Game Over Read online

  Darren doesn’t comment that we’ve been in the dressing-room for forty-five minutes but waves cheerfully from the baby pool, where he is confidently handling a happy, gurgling Ben.

  I lower myself into the pool and try not to think of the wee. I hand him the armbands for the girls. Making it clear that it’s his turn.

  ‘Will you hold Ben?’ I nod, as I don’t want to open my mouth for fear of what will go in it. Darren grins and hands him over. I’m relieved that he doesn’t start to cry. I smile winningly at him and hope that my legendary way with men works on someone so young. Darren hoists himself out of the pool.

  He is divine.

  He must work out. His muscles are taut and developed. He’s lean and tanned. I watch the pool water glisten as it clings to his shoulders and legs. I’d glisten too if I was clinging to that Adonis. I’m thrilled to note that his strong chest and legs are hairy but his back is clean. My nipples harden and chafe against the costume. Bloody cheap thing, no lining.

  Darren puts the armbands on the girls and lowers them into the pool with me. He sits on the side, dangling his legs in the water. He drags his feet unselfconsciously through the water, bending and straightening his knees. My knees have turned to Play-Doh. My entire body is on fire. I cannot drag my gaze from him. He is utterly, utterly stunning. From his tanned feet, with neat square nails – rather than the yellow, curled nails that most men choose to sport – to his long, tight, muscular legs, to his neat, flat stomach. Six pack, forget it – this is an entire shelf at the off-licence. I want to entangle my fingers in his chest hair. Lose them there and never ever find them again. His shoulders are as rigid as they are broad. They look almost polished. He’s staring out at the children and not aware that I’m studying every little droplet of chlorine that’s clinging to him. His glossy hair curls rebelliously at the nape of his neck and I’m envious. I want to be that lock of hair; I want to be the drops of chlorine, pool water and pee.

  Since he’s occupied watching the children splash and bob, I risk taking a look at his swimwear.

  WHHHOOOAAA-HHHOOO.

  Hello, Big Boy.

  ‘Should I take Ben now?’

  ‘Erm?’

  I nearly drop the baby with the embarrassment. Why did he have to choose that moment to start up a conversation? I avoid his eye as I pass the baby to him. I feel like a kid caught with her hand in the biscuit jar. I force myself to look at Darren and he’s grinning again. Well, I’m pleased to be so amusing! Irritated and flustered, I sulkily pull myself on to the side of the pool as he climbs in. He tries to make conversation but I won’t be mollified. It isn’t until I catch him furtively checking out my tits that I start to brighten up. In fact, I feel considerably happier.

  When we leave the pool we go to McDonald’s. Darren is blatantly a bit surprised by my choice of dining venue. I smile and don’t offer an explanation. It isn’t until Lucy is on to her second chocolate shake and I’ve taken Charlotte to the loo twice (unaided) that it crosses my mind to check my mobile messages. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten to call Fi or Bale. It’s not as though I’m having a good time. I mean, I’m not shopping or clubbing. Normally I check my messages every twenty-five minutes when I’m out of the studio.

  I’ve had six calls.

  Hi, Cas. It’s Fi. I reviewed the files through the night and have a shortlist of three possible scenarios for next week’s show. Should I interview them? If so, you’ll need to release more budget. Call me.

  Hi, Cas, it’s Josh. Issie told me that you are chasing some bloke halfway up the country. What’s the angle? Is he a transvestite? Now that would make a good show. Well, call me when you get a mo.

  Cas. It’s Fi again. Er, I haven’t heard back from you so I had to make the decision to go ahead with the interviews. I think I’ve found a substitute. Hope this is OK. But I didn’t really have a choice. What with the timetable being so tight. Can you call me? Er, say hi to Darren for me. Tell him I was the one in baby-blue cashmere. No, scrub that.

  Cas, it’s Issie. Weeeellllllll? How goes it with Mr Northern Hunk?

  Jocasta, it’s your mother. I do hate these things. Can you hear me?

  Cas. Bale. Call in.

  So nothing urgent. I switch the phone back to the message facility.

