“Ah, gotcha. There, look, isn’t she a cracker?”
The newborn baby looks like a newborn baby, but I make the right noises.
“And here’s one of the proud mum.”
Sandra’s face is illuminated with joy. She looks fantastic.
“I’m thrilled for her.”
“Are you sure?” asks Mac.
“Yes. It’s brilliant for her, because that’s what she wanted, and that’s what she deserves.”
It’s such a relief for me to be talking this way about Sandra and to know, for once, that it isn’t bullshit. Mac is nodding in admiration.
“You should get shot more often. It’s improved you no end. Have you worked out what you’re going to do?”
“Nope. Something new, I hope. Some sort of adventure.”
We take another couple of spins around everything that is wrong with this world and then Mac gets up to leave. As he opens the door he turns and salutes.
“Keep up the good work. We like this new Kevin…he reminds us of someone.”
I’m lucky to have Mac, amidst all the flux he’s been a constant; chaotic, erratic, but constant.
There is not much left to tell. We are virtually up to date now.
The wound took a couple of months to heal properly, but once I felt my old self again I began to throw myself into new projects. I hired a tutor and started to learn Chinese. I got my camera out from the back of a drawer and started photographing the birds in the garden. I even tried to write poetry. I’m still trying. I’ll probably never show it to anybody.
One final postscript. A few mornings ago, I am sitting in the garden doing some translation exercises when Jade’s voice comes on the radio. She is plugging a play about the Suffragettes that she is appearing in at the Young Vic. She sounds at ease, self-confident. It feels strange hearing her voice after everything that has happened. It was stupid of me to be so cruel with her that night in the restaurant.
As she talks about how excited she is to be working in live theatre, I find myself replaying our fateful argument in my mind. She was so upset and the scuffle we had is still a bit of a blur, but maybe, on reflection, I gave her a bit more of a shove than I was prepared to admit to myself at the time.
Still, she sounds fine now. And so am I. I drank the puffin blood and I got rescued. A robin lands on the lawn and gives me a jaunty look. I know this bird well now, he is quite bold, so I go inside to fetch my camera. As I enter the kitchen, the doorbell rings. I answer the door straight away – I no longer look out the window to check who it is – and standing on the doorstep is an eager-looking man in his late twenties.
“Hi, Kevin,” he says. “Sorry to ambush you like this.”
He thrusts out a hand towards me, which I shake hesitantly.
“It’s Brett.”
I know I know him, but I can’t put the face into a context. “We worked together on the show.”
Brett? Oh of course, yes, Brett, the runner – the annoyingly pushy runner.
“Can I come in?” he asks, as he comes in.
I make tea and we go through to the garden. Brett informs me that he is now a producer on the show and that he is envisaging lots of changes.
“We’ve been stagnating,” he says. “You can’t afford to stagnate in this new environment. The audiences are too nomadic.”
Then he shows me some colour-coded audience research on his laptop. Apparently it charts a slow but steady decline in the figures since Lenny was written out.
“The show lost its heartbeat once Lenny was gone. These numbers speak to that.”
What? ‘Speak to’? I hate that.
“The core audience love Lenny, so let’s give them Lenny back, give them what they want.”
It takes a few moments for me to realise what he is proposing.
“But Lenny’s dead,” I point out.
Brett waves his hand around dismissively.
“He can have faked his own death. The writers are already working on it.”
He starts to enthuse about possible plotlines, but there is so much meaningless gush that I soon start to tune him out.
“Isn’t it a problem…that I’ve been convicted of perjury?” I ask.
“You’re making a new start – just like Lenny. That will chime with the audience.”
Now he is talking about resonance and meta-narrative and even post-modernism. I pour the tea and steady my thoughts. Then he starts talking money. Big money. He is offering me my old life back, all that fakery and vanity and bogus prestige. He is offering a return to the days when I never had to pay for anything and any restaurant could find a table for me at a moment’s notice. He wants me to reset the clock, turn it back a couple of years, he wants me to regard everything that has happened to me as no more than a sidestep.
“Well,” he concludes, his eyes bright with expectation. “What do you say?”
I finish pouring the tea and then I tell him that I’ll think about it.
Supporters
Unbound is a new kind of publishing house. Our books are funded directly by readers. This was a very popular idea during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Now we have revived it for the internet age. It allows authors to write the books they really want to write and readers to support the writing they would most like to see published.
The names listed below are of readers who have pledged their support and made this book happen. If you’d like to join them, visit: www.unbound.com.
