Hopes & Dreams

by Claudia Carroll

  So I told him everything. Out it all came; about how I wanted to work for Channel Six so desperately that I really was prepared to do anything without question. Including letting Diva Di take complete and utter advantage of me. I was so terrified of losing my job, I explained, that I just hadn’t the guts to point out that babysitting her horrible children and blow-drying under her armpits with a hair dryer, was well above and beyond my job description.

  ‘And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ I remember him asking, a favourite question of his.

  ‘In front of the camera,’ I told him without even having to pause for thought. That’s all I’d ever wanted or dreamed about. I can even remember the exact phrase I used, ‘I’d ring the Angelus bell if I had to.’ But then back came all the old insecurities; would someone like me ever be given a shot, would I even be good enough or would I fall flat on my face and make a roaring eejit of myself?

  ‘Are you kidding me, Woodsie?’ he grinned, wiping a bit of strawberry yoghurt off my hair with a napkin. ‘A knockout like you? They’d be bloody lucky to have you. And always remember that.’

  Anyway, I think right there and then he must have seen some spark of ambition in me that mirrored his own, because any time I’d bump into him after that, he’d always make a point of asking me who exactly I’d sent my CV off to, what contacts I’d made, did I know what internal jobs were coming up? Kind of like a career guidance officer with a grinding work ethic, except one that I fancied the knickers off.

  Then, by the end of that year, through an awful lot of grovelling/hassling/pounding down doors, etc., I eventually managed to land a proper front-of-camera gig. It was only doing the weekend late-night weather report (at 10 p.m., midnight, then again at 2 a.m.) but to me, it was the stuff of dreams. It was there I first met the lovely Emma, in fact; she used to do the news report, I’d do the weather, then the two of us would skite off to some nightclub and laugh the rest of the night away. We were exactly the same age, we’d both started working at Channel Six at the same time and what can I say? From day one, we just bonded.

  The only downside was, I never bumped into Sam any more. In fact, apart from Emma, the only person I ever saw regularly was the nightwatchman at the security hut on my way to and from work. I kept up with Sam through the papers, but of course the only thing I was ever really interested in was who he was dating. An ultra-successful, Alpha female type usually; his identikit women always seemed to be groomed, glossy, gorgeous and it went without saying, high achievers. It was like his minimum dating requirement was that you had to work an eighty-hour week and earn a minimum six-figure annual salary. So I put him to the back of my mind and for the next few years just kept my head down and got on with it. Funny thing was though, the harder I worked, the luckier I seemed to get. It was miraculous; as though the planets had aligned for me and, even more amazingly, I seemed to be able to do no wrong. Job followed job at Channel Six, until eventually, hallelujah be praised, the Jessie Would show came about.

  Then, flash forward to about two years ago, when I was at the Channel Six Christmas party with Emma, both of us pissed out of our heads. She was celebrating the show being commissioned for a second series, I was drowning my sorrows having just found out that my then boyfriend was seeing someone else behind my back. During Christmas week too, the worthless, faithless bastard. Everyone kept coming over to say congratulations on the show and I was obliged to beam and act all delighted. All whilst sending Cheater Man about thirty text messages, ranging in tone from disbelief to accusation by way of pleading. Waste of time though; every one of them was completely ignored. It was beyond awful; Christmas is when I lost my darling dad and God knows, given the highly dysfunctional background I come from, it’s a hard enough time of year to get through without adding ‘serially single man-repeller’ into the mix as well. And then I saw Sam. Also alone, also dateless. My heart stopped; I’d forgotten how uncomfortably handsome he was.He came straight over, congratulated me on the show’s success and then, sensing something was amiss, asked me what was up. Now it takes an awful lot for me to start snivelling or bawling, but the combination of too much Pinot Grigio and being dumped and missing Dad was all just too much for me. I knew if I didn’t get the hell out of there immediately, I was in danger of making a complete and utter holy show of myself in front of him and everyone else, so I blushed scarlet, mumbled some lame excuse about having another party to go to and bolted for the door.

