Thankfully, I was feeling a lot less nervous than Trevor. I’d delivered the Looking for Leon series and, so far, it seemed that the public had taken to it. I wasn’t sure what Isolde wanted to give out to me about now but, whatever it was, I was going to use the response on the column as leverage to get her to back off.
If people had previously suspected that I was a bit . . . eccentric, they now had their proof. Isolde had the memory of an elephant, and anytime I submitted a column in the series to her with my more embarrassing stunts left out, she reminded me of things I’d said to the team that hadn’t made it into the article. I had to hand it to her – she had the art of punishment down to a tee. I’d never get another job now that I was known as someone who caused brawls in hotel lobbies. And I thought I was a laughing stock after the balaclava incident! I was expecting the police to show up at work to take my mugshots any minute.
I plonked myself in front of Isolde, waiting for the onslaught.
“I called you in here to tell you to put a bit of make-up on.” She narrowed her eyes and peered at me. “For a former model, you don’t make much of an effort, do you?”
I stared back. This was taking things too far. “You called me in here to tell me I look like crap, is that it?”
“Have you got voices in your head? I never said that, although you don’t look great today, now that you mention it. You know, I’m glad you didn’t catch up with Leon with that attitude; you’d have his heart broken. No, I said to put on make-up. We have your old Éire TV chums coming in here in about half an hour to do an interview with you about the column. See, I’m doing you a favour – you don’t want to go on TV with a face the colour of chalk. Although it might fit in well with your new haunted, heartbroken persona, actually.”
“What? Why do they want to do a report on the column?”
She pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was circulation figures for the paper for the past few weeks. The sales of our paper had increased after the first column went out, and grew larger with each new column, which was published every second day.
“That’s why. This column of yours has touched something in the public. I told you – people love a good sob story.”
“But what do they want from me in this interview? I don’t have anything new to say about it all. I didn’t find him, end of story.”
“Then repeat what you’ve already said. Just answer their questions. You’re a journalist – supposedly – so you don’t need me to tell you how this works.” She looked at her watch. “Go get your face on.”
I would have stayed and argued, but I knew I looked so tired that I needed every minute of that make-up time. This was disorientating. I was delighted that the column had been successful, but it had been hard to relive the whole thing again. It was one thing telling the funny stories to the lads in the office, but when I’d sat down to write the column, all I could think about was how strong the connection between Leon and me had been. And once I’d opened myself up to feeling it all over again, I felt worse than ever about it. I’d done my best to find him, it hadn’t worked, and there was no way I’d find him now that I was back in Ireland. I just wanted to leave it behind me now and move on.
I cobbled together a presentable image from the mismatched make-up lying in the bottom of my handbag. When I returned to the office, I heard a loud, self-important voice booming orders. The TV crew had arrived, and there was Isolde in the middle of it all, dictating proceedings. The crew didn’t have a second to get a word in, a situation they were clearly unhappy about, but were powerless to change.
Within seconds, I had been whisked off to a room in the office that we never used, and the cameraman, who I recognised from the TV station’s canteen but didn’t know personally, stuck his equipment in my face without introducing himself. I was used to the drill from my previous career incarnation, but right then I was in no mood for it.
“I’m Andie, by the way,” I said pointedly as I swivelled my head around the side of the camera currently obscuring my vision. “And you are?”
“Colm Cannon,” he said, glancing at me briefly before peering through the camera and adjusting it.
I instantly sniggered. “Nice try,” I said. “Do many people fall for that?”
“For what?”
“Your fake surname. Colm Cannon the Cameraman. It has a ring to it, I suppose.”
He frowned. “Cannon is my surname. Any camera-brand associations are purely coincidental.”
“Sure. I believe you, Colm Cannon.” I expected him to laugh politely, but instead he started fluttering his hands in a very disconcerting manner.
“Move,” he eventually said. “I need all of you in front of the camera. I can’t just film your chest, and that’s all that I can see through the lens at the moment.”
“My chest?”
“Your . . . torso, I mean. Upper body, whatever. Just stick your head back in, will you?”
I was about to stick my fingers into the camera instead of my head when a pretty girl approached us and introduced herself as Becky, my interviewer. She began to fill me in on how they planned to use our interview. I was happy to finally get some details, as Isolde had told me nothing. The station had recently launched a weekly half-hour programme reviewing quirky stories of the week, and apparently my story constituted one of those. Irish stories were favoured, but they used worldwide stories if they were short on Irish ones. And guess what, they’d had a slow week for Irish stories, so mine was going to be the headline act. Brilliant. I thought about running out of the room – but I knew that action would cost me my job. Isolde definitely wasn’t going to take any more rebellion from me, so I decided to stay put. I was already the talk of the town, so what was another bit of mortification? No point in being mortified and fired.
