by James Meek
That summer, when Rose was seventeen, she left home. Nobody told Alex and Bec the whole or the same story, but from the overlaps between what Matthew said on the phone, what he said in his great anguish when he came to London to look for her, what Alex’s parents told them and what Rose herself said when she came round one Sunday in her slightly altered headgear, accompanied by a chaperone from the Islamic seminary in Whitechapel where Rose was now studying, Rose’s departure from the family house had been intended more as a declaration of independence than a complete rupture, and only became final as a result of a despairing, futile act of force on Matthew’s part. As far as Alex could understand Matthew hadn’t hit her. He’d accepted that under the law he was powerless to stop her leaving. It seemed that on the threshold of the house he’d wrapped his arms around his daughter and refused to let her go, squeezing her so tightly that she’d cried out in panic that she couldn’t breathe. Matthew flinched and Rose wriggled free, passing her hand frantically around her neck on the way out.
Rose seemed relaxed and sure of herself when she turned up unannounced at the house and asked if she could use their landline to talk to her family. Conversing with the chaperone, a second-generation London Bangladeshi, Alex got the impression that rather than the seminarians going out of their way to recruit Rose, let alone indoctrinate her, Rose had found them and to their embarrassment demanded admission.
Rose and Bec had a separate talk. Bec promised Rose to keep her secret, that she had tried to move in with her boyfriend’s family, but that his parents had refused, appalled that their son should consider marrying an English girl.
Matthew and Lettie accused Alex and Bec of encouraging Rose’s apostasy. Dougie’s presence in the Islington house; its strikingly bare appearance, which seemed to Matthew to offer a subversive and unstable example to an impressionable girl; Alex’s inability to see the difference between Islam and the love of Christ; and Bec’s suggestion that Rose’s actions might not be about faith, but about adventure, added to their sense of persecution.
Alex went with Matthew to the seminary and they kept up a long vigil. Rose wouldn’t come out to meet them. She sent down a note to tell her father that she was well, that she would call them regularly, that she would visit them when her studies were finished, and that they shouldn’t worry.
When Matthew left Alex and Bec stood on the threshold of the house and told him that Rose would be all right.
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Matthew. ‘You believe this life on Earth is all we ever have, and you treat it so lightly.’
That evening Alex got a call from a TV producer who made shows for the BBC’s science unit. He’d seen Alex talking about his work and wanted to chat about him fronting a film project on the science of ageing. He wondered if they could have lunch.
53
In late summer, when preparations for the new season of Teen Makeover were far advanced and filming of the first set of auditions was about to start, Lazz checked himself into rehab. Midge called Ritchie to tell him one Friday night, a few hours after Lazz had vanished behind the high walls of the clinic with his overnight bag, an album of whale songs and a six-pack of French mineral water in the boot of his Mercedes. Midge emailed Ritchie the statement Lazz had released to the media, without consulting anyone, detailing his long battle with drug abuse and confessing he’d taken cocaine in his dressing room immediately before and after refereeing a showdown between a schoolgirl big band and a quintet of fifteen-year-olds channelling Motown. The statement would be public before morning. Ritchie was on the phone through the hours of darkness, persuading Riggsy to stay away from the clinic, calming Lazz’s parents, telling reporters that Lazz had made a brave decision to confront his demons. Ritchie said it came as a great shock to discover that Lawrence Jones, 29, known to millions as Lazz, had been taking cocaine in the Rika Films studio while children were close by. It was too early to talk about the future of Teen Makeover, he said. He emailed his staff telling them to be strong and stand together. He found a driver, an ex-Para who wouldn’t flinch from driving a car at high speed into a crowd of paparazzi.
At dawn a cool drizzle soaked the foliage. The car arrived and Ritchie got in the back, thinking he would sleep. The clinic was in Suffolk, two hours away, the car’s seats were deep and soft, and the sound the machine made as it flew through the rain was muffled to a faint hiss. Yet Ritchie couldn’t close his eyes.
He looked back at his house to watch the automatic gate slide shut and promised himself that he would never allow reporters and lawyers through those gates to molest his children. Savouring the nervous excitement of an unexpected trip after the fear that had tormented him for ten months, he opened the window and let the wind and spray sting his cheeks and beat his hair back. How green and solid England looked in the morning rain, he saw, how eternal. It would look the same, he was sure, whatever made the pack yelp.
