Hopes & Dreams

by Claudia Carroll

  Shit. Can’t believe I still haven’t told her.

  ‘Erm … Sharon? There’s something I need to say to you too. Are you drunk enough that you won’t be annoyed with me?’

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ she says, knocking back the rest of her Bulmers in a single gulp. ‘OK, shoot. And if it’s something I’ll be furious at, then you’re buying me a kebab on the way home.’

  ‘I’ve handed in my notice.’

  *

  It’s well after 2 a.m. when we finally stagger home with the intention of crashing out drunkenly on the sofa, so Sharon can have her kebab and I can doze off all the cider. But as it turns out, Joan’s beaten us to it and is still up, still in full make-up, wearing a matching nightie and dressing gown and watching herself on TV. Glued to it, in fact.

  ‘Oh girls, there you are, I was just playing back the tape of the documentary. Jessica, come here and tell me what you think of my interview because you know, in the pub tonight, several people were kind enough to tell me I’m a born natural on TV.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ I slur, hauling myself up, ‘you watch the bloody thing. I’m off to bed.’

  ‘Language, Jessica. Don’t you want to see it? It’ll be the talk of the street, you know.’

  ‘I’ll pass, thanks very much,’ I say, half-way out the door.

  ‘You sure?’ Sharon says, patting the sofa beside her encouragingly. ‘I mean, at least you’d know what people were talking about in the pub earlier. Plus I’ve lost four full pounds since I was interviewed, wouldn’t you like to see that for yourself?’

  I stop in my tracks. Yeah, I suppose it’s no harm to have a little look, is it? I mean, everyone else will have watched it and by everyone else, I really mean Sam. So why not have a peek with my hands over my face at this car crash piece of telly so I can see for myself how bad it is? After all, I am just drunk enough to be able to take whatever’s coming my way.

  ‘Come on, Jess,’ says Sharon. ‘At least you’re seeing it in the comfort and privacy of home. And if it gets too awful, sure you can just leave the room, can’t you?’

  Right then. I sit gingerly on the edge of the sofa, ready to run out of the room in case anything really horrible is said, and Joan helpfully rewinds the documentary back to the start. It opens with a sort of people on the street-style vox pop.

  ‘Jessie Woods?’ says a young girl of about sixteen or so, interviewed outside McDonald’s on Grafton Street. ‘Oh my God. I, like, never miss her show! She’s so amazing. And funny and fabulous and cool. I just love, love, love her. If you ask me, I think they should put her face on money.’

  ‘Now what was so bad about that, Jessica?’ says Joan delightedly and suddenly I’m able to breathe again. Then they stop a woman in her mid-thirties wheeling a buggy down the street. ‘Hang on, you mean the one who presents that crappy dare show on TV?’ she snaps at Katie, the interviewer. ‘What, are you deranged? I’ve stopped buying the gossip magazines because I am so sick of reading about her and her fella out partying like it’s the last days of Rome. “Super Couple” my arse. Will someone please tell that girl that she’s not so much a social climber as a social mountaineer. And that for some of us, there’s actually a recession going on.’

  ‘OK, that’s it, I’m off to bed,’ I say getting up. Had enough. Already.

  ‘No, wait!’ the other two yell in unison and Sharon forces me back down onto the sofa.

  Just in time to see Margaret, Sam’s snotty PA, talking straight to camera. ‘Mr Hughes is in an important business conference at the moment and can’t be disturbed. Though I must point out that he never comments on his relationship with Ms Woods. He did, however, ask me to confirm that he’s been approached about taking part in a forthcoming series of Dragons’ Den and will make an announcement of his own to the press in due course.’

  I barely have time to react when next thing Sam’s handsome, chiselled face is filling up the screen, gluing me to the seat. It’s not an interview though, it’s just his photo, while his voice is played over it in the background, sounding like a crackly message left on an answering machine. ‘Oh and don’t forget to mention that my new paperback, If Business is the New Rock & Roll, then I’m Elvis Presley, will be coming out in paperback soon. Available from all good bookstores.’ Then a line flashes up on screen: Sam Hughes, entrepreneur, and at the time of recording this program, Jessie’s long-term partner. This is an excerpt from a voice message he left to the makers of this documentary, approximately five minutes after we spoke to his assistant.

  Joan and Sharon both giggle at this and for once, even I can see the gag. I’ve never really said it before, but Sam really does come across as someone who’d sell his mother for a scrap of publicity.

