Having It All Read online

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, but I’ve got to rush.’ David put his arms round them both, sorry he’d been angry with her, loving her, mystified by her. ‘We’d better talk about this later.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, kissing him, but coming to the painful realization that he didn’t understand, not really. And when would they talk? When did they ever get any time to talk about anything these days? One or other of them was always working late or unreachable under a mountain of meetings, business deals and endless decisions to make.

  She took Jamie’s hand and went outside to the garden. Only nine a.m. and it was already hot, the sky clear and blue. England was like a foreign country again. The Greenhouse effect. Global warming. It might be melting the polar ice caps and bringing hurricanes to the Caribbean, but it was very nice indeed in Holland Park.

  Susie had filled up the paddling pool and put it in the shade of the apple tree. Daisy stood next to it wearing only a sun-hat. She cocked a tiny leg, trying to get in unaided. Liz laughed and scooped her up and kissed her small bare shoulders at the tender top of the back. She caught herself kissing Daisy all the time now. Daisy wouldn’t be a baby much longer. Those little bracelets of fat at the wrists, the dimpled bottom, would soon disappear. A growing spurt would turn her from a plump baby into a slender toddler any day now.

  Liz had loathed breast feeding; she knew some people loved it, but it had always been hard for her and she’d hated the anxiety, never knowing if they’d had enough, eternally worried she wasn’t producing enough milk. But because it was good for them she’d pushed herself on through engorged breasts and cracked nipples – even rushed home from work, her breasts leaking into her Options at Austin Reed suit, to keep up the six o’clock feed.

  She’d prayed for the day the whole messy painful business would end. And then when it did, when she weaned them on to bottles, neatly measured out in scoops so you knew exactly how much they’d had, she’d felt an unexpected sadness so powerful she’d wept. A bond had been ripped through. Daisy had begun to grow up. Soon she’d need her first haircut and her first shoes. She wouldn’t be a baby any more.

  Funny how motherhood got you every time, caught you in its mesh like a spider, even when you thought you’d got away with it. Who’d ever have thought she’d turn out to be a mommy-tracker? That’s what they were calling women like her in the States. Second-class career women who actually wanted to see their kids once in a while. Businesses didn’t think they were a good risk any more. They were even inventing personality tests to spot the mommy-trackers, in case, God forbid, they were accidentally promoted into positions of responsibility. Poor Conrad, he’d be the first to sign up.

  She looked at the scene around her longingly. Here everything was sheltered and inviting, the sun dappling through the trees. Outside on the street the tarmac would soon be melting, dogs nosing the litter, motorists swearing at each other as they battled through the daily war zone of the London streets.

  ‘What are you doing today, Susie?’

  The nanny looked up from rubbing sun-cream into Daisy’s shoulders. ‘It’s so lovely I thought we’d just laze around here in the garden and have a picnic.’

  For a moment Liz pictured the forbidden world of nannies and children, of picnics and paddling pools, from which she was excluded by being a working mother. She sighed. It was time she went to work.

  As usual, Daisy turned her face away when Liz bent to kiss her and clung fiercely to Susie. Jamie, as he did every day, sensing Liz was about to leave, refused to let go of her leg. ‘Don’t go, Mummy. Stay. Please, Mummy. Stay!’

  David emerged from the kitchen, his stone linen suit fashionably crumpled. That’s how you can tell it’s real linen, he protested, every time she tried to iron it. Jamie rushed over to him and pulled him towards the paddling pool.

  ‘What time will you be back tonight?’ Liz asked, following him, already knowing the answer. He had to be there when they put the paper to bed, he always said, then he had to join the troops for a drink or two, lead from the front. Of course he did.

  ‘Late, I’m afraid. Logan’s called an evening meeting.’ He almost told her the truth, that Logan had called a crisis meeting about circulation, but she had enough on her plate.

  Liz turned away in annoyance. Why was it always up to her to be back? But she couldn’t stay angry for long. Thrilled at suddenly seeing her daddy, Daisy started to splash him, soaking his new suit.

