The Out of Office Girl (16 page)

Thankfully, there’s no queue at the sales desk, and we get Brian on to his flight straightaway. I’m braced to put it on my credit card, but Brian says he can do that himself. Just as well – after my shopping spree yesterday, I must be near the knuckle, and I still haven’t
figured out how to cash my Italian cheque.

‘Thanks, Alice,’ says Brian, once he’s checked in. ‘I think I’ll leave you this, just in case.’ He hands me his laptop. ‘It’s just one I use for travel. You can give it back to me in London.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, taking it. ‘Oh, wait. What about the tapes and the Dictaphone?’

‘I left them in the living room. There’s a computer there as well – it’s slow
but it works – and a printer, if you need them.’

‘Great. I’ll walk you to the departure gates. Um . . .’ I half turn to Sam. I want to talk to Brian alone but I’m not sure how to put it.

‘I’ll see you back at the car,’ he says shortly. ‘Take care, man,’ he adds, shaking Brian’s hand, and strides off.

‘Listen, I think we can make it work,’ I tell Brian as we walk. ‘I’ll just have to do the interviews,
and I’ll send tapes to you at home and you can write them up. It will be fine.’ I’m not sure I believe this, but Brian looks so miserable, I want to cheer him up.

‘I’m very sorry, Alice. I’ve never let a client down like this before.’

‘Don’t be silly. This isn’t your fault.’ I swallow. We’ve arrived at the queue for the gate now. ‘Brian – oh God. I should have asked you this earlier. Do you
have any, I mean – advice?’ It’s so lame, but I just want to hear if he has anything I can learn from, before I’m on my own.

He thinks for a minute. ‘There’s so much but . . . one thing is never to jump in to fill a silence during an interview. If you can sit it out, eventually he will say something, and it will probably be something pretty important.’

‘Thanks.’ I give him a hug, and watch him
go off through the departure gates, his small, stumpy figure soon lost in the crowd. I cross my fingers inwardly for him. Then I make my way back out to the car, where Sam is waiting, drumming his fingers on the dashboard and looking impatient – essentially, his usual charming self. I deliberately decide not to thank him again, or apologise for being late.

‘What’s wrong with his wife?’ Sam asks,
as we queue for the exit. I explain briefly.

He doesn’t express sympathy or say anything else until we’re on the motorway. Then he says, abruptly, ‘It’s going to be pretty hard for you without him.’

‘Well, it’s not ideal,’ I say, instantly on the defensive. ‘But I’ll manage. We can still do the book—’

‘You didn’t have to let him go, though. Right? You could have made him stay regardless.’ He
glances over at me.

What is he getting at?

‘I suppose I could have, but it wouldn’t have been right.’

Sam just nods. As we drive on in silence, he seems preoccupied. I wonder what that was all about. Was he testing me on something? Maybe he wants to see how determined I am to see the job through. Or he thinks I’ve finally lost the plot now that I’ve let Brian go home. And he’s probably
right.
It was stupid of me. I am not looking forward to explaining this to Olivia.

Before long, Sam’s phone rings. I assume he’ll leave it but he actually has a handsfree thing installed in his car. Most of the conversation is incomprehensible though I do catch something about vacation days and an assistant, and something called ‘play or pay’. Suddenly the call is over – I think the person on the other
end hung up. Sam swears under his breath.

‘I’m going to have to pull over,’ he says.

We seem to be taking some kind of back road now; we’re off the main motorway and in what looks like a more rural area. He drives until we get to a sloping lay-by, where he stops the car and gets out to make his call. After the call ends, he spends a while punching out an email, and then he makes another phone
call. I turn on the radio and listen to Italian pop music, while he paces around outside. It’s almost soothing to see him being horrible to someone else besides me.

It’s a full fifteen minutes before Sam gets back into the car, looking extremely tense. He turns on the engine, which instantly stalls. He revs it again, but we’re on an incline, and as soon as he releases the clutch the car promptly
cuts out again. It must be because he’s so agitated. Finally, he gets the car going, and we inch up the lay-by.

‘Shit!’ he exclaims.

Our way is now blocked by an enormous herd of sheep, tailed by a man on one of those three-wheeled cars I’ve seen puttering about. There must be at least a hundred of them, all baa-ing madly and roving all over the road.

