Free Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson Page A

think?”
    I couldn't see the harm.
    “The children will love it,” I said, waiting for Terry's sharp intake of breath before adding, “Just kidding. Of course I'd
     love to come.”

Chapter 6
    T HE awards ceremony required some lifestyle changes. I hired a babysitter—I mean a babysitter who charged an hourly rate that
     was the GDP of a small nation, an agency nanny called Erica from Sweden—because I couldn't stretch my mother's goodwill any
     further, and Tanya and Patrick had for once screwed up their shifts, so that they were both working at the same time. They
     were wondering what to do with their own kids, let alone mine. Erica's main qualifications consisted of a black belt in judo,
     which seemed a little irrelevant, and a stellar career at a Swedish nannying academy. I got a haircut, short and sleek. I
     got a new subscription to Sky digital television. I'd been economizing for the past few months, but if you're going to work
     in television you've got to have access to all the news that's out there and this way I could watch everything from CNN to
     China Central Television. I dusted off my mobile phone and charged it up. If I was going to leave my children in the care
     of a total stranger—albeit a stranger with impeccable references—at least she could contact me when they choked or knocked
     themselves out, as they inevitably would. I even bought myself a new lipstick.
    Terry came miles out of his way from Putney to pick me up and tooted his horn outside my door at six-thirty. Terry is nearly
     sixty and gay, but he loves to play Prince Charming and take a woman out on a date once in a while. He has the car for it,
     a macho four-wheel drive, high off the ground. There aren't many white Range Rovers around. They tend to show the mud, but
     Terry's is always spotless.
    “Robin, you look wonderful,” he said with surprise as I climbed into the passenger seat. “Maeve said—” He stopped short.
    “She said I looked like shit,” I guessed.
    “Maeve would never use language like that.”
    “Maeve should try getting up a dozen times in the night.”
    “She should try getting up to all sorts of things in the night,” Terry said. “She's certainly missing out on something.”
    We drove through the streets of south London toward the city center in companionable silence, warm air billowing through the
     open windows. I love driving, and four years ago, back in the days when I still indulged myself, I bought a 1990 BMW. It accelerates
     like a sports car and does a hundred smooth as cream. I love its understated lean lines, but bits of it keep dropping off
     or going wrong and, weight for weight, spares are probably more expensive than solid gold. It had got to the point where I
     was afraid to drive it for fear of something else going wrong. I used it to pootle to and from Lorna's and Tanya's, and recently
     to and from the police station, even though it was developing some alarming rattles. It was due for its inspection and I knew
     it was barely roadworthy and I was dreading the expense, so when Terry had offered a lift, I had grabbed it.
    Usually I love to be driven as much as to drive, to be free with my thoughts, gazing out the window as the world passes by.
     Tonight I could not completely relax. I was flailing in a pool of unease. I took some comfort from Terry's presence at my
     side. It was easy to make fun of him, he did it himself all the time, but it was people like Terry, talented, creative, collegial,
     who still gave the Corporation a gilding of style. Old school and Oxbridge educated, with a passion for hand-embroidered silk
     waistcoats and a halo of curly gray hair around an otherwise bald head, Terry had made his way easily up the Corporate ladder.
     Then he'd hit a ceiling because he didn't have the raw ambition to make it right to the top like Maeve. In the Corporation
     he was comfortable, relatively safe. His creativity had become stifled by a career in management, but out in