The Road from Midnight Read online

  “Look I have no idea how she got that from our conversation. If I thought she was going to take you off hard news I would have been the first to put her right. You know how much I love your work, you’re the best there is … after me,” he smiled. And I believed him.

  The fact that we remained faithful to each other, never needing to or wanting to see other people, was just a coincidence in my mind. I was so busy being the future magazine editor I was in training for that I never had time for men, and when I needed one Jim was always miraculously there on my doorstep. Which in itself was a bit creepy.

  And then Sally demanded another audience.

  5

  “Darling you know how well you’ve been doing with us don’t you?” said Sally in an uncharacteristically caring voice.

  “Ah yes, I think so,” I said cautiously waiting for the axe to drop, so unaccustomed was I to hearing Sally say anything nice.

  “Well we’ve done some figures for the New Zealand market and we think it would be a good idea to launch Fabulous Day there, a local edition, what do you think?”

  “Fabulous Day in New Zealand? Oh that will ruffle a few feathers, Fab Day is very tabloid you know and the only other weekly there is very nana pants,” I laughed.

  “Yes it is, and that’s why I think you could wipe their arse with it,” roared Sally. Happy with her delightful crassness.

  “What?”

  “Congratulations, Jane, you’re the new editor of Fabulous Day, New Zealand. You’ll report to me of course, but this is a great opportunity and we have great faith in you,” she finished.

  “But what if I don’t want it? I love it here Sally, I don’t want to go home. And how do you know I’d do a good job? And did anyone think to ask me about this? I do know Kiwis and I’m not sure how well they’ll take to Fab Day,” I muttered in shock.

  “Oh shut up, Jane, you know this is a great opportunity most women your age would leap at. Did I forget to tell you that we’ll give you a $200k package, and that’s just for starters?”

  “Did you say 200 thousand dollars? That’s stupid, Sally, I’d be the highest paid journalist in the country.”

  “Oh and a car, and accommodation for the first six months while you get settled.”

  “Oh fuck, Sally.”

  “Oh fuck indeed, Jane.”

  Admittedly the chance to set up a magazine I knew well in my old stomping ground was a dream come true, the money she was offering me was incredible and I thought I could do a good job. But going home meant dealing with Jim Craig again. We were by no means “back together” in my opinion, but he would see it all as a reason to pressure me to get married again.

  “What you need to do is find a new man as soon as you get back,” schemed Daisy that night after we’d celebrated with three bottles of Veuve Clicquot.

  “Daisy I won’t have time for a man, you know that. And besides I don’t want a relationship, this is a huge career opportunity for me and I don’t want anyone getting in the way of it.”

  “Oh come on, Jane, it’s just a fuck now and then and it’ll do you good. You never know you might find someone completely different to Jim and it might be good for you. You’re a gorgeous woman, even if you are a bit skinny and it’ll be easy. Go forth and find thee a man by order of your fucking great friend Daisy!” she shouted as she leapt to the floor inspired by Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” on the stereo.

  And that’s why I met Lawrence Cunningham, but only after a lot more of Jim Craig.

  I had been back in Auckland for three months, caught up in the whirlwind launch of Fabulous Day, hiring staff, sorting out printers and dealing with Sally, who was on my back by phone 10 times a day anxious that her baby wasn’t going to be changed at all by its transformation into a Kiwi magazine.

  I was working from 5am to midnight some days, a woman determined to do the best she could. As I collapsed into bed at night my thoughts were only about my magazine and I dreamed about it most nights.

  The calls from Jim started the first week in. My new PA Christie, who I had hired specifically for her ability to get rid of people I didn’t need to talk to produced an impressive array of excuses which ranged from: “She’s approving chromalins for the printers” to “she’s in confession.” Christie was Irish and a good Catholic. She knew that confession was usually a winner.

