A Compromising Position

  A slow shake of the head. ‘Not this time,’ he says. ‘This time we’re in big trouble.’

  I don’t like the way ‘we’ has crept into this conversation. ‘What has this got to do with me?’ I demand. ‘And, more importantly, what has it got to do with the house?’ I look round at my Laura Ashley sofa and soft furnishings. ‘I thought we agreed we’d always keep the business separate.’

  ‘I remortgaged it,’ Declan admits with an apologetic smile. He too looks at our Designer’s Guild wallpaper, but I don’t think he sees it in quite the same way as I do.

  ‘How?’ There’s a horrible ringing sound starting in my ears. ‘How could you do that? This is my home too. How did you manage to remortgage it without me knowing?’

  Declan has the grace to look shamefaced. ‘Remember when you signed those documents for travel insurance?’

  ‘Yes.’ Only just. I was in the middle of making dinner at the time, or something, and he just shoved them under my nose, gave me a pen and then high-tailed it the minute I’d put my scrawl to them. Oh, Lord.

  ‘That was to remortgage the house?’ My voice is barely audible although it’s crashing inside my head, and if I wasn’t sitting down I think I’d collapse.

  Declan chews his lip. ‘You should always read the small print, Emily.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t when I got into this relationship.’ I put my head in my hands and try to convince myself not to weep. ‘How could you do that to me?’

  ‘I was desperate. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘You could have talked to me about it.’

  ‘What good would that have done? You never would have agreed.’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t have agreed! You’ve put our home on the line.’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  ‘There must be something.’

  ‘Believe me,’ he says with an icy undertone. ‘I’ve tried everything.’

  I feel completely defeated. Battered around the head by my boyfriend’s betrayal. Inside I’m reeling like a punch-drunk boxer. ‘How much are you in for? Are we in for?’ I correct.

  ‘A hundred,’ Declan states, avoiding my eyes.

  ‘I take it you mean thousand, not pounds.’

  He nods and twines his beautiful long fingers together. ‘I never, ever meant to do this to you,’ he says and, for a moment, I can almost believe him.

  ‘When they sell the house,’ the words nearly stick in my throat, ‘we should have enough left to clear that, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘No,’ Declan says. ‘That’s what we still owe after we’ve used up everything from the house.’

  One hundred thousand pounds. Even with all my worldly goods being sold from underneath me, we still owe one hundred thousand pounds. Whichever way I say it, it sounds like an insurmountably large sum of money. One hundred thousand pounds. I’ve gone cold all over, even though the central heating is kicking out for all it’s worth, and it’s a good job I didn’t have any breakfast, because otherwise I might have to throw it all up in the loo.

  The doorbell rings and I look at my watch. It’s the estate agent. He’s late. Several months too late, by the sound of it.

  Chapter Ten

  Cara paced the room. ‘You cannot do this,’ she said, tugging at one of her wannabe dreadlocks in anguish.

  Five very sheepish men sat cramped round the table in the Editor’s office. The air was heavy with smoke and the table was strewn with dead polystyrene coffee cups which festered in cold dribbles of machine Nescafé. Chris was tearing bite-sized lumps out of the rim of his spent cup and throwing them on the floor, anger blazing in his eyes. Adam looked at Chris, who looked at the Chief Reporter, who in turn looked at the Deputy Editor, who looked nervously at the Editor, who looked back at Chris. All of them looked at Cara, who glowered back.

  Chris thumped the table. ‘We have to!’

  ‘We do not,’ Cara shouted. ‘We are playing with people’s lives.’

  ‘Sit down, Cara,’ the Editor instructed.

  ‘Just because she’s your friend,’ Chris shouted back.

  ‘Shut up, Chris,’ the Editor instructed.

  Cara sat down, heavily, rattling her chair as much as she could while she did it. She banged her notepad and pen down and glowered a bit more at them all. Chris opened his mouth.

  ‘Shut up, Chris,’ the Editor said again.

  Chris shut up.

