, especially given his recent trauma. But she’s no longer sure she needs Matthew – or any boss, in fact. She’s begun to harbour dreams of setting up a production company of her own. It’s high time, she thinks, to call the shots herself.

‘Is someone going to the hospital to meet Lorna?’

‘Yes, Kev’s organising it. She’ll need help with the press – word is creeping out.’

‘I hear you had lunch with Ricky yesterday.’ She speaks more sharply than intended.

Matthew raises his eyebrows. ‘Is that a question?’

‘Yes, I think it is. Especially as he missed our programme planning meeting because of it.’

‘Did he?’ Her boss moves to open the door in an elaborate display of chivalry and gestures for her to lead the way out. ‘Well, yes, I had lunch with Ricky. At The Ivy actually. I suspect there may be paparazzi shots, which are bound to get used once the papers hear about this. Kevin’s checking it out now.’ Matthew seems quite pleased at the prospect of some intrusive evidence of his celebrity lunch.

Elizabeth hesitates at the open door. ‘Will you be telling the police?’

‘Well, yes. If it comes up.’ Matthew pauses. ‘Actually, as lunches with Ricky Clough go, this wasn’t so bad. He seemed, well, reconciled to the inevitable.’

‘The inevitable? Did you tell him we’re making a new show without him?’ Elizabeth stops in surprise.

‘Yes, I did. Although actually I think he knew anyway. He just wanted confirmation. But yes, Ricky took it remarkably well. He asked if the new show was with Hutch, and I said it was. He had quite a few very nasty things to say about Hutch and what he thought were his fatal flaws. Nothing I wasn’t expecting.’ Matthew gestures that they should continue walking and Elizabeth, whose face is aflame at the mention of Hutch’s name, avoids looking at him as he continues. ‘But you know, Ricky seemed more relaxed about his future than I’ve seen him for a while. There was none of that recent aggression. He had a few ideas for new shows himself – they were all terrible, of course – but I got the impression his heart wasn’t in it. I think maybe he was beginning to think about other things he wanted to do in life.’

Elizabeth doubts this. She can’t imagine Ricky enjoying a life out of the spotlight. And she isn’t entirely sure they can judge him, notorious as he was for his volatile mood swings, by just one day’s good behaviour. But of course it’s irrelevant now. Pointless. Poor Ricky. She suddenly finds her eyes welling. ‘Well… That’s a real shame, given…’ A tear creeps out of the corner of her eye and she rubs it away, fiercely.

Matthew grabs her hand. ‘I know, I know. It’s terrible, Elizabeth. I’m going to miss him too. He was brilliant in his heyday. Unbeatable. But he was living on the edge – you know he was. His appetites were too large. He was caning it, night after night. He’s not a child, he knew what he was doing. It’s not your fault. It’s not our fault.’

‘But he was a child in so many ways… We indulged him just like we would a child! And it feels like my fault. I was supposed to be in charge this evening. Why didn’t I spot it? Why didn’t I see that he was so ill?’ A shuddering sob escapes.

‘Elizabeth, listen. In this business, we’re all control freaks. But there are some things we simply can’t control. No producer – not even one as good as you – can stop nature taking its course.’ He smiles at her. She knows that she will tuck away his rare compliment for a future rainy, otherwise unrewarding day, but for now she gratefully accepts the neatly pressed hanky he hands her.

‘Have you got a car to take you home?’ he asks, still smiling. ‘Take mine. I might walk for a bit.’

‘Are you sure?’

The Controller is very sure. Elizabeth’s phone call had pulled him away from a meeting in a discreet hotel room where the irresistibly long-legged hostess of his lunchtime consumer show is waiting to consume him. She’s blonde and favours the sort of wrap dresses that show just about enough of a luscious cleavage (although some viewers have written in to complain that her breasts are putting them off their sandwiches). He figures that he’ll get more comfort there than he will from going home to Hampstead and his wife, the history don, who despairs of absolutely everything to do with his job – other than its considerable income.

