Filter This

by Sophie White

  Mini had never looked or acted like any of the mums at school. It was another thing she and Liv had bonded over. Liv’s mum, Myra Anand, was a psychologist, a reiki practitioner and the author of eleven bestselling books on sex, family and relationships – including one in which she graphically detailed Liv’s conception, The Untold Orgasmic Joys of Middle Age. Liv’s older siblings, Lex and Nella, were now in their late thirties – she was an afterthought baby. ‘The menopause ignited something of a sensual fervour in me,’ Myra had written in Untold Orgasmic Joys. It came out the year Liv turned sixteen.

  The waiter appeared, mercifully dispelling any lingering images of an orgasmic Myra Anand, and Ali ordered a coffee.

  ‘Right.’ Mini slapped her iPad cover closed. ‘How are you getting on? Still working on Dirty Ole Dublin?’ Ali was certain Mini got this wrong endlessly on purpose.

  ‘Yep,’ she answered, tight-lipped. ‘It’s going great.’ It wasn’t a lie as such. She just had a policy of pretending to Mini that Durty Aul’ Town was her dream job to minimise lectures – not that this worked.

  ‘Alessandra, you’re stagnating. I can see it.’ Mini sighed.

  ‘I’m not stagnating – Durty Aul’ Town is perfect. It’s a foot in the door and it gives me lots of time to work on my other projects.’ Ali could hear herself parroting her college tutor, though she doubted anyone would count her Instagram as a ‘project’.

  ‘You got that foot in the door three years ago. I remember Miles was delighted – he was obviously more far gone then than we realised.’

  Ali fought the desire to challenge this remark, remembering her aunt Eleanor, Mini’s only sister, urging her to give Mini the benefit of the doubt when she came out with this kind of thing. ‘She doesn’t mean to be so harsh. It’s her way of coping,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Cut her some slack.’

  Well, no one’s cutting me any slack, Ali raged silently. Maybe I need a bit of slack. He is my dad after all.

  ‘Where’s your wedding ring gone?’ Ali wearily changed the subject, discreetly checking the time. Almost done.

  ‘That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ali raised an eyebrow, prompting Mini to lean closer.

  ‘What have you done with your eyebrows? They look ridiculous.’

  ‘Jesus, Mum. This is the way everyone wears them now. It’s called high definition.’

  ‘Well, they’re doing you no favours. Anyway, that’s not why we’re here, although maybe they should be on the agenda. Should we be staging an intervention – that’s what they call it, right?’ She cackled to herself.

  Mini’s idea of a joke had always been pretty cutting but in the last few years, with Miles being so sick, the humour in her remarks had ebbed away entirely. Miles had always softened Mini; he had also united her and Ali. Without him their family just didn’t work. It wasn’t even a family – just two people who couldn’t seem to last a conversation without a fight.

  Ali rolled her eyes. ‘I actually have to go to work too, you know.’

  As if just remembering why they were there, Mini looked serious suddenly and even a little nervous, which was definitely strange.

  ‘So I’ve been wanting to tell you something. I’ve been thinking for a while now about maybe going on a date … with a man … who is not your dad.’

  This was not what Ali had been expecting. And then as she began to feel engulfed by the information, she realised she also didn’t think she would care so much about something like this.

  ‘You can’t go and date. He’s not dead, Mini.’ Ali could hear her voice rising but she couldn’t stop it. ‘What are you going to do, bring your dates to visit him in Ailesend?’

  Her parents had always been so together – she couldn’t picture her mother with someone else. They were a team, an unlikely one but a team nonetheless. They’d been something of an ‘it’ couple back when Miles was still centre of the floorshow at Frederick’s. It had been a hub for the Dublin theatre and art scene with Mini and Miles at the heart of it.

  Ali had loved working there during college, back when she thought she wanted to be a playwright. After Miles had started to get sick, everything about that world had reminded her of him. He’d performed in theatre productions in his early twenties in Cork before moving to Dublin in 1984 to pursue bigger roles. Miles had worked in restaurants between acting gigs and had eventually become sidetracked by the business.

  ‘You’re not a widow, Mini,’ Ali pointed out flatly. The ethics of this seemed seriously dubious. ‘You could at least wait till he’s dead to go on dates,’ Ali finished bitterly.