  Adam did not want to be here. In fact, he decided, he’d rather be anywhere else but here. In Outer Mongolia, in outer space, in a coma. And, even more, he wondered why he actually was here. He crossed his feet on the table and munched the end of his pencil thoughtfully. There was no need for him to be. None at all. Other than at some point he would be dispatched to take a photograph of Cara’s friend, should the Hampstead Observer decide that it was in the community’s best interests to inform them of an Internet porn-site model masquerading as a schoolteacher in their midst. Which it no doubt would. Presumably the photograph would require her to sport more clothes than had otherwise been evident.

  He was also there, he knew, because he was considered to be the voice of reason. Whenever the editorial meetings descended into a riot of accusations and recriminations, Adam was invariably the one called upon to sort it out. The Editor, a mild-mannered man named Martin from Macclesfield with less spine than a plankton, sent him a case of Côtes du Rhône every Christmas to thank him for the fact.

  ‘It’s a brilliant news story,’ Chris said petulantly, when it appeared no one else was about to speak.

  ‘It isn’t,’ Cara countered with a barely disguised snarl. ‘It’s scandal-mongering. As a local newspaper we should be above it.’

  ‘Every school round here is stuffed full of celebrities’ kids. Their parents have a right to know what is going on. Would you want your toddlers taught by her?’ Chris snapped.

  ‘Yes.’ Cara leaned low over the table. ‘Emily is an excellent, caring teacher. And she doesn’t teach toddlers, you cretin. She teaches teenagers. Which you’d know if you’d done a modicum of research.’

  ‘Even worse!’ Chris was elated. ‘How would you feel, knowing that your teenagers were being taught by someone who gets their tits out on the net – and who knows where else.’

  ‘Children, children,’ the Editor said firmly. ‘Let’s not have all of our toys out of the pram.’

  ‘It’s a good story,’ the Deputy Editor said, entering tentatively into the mêlée.

  ‘It’s not!’ Cara said, shooting him down in flames.

  ‘You don’t think your judgement might be ever so slightly skewed on this, do you?’ Chris enquired waspishly.

  The Editor took a deep drag on his cigarette, trying to extract some relief from his Silk Cut low tar brand. On no, Adam could feel it coming. The Editor blew out a smoke ring, which drifted up towards the brown nicotine-stained patch on the ceiling to join all its friends. ‘What do you think, Adam?’ he asked.

  ‘Well . . .’ Adam removed his boots from the table in what he felt was a considered manner and sat up straight. Why did Martin always do this to him? Why did he always put him on the bloody spot?

  ‘Well . . .’ Adam said again, to buy some time. He’d just been having a lovely daydream about lying on the golden sand of a palm-fronded beach, skipping through the edge of the surf with a bronzed babe in an itsy-bitsy Geri Halliwell-style bikini.

  ‘Well . . .’ Adam reiterated, noting that everyone round the table was hanging on his every word, particularly Cara, which was very disconcerting. ‘I think it is a newsworthy story.’

  He didn’t. He thought it was a load of old tosh. The celebrity kids might have a teacher who was a part-time porn star, but then half of the celebrity parents had probably done a lot worse in their time. And who on earth cared these days how people got their kicks? Hampstead was a hotbed of lust and who gave a toss? No one, that’s who. Apart from journalists, it seemed, who were more than happy to go through the wastepaper bins of people’s lives in order to fil
l column inches. Sometimes – like every morning when the alarm went off – he really wished that he didn’t have to count himself among them. ‘But I can see both points of view.’ Everyone relaxed slightly, assuming Adam was going to work his magic once again. ‘Cara is in a very difficult situation. This woman is her friend.’

  ‘Best friend,’ Cara interjected.

  ‘Best friend,’ Adam echoed wisely. ‘On the other hand, Chris feels he has a great story.’

  ‘It’s a blinder, mate,’ the reporter snapped. ‘And you bloody well know it.’

  Adam sighed silently.

  ‘If we don’t run it and the tabloids get a whiff of it, which they will . . .’ Chris warned.

  Adam knew that they would because Chris would make sure that they did.

  ‘They’ll crawl all over it,’ his colleague continued. ‘And then we’ll look right twats. We want a scoop on them.’

