Radio Gaga

by Nell Dixon

  I couldn’t see my torturer any more. With a lot of effort, and by screwing my eyes open and shut a few times, my surroundings gradually began to come into focus. Definitely a hospital cubicle. A stainless steel trolley was next to my bed and my arm was hooked up to some kind of machine.

  “Chloe? Oh thank God, Chloe.”

  “Shelly?” My friend arrived at my side, her face white with anxiety.

  “God, Clo; I thought I’d killed you.”

  “Huh?” Now I could see more clearly I noticed Shelly’s eyes were rimmed with red as if she’d been crying.

  “The tablets, you nonk, how many did you take?”

  Tablets? I tried to concentrate. Shelly’s tablets. I remembered taking two at the flat and one when I was inside the tower and I might have taken one on the way to the abseil but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Um, two or three?” What was Shelly saying? I was in hospital because of the tablets?

  “Bloody hell. I told you to only take two.”

  “You mean I’m in here because of the tablets? I didn’t fall off the top of the castle?”

  She blew out a breath. “You never got to do the abseil. One minute you were talking to Ben, you said you felt hot and then your words went all slurry. Next thing, you threw up all over his shoes and collapsed in a heap. They called 999 and rushed you in here.”

  My body flushed hot and then cold as her story struck home.

  “But Merv? The charity money?”

  “Merv ended up doing the abseil instead of you. Ben stepped in and did some commentary and I ended up following the ambo here to find out what was wrong with you.”

  “Oh God!” I was probably jobless. Merv would be livid. As for Ben, he’d almost certainly never want to speak to me again.

  “Then, when they found the pills in the pocket of your jeans I had to tell them,” Shelly gulped. “I honestly thought I’d killed you.”

  “Well, I suppose you got me out of the abseil, that’s one good thing. I don’t suppose Merv was very pleased if he had to do it instead though.”

  “I heard Ben reporting on it on the car radio on the way here. They were making a huge thing about your collapse and how ill you were.” She pulled a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her nose. “I was so scared.”

  “Yeah, well, it was my fault for taking too many.” Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes.

  My white-coated torturer with the light bustled back in “That’s what you get when you abuse prescription medication, especially when they aren’t your prescription drugs.” From his tone and the stethoscope I guessed he must be a doctor and one who needed a brush up on his bedside manners.

  Shelly and I received a full twenty-minute lecture on the misuse of medicines while he finished checking me out before he discharged me into her care.

  “I’ll take you back to your flat.” Shelly supported me on her arm as I wobbled out of accident and emergency.

  “Why is it dark?” I blinked at the orange lights surrounding the hospital car park.

  “Because you’ve been spark out almost all day.” Shelly propped me against the side of her car while she dug the keys from her pocket.

  She helped me into the passenger seat.

  “Thanks for staying with me. I’m sorry I messed up with the tablets.” Poor Shelly had missed a day’s work, been worried sick and now planned to spend the night at my flat just to make sure I was okay.

  “Do you think Merv will sack me?” I fumbled my seatbelt into place as Shelly started the car.

  “Nah, don’t see how he can without looking like a real jerk. I mean everything was broadcast live on air. People listening jammed the switchboard to see if you were okay. I think they thought you’d have a seizure or a stroke at first. Steph sounded totally miffed.” She reasoned as she pulled off the car park and into the evening traffic.

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Anyway I reckon Merv is the least of your worries.” She shot me a nervous glance as she halted for the traffic lights.

  “Why?” Something about the way she wasn’t meeting my gaze set alarm bells ringing.

  “The hospital wanted to know the details for your next of kin.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I had no choice; I told them I’d call her. I’m sorry Clo, but your mother is coming to see you.”

  Great. My misery was now complete.

  “She would have come straight down if she could have got a flight today. I did my best to stall her.”

  There were good reasons why I lived a long way away from my mother. After my parents had divorced, I’d stayed in the Midlands, my father had very wisely managed to flee to another continent, and my mother had gone to live in the wilds of Scotland. It was an arrangement that suited all concerned.

