Friends and Rivals

But there was a price to pay for Ivan’s success. Despite his expressed desire to spend more time at home, and especially to focus on Hector, Ivan was travelling almost constantly. Catriona didn’t think she had ever known him work so hard. If he wasn’t at the TV studios, rehearsing – the pilot of Talent Quest was going out live, to an estimated audience of twelve million – he was promoting the show, or locked in a recording studio with Kendall, or flitting around the globe signing more and more acts to the ‘new’ Jester. In the last month alone, he’d had to double the size of Jester’s London workforce and move offices to an ugly but much larger space in Hammersmith, just to keep pace with demand. Meanwhile the demands of his family took second place, and Catriona found herself effectively a single parent. She tried not to mind for herself. Things would calm down with Ivan’s work eventually. But she did feel sorry for the children, especially Hector, whose behaviour was on a downward slide again and who clearly resented his father’s long absences.

And finally there was Jack. Though she did her best to hide it from Ivan, Catriona couldn’t help but feel guilty about her old friend, especially as all of Ivan’s current success seemed to have been bought at poor Jack’s expense.

‘It’s not my fault if his clients don’t have confidence in him,’ Ivan protested. ‘I’m not putting a gun to anyone’s head.’

‘But you are undercutting him,’ Catriona pointed out meekly.

‘I’m offering a competitive rate, darling. There’s nothing to stop Jack doing the same.’

All of which might be true. But it still made Catriona feel uncomfortable, watching Kendall Bryce on television telling interviewers how much she owed to Ivan and how happy she was in England. It was only back in the summer that Jack had cornered Catriona at Ivan’s party and asked her to keep an eye on Kendall. How could he see Kendall’s defection as anything other than a betrayal?

A week before Christmas, Catriona sat at the kitchen table at The Rookery, mindlessly peeling potatoes. Tonight at seven o’clock the first Talent Quest was finally going to air. Ivan was up in London, the show was going out live; though Catriona had offered to go with him, he preferred to do it alone.

‘I’m so bloody nervous as it is, I’ll fall to pieces completely if I know you’re there,’ he told her this morning. Standing in the bathroom, his face seaweed green, the poor thing looked as if he were off to face a firing squad. ‘Is this hair dye too obvious? I feel like the roots are almost orange.’

‘It’s fine darling, very natural,’ lied Catriona. Ever since he’d turned forty, Ivan had started obsessing about the signs of ageing, from the grey streaks at his temples to the faint fan of lines etched at the corners of his eyes. Since he’d been offered the television job, his anxiety about his looks had got exponentially worse. Catriona couldn’t understand it. In her eyes, Ivan was much more handsome now than he had been in his twenties. She was the one who was going to seed. But like all her husband’s foibles, she treated this one with kindness and equanimity, and did her best to bolster his confidence.

In the end, Ivan’s hands were shaking so much that Catriona had had to shave him, otherwise he’d have appeared on screen looking as though he’d just staggered out of Sweeney Todd’s. ‘You and the kids watch it here, and make sure you Sky+ it.’

‘Of course,’ Catriona said loyally. She’d have to ask Rosie to show her how the Sky+ worked again. Last time Ivan had asked her to record Entourage, she’d somehow ended up with six episodes of Ben & Holly instead. ‘Call us as soon as it’s over, won’t you?’

Ivan kissed her on the cheek. ‘I promise.’

That was nine hours ago. It was six o’clock now, an hour till kick-off, and Catriona was starting to feel unpleasantly nervous herself. Outside, the afternoon’s thin dusting of snow had turned into a full dump. Through the kitchen window, Catriona watched the fat, soft flakes fall in silent succession, illuminated by a brightly full winter moon. She loved all the seasons in Swinbrook, but winter was probably her favourite. The crisp blue skies and snowy river bank never failed to lift her spirits, but it was also wonderfully comforting to come in from the cold to The Rookery’s roaring log fires, or to brew up a saucepan of home-made mulled wine on the always hot Aga. Of course, the downside of the cold weather was the irresistible urge to eat biscuits and mince pies and buttery mashed potatoes and all other varieties of warming comfort food. When Ivan was around, Cat made more of an effort to restrain her appetite. But left to her own devices, and particularly when Hector or Rosie were playing her up, she found it nigh on impossible not to go for the extra spoonful of brandy butter. She spent her life wrapped up in baggy sweaters anyway, like Nanook of the North. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to actually see her expanding stomach, or the embarrassing red lines left by the waistband of her favourite elasticated tweed skirt.

Tonight, however, Catriona was too nervous to eat. She was only peeling the stupid potatoes for something to do, and because the alternative was going upstairs to try and reason with a sulky Hector, who was refusing to come and watch his father’s television debut. (‘Why should I care about Dad’s things? He never gives a shit about mine.’) The boy was getting more like a teenager by the day. Or comforting Rosie, who’d taken to her bed this morning in a paroxysm of grief because Ned Williams had announced he was abandoning his Widford cottage for Christmas and jetting off to Mustique instead.

‘Mustique!’ Rosie spat out the word in disgust. ‘It sounds like a bloody deodorant.’

‘Please don’t swear, darling.’

‘Why would he want to go to Mustique when he could be here with us in Burford? It doesn’t make any sense. And what about poor old Badger? I bet he pines to death. Dogs do that, you know. Then Ned’ll be sorry. How can he be so selfish?’

After an entire afternoon of the children’s histrionics, Catriona had given up and retreated downstairs. But as soon as she was alone, she found her own nerves began in earnest. Just thinking about poor Ivan going green in the Green Room – was that why they called them Green Rooms, because everyone felt so ill before they went on air? – was enough to turn her stomach in sympathy. Please, please let him be good. Let the show be a success.