  Oh, dear. It was all so tiresome, Adam thought. Grown men, and women, tying themselves in knots to get news stories printed a few paces ahead of their rivals. Why? What was the point of it all? They weren’t in the race to cure cancer or to put men on Mars. It was a titillating story about . . . well, about someone’s tits really. Nothing more, nothing less. The saying used to be that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings, but now that the EU had stopped British chip shops from wrapping fish and chips in newspaper, today’s news merely ended up in tomorrow’s bin bag.

  ‘I’ve got a solution,’ he said, hoping that they would all buy into it and then they could piss off down to the Jiggery-Pokery for a well-earned pint. ‘Why don’t we cover it from a sympathetic angle? Cara said that this woman . . .’

  ‘Emily,’ Cara supplied.

  ‘That Emily didn’t know anything about it.’ Adam spread his hands. ‘Surely that’s the story. We do an exposé on the boyfriend and why he did it. Give him the hard time. Get her off the hook as a silly woman who’s made a mistake in the context of a caring adult relationship.’

  Cara wasn’t looking convinced. Neither was Chris, come to that.

  ‘Let’s run it tomorrow. That gives Cara time to warn Emily and it also gives Chris time to go large on it with the boyfriend.’

  Chris gave a triumphant little smile.

  Cara twisted her hair and pouted a bit. ‘I don’t know.’

  Adam wondered, not for the first time, if Cara was cut out to do her job. She seemed more suited to running an animal sanctuary or an organic health food shop or some crap like that. She was too principled to be a hack, that was for sure. But then again, so was he and he stuck it out.

  The Editor stubbed out his cigarette which was usually a sign that the meeting was to come to an end. ‘It has to run, Cara,’ Martin said, in a surprisingly decisive manner for him. ‘Sorry, but that’s the way it’s got to be. Adam has come up with a good compromise. Let’s go with that.’

  He stood up and gave a small wink to Adam. A wink that said, Thanks for getting me out of the smelly stuff again, mate, there’ll be some more French plonk on the way for you. Adam rubbed his neck to ward off the tension that was mounting in his muscles.

  Cara walked past and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Nice try, Adam.’

  He smiled a thank you to her.

  Chris followed, doing a celebratory dance and giving Adam a concealed victory punch. Adam slunk down into his chair. Would he have this much hassle if he was a postman?

  ‘Cara!’ Chris caught up with her before she reached the door. ‘How about you fix me up with an interview with the lovely Emily?’ he suggested. ‘Over dinner tonight would work for me.’

  ‘Bog off,’ Cara said fiercely. ‘Just bog off!’ And she bounced out of the office.

  Chris turned to Adam. ‘What?’ he said, looking bemused. ‘What did I say now?’

  Adam shook his head and grinned to himself. ‘Beats me, mate.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The estate agent leaves, smiling as insincerely as I am and the minute he is safely back in his car, I slump down into the sofa and try to hide this all behind my hands. This is such a nice house, my home, and I’ve worked so hard to get it just right. Just right so that it was our little sanctuary to come home to after a hard day’s work. And Declan has signed it away without a second thought.

  ‘We won’t get anything like he suggested for it if the bank sells it, will we?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ Declan says starkly and crushes any little glimmer of hope I might have been harbouring.

  ‘This is why you put my picture on the net, isn’t it?’ I ask. Declan perches on the edge of the sofa, slightly out of hitting distance. ‘You were trying to get some money back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know whether that makes me feel better or worse,’ I say. And I don’t. All the processes for logical thought have gone sailing out of the window, along with my trust for Declan.

  ‘It’s the only site that’s making us any money,’ my scheming bastard ex-boyfriend admits.

  ‘Oh good.’ I fix Declan with a steely glare which is totally wasted. I want to smash things, but as I look around at my Habitat vases and carefully selected, strategically placed ornaments, I realise I care about them all too much to break them.

  ‘You’re a very beautiful woman, Emily.’

  ‘Well, a lot more people know that now, don’t they?’

  Declan snakes his fingers across the sofa and takes my hand in his. He always has hot hands, warming, comforting. I used to call them healing hands. Now they’re only hurtful and I pull away from his touch. ‘You could do some more posing for us,’ he ventures.

