Love @ First Site Page 15

  The e-mail address Ben@sunshinehouse.com leaps out at me as one I don't recognize, so I double click on it straight-away.

  Hi Jess,

  Remember me?

  Er, no actually, if the truth be known.

  We met through Tab and Will the other night and you thought I was having a go at you because you worked in the big, bad world of television.

  Ah yes, I remember now. The Archangel Gabriel in human form.

  Anyway, I hope you don't mind, but I asked Tab for your e-mail address because, after you'd gone, she was telling me about the makeovers you oversee for the program. And basically, I was wondering whether I could nominate someone?

  She's named Anne and she has worked at Sunshine House for the past five years, helping out with the children. They absolutely adore her and, believe it or not, she does it for virtually nothing, just a few expenses.

  Her only child, Sarah, died of leukemia seven years ago, and I suppose it's her way of coping. But she's a completely selfless woman and I would love to see her pampered for a day.

  A tear plops onto my keyboard and I hastily wipe my face before anyone in the office notices. All my Olivia emotions come flooding to the surface.

  Anyway, I don't want to put you in an awkward position, and I understand completely if you can't help, so just let me know. But to be honest, I have been emotionally scarred since your outburst in the pub, and this might just mollify me enough not to sue.

  I smile at the screen. Not such a Goody Two-Shoes total bore after all.

  Anyway, it was nice to meet you.

  Regards,

  Ben Thomas

  PS: If you fancy doing a general piece on the charity, the boy band Phit is coming to visit us soon. I could ask their people if they would mind being filmed there. To be honest, we could do with the publicity to get donations up a bit.

  Without hesitation, I click on reply.

  Dear Ben,

  Nice to hear from you, and of course I remember you! I would like to comment on your claim about emotional scarring, but my lawyers have advised me to say nothing at this point.

  That aside, Anne sounds like a worthy contender for a makeover. We have a forward planning meeting this morning, so I'll suggest it and come back to you with an answer as soon as possible.

  I hope you're well.

  Regards,

  Jess Monroe

  A number of my colleagues have already started trailing into Janice's office like the walking dead, fever pitch with excitement at the thought of yet another Monday morning planning meeting where all our ideas are knocked down like dominoes. I bring up the rear, clutching my ideas, well spaced on a sheet of paper and in particularly large type.

  Janice is the executive producer of the program, which basically means she takes all the credit for everyone else's hard work. When things go wrong, however, she bats off blame in the direction of some hapless minion. Quite often me.

  When you have a good woman boss, it can't be beaten. But a bad one makes any ill-tempered male employer seem like a walk in the park. Sadly, Janice is in the latter category. Unmarried with no children, she believes in what I call "presenteeism." That is, being in the office for the sake of it when there's absolutely no earthly point in being there. Like at 8 p.m. at night, for example, when any normal, well-balanced human being has gone home to live some kind of life.

  Of course, Janice can justify the black void that is her home and social life by pretending it's because she dedicates so much time to her job. Whereas anyone who has met her will know it's simply because she's deeply unpleasant, petty, and socially inept. And those are just her good points. Small, with a seventies Roger Daltry haircut and brown eyes, Kevin calls her the cocker spaniel, though not to her face, of course. "She needs a good shag," he spits, whenever her name is mentioned. Though I notice none of my male colleagues ever rushes forward to volunteer.

  "Ah, Jess, so glad you could make it. Sorry we had to start without you," she says sarcastically as I scuttle into her office. She uses the same, deeply unoriginal line each week to whichever unfortunate is the last to arrive.

  "Right!" Her beady eyes rest on me. "Let's hope that in your case, being last means being the best. Fire away."

  Normally, I would waltz through my list with the artificial brightness of someone who really believes that the ideas they're suggesting are both fascinating and original, when the truth, of course, is that it's usually a load of recycled old bollocks.

  But today my heart isn't in it, and I flatly recite my ideas as if reading a shopping list.

  "No, no, no, no, and no," intones Janice with relish, firing her poisonous darts as if my ideas were little funfair ducks filing past her desk.

  The last one on my list is the proposed makeover of Anne, the wholly deserving woman who selflessly gives her time free of charge to help terminally ill children.

  Janice wrinkles her pug nose. "Bit worthy, isn't it? Charity workers like her are ten a penny. It doesn't really grab me. Haven't you got someone a little more dramatic, you know, who's been beaten up by her husband for years and a makeover might just give her the confidence boost she needs to finally leave him."

  "Er, I don't think a domestic violence issue can be solved with a bit of lip gloss and some curlers. It's a bit more complex than that." I shift uneasily in my seat. "It would also be a bit of a legal minefield to name and shame the man if they're still together and presenting an outwardly happy picture to the world."

  There's a pregnant pause as we go into a stare standoff across the hushed room, she clearly willing me to defy her further, me mentally fantasizing about impaling her on the stupid cactus she keeps on her desk: according to Kevin, "the only prick she can get."

  "The boy band Phit is visiting the house soon, so maybe if we do the makeover, we can persuade them to give us the exclusive on that," I offer, desperate to deflect some of the stinging criticism.

