It was no accident that while Jennifer waited for Anna to gather up coat and handbag, Dominic remained upstairs, resolutely engrossed in the task of putting Pandora to bed. Long, lanky, bespectacled, clever-faced, academic Dominic — a cliché on legs.
‘I told him you were in crisis and he said that would doubtless make you more obnoxious than ever and went into hiding,’ Anna remarked.
Over the first margarita in Joe Allen, Jennifer related her news. ‘I walked out. Jack told me next week’s features were crap just one time too many. So I resigned!’
‘Good God, is that all?’
Anna was totally unsympathetic.
‘You’ve had a row with the editor. Send in the bloody cavalry. That’s what editors are for, isn’t it? He won’t even mention your so-called resignation in the morning, as well you know.’
‘I’m not going to work in the morning.’
‘Don’t be so childish. Of course you’re going to work in the morning. You always do. You’re a survivor.’
‘Not any more. After I’d screamed obscene abuse at the bugger, I put my resignation in writing.’
‘So? He’ll tear it up, won’t he? He adores you, you know he does.’
‘Hmph. He’s got a bloody fine way of showing it. And I’ve had enough. I’m off.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous or not, I’m going home to North Devon tomorrow and I have every intention of staying there.’
‘Really?’
Anna giggled.
‘I’d love to hear what Marcus would have to say about that,’ she said.
Jennifer raised her eyebrows and tried to look disdainful. Marcus was her ex-husband. The remarkable Sir Marcus Piddell, newspaper tycoon and government minister. He had begun life as a local paper reporter in North Devon and risen relentlessly to the top. His ambition and his singleness of purpose had always been breathtaking.
With explicit and colourful use of language, Jennifer told Anna exactly how little she cared about Marcus’s opinion on any damn thing.
‘Have you been at the gin already?’ asked her friend. Yes, Jennifer admitted, ordering another round of double margaritas. But that did not alter her judgement about either her ex-husband or her future. She knew with dazzling clarity that Fleet Street was over for her. It was, in any case, a world that had changed almost beyond recognition. To survive, as indeed she was more than able, you had to change with it. She did not want to do that any more.
Anna, of angel looks and tiger tongue, was unrelenting. ‘I don’t believe a word of it. All you need is a night on the piss, which I assume is why I’ve been dragged out to play. So let’s change the subject, shall we? Let’s talk about something else apart from bloody newspapers.’
‘I used to think there was nothing else,’ began Jennifer.
Anna sighed in exaggerated weariness. Jennifer promised temporary obedience and picked up the menu. The two women ordered a hefty selection of Joe Allen upmarket comfort food and by the time they reached the Sticky Toffee Pudding stage Jennifer had begun to feel better.
‘Have you noticed, those two guys over there can’t keep their eyes off us,’ she remarked.
Anna peered across the room. Sitting at a corner table was a PR man she vaguely recognised and another young man.
‘Bent as ninepenny bits,’ she announced.
‘Rubbish, they’ve both fallen instantly in love with me,’ said Jennifer. ‘Take me home before I disgrace myself.’
They shared a cab, dropping off Anna first. She crept upstairs and eased herself into her side of the king-sized double bed, trying desperately and unsuccessfully not to wake Dominic. He mumbled something uncharitable about drunken women, and within seconds she had sunk into a deep alcohol-induced sleep.
It seemed like just five minutes later that the telephone rang.
Dominic drowsily picked up the receiver, cursed, and passed the phone to Anna. It was Jennifer.
‘Christ, what time is it?’
‘It’s a quarter to seven. I’m on the M4 heading west and I feel great.’
Anna hauled herself into some kind of wakefulness.
‘You’re still pissed, you maniac. Drive slowly for once, will you? Where on earth are you going, anyway?’
Giggles wafted across the airwaves. ‘I’m going home to Mummy of course. I told you I was going to. And I wanted you to be the first to know that I haven’t changed my mind...’
‘Jennifer, with the hangover will come remorse, I promise you. Remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’
Fifteen years ago, a Fleet-Street legend had been created and two young journalists earned their cowboy nicknames when, after a drunken party, they took themselves off to Heathrow Airport and boarded the first plane to Los Angeles. They were halfway across the Atlantic before they became sober enough to realise what they had done.
‘Yeah, I remember. They both stayed in the States and made good lives for themselves. I remember that too.’
‘Yes. Well, if you are really going home to Mummy, Pelham Bay is hardly Hollywood, is it?’
‘Annie, I have a house in Richmond worth half a million even in a slump. I am going to buy a cottage by the sea and eat lotuses for ever. I don’t need all the props any more...’
‘Oh yeah? When are you giving the Porsche back?’
The cellnet airwaves quavered slightly as Jennifer’s blasphemous description of what Jack and The Globe would have to do to reclaim their car shot through the skies. Unadorned with four-letter words, the message was simply that if ‘they’ wanted the Porsche, first ‘they’ had to find it and then ‘they’ had to take it from her.
Anna began to laugh. Dominic grumpily got out of bed muttering that he might just as well now.
‘I’ve got to go. Take care, you daft old bat. Ring me when you get to Mummy’s.’
With the last remark Anna found herself in convulsions of laughter. The giggles were infectious that morning.
‘Mummy’s! Poor bloody Mummy, I say. She’s really done it, you know, she’s really chucked it all in,’ she spluttered to Dominic, who was trying to look bored.
It would not be long before he would give in to his curiosity. That was one thing about Jennifer Stone, she had never been boring. Just about every other darned thing, but boring? Never!
As she approached the M5 turn-off at Bristol, Jennifer began to feel a relentless drowsiness.
‘Sobriety, hate it,’ she muttered to herself. And she wondered if her extraordinary sense of cheerfulness and adventure would wear off with the remains of last night’s excesses.
She pulled in to the Bristol services area, parked, wound down the passenger window a couple of inches, fully reclined her driver’s seat and fell soundly asleep.
It was a couple of hours later before she was fully awake. She fished her toilet bag from the untidy jumble which in the early hours she had flung into the front of the Porsche, and headed for the ladies’ loo. There were smudges of old make-up around her eyes. Ugh. Her mouth felt like somebody’s old socks and she suspected that her breath smelt much the same. After a haphazard clean-up, a quick rub of expensive moisturiser and a good scrub of her teeth, she was more or less ready for the day ahead.
She threw her toilet bag back into the car, checked her cash situation, picked up her laptop computer, and headed for the self-service cafeteria, where she ordered a large black coffee.
From the pocket of her black designer jeans she fished out the letter from a London estate agent that she had — with amazing clarity — thrust there just before leaving home. It was a round robin expressing interest in her big detached Richmond Hill property. She expertly tapped into the computer a brief letter, authorising them to put the house on the market. She had that to thank Marcus Piddell for, if nothing else. They had bought the house together when they married. She had bought her share with all she possessed in the world, he had purchased his with just a portion of the astonishing amount of wealth he had acquired over the years. He had offered to buy the whole house himself and put it in both their names. She, as ever, had been too fiercely independent to agree.