Best of Friends

‘Stop obsessing, Abby. We’ve got a winning formula and you’re a big part of it.’

At the back of the bathroom cupboard, Abby found her highly expensive and rarely used Eve Lom cleanser and moisturiser. If it was good enough for superstars, it was good enough for her, she decided. Serious cleansing was the answer to holding back the wrinkles.

‘What’s got you up so early?’ mumbled Tom, shuffling into the bathroom ten minutes later. His legs were thin under his oversized T-shirt, thin and pale. He had a long-distance runner’s legs, he used to joke. She wondered if he’d be hurt if she called his legs ‘OK’ instead of sexy, which was what she always used to say if he moaned about how skinny they were.

She went back to rubbing scented body lotion assiduously into her shoulders and back. Tom didn’t ask if she wanted help with the hard-to-reach bits. Once, he would have been only too eager to do so, slowly rubbing the lotion into more interesting places. Abby tried to tell herself this didn’t matter.

‘I’ve a meeting with the production team this morning to run through ideas for the show,’ she said curtly.

Abby loved meetings. Nothing made her feel more businesslike than sitting round the long table in Beech’s modern office on the river-front, everyone with bottles of mineral water and clean pads in front of them, tossing ideas around, the creative buzz almost palpable. It made her feel like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl – beautifully dressed but a bit of a fraud. Hopefully, today’s meeting would be enjoyable too. Flora was right: she probably was obsessing about the new executive producer.

‘When you’re in the shop later,’ Tom said, turning on the shower, ‘don’t forget I need new razor blades – you know the ones I like – and we’re low on espresso.’

He stepped into the shower.

Ridiculously, Abby felt like crying. It wasn’t because her husband seemed completely unaware of the system that meant they never ran out of staples like coffee or razor blades, and that, ironically, underpinned her career success and therefore their comfortable lifestyle. It was because she finally realised what she’d turned into: his mother. The only difference was that occasionally – very occasionally – they had sex. She didn’t even bother to cast her mind back to when that had last been. Apart from the sex, she was a doppelgänger for the late Mrs Beryl Barton, replenisher of razor blades and laundry angel, who required only the odd vague compliment to keep her running on oiled wheels.

OK. You look OK.

Fiercely, Abby began to apply her ‘photo opportunity’ panstick with the skill that came from watching the Declutter make-up artist work on her face. She might not be a twenty-something leggy blonde, but she could still do more than OK.

At least the perky young receptionist in the Beech office was pleased to see her.

‘Hello, Abby!’ Livia smiled from behind the wall of her sleek glass and chrome desk. ‘They’re waiting for you in the meeting room. Will I phone someone to get you or do you want to go up yourself?’

‘Don’t get anyone, Livia,’ chided Abby. ‘I do hate fuss.’

‘I know,’ sighed Livia. Abby was so lovely to work with, a rarity in their business. Honestly, she never demanded anything, not like some of the stars who rushed in and out of Beech’s offices, rudely requesting taxis immediately and treating Livia like someone who could only hear if she was screeched at.

If Abby needed a taxi, she’d politely ask Livia if it wasn’t too much trouble to call one for her. And say thank you. Abby always remembered to ask about Livia’s mother, who adored Declutter and had been delighted to get a copy of the last video with a Beech compliments slip signed by Abby herself.

Abby rushed along to the meeting room, oblivious to anything but the loud swishing of her long leather skirt. The outfit had seemed like a good idea at the time – a sort of classy but modern look, worn with pull-on Lycra boots and a chic white shirt with big cuffs – but she’d forgotten how noisy the skirt was. Each step sounded like a legion of Russell Crowe lookalikes marching noisily into battle for the glory of Rome.

There were four people in the meeting room: Stan, the executive producer; Flora, the director; Brian, the MD of Beech; and Roxie, the new executive producer. Abby got on marvellously with the first three, but she instantly felt intimidated by the look of the new woman. Roxie, in an elegant Gucci suit, was sleekly glamorous with a pointed, clever little face, and she didn’t look as if she felt like a fraud in the business world.

Abby was also somewhat woolly on exactly what Roxie’s role in Beech would be and what she’d have to do with Declutter.

She wasn’t long finding out.

