Rachel’s eyes met Stevie’s in the mirror. ‘Of course the show must go on. It’s more important now than ever.’
Stevie slipped out of the dress and tights she had worn for the broadcast and pulled on a vest, jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. ‘We barely had enough people to put out a broadcast tonight.’ She kicked off her high heels and slid her feet into a pair of leather pumps. A scream was forming in her head but she kept her voice soft and reassuring, as if talking to a nervous animal she wanted to placate. ‘The next lot are struggling even more than we did.’ She took her jacket from the coat stand and pulled it on. ‘I’m guessing that by tomorrow morning anyone well enough to work will have left the city or be lying low until this passes.’ She put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. The producer’s T-shirt was damp with sweat. Stevie wondered how long it would be before nausea joined the shakes that were making her tremble. ‘Let me take you to hospital. We’ve been on air for hours. They may have found something to fix whatever this is.’
Rachel swivelled the chair round and looked Stevie in the face.
‘People are calling it the sweats.’
‘I know.’
‘I Googled it while we were on air. There are all kinds of crazy theories about where it came from.’ Rachel sounded as if she was at a dinner party, relating a scandal that had just hit the social media. ‘Top of the list is China, with the former Soviet Republics and the United States joint second. Racists are blaming it on Africa or the Arabs. Socialists point at capitalist greed and capitalists at labour laws and moral degeneracy. Of course, religious fundamentalists of all persuasions think the Day of Judgement has finally arrived.’ Rachel grinned. ‘They seem to be positively relishing the whole thing. But the bottom line is there’s no cure. People either get better, or they die. You got better. I will too, if I keep on working.’
Rachel’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm and she looked like a witch Stevie remembered from a book she had read as a child, beautiful in her deathliness. ‘You know how I am, Stevie,’ she continued. ‘As soon as I go on holiday I fall prey to some malady or other. My father was the same. He worked for over fifty years with barely a day off sick in his life. He retired at the age of seventy-five and six months later he was dead.’ Rachel’s voice took on a pleading quality. ‘Even if the others let us down, we can put out some kind of broadcast tomorrow, just the two of us. I’ll operate the camera, and you can present the same products we showed tonight. It was decent enough trash, don’t you think?’
Stevie searched her memory for the name of Rachel’s latest boyfriend and drew a blank.
‘Is there anyone at your place?’
‘I tried Nigel’s landline and his mobile. He’s not answering.’ Rachel’s laugh was harsh. ‘Nobody’s answering.’
‘In that case, if you won’t go to the hospital, I’ll take you home with me.’
‘You’ve always had contempt for what we do, haven’t you?’ The sweat was standing out on Rachel’s forehead now, but her voice was surprisingly strong. ‘Even though it’s made you a good living for five years.’
The suddenness of the attack surprised Stevie, but Rachel had always been a tactician, able to coax or cajole in order to get her own way. She would have made an ideal general for a heroic losing army, ready to rally her troops on a long fight to the death.
‘That’s crap.’
‘At least have the honesty to admit it.’ The producer let out a snort. ‘You think all we do is sell swag to a bunch of halfwits.’
Stevie had thought it was what they both believed, but she whispered, ‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t you?’ Rachel took a handful of tissues from the box on the dressing table and wiped her face. ‘I’m surprised, because that is what we do. We sell shit no one needs to people stupid enough to buy it. We’re not breakfast TV or Newsnight, not even our biggest fans could claim that we’re an essential service, but we go into thousands of viewers’ homes every day. Some of them have so little in their lives they think of our presenters, of Joanie and you, God help them, as friends. Are you really willing to let them down?’
‘There’s nothing I can do for them.’
Rachel’s face creased into a horrid parody of a smile. She had aged in the course of the night and the summer-blonde cut that had been model-sharp at the start of the programme seemed to mock her decay.
‘Come on, Stevie, you wanted to be in show business, remember?’
‘No I didn’t. I wanted to be a journalist.’
‘You wanted to show off.’ Rachel held her arms wide. ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. They each have their entrances and their exits. Let’s make our exits in good style.’
‘I may be a show-off.’ It was true. Stevie knew her looks were both her secret strength and her kryptonite. They were the reason she had landed a TV sales job so vacuous she wanted to return to journalism, and so cushy she had never found the strength to leave. ‘But I don’t consider selling necklaces that are meant to make you look thin, tabletop donut fryers, or face cream that’s guaranteed to fill in wrinkles, as going out in good style.’
Rachel closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them she had summoned the remnants of the charm that had made her such a feared operator. ‘If you carry on selling, you’ll reassure our viewers that everything is still okay.’ Her stare was as intense as a scientologist hoping to win her first conversion and Stevie remembered the craziness that had reputedly got Rachel fired from the BBC. ‘Whatever happens next, you’ll give them a sense of normality.’
Stevie caught a glimpse of how it might be, her own face bright and sunny, beaming into living rooms occupied by the dead and dying.
‘It’s you who wants the sense of normality, Rachel. If I carry on, I’ll only be lying to our viewers. We need to face the fact that everything’s not okay. Forget about your sales targets.’
Rachel’s last remnants of poise deserted her and she shouted, ‘This is nothing to do with sales targets.’
‘In that case let me take you home.’
The producer pulled herself to her feet. She was still wearing the high heels that were part of the dolly-bird camouflage she used to wrong-foot men into thinking she was approachable, and she staggered a little.
‘If you’re going to fuck off, at least have the grace to do it quickly.’
Stevie felt dizzy with the urge to race from the room, but she held her ground.
‘You’re not well.’
‘No shit Sherlock, you should have been a detective.’ Rachel stumbled forward, like a child’s nightmare of a scarecrow come to life. Stevie put out a steadying hand, but the producer grabbed a jar of moisturiser from the dressing table and flung it at her. The heavy pot hit Stevie on the forehead and she reeled, almost dropping her bag. Rachel hissed, ‘Go on, fuck off and live.’
Stevie touched her forehead. A lump was already rising where the jar had hit her, but the skin felt unbroken.
‘Rachel . . .’
The producer kept her fevered stare on Stevie. She reached a hand backwards to the dressing table, searching blindly for another missile.
‘I’d be careful if I were you. I never knew how much the dying hate the living.’ Rachel’s hand had found a clutch of nail-varnish bottles. ‘They’ll take you with them if they can.’
She fired one of the bottles of varnish at Stevie’s head. It missed, bounced off the door and smashed against the tiled floor, a slow leaking red.
‘Christ, I’m trying to help you.’
Rachel selected another bottle from her arsenal.