Chapter Thirty-Two
Now
The yoghurt pot was comically small in Birrell’s hands.
He’d produced it from the pocket of a jacket that could have doubled as a bivouac, along with a tiny sachet of honey that he tore open with his teeth and drizzled over the top in a long, glistening thread, and was now eating it with a teaspoon that his fingers obscured almost entirely.
The operation looked like a nature documentary about a bear who’d been given a thimble to eat out of.
Tristan watched him from the opposite end of the green-room sofa and tried not to stare too obviously.
“You want one?” Birrell held up the pot. “They’ve got a basket of them on the table. Little ones like this, and the big ones with the fruit at the bottom. The fruit ones are crap, though. They’re too sweet.”
“I’m good.”
Birrell shrugged and dug into his yoghurt, while Tristan turned back to his mobile.
The thread with James sat open on his screen, the most recent exchange less than ten minutes old. James had sent the first message at six that morning.
Good luck today. Break a leg. I know that’s technically theatre talk…but, you know what I mean.
Then, forty minutes later, before Tristan could reply:
The Windsor kitchen garden is producing at a rate that frankly borders on the aggressive. The last of the winter leeks came up last week and they’re enormous, Tris. I’m thinking a chopped salad. With radishes and that dressing you made with the shallots. You’ll take the lead on that, of course.
And then, six minutes after that:
Do you reckon it’s possible to grow avocados at Windsor?
I realise this is an absurd question. The climate isn’t built for it.
But there are heated glasshouses on the grounds that haven’t been used since my grandfather kept orchids, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Imagine being able to just go out and pick your avocado for your salad right off the tree…
Tristan had read all three messages in the car, with his coffee going cold in the cupholder, grinning at the screen like an idiot.
A producer appeared in the doorway with a clipboard and a headset slung around her neck.
“Five minutes, gents. Greg and Sarah are wrapping the weather now. They’ll bring you on after the break.
” She glanced at her clipboard. “Quick heads-up on the editorial line, they’re keen to talk about the cultural impact piece.
The show’s been part of this broader national conversation around masculinity and what healthy relationships look like, and the editors want to lean into that.
Greg will lead. You’ll get a clip. It’s the restaurant scene from episode four, Jay and Ben’s anniversary dinner. ”
Tristan knew the scene. It was one of the safer ones for broadcast. Jay being charming and solicitous in public, his hand on Ben’s knee under the table. Then a man nearby glancing in their direction and smirking. The punch Jay threw in response was fast and brutal.
“Sounds good,” Tristan said. “Anything we should stay away from?”
“Not really. It’s a friendly interview. We all love the show.” She checked her watch, tapped the doorframe twice, and disappeared.
Birrell had finished his yoghurt and was folding the empty pot flat between his palms, creasing it into a neat square of foil and plastic.
“You nervous?” Birrell asked, still working the foil flat.
“Nah.” Tristan pocketed his mobile and stretched. “We’ve done about a hundred of these by now.”
“Just thirty-one, actually.”
“You’ve been counting?”
“Jenna keeps a log.” Birrell’s publicist maintained a spreadsheet of every appearance, interview, and press interaction, which Birrell found endlessly funny and kept forwarding to Tristan.
“She says we’re averaging three a week and finds it amazing that I haven’t managed to ram my foot in my mouth just yet. ”
The promotion had scaled up now that Better Half was a prestige BBC drama the critics loved and fourteen million people watched.
They’d done broadsheet profiles, tabloid spreads, podcast interviews, a Radio 4 special, and last Tuesday a phone interview with a journalist from El País who’d wanted to discuss the semiotics of Ben’s apron.
The floor manager came for them at the break and walked them through the studio, past the cooking segment’s mise en place and a camera dolly that Birrell stepped over without breaking stride.
The set was standard morning television: a curved sofa in warm neutrals and a screen-rendered backdrop of London through floor-to-ceiling windows.
The studio audience occupied three tiered rows behind the cameras, and a low murmur ran through them as Tristan and Birrell came into view.