After ten minutes of clapping themselves on the back for how well the last series had done, Roxie took the floor. Briskly flicking the switch to close the blinds, shutting out the spectacular view of the river, she touched a button and the widescreen TV lit up.

‘This is an American show pretty similar to Declutter,’ Roxie said, as the credits rolled. ‘I think you’ll all soon see my point.’

What point? wondered Abby, feeling a shade underbriefed.

The show was certainly the same format as hers, with people yielding up their homes for dejunking by the Get It Outta Here! team of experts. Only the experts were a trio of uniformly young and beautiful women – former cheerleaders by the look of them – and they didn’t pull any punches. Instead of gently detaching the client from beloved piles of mementoes or clothes that belonged to a long-dead parent, the girls forced the person to jettison their junk by behaving like high-school bullies surrounding the class geek at her locker.

‘Why would anyone want to keep this?’ demanded one of them, holding up a faded stuffed toy that the tear-stained client had kept since her now thirty-year-old son was an infant.

Because it means something to her, Abby’s inner voice said.

‘What do we say to this?’ said the US beauty, dangling the toy.

‘Get It Outta Here!’ chorused her two colleagues.

‘This show is huge,’ commented Roxie, fast-forwarding through the advertisements. ‘It’s bitchy, yes, but the ratings are big because everyone loves to see someone else getting it in the chops. This is the way forward.’

Abby watched Roxie’s little foxy face with something approaching dislike. She couldn’t imagine Roxie ever clinging on to a pile of old letters or a single broken earring because they had been given to her by a long-gone lover. You couldn’t dejunk anyone’s life without having some vague understanding of what made people tick. Memorabilia was precious, and laughing at a person’s precious things was plain cruel. Therapy by scalpel.

Roxie wasn’t finished yet. She hit ‘play’ and the show started again. Abby began to write down what she didn’t like about it.

Too hard on the people involved.

Very unsympathetic.

Difficult to get new guests once they’d seen the trauma caused.

She glanced at Stan, Brian and Flora, assuming they would agree with her. But the three of them were watching the show intensely and Flora was twirling her long black plait obsessively, her face rapt.

‘That’s the way to bigger ratings,’ said Roxie. ‘Not that I’m criticising what you’ve done up to now, but we’ve got to ratchet it up another level. Seventy per cent of TV shows have just two seasons in them, apart from the really successful concept quiz shows. We want to be in the winning thirty per cent with a show that runs and runs. Our new series is make-or-break time for us. We need to freshen it up.’

Abby sat rigidly in her chair, waiting for someone else to speak, to say, ‘No, that’s not what Declutter is about.’

But they were all nodding thoughtfully.

Abby felt the blood rush to her head. She never lost her temper at work but she felt perilously close to doing so now. They couldn’t possibly expect her to become such a TV bitch. She couldn’t do it – she wouldn’t do it.

‘I can’t behave like that, I can’t,’ she said fervently, standing up and staring at the three people round the table she thought were on her side. ‘People trust me; they know I’ve got their best interests at heart and that I want to help them simplify their lives. That’s what the show is about – helping people move on, not destroying them or laughing at them.’ This show was her baby; she’d made it what it was. She’d walk if they wanted to ruin it. ‘I’d leave before I’d act like a bitch to people.’

‘Abby, we understand that,’ said Roxie silkily. ‘Part of your charm is how gentle and kind you are.’

Abby grimaced. Roxie made kindness sound as much of an asset as herpes.

‘There’s no question of you leaving,’ insisted Brian. ‘You are Declutter, Abby.’

‘You make people feel warm and fuzzy inside, that’s great,’ added Roxie, ‘but we have to move on. We need a harder edge. Someone with a harder edge.’

As quickly as it had come, Abby’s anger departed and she stared stricken at Roxie.

‘My plan is to recruit one or two new presenters to work alongside you, Abby. You’ll be the host, of course, but we need fresh faces. I’m thinking young, maybe a male/female team,’ she said, addressing Stan and Flora now. ‘Abby will be the host and do the main links as well as being the primary de-junker, but we’ll have the added interest of two new people. We could do a whole house per show with more people. And,’ she ended triumphantly, ‘this is the biggest change, make the show an hour long. The advertisers would love us.’

She didn’t need to tell all of this to Brian, realised Abby with a sinking feeling. He was sitting back in his chair, watching his team’s reactions. He knew in advance what Roxie was talking about and he clearly agreed with her.