To my immense surprise, Sam starts laughing.
He turns off the engine, leans his arms and head on the steering wheel, and turns to look at me. ‘I thought the traffic in LA was bad,’ he says.

Now I’m laughing as well – in fact, I can barely draw enough breath to point out that more sheep are coming.

‘Shit! Literally. And we’ll be behind them all the way home.’

After five or ten minutes the sheep begin to disperse, and Sam turns the car
around, saying we’ll have to go back the other way.

‘I hope you didn’t have early dinner plans,’ he remarks. ‘I should ring that asshole back, but whatever. I’ll just tell him there was a sheep situation.’

‘What time is it in Hollywood?’ I ask, suddenly curious.

‘It’s about nine a.m. – a good time for calls. Though my assistant can’t always listen in, which is inconvenient.’

‘She listens in
to your calls?’

‘Sure. Doesn’t yours?’

‘Um . . .’

‘Any given phone call in LA has at least two people listening in and taking notes. Or more, if it’s a conference call.’

It sounds ridiculous and also mildly terrifying to me.

‘It’s just the way it works,’ he says, seeing my expression. ‘When I started out as an assistant, I would spend the entire morning rolling my boss’s calls. He would call
me at the office from the gym, or his home or his car, and I had to get him one person after the other while I stayed on the other end, taking notes and putting things in his diary. They all knew someone else was listening. Everyone does, though it doesn’t stop them from saying the craziest shit. At first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But then I started to find it pretty useful.’

This
has to be one of the longest speeches he’s ever given. I’m absorbed in the vision of a lowly Sam, switchboarding away for his boss. I’m just reflecting on how strange it is that we’re actually having a conversation, when he says something even more unexpected.

‘Hey. I’m sorry for what I said to you last night.’

‘What – about Luther?’

‘Yeah. I should have called him on it, instead of taking
it out on you. And . . . I got the wrong idea. I heard both your doors closing,’ he adds. ‘Slamming, actually.’

‘Oh.’ I can feel my cheeks going hot.

‘I guess I jumped to conclusions.’

‘A bit like in the swimming pool?’ I say, wanting to make a joke of it.

‘No way. You definitely looked a goner there.’

We both laugh. How did this happen? How am I laughing with Sam, as if we’re pals? I can’t
figure him out. Thinking about Luther I realise I’m glad I’ve had a chance to calm down. If I had seen him right after all his fibs and after Brian told me about his wife, I would have wanted to rip his head off. Now I feel calmer.

Just as I think that, my phone rings. It’s Olivia.

I don’t want to talk to her with Sam right beside me, but if I don’t answer now, I know that she’ll go even crazier.
I take a deep, deep breath, wishing that Sam didn’t have to hear what is probably going to be a very humiliating conversation.

‘Alice? I just got your message. What’s all this about Brian?’

‘It’s his wife,’ I explain. ‘She has cancer. She was just diagnosed.’

‘Oh, no. The poor fellow. I must send flowers. Can you organise it for me?’ There’s a loaded pause. ‘But – what were you saying about
him going home?’

‘He’s just left.’

‘Just left? Just like that?’

‘No, I – actually, I just put him on a plane.’

There’s a silence so long that I say, ‘Olivia? Are you still there?’

‘You should not have done that,’ she says, ‘without consulting me.’

She’s right, of course. That’s what makes it so awful.

‘I’m sorry, Olivia. I just – there was a flight this evening, and he was in such a state.
I couldn’t – I mean, it seemed—’

‘Did you hear me the first time, Alice? I said that you should not have done that without consulting me.’

‘I realise that.’

There’s another silence, during which I don’t like to imagine Olivia’s expression.

‘How do you propose that we do the book without a ghostwriter?’

I shrink down in my seat and lower my voice, hoping that this will somehow magically stop
Sam from overhearing. ‘I think we’ll manage. Luther wasn’t talking to Brian anyway. I think I can do the interviews with him, and send tapes to Brian at home.’
That’s if I can get him to tell me the truth
, I add silently.

Another deadly pause, and then Olivia says very slowly, ‘Well, Alice. It was a crisis before you went, and now – now, it’s a fucking disaster.’

