Friday
In practice, she had to do that, decide how much deeper she wanted to dive into Emily Branningham, and work out what the fuck it meant that Jennifer Hallet showing up at her flat for sex was just a thing that could happen now.
Half-past-ten-Audrey was pretty delighted about it. Because having cool no-strings hookups with an awesome sexy TV lady who said nice things about you made you a cool and awesome person.
Quarter-to-twelve-Audrey hated herself. Because while she was very much in favour of people’s right to have casual sex if they wanted to, being in the particular kind of casual sex relationship where it all happened on somebody else’s terms was not something she wanted to be okay with.
Five-past-one-Audrey was mostly concerned with whether “Local Supermarket Recalls Lasagne Sauce” would read as too vague to a general audience and/or if “Lasagne Sauce Recalled Over Contamination Risk” would read as too sensationalist to Gavin.
Two-thirty-Audrey had been through the options with Gavin (he had thought it was sensationalist but eventually accepted that the public health concern justified the stronger language) and was back to feeling smug about getting laid and idly seeing if she could get any more information about the mysterious Emily.
Four-o’clock-Audrey was relatively sure that she’d found as much out about Emily as she’d be able to without taking the bigger, scarier step of contacting actual living women to see if they were the right person, and was sliding back into feeling taken for granted, sex-wise.
Five-thirty-Audrey was far more exhausted than she usually was at that time in the afternoon.
Quarter-past-six-Audrey returned to her still fuck-ravaged flat and realised that as well as the lasagne sauce and the elusive aristocrat and her suddenly complicated love life, she also had a bunch of cleaning up to do.
It was gratifying, in a way. To know that even in her (whisper it) early thirties she could still have the kind of sex that overturned furniture and did away with ugly lamps.
At least it should have been gratifying.
Audrey tried very hard to be gratified. But as she swept up little bits of coloured glass and transferred them to the recycling bin, she was conscious of a growing sense of ungratifiedness.
If there had been one thing that had drawn Audrey to journalism more than any other—well, more than any other except the fact that the then love of her then life had decided on the career for both of them when she was about twelve—it had been the lure of the follow-up question.
Natalie had been different. For her, it had always been about Truth with a capital T.
Where are the bodies buried and who buried them and who paid for the shovels?
But all Audrey had ever really wanted to do was to ask what happened next?
And on that score, both Doris and Emily’s home front romance and what she was increasingly thinking of as “the Jennifer situation” were leaving her profoundly frustrated.
Of course, both of those frustrations had, on some level, a common remedy. She could get in her car, drive to Patchley, ask Doris to tell the next part of her story, and demand that Jennifer at least have a conversation re: what the fuck was going on between them.
She could also stick her face in a beehive, and it would be about as likely to end well.
With the wreckage of the Tiffany-style lamp dealt with and Lion the tortoise returned to his proper place on the armchair, Audrey was just ready to declare the tidying done when she noticed a little box half-slid under the coffee table.
It was small, red, rectangular, and had Jennifer Hallet’s name printed quite plainly on the side.
Not being a pharmacist, Audrey couldn’t say exactly what it was for—and googling felt way, way too intrusive—but she did suspect that leaving your medication at somebody else’s house was a problem, and that if you knew that a hypothetical somebody had found the hypothetical medication you had left at their hypothetical house, you would probably, hypothetically, want them to bring it back.
She’s a highly successful woman, Natalie pointed out, with an enormous staff working for her. She doesn’t need you running her errands. She doesn’t need anything from you at all.
A tiny, self-loathing part of Audrey agreed.
On a rational level it was completely impossible that Jennifer would feel less inconvenienced by Audrey showing up unannounced than she would by having to send a minion to pick something up.
If Audrey did decide to make the long drive to Surrey, that part of her continued, she’d be doing it for purely selfish reasons and shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Nevertheless, despite its protestations, that part of Audrey was carried along with the rest of Audrey when she grabbed the box, stuffed it into her bag, and set out for Patchley House.
* * *
She arrived somewhat earlier than last time and found that nobody challenged her as she parked, de-carred, and set out once more for Jennifer’s trailer.
