‘I shouldn’t have said “now you’re up to date” just then. Sorry.’
‘You what?’
I knew who Cass was. She’d been here maybe three weeks. I hadn’t covered Saturdays before. But Cass used to do drive on Key 103, up north. Won a Sony Rising Star. Interviewed bands. She was a music presenter, really. A jock. Not a serious presenter, or a ‘broadcaster’, as Leslie would have it.
‘Leslie doesn’t like it when I say “now you’re up to date”. But I keep doing it, because I feel like I’ve just updated people and that now they’re up to date. And also, it’s just something to say.’
Cass laughed. This … cackle. Her eyes were bright and I noticed her arms. Tanned, lithe. Her laugh went on a little too long, though. Particularly as I hadn’t actually made a joke.
‘You serious? He cares about that?’
I drained my coffee and quietly put down my mug. I glanced at Janice in the corner. She’d usually be behind the glass, but I guess she was in here for the first month with Cass to make sure all went well. She didn’t look up. She’d been Leslie’s producer for years. She acted like his PA, too, making sure he had his Starbucks ready and waiting when he got in, making sure he got his eggs on a Friday. There were rumours she made sure he was comfortable in other ways too, but that’s just idle gossip, and as you know, I don’t deal in that. But the fact was, Leslie expected a lot from those around him. It’s a brave move to laugh at Leslie James. Everything gets back to him. Everything.
Then Cass said, ‘That guy’s a dick, man,’ and got on with her show.
* * *
From: MAUREEN THOMAS
To: ALL STAFF
Will newsreaders PLEASE remember to take their mugs back to the kitchenette when their shift is done. I do NOT expect cleaning staff to have to do this. PLEASE REMEMBER we are a COMMUNITY and we DO NOT pick up after one another.
* * *
I went to get my mug and then picked up my phone.
‘Hi, I’m just calling about my girlfriend’s phone bill …’
This had been my idea last night. My big idea. What if she’d phoned Andy back? She’d have used her mobile …
‘And are you the account holder?’
‘I just need to get access to it is all.’
‘I see, and are you the account holder?’
‘No, my girlfriend is the account holder, but I am my girlfriend’s boyfriend.’
‘Well, I would need to speak to the account holder.’
‘She says it’s absolutely fine.’
‘Well, I would need to speak to the account holder to verify that.’
‘I can give you all her details?’
‘I would need to speak to the account holder.’
‘Ask me anything.’
Hayley Grace Anderson (phone carrier: TelSun, payment plan: PayMonthly, account password: Hayl3y1) gave me her number the night we met (07700 etc, etc) and I made the joke I always make when someone gives me their number which I told you already and which you’ve probably already decided to use yourself.
And Hayley had laughed and laughed at this, because remember, it’s a great thing to say, and I had beamed so widely and felt so good about life that I suppose I must have seemed very attractive at that moment, because then she immediately took the slip of paper back, amended it, and handed me her real number.
Hayley’s friend had won tickets to a gig on Bristol CitySound 98.8. We were a small team, sharing responsibilities, and gave them out in person instead of posting them because we were spending too much on first class stamps. But we were assured that ‘this was a fantastic opportunity for us to engage with the listeners one-on-one’.
I could only imagine Leslie’s fury at that kind of thinking.
‘They see us as thick bloody sheep!’ he once yelled, banging his fist on a filing cabinet, as everyone around him pretended it wasn’t happening. ‘Just sitting around in this horrible office waiting for their wonderful pronouncements! “Great news, guys! We’re halving your wages! This will be a really exciting opportunity to get back down there on the floor, to remember our roots, to see how we earn our money. This is a great chance for us to really make our budgets stretch and get the best out of our money. Nice one, everybody!” Well they’ve got one spin and it’s absolute bollocks.’