  Then Maggie’s on screen. Interviewed here, in this very TV room, on this very sofa. Puffing cigarette smoke right down the camera lens. ‘If you ask me, Jessie should have stuck to being a weather girl. Perfect vehicle for her end-of-pier talents; standing in a mini-skirt and pointing at cloud formations on maps. That sad excuse of a TV show she’s on now is barely worth the electricity it takes to broadcast it. I’d tell her myself only we only see her about once a year, at Christmas. For, like, ten minutes. Mind you, I’ll give her this much; that last magazine she was on the cover of did come in very handy. To prop up a wonky table leg, that is.’

  Sheepish looks from the other two in my direction. And then all the Bulmers I drank earlier just takes over. ‘Would one of you please explain to me,’ I say, or rather garble, ‘why exactly she hates me so much? I mean, what did I ever do to her? It’s like her whole chain of rage begins and ends with me. She’s permanently down on me and even on the rare occasions when I try to be civil to her, she still ends up having a go at me. Why? That’s all I want to know. Why?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ says Sharon between mouthfuls of the kebab. ‘You’ve got to see where she’s coming from. When we were kids you were always the pretty one who never got spots and who had boyfriends running after her. And you were good in school, and you were popular and skinny. For feck’s sake, you never even needed braces. I’m not defending Maggie, I’m just saying, life was very different growing up for her, that’s all.’

  ‘You were the apple of your father’s eye too,’ says Joan, a bit sadly.

  ‘Then when you left home,’ Sharon continues, ‘every single thing you said you’d do, you just did. It all came so easy to you. Like you led this charmed life. While Maggie was stuck doing the most boring job known to man, day in, day out. I’m not making excuses for her, I’m just saying, she had it far harder than you, that’s all.’

  I’m temporarily silenced, wondering if we’d ever have had the moral courage to say these things to each other, sober.

  Next thing, Emma’s beautiful face is on screen. Shot outside Channel Six, very late at night, I’m guessing by how dark it is. ‘And how did you feel after Jessie’s contract was so suddenly terminated this evening?’ I can hear Katie the interviewer’s voice probing her. Shit. Which means this bit was taped the night I got canned. Immediately afterwards, I’m guessing. ‘Utterly shocked, naturally,’ replies Emma. ‘However, rules are rules and I’m afraid accepting freebies is just not something any presenter is permitted to do. But of course, I’m hugely upset at this sudden turn of events …’

  ‘Very sweet girl,’ says Joan over the TV, ‘but is she a bit dim, do you think?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I look at her.

  ‘Well, remember the day she was helping us clear out all the clothes from here and the bags got mixed up?’

  ‘Do I remember? Will I ever forget?’

  ‘The funny thing is,’ muses Joan, ‘that when you were in the garage, I told Emma that all black bags with a red tag on them were mine, so they wouldn’t get mixed up. Distinctly told her. Most puzzling that she just … forgot.’

  Just then my mobile beeps loudly. It went off a few times in the pub earlier tonight, but I was having far too much of a badly needed laugh to pay the slightest bit of att
ention.

  ‘Switch that thing off, will you?’ says Sharon. ‘You’re distracting me.’

  So I haul myself up off the sofa and go off into the kitchen to listen properly. Actually glad of the excuse to get out of here.

  ‘And hurry up, will you?’ she yells after me. ‘My bit is coming up in a minute.’

  Two voice messages and a couple of texts. Both from Amy Blake, one of the runners on Jessie Would. A lovely girl, kind of reminds me of myself at her age. Up for it and would do anything you asked without question, just for the privilege of working in the hallowed halls of a TV studio. Both of her messages say the exact same thing. She saw the documentary tonight, felt awful watching it and hoped I was OK. That she’d really enjoyed working with me, was very grateful for the iPod I bought her last Christmas and would love if we could work together again some day (some hope there, Amy love). Then in her second message, she added that she had a whole boxful of stuff from the Jessie Would production office which she’d been storing for me, and wondered if I’d ring her so she could arrange to drop it off?

  Thank you, universe, I think, clicking off the phone and going back in to watch TV. Yet another reminder of my old life and how it’s finally gone forever. Funny though, I’m not nearly as upset as I thought I’d be.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Right then. Time for new beginnings. The following Monday morning and I can’t believe I’m starting my second new job in as many weeks. Steve called and offered to collect me, said he’d give me a lift on the back of his motorbike. I was perfectly happy to take the bus, but he insisted.

  ‘You offer me a decent job and you even take me there on my very first day?’ I say to him, smiling. ‘What are you, … the nicest guy in the world?’

  ‘Yup, that’d be me all right,’ he grins at me from under his helmet as I strap mine on. ‘Atta girl,’ he says approvingly. ‘Now just hop on. Boy, will this give all the neighbours something to talk about.’

  I jump on behind him and grab on to his waist, raring to go.