  ‘It’s not dates plural. It’s just one date,’ Mini argued. ‘You can’t possibly understand what the last few years have been like for me. Your dad wasn’t supposed to be lost to us at sixty. I wasn’t supposed to be this odd widow-like creature. I’m lonely, Alessandra. I don’t want to be alone – I want companionship. I still travel all the time and it’s no fun without your dad. It’s not just intercourse, you understand.’ Ali suppressed a shudder at this but Mini was on a roll. ‘I need a partner, not just sexual gratification.’

  ‘I get it, I get it,’ Ali cut across her, realising ‘I get it’ sounded like she was granting her permission, but anything to make Mini cease and desist with the sex talk. ‘Look, if you want to go on DatesForTheDecrepit.com that’s your business. I just don’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘Darling, I have to tell you about it. This is Dublin, there’ll be talk.’

  ‘Why would there be talk?’ Ali narrowed her eyes. Mini shifted about, fiddling with the cover of her iPad.

  ‘It’s Marcus.’ Mini crossed her arms and faced Ali with a resigned expression.

  ‘Oh, what the fuck, Mum!’

  ‘I didn’t plan it and nothing untoward has happened yet. We just realised we have developed feelings for each other and want to pursue it.’

  ‘Dad’s business partner.’ Ali shook her head. ‘No fucking wonder you’re worried about gossip.’

  The waiter, presumably sensing the tension, tentatively approached the table, set Ali’s coffee down and swiftly fled back to the safety of the counter.

  ‘Anyone else, Jesus, Mini – date him for fuck’s sake.’ Ali jerked her head at the waiter, who looked positively frightened and dropped behind the counter, pretending to be doing something on the floor. The café was way too empty for this kind of confrontation.

  At this moment ‘Oh Superman’, Mini’s supremely pretentious ringtone, started up and she pressed her earpiece to take the call. Mini would take a call in the middle of a funeral. Ali sometimes felt she’d spent her life watching her mother talk to other people.

  ‘I’m in the middle of a meeting, Erasmus, what is it?’ Mini avoided Ali’s glare while she listened to her assistant, who took the phrase ‘long-suffering’ to new levels. Erasmus was more soul-sapped than long-suffering as he babysat the various artists Mini represented and obeyed every whim of Mini herself. ‘They’re all as psychotic as each other,’ Mini interjected wearily. ‘Tell him to return the baby immediately. He’s too old and he’s not making enough money to still be carrying on with this enfant terrible shiteology.’ She hung up and offered a single word by way of explanation. ‘Edmund.’

  Edmund was a performance artist Mini had been repping for years and had ruined practically every party Miles and Mini had ever thrown in their house. He once arrived wearing a young nude man draped around his shoulders and insisted on keeping him in the spare room where all the other coats were thrown on the bed. The other guests had been unhappy about a naked stranger rolling around among their clothes, a fact Miles patiently tried to explain to Edmund. It was all a moot point anyway as the guy, who Edmund later admitted he’d met on the bus, took off into the night wearing a four-grand fox-fur coat with several wallets stuffed into the pockets.

  Mini hung up and reached for Ali’s hand. ‘These nails are disgusting, darling. They can’t be hygienic.’ She held the middle finger, examinin
g Ali’s multi-coloured fake nails.

  Ali took her hand back, twisting her still-pointed middle finger up, and carefully stood, giving her mother the finger at close range all the while. It was incredibly satisfying even if it looked ridiculous. ‘I’m going to work. You may not think my job’s important but they will notice if I’m not there.’

  On the bus to work, Ali pulled out her phone. The tension that always amped up when dealing with Mini could usually be tamed by some calming scrolling. Checking in on her posts was like doing a scratch card. She opened the app with the buzz of anticipation. The protein-breakfast post was raking in the likes – a few hundred! Including one from Shelly herself. Whoop. Getting the follows from bigger accounts was important so other people would see she was doing well. She went through the comments, replying to each one individually – engagement was key to boosting her account.

  As the Georgian buildings of the city centre gave way to the starker dual carriageway, Ali updated her Stories with chat about her day ahead. She tried to make her job sound more exciting than it was, hashtagging everything with #werk and #TVlife, but the reality was she was a lowly production assistant at the mercy of Stephan and the actors, many of whom were total knobs. She’d even been in college with one, Seamus Rourke, who never missed an opportunity to highlight how differently their careers were panning out.