I’m glad it wasn’t me, he thought, closed the window, and wondered: Am I a bad man, to think that? The notion that he was good was hard to prove, but it was intuitively true. The contrary was incredible. If he were wicked, Ritchie reasoned, he would be angry that the chance to save his reputation by shopping Lazz to the Moral Foundation had been knocked away, and he wasn’t angry. He was glad to be dashing across England to comfort a fundamentally decent man whose weaknesses had brought him low.
There were only two photographers at the entrance to the clinic grounds when they arrived, which Ritchie took as a sign of disrespect towards Lazz, and by association, towards himself. He wasn’t allowed up to the main building, but was directed to a lodge half a mile away where patients could be brought by golf cart. Ritchie was searched in the lobby by a security guard and shown into a bleak meeting area of grey carpet tiles and armchairs with tough hessian upholstery. Midge was there, working his BlackBerry in spasms, as if it were cattle-prodding him.
‘Pretty soft search,’ said Ritchie. ‘I could’ve had half a kilo of coke up my arse for all they know.’
‘Is that what you’ve got up there?’ said Midge. He pointed at the corner of the ceiling, where there was a shiny black bubble. ‘They’re watching us.’
Ritchie stared at the CCTV eye. ‘Listening?’
‘Who knows?’ said Midge. ‘They’re in control here.’ He rubbed the fabric of his seat viciously. ‘Look, even the fucking chairs are done in sackcloth.’
‘Why did he do it?’ said Ritchie.
‘You can ask him,’ said Midge. ‘They’re sending him down in a buggy.’
‘I want you to tell me.’
‘I don’t know why the why matters. That’s the least of it for you. The BBC’s on its way. They’re sending somebody I’ve never heard of.’ Midge closed his eyes and leaned back. ‘You know how the jackals are always talking about these bureaucrats, these penpushers at the Beeb who get paid shitloads and don’t have anything to do? What they do is the most important thing and they don’t often have to do it. They’re the antibodies. They only come in when it’s the organism’s life and death.’
‘You remind me of my sister.’
‘Why did you wince then?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did. You said “You remind me of my sister,” and you sort of grimaced, as if your sister was bad medicine. I thought she was good medicine, if you spend too much time around mosquitoes.’ Midge swallowed as if trying to force down a surge of his own vomit. ‘Scenario. Lazz does penance. He cleans himself up. He takes himself off the scene for a bit but lets it be seen that he’s doing healthy things, wholesome things. He does older-and-wiser interviews. He gets back together with his wife.’
‘His wife!’
‘It could happen. You know how much he loves his career.’
‘Why did he do it? Why did he go public? Was it because he got the call?’
‘What call?’
‘You know what I mean. The MF.’
‘Ask him.’
‘Did you get the call?’ said Ritchie, leaning forwa
rd and speaking more softly.
‘Did you?’ said Midge.
Ritchie didn’t answer. Midge stared at him belligerently. Their heads dropped.
There was a gentle knock and the door opened. Its hinges made a drawn-out, enquiring squeak. Lazz stood in the doorway. Ritchie and Midge got up and moved towards him, as if each had the expectation there would be hugging. They stopped short when they saw that Lazz wasn’t moving towards them. He recoiled a little. Waiting in the corridor behind him, a few yards back, was an attendant in a white tunic with short sleeves that showed hairy forearms and a fat gold watch. It seemed to Ritchie that Lazz had never looked healthier or more attractive. He brimmed with surplus youth and life. An unfamiliar dishevelment – stubble, untreated hair – contrasted with his naturally smooth dark skin and his clear brown eyes, now looking into Ritchie’s with great intensity. Ritchie felt the pulse of a vaguely promised future reward; the same pulse that had made him want to own Lazz at the first audition, and had made him increase the value of his contract by more than he needed to each year, despite Lazz’s tantrums, his coldness, selfishness, obsessive-compulsive dressing room behaviour and his lack of ability to do anything exceptionally well. Ritchie felt now as he supposed one of the consuming herd would feel meeting him, as if they were obstructing a marvellous being who only wants to be left alone to commune with the sacred spirit that lives inside the camera.
