Thursday Evening
“I’m not fucking satisfied,” said Audrey.
They’d retired to a corner of the lobby to lick their wounds.
And if Audrey’d been less disappointed-slash-pissed-off she might have appreciated the fact that she had, at least momentarily, the kind of life where you sat in an intimate corner of a luxury hotel with your abrasively sexy not-exactly-girlfriend to bemoan your failure to persuade a jaded aristocrat to fly home from Monaco to be reunited with a woman she’d had an affair with in a stately home seventy years ago. Like, that was a whole mood.
Except it also sucked.
Jennifer was sitting sprawled in a plushly upholstered chair, looking like a twenty-first-century rakehell who’d had a hard night raking hell.
“I mean, what did you expect?” she asked.
“She spent her entire life bailing on the poor fucker. Did you really think she was going to turn around and say, ‘Actually I’ll make amends at the last moment’? ”
“Um. No? But also…yes? Nice things do happen sometimes.”
“Oh yes, because age and wealth are renowned for changing people for the better.”
Tilting her head back, Audrey gazed at the intricate, multicoloured glasswork that cascaded from the ceiling. “Can you stop being cynical for six seconds?”
“I could, but if I was going to, I’d pick a time when that cynicism wasn’t completely justified.”
“You came out here, too,” Audrey pointed out.
“Due fucking diligence. That and not wanting you to spend an evening cranking into the Mediterranean because some haughty bint wouldn’t give you the time of day.”
“Doing what into the Mediterranean?”
“Cranking. You know, cry wanking.”
Audrey bent her considerable journalistic instincts to assessing this from multiple angles. “Okay, I don’t crank, and I’m not convinced that’s a thing anybody does. But I’m glad you didn’t want me to be upset.”
By way of answer, Jennifer gave a low growl.
And, for a moment, they sat in marbled silence: Audrey still circling the whirlpool that was Emily Branningham and Jennifer presumably working out how to walk back the fact she’d done something a little bit lovely. Even if it had been obscured by a veil of cranking.
“I think,” said Audrey finally, “what bothers me the most about all of this is that she clearly cares about Doris.”
That earned a dark Jennifer Hallet laugh. “No, Lane. She’s in love with her. And that’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Please, not even you are this na?ve. Caring about someone means wanting what’s best for them. Being in love just means wanting them.”
“I want the best for people I’m in love with.”
“I’m sure you do. But the fucking miserable thing about you, Audrey Lane, is that you’re a good person. Most of us aren’t.”
“I think most of us are, actually?”
“Okay. But people like me and Emily Branningham aren’t. Love to you is nice quilts, holding hands, and trying to make people happy. To us, it’s just power you don’t want to give away.”
A couple of weeks ago, Audrey would have believed this little speech. “That might be what you tell yourself, Jennifer, and it might even be true of Emily. But you’ve still got that shitty quilt I made. And you’ve held my hand a bunch of times—”
“During sex doesn’t count.”
“Yes it does. And,” Audrey went on triumphantly, “you came here because you didn’t want me to be sad and alone.”
“Oh fuck off.”
“No, I will not fuck off.” Audrey extended an accusatory finger. “This meaner-than-thou talk doesn’t fool me anymore. You like me. You care about me. And…and I think we’re both cool with that.”
“I’m not fucking cool with it,” retorted Jennifer Hallet at a hotel-lobby-inappropriate volume. “You snuck up on me like tertiary syphilis.”
“And to think you keep telling me you’re not romantic.”
* * *
“Yes,” said Audrey, as they wandered hand in hand across Larvotto Beach. “Not at all romantic.”
Jennifer didn’t even dignify this with a fuck off. “Well, it was this or go shag in a casino toilet, and I thought the beach would be more your speed.”
“You realise there are more options than shag in a casino toilet or go take a walk by the sea.”
“Not in Monte Carlo there aren’t.”
“Well, maybe we can fuck in a casino toilet later.”
“I’m game if you are.”
“Honestly,” Audrey admitted, “I’m not particularly. I’ve never really got the whole…lavatorial-taboo-fetish thing.”
“I don’t think it’s about being taboo. It’s about having a door that locks.”
“I’m so glad,” said Audrey, “that we’re on this golden beach beside the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean talking about toilets.”
“You were talking about toilets. I was talking about sex.”
“Sometimes I have no idea why I like you.”
“Same. Now”—Jennifer had spotted something through a small forest of sunshades—“do you fancy a taco?”
“What?”
“There’s a place over there called Sexy Tacos. Don’t make me not eat at a place called Sexy Tacos.”
“Are you seriously basing our dinner plans on the name of the restaurant?”
“No, I’m basing it on my detailed knowledge of Monte Carlo’s dining scene. It’s here, it’s on a beach, it sells tacos—what more do you want?”
Put like that, Audrey couldn’t name a single thing.
And fifteen minutes later they were sitting on the sand, in the part not taken over by the militarised battery of sun loungers, Jennifer wolfing down a taco de cochinita pibil while Audrey tried to subtly check that she hadn’t dropped guacamole down her bra.
“See something you like?” asked Jennifer.
“They’re my own breasts, Jennifer. I see them every day.”
“It’s a topless beach, you know. You can whap them out if you want.”
“I’m more concerned about spilling taco down myself.”
“Let me check that for you.” Before Audrey could stop her—not that she would have—Jennifer leaned over and made a brief performance of inspecting’s Audrey’s person for stray crumbs and dollops of sour cream.