So anyway, we used to ask these competition winners to come to reception, and more often than not they were these confused middle-aged women who couldn’t remember what tickets they’d won. There’s a whole network of them. Bored housewives who all text each other when they hear there’s a competition on and then share the prizes. Doesn’t matter what they are or what station it is or whether they’ve ever heard the show before. Tickets. Trips. Tiaras. Greedily snuffling about for whatever’s going. Pete Lawson on Vibe calls them GigPigs. He did it on-air once. No one noticed.
But Hayley and her friend looked different. They looked like they might actually listen to the station.
‘Do you listen to the station?’ I asked.
‘No,’ they said.
Then the friend, Laura, who Hayley used to see all the time – and I don’t know why she doesn’t any more, now I think about it – said, ‘How many tickets is it again?’
‘Four,’ I said, and I handed them over.
‘There’s only two of us,’ said Hayley.
I never went out back then. Well, hardly. A couple of nights a month with Calum, before he got the job offer in Dublin. We’d been mates since school, and he’d helped see me through the things that had happened … but he’d always been that little bit ahead of me – he had a family, these days. A proper, grown-up marriage with date nights and anniversaries and big family parties. Trampoline in the back garden. A back garden! Corporate car, a home mobile and a work mobile, the trappings of adulthood. But back then, even with someone I knew so well, I felt I should spare the world my company.
That night, though, I had fun. I let go. Went with the flow. Did what my old doctor used to say I should do – ‘do what everyone else is doing!’ It was at Colston Hall, Abbey Grant, the last gig of her first tour, signed by Universal and on her way, rumour had it, to America … but here in Bristol first.
And it was Hayley, Laura, me and a stranger from the queue we’d given the spare ticket to. The girls had asked me straight away because they didn’t know anyone else in Bristol and I fancied Laura so said yes straight away.
‘She’s got an aura, hasn’t she?’ said Hayley, when Laura had gone to the toilet. ‘I call it a Laura-aura.’
And then I felt a bit ashamed that I’d been so obviously into her. And like I’d been rude to Hayley. So I started talking to her more, as we found a bar down by the marina. And the more I talked to her, the more I tried to impress her, the more important it became to me that she liked me too.
They were in town from Stockport for a few days for a friend’s wedding in a chapel near Frome, but they’d grown restless.
‘I thought you two were sisters,’ I said, when Laura sat back down, and I thought I saw her bristle slightly, like I’d said they were wearing the same tops or something.
‘We’ve just got very similar tastes,’ said Hayley.
Things moved fast.
We’d met up the next day, the three of us, and I’d taken them to see Clifton Suspension Bridge, and I’ve no idea why, because as impressive as it is, you’re still just taking someone to see a bridge, so we found ourselves food and we chatted and hardly noticed when Laura slipped away.
And the next day, when Laura said she had a headache and just needed to get some work done, we hit the countryside on our own, walking the two miles along the canal from Bath to the George in Bathampton, sinking slow pints by the lock in the sun as kids played cricket over the bridge. It was easy, talking to Hayley. It sounds too simple and childish, but it was like everything that was my favourite was her favourite too.
Bands. Albums. Specific versions of tracks.
Countries. Cities. Specific areas of cities.
/> TV shows. Characters. Specific lines delivered by characters.
And the weirder it became, and the more we pretended to be freaked out by it, the more we loved it, because it meant we didn’t have to take responsibility for this – it was like the heavens themselves were willing it.
‘Laura? It’s Tom … Hayley’s Tom …’
My voice was upbeat, friendly, delightful. I’d rehearsed, and I can do delightful.
‘Tom?’
Her voice wasn’t delightful.
‘Yeah! Hey, can you speak?’
‘Not … not right now, not really, Tom … what’s this about?’
She was distant, unfriendly. Maybe because she knew? Was she hiding Hayley? Had I cracked it already and she was struggling to work out how?
‘I was just wondering … have you heard from Hayley at all?’
A pause.
‘I have not heard from Hayley, no,’ she said.
I waited. I’m not sure for what. A question, maybe. Some concern. But nothing.
