Free Lifetime by Liza Marklund

better.’
    ‘That’s not true,’ the producer protested. ‘You were always a much better journalist than Michelle was.’
    ‘I mean better on TV,’ Anne said. ‘She had more screen presence than I ever had. You do know that both of us were up for the The Women’s Sofa gig, don’t you? She got it. And I never forgave her for that.’
    ‘So she got rich and famous at your expense?’
    Anne hesitated and then nodded.
    ‘Something like that.’
    Karin Bellhorn smiled wryly.
    ‘Well, see how much good it did her.’
    Anne looked up at her with a shocked expression on her face. She met the producer’s gaze and began to giggle hysterically.
    ‘I certainly prefer being me today,’ she said.
    The two women sat in silence on the bed. Anne Snapphane felt a melancholy calm start to radiate throughout her chest.
    ‘That was some night,’ she said after a while.
    Karin Bellhorn sighed.
    ‘Not to mention the taping session; I’ve never seen such chaos and I’ve been around the track a few times. Those anarchists were just too much – who dug them up?’
    ‘Mariana, I think. And did you hear her talking to Bambi Rosenberg about nude pictures at two a.m. in the lounge? What a racket they made!’
    ‘Then Highlander showed up and had a fight with Michelle.’
    ‘The boss himself? What did they fight about?’ Anne Snapphane asked.
    ‘He fired her.’
    ‘You’re kidding me!’
    Karin put her finger to her lips.
    ‘Careful . . . I saw them, he went up to her as soon as we had wrapped. Michelle wasn’t receptive, you know how hyper she gets after a show, and particularly after a special like this.’
    ‘Highlander’s nuts,’ Anne Snapphane said.
    ‘He certainly knew exactly what he was going to say. But his timing wasn’t very appropriate.’
    ‘Well, what did he say?’
    ‘That she was too old.’
    ‘Too old? She just turned thirty-four last Monday.’
    Karin smiled with a trace of bitterness.
    ‘First it didn’t register: Michelle was still pretty buzzed after the show. Then I was afraid she was going to pass out – her face went all white and she was chewing her tongue. And suddenly she went berserk, yelling that Highlander was a pathetic fool who made his way up by sucking dicks, cleaning toilets and making coffee for the big shots in London.’
    ‘There is something to that,’ Anne interjected.
    ‘And that she wouldn’t accept orders from a conceited, power-crazed moron who didn’t have brains or balls. And she went on and on like that.’
    Anne Snapphane giggled.
    ‘It was almost funny,’ the producer conceded.
    ‘Highlander felt that Michelle should be grateful that he had taken the trouble to talk to her in person. He wasn’t obligated to do anything beyond sending her written notice. Apparently, that’s in her contract. Naturally, she’d be paid for the duration of her contract, a little more than one and a half years, as long as she respected the terms of the quarantine clause.’
    ‘In other words, even though she had been fired, she wouldn’t be able to work for anyone else?’
    ‘Exactly,’ Karin Bellhorn replied. ‘If she hosted some other network’s shows, they could sue her for breach of contract. And that’s not all. After the showdown at the Stables, Michelle kicked out her manager. She called him a leech, a millstone, and a lot of other nice things.’
    ‘Did Follin get fired too?’ Anne asked.
    Karin Bellhorn lit a cigarette and fingered her lower lip.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Right now I don’t know one damn thing for certain.’
    Suddenly Anne felt like crying again.
    ‘What are we involved in?’ she whispered.
    They sat for a while in silence. Sounds seeped in through the walls: Sebastian Follin was running water in the sink upstairs. To the right, Highlander’s radio blared. To the left, Barbara Hanson coughed.
    ‘Listen,’ Anne Snapphane said. ‘Who do you think did it?’
    Karin gave this some thought, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her