The interview started tamely enough. Becky asked me to explain how I had met Leon, and to tell her about some of the escapades I’d been through hunting him down. We’d been talking for about ten minutes, and I was sure they must have everything they needed by now – even the longest segment on a half-hour show wouldn’t exceed ten minutes. I started shuffling in my seat to give them the hint that I’d had enough.
“Okay, Andie, that’s great. Before we finish, let me ask you one last question.” She cocked her head sideways as the camera focused on her. “Just what was it about this guy that made him so special?”
The camera panned back to me. “Leon was . . .” I took a deep breath. It was hard to summarise everything that Leon was into a five-second soundbite. “Leon was my spirit in another person. We were two halves of the same entity.” Christ, talk about melodramatic. Where had that come from? Maybe Isolde was right about the voice in my head . . .
And to my absolute horror, tears that I hadn’t known were on the way started bubbling over the rims of my eyes. Becky looked dismayed and excited in equal measure, sensing that her story had just become a lot juicier but not quite sure how to handle the situation either. I gasped for air in an attempt to regulate my breathing, but ended up just catching my breath and sounding like I was about to choke on emotion. Something gave me the impression that my slot might just exceed ten minutes after all.
While all this was going on, Canteen Cameraman was hovering over me and getting closer and closer – and either he was unskilled or very cruel, because instead of using his zoom, he literally shoved the blasted camera onto my upper lip. The camera was the final straw in a day that refused to get any better. I shoved him out of my way (secretly hoping I might “accidentally” knock the camera to the ground and shatter it, so that the interview would never see the light of day), and raced out of the room and back to my desk. The sense of déjà vu was palpable as I grabbed my coat and handbag and ran out of the office with everyone staring at a blubbing me – only, this time, I had given them even more to stare at. They’d wear their tongues out talking about me. Thankfully, it was only five minutes away from our knocking-off time, so Isolde couldn’t give me any hassle about leav
ing early. The fact that she could viably give me hassle about running out of an interview bawling was something my mind chose to gloss over. Things were bad enough without having to face yet another slice of reality.
Isn’t it funny how the best-case scenario never works out? I visualised how the interview might look when it was transmitted and in my mind it wasn’t too bad. You always saw interviews with people on the news pussing about this, that and the other. As usual, I had probably exaggerated the scale of the problem in my head.
I couldn’t have imagined the worst-case scenario in my wildest dreams. We’d done the interview on a Wednesday, and it was due to be broadcast on the following Sunday. So imagine my surprise, and sheer distress, when I was greeted with the sight of my blotchy, mascara-streaked face during the ad break of Corrie on Friday. I’d been reading a magazine and ignoring the ads, when I suddenly heard the sound of my own voice. My sobbing voice. And then, “It’s the story everyone’s talking about – and we’ve got the interview. Andie Appleton pours her heart out to us about her lost love on Sunday at five thirty.” I hadn’t time to put down the magazine before the phone started ringing. I put it on silent, and ran straight to the drinks cabinet.
When Corrie finished, the ad came on again. And during the show after that. And during the nightly news. I got a duvet and sat in front of the TV with a bottle of Bacardi and two-litres of Coke, watching the whole thing unfold in the way that you would stay up all night waiting for the result of a presidential election. Every time the ad was shown, I poured a drink and knocked it back in one go. I lost count after seven drinks.
Never in my life was I so happy to pass out into oblivion.
Chapter Six
Three days later
The show had been broadcast the night before, but I’d refused to watch it. Mount Everest wouldn’t have been large enough for me to hide behind and cringe, so I went out for a run while the show was on. I ran so hard and for so long that I was in terrible pain for the rest of the evening, which was great. It even took my mind off the whole thing for about five minutes at one stage. I had a bath and went to bed immediately afterwards, with my mobile turned off.
I was the first one into the office the next morning, which was hardly surprising after going to bed at half nine and waking up at half five.
Laura was next to land in.
“Don’t,” I said as she opened her mouth. “I don’t want to know about it. Just say nothing.”
“I was only going to say hello,” she said, somewhat put out.
I didn’t believe it for a second.
I went through this rigmarole with all the others when they came in too. Everyone wanted to talk to me just so that they could go home tonight and say they had. “Yeah, poor Andie, she’s so embarrassed about the whole thing, blah blah blah!” We live in a world where everybody wants to be the first to have the fresh news, the one who knows everything about everything before anybody else, and nobody more so than journalists. Every single one of them bar Jason did a Laura and pretended they were only going to pass pleasantries.
“I can slag you now or slag you later, Appleton,” Jason said. “You’re only postponing the inevitable.”
It was true for him. I couldn’t bury my head in the sand forever – I had a meeting with Isolde that morning, and she was sure to bring the whole thing up in great detail. Still, I could try to avoid reality for as long as possible.
Isolde had other ideas.