  ‘It’s still so weird that you’re, like, a runner, isn’t it?’ he’d said the day before when she came to get him for his scene. ‘I always thought you wanted to write plays and stuff.’

  The ping of the bus nearing her stop interrupted her thoughts. She grabbed her bag, hopped out at the TV station and headed towards Studio 4, where today’s scenes were shooting.

  Inside the studio was hectic as usual. Durty Aul’ Town was shown four times a week and getting episodes rehearsed, shot, edited and aired was a daily shitfight. Four scenes into the day and Ali found herself beside Terry, the show’s head writer, as they watched Stephan storming around the set of the town’s fictional pub, O’Mahoney’s, while crew scattered in every direction trying to look busy and avoid him.

  Stephan raged around, spittle flying as he bitched people out of it for the slightest misstep or goof. He was most unpleasant but fun to watch, Ali thought, as long as he wasn’t directing his ire at her. He’d been series producer of Durty Aul’ Town for twenty-seven years and it seemed to have gravely affected his mental health. He terrorised people indiscriminately, from the make-up artists to the show’s oldest and longest-running stars, Yvonne Lawler and Eric Vaughan, who had appeared on the pilot episode as the couple who owned O’Mahoney’s. It was, in fact, Yvonne who was the source of Stephan’s current tantrum.

  ‘Jesus,’ Stephan screamed mid-scene. ‘This cannot go on. Can we do something about Yvonne’s face? Please. It’s giving me the creeps. She looks like the aul’ one from Titanic. Trevor, check the lighting, will you? Or actually, fuck it, Yvonne, just face the other way – that’s right, luv, back to the camera. Thanks. Thanks, pet.’

  Stephan, Ali believed, deliberately cultivated his reputation for being an arsehole. He strutted around in his uniform of black drainpipe jeans, black polo neck and old Doc Martens, smoking rollies and generally trying to act like a badass Tarantino-type despite being a fifty-something TV producer who had only made one show in his entire career. When younger up-and-comers came on board to join the writers’ room or operate cameras, Stephan’s desperation to impress was an embarrassment.

  ‘Christ,’ muttered Terry beside her. ‘The poor woman is nearly seventy.’

  ‘Ali?’ Shite, Stephan was roaring her name now. ‘Ali? Where the fuck is Ali?’ Stephan was standing dead in the centre of the set – if he’d bothered to turn his head slightly to the left, he’d spot her.

  ‘Stephan! What can I do?’ Ali scurried into his eyeline, digging in her pack where she kept the day’s running order, scripts, Stephan’s CBD oil, more heavy-duty medications and snacks. ‘Sandwich? Are your sugars dropping?’ Stephan had recently gone keto, which was making Durty Aul’ Town an even more trying work environment than usual. Ali pulled out the lump of cheddar cheese sandwiched between two rashers that catering made specially every day.

  Stephan snatched it up without a word of thanks and strode off to berate some other unfortunate and Ali returned, rolling her eyes at Terry. All the crew bonded over Stephan’s bonkers ways.

  ‘I’m not sure he actually gets the keto thing.’ Ali grinned. ‘So did you, eh, have a chance to look at that thing I sent you? I know you probably didn’t, I know how busy you are …’

  Months ago, Ali had done a spec script for Durty Aul’ Town for a storyline for Imelda, Shelly’s character, but it was hard to find the time to corner Terry. Plus she wasn’t totally sure she wanted to hear the feedback. If he hadn’t been chasing her to offer it, it was probably not glowing.

  ‘Ah, I did, Ali. Sorry – as you say, the pace around here … It can be really hectic in the writers’ room.’ Terry was looking awkward and Ali decided on the spot that, with everything that had already happened that morning with Mini’s burgeoning love life, maybe she didn’t need this buzzkill.

  ‘Look, no worries, it wasn’t right. It’s cool.’ She tried to smile.

  ‘Ali, you could be solid. I think you just need to give it more work. The scenes felt a little, I dunno … mannered. Maybe it’s coming from college. You did theatre, right? TV’s a different animal. Also I just felt, you know, if Imelda’s dad was getting sick – her reactions seemed a bit off. Wouldn’t she be more upset?’

