Therapy

“I’m dying for a pee and a drink, in that order.” One of the things I like about Amy is that she never calls me Tubby. She calls me by a lot of other familiar names, but never that one. I pushed the button to open the front door, and moments later admitted her to the flat. Her cheek was cold against mine as we embraced, and I inhaled a heady whiff of her favourite perfume, Givenchy, eddying round her throat and ears. I hung up her coat and fixed drinks while she went to the bathroom. She emerged a few minutes later, lips gleaming with freshly applied lipstick, sank into an armchair, crossed her fat little legs, lit a cigarette, took her drink and said, “Cheers, darling. How’s the knee?”
    I told her it had given me one bad twinge today, in the train.
    “And how’s the Angst ?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Oh, come, sweetheart! Don’t pretend you don’t know what Angst is. German for anxiety. Or is it anguish?”
    “Don’t ask me,” I said. “You know I’m hopeless at languages.” “Well anyway, how have you been? Apart from the knee.”
    “Pretty bad.” I described my state of mind over the last few days in some detail.
    “It’s because you’re not writing.” She meant script-writing.
    “But I am writing,” I said. “I’m writing a journal.”
    Amy’s black eyes blinked with surprise. “What on earth for?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. It started with something I did for Alexandra.”
    “You should write something that will take you out of yourself, not deeper in. Is there going to be another series?”
    “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I had lunch about it with Jake. How was your day?”
    “Oh awful, awful,” she said grimacing. Amy’s days are invariably awful. I don’t think she’d be really happy if they weren’t. “I had a row with Zelda at breakfast about the pigsty state of her room. Well, c’est normal. But then Karl’s secretary called to say he couldn’t see me today because of a sore throat, though why he should cancel just because of a sore throat I don’t know, because sometimes he doesn’t say anything by choice, but his secretary said he had a temperature too. So of course I’ve been on edge all day like a junkie needing a fix. And Michael Hinchcliffe, whose agent told me he was ‘technically available’ for that BBC spy serial, and would have been wonderful in the part, has taken a film offer instead, the sod. Not to mention Harriet’s latest clanger.” Harriet is Amy’s partner in the casting agency. Her long-standing relationship with a man called Norman has just broken up and she is consequently unable to think straight and is apt to weep uncontrollably when speaking to clients on the phone. Amy said she would tell me about Harriet’s latest clanger when I had told her about my lunch with Jake, so we went out and settled ourselves at our usual table in Gabrielli’s first.
     
    Jake Endicott is the only agent I ever had. He wrote to me when he heard a sketch of mine on the radio, yonks ago, and offered to take me on. For years nothing much happened, but then I struck oil with The People Next Door and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was his number one client now. He had booked a table in the back room at Groucho’s, under the glass roof. It’s his kind of place. Everybody is there to see and be seen without letting on that that’s what they’re there for. There’s a special kind of glance that habitués have perfected I call the Groucho Fast Pan, which consists of sweeping the room with your eyes very rapidly under half-lowered lids, checking for the presence of celebrities, while laughing like a drain at something your companion has just said, whether it’s funny or not. I had imagined it was just going to be a social lunch, a bit of gossip, a bit of mutual congratulation, but it turned out that Jake had something significant to report.
    When we had ordered (I chose smoked duck’s breast on a warm salad of rocket and lollo rosso, followed by sausage and mash at a price that would have given my poor old Mum and Dad a heart-attack apiece) Jake said, “Well, the good news is, Heartland want to commission another two series.”
    “And what’s the bad news?” I asked.
    “The bad news is that Debbie wants out.” Jake looked anxiously at me, waiting for my reaction.
    It wasn’t exactly a bombshell. I knew that the present series was the last Debbie Radcliffe had contracted for, and I could well believe that she was getting tired