  ‘Daisy, you naughty girl!’ David shouted in irritation and then, seeing her small face fall and pucker, he lifted her out of the paddling pool and held her, greasy and giggling, to his chest.

  ‘David, you’ll get soaked!’

  He smiled wickedly. ‘You have her then!’ and chased Liz round the terrace as Daisy shouted with laughter till Susie, shaking her head over this mad teenage behaviour, finally stepped in and took her away.

  Liz picked up her briefcase and headed for the front door, wondering how David could love his kids as much as he did and still forget them the moment he closed the front door. It must be something in the hormones. Why didn’t he feel guilty about leaving them, she wondered for the hundredth time. If Logan asked him to go to New York for three weeks he’d just say yes without a second thought.

  Liz climbed into her car. The seats were already burning hot. Why is it, she asked herself, that having children changes women, alters their perspective for ever? David loved his kids too, she knew that, but he hadn’t changed in that gut-wrenching transforming way she had. It was one of the mysteries of life how women fought tooth and nail to be treated the same as men. Then they had babies and found they belonged to another species.

  She remembered when she was pregnant for the first time asking a friend what it was like to have a baby. She’d expected the usual whinge about broken nights, loss of freedom, colic. Instead to her astonishment her friend said it was like having a love affair. ‘You can’t imagine the excitement,’ she said, ‘the breathless anticipation when you rush home knowing the baby’s waiting for you. Like a lover.’

  And of all her friends, it had been this one who had been right. Nothing had prepared her for the passion, the intensity she felt for Jamie. Looking down at him, lying wrapped in a cobweb shawl, the day after he was born, she decided it must be because this love was so unselfish. When you fell in love with another adult both of you brought so much baggage, your past, your aspirations, your insecurities. Your love was complex, trammelled. A baby brought nothing with it. It just needed you. And the love you felt was simple, instinctive, pure.

  And yet to her surprise, good career woman that she was, standard-bearer in the cause of women’s achievement, when the time came to go back to work it had been surprisingly easy. Small babies were such hard work, so submerging, that closing the front door on the world of sterilizers and nappies and endless baby talk had been almost a relief. She could honestly say she didn’t think about him much once she was back at work.

  And then along came Daisy. Rosebud-lipped, fat-cheeked Daisy with her round blue eyes, laughing and gurgling, as good-natured as a puppy. And this time she’d taken longer off. Through a long and beautiful summer she’d had time enough to get into the rhythms of home and children, time to get to know them for the first time. And suddenly it wasn’t so easy to shut the door on that part of her life and slip into the executive mentality along with the Jaeger business suit.

  Turning left into Kensington Church Street she saw a man hurrying towards the tube lean down and look into the car, noting the chauffeur and Liz sitting in the back. All right for some, she could almost hear him say. And he was right. She must pull herself together and stop this daydreaming. How many women were earning eighty grand, with a share option in Metro that could make them seriously rich, as many trips to New York and LA as they wanted, their own driver? And on top of that she had a fascinating job and the instant respect that went with being one of the most powerful women in television. Liz Ward was seriously successful. A little guilt and regret was a smal
l enough price to pay for all that, wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘All right everyone, let’s get something crystal frigging clear. We have a new motto at Metro TV: Profit before Public Service!’

  Liz had been dreading this meeting when Conrad gathered all the company’s Heads of Department together to tell them a few home truths about television in the nineties. They’d all come from backgrounds in commercial television or the BBC where it was accepted to a greater or lesser extent that public service mattered. But Conrad came from the jungle of American syndication where executives jumped from their skyscrapers if they lost a rating point and where it was a fight to the death for every viewer. And there had only been one road: downmarket.

  ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, up till now in the genteel subsidized world of British TV there have been two kinds of programmes: worthy programmes and ratings-grabbers. I’d like to make it very clear that in the future there will only be one kind and I don’t need to point it out to you good people which one it will be. In future even the artsy-fartsy shows need to get audiences, or you can just forget ’em.’