Having taken the edge off with two large gin and tonics, Catriona poured herself a third for luck and went through into the drawing room to find the TV already on. Rosie had apparently tired of sobbing Ned’s name into her pillow and decided to watch her father’s television debut after all. Coiled up on the sofa with a big bowl of Quality Street, she looked happy as a clam. Oh, the resilience of youth, thought Catriona.

‘It’s still the adverts.’ Rosie scooched over to make room for her mother. ‘Should I go and get Hector?’

‘No, leave him,’ said Cat. ‘There’s no point forcing it. He can watch the recording later. Oh my God, it is recording, isn’t it? Daddy’ll kill me if I muck it up.’

‘Yeeees, Mum.’ Rosie rolled her eyes wearily. Catriona’s technological incompetence was legendary. ‘Ooo, oo, oo, it’s starting!’

‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome tooooo … TALENT QUEST!’

As the voiceover boomed out, the camera zoomed around a cheering studio audience. There were strobe lights everywhere and clouds of dry ice from which the show’s presenter, a generic blonde called Isabella James, emerged in a gold-sequined minidress. A cantilevered stage lifted her upwards, the cameras trained firmly on her lithe, gazelle-like legs, while a six-piece live band played the show’s theme tune to rapturous applause.

It’s very old-fashioned, thought Catriona. Almost like a seventies game show.

‘Cool!’ Rosie breathed rapturously. ‘I love the smoke.’

Isabella James rattled off her script from the autocue, briefly outlining the show’s premise – to find the best vocal talent from all sides of the spectrum, pitting classical against pop and jazz against opera – before introducing the judges.

First up was Stacey Harlow, lead singer of Heavenly, a hugely successful girl band. A natural performer, Stacey smiled and waved at the camera, as relaxed as if she were posing for a family photograph. Next was Richard Bay, a handsome American in his early thirties, better known for his string of celebrity girlfriends – Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johansson and Amanda Seyfried to name a few – than for the fact that he had written and produced two of the most successful Broadway musicals of recent years. And finally Ivan, whom Isabella James introduced as ‘Britain’s top music manager and the man who brought you the sensational Kendall Bryce.’

The audience applause was clearly Ivan’s cue to acknowledge the camera with a nod and a smile. Instead he stared straight ahead, jaw rigid, beads of sweat clearly visible on his forehead. Catriona winced.

‘What’s wrong with Daddy?’ asked Rosie. ‘He looks awfully strange.’

Some heavy-handed make-up girl had gone overboard with the foundation, possibly in an attempt to hide Ivan’s nerves-induced pallor. The result was a ghastly, orange, waxen look that made him look ten years older – a plastic George Hamilton melting beneath the studio lights.

Isabella James sashayed down to the judging panel. ‘So, Ivan,’ she said chirpily, ‘how do you feel about meeting Talent Quest’s very first live contestants? Are you confident we’re going to unearth the recording stars of the future?’

The camera closed in on Ivan’s face. For a few awful seconds he said nothing, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights. Then, at a nudge from Stacey Harlow, he belatedly looked up at the autocue.

‘Very confident Isabel … er, sorry, Isabella. The standard in the audition rounds was extreme. Er … Extremely. Extremely high. I’m sure our quest will be a success.’

You could have cut the awkwardness in the studio with a knife. Poor Ivan! Catriona couldn’t bear it. Not only had he fluffed his lines, but his voice sounded terrible, a flat, lifeless monotone. Ivan was a brilliant speaker, a natural raconteur. It was as if the camera had reached inside him and sucked out all his charisma, replacing her bright, brilliant husband with a wooden puppet.

She prayed he’d warm up as the show got under way, but if anything things got worse. The acts were mediocre, with the exception of one eleven-year-old choirboy who sang ‘Pie Jesu’ quite beautifully and without any accompaniment. But while the other judges joked with the contestants and bantered easily with the presenter, Ivan continued to parrot his lines lifelessly, his body and manner both as stiff as a corpse.

When it was over, Rosie stretched out her legs, scattering Quality Street wrappers all over the carpet. ‘I thought that boy was brilliant, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Catriona. ‘Wonderful.’

Perhaps the rest of the show’s viewers had also been too focused on the competitors to notice Ivan’s lacklustre judging performance? She did hope so. Things probably seem worse to me because I’m his wife.

‘What the fuck was that? Late-onset fucking autism?’

Don Peters, Talent Quest’s executive producer, didn’t pull his punches when he saw Ivan after the show.

‘I know I wasn’t great,’ admitted Ivan, disconnecting his mic. Following Don into his office, he felt like a naughty schoolboy. ‘But it was my first live show.’

‘Not great? It was crap, Ivan. It was a fucking embarrassment.’

‘Oh, come on. I wasn’t that bad.’

‘You reckon?’ snarled Don Peters. ‘You wanna see the tape?’

Ivan didn’t want to see the tape. He wanted to go home, crawl under the covers and hide for the next six months. The irony was that he’d always assumed television would be so easy. Surely any monkey could stand up and read a few lines off a screen. He was so used to being around artists, performers who loved the stage and revelled in it like a drug, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might actually find a live audience intimidating. Nothing had prepared him for the stage fright he’d felt tonight: the sweating palms, racing heart and dry mouth that had crippled his performance. He’d made a fool of himself in front of twelve million people.

‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I don’t know what happened. I’ll get it together next week, I promise.’

‘You’d fucking better,’ Don Peters growled. ‘You’re not irreplaceable, you know.’

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