* * *
The nightmares had come back, out of the blue, dark thoughts that she’d tried to bury. They had started before Daniel was even born. She’d dream she’d had another baby, but had forgotten all about him, only remembering three days later that she’d left him in the wardrobe in a pram. Panicked, she’d pull him out, neglected, near starving, and he’d look at her, wide-eyed and confused, not knowing why he’d been abandoned. Guilty relief would swamp her, relief she’d got to him in the nick of time, but somewhere in the back of her head, she knew she’d do it again, she’d let him down again. And so she did, because the nightmare was recurring.
Later, when she really did have her baby, she’d have black thoughts, visions; and panicked “what-if’s” would attack their way into her head, leaving her standing by, terrified and vulnerable, until she could gather herself enough to shake her head and force them out. She’d be walking him down the street in the pram, and as a car passed, she’d suddenly see nothing but its wheel and imagine Daniel whipped beneath it, his head crushed and mangled in the metal. She’d be in the shower and see him falling from an open window that she’d mistakenly left open, his tiny body lying inert on the paving below. A knife in the kitchen would become a gruesome blade that she would put out of sight, even though he was happily cooing in his bouncy chair. Worst, she would hear on the news about a young child snatched and she would plummet into nightmarish visions of Daniel calling for her, screaming out, confused as to why she didn’t come and finally broken when he realized she wasn’t ever coming for him. She would start to hyperventilate and have to get up, walk around the room to expel the images.
They had been dark hours, nights, months, but they had gradually lessened as the years progressed, although they neverdisappeared completely. If Daniel was late coming home from school, or later, when he was at uni, and she heard of a car crash on the M11, her imagination would start breeding ideas, one horrific thought morphing into another at rapid speed, until she forcibly stopped them, telling herself he had just got talking to some friends (which he had) or hadn’t been driving to or from Cambridge on the day of the accident (which he hadn’t).
* * *
Movement in front of her made her look up and she saw Alison and Sean, the drama powers from ITV, had arrived at La Galette, the restaurant they’d picked for lunch. It was in Upper Ground, not far from their HQ, but still they were nearly fifteen minutes late. Alison’s PA had called to offer a girlish apology: “They’resosorry!” However, she had managed to make it sound anything but.
Sean came in first; with arms outstretched, he took her hands as she stood. “Laura, we’resosorry. Got held up with Helen at the last minute.”
Helen was the comptroller of ITV, and the rumors were she was fond of summoning people to her office in a very headmistress-like way, something that won her no love amongst her staff.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Laura affably. She’d met Sean a couple of times before and liked him, felt he had a nose for a good script and wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind.
“We only managed to get away by saying we had to see you,” said Alison. Laura was sure that Helen didn’t give a flying fig whether or not they had a lunch date with an independent producer, and the false bolstering of her ego made her slightly nervous—as if she shouldn’t trust anything Alison said.As well I shouldn’t,thought Laura wryly.Nothing had changed there.
As they took their seats, she wondered what had briefly unsettled her, and it wasn’t Alison’s throwaway flattery—it took more than that to put her off balance—it was this uncertainty with Cherry. She had to put it out of her mind for the next hour or so; this lunch could be pivotal to the future of her company.
Sean looked at her through his dark-rimmed square glasses. “Thank you so much for coming, Laura, and thank you forPillow Fight.I’ve seen two episodes now and I love them.”
Laura said she was glad, while Alison sat with a magisterial smile, as though she had been the one behind it all and without her neither Laura nor the series would be what they were.
“Yes, we’re really pumped,” he said, beaming. Sean was younger than Alison and liked to speak on a more informal level; he worked in television because it was “fun.”
“Has Helen seen it?” asked Laura.
“Not yet. It’s in her schedule for next week. But we think . . . Well, it’s obviously still too early to say for sure, but we’ve got great hopes for it.”
He meant ratings, Laura knew. They wanted a big hit.
“And Sasha isamazing.She’s going to be a big star when this comes out. Like I say, we’ll have to wait on Helen and the first couple of weeks’ overnights, but Alison and I would like to see a second series.”
Laura smiled; this was great news indeed. “That would be fantastic.”
“Alison says you might have a couple of other things to talk to us about?”
She did. The first one was the private school. She’d sent an abridged version of the writer’s treatment on ahead of the lunch. As she launched into the pitch, she watched their pleasant faces remain static and knew they weren’t biting.
“We like it,” said Sean, “. . . like it a lot. It’s just we have something very similar already in development.”
It was the kiss of death. Laura left the fully developed treatment that she and the writer had worked so hard on in her bag. That was the nature of the business: Something you got excited about, and spent a lot of money and hours of time on, could be quashed in one idle sentence. It felt more of a blow than usual, but she had to move on. There was also a book adaptation for which she’d gotten the interest of a British star who was currently on an HBO series, earning ten times what she could in the UK, but who was desperate to get back to the UK, Laura knew,because she missed her family so much. They remained lukewarm over that one too, citing that their core audience probably wouldn’t identify with the romantic novel as much as BBC viewers, perhaps, would.
“It feels a bit gloomy,” said Sean. “What we loved aboutPillow Fightwas the suspense, the way the lead character tricked her best friend and ended up getting her man.”
Alison was nodding along in agreement and then they were both looking at her expectantly. She had one last idea up her sleeve. It was a crime drama, and one or two of those on ITV were nearing their sell-by date, so there would be an appetite for a replacement. This one Laura liked, for the lead character was a formidable lady detective who had come out of retirement to avoid being saddled with her grandchildren while her daughter went (out of necessity) to work. She’d rather help pay for child care than have to do it herself. To her surprise, they liked it, and they spent the next half hour batting around some story details and who might make a good lead.
“Can you get us a treatment?” said Sean. “I think this one could really go somewhere.”
Laura said she could, and lunch continued pleasurably amidst various intruding texts and calls.
* * *
She arrived home to find a rucksack in the hall and had barely got her jacket off before Daniel came through and swept her up in a hug.
“You’re home!” she said, delighted.