‘I’m sorry, Ritchie,’ said Lazz. ‘I let the guys down. Thanks for coming over.’
‘Don’t worry, Lazz,’ said Ritchie. He blinked. He felt the tears about to spill and teetered between letting it out and holding it back. He controlled it. ‘The most important thing is that you get yourself sorted out.’
‘If there was a way I could come back, I’d like to,’ said Lazz.
‘We’ll talk about that when you’re better.’
‘I’m not ill,’ said Lazz. ‘It’s rehab.’
‘I know,’ said Ritchie. ‘But I didn’t come to talk about work. I wanted to tell you I think you’re courageous, we’re going to get through this, and as soon as the doctors –’
‘Counsellors,’ said Midge.
What do they do here, anyway? thought Ritchie. ‘As soon as the counsellors have done their stuff, we’ll sit down and work out where we go next.’
‘You’re dumping me,’ said Lazz.
‘Ritchie’s right,’ said Midge. ‘The only thing that matters today is that you get yourself in a good place.’
‘Did he tell you?’ said Lazz to Ritchie.
‘I said he should ask you,’ said Midge. He passed his forefinger quickly along the bottom of his nose, forward and back.
‘Midge wanted me to shop a mate,’ said Lazz.
‘I said you had options,’ said Midge, and raised the finger in the air. ‘I wouldn’t be much of an agent if I didn’t tell you you had options.’
‘A specific mate?’ asked Ritchie.
‘My granddad was a prisoner in Korea,’ said Lazz. ‘The Communists couldn’t make him crack.’
The nurse, if it was a nurse, called Lazz away and Lazz turned and followed him out. Ritchie and Midge stood in the doorway and waved him off, telling him that they would be thinking of him, and that they would see him soon.
‘He’ll never work in children’s TV again,’ said Ritchie.
Midge put his hands in his pockets and chased a pebble in a circle with the toe of his shoe. ‘Everyone will be forgiven one day,’ he said.
Ritchie said: ‘If you were telling him to shop somebody else, how did you know he wouldn’t shop you?’
‘I’m not famous like Lazz,’ said Midge. He looked at Ritchie and smiled. ‘Or you. Besides, I’m a good boy.’
‘Not in Chiang Mai.’
‘Not sure what you’re talking about, mate. You know in Thailand the age of consent is fifteen?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, Midge. I’d never … not to you.’
‘I’m sure. And I wouldn’t to you. But you’d never tell me if you’d got the MF call. If you got one of those codes.’ Midge stopped, as if waiting for Ritchie to speak, and went on. ‘Do you know what they offer you if you give them something they can use on somebody else? Twenty years’ immunity. They deposit a certificate with a lawyer, in your name, undertaking not to publish material detrimental to your standing in the community for twenty years. They’ve got us all. Nobody trusts each other. And if somebody’s out there, riding high, untainted, pure, nobody in the know’s thinking What a great guy. They’re all thinking Who did he sell to buy his peace of mind?’
A woman was walking towards them from the gate with her hands in the pockets of her coat and the hood of the coat over her head. She moved as if she were strolling to pass the time, but she came up to them and introduced herself as Jane from the BBC.
‘Corporate affairs,’ she said. The whine of the golf cart taking Lazz away had gone and her voice sounded in absolute silence. Ritchie was shocked by how young she was. Was she even thirty-five? She had glasses with thick black frames and a large crusted-over spot in the middle of her cheek. It seemed to Ritchie that her lack of make-up showed disrespect. Somewhere across the park a crow cawed and, as if cold, damp air had gushed from its throat, they each felt the temperature drop and of their own accord went back inside.
Midge started sketching out a path to redemption for Lazz and Jane listened from one of the hessian armchairs until Midge ran out of words under her gaze and stopped talking.
‘As far as I understand they make you healthy here,’ said Jane. ‘They don’t make you good. I’m not sure where you go these days for that kind of rehabilitation.’ She turned from one man to another and her glasses caught the light, hiding her eyes behind bright, cold squares. ‘The Corporation’s very unforgiving about attractive young celebrities taking hard drugs in close proximity to children. Is that unreasonable, Ritchie?’
