Free Falling Off Air by Catherine Sampson Page B

the raw competition
     of the independent producers someone like Terry would have been ripped limb from limb. I had always assumed he would sit out
     his career at Maeve's knees, perfectly content. Then I remembered what Jane had said and wondered how long Maeve would have
     knees for Terry to sit at. It was strange, I thought, that Terry should be happy to sit just this far up the ladder, making
     no apparent effort to climb. Meanwhile Jane, Suzette, and Maeve were driven by red-hot ambition to go that extra step. And
     me? What was I driven by? There had been ambition, as strong as Jane's. I had banished it for the past year, but I could feel
     it lurking, and I feared that if it had lost none of its heat, its return would condemn me to a life of frustration. Could
     I tame my ambition so that I would not be constantly torn between my children and my work?
    “Penny for them,” Terry said.
    I shook my head.
    “It's weird being out and about without the children. Nice but weird.”
    “You'll go mad if you don't work, Robin.” He said it softly.
    I sighed.
    “I have to work or we'll starve. I just don't like the children being with anyone but me.”
    “You'll have to get over it.”
    “I am aware of that, thank you, Terry.” Silence fell. I felt guilty for snapping at him, but really there was no need for
     him to be so damned patronizing.
    “You should take the job,” he said eventually.
    “It's not me,” I grumbled. “You know it's not. I don't want to be some sort of policeman, going around slapping wrists when
     people step out of line.”
    “Someone's got to do it, and better you than some twenty-year-old with a nose ring through her brain.”
    “Can't do it anyway,” I told him. “Paula Carmichael's death will be top of the EGIE agenda, and the police seem to think I'm
     a prime suspect.”
    He laughed at that, thinking I was joking. I wished Finney could have seen him.
    “Anyway,” he said, when he'd sobered up, “Paula Carmichael's death is right off the agenda. Her husband's retracted his statement,
     at least the stuff about the Corporation.”
    “What?”
    “The lawyers were onto his statement the moment he made it. Then the director paid him a visit to express his condolences:
     flowers, gifts for the boys, everything. While he was there he pointed out a few of the finer legal points, reminded Carmichael
     how expensive it would be to fight a libel charge and, hey presto, he backed off. He made a statement this afternoon saying
     he was very upset when he spoke to the press yesterday, and he'd been mistaken to say Paula had been upset by the documentary.
     Indeed, she'd been flattered by their interest. The lawyers are double-checking it as we speak. It'll be all over the bulletins.”
    I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled slowly.
    “Great,” I said, “first the Corporation humiliates his wife, then him.”
    “Rubbish,” Terry protested. “The documentary about Paula Carmichael was never aired, no one ever saw it.”
    I frowned.
    “That's the documentary she made with Adam?”
    “Strictly speaking, it wasn't even a Corporation project,” Terry explained. “It was a Paradigm production, you know, the company
     Suzette Milner set up, but it was commissioned by the Corporation, and Suzette hired Adam to do the presenting.”
    “Really?”
    Terry nodded without comment. They weren't the best of friends, Terry and Suzette, so I didn't say what I was thinking, which
     was that Suzette had played that particular card close to her chest when I had seen her on the morning after Paula's death.
    “So was Paula Carmichael depressed or wasn't she?” I tried to clarify. “What's her husband saying?”
    “The man's a mess,” Terry said. “He probably doesn't know what he's saying himself.”
    He leaned forward and turned on the car radio to see whether there was any mention of Carmichael's retraction on the news.
     There was none. “Still being digested by the lawyers, then,” Terry