‘Thanks, boss. Great speech about the royal thing. Love it.
Dig it.
Nobody is bigger than the
Throb
, right? We can love him or shove him.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you idiot. Of course we’re not going to shove him. He wants to face a popular vote and he’s going to face one. He’s going through to the finals.’
‘Right. Yes. Of course he is.’
‘That’s why he has to appear to be treated normally.’
‘Yes. Mmmm.’
‘Or it’ll look rigged.’
‘OK. Copy that, boss.’
‘He’s worth a lot more to us on the show than off and the way to keep him on is to give the public a chance to get to know him and like him. They will never like him if they think he’s getting special treatment, will they?’
‘No.’
‘Because if there’s one thing we know about us as a nation it’s that we want a royal family with palaces and pomp because
we do it so well
, but we don’t want the royal family to get any special treatment.’
‘Uhm . . . right. Was there anything else, chief?’
‘Yes . . .’ Calvin said it casually, as if it had only just occurred to him.
‘I want a teenage kid who can’t read.’
‘OK. Good. Ri-ight,’ Trent replied, taken by surprise but trying not to show it.
‘Also a victim of domestic violence. Female, obviously, don’t go getting me some henpecked wimp or a bruised poof with a boyfriend who likes it rough.’
‘No, of course not. Right.’
‘Also somebody who is waiting for an operation . . . No, better still, whose
kid
is waiting for an operation.’
‘Uhm . . . Fine, chief. Good. Got that. Uhm, are these to be contestants?’
‘No, I want them as holiday companions. Of course as contestants. Fucking hell, Trent, I’m in a
hurry
. Trawl back through the envelopes and try and find them and if you can’t, find them anyway. Just make sure they’re in the mix before the regionals.’
Trent knew better than to argue.
‘Right. OK, chief. You got it. A kid who can’t read. A female victim of domestic violence and somebody either waiting for an operation or whose kid is waiting for an operation. Any other clues?’
‘Well, telegenic of course. Cute if possible, particularly the kid and the battered wife. Clingy but not Mingy, I think. Also it would be better if they can sing a bit but obviously not essential. Right, that’s it. Meeting over. Well done. Get on with it. See you for the first audition day.’
And Calvin hurried from the room.
Dinner and an Indecent Proposal
That evening at eight o’clock exactly the bell rang in Emma’s little flat. It had been a rush but she was ready. Home by seven, she had settled on a little black number from Kookai with a red lacy fringe at the décolletage, and been left with enough time to do her face and not enough time to worry too much about the evening ahead.
The car Calvin had sent was a Jag, beautifully luxurious, and in it on the back seat she found a single rose with a card attached that said
A rose from a prick.
The last vestiges of Emma’s anger evaporated. He was saying sorry. He hadn’t meant it. He’d had a brainstorm, been suffering from a salt deficiency. Something like that. Emma had previously resolved to be tough with Calvin but if he was going to be that contrite then it would be churlish not to forgive him.
They dined in a private upstairs room at the Ivy, which, despite Emma’s efforts to be underawed, felt glamorous and exciting. Calvin apologized early on for his brutal behaviour and with due contrition offered Emma her job back plus a raise, which she was pleased to accept. Calvin then insisted that they spoke no further on the matter and instead he regaled her with amusing anecdotes about Rodney and Beryl and the American pop industry. He mentioned his broken marriage briefly but in a light and self-deprecating manner, concluding that two arrogant, manipulative superegos had made a big mistake and in so doing proved once and for all that only opposites attract. Then, when the last of the wine had been drunk and coffee had been served, he asked if she would return with him to his house in Belgravia.
Of course she should have been expecting it but in fact she hadn’t been. She was not a particularly vain girl and knowing that Calvin could pick and choose his women at will she had not flattered herself that this dinner might in his view be a means of seduction. At the back of her mind she had thought it might be more of an effort to avoid the possibility of her taking legal action against him for unfair dismissal. After all, the days when mega-rich employers could do whatever they liked with their employees were mercifully past.
‘You want me to come home with you?’ she said.
‘Yes. Absolutely. Now would be great.’
‘For coffee?’ she enquired weakly, trying to maintain the niceties.
‘No. We’ve had coffee. I want you to stay the night.’
Emma was taken aback. She had not received so blunt a proposal since her drunken first-year nights in the Student Union bar and she did not like it much.
‘Calvin, I can’t,’ she said quickly.
‘Emma, please,’ said Calvin. ‘It really would mean a lot to me.’
‘Mean a lot to you? How do you mean, mean a lot to you?’
‘Exactly that. I want to sleep with you. It’s very important to me.’
‘Important to you?’
‘Yes.’
Now Emma was becoming as angry as she had been surprised.
‘God, you’re a plain speaker, aren’t you, Calvin?’
‘Well, I’m sorry if I’m being blunt but it’s late, we both have work in the morning and this is important to me.’
‘Who I go to bed with is important to me. So no,’ Emma said firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Why not?’
‘What do you mean, why not? Goodness gracious, I never heard such a thing! I don’t just sleep with blokes when they ask me to. Particularly when it’s practically a bloody order. It isn’t me. There has to be . . . I don’t know, something more.’
‘What? Romance? I can do romance.’
‘Clearly you can’t.’
‘Emma, you
have
to do this for me.’
‘No, Calvin, I really don’t have to do this for you and I really shan’t either.’