  Now, my mother was no doubt busy efficiently packing a suitcase ready to come and remind me yet again what a disappointment I was to her. Since I’d been a disappointment from the moment she’d discovered I was a girl and not the baby boy she’d ordered, this was nothing new.

  My lack of academic prowess, and failure to secure what she considered to be a good job, were yet more sources of anguish. I had redeemed myself briefly when Neil had moved into the flat and she’d thought she might be gaining a son-in-law. True, he wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer, but an accountant did come pretty close in her eyes to being what she considered to be an ‘eligible catch’. Obviously, I hadn’t told her that Neil and I had split up.

  We pulled to a halt outside the house. The lights were on upstairs in Ben’s flat and I wondered if he still had my sweater. Shelly bustled out of the car to come and help me.

  “Have you got your keys?”

  I almost asked her “what keys?” before my cotton wool brain kicked in to gear. What had I done with my keys? And my phone? Where was my phone? I patted the pockets of my jeans and found a crumpled tissue, three pound coins and a chap stick.

  “They were in my coat pocket with my phone.” Realisation flooded back accompanied by blind panic as I realised I’d thrust my coat at Merv immediately before I’d made my undignified exit from the abseil.

  “You’re kidding me?” Shelly stared at me in dismay.

  “Wait, what’s that?” A yellow scrap of paper sellotaped to the entry buzzer of the house caught my eye.

  Shelly sprang forward to pull it free, bringing it under the brighter light from the security lamp so we could read the message.

  “Have got your keys. Ben.” She grinned at me. “Oh goody, now I get to have a closer look at your new neighbour.”

  Before I could gather my wits, she pressed the button for Ben’s flat. Oh hell, I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him again quite so soon after making such a complete tit of myself. Still, I suppose it had to be better than having to try and contact Merv to get my things back.

  My heart was in my mouth as Ben opened the door. Shelly gave him one of her best smiles. “We found your note. Thank goodness you’ve got Chloe’s keys, she was really worried.”

  He smiled back at Shelly sending a tiny shaft of jealousy through my chest. “No problem. Mervyn gave me Chloe’s things when she got rushed away.”

  He turned his attention to me and I tried to curb my instinct to hide away behind my friend.

  “How are you feeling now, Chloe?” He sounded genuinely concerned and not at all cross that I’d apparently been sick over his shoes and landed him with commentating on Merv’s abseil.

  “Much better, thank you.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to look him in the face though.

  We followed him into the hall where he handed Shelly my jacket and sweater while he unlocked my front door.

  “I’m so sorry about today. It was good of you to cover for Merv while he took my place on the abseil.” I summoned up my courage to finally take a peep at his expression as Shelly turned on the light in my tiny hall way.

  “That’s okay. I’m glad you were okay. Substance abuse can do terrible things to people.”

  My mouth
fell open. Substance abuse! Oh my God!

  “But it wasn’t, I mean I wasn’t. They were prescription things.” My words piled up in my mouth like a giant log jam as I struggled to explain.

  “I’d better go, see you ladies later.” He flashed Shelly another smile and bounded back up the stairs to his flat leaving me still spluttering and indignant on my door step.

  “What was that about?” Shelly reappeared at my elbow having missed the last part of the conversation while she’d been switching on the lamp in the lounge.

  “He thinks I’m a druggie.” I trailed miserably down the hall and into the kitchen.

  “That’s crazy. Why would he think that?” Shelly busied herself with the kettle.

  “Oh, I dunno, maybe someone told him about the tablets and he’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick.” I looked closely at her face. Her cheeks seemed to have turned a slightly darker shade of pink.

  “Don’t look at me like that. All I said to Merv was that maybe you’d reacted to the tranquillisers. Merv must have mentioned something to him.” She turned her back on me for a second to rummage in the cupboard for my teabags.