  But when I replay it back in my head now, it seems almost like a scene from a French movie, complete with mood-enhancing smoke machines and violins playing as a soundtrack in the background. There I was on the road outside Channel Six, in the lashing rain, holding back the tears and frantically trying to wave down a cab; next thing a sleek black Mercedes pulls up beside me on the kerb and the window elegantly glides down. It’s Sam. Who knew I was upset and who followed me, bless him. He coaxed me out of the icy rain and into the warmth of his car, gently asking me what the problem was and how he could help fix it. And so, not for the first time, I ended up pouring out my whole tale of woe to him. All about Cheater Man and how he actually broke up with me … via text message, the cowardly gobshite. Didn’t even have the manners to dump me for someone younger or thinner either.

  Sam flashed his Hollywood smile at that, then turned to me. ‘Woodsie,’ he said, strong, clear and firm as ever, ‘any guy that would treat a gorgeous girl like you that way is an idiot and why would you want to be with an idiot? Get rid of him.’ Then the scorching black eyes gave me the sexiest up/down look before he cheekily added, ‘So then …’

  ‘So then …?’ I swear, I could physically feel my heart thumping off my ribcage.

  A long pause while we looked at each other, exchanging souls.

  ‘So then … you can go out with me.’

  Well, it was like something religious people must experience. Could this really be happening to me? Sam was too rich, too cool, too out of my league. I couldn’t get my head around it. Then when we sailed through our first few magical dates and when it became obvious he was slowly morphing from fantasy fling to proper boyfriend, I worried so much about what he’d see in someone like me. Turned out the answer was the very thing that I thought would turn him off me; the fact that I’d never had any of the luxuries he took for granted and was now acting like a kid in a sweetshop, loving every second of the high life he introduced me to. Until he met me, he’d often say, he was becoming jaded with his fabulous lifestyle, but seeing it all fresh through my excited eyes somehow kept it all real for him. Every time he’d see me bouncing up and down on the bed in some posh hotel or gasping in awe at some view he’d long since tired of, like the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, he said it made him fall in love with life all over again.

  And in love with me too, I’d silently hope.

  ‘Jessie?’

  Oh shit. The interview. I almost forgot.

  ‘You’d drifted off there for a moment,’ Katie sing-songs. ‘We were asking you about how you first met Sam?’

  I go with the standard interview answer. Of course. ‘Through work, Katie. You might say Channel Six brought us together. Ha, ha, HA.’

  ‘And, tell us the truth now, any wedding plans?’

  Real answer: Ehhh … no. Mainly because he hasn’t asked. At least, not yet, he hasn’t. But then, with Sam you never know what’s around the corner, so I live in hope. I mean, this is a guy who’s big on spontaneity and we have been together for just over two years now, my longest relationship by a mile.

  ‘Jessie?’

  Yet again, out comes the interview answer: ‘Well, you know how it is, we’re both so busy at the moment; honestly, it’s just something that’s never come up. But if it does, you’ll be the first to know. Ha, ha, HA!’

  ‘Oooh, but, look what I found here; what are you hiding from us?’ says Katie, waving at the camera to pan right to the very back of the piano.

  My heart skips a beat; something embarrassing I forgot t
o clean up? A pair of knickers from the last party I had? An empty tin of beer stuffed with cigarette butts? A final notice bill from the gas board? It’s OK, I think, breathing normally again. Nothing too offensive, thank Christ; just an old photo of me when I first started out as a weather girl, with a horrible mousey brown bob, which kind of gave me a look of Julie Andrews from certain angles. Then another one of me in studio with Emma, my hair as spiky as a toilet brush and far, far blonder, taken when we first started working together, all of five years ago. Emma looks neat, be-suited and pristine, with her chestnut hair elegantly groomed as always, like she’s ready to start reading the nine o’clock news at the drop of a hat.

