“Yes, yes, we’re all pricks.”
“And there’s always an angle.”
Smiling sweetly, Audrey eased past Jennifer and into her car. “Don’t be silly”—silly, she had to admit, was a risk—“if there was, you’d have found it already.”
Apparently unused to having her own competence weaponised against her, Jennifer was stuck momentarily for an answer. But only momentarily. “I’ve already told you, Lane, it’s a bad idea to fuck with me.”
“And I’ve already told you: I have no intention of fucking with you.”
“Are you sure? Because you keep acting like you have every fucking intention of fucking with me.”
“I have no fucking intention of fucking you.” Audrey paused, definitely extremely composed and in control. “With you.”
The grin was back, just for a second. Like a wolf that had just realised the brick house had a spare key under the doormat. And then, Jennifer Hallet stood aside with a kind of mock gallantrythat made Audrey want to do something physical to her. From a short list of viable physical somethings.
“Take care, Lane.” Her eyes gleamed wickedly. “I’ve a feeling you’ll need it.”
Week Two
Bread
Monday
It was, Audrey knew, technically a violation of her contract with the BBC and a vindication of every single negative thought Jennifer had expressed about her, her integrity, and her profession, but she couldn’t help herself. All thoughts of simnel cake were forgotten and all thoughts of the show’s frustratingly charismatic producer were not forgotten but were, for a while, rigorously suppressed. She’d typed up her notes on Doris’s story as soon as she got home, her brain borderline fizzing with the possibilities. Some of those possibilities—and this really was going to confirm Jennifer’s worst suspicions—were commercial. War nostalgia sold. Stuff with TV tie-ins sold. This could be a real scoop for theEcho. Then again theEcho’s last big scoop had been about a series of vicious goose attacks in High Ercall.
But salability aside, even if you cut out the extremely lucrative connection to a very popular television show, the story itself wasn’t letting Audrey go. Which was foolish in a lot of ways, because all she really knew was that Doris had come to Patchley House more than seventy years ago and had met another girl who, honestly,had been kind of shitty to her. What this said about Audrey’s own issues she didn’t want to interrogate too closely.
Nevertheless, she’d arranged a pitch meeting with Gavin as soon as she got into work. And while the more relaxed atmosphere at theEchosometimes gave Audrey a nebulous sense that she was doing it wrong (You’re not doing it wrong, said Natalie,because you’re not doing it. This isn’t journalism.) it did mean that a pitch meeting was more likely to be a pleasant cup of tea after lunch than a three-minute conversation in a lift with a guy who’d try to put his hand up her skirt.
“Biscuit?” said Gavin, pushing a plate of hobnobs and pink wafers across the desk as he perused Audrey’s printed proposal.
“Not right now.” She was slightly too nervous for a biscuit. Although, given how incredibly low the stakes were, she wasn’t sure why.
Gavin read. He wasn’t a slow reader, but he was a meticulous one. It was, in abstract, a good quality for an editor. Just not when you were sitting in front of him, trying not to dwell on how much you were about to piss off a woman whose default state of being already involved a certain level of pissed-offness.
“You’ve got to admit,” she said, as Gavin was starting his third reread, “it’s a strong human-interest piece.”
“Yes”—he pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose—“but…”
“But you’re worried what the BBC will say?”
Gavin gave the most sheepish of nods. “The producer lady has quite the reputation.”
“Her name’s Jennifer, and she’s not that bad.” Audrey knew for a fact that she wasexactlythat bad, but this was very much the wrong time to point that out. “I really think if we reach out to her she’ll go for this.”
“Do you?” It was only two words, but the look in Gavin’s eyes provided the rest.
“Yes?” Audrey tried to restrict her voice to rising one octave rather than several. “I think she can actually be pretty reasonable?”
“Do you?” Gavin repeated.
“Look at it this way.” Who was she trying to convince here? “The absolute worstpossibleoutcome is she says no.”
“Is it?”
Audrey considered this. “Okay, the worstpossibleoutcome is that she says no, kicks me off the show, and vindictively sues theEchoevery time we so much as mention baking from now until the BBC goes bankrupt from underfunding.”
Gavin drummed an anxious pattern with a single fingertip. “That does sound like quite a bad outcome. Possibly an extremely bad outcome.”