  By the time we drop the kids back with Sarah, I am exhausted and barely have the energy to turn down the offer of staying for supper. Which under normal circumstances I’d turn down with extreme force.

  ‘Stay – we’re having lasagne and Mam and Dad are down the pub, Richard’s at Shelly’s, Linda’s here. There will be no one at home. You’ll be rattling around an empty house.’

  Hearing this, I get another surge of dynamism and almost wrench Darren’s arm out of its socket as I pull him from their kitchen and bundle him into the car. Laughing, he turns the ignition.

  ‘Had enough of kids for one day?’

  I feel a twinge of guilt. Perhaps he wanted to stay and was too polite to contradict me; after all, he probably doesn’t get to see his family much, being based in London. But my arms are aching with playing ‘one, two, three, swwiiinnnng’. I smell of baby puke, my mind is fried with coming up with answers to the perpetual ‘why’ question (nearly all of which had come from Darren). Most importantly, I haven’t reapplied my make-up since leaving the swimming pool.

  ‘To be honest, yes. I’m not used to kids. No nieces or nephews.’

  ‘Some of your friends must have children, though,’ he comments.

  I think about it. No, not really. Women in TV rarely nod towards their reproductive capacity and my friends in other lines of work seem to disappear once they have babies. I suppose it’s because we keep very different hours.

  ‘No.’ I smile at Darren and decide to confess, ‘In fact, until today I don’t think I’ve ever held a child, or dressed one, brushed its hair, taken it to the loo, changed a nappy or fed it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ I confirm.

  I’m slightly shamefaced and don’t know how Darren will take this. He obviously values these motherly skills in his women. Indeed all men like to see a woman behave perfectly with kids. Most women like to think they have a natural ability to be patient, entertaining and loving. Not me. I’m not bothered. Well, I was keen to put the shoes on the right feet but that was because I hate to be inadequate at anything. As a kid myself, I didn’t like anyone else winning musical chairs. Second place is nowhere. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. That’s always been my motto. It has nothing to do with impressing Darren. I don’t care what he thinks of me. I sneak a look at him to check his reaction to my confession. Richard’s car is so tiny that Darren is almost folded double. He’s concentrating on the curling roads. He puts on the long beam lights and the windscreen wipers are valiantly trying to clear the pouring rain. I fear it’s a losing battle. Without taking his eyes off the road, he mumbles, ‘You’re amazing.’

  I’m amazing! I’m floating on air. My bum is absolutely refusing to stay in the car seat.

  I’m amazing? Oh yeah, and how many times have I heard that before?

  I’m amazing! I’m floating on air. My bum is absolutely refusing to stay in the car seat.

  I’m amazing. I bet he says that to everyone.

  I pretend I haven’t heard and close my eyes, keen to get some sleep on the short journey back to the Smiths’ house.

  I wake up and a young Kevin Keegan is smiling down at me. Where am I? I’m in a single bed with itchy nylon sheets and itchy nylon bedspread. They are brown. Different shades of brown. My worst fear – I’ve screwed someone with bad taste. I hear children laughing in the garden and I look out of the window.

  Darren.

  And Charlotte and Lucy. It’s a grey, bleak day. Grey grass, grey sky. But Darren and the girls are a remarkable contrast, their clothes and laughter, a colourful relief to the horizon. Impetuously I bang on the window and wave furiously. They all look up and wave back. Then I remember I haven’t got any m
ake-up on, so I dive back into bed before they can see me properly. There’s a knock on the door and, before I answer, Mrs Smith bustles in. She smiles broadly and I bathe in it. Perhaps she’s heard how good I was with the children yesterday and is beginning to approve of me. Not that it matters. I neither want nor need Mrs Smith’s approval.

  Much.

  She hands me a cup of tea that’s so strong the spoon can stand up in it. I take it from her and thank her.

  ‘By, you were tired, weren’t you?’