I’ve never heard Olivia swear
before. I’m not surprised when she just hangs up. I dig my nails into my palms and repeat to myself: Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry. If I start having a meltdown in front of Sam, then I might as well give up and go home right now.

I don’t dare look at Sam. Did he overhear Olivia’s end of the conversation, hear her asking me to order flowers, for example? I have a horrible feeling that he
did. Even hearing her squawking through my phone would have been enough. Great. Now he knows I don’t have back-up. If he finds out I’m not even a proper editor, I’m screwed, especially after what happened in the nightclub. He’ll walk all
over me or, at the very least, he’ll complain to Olivia. I brace myself for what’s about to come.

‘Have you ever had
caponata
?’ he asks.

Before I can reply,
he starts talking about some dish that Maria Santa is going to make for us tonight – not that I’m going to be able to eat it. As he rambles on at length about Sicilian food and how different it is from other Italian cuisine, I realise he’s deliberately changing the subject. This is very weird. Is he actually trying to save my face? My hangover is making a come-back, and I’m suddenly longing for five
minutes alone so that I can pull myself together.

Finally, we’re back, and parking at the end of the drive. I fumble with the door handle, but for some reason it won’t open.

‘Is there some kind of child lock?’ I ask Sam, but to my surprise he’s already leaned across me and opened it. For just a split second, his arm and upper body are almost brushing against mine; his head is close to my chest;
and I feel a strong crackle of something – I don’t even want to know what it is. I practically jump out of the car in my haste to get away.

Luther is outside the house, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette.

‘Hey, where were you guys?’ he says, coming towards us. ‘I woke up and I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Annabel’s out with her new dude and I’ve been staring at the walls all afternoon.’
He sounds genuinely annoyed, and I realise he’s not used to being left alone. I decide to let Sam deal with it and I slip inside.

He’s not on his own at all. Marisa and Federico are on the terrace about to start dinner. They look pleased to see us. I sit down beside Marisa, as far away from Luther as possible. Sam sits down opposite her, across from Federico.

‘You’ve been to the airport?’ Marisa
says.

I explain briefly about Brian. Marisa exclaims and asks questions; even Federico looks politely concerned – I think so, anyway.

Luther just says, with a shiver, ‘I hate talking about cancer.’ He immediately starts talking to Sam about the new release date for
The Deep End
, which is the film he’s got coming out before
Roman Holiday
. I can’t believe he’s being so selfish. I’m getting more
and more disappointed in him.

‘I almost forgot!’ says Marisa, seizing my hand. ‘What about you? I worried about you! You’re feeling better?’

For a second I’m confused – do they know about my conversation with Olivia? Then I realise they mean my fainting fit, which already seems a million years ago.

‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘Just a little embarrassed.’

Federico nods. ‘Don’t worry. We all know. Too
much party – boom!’ He mimes collapsing. ‘A little too much champagne and, how do you say, snow?’

The cheek of him! ‘No snow, just champagne. I have low blood pressure.’

‘Hypo-something,’ says Luther. He’s looking more cheerful now. ‘I’ll play doctors with you any time. I think I’d make a good doctor. Sam, can you get me a doctor part?’

Dinner seems to take for ever. I keep on thinking about
Olivia. She was right. I know she was right. I should never have sent Brian home without talking to her; it was idiotic. When she said I had to make decisions, she didn’t mean unilateral and stupid ones. Thank God she doesn’t know about my performance in the nightclub. Strangely, though, I feel more self-conscious around Sam now than I do around Luther. At one point I glance up, and catch him looking
right at me, before he looks away.

I think I’m just over-tired. All the events of last night and today have hit me, and I’m practically falling asleep at the table.

‘Alice,’ Marisa says, beside me. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘Sorry, Marisa, what?’

‘I said: do you want to come and have dinner with me tomorrow night?’

‘Just us?’ I ask, tiredness making me tactless.

‘Yes, just us girls! Federico is
away on business again.’ Hearing his name, Federico looks up and says something in Italian, indignant and snappy-sounding. Sam says something to him, equally sharply, also in Italian, and Marisa joins in, conciliating.

‘Jesus. I need subtitles,’ says Luther.

I stand up. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight, everybody.’ Marisa looks embarrassed, and I smile at her. ‘See you tomorrow,’ I tell her. As
I leave the table, Luther cracks another joke and the conversation starts again.