  Actually, at the time that photo was taken, I only had a tiny little five-minute feature-ette on what was then Emma’s chat show; the wacky sidekick to her more sober, grounded TV persona. The balance of personalities seemed to work though; me wild and scatty, her cool and ordered. Then by some miracle (and a lot of encouragement from the mobile phone companies, who made a fortune out of all the texts people bombarded us with) my mad dare piece took off, and got so big that now the whole show is about me making an eejit of myself out on location, while Emma acts as anchor back in studio. Lesser women than Emma may have been slightly peeved at me stealing her thunder, but like I say, the girl is a walking saint and has never been anything but super-cool and encouraging about the whole thing. If there are angels masquerading as people wandering round this earth then Emma Sheridan most definitely is one.

  Back to the interview and by now the camera is panning in on a photo of me with a broken leg, which I got after a bungee jump dare. But no, it was nothing as dramatic as whacking it off a bridge while suspended upside down by knicker elastic or anything; just a piece of camera equipment fell on me as I was clambering back into the van on our way back to base. My hair is longer in that shot and still blonder again; in fact, it flashes through my mind that the more successful I got on TV, the brighter the highlights got, right now the hair is almost platinum, the exact colour of Cillit Bang.

  Then, out of nowhere, eagle-eyes Katie grabs up a photo which I’d forgotten all about. ‘And here you are as a teenager. So pretty, even then! Tell us, Jessie, who are your two friends in the photo with you?’

  Oh God, I’d completely forgotten. That’s the trouble with airbrushing your past; the people you knew back then can sometimes seem like ghosts from a bygone age. OK, so the real answer to her question is that yes, that’s me, aged about fourteen, with my then best friend Hannah and her older brother Steve, who lived across the road from us and who were amazingly kind to me during a very rough time in my life. We were thick as thieves, Hannah and I; after we left school, we even shared a flat for a few years, which suited both of us down to the ground. We were both eighteen and she wanted her independence, while I had just lost my darling dad and had to get the hell out of our house for … well, let’s just say for personal reasons. Anyway, Hannah and I had a ball together. My life was slowly starting to turn a corner; I was working as a lounge girl in a bar at night so I could put myself through a media training course during the day, right up until I landed my first gig as a runner at Channel Six. Meanwhile Hannah was doing an apprenticeship in hairdressing and it seems like we just spent the whole time laughing and messing and getting on with our young lives. Steve worked as a handyman doing odd jobs wherever he could, but was always hanging out with us too, and it was just such a happy, joyful time all round. But then Hannah got married, I moved from behind the camera to in front of it and the last I heard of him, Steve had upped sticks and moved to the States. And so the three amigos drifted apart a bit. The way you do.

  It’s no one’s fault or anything, these things just happen. You know how it is; you try meeting up whenever you can, but then realise that actually you don’t have all that much in common any more. And in an alarmingly short time, old pals become shadowy people who you exchange Christmas cards with and scrawl across them, ‘We must meet up sometime, it’s been too long!!’ But you never do.

  God, I wonder what Hannah would say if she could see me now, given that this is exactly the type of show that we used to crack ourselves up laughing at, slagging off the D-list celebs desperate enough to go on them. ‘For feck’s sake, Jessie, what are you doing, dressed up like a dog’s dinner and throwing your home open to these eejits?’ most likely. ‘You look like a right gobshite.’ Hannah was never one to pull her punches.

  I don’t get a chance to go with the interview answer though. Because by then Katie has snatched on another, even older photo that brings a whole new set of memories flooding back.

  This time it’s an ancient, grainy shot of me aged about four, up a tree in our back garden at home, with my dad standing proudly at the bottom, arm rested against the tree-trunk, like he’s just planted it all by himself. I’m in a pair of shorts, with a dirty face, scraped knees and a plaster on my arm.

  ‘Oooh, look at little Jessie … such a cute little tomboy!! I think you must have been a daredevil even from a young age!’

  Real answer: Funny thing is I can remember that photo being taken so clearly. It wasn’t long after my mum died and I remember spending all day every day up that tree. Coaxing me down was a daily ritual for my poor dad. He used to call me his little firecracker and would proudly tell neighbours and aunties that I was afraid of nothing. But then, losing your mum young makes you fearless. Because the worst thing that can possibly happen has already happened, so what’s there left to be afraid of? I can’t say that though, because, even after all these years, there’s a good chance I might start sniffling.