Having been to Patchley three times as a contestant and once as an invited-if-sworn-at guest, Audrey felt a bit odd showing up now as—technically, at least—an intruder.
It felt even odder when she banged on Jennifer’s door and wasn’t immediately told to fuck off.
“What is it Co—hang on, I know that knock.”
“Hi,” offered Audrey, a little weakly.
There was a longer beat than usual before Jennifer came back with, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You, um, you left something at my place.”
“If it’s my pants you can call it a swap.”
Ah yes, she’d never actually got those back, had she? “No. It’s more sort of—I’d rather not say outside because it’s a little bit sensitive.”
“Oh, right,” Jennifer’s voice was beginning to skew sarcastic again. “You mean it’s my prescription antidepressants.”
Audrey nodded, then realised nodding was a purely visual form of communication and said, “Yes.”
“Grand. I’ve been looking for those. Come in.”
So Audrey came in. It was a bit disorienting to actually be invited instead of ordered or ignored. Inside, she found Jennifer sitting at her desk as usual, in the middle of doing something complex to footage.
Without further comment, Jennifer held out a hand, and Audrey fished in her bag for the little red box.
“Thanks,” said Jennifer, taking it. And then after she’d left Audrey to stand in silence for three seconds, she continued, “You going to ask?”
Normally when Jennifer was gnomic, Audrey didn’t have much patience for it. But she tried to be patient this time. “If you mean, am I going to ask what specific condition you’re medicating for then no. I don’t think so, actually.”
“Suit yourself.” Jennifer returned her attention to her monitors. “But since you’re probably wondering anyway—”
“I’m really not.”
“—I’m on a low-dose SSRI for anxiety. No idea if it helps, but I’m used to it. Up to you if you think that explains why I’m such a bitch.”
“Again, could have expressed that without using a gendered insult,” replied Audrey, feeling that they’d both be more comfortable if the conversation went back to more familiar ground.
“Fuck off.”
Audrey hovered. In a way, fucking off was probably what she should be doing. Except since she’d tacitly admitted to herself that bringing Jennifer her pills had been a thinly disguised excuse to see her and maybe talk and/or bang, it seemed cowardly to back out now.
“While I’m here…” she began.
Jennifer looked around, a deep suspicion settling onto every part of her face that suspicion could reasonably settle on. “Yes?”
“Well—the thing is—you know how I sort of quit baking for a while because…”
“Because of your ex?” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Fuck, is this because I called you impressive? If so, I fucking take it back.”
This was going less badly than Audrey had feared.
Actually now she thought about it, it had been going less badly than she’d feared for a while.
She’d even been let into the trailer without the usual twenty minutes of sexually charged hostility.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…one of the things about that particular ex was that she wound up making me feel like I was the junior partner in the relationship.
And I really don’t want to be going there again. ”
“Hold it, Lane”—Jennifer had swivelled fully around to face Audrey and extended an admonishing finger—“we do not have a relationship. We just…we sometimes fail to not fuck.”
There was a framing issue there that Audrey felt could be revisited at a later date. “Right, but at the moment it feels a bit like it’s more that you fail to not fuck me, and I think I’d quite like to be able to fail to not fuck you at some point.”
Jennifer checked an imaginary watch. “I’ve got ten minutes if you have.”
Even though she’d been expecting Jennifer to try to shock her, Audrey was still a little bit shocked. Not by the suggestion, so much as by how little swearing or telling her to leave had gone with it. “I mean in general.”
“I mean in particular. We’re both busy women—we need to line up our windows where we can.”
An unhelpfully easily distracted part of Audrey’s brain suggested that there wasn’t anything she needed to say now that she couldn’t also say after a short sex break. But she tried her best to ignore it. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Suspecting that she might need to conserve energy for an argument, Audrey leaned against the wall in a way she hoped looked casual. “Really, though. I need to know that this isn’t going to consist entirely of you showing up on my doorstep and saying, ‘I’m horny, let’s bone.’”
Jennifer looked Audrey up and down, then made a show of examining her immediate surroundings. “Sorry, who is in whose workplace right now?”
“That’s different,” Audrey replied, only afterwards realising that she couldn’t quite articulate why.
“Is it?”
“I was doing you a good turn. I wasn’t just showing up to—”