Page 40 of Sassy & Sixty
Ten minutes and two fortifying cups of Earl Grey later, Lisa had calmed down enough to explain the situation. She’d agreed to write his book because she admired him professionally, but she also did quite fancy him, and their meetings to discussnarrative flow and chapter structure had resulted in romance developing between them.
"He's not even married!" Lisa wailed. "We weren't doing anything wrong. But now the press is making it sound like I'm some kind of... of..."
"Cougar?" Rosie supplied helpfully.
Lisa glared at her. "I was going to say 'homewrecker,' but thank you for that delightful image."
Before Rosie could apologise, the doorbell rang. She opened it to find the rest of the Sensational Sixties Squad on her doorstep, each looking more frazzled than the last.
"We came as soon as we saw the news," Emma announced. “There’s a hell of a lot of journalists out there. Did you know?”
“Yeah. I had an idea,” said Lisa.
For the next hour, Rosie's living room became a war room.
“Does he not have any advisers? Can’t they tell you what to do?”
“Nope. Noone seems interested in my welfare at all. I knew this, of course. They just want to protect him from any fall-out. Noone gives a toss about the woman whose house is surrounded.”
“We care,” said Julie. “We all care a lot.”
“I know,” said Lisa. “I’m lucky to have such amazing friends. You’re all wonderful. It’s just disappointing that of all the advisers in the entire British government, not one person is interested in advising me.
“Actually, it’s worse than that…not one person has given a second thought to me or that I am caught up in this as well.”
“I remember when you wrote speeches for that famous actor and it was the same then,” said Emma. “He had about 50 million people on speed dial and none of them were interested in you.”
“You had an affair with a famous actor?”
“No, no. But it gave me an insight to what fame does to people and the power it has. I remember walking up to a door with him, people would rush to open it for him then let it close in my face. We’d walk towards a taxi and the driver would take his bag and carry it while I was left struggling with fine. Fame is an odd thing…it attracts interest and help, money and hangers on. People like being part of it. They’re blinded by it.”
As Lisa spoke, her phone rang. “It’s him. Listen, I’ll have to get this,” she said.
The women stood still while Lisa muttered a succession of ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘I don’t know’. Eventually she put the phone down and turned to them.
“I need to get to the little layby near Esher station,” she said.
“It’s about a 10minute walk,” said Catherine to the astonishment of everyone.
“She can’t walk down the street, there are about a dozen photographers outside,” said Rosie. “We need a plan. We need to be like Cagney and Lacey.”
“Oh my God, I loved that sow,” said Emma.
“Right. My car is parked behind the house. We can reach it by going through the back garden, but someone will need to distract them at the front,” said Rosie. “I’ll have to come round onto the main road and there’s only one way to do that…it takes me right passed them. We need them to be otherwise occupied or they might spot me.”
“Sure,” said Emma. “We can think of ways to distract them.”
Rosie should have known, in that moment, that things were going to drift seamlessly from the ridiculous to the utterly absurd.
Ten minutes later, Rosie and Lisa were poised by the door leading out of the sitting room and into the garden. It was a small garden with a gate on the end which led out to a string of garages. Rosie never used her garage. When she and Derek hadlived together it was a store for a wide range of tools that she never understood the use of and her husband never used. Now it was a store for all of his things that he didn’t take when he left. She’d asked him to take it several times in the past, and now it just sat there, presumably damp, covered in mould and no use to anyone.
Instead her car was parked directly at the bottom of her garden…easy to slip into and unlikely to be spotted until they were on the main road and going past the media scrum.
She looked at Lisa. “OK?’
“Yes. Thanks so much for this.”
“My pleasure,” said Rosie. “I’ll just check that everyone is in the right place and ready to go.”