If he had waited she might have added something. Something like, maybe next time. That they’d have to see. And if not next time, almost certainly the time after that. Depending on how things developed. Unfortunately Calvin did not give her the chance.
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘and this is going to sound really wrong but there’s no nice way of putting it, you can’t have your job back.’
Emma could not believe what she had heard. It was so
blatant
! She had never come across anything like it in her life.
‘You’re joking, of course.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not.’
‘You mean you’re actually saying to me, straight out, that my getting my job back is dependent on my going to bed with you?’
‘Well, it wasn’t . . . before.’
‘Before I said no?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it is now?’
‘I’m afraid it has to be, Emma. It’s about focus, you see. You’re blurring my focus. My mind is wandering. Do you have any idea how serious a thing that is at this stage in programme development? I need to get it out of my system. Right now. Tonight. I can’t afford to lose another minute of concentration time.’
‘So you sacked me just so you could then blackmail me into having sex with you?’
‘No, absolutely not, that’s not how it happened at all. I sacked you to try to get you out of my focus, so that I could concentrate on the job in hand. But it didn’t work.’
‘I’m going to the police. This is completely illegal, it’s not the tenth century, you know. You’re not a baron, you can’t just shag your serfs when you feel like it.’
Now it was Calvin’s turn to be taken aback. It had already been dawning on him that he had played the situation rather badly but things were suddenly getting out of hand.
‘You can’t go to the police, Emma,’ he said, his manner losing something of its self-assurance. ‘I’ll deny it, it’s your word against mine. I’ll say this is your way of getting revenge.’
‘I’ve been recording you. I brought a tape recorder.’
‘Emma,’ Calvin replied gently, ‘you haven’t. I always carry a device that lets me know if anybody is recording anything within half a mile of me. You can get them at any of those spy gadget shops.’
‘Oh,’ said Emma, looking slightly crestfallen.
‘Actually that was a lie,’ Calvin added. ‘I don’t have any such device.’
Emma picked up her bag to leave.
‘Goodbye, you horrible bastard.’
‘Emma?’ Calvin said urgently. ‘If I could give you your job back without you having to sleep with me I would. I really would. But believe me, I can’t. You’re just too . . . too
fascinating
.’
‘Too
fascinating
?’
‘Yes. I keep trying to work and you keep . . . distracting me.’
‘And you
sacked
me for that? For being unwittingly distracting?’
‘Yes. I’m a busy man. I need to concentrate. If I let you back in I’ll probably just get distracted again. I can’t afford to have that happen.’
‘But it will be all right if you sleep with me?’
‘Yes, that’s my theory anyway. I think I need to see you naked. If I can just see you naked and have sex with you then all that will be out of the way. I won’t be messing up my meetings thinking, what would that girl look like naked, because I’ll
know.
My mind won’t be wandering off thinking, if I could have sex with her just once . . . because I’ll have
done it already.
Do you see? That’s why if you won’t sleep with me I can’t let you have your job back. I have responsibilities, a lot of people’s jobs depend on me doing my job right. I have a show to make. I can’t allow you to ruin that. In a way I’m as much a victim of this as you.’
Emma could only stare. If nothing else, she now understood a little better how it was that this man had so quickly become such a colossus in the business.
‘You really think you can fix anything, don’t you?’ she said finally. ‘Manipulate any story, even your own?’
‘Well, don’t you think it’s a good thing to take responsibility for one’s life? To assume control?’
‘What I think, Calvin,’ Emma said, getting to her feet, ‘is that you are going to die a very lonely man.’
Then, refusing to discuss it further, she left the restaurant and went home.
Reality Check
As it was eleven in the morning in Wardour Street it was 3am in LA. Priscilla had been in the club for about an hour and whatever was in the uppers she had bought from the bathroom chick was not doing the trick. She was supposed to be having fun. There was a line outside fifty metres long of people desperate to be where she was and she had walked right past it and been nodded through. She was, after all, Priscilla Blenheim and the last time she had visited the club she had gained them some welcome publicity by bringing with her a camera crew covering her ‘spontaneous’ night out clubbing despite having been grounded by her two mothers for getting her first boob job.
She had hated those boobs. They were so lame, though when the idea had come up at the story meeting it had sounded fun. Like the whole episode would be about her, instead of the usual thing which was just her whining on the periphery, and she would get to have badass fuck-you space hoppers done live on TV. But then the people at the network said that because she was still a teen they would have to be really small tasteful titties so as not to offend any parents or encourage irresponsible behaviour. Like those pathetic token peaches that preppy girls got done in their first semester away from Mom, which didn’t even look like a boob job at all. What was the point of having a boob job that didn’t look like a boob job? Priscilla had wanted Pammies, two huge, fuck-off, rock ’n’ roll tits with She Devils and butterflies tattooed all over them, but her moms had said no. And despite the fact that the tits were so obviously a sad token effort she’d have to act like she was really scared of what her mom and mom would say.
Now of course she had two enormous balloons straining the confines of her jumper and Beryl had been furious, not least because nothing had been caught on camera. There were no cameras with her now either. Nobody at all, in fact. The friends whom she had come in with, who had breezed in on the coat tails of her celebrity, had all grabbed their passes to the VIP area and evaporated.
Then she noticed a band she had always admired sitting in a booth drinking beers and laughing. They were an indie rock band, not big at all, but they had a small deal and played regularly and were kind of respected. The sort of band she had always liked. She went over to talk to them. It was OK to do that, they were fellow celebrities, it was a special bond.