Tears are now falling freely down Elizabeth’s cheeks and she allows herself to be ushered into Matthew’s Mercedes with its deep leather seats and the heady smell of aftershave. Winston, Matthew’s driver, tilts his mirror to look at her in the back seat and then silently hands her a box of tissues. As the car pulls away from the kerb, she sees Deniz Pegasus, Ricky’s friend and manager, lurking in the shadows of the building. He steps out and moves towards the car but without saying anything, Winston gently presses down on the accelerator and they glide smoothly past him. Elizabeth turns and looks out of the back window to see Deniz standing in the street, his legs apart, his arms outstretched, watching her go. ‘Thank you,’ she says to Winston. He nods at her in the rear-view mirror. She pulls the hood of her parka low down over her face, sinks back into the seat and Winston turns up some soft jazz. The car slides like a snake, stealthy and smooth, through the London night.

Chapter Three

Elizabeth woke alone in her flat the following morning, having had no more than a couple of hours’ sleep and feeling parched and nauseous. The day was already bright and spring-like. The cherry blossom in the street was showering dusty blooms, leaving a pale pink underlay on the pavement. She reached for her mobile to check her messages. The blank screen was a stark reminder of how changed things already were and brought with it a fresh wave of grief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken to a morning with no texts. Especially none from Ricky. He’d spend his nights sending her random ideas for the shows, feverish thoughts – and the occasional ridiculous demand. There had been middle-of-the-night phone calls as well, always in theory about some urgent piece of show business, but quite often giving way to monotone, paranoid monologues, where he lectured her on the failings of her production team.

There was no text from Hutch, either. Over the last few months, he’d sometimes send her funny, sexy, late-night messages – usually comments on the poems she was making him read (‘I’ve got that old letch John Donne in bed with me tonight. Unruly son. He’ll do/ But he’s not you.’) Elizabeth didn’t always respond to these suggestive texts; she was uncomfortably aware that they were sometimes sent when he was hiding in the bathroom or lurking in the shadows of his back garden. But there was nothing today. It was possible that he still hadn’t seen any of the gossip circulating on social media, and she hadn’t called or texted to tell him the news last night. She’d felt too drained somehow, too tired, too sick; she hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Over the last few weeks – since Ricky’s party – she’d felt that in every conversation with Hutch she was dancing on eggshells.

She pulled on a jumper he’d left in her room the night before last, when he’d told her that he loved her and she’d allowed herself to believe the world was still rich with possibilities. She wandered barelegged into the tiny kitchen, opened the fridge door and drank milk straight from the bottle. Then she leaned against the long sash window, gazing down at the street, where a road sweeper was wheeling his barrow of blossoms while jabbering away on his mobile in Polish. The jumper still smelled of Hutch and she hugged it round her, closer. Ricky dead! How was that possible? The man who had seemed so much larger than life!

Elizabeth knew something about loss. She knew that things can be snatched away when you’re least expecting it, perhaps when you’re still not grown up, not fully the person you’re going to be. That you might get a phone call in the wrong place or at the wrong time of day and that moment will not only change your life, it will change your entire view of life. Elizabeth was seventeen when her dad died out of the blue. She was at school and she had to go and see the headmistress, who sat on the wrong side of the desk and looked very sad. She handed her the phone and Elizabeth could hardly recognise the voice of her mother, cracked and hoarse, the terrible words strangled in her throat. The school organised a taxi to take her home and Elizabeth knew even then, in the back of the cab, that she’d just learned a lesson many people escape ever having to learn: that the world can be very fragile and your grip on it uncertain.

Elizabeth made some tea and forced herself to eat some dry toast. She was always astonished to find her kitchen empty of anything resembling butter or jam. She knew these things had to be purchased with forethought from a supermarket – she just never seemed to have the forethought. Jamie, when he’d lived with her, had been good at keeping up the supplies, religiously filling out the Tesco order online, taking care to seek out all the organic options, replacing Elizabeth’s Jammie Dodgers with nourishing seeds and nuts. At times like these, Elizabeth hated living alone. She didn’t want to be by herself, this morning of all mornings. She missed the lie-ins, the cuddles, the cups of tea in bed, the cleaning of teeth side by side, spitting in unison into the basin. She missed Jamie.

Jamie! The day that should’ve been her happiest – her wedding day – was a year ago, almost to the day. Another terrible May day.

When Elizabeth told her mum the date of her wedding six weeks beforehand, the corners of Maureen’s mouth had drooped and she’d murmured, ‘Marry in May and rue the day.’ Elizabeth had been furious. But later she had to acknowledge that her mum, through some spooky umbilical instinct, seemed to know something then that Elizabeth barely knew herself.