Tania Ackroyd
Alison Adams
Geoff Adams
Keith Adsley
Anthony Allen
Richard Allen
Sandra Anderson
Tom Anderson
Nicholas Andrews
Steve Angell
Phillip Ansell de Percy
Lucy Armitage
Philippa Arthan
Jamie Asher
Claire Atcheson
Michael Atkinson
Julia Attwood & Tim Joy
Simon Axford
Clare Axton
Carrie Baide-Pugh
Eve Baker
Sam Baker
Derren Ball
Jason Ballinger
Paco Banos
Keith Barnes
Katherine Barr
Alex Batchelor
Ian Beaumont
Sarah and Simon Bedwell
Adrian Belcher
Saurabh Belsare
Nicole Benjamin-Ma
Julian Benton
Terry Bergin
Ray Bewick
Morag BFP
Jessie Bicknell
Richard & Evelyn Billett
Emily Bird
John Birtles
Kat Blair
Paul Blanchard
Nathan Bloomfield
Lee Boardman
Colin Bodley
John Bohan
Gilly Bolton
Charles Boot
Carole Booth
Tom Bowles
Claire Bradley
Alan Bradshaw
Lisa and Bill Brannan
Janey Brant
Richard W H Bray
Sophie Bridge
David Briers
Jon Briggs
David & Sally Brokenshaw
Ian Brooks
Emma Brown
Margaret JC Brown
MC Brown
Norma Brown
Anne Brown-Robins
Nick and Jane Bryan
PJ Bryant
Louise Buckley
Catherine Bull
Valerie Ann Bull
Simon Bullett
Adrian Bulley
Alison Burns
Sally Burrows
Sheila Bushell
Marcus Butcher
Sue Byrne
Tom Byrne
T C
Jo Cameron
Dave Campbell
Jane Campbell
Andrew Campling
Victoria Cargill-James
/>
Anne Carlin
Barry Carpenter
Jonathan Carr
Micah Carr-Hill
Neil Carruthers
David Catley
Dawn Cavendish
Rick Challener
David Challis
Allen Chaperlin
Paul Charlton
Jill Chatt
Tim Clark
Stephen Clay
James Clelland
Louise Clover
Thom Clutterbuck
Alastair Cobb
Stevyn Colgan
Peter Constable
Nigel Cook
Simon & Sarah Cook
Julia L Cottrell
Richard Courtice
Peter Courtney-Green
Bev Cox
Gillian Craigie
Kevin Crane
John Crawford
Andrew Croker
Heather Culpin
Dave Dalton
Ivo Stormonth Darling
Dave (hedgecutter.com)
Clive Davey
Nick Davey
Stuart Davidson
Tracey Davidson
Lewis Davie
Clare Davies
Harriet Fear Davies
Bernadette Davis
Ian Davis
Andy Davison
Jonathan Davison
Steve Day
Graham Debenham
Paul Dembina
JF Derry
Brian Diamond
Dr Alison Diaper
Simon Dicketts
Miranda Dickinson
Ian Dickson
Max Dighton
Martin Docherty
Michelle Donlan
Christopher Dottie
Abbie Douet
John Dowie
Bob Dowling
Lawrence T Doyle
Rhian Drinkwater
Robert Dumelow
Keith Dunbar
Celina Dunlop
Neil Dutton
Dave Eagle
Nicky Edmonds
Nick Efford
Greg Erskine
J Evans
Udall Evans
Simon Everett
Peter Faulkner
Káit Feeney
Ginny Felton
Mark Finch
Anthony Fincham
Christine Fisher
Anne Fox-Smythe
Pat Fraser
Mark French
Paul Fulcher
Keith Gale
Paul Gallagher
Ina Gallo
Natalie Galustian
Amro Gebreel
Christopher Giavotto
Rob Gibson
David Giles
Aileen Gill
David Gillborn
Dorn Gillborn
Paul Godden
Jake Godfrey
Eleanor Goldsmith
Sophie Goldsworthy
Kevin Goodall
Chris ‘Chairs’ Gough
Keith Grady
Mark Graham
Heather Grant
Lucille Grant
Paul Grant
Mark Gray
Mark Greaves
Fenella Greenfield
David Griffiths
Heather Griffiths
Paul Groom
Stuart Guy
Owen & Liz Gwynne
Ben Hall
Keith Bryan Hall
Steve Hall
Tracey Hall
Gretel Hallett
Andrew Harding
Andrew & Dorte Bille Harding
Dorte Bille Harding
Alan Hardy
Jeremy Hardy
Pat Harkin
Simon Harper
Bridget Harris and Ivan Furness
Jo Hart & Nick Dean
Tony Hatherall
Christopher Haywood
Rebecca Haywood
Caroline Hearne
Nick Helweg-Larsen
Richard Hemming
David Hemmings
Charlotte Henwood
Adrian Hickford
E O Higgins
Jilly Hilton
Robert Hinchliffe
Jon Hobbs
Elizabeth Hogg
Christopher E Holden
Wendy Holland
Antonia Honeywell
Helen Hooker
Sir Deian Hopkin
Phil Houston
Ginny Howard