Greg stood to greet them with a firm handshake, and Sarah kissed them both on the cheek before steering them towards the sofa.
Birrell took one end and crossed an ankle over his knee, filling the frame. Tristan took the other, back straight, one arm along the sofa’s back. His media coach had drilled this posture into him, saying that it made him look relaxed and trustworthy.
The count came, and the cameras went live.
“Now then,” Greg said, leaning forward in his chair.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Better Half has become the most talked-about drama on British television.
There were fourteen million viewers for the last episode, and the two men responsible for bringing it all to life are sitting right here with us today. ”
Greg introduced the clip and let it play out, in front of a rapt audience. An entire room going that silent for something Tristan had helped make still got to him, even now.
“Daniel,” Greg said, turning to Birrell, “Jay is, there’s no other way to say this, a monster. But you play him with such nuance that there are moments where the audience genuinely sympathises with him. How do you find that balance?”
Birrell uncrossed his legs and put his elbows on his knees.
“Jay doesn’t think he’s a monster. In his view, he’s protecting his man.
To him the world is dangerous, and the only way to keep Ben safe is to control everything: what he eats, what he wears, who he talks to, how he sits at a dinner table.
And the terrifying part is that some of that reasoning sounds almost rational, until you see what it does to the person on the receiving end. ”
“We worked with an organisation called Respect,” Birrell continued.
“They run programmes for perpetrators of domestic abuse, and they put me in a room with men who’d done the things Jay does.
And the thing that stayed with me was how ordinary they were.
They weren’t villains. They were blokes who’d convinced themselves that control was the same thing as love.
That’s what I try to bring to Jay. I never want to excuse his behaviour, but I wanted to show how someone ends up with this mindset, and how deeply they can get entrenched in that way of living. ”
Sarah reached across and touched Birrell’s arm.
“Can I just say,” she said, “that I thought both of your performances were extraordinary. Tristan, what you do with Ben, honestly, there were scenes where I had to pause the telly because I couldn’t breathe.
The kitchen scene in episode three, my husband came in and found me in bits on the sofa. ”
Tristan gave her his best self-deprecating smile.
“Ben’s an interesting one to play, because so much of what he’s going through is internal.
He can’t say the things he’s got in his head, so it’s all got to live in the face, in the body language.
And Daniel’s so generous to work with. He gives you so much to react to that, honestly, most of it’s just listening. ”
“Don’t let him do that. He always does that.” Birrell turned to the camera. “I’d like it on the record that Tristan Whitlock is the best scene partner I’ve ever had, and I’ve worked with Olivia Colman, so that should carry some weight.”
Tristan looked down at his hands and then sideways at Birrell, as though checking whether he’d actually just said that. A warm ripple went through the audience.
“Of course,” Greg said, his tone recalibrating, “we can’t really talk about masculinity today without talking about what’s happened in public life more broadly.
The King’s outing, obviously, has been an enormous moment for the country.
A lot of people have drawn a line between what Better Half is exploring, this idea of what it means to be a man in a relationship, what strength actually looks like, and the conversation that’s been happening around the Palace. ”
It was cleanly done. The bridge between the drama and the outing had been built by a hundred think-pieces already.
“Sarah,” Greg said, “you’ve been quite open about your reaction to the King’s statement.”
Sarah tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave a small laugh.
“I have, and I know it sounds silly, but I’ve always had a bit of a crush on King James.
A lot of women did. He’s very handsome, very dignified.
There was this sense, after his father passed, of this young man stepping into an enormous role, and doing it with such grace.
And part of the fairy tale, and I know we shouldn’t think of it in those terms, but we do when it comes to our royals, was the idea that at some point, he’d find a lovely wife, and there’d be a wedding, and the United Kingdom would come together for it the way we always do. ”
She paused. The studio was quiet.
“And now we know that’s not going to happen.
People are allowed to feel a bit…” She searched for the word with a tilt of her head.
“Well, disappointed. Not in him, necessarily, but in the loss of that particular tradition. The wedding, the balcony moment. It was something we Brits were looking forward to for James. Because he deserves to be happy.”