  “Why did you tell Merv I’d taken tablets? Misuse of drugs is a sackable offence.” If Merv thought I was on drugs then I was definitely out of Live it Up.

  “I thought I’d killed you, remember?” Shelly banged the tea caddy down on the counter, her eyes filled with tears. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. Any way, I don’t think taking a couple of tranquillisers is what they mean by being sackable. They probably mean Coke or something like that.”

  Remorse flooded through me. “I’m sorry Shelly. I’m not blaming you, honestly. It was my idiocy that got me into this mess.”

  She stepped around the counter to hug me. “Listen, everything will be fine. You can explain to Ben when you see him next and Merv will understand. It isn’t as if you made yourself ill on purpose. If he and Steph hadn’t pushed you into doing that stupid abseil in the first place then you would have been fine. You could sue him!”

  The muffled sound of my mobile ringing from the depth of my jacket pocket in the lounge pulled us out of our consolatory hug. I scurried through to try and grab it before the call could go to voice mail.

  I wrestled it from the folds of fabric and gasped a breathy “hello” into the mouthpiece in the nick of time.

  “Chloe?”

  I should have let it go to voice mail. It was my mother.

  Chapter Six

  Shelly gave me my mug of tea and an apologetic smile as the sound of my mother’s cut glass voice penetrated the silence of the lounge.

  “I’ve managed to get a seat on the ten o’clock flight so I’ll be at your flat shortly after lunch. Really, Chloe, whatever will you get up to next? I told Michelle, it’s been very inconvenient for me to have to drop everything to come to look after you. You know how busy I am.”

  I dived in quickly when she paused for breath. “Mum, everything is fine. I’m quite all right now. You don’t have to come down. I don’t need anyone to look after me.” My mother had never looked after me whenever I’d been ill. It had usually been Daddy that had stayed home whilst my mother had issued instructions and terrified any childhood illnesses into fleeing the vicinity.

  “Nonsense, it’s about time someone helped you to sort your life out, Chloe. What does Neil think about all this?”

  Hell. “Um, about that. I meant to tell you, Neil and I aren’t together anymore. He moved out.”

  There was a telling pause.

  “I’ll be at your flat shortly after lunch.” She rang off.

  Shelly opened my emergency packet of biscuits from the other night. “Thought you might need these,” she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.

  I needed more than a chocolate digestive and a cup of PG Tips. By the time my mother arrived tomorrow I would probably need at least half a bottle of vodka.

  “Do you think I’ve got time to flee the country before midday tomorrow?”

  Shelly shook her head. “I take it you hadn’t told her about you and Neil?”

  “I was waiting for the right moment.” Not that there ever would have been a right moment. I’d been hoping for a not-quite-so-bad, or maybe-when-I’d-been-visiting-Dad kind of a moment.

  Judging from Shelly’s biscuity snort she didn’t think there would ever have been a right moment either. I fortified myself with a sip of tea and three more biscuits before reading the text messages on my phone.

  Unsurprisingly, there were several from my colleagues at Live it Up.

  ‘Hope U ok?’ From Bhangra Bob.

  ‘Shld have known U’d mess up.’ From Steph. I gritted my teeth and read on.

  The last message was the one I dreaded most. ‘B here 10 am tomoz.’ From Merv.

  “Crap.” I read Merv’s text out loud to Shelly.

  She chewed her bottom lip. “Sorry, Clo, that doesn’t sound good.”

  I switched my phone off and threw it down on the sofa. “I know. He sounds really concerned about me, doesn’t he? For all he knows I might still be in hospital – or dead.”

  “When did he send the message?” Shelly picked up my mobile and turned it back on. “Twenty minutes ago. He probably rang the hospital and they told him you’d been discharged.”

  I peered at the screen. “I’ll have to get up early then to collect my car from outside the castle.”

  “Where did you park? I didn’t see your car.”

  “In a side street by the old post office.”

  Shelly’s brow arched. “Then you’ll have a ticket when you get there tomorrow. It’s a two hour limit along there.”

