Wednesday
As it turned out, trying to convince a reality TV producer to let you do something that you were contractually obliged to not do wasn’t just difficult, it was complex.
Complex enough that it was forcing Audrey to visit Jennifer Hallet at her office.
Rationally, of course, Audrey knew that she did not live full-time in a trailer on the grounds of a stately home, but emotionally it was weird to be heading back to London after years of resolutely having shit all to do with London, just so she could have a meeting with a woman whose career-defining project sold itself as quintessentially rural.
In fact, by the time she’d driven around Holborn for forty minutes looking for somewhere to park her damned car, Audrey was pretty close to blaming Jennifer for London existing at all, as if she’d built a time machine and said to the Romans, “Now you listen to me you pack of toga-wearing imperialist fucks, you’d better start building a city on an inconvenient bit of the Thames or I’ll come down on you so hard you’ll think the Visigoths are a band of fucking tourists. ”
There was a slight chance Audrey’s imagination was running away with her.
Jennifer’s offices were in a fairly nondescript redbrick building on a narrow street only a few minutes’ walk from the carpark that Audrey had, eventually, managed to find. She buzzed at the door and recognised the voice of Colin Thrimp on the intercom.
“Ah, Audrey. So lovely to see you—well not see you, I can’t see you—let me buzz you up.”
Buzz he did, and Audrey made her way upstairs to the offices of Inveterate Productions, the company that Jennifer Hallet cofounded and had, for eight years, run more or less solo.
She’d sort of expected it to be more impressive, what with it making one of the nation’s favourite TV shows, but she supposed offices were offices, especially in London, where square footage was at such a premium you were often lucky to get square inchage.
“Come in,” called Jennifer’s voice from behind a resolutely closed door, and then when Audrey came in, added, “Oh, it’s you.”
“You knew I was coming.”
“I did. I was being dismissive to keep you on your toes.”
Having learned the futility of waiting to be asked, Audrey sat down in front of Jennifer Hallet’s desk. “You really are always on, aren’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I have a thin facade of hostility that you alone can see through or call me on. Fuck off. Now can we talk about”—Jennifer lifted a tablet that was lying in front of her—“this?”
It hadn’t been an encouraging this. It had been at best an ambiguous this and at worst the this in What is this shit?
“Is there a problem?” Audrey asked in her best I-suspect-I-know-what-the-problem-is-but-don’t-want-to-admit-it voice.
“Yes.” Jennifer Hallet gave a slow nod. “Yes I think there might be the tiniest bit of a problem.”
“I can redraft?” suggested Audrey. “If you can point me to the parts that aren’t working for you.”
Although the angle of the screen made it impossible for Audrey to see the text, Jennifer waved her hand over it anyway. “All the parts, sunshine. This is very much not what I thought I was signing up for.”
“No?” Audrey tried her best to sound innocent.
“No. What you pitched me was an in-this-together story about the blitz spirit. Something that the flag-waving, royal-watching, bunting-fucking, VE-day obsessed, middle England NIMBY pricks who very much keep my lights on would be able to read and think, Ooh, that makes me feel all warm and patriotic and in no way confronts me with anything I might disagree with. What you’ve given me is a story about two teenage lesbians stealing cars. ”
There was that. “One car. And they brought it back.”
Jennifer Hallet made no reply. She just glowered. It was a good look on her, in a lot of ways.
“Also, they might not be lesbians. One or both of them might be bi.”
“Oh, well that changes everything.”
One of the nice things about working on a local paper with extremely limited distribution where virtually all your articles were about parking prices and hypothetical ghost barges was that you normally didn’t need to have this kind of conversation.
“I hope,” said Audrey cautiously, “I’m just misunderstanding you, because it sounds to me like you’re saying you don’t want me to run this story because it has an LGBTQ+ element. ”
“It’s not just an LGBTQ+ element, it’s a be gay do crimes element. And there’s no sounds like. That’s exactly what I’m saying. This is the BBC, my girl—”
“Don’t call me my girl—I’m not your girl.” Friday or otherwise, a more whimsical Audrey added.
“I’m so sorry. This is the BBC, sunshine. And that means being neutral on controversial topics.”
Audrey couldn’t quite believe where this was going. “Are you really saying that a story where two girls kiss once is a controversial topic?”