‘Do you know where she might be?’ I asked. ‘I’m only calling because—’
‘I haven’t heard from her and I don’t expect to,’ said Laura, and I thought that would be the end of the sentence, but something crackled and spiked in her voice, like flint against steel, some small spark of fury and impatience, and she said, ‘And I thought I made that really, really clear, so if this is some kind of set-up, or some kind of trick, then I’m not interested, Tom.’
I blinked.
‘Sorry?’
‘She’s a bloody psycho. Please don’t call again.’
And the line went dead.
[2]
Cockroft takes a sip of his wine. It is a brooding, blood-red wine – a 1975 Chateau Patache d’Aux. He raises his glass, holds it to the light, tings the crystal with a single blackened fingernail.
All the while, a couple at the other table drink their bottle of wine, oblivious.
‘It’s delicious,’ he says, one hand softening his now-silver beard, ‘Berries. Black licorice. Full body. Long finish. Try some.’
‘You like that one?’
‘Never had it before. Never even heard of it, truth be told.’
I smile, I can’t help it. I notice the long-stemmed churchwarden pipes behind him, once smoked by Roosevelt, Hoover, Ziegfeld. Once, for $5 a year, patrons could keep their own pipe here. When a member passed away, the stem of their pipe would be cracked. Cockroft would look good with one of those pipes. The bar-room philosopher; the thinker.
‘You’re resisting,’ he says, and I realize he’s been staring at me for some time.
‘I guess,’ I say.
‘You avoid the water I order, you don’t take of the wine …’
‘I’m not trying to be rude,’ I say.
‘This happens a lot,’ he replies, and I notice his body language mirrors mine. I shift, uncomfortable at the thought he might think me in his awe. ‘But you must know, you are already in. A stage hypnotist will tell you that the people who go to his show are already hypnotized; they believe; that’s why they are there. Why are you here?’
‘Not because I believe,’ I say. ‘Because I’m a journalist.’
‘You report. You see the world from afar. Do you never feel you want to engage? Why choose to report? Why not choose to involve yourself?’
six
6.27am. Monday. Second bulletin.
I feel restless, distracted.
Adewale on reception had given me a can of Tango. He’d drunk three himself already today and he couldn’t stop moving his knee. He sat, grinning, next to three more, under a giant plasma screaming WELCOME TO OUR FRIENDS AT BRITVIC PLC!
He could not believe his luck.
A bloody psycho, eh?
I sat down, checked the wires.
Oh, great. A story about First Capital Connect. I bloody hate First Capital Connect. Too many kahs, too many chks.
First. Capital. Connect.
Who named it? Who thought that was a catchy name? Try saying it fast. Now try saying it fast, on air, with half of London listening. First Capital Connect. You have to spread the words. First. Capital. Connect. Slow it down. It just doesn’t flow. What were they thinking? Why wasn’t there a meeting? I dragged my eyes across them once more. I had to stay focused.
Psycho. Psychopath. Someone thinks my girlfriend is a psychopath.
Is she even my girlfriend?
Christ – Stanislas Wawrinka was playing Murray tonight.
I’m no tennis fan, I know nothing about it, my job is simply to sound like I do, to deliver words and numbers with authority, to learn the most effective way of implying knowledge, to know how to pace ‘six-two, six-two, six-four’, or ‘twenty-two under-par’ or ‘two hundred and sixty-five for seven’, but I genuinely wish Stanislas Wawrinka nothing but ill in his career. I hope he loses, badly, then immediately decides to retire, preferably after changing his name by deed poll to something like Bobby Easyname.
Stanislas Wawrinka.
The arrogance of it.
‘Tom,’ said Pippy, standing next to a clean-shaven kid of maybe nineteen in a bright lime hoodie, nervously running his hand through messy brown hair. He was still proudly wearing a grubby wristband from Rock Ness. He also looked knackered. Like until this moment he hadn’t even known there was a 6.28 in the morning. ‘This is Work Experience Paul, he’s starting with us today, and …’
‘Stanislas. Vav-rinka,’ I muttered, barely nodding then pushing through the studio door, and picking up from some subtle clues that Leslie was less than happy.
