by Jane Lythell
‘It’s wonderful, Simon, but he’s an unknown.’
‘I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He’s a natural. He came out with all these brilliant funny stories about his kids. And look at him.’
Simon handed me a photo he’d printed of John seated on a sofa with his three children climbing over him, two boys and a girl. The sofa was worn, the room was shabby but the kids looked happy. He was a good-looking man with a friendly open face.
‘He is rather attractive,’ I said.
I handed the photo to Molly, my other researcher.
‘I wonder why he hasn’t got himself a girlfriend then,’ she said.
Molly and Simon get on but there is an inevitable rivalry between them for stories. She was pushing her idea for Fizzy to interview a footballer who had brought out his memoir; actually it was more of a misery memoir than a sporting one.
‘It’s not only about football, it’s also about his tough childhood and it’s surprisingly well written and revealing,’ she said.
‘Why does everyone think footballers are stupid?’ Simon said.
I was reading the back of the book.
‘And he wrote it himself? Not a ghostwriter?’
‘All his own words...’
‘Maybe next week, Moll; I’m not keen to do two book stories back to back.’
‘I’ve got this feeling John from Sheffield will be great. I think Fizzy will love him. We get her to empathise with him and she can ask viewers to email or tweet us any suggestions about dealing with teenage girls,’ Simon said.
‘That’s Betty’s territory,’ I said.
Betty is our formidable agony aunt and she covers these types of issues on her weekly slot, but she was away doing a lecture tour in Canada. It was high risk but in the end I decided we would invite John from Sheffield as our interview of the day. Some of our most successful items have involved ordinary people and Simon’s instincts are sound.
Chalk Farm flat, 7.15 p.m.
I was home by seven-fifteen tonight which wasn’t too bad. I pay Janis, a woman who lives locally, to be with my daughter Florence until I get back. Flo complains it’s stupid because at fourteen years of age she is fine to be left on her own, but she gets on well with Janis who has been her childminder for years. Janis cooks her supper and they talk. I learn all kinds of useful stuff about Flo from Janis, which I’m grateful for but which also makes me sad because Flo stopped confiding in me a while ago. When she was younger we were incredibly close and she was my best cuddly little girl.
Janis left and I knocked gently and popped my head round Flo’s bedroom door. One of the great fights between us has been about how I barge into her room unannounced. Now I try to remember to knock first. Flo’s bedroom was in near darkness except for the glow of her tablet which lit up her face. I love that face more than any other face in the world. She did not smile when she saw me but she did not scowl either.
‘Had a good day, sweetheart?’
‘Yeah, OK. Dad called.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘He said Granddad will pick me up if I get the train on Friday.’
‘Great.’
Every two or three weeks Flo spends the weekend with her dad Ben and his parents in Portsmouth. We have to be flexible about it because Ben works as an aerial photographer and sometimes a big job will come up at the weekend and he can’t see her. Sometimes she will go down on a Friday night, which I prefer because it gives her longer with her dad.
‘I’m making chilli. Do you fancy some?’
She shook her head.
‘No, ta. I’m stuffed.’
She was keen to get back to her tablet so I closed her door. It was one of our better exchanges because recently we rarely talk without angry words passing between us.
As I chopped the onions I reflected that I would have a free weekend. Ben and I set up the weekend arrangements after we divorced and I try hard not to let it slip. Before our split I couldn’t understand those women who try to stop contact and who bad-mouth their exes, especially when they do it in front of the children. But afterwards, when things got ugly, I would find myself biting back my anger and frustration in front of Flo. There was a lot of anger and disappointment to process after ten years of being together and I’m sure she must have overheard our heated words from time to time.
CHAPTER TWO
StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge
John, the single-parent dad from Sheffield, was terrific. Fizzy connected with him at once and she got him to talk openly about the struggles he’d had since his wife left him and their three kids one afternoon. It was out of the blue, he said. There had been no warning signs and no message left. His wife had asked a neighbour to keep an eye on the kids till he got back from work and then had driven away in the family car. When John got back he’d tried to call her, getting more and more anxious when he couldn’t get through. But it was only after putting the kids to bed that he saw she had taken her clothes, her jewellery and one framed family photo. He has not heard a word from her since and he thinks she had some kind of breakdown. He has had to cope with the children’s questions and their misery at this rejection by their mother. Children so often take the blame for these things onto themselves, he said. I thought of my Flo when he said that. Did she feel she was responsible for Ben and me breaking up? Fizzy asked him what was most difficult and he replied that with his daughter, the oldest of his three, reaching thirteen he was feeling out of his depth.
You can’t fake authenticity and we’ve been flooded with emails and tweets from viewers with all kinds of advice as well as about thirty marriage proposals! I am planning to do a follow-up story with John in a month or so and I can see him becoming part of our StoryWorld family. Even Julius was pleased at the morning meeting.
‘I don’t know why that item worked so well but it did,’ he said.
Julius shuffled his running order and script into a neat pile in front of him. We were waiting for the signal that the meeting was over because no one gets up to leave until he indicates that discussion has ended.