The whole wedding had been a whirlwind, although she and Jamie had met in their first week at uni and had shared a flat for the last ten years. Elizabeth had assumed they’d just continue to live together and then – quite soon, she hoped – have a baby. Jamie had often described marriage to her as an outmoded, patriarchal, state-imposed institution and as a full-time feminist, Elizabeth felt that she ought not to feel excited about the idea of a day when everyone would treat her like a fairy-tale princess. (Although she and Lola did quite often find themselves poring over wedding dresses in Hello!, and she had really quite well-developed ideas about what she would wear, in the very unlikely event that the occasion might arise.)

So the proposal, when it came, caught her completely off balance. She’d been up to her eyes producing the latest series of Saturday Bonkers and was out of the door early in the morning and always home late. She and Jamie were hardly ever in the flat at the same time. He’d grown exasperated with her job, her hours, the Ricky Clough antics. He worked for a charity which educated women in Ethiopia about the spread of HIV and he quite often travelled abroad. He’d shown Elizabeth photos of the prostitutes lining the road to Djibouti, a long ribbon of tarmac known as HIV Drive, and she’d often wondered what those women in their brightly coloured kemis and embroidered shawls thought of her blond, earnest boyfriend, in his button-down denim shirt, squatting in the dust talking to them about condoms.

In an attempt to spend more time together, Elizabeth had suggested that they go to her nephew’s birthday party and stay the weekend in Manchester with her sister, Vic. Elizabeth adored her two small nephews and Vic in turn was fond of Jamie. Elizabeth had thought a family party might be healing, but in the end she and Jamie argued all the way up the M6 about whether or not they should sell the flat and buy a small house (Elizabeth was keen – she was secretly hoping they might soon have a need for a second bedroom – but Jamie dampened her hopes by arguing it was too acquisitive and bourgeois) and the tiff cast a cloud over the family reunion. Jamie was mostly sullen and distracted from the moment they arrived, and Elizabeth found herself overcompensating by being exceptionally lively and drinking too much. But during the birthday party on Saturday – just as she was acting out an elaborate scene from Toy Story with her nephews – Jamie suddenly seized her round the waist and murmured into her hair, ‘Hey Lizzie, you’re good at this. Let’s get married and have one of our own.’

Elizabeth looked up, puzzled by his change of mood, and in her best Buzz Lightyear voice said, ‘Excuse me, you are delaying my rendezvous with star command.’ But Jamie was looking at her very seriously. It wasn’t a joke. Vic paused in her pouring of lemonade and looked over at them anxiously.

‘Well?’ Jamie said more loudly.

Her nephew, Billy, who was Woody to her Buzz, took off his sheriff’s hat and threw it across the room, frustrated that the game had stopped. He looked up at Elizabeth with a chocolate-smeared mouth, eyes round and impatient. Jamie’s face paled. He looked suddenly young, very like the hopeful blue-eyed boy she’d met on a freezing anti-war march in her first term at York, when he’d offered her some soup from his flask and some socialist leaflets from his rucksack.

But marriage? Did she want to be married? To wear a ring that signalled I belong to someone else? And they’d been so distant with each other recently! She glanced over at her sister, whose mouth formed a small questioning O. Billy tugged at her skirt and she looked down at his sweet face. But oh yes, oh God, she so wanted that! She did want one of their own. She took Jamie’s hand. The hand she knew so well, every contour and lifeline, almost better than her own. How could she not accept that hand? Things would be better if they were husband and wife. She’d go home more. He’d be more communicative. They’d have a baby. Everything that felt wrong now would feel right once they were married.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Yes. Yes. YES.’

Elizabeth drained her mug of tea and wandered over to the mirror that hung over the fireplace. Her face was unnaturally pale, the fine dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose more pronounced than usual, her lips colourless, her short brown hair standing on end where she’d run her fingers through it, again and again. Hollow eyes were framed by dark circles and looked back at her accusingly: Why didn’t you know? You were meant to be in control. Why didn’t you spot how ill Ricky was? Was it just like it was with Jamie? You simply didn’t notice what was wrong?

Her phone rang and she hesitated, thinking it would be Hutch. It was her mum. Elizabeth imagined her in her Essex kitchen, pottering about in the inappropriate silk robe Elizabeth had bought her when on a shoot in Rome, more suited to a bordello than a bungalow in Frinton-on-Sea. It sat uneasily on her, as did a number of other things Elizabeth had bought on her travels: the sofa throw that she’d brought back from Colombia, or the Costa Rican mugs, or the Galapagos tortoise paperweight. None of it suited the home of a woman who had spent most of Elizabeth’s childhood holidays on the Costa del Sol searching high and low for Branston Pickle and Cheddar cheese. But that’s what parenting was like, Elizabeth imagined: you cherished unsuitable gifts just because your children had thought about you for the briefest of moments while shopping in a South American street market.

