Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Jack privately conjectured that Danny could do a lot worse than go home and make an effort to help out a bit, but feeling ill-placed to give anyone a lecture about the secrets of a happy marriage, he swallowed another tepid mouthful and shook his head. To be him. Danny was way off-beam. There was nothing more spicy in his life right now than the microwaveable chicken jalfrezi that was waiting for him at home. Like a lone iceberg in a sea of empty fridge. And no milk. Or was it no Frosties? It was always one or the other, anyway, no matter how hard he tried to get things together domestically. Perhaps, if he left now, he’d be in time for the mini-market. He checked his watch. Or perhaps not. It was such a little thing, remembering to have proper food in the house. Why couldn’t he get the hang of it? He’d been so good at first. The day after he’d moved into the flat he was like a child in a toy shop, going round Sainsburys. A libertine let loose among an abundance of sensual delights. He’d bought speciality beers, a pineapple, lots of different types of biscuits, a selection pack of pesto sauces and bags of pasta with names like tropical diseases. He’d even bought an apron. Navy with stripes. And a pleasing little perspex mill that did salt one end and pepper at the other (Lydia having retained possession of their poncey Philippe Starck ones, because they’d been a present from her womb awareness group or something). But it had been a novelty thing. Now it was just plain boring. And with that thought came a sudden sense of humility that women did this thing day in, day out, all their lives. Guilt nagged at him. Guilt for all the mornings when he’d been brusque with Lydia. There’d been so many.

  ‘Any thoughts on dinner?’

  ‘God, I don’t know! Anything! How can I think about food straight after breakfast?’

  But she’d had to. Because someone had to, and it hadn’t been him. Not just make dinner, but thinkabout dinner. Think about what she would needto make dinner. Consult the inventory that was lodged in her brain and know, with some cognitive skill that entirely eluded him, which ingredients she already had in the house. He could readily see, now, what a burden that was. Another failure to add to his list.

  ‘Not for me, mate,’ he said, as Emma ambled up again. Danny paused to flop his mouth open and emit a low and appreciative moan. Which she also ignored. ‘Oh, go on.Put a half in there for him, Em,’ he told her, gesturing to Jack’s glass. ‘It’s only half ten.’

  ‘It’s only Wednesday,’ Jack countered. It’s only January, he thought. A mere fortnight into his new health and fitness regime and already he was at sea. OK, he was walking to the station intermittently, but he was also eating erratically, drinking excessively, and failing to sign up for any sort of gym, despite there being two within guilt-inducing distance, both sporting huge neon signs that were tricked out with some sort of invisible beam that pawed at his conscience every time he drove past.

  Danny, who had no doubt augmented his calorie intake with a shepherd’s pie or a chicken casserole at teatime (Julie being rigorous in the matter of proper family mealtimes) offered him a pork scratching.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Here – get that – oh shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My mobile.’ He fished around in his other jeans pocket for it.

  ‘Shit. It’s Julie.’ He arranged his face into one of compliance and humility. ‘Hello, my lovely – just –’

  There was a lengthy silence punctuated by more facial contortions.

  ‘OK. On my way.’

  Jack forestalled Emma’s hand on his glass, much relieved. Thank goodness for Julie.

  It was a clear night, frosty. And very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that every intake of breath was like inhaling spicules of ice. The puddles that had been loitering outside the pub earlier were now crystal dinner plates, and the pavements themselves were whitewashed with glitter. It was nights like this (in conjunction with the lager, admittedly) that always made Jack feel melancholy. So much beautiful stuff in the world and yet here he was, beginning his fifth decade (the thought almost made him stumble) and all he had to show for it was a maintenance agreement of terrifying proportions, a rented flat in Cefn Melin (courtesy of Julie’s mother, who played bridge with the man who owned the house), an increasingly part-time relationship with his son, a job he was beginning to feel was turning him into a comedy representation of himself – Prince Charming! Christ! What nonsense was that, for God’s sake? A question mark hanging over his entire career, and… What else? Oh yes. That was it. No milk.