  Liz wrote a reminder to herself to check the casting on Metro’s new Agatha Christie series. Left to himself, the director would probably cast the leading lady from the Royal Shakespeare Company, when the co-producers wanted Joan Collins. She’d have to try and keep both of them happy and make sure they got someone suitable and famous.

  As she looked up she saw Sam Powell, the man who’d replaced her as Head of Features, giving her a You’re not going to sit there and take this? look. But there was no point raising hell at this meeting, it would only put Conrad’s back up and get nowhere. She had to fight him on specific projects.

  ‘Now, I know all you high-powered folk with your university degrees think what I produced in the States was crap. But it was successful crap. And as someone once pointed out no one’s ever gone bust by underestimating the taste of the viewer.’

  Liz looked round. The outrage on everyone’s face was almost comical. What did they think Conrad would be like, for God’s sake? A shy accommodating little man who’d put out Wagner in peak time?

  ‘So, no matter how distasteful it is to you,’ – Conrad stood up for emphasis – ‘think audiences, think big ratings. If five million people don’t watch it, forget it.’

  Liz was beginning to see that missing her kids wasn’t going to be the only drawback to the job. Above her, Conrad would be chasing ratings and profits, below her, the programme-makers battling for standards and quality. In the middle would be her. Liz Ward, the most powerful woman in television. Or the ham in the sandwich.

  ‘My friend Liz Ward, the new boss of Metro TV, thinks that we at Femina are peddling a heap of shit and that Having It All is a myth, a con and a dangerous lie.’

  Every face round Femina’s boardroom table turned towards Mel in horror and disbelief, as though she had just announced that multiple orgasms didn’t exist or that men liked housework.

  Femina’s entire staff was crowded round the table for one of the interminable conferences Olivia believed were so vital to keep the magazine in touch with current issues. Everyone had to come to them from the Managing Director down to the switchboard operators. Privately Mel thought they were a waste of time but she would never dare tell Olivia so.

  ‘So your friend thinks Femina is misleading its readership.’ Olivia’s voice was high and sharp as if she scented a palace revolution. Mel might be the editor but Olivia was still the publisher and she wanted everyone in the room to know it. ‘And do you agree with her?’

  What exactly did she think? Mel glanced round at the framed Femina covers taking up every inch of the boardroom walls, dating right back to the early eighties when Olivia founded it.

  Femina had been the first magazine for the brash, confident young woman for whom a career was as essential an accessory as a studio flat or her own Visa card. Women, shouted Femina, had their eyes on the prize. Watch out, you guys, warned its first issue, there’s no stopping us now!

  All around her young women in red jackets and tailored suits smiled down at Mel, proudly brandishing the latest piece of armour in the sex war, the executive briefcase. And Femina became their bible, pushing them on to storm the male bastions that had kept their hands off the power for so long. And naturally Femina took it for granted that for the new woman everything was possible. She could Have It All: career and family, success and happiness. But what would its message be for the nineties? That she couldn’t have it all after all? That she might have to choose? The idea was ludicrous. Liz was utterly, absolutely wrong.

  Mel knew everyone was waiting for her answer.

  ‘Of course I don’t agree with her. If she were right that would mean that the fight had been for nothing.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear that.’ Olivia looked directly at her. ‘I thought for a moment you might be losing the faith.’

  Mel felt furious with Olivia. Of course she wasn’t losing the faith. She’d been cut to the quick by Liz’s attack the other night. It had hurt her much more than she admitted. Femina was her life. She accepted it totally, lived by its principles. She even believed its horoscopes for Christ’s sake! And knowing the fat old queen who wrote them that took some doing.

  ‘Fine.’ Olivia smiled her face-lifted smile at the faithful. ‘Let’s move on.’

  ‘Before we do,’ said a voice from the other end of the table, ‘why don’t we bat the issue about a bit? I mean, speaking as a mere male, I think Mel’s friend’s got a point.’

  Mel leaned forward to see who had dared challenge the oracle. It wasn’t a voice she recognized. Peering through the wall of shoulders and elbows she made out a new writer who’d just started freelancing for them. She had a feeling his name was Garth something.