‘Think about it,’ Roxie continued. ‘We’ll be broadening the appeal of the show, we’ll be able to get some chemistry going with the two new leads, and we’ll have more airtime plus more advertising revenue. Think of three ad breaks instead of just one.’

Abby felt like Coyote watching the huge rock fall on his head while Road Runner whooped happily in the distance. She wouldn’t do bitchy, so they would find people who did – she’d walked right into the trap.

‘I don’t know,’ said Stan. ‘Would the show work in an hour-long format? And with regards to new presenters, shouldn’t we get some figures on the appetite for this type of change? I don’t want to mess up the formula. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

Of course, Roxie had an answer for that. ‘We could always make some pilot shows, just to see if the idea works,’ she said smoothly.

‘Youth is the way forward,’ philosophised Brian, sitting back in his leather chair and giving them all an even better look at his belly, which was straining against the buttons of his Charvet shirt.

He hadn’t been able to afford handmade French shirts before Declutter had been so successful and transformed Beech’s bottom line, Abby thought furiously.

‘Definitely. Youth makes television magic,’ he added. ‘No offence, Abby.’

‘None taken,’ she said from between gritted teeth.

‘Presenters are getting younger and younger,’ Roxie put in.

‘Youth is where it’s at,’ Brian repeated pompously. Everyone nodded sagely.

Abby glared at them. Youth? What did they know about youth? Brian was a childless man in his early fifties with thinning hair, and the nearest he got to exercise was propping up the bar after he’d watched a soccer match. Stan was a skinny single guy on the wrong side of thirty-five with a forty-a-day Benson & Hedges habit, a fondness for junk food, and the unhealthy pallor of someone whose arteries were furring up at the speed of a Formula One racing car. Flora had recently celebrated her fortieth birthday with a big, booze-fuelled party and had dramatically insisted that everyone wore black to mourn for her lost youth.

Being young was just a memory for all of them, yet they were able to pontificate to her about age. Only Roxie, who was twenty-five, max, and, with the hubris of youth, probably thought that old age happened to other people, could claim to understand youth culture.

After some discussion about casting new talent, during which Abby sat with a fixed smile on her face, the meeting ended.

‘Great to meet you,’ Roxie said to Abby. ‘I love your work.’

‘Thanks,’ Abby said mechanically. She was too shattered to say anything else. She made her way to the ladies’ room across the hall, and Flora followed her.

‘I know it’s tough,’ said Flora, when she emerged from the cubicle to wash her hands, ‘but Roxie has a point, Abby. Youth is in.’

‘I know that,’ said Abby, somehow managing to hide how desperately hurt she was.

‘We’d all hate you to be upset. You’re our friend, Abby – that goes beyond TV.’

‘Course I’m not upset.’ Abby’s hands shook as she took out her make-up pouch. She daren’t try to use her lipliner. Her face, pale and haggard with shock, stared back at her. Her new chestnut streaks looked ridiculously harsh against her pale face. Her previous all tawny tint had suited her colouring better.

Flora was watching her. Somehow, Abby recovered.

‘This is a job, after all, and job descriptions change. I’m a professional, Flora. You should know that,’ she said.

‘Sorry.’ Flora gave Abby’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. ‘I forgot. They don’t call you the most down-to-earth presenter on the box for nothing.’

Abby did her best to look down-to-earth, even though she felt like lying down on the tiled floor of the ladies, drumming her heels and screaming about the unfairness of everything.

‘You know, I wasn’t sure I liked Roxie at first, to be honest with you,’ Flora was saying, redoing her plait, ‘but she has some great ideas and she’s all right behind that tough exterior.’

‘Yeah, for sure.’ Abby zipped up her handbag. ‘Must fly, Flora. I’ll talk to you soon, OK?’

She managed to leave the building without meeting Brian or Roxie.

‘Oh, Abby,’ sang Livia as Abby rushed past reception, ‘Mr Redmond was looking for you.’

‘Can’t stop. Sorry, Livia,’ said Abby politely. She could not face Brian Redmond now. ‘Bye.’

She rushed to the car park, leather skirt creaking wildly. Only when she was in her car and past the security barrier did she allow herself to break into floods of tears.

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