  I was just too busy, and I had one focus, Fab Day. I wasn’t ready to resume our on again, off again relationship, so I called it quits, told him to leave me alone and got on with it. But that didn’t stop him ringing, and if he knew where I was living he would have turned up. But he soon realised that Christie wasn’t going to let him through so he’d get a mate to ring up and say he had a story. Christie was allowed to interrupt me at any time if there was a story on the line.

  “Hi there are you ready to see me yet?”

  “No.”

  “You’re doing a great job with that magazine, I always knew you had it in you.”

  Silence

  “Meet me for a drink will you? Just one. No pressure, I’m not going to force you into anything. But I miss you, and I know you must be missing me, well at least part of me,” he chuckled. “Just one drink, baby.”

  Baby.

  And then one day I gave in. It had been three months. I needed sex, I reasoned. And when you need sex, who are you going to call? I told a surprised Christie to put him through next time he called.

  “Just one, but I’m on deadline so don’t go getting any ideas in that skinny arse of yours,” I flirted outrageously.

  And there he was in the pub in the same black narrow leg jeans he’d been wearing since the 60s and the Led Zeppelin T shirt I had cuddled so many times. One drink, two drinks, three drinks, four then home to bed and the best shag of my life. Bastard.

  But as we resumed our occasional bouts of sex I became increasingly wary of Jim Craig. While my career was in a major trajectory, his was falling back to earth. While I had been in Sydney a new editor had come in at the Auckland Daily and he took an immediate dislike to Jim Craig. Actually the new editor just didn’t like being called a “fucking wanker” every second week, while the old one had put up with it in return for some great copy. Jim was by now the most highly paid freelance investigative journalist in the country but his pieces had become more and more tawdry and low life. His exposé on a paedophile ring was a monumental work of journalism which caused the whole country to draw breath and several law changes to be rushed through Parliament, and I wanted to be proud of him. But I realised that he was spending a lot of his time hanging out with his low life contacts … from child abusers to drug addicts even after his stories went to print. He was becoming increasingly shabby and low rent and I seriously began to wonder if he had made a pact with the devil who was supplying him with good leads for his stories. Jim had one word tattooed on his forehead, and it said “Doomed.”

  6

  When I first met Lawrence he was a baby star on a children’s show and his publicist thought I should meet him. I had brought the Fabulous Day formula for creating stars with me from Sydney by running features on them when they weren’t very well known which would grow in size and frequency and pretty soon a star was made. After a year I had quite a stable and their bosses at the TV networks suddenly started mentioning that their wives and daughters had read about them. Stars liked that. In Lawrence’s case it took six months and then he was offered the top job presenting the “hip” news show Two Twonight at 5.30 in the afternoons. Surprisingly it rated incredibly well, something no other show had managed to do in that slot. And his show was credited with delivering huge ratings to the network’s 6pm news. He was, without a doubt the hottest guy in town and everyone was after him.

  He was eight years younger than me, tall, dark and gorgeous with a personality which could make the sun come out on a dark day. He had the kind of olive skin which in New Zealand could often mean a touch of Maori in your blood. We once ran some pictures of him as a child for a “Guess the S
tar” competition and heaps of readers wrote in asking if he was Maori. From that day on I jokingly called him Tama until the joke wore thin and he told me in no uncertain terms that his olive skin was due to some Spanish blood on his mother’s side. Along with his olive skin were the most caramel eyes I had ever seen on a man. When you locked into them you could get lost in the creamy, honey sweetness of them, and when he looked right at you, there was no choice but to leap into those sticky pools. Unlike most male stars he didn’t work out at the gym, but he didn’t need to. His body was long and lithe and while he didn’t have a lot of muscle definition he didn’t need it. Clothes hung on him the same way they hung on Parisian catwalk models. He could wear anything and look good. Which was just as well because he mostly got around in a pair of jeans and a T shirt, all provided by whatever new, burgeoning label was trying to get some free PR. Lawrence loved a freebie and was dependent on his ‘sponsors” for his late model car, holidays, cell phones and meals out.