  He was about twenty-five with thick shiny brown hair tied back in a ponytail, humorous hazel eyes and smooth biscuit-coloured skin, a deep V of which was peering out at her temptingly from his white linen shirt. Mel found herself wondering if he was that yummy colour all over. Unfortunately if he went on like this he wouldn’t be around long enough for her to find out. She knew Olivia. One whiff of disloyalty and you were out on your ear.

  She tried to catch his eye and signal to him that he was committing public suicide but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking calmly at Olivia.

  ‘I mean, why are we so scared of finding there might be some truth in it? It doesn’t mean Femina was wrong, just that women have moved on again. Maybe they’ve discovered what men knew all along. That work isn’t the Holy Grail, Paradise Regained and Club Med rolled into one.’

  ‘So you think women want to be pregnant and in the kitchen again?’ The edge in Olivia’s voice would have sliced a lesser man into tiny pieces. Garth simply ignored it.

  ‘Of course not. But don’t you think that maybe things have swung too far? I mean look at you all.’ He gestured to the women round the table. ‘You call yourself liberated, yet you’re more in chains than your mothers were. I’ve seen you all arriving exhausted from the broken nights then rushing off after work to the supermarket when any sane person would be sitting down with a glass of wine.’

  Looking round at the horror on every face, Mel tried to suppress a giggle. It might be his last speech at Femina but he certainly had an attentive audience for it.

  ‘You’ve taken on men’s ambition but you’re still saddled with women’s responsibilities. Hasn’t something got to give? I mean what happened to fun, to pampering yourself at The Sanctuary, to the occasional bit of nice, healthy selfishness? You may drive BMWs but it seems to me you’re drudges all the same. I’m sorry to rock the boat but from where I stand working motherhood looks like a mug’s game!’

  ‘So you agree that Femina has been misleading its readership?’ Olivia’s voice tinkled like the ice in a very dry martini.

  ‘As a matter of fact I do.’

  Silly, silly boy. He was handing himself to Olivia on a plate, an apple in his mouth and an onion
up his bum. Mel couldn’t watch. She hated bloodsports.

  ‘In fact,’ Garth continued unperturbed, ‘there may even be a new trend here that no one has noticed. We may be sitting here looking at the biggest unfaced issue of the nineties.

  ‘It strikes me’ – he smiled disarmingly at the group of silent women –‘that Femina’s great strength has always been to know when to change tack. To recognize when the goalposts have been moved and indeed to claim that it was Femina who moved them. You see, I believe’ – Garth gave Olivia his most dazzling smile – ‘that this is an issue Femina could make its own.’

  Clever, thought Mel. Tempt her with being first in on a new philosophy. She held her breath.

  Slowly Olivia turned to him and smiled like a praying mantis contemplating lunch. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Brook, but I’m just not convinced. Women today are not enslaved by work, they’re freed by it. And now it’s time we moved on. We’ve wasted long enough on this subject already.’

  Through the forest of shoulders, Mel exchanged a sympathetic glance with Garth. He might be wrong but he was still the most delicious thing she’d seen in months.

  Britt Williams looked at her watch and swore. Ten p.m. and she had another hour to do at least. The trouble with running your own business was that if you didn’t put in the work, you could be sure as hell no one else would.

  For a moment she thought about her empty flat. Usually the thought of having her own space with no one around to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle and leave dirty socks everywhere appealed to her. But not tonight. It was probably just the dregs of the hangover she’d woken up with this morning making her morose. After all, if she needed any reassurance that she’d made the right choice in staying single and concentrating on her career, Liz had provided it last night. She didn’t envy her lifestyle one bit: to her Liz’s life seemed to be nothing but give, give, give. And if Britt had any choice she preferred the idea of take, take, take. If it meant you had an empty flat waiting for you, well maybe that was the price you had to pay. After all, sex was no problem. You could get that easily enough away at conferences and business trips, with no strings attached.