“Have you read a newspaper lately? Other than the one you work for I mean.”
Much as Audrey hated to admit it, she understood where Jennifer was coming from.
She just didn’t agree with it. “You’re not going to get kicked off the BBC because of one article, and it’s not as if there have never been gay people on this show.
Aren’t Tariq and…you know, thingy, the tall one nobody liked… aren’t they dating now?”
Jennifer rested her forehead on her fist like The Thinker. If what The Thinker was thinking was, I cannot be fucked with this. “When will people stop thinking they know my show better than I do.”
“Sorry, been a fan for a long time.”
“The point is,” Jennifer went on, still not looking up, “is that there’s a difference between two photogenic young men giving an interview, after the show has gone out, where they happen to mention they’re together now, and you running a long-form story, while the show is airing, that goes in-depth on Doris and her tragic but gay as balls childhood romance. ”
It wasn’t quite the point, but something in Audrey felt the need to protest. “You don’t know it was tragic.”
“Well in 1953 she married a man named Bobby Rice and they were together until he died in 2002…”
Journalist-Audrey couldn’t help filling in one year before their golden wedding anniversary.
“So unless they were reunited very late in life or she spent fifty years fucking some posh tart behind her husband’s back, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this”—Jennifer waggled her fingers over Audrey’s article like she was warding off the evil eye—“Mills and Boon historical romance you’re trying to conjure up for them did not end happily. ”
On some level, Audrey had known that. Which meant that being confronted with it now didn’t do much to change her mind.
“Okay.” She put her hands up in a balancing kind of way.
“A lot to unpack there. Firstly, I don’t think a story isn’t worth telling just because it has a sad ending.
Secondly, I think that’s doubly true for stories about gay people in the forties because those often ended badly for very specific and obvious reasons. ”
With a groan of frustration, Jennifer Hallet looked up at Audrey.
Her eyes said, You are boring my tits off, more eloquently than words ever could.
“And that’s what you think people—the people of Shropshire, mind, a county where sixty percent of the population vote Tory and fifty-seven percent voted for Brexit—want to hear when they’re tuning in to their favourite baking show is it?
You think they want to look at the relatable granny and say, You know, she was sticking it to a posh bird all through the war, but then they had to break up because of institutionalised homophobia. ”
“Can you…” Audrey shook her head plaintively. “Can you just stop being deliberately awful for three minutes?”
“No.”
Sighing, Audrey got up. “Then I guess we’re done here.”
“Looks like. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
Her hand was just on the door when, despite everything rational-Audrey and for that matter remotely-professional-Audrey was telling her, she turned back. “I’ll admit I’m disappointed.”
Jennifer didn’t even blink. “Not surprised. It would have been a good opportunity for you.”
“No, I mean, when I applied to the show I looked into you and, well…”
Jennifer blinked now. Her lips tightened and she jabbed a finger across the room at where Audrey was standing. “Oh no you fucking don’t.”
“I just thought maybe as—”
“I swear if you say as a queer woman you will be off my set so fast, scientists in Geneva will be detecting anomalous readings on their—their things scientists detect readings on.”
Audrey backed very slightly off. On this one, specific point, Jennifer was maybe not being completely unreasonable.
It had been a pretty shitty card to play.
“Okay, okay. You’re right. I shouldn’t be…
you’ve not got an obligation to be visible.
It’s just—I mean, leaving aside what all the, all the bunting-wearing king-fucking whoevers will say, what did you think about it as, you know, as a story? ”
The look on Jennifer Hallet’s face was far from encouraging. “You really want to know?”
“I mean I think you’re probably just going to say something needlessly cruel, but yeah, I do.”
For a moment, Jennifer looked back down at her tablet, scrolled through a few lines of the article, then said: “What I mostly think, looking back at it is, This rich bitch is going to break that poor girl’s heart.”
It wasn’t the answer Audrey had been expecting. At least it mostly wasn’t. “You know you could have expressed that without using a gendered insult.”
“Oh fuck off.”
There was a very, very narrow window here to turn this around. “Okay. But taking my fucking off as read, it sounds like you do care a bit. About what happens next at least.”
“I know what happened next. She got old, got boring, and went on a baking show, the end.”