  ‘Us,’ I say. ‘Us?’ I bite back the tears. Declan will not see me cry over this. ‘I did that for you. You alone. For fun. Because I loved you.’ I hope he noticed the past tense, but if he does, Declan doesn’t register it in his eyes. They have taken on a vaguely sparkly appearance and he soldiers on regardless of my black looks.

  ‘Nothing too awful,’ he says brightly in an attempt to be reassuring. ‘Arty. Erotic. Not porn.’

  ‘Oh?’ My eyes close down to slits. ‘Like appearing in a Santa suit with HO-HO-HO written on my bum? That sort of art?’

  ‘They’re lovely, fun pictures.’ Declan looks at me as if I’m mad. ‘You should be proud of them.’ He smiles condescendingly.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Declan. If you’re so keen, you do it.’

  Declan inches away from me. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve not got a bad body.’ It is, in fact, totally gorgeous, but I’m not in the mood to tell him that now.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Declan really does look shocked.

  ‘There must be sites where women go to ogle men,’ I say. There must be, but I hadn’t really thought about it before. Perhaps I’ll start to surf the net a bit from now on. ‘Or gay sites.’ I’m getting into my stride now. ‘You could make a fortune with your cute little bottom.’ Declan has blanched. My jaw clenches. ‘Or does it suddenly seem less appealing?’

  ‘I’m a businessman, Emily. I’d lose my credibility completely.’

  ‘I’m a schoolteacher, Declan. You didn’t think about that.’ My heart is pounding very slowly. ‘What will happen if they ever find out?’

  ‘Of course they won’t. Don’t be silly!’

  ‘I’m not being silly,’ I insist. ‘Don’t you see how serious this is? How damaging?’

  ‘I think you’re going a bit over the top . . .’

  ‘Oh you do, do you?’ Weariness attacks my bones. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t secretly put a webcam in our bedroom.’

  ‘I did think about it,’ Declan says without batting an eyelid. ‘They’re very popular sites. They make a lot of money.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should do one,’ I say, hoping that he detects the sarcasm in my tone and doesn’t whip out a webcam to take me up on my offer. ‘I can’t think how else we are ever going to pay off these wretched debts.’

  ‘I’ll work something out,’ Declan assures me. ?
??You’ve no need to worry.’

  I want to beat my head against the Natural Calico Dulux Emulsion but, instead, stand there impotently, worrying on a scale I’ve never previously experienced.

  ‘Come back to me, Emily. We can see this through. Together. Come back.’

  As I look into Declan’s eyes, I can tell that he honestly thinks I will.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cara took the tomato juice from Adam and he sat down on the red plastic bench beside her, so close that his thigh nestled against hers. But then the Jiggery-Pokery was packed, as always, and they were all pretty squashed together so she tried not to read anything into it. Chris, however, had stayed standing up, leaning against the bank of fruit machines, talking to some blonde bimbette from the Promotions department which she took as a definite snub. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t you drink?’

  Cara shook her head. ‘Not much. I don’t like to put too many toxins into my body.’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said and eyed his Guinness. ‘Me neither.’

  Cara wasn’t a huge fan of afterwork drinking. She hated the smoke and the noise and the forced air of joviality and the sticky, smelly carpets. At the end of a day at the Hampstead Observer, all she wanted to do was to go home to a nice rose-scented bath, a few smouldering ylang ylang joss-sticks and some green tea. Heaven! But if you wished to be one of the boys, part of the team, which she desperately did, then going to the pub was the thing to do. And it was nice that Adam had made a point of coming after her to ask her to join them. He could be quite a sensitive person when he wanted to and he’d clearly realised that she’d taken a mauling in the editorial meeting. She smiled at him gratefully.

  ‘Feeling OK now?’ he asked, licking his Guinness from his top lip.

  Cara shrugged half-heartedly. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face Emily.’ She huffed out loud. ‘What am I going to say to her?’

  Adam’s eyes softened. ‘Tell her the truth. Tell her you tried to fight her corner. You can’t do any more than that. At the end of the day, this is Emily’s mistake. She’s the one who has to live with it.’