Tuesday
“What are you doing here?” asked Audrey.
Theyouin question was Jennifer Hallet. Theherewas the doorstep outside Audrey’s flat. She’d have said it was the last thing she was expecting, but who was she kidding? This was exactly the kind of shit you would pull if you were exactly the kind of person that Jennifer exactly was.
Arms folded, mouth tight, she was leaning against Audrey’s front door like she owned it. “Making an entrance.”
Audrey had spent the whole day chasing a group of firefighters who were chasing a greyhound that had briefly been trapped between a gate and gatepost and had celebrated its release by bolting across the fields almost like it had been specifically bred to move at high speeds across open country. Right now, she needed a cup of tea and a buttered crumpet, not a television producer and an argument.
Not quite sure whether pushing past Jennifer was any more rude than just letting her stand in the street, and even less sure whether she cared about being rude in the first place, Audrey fishedher keys out of her pocket. “Did you really come all this way just to stand there like”—she waved her hands in frustration—“like that?”
“I can tell you’re a journalist, you have such a way with words. And yes, I came all this way just to stand here. Because I wanted you to know how seriously I take it when peoplefuck with me.”
With a speed she was sneakily proud of, Audrey gamed out the rest of this conversation:I didn’t fuck with you / Yes you did, you [vulgarity]ed my [vulgarity] so now I’m going to [vulgarity] on your mum’s [vulgarity] / okay but… / [vulgarity]and decided, as a result, it was a discussion she didn’t want to have in front of her neighbours. “Would you like to come up?”
Jennifer sneered. “Sweet of you.”
Letting Jennifer Hallet into her flat was a little self-conscious-making. The flat Audrey’d shared with Natalie for over a decade had been chic to the point of hostile (minimalist, Natalie corrected her) and looking at the flat she’d moved to directly afterwards with fresh company-coming-around eyes there…might have been an overcorrection.
She liked to think it was still tasteful. The cushions matched the sofa and the rug, and since she’d got most of her furniture off Freecycle, that had been a major interior design win. The flowers, which she changed weekly, were chosen to complement the curtains, the fairy lights framed the fireplace just like she wanted, and she’d specifically crafted the lampshades to…fuck, it was twee. She was twee. She lived in a twee little flat in a twee little town in a twee little county that only an incredibly twee person would ever go anywhere near.
To Audrey’s dread and relief, Jennifer settled herself into the only armchair without comment, even though in sitting downshe’d had to remove the cuddly tortoise that child-Audrey, with a contrariness that Audrey remembered having once and feared she might have lost, had chosen to name Lion. Lion the tortoise had been Audrey’s constant companion for the first fifteen and past two years of her life, and held very strong preferences for which seat he sat in.
“What,” Jennifer asked in a tone that made it very clear the question was rhetorical, “was theone thingI said you weren’t supposed to do?”
The main advantage of getting bollocked in your own house instead of Jennifer’s trailer was that you could sit somewhere comfortable. Taking off the bolero she’d been wearing over her checked sundress, Audrey defiantly claimed her own sofa. “If I could—”
“One thing.” Jennifer was holding up a single finger to indicate the single thing. “What was it?”
Sighing, Audrey decided compliance was faster than resistance. “Not to write anything about the show, bu—”
“No. It wasdon’t write anything about the show, no buts about it.”
“Bu—”
“No.”
“You came a long way to say a short word.”
Jennifer leaned forwards with an air of menace only slightly marred by the fact that she was cradling a fluffy tortoise. “I wanted to remind you I know where you live.”
This was definitely a not-taking-your-shit moment. “I told you where I lived when I applied for the show. Rocking up here isn’t some huge power play or baffling magic trick, it’s just…mildly annoying.”
She might have been imagining it, but Audrey thought she saw the glimmer of a smile on Jennifer’s usually very unsmiley lips.“You didnotjust call me mildly annoying.” For a moment, she sounded almost amused. Then she remembered herself and finished, “You diminutive rural hack.”
Of the three words in that sentence, only one was really insulting. “I think you’ll find I did. Look, I’m sorry Gavin reached out to you, but I really do believe—”
“That you know what’s best for my show?”
“That I know a good story when I hear one.”
The contempt on Jennifer’s face was palpable to the point of parody. “Oh yes, because if there’s one thing this country needs it’s more dewy-eyed pap about blitz spirit and how great it was to live in a world with rationing, conscription, and the constant threat of death by bombing.”
A tiny upside to having spent a decade with a miserable job and an opinionated girlfriend was that Audrey had come out with a very, very high tolerance for disapproval. And if her goal had been to win the argument, she’d have told Jennifer that. Well, notthatthat. But something kind of like it. Something cool and cocky like, “Babe, you ain’t got shit on my issues.” Unfortunately, Audrey wasn’t cool or cocky. She was earnest and embarrassing. And, more to the point, she wanted the story more than she wanted Jennifer Hallet. Wantedto get one over onJennifer Hallet.
“And you don’t think”—she leaned forward, earnest and embarrassing to the last—“it’s even alittlebit interesting that one of your contestants lived at the house your show is filmed in more than eighty years ago? When it was owned by different people, used for a different purpose, when it was almost a differentworld?”
Jennifer didn’t even blink. “No.”