‘Those absolute pricks with their fucking gas of words and corporate speak – billows out of their mouths like a fog, a green fog, filling the room, suffocating ideas, any new way of thinking, anything that isn’t theirs or been proven by a focus group …’
He looked at me, wild-eyed, then back at Janice.
‘Have you ever seen these focus groups? Have you? Slack-jawed simpletons paid in Pizza Hut vouchers. And they have a say in what I do.’
His eyes flicked to his screen. Forty-two seconds ’til on-air. He relaxed, and pointed at the cupboard.
‘You know what they did last month?’
Here we go.
‘They said we couldn’t keep jam in there. They sent a fucking company-wide memo to say we could not keep jam in that specific cupboard.’
I looked at the cupboard. It was just a cupboard. He shrugged his shoulders, bewildered.
‘It’s empty, that cupboard, and yet we can’t keep a simple pot of jam in there in case a client walks in—’
‘It’s Britvic today,’ I said, trying to interject.
‘—and for some unknown bloody reason Billy bloody Britvic decides to look in a cupboard, sees some jam, and thinks, “I don’t think I’ll spend any of my hundreds of thousands of pounds of advertising budget on any of the radio stations in this group because once I opened a cupboard and there was some fucking jam in it.”’
‘Isn’t the kitchenette the proper—’ began Janice, never expecting to finish.
‘The kitchenette will see the end of that jam in less than five seconds flat, because the engineers bloody stand around the fridge eating jam with their spoons, Janice. I’ve seen it. It’s disgusting, they’re barely a rung up from focus groups. Honestly these people, these bloody people up there …’
He pointed at the ceiling, jabbed his arm up and down …
‘… they’re fucking ideas jockeys, they thrive on it, they see us as their pets, just tame and docile, and they leap on our creativity and they ride it to death. Why don’t they just build us a fucking exercise yard and be done with it?’
What amazed me about Leslie was that he still didn’t get it. Thirty-five years in radio and still the penny hadn’t dropped, shrouded and cosseted as he was in his own arrogance. The ads aren’t there to support his show. His show is there to bring in ads. He’s just a placeholder, someone who can hold a room, keep everyone listening until the next Kwik Fit
ad or paid-for read comes round.
‘So in the next bulletin—’ I said, hopefully, but he was off again.
‘Fucking blotterjotters! It’s a constant battle with these nitpicking sods! I watch them walk in, in their bloody pink bloody shirts, invent a problem, magnify it, and walk out like they’ve solved something. What a way to earn a living!’
I glanced down to concentrate.
‘Devoid of talent! Devoid of empathy!’
Fifteen seconds ’til on-air. I tried to point at the screen with my elbow but now Leslie was really going for it.
‘They piss about the place in their ill-cut suits, chosen by wives who stopped caring long ago, or turning up in new ones from Burton, which means they’ve got a mistress or an eye on one, and they don’t walk, they leer, they prowl. You know what they might as well call themselves? These fucking sods? They’re Programme Prevention Officers! They’re bloody PPOs, the lot of them!’
And then, like the pro he is, it was ads done, mic up, voice low …
‘… just coming up to 6.30, so let’s get your news, weather, travel, sport and showbiz, with …’ – he looked at me, searched my face for a name, relaxed as he realised it didn’t matter – ‘… Kate Mann.’
Eyes down. Mic up. News bed.
Usual three stories plus sport from me, plus the inevitable warning about the Blackwall tunnel, finish on the highs.
Stanislas. Wawrinka.
‘It’s Monday June 18th, I’m Tom Adoyo with the stories you’re waking up to …’
I was starting to think that maybe Hayley divided opinion.
I mean – What. The. Hell.
Laura’s words whirled thick through my head.
I was also, I think, starting to hate Hayley. Really hate her.
I sat at my desk, my world under a cloud, and I bent a pen until it creaked, until it teetered on the verge of snapping.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ said a voice, and I immediately snapped my pen.
It was Work Experience Paul. He looked so keen to be of service, so happy to help.
Who is Tom Ditto? Page 4