  He got the key into the lock at the fifth attempt, and lurched foward into the gloom. The flat smelled faintly floury, like a long-closed-down bakery. Legacy, no doubt, of his hurried breakfast Pop Tart, which he hadn’t been able to eat on account of having nuked it, on account of not bothering to read the instructions, on account of thinking – misguidedly, as it turned out – that as Pop Tarts were marketed for dumb adolescents, that they would be foolproof in the same way McCain’s Microchips were. He shuffled into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. A new smell – chilled socks? – prickled his nostrils. He pulled the curry from the shelf and spent some moments contemplating the icons and tables that were printed on the back. Perhaps not. Perhaps he’d just have a cup of tea. Ah. But black. Perhaps he’d just have a biscuit, then. He bent to grope in the cupboard under the work top, but the action of rising with the plastic biscuit box made the silence around him crash and boom in his ears so unpleasantly that it was some moments before he dared focus on anything for fear he might be violently sick. His reflection scowled at him from the kitchen window.

  Shit, he hadn’t finished the piece for the Mailyet. Or phoned Allegra back. Perhaps he’d better just go to bed.

  Chapter 4

  It was ironic, thought Hope, the domestic set up she had right now. Which was basically that she worked till the usual time – five, five thirty-ish, depending on workload – and her mum, who looked after Tom (fourteen) and Chloe (nine) after school three afternoons a week, was there to greet her when she got in, like a genetically modified version of herself. They’d had this arrangement in place since the autumn term. And though she was grateful, though it was workable and sensible, though it had been, OK, a Godsend, it felt all wrong. Because it was all wrong. Because her mother was doing what she used to do, and she was now doing what Iain used to do. Right down to the details. Her tutting about shoes and abandoned school bags in the hallway. Her mum bustling about in the kitchen making tea. She even pecked Hope on the cheek like Hope used to peck Iain on the cheek. Though, thought Hope ruefully, as the familiar rush of irritation washed over her, had she known then what she shouldhave known then, she would have ditched all the pecking and tea-making duties and clamped his scrotum in her garlic press instead.

  ‘He’s very handsome,’ her mother said now.

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘That DJ, of course! Jack Valentine.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen him on ‘Wales this Week’.’

  ‘Have you? I thought he was on the radio.’

  ‘He is. Only he was on there the other week talking about the stadium or something. He’s got a lovely head of hair.’

  ‘That sounds rather alarming. So has Dave Lee Travis.’

  ‘Now there’s someone you never hear about any more. I think he’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he’s not dead, Mum.’

  ‘And not like that. I mean, it’s not bushy or anything. Just lush.’

  ‘Lush?’

  ‘Dense. You know. Nice and thick. Healthy-looking. And he’s got a very handsome face. Puts me a little in mind of Paul Newman in that film. What was it called? Cool Hand Luke, that was it. No, it wasn’t. That was the egg one. He had it cropped in that, didn’t he? No, it must have been Hud. You know.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Yes you do. That one with Patricia Neal.’

  ‘What time did you put the fish fingers in?’

  ‘And that black shirt. I’ve always liked a man in a black shirt.’

  �
��Mum? What time?’

  ‘Oh, ten past. They’ll be done by now, I should think. I put them on two-twenty because your oven’s so cold. I don’t know what possessed you to get electric. You’d have been so much better with gas. You know where you are with gas.’

  She had known where she was with being married to Iain. Or so she’d thought. Electricity was different from what she was used to. And so better, by default.

  ‘Twelve?’ she said now, pulling the baking tray from the oven.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum, why have you cooked twelve fish fingers, for goodness sake?’

  ‘What? Oh. I just did what was left in the packet. I had to make space for Suze’s bolognaise sauce. Did I tell you she’d popped in with it?’ Hope rolled her eyes. ‘And there’s no point in putting two fish fingers back in the freezer now, is there? Besides, Tom’s a growing boy. You never seem to give him any proper food these days. Now, shall I mash these, or what?’