And you stood by them no matter what they’d done.

Thoughts of home were comforting and Elizabeth wished she was with her mum now, being made cups of strong sweet tea. Tea had got them through so much over the years.

‘Hello, dear. How are you? I wasn’t sure if you’d be up… Elizabeth, are you still not sleeping properly?’

‘Well…’ Elizabeth realised her mum wouldn’t have seen the news swirling on the internet. She kept the old android phone her daughters had bought her in a knitted sock in her bedroom drawer ‘for emergencies’.

‘Mum, Ricky Clough’s dead! He died last night.’

‘Oh no! Elizabeth! Really? How awful! How old was he?’

It was a relief finally to be able to talk about how terrible it had been, without having to put on a show of being capable and in charge. ‘Oh, Mum, it was so horrible! And do you know, I’m not sure how old he is… I went to his birthday party a few weeks ago and people said it was his fiftieth but I think he was a bit older.’

‘Yes, he looked a lot older.’ Maureen had got to the age where the death of friends was most often the reason for a phone call before breakfast, but news of an unnaturally early death was much less run-of-the-mill. ‘What did he die of, do they know?’

‘We’re not sure. Mum, it was during the show! I was there.’

‘Oh, Elizabeth! Did you see it happen?’

Elizabeth thought of Ricky’s body writhing on the studio floor, his eyes bloodshot and his mouth distorted, his hand gripping her wrist. And then she thought of her mum, running in from the garden on another glorious May morning, dropping to her knees with a small scream and cradling her husband’s head as he grasped hopelessly for his last breaths, his heart clenching itself into an unyielding fist. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Yes. I’ve got to go to the police station this morning for an interview.’

‘The POLICE? Good heavens! What on earth for? Oh, dear, are you in trouble?’

Elizabeth wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Was she? ‘No, I don’t think so, it’s just that they don’t yet know what he died of… I think they just want to speak to everyone who’d been with him.’

‘Well, I imagine it was his heart. I mean, he didn’t pay much attention to his health, did he? He was quite heavy. And for a man of his age…’ Her mum faltered and Elizabeth thought again of her dad at his office desk, gazing miserably at the Tupperware box of cottage cheese and pineapple chunks her mum had carefully prepared for him, longing for his egg-and-chip lunches of old in the City Road café. Not that it had helped in the end. Fat lot of good that low-cholesterol diet was, Maureen had said, sobbing, as they buried him, aged fifty-four.

‘I guess it’ll be on the BBC News by now.’ Elizabeth reached for the remote.

‘Oh yes, I’ll take a look. But are you okay, in yourself? I mean, I know you’d worked with him for a while but I was never sure if you really – well, you know – liked him? Was he a nice man?’

Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘No, Mum, I don’t suppose he was what you’d call a nice man.’ Who wants to be nice? ‘But Ricky was interesting. He could be very good company. In his heyday.’ Elizabeth realised how easily she had let Ricky slip into the past tense and tears pricked her eyes again. He was already gone from the present and he would be gone from the future.

‘Well, I only really watched his shows because you were working on them, you know.’ Elizabeth’s mother seemed very happy to dump Ricky now that he was dead. ‘He wasn’t really my cup of tea. You know, a bit shouty and well, a bit crude sometimes.’

There had been many versions of this conversation before. Elizabeth sighed. ‘Yes. He wouldn’t have been right for Countryfile. Mum, I’ve got to go – I’ll call you later.’

‘But listen, your sister’s coming down to Frinton tomorrow for the weekend with the boys because Mark’s away. Why don’t you come too? I don’t like to think of you there, alone.’

Elizabeth very much wanted the comfort of home – even her mum’s neat seaside bungalow, with its limited provision of alcohol and pervasive smell of potpourri, and she longed to see Vic. Her sister was a successful divorce lawyer and had built a thriving practice in Manchester redistributing the wealth of Premier League footballers. Their chances to get together for boozy confessions had been much curtailed by Vic’s move up north. It would be good to see her – she had a lot to tell her.