Falling Off Air (22 page)

“Look, Robin,” she said, glancing at her watch, “I've got another meeting in a few minutes and this is really getting you
nowhere.”

“Is Terry going to be there?” I asked.

She nodded warily, although I was pretty sure she was making the meeting up.

“Well, I'll tag along if that's all right. I need to speak to him.”

She lowered her forehead into her palm and rubbed. “Robin—”

I interrupted her.

“Maeve, you've put me back on the payroll, but you never issued me with a new pass to the building,” I complained. “I have
to sign in like a guest. It looks like you've fired me, as if you're frightened to let me in. At least let me come and sit
in the library and do some research, let me tell the press I'm working on a proposal, show them I'm planning on a future here
and not in some women's prison. Then I'll stay out of your hair. I promise.”

Maeve gazed at me for a moment, then she heaved a sigh.

She swiveled her chair and tapped something out on her keyboard, then printed it out, read it through, signed it, and handed
it to me. In my hand I held a signed instruction to the personnel department to issue me a Corporation pass.

“Thank you,” I said, without a smile. This was all I had wanted.

“It's the least I can do,” Maeve said drily. Which was true.

I went to find Terry. He'd been reduced, in the last redesign, to a large Perspex cubicle, like a fish tank in the middle
of the newsroom. It was supposed to be a model of soundproofed transparency, but most staff had simply brushed up their lip-reading
skills. It was an evolutionary thing, like growing longer thumbs to play video games. Terry's eyes were constantly flitting
beyond me, watching passers-by watching him.

“You're missing a meeting with Maeve,” I told him.

“I am?” he said. He pulled a Palm from his pocket and poked at it for a minute before hissing at it, throwing it down, and
thumbing anxiously through a desk diary. “I don't think … no … no, not 'til Monday.”

He slumped back in his chair, his potbelly sticking out. I hadn't seen Terry since the night of the award ceremony. He was
sweating slightly. Despite the cold outside, the building was hot and his little greenhouse was hotter.

“Robin, Robin, Robin, what are we going to do with you? This is a fine mess you've got yourself into.”

The nervous banter irritated me, and the underlying accusation irritated me more.

“Someone else got me into this,” I said bluntly, sitting myself down opposite him. He pushed his chair backward as if to retreat
from me. “Someone stole my car to run Adam over then rang the police to tip them off. Someone's framing me.”

Terry's eyebrows rose a little, but his eyes avoided mine.

“Whatever you say, my dear. I wouldn't like to be the one to upset you.”

I stared at him, but his face was still turned away from me. He seemed to be looking at his left shoe, a rather fancy wingtip.
If I wasn't mistaken he was sufficiently unnerved by Adam's death, and my alleged part in it, that he could no longer look
me in the eye. Terry was high on my list of people to be trusted, but it looked distinctly as though he'd have to be struck
off.

“Has Finney been to see you?” I asked.

“Finney?” He shook his head in genuine confusion.

“The police.”

“Ah. Yes. A young black girl took a statement from me, about my phone call, you know.”

“Of course.” I had known that they would check telephone records to my house—they had my full permission to do so, among a
thousand other invasions of my privacy—but still it made my skin crawl. “What did you say?”

“Well,” Terry puffed, “that you had cut me off saying you were in the middle of some crisis. That you were clearly distraught.”
Terry glanced upward and caught sight of my face. “What am I supposed to say? That's what happened. I'm not about to perjure
myself.”

I had come here to ask him for information about the
Carmichaelite Mission
documentary, but I had lost my appetite for it.

“Well, I just dropped in to say hi.” I stood up.

Terry looked sheepish. “Where are you off to now then? We could get a coffee.”

In the light of our conversation the suggestion seemed ludicrous. “I don't think so.” I pushed open the door so that his staff
could hear my farewell. “I'm really glad I can count on your support,” I said loudly, and forced myself to kiss him on his
unwilling cheek. Then I turned and left him staring after me.

I found Suzette in the canteen. A wintry sun was shining through the high windows and casting great patches of bright light
over the tables and chairs, most of which were empty. A group of kitchen staff chatted and laughed near the buffet. A panorama
of London spread beyond the glass. Suzette had chosen a table as far away from the sun and from other people as possible.
She was sitting alone, facing the wall and contemplating a plate of something green.

“Suze,” I said, and she jumped at her name, twisting to see who had spoken and spilling liquid from the white teacup in her
hand.

“Sorry.” I grabbed a paper napkin and dabbed at the mess. “I didn't mean to give you a shock. What's the matter?” I caught
sight of her ashen face, eyes swollen, and pulled up a chair opposite her. “Suze, you look worse than I do.”

She gazed at me, then shook her head wordlessly. She hadn't touched her open sandwich. The lettuce was beginning to wilt and
the ham was taking on a nasty sheen, and I wondered how long it and Suzette had been sitting there. I could see her struggling
to pull herself together, and eventually she spoke.

“I rang you but you didn't ring back.”

“I'm sorry, it's been a really bad time.”

“I came in for a meeting with a commissioning editor, but…” She shook her head, on the verge of breaking down. “Adam and I
used to have lunch here sometimes. Christ, what a thing…” She attempted a watery smile.

