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‘On your honeymoon? How exciting!’ pervy Dave says. ‘Do you think she might be the one?’
‘It’s too early to say for sure, but let’s say that she might be, yes.’
My mouth drops open again and I turn to look at Ed. He’s studiously avoiding my gaze by staring fixedly at the TV.
On the screen, Ed is telling pervy Dave about how we met and how wonderful I am, and I suddenly feel like an awful human being. Here he is, saying all this amazing stuff about me, while I was trying to get as far away from him as I could. I didn’t deserve him, I realise, and a tear slips down my cheek, followed closely by another. Thankfully, everyone else is glued to the TV and nobody notices. I wipe them away surreptitiously.
The closing credits roll, and I realise with relief that Ed has been as good as his word. None of the footage of me was included.
‘How did you do it?’ I ask him.
‘Actually, it was a lot easier than you might think,’ he replies. ‘I told Dave he couldn’t use the footage he took of you because, although I was under contract, you weren’t. He came back at me and said he could film whatever he wanted in a public space, so I told him a hotel room didn’t count as public. He got really pissed off and started demanding I go and find you and get you to sign a consent form or the production company would sue me for breach of contract, so I hit him with a load of legal mumbo-jumbo about coercion and so on, and eventually we compromised. I agreed that I’d do an extra bit of the interview about meeting you in return for him leaving you alone. I came to find you afterwards, to tell you what I’d done, but you’d gone.’
‘I’m so sorry. I panicked,’ I tell him.
‘It was my fault. I should have remembered they were coming,’ he replies.
‘Charley,’ Mads pipes up suddenly, ‘I have an early start in the morning so I’m going to head off. Are you OK to drop Ed back at the station on your way home?’
She’s unbelievable. I follow her into the hallway to see her off.
‘My work here is done,’ she tells me. ‘Don’t fuck it up again, will you?’
27
I’m very conscious of Ed’s presence in my car as we drive to the station. His aftershave hangs in the confined space as he sits with his hands on his lap, looking straight ahead through the windscreen. It’s only a few minutes’ drive and we travel in silence. When we get to the station, I pull into the car park and switch off the engine. Ed undoes his seat belt but doesn’t get out of the car.
‘Charley, I’m really sorry about Alice. She was completely out of order. I have no idea what she thought she was doing. She must have known who you were, because I’d told her about you when she asked howMarried Before We Metwas going.’
‘So why did she tell me you didn’t want to speak to me? Why did she tell me to stop calling?’
‘When Mads confronted me in the lobby, my first instinct was to not believe her. Alice has always been a hundred per cent trustworthy. But Mads was so fierce about it that I decided to check. We record all our calls, so I went into the system to listen to the recordings from the days that Mads told me you called and it was all exactly as she described. I was devastated and furious in equal measure. I called Alice into my office and played the recordings to her.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she thought you were a journalist. We get quite a lot of calls where journalists pretend to be friends or family, just to get through and try to get the inside story on some of our cases. I don’t know what they think they’re going to achieve, as there’s no way we would ever tell them anything. But even still, the protocol is that, if she’s suspicious, she’s supposed to say I’m busy, take the number and pass it on to me, just in case it’s a genuine call and I recognise the person.’
‘But she didn’t do it with my number?’
‘No. I asked her about it and she said she must have mislaid it. Then, when you called again and I hadn’t added you to the trusted numbers list, she decided you were a nuisance caller and told you not to call again.’
‘That’s pretty unprofessional, isn’t it, to mislay someone’s contact details? What if I’d been somebody important?’
‘Youaresomebody important!’ he exclaims. ‘I’m still furious with her and I’ve threatened to raise it with HR as a disciplinary issue. Believe me, she knows she’s done the wrong thing.’
‘Will you?’
‘Probably not. I’d like to, but the company has policies on taking personal calls on the office line, so I’d probably get a bit of flak too because I’d have to explain who you are. But she doesn’t know that, so I’m letting her stew for the time being.’
‘Do you remember when you first told me about her, you said she was really anti you being on the show?’
‘What about it?’
‘You don’t think she’s got designs on you, do you?’
‘I’m sure she hasn’t,’ he replies, with complete certainty. ‘It would be unprofessional and, besides, we’ve worked together for years; something would have leaked out by now.’
‘Mm. I’m not convinced, if you don’t mind me saying. However, you know her better than me, so I’ll leave that one with you.’
