to leave because although she isn’t awarded a London Living Wage, she is awarded the responsibility of locking up the Green Room at the end of the night.
‘Sam,’ Elizabeth says pleadingly and the intern jumps up, grateful that someone has finally spoken to her. ‘Please could you find some whisky… somehow… somewhere?’ Sam nods quickly and runs out of the room. Elizabeth puts her arm around Lola while Matthew sits on the edge of a chair, uncertain how to interject himself into the emotionally charged scene. He hasn’t got where he’s got to without previously keeping all his presenters alive and kicking.
Lola begins to sob on Elizabeth’s shoulder. ‘I mean, Ricky seemed so fine this afternoon! Like really normal, you know? He’s not been drinking or you know, doing – anything else.’ Her mascara begins to run in deep black rivulets down her cheeks. Elizabeth has never seen her friend so unkempt. She’s always impressed that Lola can turn up for any crisis with her face done, her hair plaited or piled, and in clothes so tight and heels so high that Elizabeth is surprised she can move or breathe. Elizabeth, in contrast, keeps her hair cut short so that she can simply dry it by running her fingers through it each morning and wears a combination of short skirts and pumps that allow for running, since she always seems to be going at twice the speed of everyone else. (‘We should put a battery pack on you,’ Hutch once said as she came hurtling down the street, bumping into passers-by and tripping into his arms. ‘I could plug into you and charge my mobile phone at the same time.’)
‘Ricky was really together and just – well, you know – not that tipsy, really.’ Lola gulps.
Elizabeth nods. The dress run had gone well in that Ricky hadn’t had a tantrum. He’d managed to keep the camera crew on side with a couple of well-aimed quips against his guests, especially the celebrity chef Paolo Culone, whose very fashionable and pretentious Soho restaurant had just opened. It was Ricky who’d come up with the idea of bringing some of Paolo’s food on to the show for a tasting and, he promised, a pasting. ‘Piquant cockle ketchup?’ he’d sneered in the rehearsal. ‘Little nuggets of calf’s tail? Blimey! Who wants to eat this stuff? What’s wrong with a tidy pie from Greggs?’ And the crew had laughed and egged him on, surprised at the host’s new-found enthusiasm for his show. Many of them had been at the receiving end of Ricky Clough’s bad humour over the last few weeks, when he’d found everything wrong and everyone else to blame. This was a welcome change.
Matthew begins to pace around the Green Room. He’s small and completely bald but muscular and full of a kind of attractive adrenaline. Two weeks ago he was the victim of a mugging and has since developed a slight limp. He’s in his mid-fifties and every morning a personal trainer comes to his Hampstead Heath mansion with a gym bag full of rubber resistance bands. As a result, Matthew has gained some nicely bulging triceps, a flat(ish) stomach and, Lola claims, a new-found interest in S&M (she’d heard it from his secretary, who found a bag of sex toys stashed in the secret, locked, bottom drawer of his desk – a drawer to which she’d taken the precaution of cutting a duplicate key). Matthew hasn’t got where he’s got to without flexing a few muscles and he likes people to notice them.
‘Christ, we’ll have to put out a repeat this week instead of the show,’ he says despairingly, but then his eyes brighten. ‘Maybe a compilation? The Best of Ricky Clough? Only the early shows, obviously. Kev – would we have enough time to publicise it? Get everyone to watch it while they’re still upset? We could be in for bumper ratings!’ The two men huddle together around Kev’s vibrating mobile.
‘Lola, what time did Ricky actually arrive at the studio this afternoon?’ Elizabeth tries to think back over the day’s routine. She’d been in the production office till the early afternoon, trying to sort out next week’s show. She’d only joined for the dress run when Ricky was ready to rehearse his monologue at the top of the show.
Lola looks at her miserably. ‘I didn’t like to call him.’ She looks defensive. ‘You know, it’s not MY job to chivvy up the presenter…’ Her eyes well up again and Elizabeth strokes her back.
‘Of course it’s not. It’s just that you do it so well. Normally.’
‘But he was only an hour late. And you know, sometimes it’s been worse than that. And he was in such a good mood when he arrived.’
It’s true that Ricky had seemed much more his old self and Elizabeth had been hopeful the show might improve. It was very unlike the last couple of weeks, when he’d been bored and bullying. She’d had to have words with him after she found a camera assistant in tears. Yesterday, he’d missed the production meeting because he’d failed to return from lunch. Elizabeth was getting fed up with it and had begun to think about leaving the show and leaving Ricky Clough.
As if reading her thoughts, Lola turns to Elizabeth, her face streaky with grief. ‘I thought he was getting better. You know…’
‘Yes, I did too.’ Elizabeth pauses, but the whisky has done its job. ‘Lola, hon, when did you last…um…you know, with Ricky?’
Lola screws her soaking napkins into a tight ball. ‘Not in the last few weeks. He hasn’t wanted to. He didn’t seem to want company – or at least, not my company. To be honest, I’d wondered if there was someone else.’
‘Oh, Lola. You didn’t tell me! So no more late-night visits after the show?’
‘Not for a few weeks, no.’ Lola looks up, sharply. ‘You won’t tell Matthew, will you?’
‘If you haven’t seen Ricky – I mean, alone – for a while, then I don’t see how it could be relevant,’ she says slowly, glancing over at her boss. ‘But Lola, I’m not sure it’s as secret as you think it is…’
‘Has anyone from the team said anything to you?’
Elizabeth considers this for a moment. When she’d first gone to discuss her presenter’s bad behaviour on the show with Matthew, he’d asked if Ricky had ‘inappropriately’ propositioned anyone on the team. Elizabeth had said, truthfully, that no one had complained and Matthew seemed very relieved. But she’s wondered a lot since about that word ‘inappropriate’. Was it inappropriate that Lola should phone Ricky late at night, when she ‘unexpectedly’ found herself close to his Kensington house? Or inappropriate that she should accept his offer of a nightcap – and then a bacon butty? Or inappropriate that she should then go back for more at Ricky’s urging? Inappropriate maybe, but definitely consensual. Over the years, Ricky had entertained a number of dalliances – Lola was merely the latest. They’d all lived with it, condoned it, covered for him, even. And Lola is her best friend. No, Elizabeth isn’t about to tell tales about this affair.
‘No, no one from the team.’ (Elizabeth decides that Matthew doesn’t really qualify for this distinction.) ‘Why don’t you go home, Lo? Nothing’s going to happen here. Let’s speak in the morning. I’ve got to see the police again at 10. I’ll call you after that.’
‘Promise?’
‘Of course.’ Elizabeth hugs her. ‘By the way, hon – do you know who Ricky had lunch with yesterday, when he missed our planning meeting?’
Lola bends down to pick up her vintage peep-toes, which she’d dramatically discarded in the heat of the crisis. ‘Oh yes. Didn’t you know? He had lunch with the boss.’
Elizabeth turns to her in surprise. ‘With Matthew?’
Lola nods.
‘Oh.’ She glances over at the whispering two men in the corner of the room. ‘Funny. Matthew didn’t mention