He said: ‘I’ve been thinking about the overall look of the show and I’ve come to a decision. From now on I want our presenters to wear pastel colours. People wake up to us every day and it’s our job to lift their spirits and to offer them a cheerful start. I don’t want to see any black or dark blue or dark green on anyone on camera. Dark colours say misery, we associate black with death. From now on StoryWorld will be yellow, it will be pink, it will be pastel. Is that clear?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Fizzy said.
Fizzy is close to Julius and I’m sure he had briefed her on this before the meeting. It was Julius who gave her that first break as our weather presenter and her rise since has been meteoric. A lot of us resent how well those two get on and we are careful around Fizzy for this reason. Some of the team even think that they are lovers. I don’t think so; it looks more like a master and protégée relationship to me. After Fizzy’s enthusiastic endorsement there was an awkward silence in the meeting room. I am the producer who deals with most of the presenters so I had to say something.
‘Julius, I can see your point but how am I going to get Gerry and Ledley into pastels?’
Gerry is our astrologer and he favours a smart tailored look with a navy blazer or dark jumper. Ledley is our cook. He’s tall and slim and he goes for a relaxed anti-fashion style. He’ll come in wearing an orange shirt with dark red jeans or a printed pattern shirt with worn black jeans and boots and he gets away with it. He has even been written up in a magazine as a good example of street style. I couldn’t see Ledley agreeing to wear a pink shirt.
‘You can put Ledley into chef’s whites. And tell Gerry it’s the brand, the StoryWorld brand. People don’t want dark colours and misery in the morning. They want upbeat stories and light bright colours. I want this implemented straight away.’
Bob the news editor spoke up now.
‘I assume we’re talking the feature presenters here,
Julius? News can hardly be pastel.’
Bob runs the team of news reporters and they are overwhelmingly male and macho. In every TV station there is a great divide between the features team and the news team which is why his support of me yesterday was unexpected. Julius gave Bob a hard look.
‘I want to see the news reporters in pale blue shirts,’ he said, standing up, ‘from next Monday.’
The meeting was over and Julius walked out of the room. I was keen to talk to Bob about this latest development and followed him to his office. I could tell by the way he was walking that he was furious. He sees himself as a serious news man in competition with much larger outfits. He prides himself on getting exclusives and on selling these on to other TV stations. We reached his office and he slammed his door shut.
‘Pastels! Such bullshit,’ he said, throwing his papers onto his desk.
‘You’d think we were a supermarket or an airline. Welcome to StoryWorld... fasten your seat belts,’ I said.
‘You know what gets me? It’s a fucking great power trip, that’s what this is all about. It’s about him getting us to do something and there’s never any room for discussion.’
It was true and I wondered if Julius was punishing Bob for his intervention yesterday. He has pockmarked cheeks and dark angry eyes and he’s weirdly attractive and magnetic. He’s been at the station about two years. As a rule the news editors don’t last long here. Sooner or later they clash with Julius and Julius always wins any power struggle.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘Carry it out, of course,’ I said.
‘You’ve worked with him a long time, haven’t you?’
‘I have and I’ve learned to pick my fights. I’m not going to fight over what colours people wear.’
He knelt down to pick up the papers that had slid off his desk onto the floor.
‘Yeah, but just the once I’d like him to get what’s coming to him,’ he said.
I went downstairs to get myself a coffee from the staff café which is called the Hub. The management spent a shed-load of money on this café and got an architect in to design it. Julius has a theory that if you give the staff a good place to eat and drink they are more likely to put in the long hours. There is a central circular food and drink bar and spreading out from these like the spokes of a wheel are stylish lime-green and orange designer tables and chairs. The lighting is trendy and can be changed to create different moods – we use the Hub for presentations sometimes. The menu caters for all types and all allergies. Gerry Melrose, our astrologer, was sitting in there drinking a diet Coke. He told me recently that he’s on a diet and is aiming to shed a stone. He’s in his late-forties and his partner, Anwar, is younger than him and Gerry worries about his appearance. No time like the present, I thought, as I sat down opposite him. He was wearing a rather nice dark blue jumper over a crisp white shirt.
‘How are things with you, darling?’ he asked.
‘OK,’ I said, stirring half a spoon of sugar into my coffee. ‘Julius has this new idea. He wants all the presenters to wear pastel colours; yellow, pink, pale blue. But not dark blue like your nice jumper, and definitely no black. He was adamant about it. Said it’s the StoryWorld brand to be bright and cheerful and he wants us to implement this straight away.’
‘Pastels can be fattening, you know?’ Gerry said.
‘I know they can.’
‘What’s he got against dark colours?’
‘He says they stand for misery and death,’ I said, trying to resist the impulse to roll my eyes.
‘That’s an Aquarius for you, free thinkers, mould breakers.’
‘Julius is an Aquarius?’
‘Oh yes. I did his chart a while back.’
I tried to imagine how Julius would have reacted to this. Julius is the most private of men and he would have had to give Gerry the exact time and location of his birth.
‘I guess I’ll have to buy myself a few new shirts then. I don’t usually go in for pastels,’ Gerry said.
‘Thanks for taking it so well.’
Gerry sipped his diet Coke.