  The best thing about Lawrence though was his personality. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so he would often go quiet and gaze off into space when the conversation reached a level he wasn’t confident about contributing to. This only served to make him look introspective and thoughtful. I knew better, but I loved spending time with him and we soon became close friends. He seemed to like what I did for a job and would be entertained for hours with my stories. He was also a great lunch companion, never failing to keep me entertained with his brilliant impressions of his colleagues and quite often we would be lunching well into the evening. And if I was honest I quite liked the fact that someone so obviously hot wanted to spend time with me, the older woman.

  He was also engaged to an equally hot young soap actress, Cindy Henderson, and I was looking forward to running the exclusive of that particularly high profile wedding in six months’ time. She was trim, taut and terrific as we say in the business and what she lacked in brains she had in the body. There was no one hotter than Cindy on the television and she knew it. She was also the most determined-to-be famous person I had ever met. She had only been on the top-rating TV soap Shortland Street for two minutes when she was on the phone offering a story about her recent discovery that she was adopted and would I like to run the story about her search for her real mother? Then there was the sexual abuse by an uncle followed by the sister with cancer. There was nothing Cindy wouldn’t talk about and her star was in ascendancy within a few months. You had to take your hat off to her and I did, happy to go along with helping her become the huge star she wanted to be. I wasn’t so happy about her relationship with my friend Lawrence, however. I knew he was just another business decision. When you saw the two of them together there was no love coming from her unless the cameras were there. Cindy knew she needed another hot body on her arm, and Lawrence was the one to give her maximum hot couple status.

  So when he asked me outside at the annual Fabulous Day Christmas party, I presumed he wanted to talk about the wedding coverage. We had invited all the “fabulous” people who had been in our magazine that year to a slap up cocktail party as a way of saying thank you. It was never much of a strain on the magazine’s entertainment budget as the celebrities never ate much and the booze was usually donated by a local label eager to get some exposure.

  And the celebrities, rather pathetically, loved the fact that I would award them with achievements such as “The Best Celebrity Story”, “The Best Dressed Celebrity”, and “The Celebrity with the Best Sense of Humour!” They eagerly clambered up to me to receive their $5 fake silver cup and bunch of flowers. You just never could give them enough attention.

  After I had given my speech and delivered the awards I got drunk as I did every year and fully intended to dance all night with the stars and harvest another half a dozen stories from them while we were all so inebriated we didn’t care who told who what, and how often.

  So when Lawrence took my hand I presumed he was going to have a go at hiking up his exclusive wedding fee or at least swing an extra photographer on my budget. I had seen Cindy take him aside and have a few words with him before leaving for another cocktail party across town at a newly opened restaurant. Something most of the stars had turned down for my event, but not Cindy “no opportunity wasted” Henderson. I was sure she was giving Lawrence instructions.

  But when we got outside the function centre into the Auckland Domain he led me to a park bench and sat down beside me still holding my hand.

  “Lawrence, what are you doing?” I giggled, already seriously tipsy.

  “I need to talk to you about us,” he said. All of a sudden serious and staring straight into my eyes with his caramel brown pools.

  “About you and Cindy, yeah sure, but I’m trying to relax and have a good time tonight. If it’s about the wedding can we talk tomorrow?” I answered quickly wondering who was watching our hand holding from the party. My journalists were trained to spot such indiscretions 10kms away.

  “No not Cindy. Us. You and me.”

  “Oh us? You know I love you, darling, you’re my favouritist little celeb in the world and you’re going to sell me millions of magazines with your gorgeous wedding exclusive. I love you so much!” I gushed, trying unsuccessfully to withdraw my hand. He held on. His grip had become determined.

  “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to tell you. I’m biscotted with you,” he blurted out, almost in tears.

  “Besotted.”

  “What?”

  “Besotted. Biscotti is an Italian biscuit you have with coffee. You mean besotted, well I think you mean besotted … or did you want to give me a biscuit?”

  By this time Lawrence was smothering my hand in kisses.