  It was silly. But there was no telling Madeleine that. And she got to be reunited with her trainer, which was an unexpected bonus. Thank God she hadn’t thrown the other one away. But speaking on the radio. Now that was a scary concept.

  ‘So that’s the plan then, is it?’ her mother asked now, while doling out beans on to plates for the children and reminding Hope to ring her sister-in-law to thank her for the bolognaise sauce. That she hadn’t asked for in the first place. That she didn’t even want. ‘Friday? I’ll need to know when it is you’re going to be on, exactly, because I’ve promised your Aunty Doris I’ll tape it for her.’

  Hope pulled the almost empty ketchup bottle from the fridge and started banging it upside down against the table top.

  ‘Half-past twelve, I think. Or just after. That’s when they’ve told me to get there, anyway. God. I’m going to feel such a prat. But Madeleine seems to think there might be something in it for us – what with the fun run and everything – and she does have a point. And I get my trainer back. But, ugh. I can’t imagine anything more silly. Prince Charming, indeed. I mean, how sad is that?’

  ‘But he is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Jack Valentine!’

  ‘We’ll see. He’s got a very silly name.’

  Hope had never been to the BBC before but, even so, she hadn’t expected to be so nervous. Or find that she was the sort of person who’d try on eight different combinations of tops and bottoms before seven in the morning. Her stomach was lurching unpleasantly. Going to the BBC was something other people did. People with aggressively styled hair and all-over tans. People who could open their mouths in front of microphones and be confident that long strings of sensible words would come out. People not like her, in fact.

  She negotiated the last roundabout and tried to slow the anxious thumps in her chest. The buildings, which were of a late-sixties persuasion and many in number, reared imposingly at the intersection of two roads, surrounded by towering Scots pines. She pulled in at the entrance to find a man staring balefully out at her from the doorway of a Portakabin.

  ‘I think I’ve got a space reserved,’ she told him.

  He nodded with the gravitas of a person for whom the parking space shortfall was the bane of his existence. Which, Hope reasoned, it probably was. ‘Just as well, my lovely.’ He shook his head. ‘Just as well.’ He directed her up to the front of the biggest building, and, just as the girl on the phone had promised, there was a space ready and waiting for her, with a board on a stick beside it. Reserved for Hope Sheppard, someone had written in felt pen. It wasn’t the biggest space in the world, and she spent some minutes shunting the car back and forth before getting into it, under the scrutiny of a young man who was hovering with a cigarette just outside the entrance, and whose incurious yet somehow still critical presence made her pulse thump all the more.

  Once inside the reception, which was bare save for glass cabinets containing various awards, and six televisions with pictures but no sound, she was greeted by an elderly man in a navy-blue uniform. She wrote down her name, and her organisation, and the time she’d arrived, and then went and sat on a low leather couch, a little visitor sticker now attached to her chest.

  There was nothing to read apart from a glossy book full of accounts and montages of smiling celebrity faces, and having established that Jack Valentine’s was probably not among them, she looked out of the window instead. Eventually a pretty girl with freckles, who introduced herself as Ffion, shook her hand limply and took her off through a low glass security gate and then on though some heavy double doors.

  Hope followed her up a flight of stairs, along a short corridor and then through a door that said ‘Cubicle’ on it, which seemed rather strange. Everything seemed to be covered in hessian.

  ‘Plonk your bits down,’ the girl urged as they entered. ‘Water? Wee? Anything?’

  Hope dithered about the wee, before accepting some water and sitting down on the chair in the corner that the girl indicated. The room she was in was full of wires and huge consoles. Enough buttons and knobs to direct a small jumbo jet, presided over by a kindly-looking woman in a hand-knitted sweater. She smiled up at Hope but didn’t speak. Instead, her fingers clattered over the keyboard in front of her, and the words ‘Hope Shepherd – Heartbeat – is here’ appeared on a screen to her right. Beyond her, a long plate-glass window looked through to what Hope assumed was the studio. It was bigger than the cubicle – which figured – and housed a large circular table with a hole in the centre, the surface of which was dotted with monitors and microphones. There were two people in there. The man, who she assumed must be Jack Valentine, was seated at the far side of it wearing oversized headphones and looked not in the least like Paul Newman, and the young blonde adjacent to him was similarly attired. Their voices were issuing from some part of the equipment.

