Remember My Name. Havana Adams

form the attack would take. She might still be relatively new, had only been in the TV industry for five years, but she’d seen too much, witnessed too many long knives in action not to anticipate that something rotten lay in store for her. A painful knot formed in her stomach, as it did during moments of tension and stress, when suddenly the door was wrenched open and Talia turned to see Rick enter the room, followed closely by Damian Sanderson, the show’s executive producer. Talia’s stomach dropped further. Something had to be seriously amiss to rouse Damian to come down from his tower.

      The general sense of foreboding that had dogged her all day now crystallised into something more certain. As she met Damian’s eyes, she knew with an instinctive sense of self-preservation that somehow, she was fucked. Damian strode casually across the room and Talia watched him fold his ridiculously tall frame into Rick’s chair behind the desk. Rick himself hovered uncertainly as he tried to figure out where to place himself in his own office. Rick finally dropped into a soft sofa, which placed him several inches below Damian and Talia watched silently as Damian pushed his jaw-length hair behind his ears. He stared at her, as though he was the interrogator trying to psyche out the perp in some police procedural show that was playing out only in his imagination.

      Talia knew that something had gone wrong and somehow she was now in the line of fire but with the fear came an unexpected, uncharacteristic spark of determination; she would not go down quietly. She had never liked Damian and she’d sensed that the feeling was mutual. She hated the way he cultivated a sense of avuncular detachment, the way he strode through the department like some benign earth father constantly talking about his yoga sessions, his three children at prep school, his yummy mummy wife. Even as he continued to stare at her in silence stroking his ridiculous stubble, Talia was determined that she would not be the one to break this silence.

      Finally Rick spoke. “Well Talia…”

      Immediately Damian cut him off. Even though she was the one caught in the crosshairs, Talia felt a moment of sympathy for Rick. He was the backbone of the production team, he was the one who lived and breathed the show, but he simply hadn’t played the game as well as the slimy Damian. Now he found himself saddled with a boss who threw orders about and made demands but who had no idea about what production entailed or the ramifications and consequences of the pieces he moved about on the board in his tower office.

      “Talia…” Damian said as he leaned back in the chair. He was enjoying himself. He let her name hang in the air and then he continued. “Frankly,” he said, “you’re in something of a predicament, aren’t you?” Talia let the breath that she had been holding escape her and suddenly a face flashed into her mind. Chris Priestly, her predecessor, who one day had simply not returned to work. His desk had been cleared and Chris was gone, never to be seen or heard from again. That was how it worked in television; like the Mafia, once you were out, you were out. You disappeared into the ether, into some unmarked grave never to be spoken of again. Randomly months later, during an impromptu break to visit her mother, Talia had run into him in a service station outside of London. He’d been gaunt, with a look in his eyes that had stayed with Talia, the look of a man who had given all that he had, the look of a broken man.

      “The thing is,” Chris had said to Talia, “you’ve got to be in the driving seat. TV is just one big appetite, it will take and take and take, it never says when and it’s never satisfied. But at least if you’re going to crash and burn, make sure you’re in the driving seat, make sure that you and only you drive yourself off the cliff.” He shook his head with a bitter smile and Talia had watched him climb back into a battered Volkswagen before driving away. She’d watched him go and wondered what had happened to his BMW, which had been his pride and joy when he’d worked on the show. She hadn’t thought about that chance meeting in over a year but now his words raced back into her mind.

      “A predicament?” She pushed the words out through dry, parched lips. “How do you mean?” She watched as a small sneer spread across Damian’s face.

      “You’ve seen the photos, haven’t you?”

      Talia nodded.

      “Of course. But what has that to do with me?” Talia tried for directness even as something inside her died. So this was what Dom had been talking about, what he had tried to warn her about.

      “Don’t play about, Talia, we know everything.” Talia watched Damian sit back with a satisfied sneer. She’d never bought into Damian’s act and the fact that she’d once caught him exiting Tamara’s dressing room whilst doing up his fly had cemented their mutual dislike. For all his talk about his kids and his yoga-practising wife, Damian wasn’t above fooling around with the cast. Talia turned to Rick.

      “What’s going on, Rick?” Talia watched as Rick shook his head, a mix of confusion and anger on his face. Gruffly he spoke, barely meeting her eyes.

      “It doesn’t look good, Tal.” He gestured at the collection of compromising newspaper front pages. “Big bosses are going mad, saying we have to suspend Angelina, maybe even sack her.”

      “What’s that got to do with me?” Talia repeated.

      “Don’t pretend to care now.” Damian spat the words out with irritation. “We know that the photos were leaked by you – the emails were sent from your email. You weren’t even smart enough to cover your tracks properly.”

      “What?” The word exploded from Talia as Damian threw down a sheaf of papers on the table. She glanced down at them but her mind was a whirr of activity. She barely took in the text on the printed sheets of paper as slowly it all fell into place. Between Dom and Tamara, she’d been played. She looked up at the smug look that played on Damian’s face; perhaps he had also been in on it. Slowly the scale of the shitstorm she was in became apparent to her. “I’ve been set up.” Even to her it sounded weak and she watched the disdain on Damian’s face and the look of confusion on Rick’s. “Rick, I work harder than anyone, you know that. Why would I do this?” But she wasn’t winning him over, even in her daze she could see that.

      “You’re out of here, get your things and get out. HR will ring you to sort out the finer details.” There was a note of triumph in Damian’s voice as he barked the words across the table at her. Talia sat stunned even as Damian rose, his job done. “For the sake of morale we’ll keep this under wraps, but you’re mud in this industry, don’t forget it.” And with that he strolled out. Talia sat frozen in the seat and then she heard a movement and turned to see that Rick too had stood up to move round to reclaim his seat behind the desk.

      “I didn’t do this, you know that, you know me.” But all she saw reflected in Rick’s eyes was doubt and fear. He’d championed her, helped push her up the ranks and now he was afraid that her fuck-up might ricochet back on him and bring him down. Rick wasn’t going to go out on a limb for her.

      “I need your key fob.” In a fog, Talia reached up and pulled off the security fob and ID card which hung around her neck. There was a knock at the door and Talia turned as two men from security entered the room. Men that she’d greeted every morning as she entered the studio. Their eyes were averted and they wouldn’t meet her gaze.

      “You’ll be escorted off the premises and your personal things will be posted to you.” Talia felt a roar in her head, like the sound of a wounded animal dying as everything she had worked for was obliterated by the storm that she now found herself unwittingly at the centre of.

      If it were a movie, the scene would have played out in slow motion. In the days that would follow, Talia would not remember the walk down to the main exit, she would not remember who had met her eyes and who averted their gaze. She didn’t remember what Wayne on security with the kind eyes had said to her as she’d stepped off the premises. Those moments after she was sacked were a blank. What she remembered was this – sitting on the train with only her battered handbag on her lap. The script bag, which she always carried with her had been left behind, she would not need it now. There was something almost surreal about the empty train and the sunshine that warmed the carriage in which she sat. Talia was unused to being out so early in the middle of the day. Usually she’d still have another four maybe five hours at her desk. She knew