“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 havingExpectations.”
“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 calledThe Boxwhere 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 withExpectationsis 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 aboutExpectations. 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 wasdefending 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’ssmall, 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. IfExpectationstaught 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.
Sunday
Not being quite as much of a workaholic as Jennifer and also suspecting that dropping the whole the-love-of-your-life-doesn’t-want-to-see-you-again bomb on Doris right before filming would be kind of a dick move, Audrey took the Friday afternoon and the Saturday off, only returning to Patchley on the Sunday, arriving just in time to catch the judging.
The theme for that week’s baketacular was simply “childhood favourites” with no instruction beyond—in Grace Forsythe’s words—“blowing Wilfred and Marianne’s little socks off.” And while Audrey was sure Jennifer would characterise it as cheap, saccharine, and emotionally manipulative, she still appreciated the, for want of a better word, rightness of it.
Because it didn’t only close the loop on episode one’sshow us who you arebake by asking the contestants toshow us who you were, it grounded the penultimate episode of Jennifer’s last series in reflection and retrospection.How far we have come?it seemed to be saying. And it was saying it in a room containing a woman who had lived in Patchley before it was even a hotel,and a girl who had been watching the show since she was eight years old.
Cheap and saccharine it may have been. But it was alsoperfect.