  ‘Still raining out?’ asked the lady at the console now, turning to her. Hope nodded. ‘Couple of minutes and I’ll take you through to the studio, lovely.’ The atmosphere was informal. Classroom-ish, even. An oversized clock dominated the small room.

  The man – this would be Jack Valentine, then – stuck his hand in the air and curled his fingers to form a thumbs up sign. He pushed the headphones back from his head so that they sat looped around his neck. Music – Steps? – began to usher from the equipment.

  The lady at the console pushed a button.

  ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Right ho.’ Hope could see the man talking, but his voice had now gone. ‘OK,’ the woman said now. ‘That’ll work. Uh huh. Go to the bus shelter straight after the weather then I’ll bring Hope in and we’ll do the Cinderella piece after that.’

  She turned back to Hope.

  ‘Still raining out?’ she asked her.

  Hope nodded a second time. ‘Still raining,’ she said.

  ‘You are so not what I expected,’ observed the girl in the studio, whose name, it turned out, was Patti. Hope, who had now been bustled into the studio and plonked down on the opposite side of the table in front of one of the big, spongy microphones, was fearful to so much as exhale. But Patti was talking, wasn’t she? So it must be OK.

  ‘My fairy godmother didn’t show up,’ she responded, wondering quite what it was that the girl had been expecting. ‘So I had to come in this. Sorry.’ But Patti didn’t seem to get the joke.

  But the whole thing was a joke. Clearly. The man – Jack Valentine – spoke for a while about some ongoing drama about groundwater in a basement somewhere, about the fact that there was an outbreak of Japanese knotweed somewhere else, and then, seemingly without pause, or indeed, reason, about the fact that pretty much everywhere in Cardiff, the men, it had been revealed in some survey, had turned out to be the least romantic in the UK. He then pressed a switch and more music started playing. It was a Disney theme of some sort, – oh, God, it was Cinderella – over which he began speaking, this time with some feeling, recounting his encounter with a small abandoned trainer
and his quest to track down the maiden to whom it belonged. Hope was wincing along so comprehensively to this that she was completely unprepared when he pointed his pen at her and said, ‘So, Cinderella. The nation needs to be told. What happened to you on the way home from the ball?’

  He was smiling right at her, and nodding his head minutely, to indicate, she assumed, that she should say something back. Hope swallowed. Her tongue had become glued to her teeth.

  Hope wasn’t sure what it was that she did say, only that for what felt like about half a day she twittered on about who she was and where she worked and how she’d come to lose her trainer and that she’d had to walk all the way to the shoe shop with nothing on her feet and how someone in the office had heard the announcement on the radio and how funny it had been that she should lose her trainer of all things because her charity was doing, well, a charity fun run, and wasn’t that a coincidence? And he’d smilingly agreed that it was.

  And then it was over. Just three minutes had passed.

  Someone else shuffled in then, a young boy with a lip stud, wearing jeans with a crotch that hung down between his kneecaps, three T-shirts and an expression of mild dissent on his face. And suddenly Jack Valentine was saying something about the weather and the boy started talking about low pressure and fronts. Hope realised, somewhat shocked, that this mellifluous voice was the very same she’d heard read the weather when she’d been on the way here. These radio people were so odd.

  He went. Someone else came. A plate of biscuits arrived with him. Jack Valentine chatted to someone in the cubicle, and Patti – was it Patti? – scribbled furiously on a pad. Hope really wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. So she sat stone still and silent, in case the nation should hear her, while a red light burned steadily and the clock hands marched round.

  ‘Way to go!’ said Jack Valentine suddenly, startling her.

  ‘Oh,’ Hope whispered. ‘Is it all right to speak now?’