I sat and stared at her. Something in her expression was like a lightning bolt in my head, suddenly illuminating the landscape
of the past. I had introduced Suzette and Adam, and I knew they had worked together more than once. I knew they had liked
each other. Now Suzette's face was telling me something more, almost as though she were willing me to know. Still, for a moment,
I could not bring myself to say anything, and she too sat there silently, staring at the table. There was a sense, I think,
that for either of us to take a step forward from that point would be to enter a minefield, but eventually I could not resist
asking the question.

“Were you and Adam seeing each other?”

She stared at me with huge sad eyes, but she took her time over answering, just sitting there, her hands in her lap clutching
a screwed-up tissue.

“No one was supposed to know,” she said at last. “I'm so sorry.”

I felt as though she had slapped me—and as though Adam had risen from the dead to slap me too. We sat there for a moment,
but there were more questions that had to be asked.

“When did it start?”

“When you split up,” her voice was a whisper.

“So you mean, all the time you were dropping by to give me moral support,” I couldn't help dwelling on those two words sarcastically,
“you were with him?”

She nodded, tears overflowing onto her cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” I had to lean in close to hear what she was saying, “he didn't really want me.” She passed the tip of her tongue
over dry lips. “He wanted news about you and about the children …”

I stared at Suzette and she started to sob softly, dabbing at her nose and her eyes with a paper napkin. “I felt so bad for
you.” Her voice kept breaking up. “I wanted Adam, but I could see what you were going through, and I wanted to be your friend
too. I'm sorry.”

I shook my head.

“Have you told the police about your relationship?” My voice was accusatory and Suzette jumped again.

“They haven't asked me.”

“What did you do, communicate in code? They must realize he was seeing someone.”

She shook her head for a long time before she could stop crying enough to speak. “We split up months ago, there's nothing
the police need to know. It just, you know,” she looked at me sideways, “fizzled.”

I gazed at her waxen face. Fizzled wasn't a concept I associated with Adam. After a moment Suzette shrugged.

“We just got bored,” she said.

I gazed some more and she shrugged again.

“There always was someone else with Adam, wasn't there?” Then she said, “I really want to know who did this.”

I wanted to get this straight. “It was over. So when you invited me to work with you at Paradigm, you weren't going to work
alongside me and then go home to Adam at night?”

Suzette wouldn't look at me, but she shook her head.

I sat and stared at her. I felt drained. Drained and hugely disappointed, and as though, if I had to lose another friend,
I would disintegrate. At the same time something inside me was hardening. The earth beneath my feet was crumbling, but in
some strange way I was finding my footing. This was not the time for forgiving and forgetting. Indeed that time might never
come—I saw no particular reason why it should—but, whatever became of our friendship in the long run, in the short term I
needed Suzette.

“I'm not going to tell you what I think of you right now,” I said to her. Her eyes lifted, and I saw relief flit across her
face. “But if you want to know who killed him, you have to help me. I think Adam's death has something to do with Paula Carmichael's.”

That put a stop to the sniveling at least.

“Why do you say that?” She wiped her eyes.

I told her what I'd told Jane and managed to overcome her initial skepticism as I had with Jane too. By the time I'd related
all the coincidences, she was listening carefully.

“Adam and I were together when we were working on the documentary,” she said thoughtfully. “We spent our spare time together.
I've already told you, as far as I'm aware he had nothing but a passing professional relationship with Paula.”

I scowled. There had to be something.

“Is there any film from the documentary knocking around anywhere?”

“I don't really see how that could … I'd have to take a look, I don't know off the top of my head,” she said eventually. “I
don't understand what you're looking for.”

“Anything that tells me anything. I'm clutching at straws here.”

“Well,” she said, “I can have a look …” Her voice trailed off and we sat in silence for a moment, Suzette scrutinizing my
face.

“So this is some sort of investigation then,” she said uncertainly.

I held up my hands, defending myself.

“I'm just trying to dig myself out of a hole,” I said.

Suzette nodded.

“I can see why you would want to do that,” she said.

The silence stretched between us. Suzette seemed much calmer now, but she was lost in her own thoughts, her eyelids heavy.
The canteen was getting noisier as teatime neared and I didn't want to have to face my former colleagues. With Erica on a
stopwatch I couldn't afford to hang around with Suzette, even if I'd wanted to, and frankly I didn't want to. Her morose state
of mind depressed me, and her betrayal had left me angry and hurt. Right then I could not foresee any time that I would seek
her out as a friend. Just as I was about to get to my feet and make my excuses my mobile started to ring in my pocket. It
was my mother. She was with Lorna, in an ambulance, on her way to accident and emergency at St. Celia's. She would explain
when I got there.

S
T. Celia's accident and emergency was a prefab shack next to the car park. Two nurses sat behind what might or might not have
been—but probably should have been—bulletproof glass. They listened wearily to my pleas to be given access to my sister and
assured me that they would try to find out where she was, if only I would just take a seat.

It took a while, during which a procession of mildly injured and sick-looking people arrived and joined the forlorn queue.
Now and again someone would be ushered through a scuffed navy door into the inner sanctum of the hospital itself and a shudder
of excitement would run through the room. I tried to track my mother down by calling her mobile, but she had switched it off.