John Howard
Matt Huggins
David Hughes
David Hughes
Tim & Alison Hunt
Nik Hurrell
Florence Hyde
George Stanley Irving
Johari Ismail
Ian Jack
Barbara Jackson
Judith Jackson
Helen James
Gavin Jamie
Marjorie Johns
Mike Johnson
Jonathan
Chris F Jones
Claire Jones
Nick Jones
Peter Jordan
Tim Lund Jørgensen
Julie Kay
John Kelly
Tricia Kelly
William Kelly
Alistair Kemp
Michael Keohane
Kevin Kevane
Kevin Kieran
Patrick Kincaid
Mike King
Simon Kingston
Tim Knight
Shreena Kotecha
Samuel Labib
Evelyn Laing
John Latham
Jimmy Leach
Jane Learner
David Leddy
Caroline Lee
Jonathan Lee
Max Lehmann
Daniel Lennox
John Leonard
John Leonard
Paul Levy
Rupert Lewis
Margaret Lewisohn
Mark Lilley
Daisy Line
Nicole Loutan
Shirley Lowe
Martin Loxston-Beed
Rhian Luke
Duncan Lumsden
Anne Macdonald
Cara Macdonald
George and Angela Mackay
Yvonne Maddox
Mike Manger
Frances Marshall
Jane Marshall
Ros Martin
David Martindale
Chris Maryon
Guy Mason
Matt, Terri, Joseph & Clara
Nikola Matthews
Aidan McCann
Beth Mcgowan
John A C McGowan
Sean Mckay
Mark McKean
Gavin McKeown
Sheena McKerrell
Philip Meehan
Lynne Mendoza
Daniela Menezes
Ellie Middleton
Miggi
Peter Milburn
Stuart Millar
Anne Miller
Ben Miller
Andrew Mills
Brian Mills
Ann Mills-Duggan
Margo Milne
Claire Minett
L Mitchell
John Mitchinson
James Moakes
Mark Moncreaff
Loveyou More
Adrian Morris
Andrew Morris
Much Ado Books
Lauren G L Mulville
Gary Murrell
Jon Naismith
Craig Naples
Carlo Navato
Richard Neath
Rog Newman
Simon Newman
Al Nicholson
Ann Patricia Nicoll
Chris Nicolson
Anya Noakes
Thomas Nolan
Vaun Earl Norman
Alex Norton
Bryony & Peter Nowell
Jan O’Malley
Chatrina O’Mara
Desmond O’Neill
Susan O’Reilly
Adrian Oates
Gail Ollis<
br />
Paul Johan Omar
Erwin Oosterhoorn
Dave Overall
Alison Owen
Jennifer Pahnke
Julia Parker
Angela Paskins
Chris Payne
Rob Peaker
Neil Pearson
Bella Pender
Thomas Perry
Dan Peters
David Petts
Stephen Phelps
Gary Phillips
Laven Pillay
Philip Pinnell
Lynne Pointer
Justin Pollard
Andy Porter
Howard Posner
Daniel Potter
Wendy Potter
Stephen Powell
Louise Preston
Janet Pretty
Neil Pretty
Rhian Heulwen Price
Tim Prollins
Jenny Pryer
Francis and Maise Pryor
Graham Pughe
Jude & Philip Pullman
Huan Quayle
Brent Quigley
Andy Randle
Tiny Tina Rashbrook
Manoj Rathod
Colette Reap
Lesley Reeves
Troy Gordon Rich
Philip Richards
Christopher Richardson
Liam Riley
Graham Ring
Jennie Ritchie
Andrew Roberts
Wyn Roberts
Martin Robertson
Andy Robinson
Elizabeth Robson
Phil Robson
Stian Rødland
Tony Roe
Alan Roebuck
Ben Rogers
David Rose
Hilary Rose
Chana Rochel Ross
Dominic Rushforth
Roy Russell
Dominic Salles
Charly and Ben Salvesen
Rosemary Sandars
Michalis Sarigiannidis
Tony Sawford
AJE Sawyer
Dawn Schultz
Marianne Scobie
Suzanne Scott
Dr David A Seager
Matthew Searle
Owen Seddon
John Sheehan
Tamsin Shelton
Jodi Shields
Robert Shooter
Caroline Shutter
Glen Simmers
Laurence Simpson, ‘According to The Daily Mail’
Adam Siviter
Keith Sleight
Michael Smeeth
Alan Smith
Andy Smith
Bob Smith
Lewis Smith
Mathew Smith
Nic Smith
Nigel Smith
Richard Smith
Ross Smith
Stephen Smith
Stuart Smith
Stuart Snaith
Jeremy Snead
Eulalie Soeurs
David Somers
Richard Soundy
Chris Spath
Andrea Speed
Lorna Speirs
Jason Spencer
Martin Spencer-Whitton
Joe Trevor Spivey
Janice Staines
Robert E. Stephenson
Michael Stevens
Adrian Stewart
Martin Stewart
Rachel Stockdale
John Stokoe
Katie Stowell
Katie Sutcliffe
Stephen Swindley
The Star Witness Page 29