  The expression on my face must have said it all. Shelly plucked my phone from my hand. “Come on, go and get some sleep. I’ll give you a lift over to collect your car in the morning, and if you still feel crappy, I’ll call Merv and explain.”

  I’d thought it would take me a long time to fall asleep after being out for the count for most of the day. I must still have still had some side-effects from the tablets as when I woke it was already morning and Shelly’s voice sang out tunelessly from the bathroom.

  Two cups of coffee, a hot shower and a round of toast later Shelly and I were zipping through the back streets to collect my car.

  “What am I going to do if Merv sacks me?” I hung on to the strap of my seatbelt as Shelly bounced us over a pothole.

  “You’ll get another job.”

  I didn’t think that was likely. “Have you forgotten how many jobs I had before I got this one?” I didn’t so much have a CV, instead I had a carefully edited list of disasters.

  “Well, I know there were quite a few, but you were younger then and anyway you didn’t get sacked from all of them.”

  I’d had twenty-seven different jobs, and while Shelly was technically correct saying I hadn’t been dismissed from all of them, the jobs I’d left of my own accord were definitely in the low single figures.

  “You liked that job you had demonstrating those toy flying helicopters in the shopping centre,” Shelly continued.

  “Yes, but then there was the wig incident.” There’d been an unfortunate accident involving one of the toy helicopters and a pensioner’s toupee outside Marks and Spencer.

  She screeched to a halt at the traffic island. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  I wished I could forget about it. At least my victim had dropped the personal injuries law suit after some negotiations with my erstwhile employers.

  “You could go back to work at the supermarket again,” Shelly suggested. “Oh no, wait, wasn’t there that problem with you giving that old lady free tins of salmon every time she went through your till?”

  “She looked as if she didn’t have much money.”

  Shelly grimaced.

  My mother would have a field day if Merv gave me my P45. She would steam roller in, pack my bags and march me off to Scotland to work on one of her projects. I could be trapped in a soup kitchen doling out watered down
minestrone to vagrants for the rest of my natural life. Not that I minded charity work, I quite enjoyed helping out from time to time, but it wasn’t the glittering career path I’d envisaged.

  “Any way there’s no point worrying until you know.” Shelly stamped on the brakes as I mentally blessed the inventor of seatbelts.

  My car was still where I’d left it, but as Shelly had predicted, a parking ticket was now adorning one of the front wiper blades.

  “Bugger, that’s another twenty-five quid down the drain.” I climbed out and collected the plastic bag containing the ticket from the front of my car.

  Shelly let down her side window. “At least they didn’t tow it.”

  I stuffed the ticket into my bag. “Yep, got to be grateful for small mercies I suppose.”

  “That’s the spirit. Look for the silver lining. Let me know how it goes with Merv. And, if you need me to save you from your mother, I’ll do my best.” She laughed as she started to close the window.

  “When don’t I need rescuing from my mother?” Facing Merv would be easy compared with listening to one of my mother’s lectures.

  Shelly drove off as I unlocked my car and slid, shivering into the icy embrace of the driver’s seat. While I waited for the heaters and de-misters to kick in I wondered how to kill the next hour before my appointment with Merv. It would take me twenty minutes to get back across town through the rush hour traffic to reach the radio station, and I didn’t want to hang around the studios cooling my heels for half an hour. Especially when Steph would be there.

  I ended up parking my car around the corner from the studio in a quiet back street where it wouldn’t be easily spotted. After spending a few minutes staring at the deserted street in front of me I decided I’d be warmer inside the greasy spoon café on the corner instead of freezing my assets off inside the car.

  I didn’t actually want anything to eat or drink. Nausea swept over me very time I thought about my forthcoming interview with Merv. I pushed open the door to the café to be met by a blast of warm air and the scent of bacon frying. The café, like many others in the area had probably started life as the front room of a terraced house, and over the years, had been converted. There was a small counter where a plump elderly woman wielded a teapot. A pair of tables and chairs jostled for the remaining space and that was it.