  Janice's heavily penciled eyebrows shoot up. "Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Honestly, Jess, I seriously worry about your sense of priorities sometimes. Phit as an afterthought?" she says witheringly. "Fine, let's do it."

  Two seconds later, she has swiveled her head Exorcist style to annihilate the ideas of some other quivering producer. I just sit there, their voices washing over me, wondering how on earth I found myself working for a television program so trite, shallow, and celebrity obsessed it makes the reality show Big Brother look like PBS.

  After a gallingly wearing day of dealing with Phit's "people," I feel I have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in a pair of flip-flops, only to slide halfway back down again just before reaching the summit.

  Ben, bless him, works in a straightforward world with decent people who have no agenda other than to help others and have absolutely no delusions of grandeur. What you see is what you get. Clearly, he thought filming Phit would simply involve one phone call to their representative. The reality, as anyone who works even on the periphery of "showbiz"will tell you, is a soul-destroying merry-go-round of unreturned phone calls, numerous faxes falling into a black hole, and endless conditions and promises made to try and secure even the most benign, banal piece of footage lasting about two minutes.

  It's always the same old story. Unknown, relatively untalented, glorified karaoke band wants to be famous and their publicity people bombard you with calls and increasingly desperate "ideas" to get them written about or filmed. Once you bite and contribute towards making them household names, they eventually become precious and start complaining about "press intrusion." Only the genuinely talented or those who know how to play the press game ever achieve longevity in the music business. But Phit is having its fifteen minutes of fame and, right now, I have to play along if I want to get Anne that makeover.

  The main problem arises from the fact that one of the band members--Ned Pearson--has recently been found in flagrante with a lap dancer. Not unusual for a single, heterosexual pop star, you might think, but for a supposedly squeaky clean boy band that sells itself to
girls as young as ten, it's nothing short of catastrophic.

  So, one of the conditions imposed is that absolutely no mention be made of this incident, either to Ned himself or in any subsequent narration on the item.

  Just after I'd spent half an hour trying to convince Janice to agree to the terms, and suffering all the ritual humiliation that went with it, I returned to my desk to find a message saying Phit's record company bosses didn't think it was a good idea for them to be filmed during such "sensitive" times. All together now, aaaaaarrrrrggghh!

  Incensed by such puerile self-obsession in the face of such a worthy cause, I rang the office of the chairman of the record company and ranted at his PA for a good five minutes about unreliable, talentless pop stars letting down sick little children who had hoped their big moment was going to be filmed for posterity. "It would have been a wonderful keepsake for their poor, emotionally drained parents," I added for good measure.

  "Leave it with me," she said. So I had and, shortly afterwards, struggled home where I now sit, with a piping hot Marks and Spencer meal for one in my left hand and a glass of chilled chardonnay in my right. Better still, it's cold and wet outside, I'm warm and dry inside, and Law and Order is about to start. Ding dong. The doorbell. Ignore it and hopefully the unannounced visitor will eventually go away.

  Ding dong. Bugger.

  Ding dong. Ding dong. Ding dong.

  If this isn't someone telling me we all have only four minutes left to live, I won't be responsible for my actions. I angrily fling open the door and scowl out into the darkness.

  "He's dumped meeeeeeeee!" a voice wails from the murky gloom.

  It's Kara. Before I can respond, she shoves her way past me into the hallway, her soaked umbrella showering my slippers with raindrops.

  Following her through to the sitting room, I sigh heavily and switch off the TV just as the thumping beat of Law and Order starts. My meal for one is already developing a film on top.

  "Fucking bastard. How dare he!" spits Kara, removing her coat and lobbing it onto the wooden chair in the corner. She has yet to even say hello to me.

  "Sit down," I say wearily, gesturing to the comfy armchair I was blissfully nestled in just moments ago. "Cup of tea?"

  "Something stronger," she barks, "wine if you have it."

  Yes, your ladyship. I shuffle through to the kitchen and pour her a glass of the chardonnay. When I return, she's slumped back in the chair, staring at the ceiling.

  Placing the glass of wine by her side, I sit down on the adjacent sofa. "So tell me what's happened," I say gently.

  Her features momentarily harden, then almost as quickly crumple with distress. "Dan came home from work today and told me he doesn't want to be with me anymore . . ." Her voice peters away as she struggles not to sob. She shrugs, as if to indicate that's all there is to say.

  "Did he say why?"

  "Oh, the usual bollocks about loving me but not being in love with me. It must have taken him all of five minutes to come up with that one," she says bitterly, regaining her composure slightly.

  I frown. "Has there been anything about his behavior recently to suggest this was coming?"

  "No." She shakes her head. "In fact, I thought he was going to propose soon." She starts sniffling again at the thought.

  Passing her a tissue from the same box I used for Olivia, I struggle to find something reassuring to say. "He'll be back, you'll see. He's probably just going through a bad patch at work and taking it out on you."

  "Work?" She spits the word out as if it were a piece of phlegm. "Gigging around pubs and clubs at night, then sleeping most of the day. Hardly work, is it?"

