A Lovely Way to Burn

Fourteen

Perhaps it was the five years she had spent as a newspaper journalist, under the command of deadline-obsessed editors, which made Stevie ignore Derek’s advice and go directly to the TV station. Or maybe it was the feeling that without Joanie or Simon she had nowhere else to go.

She was scheduled to knock off at midnight, but Rachel had trouble putting the next shift together and so Stevie worked on. The programme passed in a haze of distorted time. She had had no chance to review the products before she went on air and they seemed to increase in strangeness as the night progressed, like a succession of confused dreams grafted on to a sleepless night. Towards the end Stevie thought she might be getting sick again, but it was only tiredness, combined with the late hour and the heat of the lights, all of it pressing on the strain of the day. Rachel had not been able to find a replacement for Joanie, and so Stevie presented the show on her own, watching the sales numbers’ staccato climb, poor ghosts of their usual tallies. Aliah had neither phoned nor turned up but Precious, the production assistant, agreed to ignore union rules and take her place. Her frozen grin and self-conscious dips and twirls, in a series of outfits a size too small for her, added to the strangeness of the night.

Some time around 2 a.m. Rachel opened a bottle of wine. The producer’s steady sips sounded in Stevie’s earpiece. She heard Rachel’s voice grow heavy and recognised her longing for sleep. It was odd, Stevie thought, how they forged on as if they had been charged with a vital mission, but when the programme drew to its close and the remnants of the next shift were in place, she felt suddenly, ridiculously elated, like a soldier whose squad had survived a bloody battle unscathed. They had got through the night.

Stevie high-fived Dave the cameraman, gave Precious a hug, and made an elaborate bow to the production booth. Rachel saluted the team through the glass, laying her headphones carefully on the desk, as if they were worth a million pounds. Stevie watched her slide free of the controls, saying a few words to the producer who was taking her place. There was something off-kilter about the way Rachel was moving, an awkwardness Stevie hoped was down to the empty bottle of wine abandoned on the production desk.

‘I think we got away with that.’

Rachel’s voice was hoarse with drink, fatigue, and something else. She opened her arms wide and Stevie met her embrace. She smelt the decay lacing the sweet-sour scent of cheap white wine on the producer’s breath, saw the sweat sticking her hair to her face and knew that Rachel was ill. She forced herself not to pull free.

‘Can I give you a lift home?’

‘No thanks, darling.’ Rachel gave her a last squeeze and let go. ‘I’m going to bunk down here. You probably should, too, if we’re going on air tomorrow.’

Rachel’s smile was ghastly. She had always been slender but now her flesh had been sucked close to her bones. Stevie forced herself not to look away from Rachel’s expensive grin, the capped teeth set in the jolly skull. She said, ‘You should go home.’

The producer didn’t bother to answer. She linked an arm through Stevie’s and they walked together to the dressing room she usually shared with Joanie. Inside, Rachel flung herself on to a chair and brought her face close to the mirror, scrutinising her reflection.

‘And I thought you looked bad.’ She ran a hand through her untidy bleach-blonde bob, looked at the clump of hair that came away in her fingers and let it drop to the floor. ‘Well, you know what they say, the show must go on.’

‘Must it?’

Stevie unlocked the locker she had never bothered to use before and took out her bag. She glanced quickly inside to make sure Simon’s computer was still there, though the weight of it had already reassured her.

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.

‘I may have the sweats but I’m not so desperate I need your help.’

This time the varnish was the pale blue of a Mediterranean sky. It spread across the floor like a promise of summer. Stevie jerked open the changing-room door and slammed it behind her. The sound of the producer’s laughter followed her down the corridor.

The lights that normally illuminated the car park were out. Stevie stood for a moment on the back steps of the studio, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, thinking of Joanie, alone in her nest of tubes and wires. Joanie had a sweetness that made people want to please her. She would have managed to persuade Rachel to go to hospital. Stevie wondered if she should go back and try again, but stepped out into the gloom of the forecourt, her pumps silent against the tarmac. Tiredness and the shock of Rachel’s attack had chilled her. She took a silk scarf from her jacket pocket and wrapped it around her neck.