  A strange feeling of unease creeps into bed with me; it gets under the sheets and disperses the cosy feeling. Oh bugger, yes, now I remember. Last night I’d been very tired. Too tired to argue my case about the show properly but tired enough to argue petulantly. We were having a laugh. In the absence of wine or gin we decided to raid his parents’ cocktail cabinet. A walnut veneer monstrosity, straight from the Ark, justifiably hidden in the ‘front room’. We agreed that tequila was the perfect accompaniment to cheese on toast (desperate measures for desperate times. The other choices were all fluorescent in colour and likely to have been radioactive). I had the idea of broaching the subject of the show whilst the family were out and we had the house to ourselves. I thought that as he was beginning to warm to me he might be open to discussion. He wasn’t. The conversation had been brief, powerful and cold.

  He turned his back to me and concentrated on grating the cheese. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing to attention. I had an overwhelming desire to blow on them.

  ‘I’m not saying that you should have sex with Claire.’ God forbid. ‘Just find out what would happen. Just let fate take its course,’ I argued to his very wide shoulders.

  ‘But your programme isn’t about fate or what would happen naturally if everyone was left to their own devices. Your show is designed to distort. To bring out the worst in people.’ He was watching my reflection in the window against the black night sky.

  ‘The worst in people is the norm.’

  He tutted dismissively. But he did, at least, turn back to me. Or was he just turning because he needed to put the bread under the grill?

  ‘No, it’s not. You just think that the peculiar is normal because it’s prevalent in your life.’

  Fucking cheek. What does he know about my life? Well, besides the stuff we’d talked about at the Oxo tower restaurant, on the train and today. But that hardly amounts to revealing insight. He knows little more about me than what my favourite milkshake was when I was a kid. Oh, and admittedly, we had a fairly flirty but extremely coded (due to the presence of minors) conversation about condom flavours this afternoon. But then half the men at TV6 know that I prefer banana-flavour condoms.

  None of them know it’s chocolate milkshake.

  I glared at him and said, ‘Infidelity is a fact. Disloyalty is a fact.’

  ‘OK. Maybe. But it’s a horrifying fact and should remain horrifying. By continually showing betrayal as an acceptable form of entertainment you are neutralizing the horror. Are you so damaged that you can’t see that?’

  I was tired and sick of his sanctimonious attitude. I found I was shouting. I ignored his question and asked my own instead. ‘You want to shelter who, exactly, from these cultural and moral norms of the West? I’m not suggesting anything that they aren’t already endorsing, committing.’

  We both fell silent as Darren concentrated on retrieving the cheese on toast from under the grill. He set it down in front of me and offered Worcester sauce. I refused it. I poured him tequila; he’d left it untouched. We ate in silence and then I went to bed, alone, defeated.

  Now, I try to find my wristwatch.

  ‘It’s three thirty, pet,’ says Mrs Smith, cheerfully.

  ‘In the afternoon?’ I jump up suddenly. Mrs Smith clocks my lacy negligée.

  ‘Yes, in the afternoon. By, love, you must have been tired not to notice the cold in that flimsy thing. If you’d said you only had your underwear to sleep in I’d have lent you one of my nighties.’

  Duly mortified, I crawl back into bed and cover myself from her disapproving gaze. Underwear indeed! I’d especially selected the most conventional and practical nightdress I own to bring on this trip. I normally sleep naked. If she thinks this is skimpy enough to be underwear, what would she think of my knickers?

  ‘Darren wanted to get you up but I said, “Let her sleep.” You obviously needed it. He’s just taking the kids into town for a ride on the merry-go-round on the seafront. I thought that you might want to get bathed and then we can think about a bite to eat.’

  I nod politely, although I’m sure my stomach will actively revolt if I try to eat anything more. Yesterday’s binge of sweets, chocolate cake, scones, hamburgers and finally cheese on toast was more than I normally eat in a week. It must be the fresh air that’s given me such an appetite.

  ‘What time did you say it was?’

  ‘It’s nearly twenty to four now.’

  ‘What day is it?’ I’m not normally so vague, but then I don’t normally sleep for seventeen hours. And I don’t ever sleep in nylon sheets.

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Mrs Smith looks horrified but I have no time to placate her.

  ‘Shit. Shit.’ I scramble in my bag looking for my mobile phone. ‘Shit. Fourteen messages.’ Mrs Smith tuts and leaves me to my own devices. I think it’s safe to assume that any tentative strands of approval she’d been weaving my way are now well and truly snapped. So what? I turn to my messages.

