Jennifer Hallet’s eyes narrowed. “You know what I hate?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say…everything?”
“I hate clichés. Which is why I’m so fucking furious that you’re forcing me to tell you to go cry me a fucking river.”
TheEchowas not, Audrey knew, theGuardianor theTimesor even theMail, but she was still a professional reporter and that meant knowing how to deal with bullshit. “I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m telling you that it’s not okay to make a woman inher nineties trek up and down that hill three times a day just so the BBC can save a couple of quid on hotel rooms.”
“She hasn’t complained.”
“Her generation was raised not to.”
That didn’t impress Jennifer. And few people, Audrey was realising, could signal their not-impressed-ness with as much silent eloquence. “Her generation w—”
“If you’re about to say her generation won the war, I will laugh in your face.”
The barely perceptible tip of Jennifer’s tongue ran across her lips. “I wouldn’t, sunshine. I’m not in the mood to have anyone get cute with me, least of all you.”
“I’m not being cute. I’m being concerned about an old woman’s well-being.”
“And I’m being concerned with my fucking show not being a fucking disaster.”
Given that Jennifer Hallet had been smashing this show out of the park for seven years solid, Audrey didn’t quite buy that. “Why, did we not sparkle enough for you?”
Jennifer was glaring now, but Audrey thought she could see genuine frustration in that glare. A sense that she really did feel an intense need to go back to work or else some grand unspecified Bad Thing would happen. “Well of course you didn’t. The contestants never fucking do. We add the sparkles in postproduction. That’s why the bumbling one is loveable instead of just begging for a smack in the teeth. It’s why the insecure one makes you hope she’ll see how good she is deep down. It’s why the granny feels likeyourgranny and the mum feels likeyourmum even though they’re really just two fuckers you’ve never met. And if they weren’t on TV, they could both die slowly of a rectal prolapse and you wouldn’tknow or care.” She swivelled her chair around fully. “And none of that, sunshine, none of that happens unless Imakeit happen, so I would beunbelievablygrateful if we could wrap this up before we both develop age-related incontinence.”
Probably the right thing to do was to leave it there. Audrey didn’t leave it there. “Alanis had a rough time today as well.”
“Oh boo fucking hoo.”
“She’s sixteen, Jennifer. She’s basically a child.”
Jennifer Hallet sat back looking, for a moment, like a grimier, more technologically up-to-date version of the wicked queen in a Disney movie. Which, for someone whose first crush was Maleficent, was a bad comparison to be making. “Not according to the law.”
“Yes, according to the law. According to the law she’s still a child for another two years.”
“And yet the law also says she’s old enough to join the army or get fucked wherever she wants to be fucked by anybody she wants to get fucked by if that’s what she wants to do. It’s a funny old world, but I don’t make the rules.”
Audrey tried very, very hard not to lose it, and mostly succeeded. “Okay, one: Ireallydon’t think you should be talking about Alanis like that and two—actually I’m not sure thereisa two. Because one is already quite important.”
“And that’s the best you’ve got?” The look on Jennifer’s face was exasperation commingled with…with something Audrey couldn’t readily identify. “The bad woman said a bad thing and I’m outraged. Fuck off.”
“I’m not outraged I’m—”
“If you’re about to play theI’m not angry I’m just disappointedcard I’ll remind you that you’re not my fucking primary schoolheadmistress. And, for the record, I didn’t give a fuck what she said either.”
Audrey had, in fact, been about to play exactly that card. Except it wasn’t a card. It was justtrue. Working in media—new, old, or whatever—you got very used to the fact that almost anything that made any sort of money was, if you dug deep enough, controlled by the same three straight white men. AndBake Expectationsbeing one of its genre’s heaviest hitters and being entirely woman-run was something that got regularly brought up as a bright light in an otherwise dark industry. So yes, in a lot of ways, encountering Jennifer Hallet was becoming disappointing. Even if the image of a tiny, foul-mouthed Jennifer telling her school where it could stick its rice pudding was ever-so-slightly adorable.
“Okay.” Audrey put the complex reality of Jennifer Hallet aside and took a deep breath. “Let’s look at it like this. I’m aware that people don’t normally come to you about these kinds of issues, and maybe I’m a bit out of line, so I’m making some allowances. But I don’t believe you’d let anybody treat you the way you treat the contestants on this show.”
“And?”
Audrey wilted slightly beneath Jennifer Hallet’s precisely raised eyebrow. “And—I don’t know. Think about that maybe?”
“Sure,” said Jennifer Hallet, in a tone so sarcastic that if it tried to enter a most sarcastic tone contest, its application would be rejected because the judges would assume it was sarcastic. “I’ll go away and reflect and grow as a person. Now have you quite finished wasting my fucking time?”
It had probably been foolish to expect better. Whatever Audrey thought she’d seen in Jennifer Hallet the night before had been an illusion brought on by overexposure to televisual nostalgia. And itmade sense. You didn’t get to be at the top of a competitive industry without basically turning, in one way or another, into a colossal piece of shit. She’d seen it happen to so many people in her old job, and the ones it didn’t happen to had breakdowns or…well, they ran home to get jobs writing about parking fees in Much Wenlock. Still, it was a little sad-making to realise that the woman who created the nation’s favourite celebration of all that was wholesome and comforting was just as willing to put profits above people as every other macho prick in the industry.
Trying not to deflate like any soufflé she tried to make while sober, Audrey decided to give it one more go. “You know,” she tried, “I really hoped you’d be better.”
