The ticket collector pulled back the sliding door and Ginny welcomed his appearance with relief. Jeff had been doing no more than putting her own fears into words, but it was a shattering experience listening to them confirmed by him.
‘I’m sorry it’s my fault this lady’s in here!’ he explained when she proffered her second class ticket. ‘I’ll pay the difference.’
‘You will not!’ she snapped at him, annoyed. She fished in her purse for some money. ‘From what you were saying about the state of business, you need it more than I do!’
‘Touché!’ he laughed, his eyes never leaving her face. His gaze was so tactile, it felt almost as if his fingertips were wandering over her skin.
‘So what do we do about it?’ she asked when the ticket collector had left.
Bernie had already been in touch with the University of Lingford Department of Agriculture, she explained, though with no positive result yet. In collaboration with the police warning posters were to be issued that weekend. More, too, was known of the bacterial infection which was passed on through contact with the caterpillars, at least insofar as it had been successfully treated.
‘Yes, and I have my own contacts in other departments of the University,’ Jeff told her, ‘so between us all we should be getting a fuller picture. What I suggest is that we two meet in a couple of days’ time to draft a preliminary report which we can then take along together to the Chief Constable.’
‘Very well. That sounds better than doing nothing.’
‘What alternative do you suggest?’
‘Television.’
‘And risk causing a panic? Let’s try the Chief Constable as a first step, anyway. He will have a direct line to the Home Office.’
The track had widened to include several different lines running parallel into London and it was now bordered by a patchwork of playing fields and housing estates. Once again in a silent moment she wondered about the morality of suggesting moths as a subject for television entertainment. But then Bernie was right, wasn’t he? There had already been drama series on nuclear war, and the holocaust. No subject was taboo, so why not moths?
‘I wish you’d managed to trap that moth,’ she said as the train swung across the network of points approaching the station. ‘We could really do with some living specimens.’
There should have been a DANGER warning on the office door. Joan, the chain-smoking literary agent whom she’d met only once before in her soap opera days, was a fat bullet-headed woman characterised by folds of excess flesh which she attempted neither to conceal nor reduce. When Ginny went in she was telephoning, gripping the receiver with a bunched-up left shoulder which made her look like the hunchback of Notre-Dame, Charles Laughton version.
With one hand she riffled through the pages of a contract; with the other she tapped out figures on her electronic calculator. Waving Ginny to a seat, she announced to the poor devil on the far end of the line that she couldn’t agree anything without consulting her client and she’d call him back. She slammed the phone down.
‘Sods,’ she announced, fumbling in her handbag for a cigarette. ‘But they’ll not get away with it. Let the buggers sweat for a bit.’
Ginny nodded, impressed. With this agent she could go right to the top. The big league. Confidently she launched into her spiel about the moths proposal, how the technical problems might be handled and which star names might be the most suitable to approach.
After a few minutes the agent interrupted to send her secretary for more cigarettes. What about this tea-time soap opera Ginny used to work on, she wanted to know. For starters, she might be able to land a couple of scripts on that. Had she met the new producer?
Yes, Ginny had met the new producer, a notorious pillar of the Gay Mafia whose tentacles reached into the farthest corners of the TV industry. On those rare occasions when he bothered to greet the cast he offered friendly nods to the women and kisses all round for the men.
But she fell in with the suggestion that it might be useful to talk script with him.
‘I’ll fix the appointment for you,’ the agent said breezily, scribbling a note. Standing up, she led Ginny to the door. ‘If you leave your folder with the other idea I’ll mull it over. Not that I can promise anything. From what you say, you have rather stacked the cards against yourself.’
Depressed, Ginny made a beeline for their old pub, hoping for company, but none of the television crowd were in that day. She rang Jack, but he was out. She tried three or four other numbers: people had moved or were tied up. In the end she sat alone over a ham sandwich and a lager, brooding about the irony of having to return cap-in-hand to the very programme she’d been so happy to escape from only a few months earlier.
Because of the heat, most customers had taken their drinks outside where they stood in huddled groups on the narrow pavement. Christ, there were times she hated London! Best catch an earlier train back, she decided. No point in hanging around.
She finished her sandwich though it tasted like stale cotton wool, left half the warm lager undrunk and was about to leave when Jack appeared framed in the doorway — the same old sandy-haired Jack in a T-shirt and tatty jeans with his key-ring hooked on to his belt. He spotted her right away.
‘Ginny! Oh, that’s great!’ He whirled around to the others following him in — Bill and Margie and Dan. ‘Hey, guess who’s here! It’s Ginny!’
His arms were around her in a strong, actors’ bear-hug and the others crowded forward to kiss her, to question her eagerly, making her feel she’d suddenly been brought back to life again. The intensity of those last few days with their caterpillar attacks and that tangled relationship with Bernie: it all fell away from her. This was her own warm, familiar world again, and she’d not been forgotten.
Dan organised the drinks. He was a dark-eyed, innocent-looking young actor with a special gift for playing really vicious thugs. A potential superstar, she’d always thought.
‘What’s it to be, Ginny?’ He glanced at her drink pityingly. ‘Not that draught lager? That’s cat’s piss gone flat.’
‘He knows!’ Margie mocked, meaningfully.
‘I keep on telling them, but they do nothing about it.’
‘I’ll have a whisky.’
‘Oh, it’s whisky these days? All right for some! How’s the country house then? Any trouble with the peasants, just call me!’
God, it felt so good being back with them! She had not realised how tense she’d become living down in that village cut off from everyone. But now it all seemed miles away. She listened enthralled to the latest gossip, drinking it in like water in a desert. Even the jokes sounded new.
Suddenly it was closing time. She and Jack were left alone together, the others discreetly going their own ways. On the pavement outside Jack paused, as so often.
‘Curry?’
The Indian restaurant was next door to the pub, a shabby place with bare, plastic-topped tables and a takeaway counter. It was open all day, imposing no rules about eating hours. She must have hesitated, because he added:
‘Or there’s a new Chinese opened just up the road. Deep-fried caterpillars and chopsticks.’
‘Jack!’ Shocked, she swung on him furiously; but then she remembered he didn’t know yet. She’d tried to ring him but he’d never been at home. ‘Sorry. Let’s go in here.’
They were the only customers, which made it easier for her to talk openly. She chose a table next to the window protected from the public gaze by a grubby lace curtain and ordered Tandoori chicken with rice and chutney. Jack took the same. While they waited she told him what had been happening since they had last been in touch — Lesley in hospital, then Mrs Kinley and her friend both killed, and that teenage girl with the van driver.