‘Of course not,’ said Ritchie.
‘Be that as it may,’ said Midge.
‘It is as it is,’ said Jane. ‘Lazz is out of Teen Makeover for good. There’s nothing to be talked about there. The question is about the show itself.’
Ritchie waited for Jane to go on. He wondered if she was a lesbian. He was impressed by her confidence. Could he offer her a job? Yet it would be murder to have her around. She seemed to him like someone who looked down on everyone, not because of what she’d done at university or in adult life, but because she’d passed the entrance exam to some swotty London day school when she was eleven.
‘Everybody wants the show to go on,’ said Jane. ‘Unless you feel the loss of Lazz would knock the heart out of it.’
‘We’re broken up, of course,’ said Ritchie. ‘But even the most golden of golden boys is replaceable.’
‘I’m off,’ said Midge. He got up, but Jane asked him to stay, and he moved to the side of the room and leaned against the wall with his arms folded.
‘Good,’ said Jane. ‘There’ll be a meeting later. We’ll have to take another look at the format. As long as you understand there’s no second chance. If there’s another event like this one, it’s over.’
Ritchie nodded fiercely.
‘At least Lazz wasn’t caught fiddling with one of the teenies,’ said Midge.
‘Have you reason to believe that’s been going on?’ said Jane. ‘Or was that a joke? Do you think the sexual abuse of minors is funny? Do you, Ritchie?’
Ritchie patted the air with his hands and said that they should take it easy.
‘I suppose this is all about the Moral Foundation,’ said Jane. She leaned forward as she spoke and squeezed her right ankle. It made her seem girlish.
‘Please don’t stare at my legs while I’m asking you a question,’ said Jane. ‘Have you ever had a call from the Foundation?’
‘No,’ said Ritchie.
‘Good. We’d like you to tell us if that happens. It is interesting, though, isn’t it? It can’t last. They only destroy reputations. They rely on old media to make the reputatio
ns in the first place.’
‘What’s so interesting?’ said Midge. Ritchie was surprised by his surliness, when he was bound to need this woman’s goodwill one day. Yet Midge’s resistance energised Jane.
‘The Moral Foundation’s only a threat to people who’ve done wrong,’ said Jane.
‘So now it’s a moral police state,’ said Midge. ‘A camera in everyone’s bedroom, but as long as you stick to the missionary position, you’ve got nothing to worry about. What about the actor they stitched up last week for cheating on his girlfriend? Why is that anyone’s business except theirs?’
‘He was lying to his girlfriend about being faithful,’ said Jane. ‘That’s why it’s called cheating.’
‘Every day millions of men and women are cheating on each other in this country and nobody cares.’
‘Somebody should care,’ said Jane. ‘Whether they care or not, it’s the same wrong, isn’t it?’
Midge’s jaw worked. ‘I feel as if I’m listening to the future chief matron of the British vice and virtue police,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I’d be very good at that,’ said Jane. ‘I’d say something out of turn and somebody would report me. Isn’t that how it works in police-state countries? It’s not all torture and buying people off, as far as I understand. Don’t they catch most of the dissidents out by blackmailing the cheaters and druggies and embezzlers to betray their friends? I suppose that’s what’s interesting about the Moral Foundation. It rewards people who inform on their friends. That doesn’t seem very moral, does it? Ritchie, I wouldn’t have guessed you were such a good listener.’
Ritchie told them that he had to leave.
54
Early one morning, without telling anyone, Bec went to a literary festival in Cardiff, shaking with nerves. A few miles west of Bristol she dry-heaved into the stinking pan of the train’s toilets. O’Donabháin’s session was one of the earliest, at eleven a.m. on a weekday. He’s a harmless old murderer poet these days was what Wales reckoned, by the look of it; his session was three lines lost in the middle of the festival programme, part of a strand called Voices Redeemed. Other redeemed voices were a white South African apartheid-era cop, a reformed heroin dealer with an inside account of the trade and a perjurer MP who’d found Jesus in prison. They’d been given afternoon and evening sessions. O’Donabháin seemed to have been marked down.