Bad Friends. Claire Seeber

crumpling my ‘Welcome Back’ card in the process.

      ‘He does seem a bit odd, yes.’ I moved the card.

      ‘Anyway, darling, we need to discuss the show –’

      The phone rang and I snatched it up, glad of the distraction. ‘Maggie Warren.’ No one spoke. ‘Hello? Hello?’ Eventually I hung up.

      ‘So, look, I’ve been talking to the team about the You’re Dumped show.’ Charlie admired his reflection in the glass partition and adjusted his collar minutely. ‘Everyone’s very excited.’

      I seriously doubted that.

      ‘But we do need to book a celeb couple pronto, for the kudos. Get Donna on it.’

      ‘Oh Charlie, come on.’ I actually laughed. ‘No one in the public eye is gonna dump their partner live on air, are they. Not even the Z-list.’

      ‘Really? What about Jade Goody? Or that blond kid from East-Enders, the one that’s always fighting in the clubs –’

      I fought the urge to sink my head onto the desk. ‘If you say so,’ I murmured.

      ‘Pull all the stops out, Maggie, yeah? You know you can do it.’

      ‘I’m not sure I’m quite there yet, Charlie.’ I held his gaze.

      ‘Well, you’d better be, my darling. Because Sally and Donna are chomping at the bit for your job.’ Charlie flung the folder onto my desk. A photo fell out of the side. ‘I can’t stave them off for much longer.’

      The photo looked horribly like –

      ‘Is that …?’ I pulled the picture towards me.

      ‘What? Oh yes, your little friend. She’s dying to appear on any show, apparently. I do love the fame-hungry, don’t you?’

      I turned the black and white headshot round to face me. Fay.

      Somehow I got through that first day, though I practically willed the clock to strike six. I was hugely relieved to realise I hadn’t forgotten everything I knew, although my memory and my concentration were still tested.

      Around five I’d taken a deep breath and made a phone call. She was horribly pleased to hear from me.

      ‘Don’t worry, Maggie. Charlie’s explained it all. It makes perfect sense – you know you love someone, but you also know you’re doing the right thing by finishing with them.’

      How very ingenious of Charlie.

      ‘I need to talk to Troy first, obviously, sound him out. But Charlie said, well, he said he’d make it worth my while, you know.’

      ‘I bet he did,’ I muttered. ‘You know, Fay, you should really, really think about this before you do it.’

      ‘I have.’

      ‘I mean, how will Troy take it if you do something like that live on air, in front of an audience? There’ll be no going back once it’s done.’

      I almost couldn’t believe my own ears. Me, who was usually trying desperately to persuade, to coax people into doing things on live telly that I’d never ever countenance myself.

      Fay was absolutely blithe. ‘He knows it’s on the cards anyway. I’m sure he’d like to be on TV too, you know.’

      ‘Yeah, but Fay, this is real life. It’s not play-acting.’

      ‘Oh, yes, I know.’ I could picture her dreamy smile. I had the unsettling feeling that she was actually quite mad. ‘He’ll be happy for me. He knows I want to be famous.’

      ‘Famous?’

      ‘I’ve already got recognised in the street since the show. It’s so exciting.’

      I cringed inside. ‘Look, Fay, I can arrange for you to be on another show. You don’t have to dump your boyfriend live on air to be famous, really.’ I was so tense my head was starting to ache.

      ‘It’s not dumping,’ she gabbled on. ‘It’s just telling the truth. And Charlie said he’d take care of me anyway.’

      It was too late to save her. She’d been truly brainwashed.

      In the end Fay and Troy split up long before the show. Instead she came on an episode that Sally produced called ‘I’d Do Anything To Be Famous’, where Fay showed the crash photo reverently and cried a bit, and then performed a rather innocuous pole-dance live, which resulted in one of the glamour agencies signing her up. I watched the show in the office with half an eye, busy signing contracts to secure a drug-addled celebrity set to reveal her addictions on a show next week for an awful lot of money. Suddenly I thought I heard my name. I took a swig of coffee and turned the volume up.

      ‘Yes. As I say, I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for my new friend. Good comes out of bad, you know, I think that’s always true. I’m so glad that I got the chance to meet her.’ Fay looked right into the camera, practically caressing the lens with those melting eyes. ‘Maggie, I’d like to thank you – not only for saving me on that coach, but for showing me the way. Here’s to you.’ She raised an imaginary glass to the screen.

      The phone on my desk rang as I almost choked on my coffee, but by the time I’d mopped up and answered it, the caller had rung off. On the show, Renee moved swiftly away from Fay’s pseudo-psychology; if she had any idea it was me that Fay was celebrating, the bitter old bag sure as hell wouldn’t dwell on it. And neither would I.

      I had an odd feeling somewhere deep inside. I felt guilty about Fay, about the fact that she made my skin crawl. I hoped this would be the last I saw of her. But I soon forgot her. There were more serious things on my mind by then.

       Chapter Nine

      Since I’d split up with Alex, Sundays haunted me. They were long and lonely; they reminded me of far happier times. However much I tried to celebrate my freedom, I just felt sad and empty as I dragged myself around the hills of Greenwich Park with Digby, or played gooseberry at Bel’s.

      This Sunday, as my father dropped me at the nursing home on his way to Jenny’s, I was suffused not just with self-pity but with guilt too. I hadn’t visited much since the accident, since I’d utterly lost myself in the summer. I’d kept away while I tried to recover. Now, though, I wanted to be with my grandmother, searching for some calm and serenity. I needed to step out of time for a moment.

      The staff were as welcoming as ever when I arrived; relieved to see young blood in these corridors of doom, I always guessed.

      ‘How’s the wicked Renee?’ joked Susan, her broad face still jolly despite the smell of decay and urine that pervaded the air; the perpetual smell that Susan lived and worked in. They thought I was so glamorous because I worked in the TV industry, and I played along with the lie because it was a nice job when you compared it to what they did: shovelling food and drink into slack old mouths, listening to the same feeble moans, to the hysteria of the senile and the ramblings of the lonely, the interminable wiping and dressing and wiping again. How could I possibly complain? They didn’t know that I hated myself a little more each day.

      Angelic in her green dressing-gown, Gar looked as fragile as a powder-puff about to float away. Her soft hair was tied in a bun, silky under the dim light of her room. Someone had tuned her stereo into Radio 3 and she was nodding off to the strains of Strauss, her last cup of tea cold and cloudy before her on the table. I didn’t want to wake her – there was little point. Gar was going gaga, that was the awful truth. She was clamped in Alzheimer’s relentless jaws, and there was no snatching her back.

      I held her hand as she slept, her wrinkly old hand that was so light these days, and gazed almost unseeing at the familiar photos on the wall: me as a toothy baby; me as a fat and naked toddler in a pink sunhat on the beach