  ‘Well, maybe she’s just handling it a bit differently. Maybe she doesn’t know how to handle it. But yeah, no, you’re right.’ Ali started backing away – she didn’t want to get upset on set. ‘Um, thanks, Terry. Thanks for reading it.’

  ‘Ali, these things take time. There’s nothing instant about making a career in writing. Keep sending me stuff.’ Terry was smiling kindly and Ali couldn’t take it. Still backing off while trying to smile, she stumbled over some huge camera cables and, thankfully, at that moment Stephan called for a five-minute break.

  Ali went to the loo and took the opportunity to pop on Insta. It was like a little mental massage. She knew Terry wasn’t wrong. She’d been writing less and less in the last year. The things she wanted to write about were just too painful and then her Insta had started taking off and it was more fun and easier racking up likes than wordcounts.

  Her post had a new comment:

  @Janet_pics: You’re so dedicated, Ali, no wonder your skin’s so gorgeous. I need to start juicing more. What do you put in yours?

  Ali smiled and turned her front camera on to take a selfie. She angled the phone above her but not so much that you could tell she was taking a piss. The light was so nice. She sucked in her cheeks slightly, touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth (a tip from Kate, who swore it killed any hint of a double chin), pouted heavily and snapped a few options – thirty-six for safety. As she edited the pic in FaceFix she had to admit her skin was good, but definitely through no efforts of her own, plus @Janet_pics had never actually seen her skin unfiltered.

  Ali finished prepping the pic then googled a green juice recipe and pasted it into the Instagram caption.

  So many people have been asking about my skin, and while I think it’s mostly genetics, here’s the green juice recipe I swear by. #greenlife #skinfluencer #DublinIgers #DiscoverUnder10K #Juicing #HealthyAf

  Instantly the likes started rolling in. Selfies do well but you can’t be seen to be doing too many or people think you’re too up yourself. Ali sighed. It was a delicate balancing act.

  She finished up in the loo and headed to make-up, where Shelly would need escorting to her next scene.

  In the make-up chair, Shelly was scrolling on her phone. She looked up and smiled as Ali jogged towards her.

  Ali was nervous around Shelly. She was so perfect-looking and Ali was afraid of coming across as desperate.

  ‘Hi!’ Shelly smiled, putting t
he phone away. ‘Are we set?’

  ‘Yep, Scene 36 down in Imelda’s living room.’ Ali picked up Shelly’s script and water bottle and they headed down to studio.

  ‘So how are you? All going well with your account?’ Shelly was always polite but a bit distant with Ali and she sensed that Amy, Shelly’s assistant who often hung around set, did most of the likes and comments on Ali’s posts that purported to be coming from Shelly.

  ‘Yeah, great, really looking forward to the Glossie Awards launch tomorrow night! Any excuse to get dressed up.’ Ali smiled, ignoring Stephan’s shouting in her headpiece about where the fuck were they. Ali tried to maximise these moments to ingratiate herself with Shelly. She held the heavy door to the studio open for Shelly and ushered her in, helping her over the spaghetti junction of wires and shielding her from various crew bustling past as they made their way around the back of the set.

  ‘Oh, I know.’ Shelly smiled. ‘There’s actually a really exciting new element to the awards this year,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘They’ve got a wild-card nomination that will go into the Influencer of the Year category!’

  ‘Seriously?’ Ali’s eyes widened. ‘So just anyone could be picked?’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you but they’ll be announcing it on their social tonight so no harm. Basically, anyone who wants to be in the running for the wild card just needs to post an #OOTD tomorrow and the winning OOTD will be announced at the launch party! It’s an initiative to boost up-and-comers. They’re actually letting me judge the posts!’

  It seemed a bit much that the woman in contention for Influencer of the Year was permitted to essentially choose the wild-card entry for that same category, but then what wasn’t irritatingly incestuous and nonsensical about the whole Irish Insta-world? And in a way, it could work in Ali’s favour. Shelly Devine would never crown a winner among any of the upper mid-level influencers, whose clout she most likely genuinely feared. Ali’s non-threatening just-under-10K followers would be much more acceptable to Shelly. Plus, she actually knew Ali existed, unlike the other faceless nobodies.