  Interview answer: ‘Yes, Katie, that’s me with my darling dad, who passed away almost twelve years ago now.’

  A pause, while Katie fingers the old photo frame thoughtfully.

  ‘And you’re an only child?’

  ‘Yup, certainly am.’

  When I was younger, during interviews I used to do a wistful look into the middle distance whenever it came up about my being orphaned. I stopped though, when it was pointed out to me that actually, I just looked constipated.

  ‘But your father remarried, didn’t he?’

  Shit. How does she know that?

  ‘Emm … well, I suppose he did, yes, but …’

  ‘And in actual fact, you grew up with your stepmother and two stepsisters, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well … the thing is …’

  ‘She’s called Joan, and her daughters are Maggie and Sharon. Isn’t that right?’

  Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, she even knows their names? OK, now the saliva in my mouth has said, ‘I’m outta here, see you!’ Come on Jessie, think straight. Right then. Nothing to do but brush it off. I mean, everyone has family skeletons in the closet they don’t necessarily want to talk about, don’t they? And believe me, this is something I never talk about. Ever. In fact the only person in my new life who knows is Sam and that’s only because he was giving me the third degree about my deep background and I’d no choice but to ’fess up and tell all.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly done your research, haven’t you Katie?’ is what I manage to come out with. Perfect answer. I even tag on the false TV laugh for good measure, because that’s how cool I am talking about this. ‘Ha, ha, HA!’ Then I go into distraction mode; anything just to get off this highly uncomfortable subject. ‘So, em, anyone fancy a coffee then? I’ve a lovely new espresso maker in the kitchen that I’m only dying to try out.’

  No such luck though, it’s as if Katie smells blood here and isn’t budging.

  ‘Yes,’ she nods slowly and for the first time I can see steel in her eyes. Bloody hell, is all I can think, this one will make a brilliant investigative reporter in years to come. ‘In fact, I’ve done an awful lot of research on you, Jessie. For starters, your Wikipedia entry said that you went to school at the Holy Faith School in Killiney, but when I called them, they had absolutely no record of you at all. So they suggested I try their sister school on the Northside, who did have a Jes
sie Woods on file. Yes, they said, you’d been a pupil there right the way through secondary school. They were incredibly forthcoming with information, you know; they even had your old address on file. Which is how I eventually tracked down your family.’

  No, no, no, please don’t use the F word. You don’t understand, I have NO family, I had nothing to do with those people and they have nothing to do with me …

  ‘Emm … or we could shoot out in the back garden if you like?’ I’m gabbling now, panicking a bit, while thinking, Curse you, Wikipedia. ‘Ehh … there’s a gorgeous water feature out there that looks lovely when it’s switched on. I mean, it’s a bit clogged up with dead leaves at the moment, but apart from that, it could make a great shot for you …’

  ‘In fact, as it happens, Jessie, I’ve already spoken to your stepfamily. We interviewed all three of them only yesterday. For the full afternoon. Fabulous interviews. And you know, they were all so generous with their time, we couldn’t have been more grateful. So, it’s in the can, as you might say!’

  Oh no no no no no no no no no no no …

  Chapter Three

  I should fill you in a bit. Relations between me and my stepfamily are as follows: they can’t abide the sight of me and for my part … just when I think I’ve come to the very bottom of their meanness, turns out there’s a whole underground garage of mean to discover as well.

  First up there’s Maggie; eldest stepsister, thirty-three years of age and still living at home. Honest to God, if you handed this one a winning lottery ticket in the morning, she’d still whinge and moan about having to drive all the way into town to collect the oversized novelty cheque. A woman with all the charm of an undertaker and the allure of a corpse, her philosophy of life can be summarised thus: ambition leads to expectation which inevitably leads to failure which ultimately leads to disappointment, so the best thing you can possibly do with yourself is not try. Just get up, go to work, come home, then spend all your free time, nights, weekends, bank holidays, the whole shebang, crashed out on the sofa in front of the telly, with the remote control balanced on your belly. Low expectations = a happy life.