Alone with Rachel, in the brightly lit changing room, it had seemed as if they were on the brink of the world’s end, but now she could see a chain of car headlights driving along the motorway in the distance. A plane passed overhead on its way to Stansted or Heathrow. She stopped and watched its landing lights blinking until it slipped into the darkness. Stevie took a deep breath and smelt freshly mown grass. She was alive in a world where people still cut their lawns. She let out a long, shivering sob of relief. She would go back, tell Rachel that they had both succumbed to mass hysteria and persuade her to go to hospital.

As Stevie turned to retrace her steps she glimpsed a figure, dark against the blackness. A hand reached out and grabbed her satchel. Stevie snatched it free and ducked his blow, hooking the bag’s strap over her head, stringing it fast across her body. She spun in the direction of her Mini and ran, reaching into her pocket for her keys, but her assailant was swift. He caught her by the shoulder. Stevie dug her elbow backwards, aiming at the vulnerable point in his stomach, letting out a yell that stayed in her throat, sudden and airless, held there by a pair of strong hands twisting her scarf tight around her neck. Her heel made contact with her attacker’s shin and he swore: ‘You fucking bitch.’ Her kick seemed to spur him on. He wrapped his arm tight around her neck and leant backwards, still gripping her scarf. His free fist slammed into her solar plexus and he lifted her from the ground, taking her weight on his chest and raising her up, Stevie realised, so that he could let her drop, and allow gravity to do the work of breaking her neck. She kicked out again, but he had levered her free of the range of his body and her legs pedalled uselessly in the air. Her face was touching his. She felt his breath, warm and ragged, close as a lover’s. Wool bristled against her cheek and she guessed that he was wearing a balaclava. She wanted to pull it free, but her hands were intent on scrabbling against his arm, desperate to tear his grip from her throat.

The muscles in her legs were screaming. Stevie kicked out again, summoning all the stamina wrung from years of spin classes and Pilates sessions. White spots flashed on her retinas. She bucked and buckled, hearing the man’s heavy breathing, knowing that he was growing tired too, and that her only chance was to unbalance him and bring them both down. She was losing consciousness. The laptop battered against her groin and she wished she had surrendered the bag rather than fastening it around her body. She had survived the sweats only to die for Simon’s secret, without ever discovering what it was.

Stevie hit the tarmac hard. The man’s weight was upon her and she wriggled like a netted fish, struggling to pull herself loose. Someone was shouting in a language she didn’t understand. A boot hit her in the ribs and something gave, but she knew somehow that the kick had been meant for her assailant. Stevie grabbed the balaclava, dragged it off the man and rolled free of the fight. She scrambled to her feet. One of her shoes had got lost in the struggle. She tore the other one off and threw it at the man on the ground.

Jirí was on top of him now, putting his fist into her attacker’s face. The security guard’s body interrupted her view of the man, but she got an impression of broad, pale features beneath a shock of bright hair. Jirí looked up at her, ghost-white in the dark, and shouted, ‘Run!’ Stevie held on to her battered ribs and made for her car, pressing the key fob in her pocket, sobbing with relief at the electronic beep that told her the doors were unlocked. Someone was shouting behind her, but Stevie didn’t look back. She scrambled behind the wheel, locked the door and fumbled her keys into the ignition, swearing at her own clumsiness. The engine caught. Stevie shifted the Mini into gear, reversed out of the space and skidded across the car park, turning the headlights to full beam.

The security guard was alone on the tarmac, clutching his bloodied face and trying to get to his feet. Stevie swerved around him and caught her attacker in the shaft of her headlights. She saw his face, his open mouth and panicked eyes, and knew she had never seen him before, but that she would recognise him again. Stevie pressed her foot hard on the accelerator, hearing the engine whine as she ripped through the gears. ‘Fucking bastard.’ Her lips moved but her throat was raw, and no sound came out. The man was zigzagging now, trying to evade the beam of light. Stevie lost him for a second, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, and then caught his dark shape running across the grass verge that edged the car park. She bumped the Mini over the kerb and slammed on the brakes as the perimeter fence loomed in front of her. Stevie’s chest hit the steering wheel and she swore again, a spray of spit and invective, as she saw the man scale the railings that secured the station and boost himself over the top. Her assailant gave one quick look back at her and then he was gone.