  “I’m in love with you, Jane. You’re doing my head in. I can’t stop thinking about you every minute of the day. I need to be with you,” he blurted out almost in tears, those caramel eyes doing their stuff.

  I looked around. Behind me, to the side of me. This had to be a wind up. Any moment now someone was going to leap out of the bushes and say “surprise you’ve been had!”. Lawrence loved his jokes and it was only a matter of time before I was at the centre of one of them.

  “Stop it, people are watching. Have you taken something because this isn’t happening. You are engaged to Cindy for God’s sake, I’m a million years old. You’re hot, I’m not. Go away.”

  The first person I talked to about Lawrence and the stunning revelation that he was interested in me sexually, was Daisy, who was typically philosophical about it all.

  “Yes but how do you feel? Is this a path your spirit should be taking, do you feel it in your inner self?” Before saying what she was really thinking which was: “Are you sure he was serious?” she inquired.

  “Daisy I don’t fucking know. I told you exactly what he said and so I have to believe him, don’t I? He’s hot, he looks good, he makes me laugh, what else do I need to worry about? You’re the one who told me to get another man!”

  “Are you still wearing that rose quartz crystal in your bra like I told you to do?

  “Of course I’m not, Daisy, it hurts.”

  “Well if you were I’d be able to give you some more accurate advice, I’ll do your chart and send it over.”

  Lawrence, on the other hand, was naivety and innocence itself. I enjoyed teaching him how to eat oysters with a squeeze of lemon and a grind of pepper at good restaurants and the day he learned how to tip them into his mouth straight from the shell was one of our more intimate moments. And the sex was always surprising.

  Our first night together was at the Airport Inn, necessary so that we wouldn’t get caught, but astoundingly unromantic in its décor. As we lay on the polyester dark blue bedspread I wondered what I had got myself into. Me old, him young. Me tired, him fresh. And so I let him lead the way.

  “How about we get our clothes off,” he suggested after checking out the movies on the hotel TV.

  “Um, okay,” I responded. I turned my back and set about removing the 7
denier sheer black stockings I had worn specially for the occasion and when I turned around still fully clothed he was lying back stark naked and playing with himself.

  “Come on, don’t take all day,” he laughed.

  So that’s how the young ones like it.

  “I’m doing my best, don’t get too carried away with yourself will you,” I suggested trying to add a touch of levity to the situation. I’d never seen a man play with himself, Jim had never needed to. He looked quite pathetic.

  “Well that’s up to you really, isn’t it,” he leered.

  When I’d finally got undressed, leaving my bra and panties on, thinking he might like to admire them. I had paid an exorbitant amount for the two scraps of black lace, and he might want to get involved in removing them because most men — well Jim — did. But no, he pulled me down on the bed, yanked my lace knickers off, and turned me over.

  “Lawrence!” I exclaimed unused to such hasty pushing and shoving and feeling very much like a lump of meat and a sore one at that.

  “Good wasn’t it,” he said, removing himself and lying back. He had barely taken 30 seconds. “I suppose you’d like me to do something for you now,” he added absentmindedly, with a quick glance at the TV which he had simply muted for our brief encounter.

  “You know what, I think I’m okay,” I said, not feeling in the mood any longer.

  “Oh okay, maybe later, eh. Grab me a beer will you, there’s some good porn on.”

  And with that we spent several hours alternately drinking, watching porn, and having short, sharp sex. I can only think that I was so keen not to disappoint him, and anxious to be the young, hot lover he was used to that I went along with it. Perhaps this is how it was done these days I reasoned.

  Over the months I managed to teach him to slow down a bit and take his hand off it, and made sure that when we met in secret it was never in hotel rooms with TVs which would distract him. Instead we met at my place with him sneaking in through the back garden, and once we even managed to go to Thailand together for a week without anyone noticing. Sitting on the same flight at opposite ends of the plane was exhilaratingly naughty and we loved it. His end was business class and mine was in economy. It was all part of the drama but I was old enough to know better.