‘Will we get a clothing allowance for the new shirts?’
I’m fond of Gerry, even though I think astrology is enjoyable nonsense, but he does like to drive a hard bargain on money matters.
‘Not sure. Leave it with me.’
I went upstairs to congratulate Simon on his excellent choice of John from Sheffield as the interview of the day.
Chalk Farm flat, 6.50 p.m.
It was good to be home earlier tonight. Flo was in her room and as she was leaving Janis told me a new family has moved in across the road. There’s a daughter, Paige, who is a bit older than Flo and they had been talking. Flo was dead chuffed to have made friends with a girl of sixteen, Janis said.
She left and I decided to make macaroni cheese. I don’t eat much during the day and when I get home I like to make something from scratch. I’m an average cook but cooking helps me to decompress. Macaroni cheese is one of my favourite comfort foods and I made a creamy sauce with extra mature Cheddar and a bit of Gruyère I had left over. As I grated the Cheddar I was thinking about John from Sheffield and his story which had moved our audience today. It brought back the painful time after Ben and I split up. Flo had just had her seventh birthday and was a happy and settled child. Ben and I had been going through difficult times for a while but we had managed to protect her from the worst of it and our separation came as a complete shock. She was confused and upset and I noticed a definite change in her. She started to cry at minor things and would cling to me when I dropped her off at school, pleading with me not to leave her. It was tough having to pull her fingers off and walk away. She had seen one parent leave and was frightened the other one might be off too. She wanted to sleep in my bed every night. Poor little mite, it hit her hard.
I put a good pinch of nutmeg into my sauce and kept stirring. I took it hard too. Ben and I had been together for ten years. I met him shortly after I joined StoryWorld as a junior researcher and he was working as a cameraman and on a higher salary than me. I was vulnerable. My darling dad had died suddenly the year before and looking back I can see that there was always an imbalance in our relationship. I let Ben take the lead on most things, like where we would live and how much we would spend on things. I was a bit of a pushover really. So being on my own with Flo has stretched and challenged me. I have had my moments of blind panic but I know I have become stronger.
Flo came out of her room.
‘How was your day, darling?’
‘I hate today. I hate double maths,’ she said.
Mr Crooks, our cat, was curled up on our squashy yellow sofa in his favourite spot with his nose resting in his fur, blissfully asleep. Flo picked him up with a deep sigh and took him back to her room. I sat down on the sofa. I love the colour yellow in a home. It’s so cheerful and my sofa just asks to be stretched out on.
I cleared my emails, turned off my mobile and made myself a mug of tea. I value these quiet times. When I split up with Ben we sold our small house in East Finchley and I found this two-bedroomed garden flat in Chalk Farm. There’s not much of a garden, it’s more a patio with potted plants, but there’s room enough for Flo and me to have two deckchairs out there in the summer and to pretend we have a garden. It’s not a big flat inside either. Both our bedrooms are small doubles. It does have one beautiful large room, the living room, which is also our kitchen and dining room. There are doors at the far end which open onto the patio and I bought the flat because of this room. It’s costing me more than I can comfortably afford and a great slab of my salary goes on my mortgage every month. But my flat is my haven. Often, late at night, when Flo is asleep, I’ll sit here on my sofa with the doors open, listening to the thrum of the city and enjoying the feeling that this is my little corner of the world and no one can get me here.
CHAPTER THREE
StoryWorld TV station, London Bridge
Start of a new
week and Harriet Dodd arrived today. I was walking out of the morning meeting with Julius when this young woman with light red shoulder-length hair approached us. She had hooded eyelids which gave her a sleepy look, though she sounded confident as she extended her hand towards me.
‘I cannot thank you enough for this opportunity. I’ve always wanted to work in television.’
She had the well-bred voice and the poise of an expensively educated girl and she was dressed immaculately. I wondered what my team would make of her.
‘You must be Harriet,’ I said.
‘Yes. Please call me Harry, everyone does.’
She smiled at me and then glanced over at Julius and smiled at him and I could see that his interest was aroused. He introduced himself and they shook hands.
‘My father sends his best wishes to you,’ she said.
‘Please send mine back,’ Julius replied.
That grated on me. She was already working her contacts. Harriet followed me to the quartet of desks outside my office that belong to my team and I presented her to Molly, Simon and Ziggy, my runner.
‘Please show Harriet how to log on and we’re meeting in my room in fifteen minutes,’ I said.
They joined me and we spent the next hour discussing several ideas we were working on for the show and I could see that Molly and Simon were observing Harriet rather carefully. I was observing her too. Maybe because of her hooded eyelids she has a closed face that you can’t read. She has beautiful shiny hair which is the colour of apricots and she was dressed in a cream silk blouse which had to be designer, tucked into a burgundy leather pencil skirt with kitten heel courts the exact same shade of dark red. Now, we television people earn good money and we can be a stylish crew but honest to God, Harriet’s ensemble was in another league.
‘There’s a lot to learn about turning an idea into good TV,’ I said to her. ‘I’d like you to shadow Simon this week and he can teach you the basics.’
I saw an expression flit across Molly’s face. Was she aggrieved that I hadn’t asked her?