Stevie had no memory of switching off the engine, or of leaving the car, but she was outside. Her hands were gripping the metal bars of the fence, and she was staring through them at the empty road beyond. The grass was wet against her bare feet, her satchel still strung across her body.

‘I’m sorry, he got away.’ Blood and saliva thickened Jirí’s accent. She turned and saw him standing behind her. His nose was bleeding and blood drenched the front of his white shirt. He raised a hand to his face; the other clutched his cap. ‘Are you okay?’

‘He was trying to kill me.’

‘It looked that way.’ The security guard turned away, spat into the grass, coughed and spat again. Stevie found a tissue in her pocket and passed it to him. ‘Thanks.’ Jirí dabbed at his face but the tissue was too insubstantial and he untucked his shirt from his trousers and used its hem to wipe off the worst of the blood. ‘What is he? A jealous boyfriend?’

He made it sound as if such things were only to be expected.

‘No,’ Stevie said. ‘My boyfriend’s dead.’

Jirí shook his head. The blood was still leaking from his nose and he dabbed at it again with his bloodied shirt. His uniform trousers were too wide for him and he had belted them tight to take up the slack. Stevie said, ‘I need to go.’

‘That man, did he kill him? Your boyfriend?’

The threads of car headlights still glimmered in the distance but they no longer seemed reassuring. It was three in the morning, yet they were queued along the motorway as if a mid-morning rush hour had been stalled by roadworks.

‘No, he was unwell.’

Stevie thought Jirí would ask whether Simon had fallen victim to the sweats but the security guard merely looked at the ground and said, ‘I am sorry.’

It was quiet in the car park after the shouts of the fight and the roar of the car engine, but the smell of petrol still hung, dark and chemical, in the air. It reached into her lungs, and then slipped down to her belly, evoking a memory of long car rides and travel sickness. Stevie bent over and threw up in the grass. Jirí took a step backwards.

‘Are you sick?’

‘No. I had it but I’m okay now.’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I got hit in the stomach.’

She didn’t want to say that it was his boot that had found her ribs by mistake.

‘Why do you say you “had it”? What did you have?’

‘You don’t know?’

He looked bemused. ‘Why should I know?’

‘There’s a sickness, a virus, people are calling it the sweats. It’s been in the newspapers, on television, people are dying.’

‘I don’t see so much television, I watch your show and movies on DVD, and I study, that is all. After the summer I go back to university.’ News of the virus seemed to have no impact on the guard. He asked, ‘Why did he attack you?’

Stevie’s hand tightened around her bag. ‘I don’t know.’

‘There are crazy people about. Probably he saw your programme and decided to become a stalker. I feel bad I didn’t see him before he attacked you. You want me to call the police?’

‘No thanks. I’ll go to a police station on my way home.’ Stevie forced a smile. ‘I think you might have saved my life.’

Jirí said, ‘You don’t owe me nothing.’ He transferred his uniform cap from one hand to another. ‘You shouldn’t be alone while he is still out there.’

There was a proprietorial note in the guard’s voice that made her uneasy. The car keys were still in her hand. Stevie braced herself.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.’

‘You should let me drive you.’

‘I told you, I’ll be fine.’ She opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. The security guard was at her window and she was reminded of the first time they had met. She had been desperate to go home then too, but he had held her there, using her politeness against her. This time, though, she owed him. Stevie wound down the window and asked, ‘How about you? Will you be okay?’

‘Of course. I hope he comes back. I will be ready for him.’ Jirí crouched down, as he had before, his face level with hers. ‘Maybe this is not the right time. Your boyfriend has died and you are sad. But if I don’t ask now, I may never get another chance.’

She started the engine.

‘Jirí, I’m not ready to go out with anyone yet.’

‘I know that.’ Blood was beginning to crust his top lip, giving the illusion of a Chaplin moustache. ‘I wanted to ask if you can help me get a job. I’m happy to start off small. I am studying accountancy. I will graduate this year and I would like to stay in this country, but I need a better job. I thought maybe there might be something here. TV stations always need accountants.’

Stevie forced a smile. ‘I’ll put in a word for you if I can. The way things are going, I have a feeling there may be some vacancies coming up soon.’

She dimmed the lights, put the car into gear and steered it out of the car park, into the darkness of the road beyond.