Finding none, she danced the tip of her tongue up Audrey’s cleavage and across her collarbone. “Seems fine to me.”
“Smooth moves,” Audrey told her.
And Jennifer Hallet laughed.
“I suppose,” she remarked, after a minute or two, “I could have taken you to some fancy restaurant.”
Finishing the last of her taco, Audrey balled up the wrapping and popped it in her bag. “No, this is perfect.”
“Never really liked restaurants. Full of sneering fuckers who judge you.”
“I think, being a TV producer, you might be a sneering fucker yourself these days.”
“Thanks. I’ve worked hard to get there. Still doesn’t mean I want to pay two hundred and fifty quid for whatever Alain Ducasse deigns to serve up to me while the pricks at the next table try to earwig whatever the fuck I’m talking about.”
There was a touch of…well, Jennifer didn’t get vulnerable and didn’t do uncertain. But, reading between the lines, Audrey almost felt like she was being asked a question. “I mean, I like the occasional restaurant. But it’s not a deal-breaker.”
“Didn’t say I thought it was,” said Jennifer, confirming she’d definitely thought it might be.
Audrey lay back on the oddly glinting sand and stared up at the cartoonishly blue sky.
Beside her, Jennifer did the same, turning so she could rest her head against Audrey’s side.
Given the three-hour flight and the unsatisfying conversation with a disdainful lesbian, they were both hovering on the edge of exhausted.
But with the heat mellowing as the sun dipped lower, and the contented feeling that arose from having had some really good tacos, it wasn’t a bad exhaustion.
It just turned the world a little hazy and swept its everyday concerns out to sea.
Which was, perhaps, rare for both of them.
“How are the talks going?” asked Audrey.
Jennifer made a drowsy noise. “What talks?”
“Selling the show.”
“Oh, those talks. All talks are the same. They want this, we want that. Grace’ll probably go if it moves. She’s BBC to the core.”
“Will it still be Bake Expectations without her?”
“Some people will say it is, some people will say it isn’t. But they’ll carry on watching anyway.”
“And what about you?”
“I probably won’t. I think it went downhill after season three.”
Lifting an indolent hand, Audrey batted in Jennifer’s general direction. “I meant what will you do, like, career wise?”
“Technically I won’t have to do anything. I’ll be fucking rich.”
Audrey’s imp of the perverse fluttered its wings. “You could move into a suite in the Hotel Metropole and hang out with Emily.”
“We could while away our twilight years consoling each other about what miserable fucks we both are. Well, her twilight years.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever whiled away anything in your entire life.”
Jennifer made a not-disagreeing-with-you noise.
“But it’s going to feel strange, isn’t it?” asked Audrey Lane, investigative relationship journalist. “Not having Expectations.”
“It’s going to be a bloody relief,” said Jennifer, with too much conviction. And then, “I suppose so.”
“What were you doing before?”
“This and that. A couple of those be-angry-about-this-social-issue type documentaries that nobody fucking watches. A gameshow called The Box where no one understood the fucking rules.” Sitting upright, Jennifer scuffed at the sand with the toe of her boot.
“And then Jemima was all like, let’s do something nice and cosy, and it fucking worked and she fucking left me.
And the BBC are already on at me to do a spinoff about sewing or pottery or hairdressing or something. ”
Audrey sat up, too. “I’m sure those would all be…great. But I don’t know if trying to recapture what you did with Expectations is the right call.”
“It’s the right call financially. None of them will be as good or as big, but you can make a dozen of the fuckers.”
“Yeah, but, like you say, you’ll already be rich so why do spin-offs if they’re not what you actually want to do?”
“Because I don’t want to be rich and bored.
And I also don’t want to go off and make up-yourself vanity projects about dead fish and sad children.
I want to make something people give a shit about.
” She turned so she was facing Audrey directly.
“And they give a shit about Expectations. And I used to. And in an ideal world, those two would line up again.”
“I’m sure they can,” said Audrey.
“You can talk, Miss Shropshire’s Second Largest Newspaper.”
“Hey, I…” That brought Audrey up short for a moment. She felt nebulously defensive, but she wanted to make sure she was defending the right thing. “It’s not about the size of the audience. It’s about telling the stories I think matter.”
“What? ‘Parking Fees to Change in Much Wenlock’?”
Audrey sighed. “Yeah, and I’d like to do less of that. But that isn’t because it’s small, it’s because I’m not particularly interested in parking. But then I’m not particularly interested in what the prime minister lied about this week either. I’m interested in—”
“Two sad lesbians in a house in the forties?”
“I mean, yes. Or, I don’t know, Alanis’s father’s journey from Somalia. Or all the little stories that are going on all around us all the time. The ones we ignore or forget or pretend aren’t part of our history and who we are.”
“Careful, Lane.” Jennifer gave her a sharp look. “It sounds like you’re pitching a miniseries.”
“You mean, the sort of dead-fish-and-sad-children, be-angry-about-this-social-issue show you’ve just told me nobody watches?”
Jennifer was quiet for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Depends how you package it. If Expectations taught me anything, it taught me that. Well, that and don’t stay on the same fucking show for eight years.”
Six weeks ago Audrey would have made an obvious personal connection about the dangers of sticking with something that wasn’t working for you for a very long time. But present-day-Audrey wasn’t feeling it.
All present-day-Audrey felt was the last of the day’s heat. Which—like Jennifer—stayed with her as the sun slipped away and the extravagant rainbow of the city lights streaked across the still waters of the bay, turning it into a fantastical slick of colour.