  Previously, Kara has always informed me that Dan is permanently teetering on the edge of the big time, so I am rather taken aback by her sudden change of heart.

  Having been to a couple of his gigs myself, I can report he is the lead guitarist in a band called Tint, best described as the love child of Coldplay and REM. Several record company A&R's have been to see them, but as yet the lucrative deal remains elusive.

  "You've always been very supportive of what he does," I point out, more due to a lack of anything else to say.

  "Well, you have to be, don't you?" She sneers slightly. "God forbid I don't look like the supportive little girlfriend, fawning from the sidelines."

  Oh dear, I've been here before. Whenever she's single, Kara is a raging feminist, finding sexism in every little male utterance. But as soon as she's dating, her sisterly principles do a runner and she's ready to play the Mrs. in a heartbeat.

  "You seem quite upset," I venture bravely. "Perhaps you should try to talk to him about this, tell him how you feel."

  "What, and have whatever shred of self-respect I have thrown back in my face?" She glares at me challengingly. "No thanks."

  "Maybe he feels that you don't care enough about him, and he's doing this as a kind of challenge, to see how you react." I wince slightly, waiting for the onslaught of a feminist diatribe on how women should never prostrate themselves on the altar of men's mind games. Or something like that.

  "Do you think so?" she says meekly, grasping pathetically at my emotional straw.

  "Yes," I say effusively, warming to the theme. "Men are just like babies really. They do things solely to get your attention." I don't know when I became such an expert on the male psyche, but my comment seems to have the desired effect.

  Kara straightens her back and visibly brightens. "I've got an even better idea."

  "What?" I smile encouragingly.

  "You talk to him on my behalf and find out. That way, I don't have to face the humiliation of being rejected again."

  My smile evaporates. "Me? He's not going to tell me what's going on inside his head, is he?"

  She shrugs. "He might. Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone fairly objective, although of course you're on my side."

  I nod in assent, but inside I'm thinking that if I was Dan, I'd have dumped her long ago.

  "Yes, that's it." She's positively cheerful now. "Take him out for a drink and tell him that I'm the best thing that's ever happened to him. See what he says."

  I could probably write the script now, I think, and the words "happy ending" don't spring to mind. But I stay quiet, instead picking up her empty wineglass and returning to the kitchen to fill it.

  "You know, I'm so glad I came round to see you," she shouts through the open doorway. "At first I thought, nah, what's the point of getting advice from the terminally single Jess . . . what can she possibly know about the ups and downs of a serious relationship? But it's been a real tonic, it really has."

  Would Ex-Lax show up in a glass of wine? I muse. Sadly, it probably would.

  Nineteen

  Well, well, well, it seems my little tantrum to the chairman's PA has paid off. I really must learn to throw a wobbly more often. As my old grandma--a career complainer--used to say: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

  I came into work this morning to find a message on voice mail saying that Saffron Records has had a change of heart and will now allow Phit to be filmed at Sunshine House this afternoon.

  Which means I have precisely one hour to organize myself and a crew, and get down there in time. Short notice, short shrift, I'm afraid, and I just know the only available camera crew will be the two unaffectionately known as Stinky and Perky.

  One and a half hours later, I'm crammed into an ancient Volvo that reeks of dogs and the BO of Stinky the soundman in whose armpit my face is practically buried. The cameraman, aka Perky, is renowned for his long-winded, tedious monologues about the state of the country and he's in the middle of one right now. Asylum seekers . . . drone drone . . . should go back where they belong . . . drone drone . . . come over here and take our money and women . . . drone drone.

  Surrounded by camera equipment, my feet jammed under the seat in front, it's possibly the most uncomfortable journey of my life. Not for the first time, I mull over other career options.

  "Turn left here
," I mumble, trying desperately not to gag. As the car sweeps onto the driveway of Sunshine House, I have to restrain myself not to leap out and kiss the tarmac.

  Ben is waiting just inside the front entrance, a pleasantly warm, welcoming, and nicely fragrant area after the traumatic, stench-filled journey. The building is modern and purpose-built from charity funds, with a small reception desk to one side and a vast, busy notice board peppered with photographs of smiling children.

  There's a small clutter of chairs scattered around a low coffee table and I wonder how many anxious parents have sat there, waiting to be checked into an establishment that offers so much comfort but where you'd do anything not to have to be there.

  "Hi there." He smiles, extending his hand for me to shake. "Good journey?"

  "Fine thanks." I force a smile back. Now isn't the time to complain, particularly as the crew are ambling through the door.

  "Great." Ben claps his hands together, then looks at his watch. "Well, we're expecting Phit to pitch up in about half an hour, so I expect you'll want to get set up. Follow me."

  He leads us down the hall into a well-heated lounge area with a large television in one corner and several sofas and beanbags scattered around. In the other corner, there's a large collection of toys and a stack of well-used board games like Monopoly, Junior Scrabble, and Clue.

  "This is the communal lounge area where families can get together if they wish," says Ben. "If they don't feel up to socializing, they each have their own little unit with beds and a small sitting room. But this is where Phit will meet the children."