  The first is from Issie, reminding me that my New Year’s resolution was not to have casual sex. Ha, fat chance. Darren doesn’t even seem to want to swap pleasantries, never mind bodily fluids. And anyway, what is she talking about? That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to endear myself to Darren so that he agrees to be on the show. Nothing more. I thought I’d explained that. All the other messages are work-related.

  Cas. Please give me a call. It’s Tuesday morning. What time will you be back? Have you persuaded Darren to be on the show?

  Fi sounds nervous and a twinge of guilt bites as I acknowledge that I have left her in the lurch. She’s a strong assistant but she hasn’t had to make the decisions before. Well, maybe I micromanage too much and it’s time that Fi had a bit more responsibility. She’s probably doing a good job. I skip a few more messages to listen out for her voice. There are three more from Fi. The first and second are increasingly irate. The third confidently asserts that she’s found a replacement for Darren, Claire and Marcus and has made the decision to reschedule the filming. She details how she’s going to use the two producers back to back. One in the studio, editing, whilst the other is at the shoot and then vice versa. This is a good idea as it will help catch up on time. She says she’s expecting me back by Wednesday morning and significantly repeats, ‘As you promised.’

  Bale is less subtle.

  Cas, where the fuck are you? Getting serviced? Well, fuck that. Call me.

  His three messages are all the same. I also have calls from Di, Debs and Ricky. Apparently some bishop or other has written an open letter to The Times condemning the show. Which is great news. Di and Debs want to know how to handle the PR. Idiots. Can’t they do anything without me? Ricky is lobbying for a schedule change to coincide with Valentine’s Day. He’s come up against a brick wall. Or, more accurately, a homo-phobe executive who can block or facilitate such things. Ricky’s particular breed of charm will only serve to irritate in this instance. Whereas I could undoubtedly help by just offering to take the guy to lunch. I call Ricky and tell him to set it up for Friday. I call Fi, and it’s not until I tell her that I’m not travelling back tonight as originally promised but early tomorrow morning or tomorrow night at latest that I realize I’ve made this decision.

  ‘But you don’t need to stay, Cas. I have a replacement.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think Darren is just about to capitulate and I still think he’d make such a good show.’ This lie is vibrant scarlet but I have no
conscience about it.

  ‘He is gorgeous,’ Fi agrees enthusiastically.

  ‘If you like that kind of thing.’

  ‘Are you having a good time?’

  ‘Not really. He’s unstable. A delight one minute and a rabid dog the next. I have to schlep round with his tedious family. It’s freezing and I’m in the middle of nowhere.’ It’s always been an adage of mine that I don’t owe every pertinent enquirer the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

  ‘The things you do for your job.’

  ‘Exactly. Listen, Fi. It’s probably best if you don’t mention to Bale that we have a replacement. He hasn’t met Darren and won’t understand why I’m so actively pursuing him.’ Fi titters, so for clarity I add, ‘For the show.’

  ‘Of course.’ I can hear the smirk in her voice. Cow. ‘Be careful you don’t fall for him.’

  ‘Impossible. I could never fancy anyone called Darren. I’m not called Kylie or Sharon.’

  Fi laughs. ‘I won’t say a word to Bale, but you’ll have to get back by first thing Thursday at the absolute latest. We can push the filming back to then but no later. I can’t do the filming on my own. We need you.’

  Of course they do.

  After bathing I feel in need of fresh air. Avocado green has never been my colour for bathroom suites. I decide to catch up with Darren and the children. Because what else can I do? Play bowls? I walk along the pier and spot them walking down the beach, which is more or less deserted as it’s January, it’s the north and it’s freezing. Anyone with any sense is sitting by their fireside or, less romantically but more realistically, their TV set and radiators. I wave and shout, and surprisingly Lucy and Charlotte start to pelt towards me, their little legs not keeping up with their will to be further ahead than they are. I succumb to the Calvin Klein advert factor and rush to meet them. I stoop down to hug them. I only do this because I’ll look good.