“I’m bringing our meeting forward, come in now” flashed up as an instant message on my screen. This really bloody irritated me. She never even considered that I might be in the middle of something else. Everything was now, now, now when she wanted it to be now, now, now. And the cheeky cow couldn’t even be bothered to get up off her seat and yell out the door for me any more – I was only worth an instant message that took two seconds of her time.
However, now (or even now, now, now) wasn’t the time to point out those home truths. Not only was I still skating on thin ice, but I had no fight in me. Whenever I had entered Isolde’s office recently, I’d seemed to slump down further in the seat each time.
I tried to gauge her mood. Hmm. She had the inscrutable face on today. This task was usually much easier, as she was just plain grumpy-looking most of the time.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” Her voice was low and, to my ears, menacing.
I decided to launch an appeasement bombardment. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have run out of the interview, and you’ve been good enough not to mention it before now – but it just got too much for me. If you’d have been in my position, you’d have done the same – well, maybe not, but you never know, you might.”
She shook her head and looked at me with what I can only describe as a mixture of incredulity and contempt. “Every time I credit you with just the smallest amount of intelligence, you prove me wrong. You’ve missed the point entirely.” She threw herself back in her seat and swivelled. “You couldn’t have dragged the arse out of this story any better if you’d planned that little bawling fit – which I presume you didn’t. You’re a right soft git, we all know that. And thanks to your little TV appearance, my phone hasn’t stopped hopping since the broadcast last night.”
I was taken aback. “Well, I’m glad to hear that . . . but does it really make any difference? The story has run its course, Isolde. There’s nowhere else I can go with it.”
Isolde grinned, a sly, knowing grin that spread all over her face. She should really have smiled more often – it made her look younger, less embittered.
“Oh, you’re going somewhere alright.” She grinned some more. “As you know, we like to maintain healthy professional relationships with our colleagues and friends in the media.”
I frowned. She caught my look, threw her head back and cackled so coarsely it actually made her cough.
“I should have known I wouldn’t get away with saying that crock of shit, even to you. Let me rephrase. Everyone knows that if you get a good opportunity, you grab it. And we’ve been offered an opportunity that will benefit an interested third party, you, and most importantly, the paper. As you of all people know, Éire TV are trying their damndest to get one over on the rival TV station. They need a big story to make people tune into their daily news show instead of the competition’s. They had such a big response to the ad they showed of you being a sooky babby over Leon in advance of the show that they’ve come up with an idea, and they’re sure they’re onto a winner.”
She reached into her sack of a handbag dramatically, almost theatrically. It would have been amusing to see her so animated if it was a different situation, but I was too busy being apprehensive to enjoy the moment.
“The public don’t want this story to end. Everyone enjoyed the sheer embarrassment of your madcap antics when you were looking for Leon, and now they want to see new ones for themselves.” She threw what she had fished out of her sack on the desk. It was an airline ticket. “Pack your suitcase. You’re going back to Vegas to find Leon.”
“What?”
“Don’t even bother arguing. You know and I know that you’ll do what I want you to in the end, so let’s not waste our morning talking rings around it.”
“But it didn’t work out last time!”
“Last time, you had one day to make a few half-arsed attempts to find him. This time, you have a crew from Éire TV who are very good at liaising with other TV stations. They’ll get you whatever local coverage you need. Just don’t do anything too effective too soon. We want to drag the story out for a while.”
“But . . . for how long? And how can you afford to give me the time off?”
“Time off? Are you crazy? You’ll be sending me back a 1,000-word update every day for the paper, plus working on some of your other regular duties. We’ll keep you over there for as long as there’s still an appetite for the story. You’ll need to make sure whatever you do to find him is zany and off-the-wall, but it’s you, so that won’t be a prob
lem. And this time, give us a happy ending. We’ve got as much mileage as we could get out of the sob story, so it’s time to change tactics.”
“And what if there isn’t a happy ending?”
“Andie, I’m going to say this to you once, and only once.” She pulled her castor-seat over beside me using her feet to drag herself. She wasn’t one for physical proximity usually. Was she going to impart some serious words of wisdom to me or what?
She leaned her head forward to whisper in my ear. “If you ever want to get another job in this country, you’ll find the fucker.”
There was no arguing with that. I was on the plane the next morning.
Chapter Seven
It was always the same dream.
She takes the shortcut. Safety is the last thing on her mind after what’s just happened. All she wants is to get home, to get away from the place where everything fell apart. The distant sounds of the traffic whizzing past on the road behind the trees don’t reach her ears. The memory of what she’s just seen drowns out all of her senses.
When he grabs her, she’s too shocked to even scream at first. By the time her brain kicks into action, it’s too late. His hand is now over her mouth, tighter than a vice. His free arm is around her body. She feels like fresh tar has been poured all over her as she struggles like a newborn kitten would against an Alsatian attack.
By the time she gets the opportunity to scream, she’s aware that it’s too late. And now, she knows the answer to the age-old question of whether or not a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if no-one is there to hear it . . .
[2014] Looking for Leon Page 5