  ‘Got to warn you, this thing goes fast.’

  ‘It’s OK. Speed’s not much of a problem for me,’ I shout back from under my helmet.

  ‘Well fair play to you, Miss Woods; you’re the first girl I’ve ever taken on this yoke who wasn’t petrified with nerves.’

  I grin to myself. If only he knew.

  Funny, but when he first told me back in Smiley Burger that he might have a job for me, my first thought was, as what exactly? Backing singer in the band he’s in? Because, believe me, when I sing, it sounds a bit like nails being dragged down a blackboard.

  No, Steve laughed when I shared my worry with him. Not a singing job at all.

  Which is how I find myself hopping off the motorbike outside what looks like a perfectly ordinary office block in the centre of town, about twenty minutes later. We’re now on Digges Lane, a small cobble-stoned street in the heart of the city, right in the midst of all Dublin’s busiest and most bustling bars and coffee shops, and I’m looking at a discreet plaque on the wall which reads, ‘Radio Dublin, Marconi House.’

  Because this will be my new job. And no, I’m not here to clean the place.

  Meet the new presenter of The Midnight Hour show. (I know, I can’t believe it either.)

  Steve parks the bike and leads us both inside, through revolving doors and into the foyer. He signs us both in, then guides me towards the lift and on up to the fifth floor. We step out into a huge, open plan office, with floor to ceiling glass walls full of light and air and with stunning views over the city centre below. As Steve steers me past row after row of desks, it seems like every second person looks up to give him a warm smile and a big, cheery, ‘Hi Steve!’

  Mostly, it has to be said, women. All young ones, pert and pretty and probably wondering who the redhead trailing behind him is. For a split second, I find myself wondering if he has a girlfriend. Only because, if he were single, there’s certainly no shortage of admiring female looks headed in his direction here. It’s a tough one to call. He certainly hasn’t mentioned a girlfriend, but then I’ve so little information about him, how would I know anyway? All I do know for certain is that he lives in an apartment in Santry on his own and, according to Sharon, eats in Smiley Burger a minimum of three times a week. Which now that I come to think about it, kind of does sound a bit like single behaviour.

  Anyway, he’s teasing bordering on mysterious about his connection to Radio Dublin and how he managed to get me a gig here in the first place. Not to mention the fact that everyone here is warmly greeting him by name, like he’s great buddies with them all.

  ‘Oh, just friends in high places, you know yourself,’ he grins infuriatingly at me when I ask him for about the twentieth time. ‘Come on, let’s get you a coffee.’

  Next thing, we’re side by side in a tiny office kitchenette and he’s pouring us out two mugs of fresh brew. Him towering above me, somehow looking even taller in all the biker gear.

  Steve’s older than me by about three years, which makes him early thirties, but somehow he permanently has a look of someone on a grown-up gap year. An adultescent, if they’ve even invented such a term yet. Utterly impossible to have a serious conversation with him; everything, absolutely everything gets turned into a joke.

  Out of nowhere, a memory from years ago comes back. I remember him, aged about eighteen, out mowing our front lawn and Maggie first nicknaming him the Milky Bar Kid, on account of his fair hair and the roundey John Lennon glasses he used to wear back then. I did nothing whatsoever to stick up for him and now he’s like the saviour who rescued me from Larry the Louse and eight-hour shifts of shovelling fries into Smiley cartons. I blush a bit, utterly mortified, then make a silent vow to be super-duper nice to him from here on in. So sweet, it’ll nearly give him diabetes. I have a lot of making up to do. Years of horribleness from all the Woods family to atone for.

  ‘So, Steve,’ I say, smiling brightly up at him. ‘You’re in a band, aren’t you? Is that how you’re so in with the radio crowd?’

  ‘Don’t you ever listen to neighbourhood gossip?’ he grins, handing me over the mug of coffee. ‘Yes, I’m in a band, but only as a hobby. Just for the laugh more than anything else. If you ever heard us play, you’d understand.’

  I smile and sip the coffee.

  ‘Actually, we’ve a gig in Vicar Street at the end of the month,’ he says. ‘Why not come along?’

  Oh shit. Did that just sound like he was asking me out? Because saviour or not, I’m sorry but I do draw the line there. Not only am I not in a place where I could ever look twice at another fella, but … I’m just not interested in Steve. Sorry, but I’m not. At least, not in that way. Thing is, I’m the single most monogamous person you’re ever likely to meet. Even when I’m grieving the death of a relationship, I still can’t bring myself to look at anyone else. No Morphine Man for me (you know, one who’s there to dull the pain and nothing else). And now a fresh worry washes over me. Is that why Steve’s being so good to me? Because, if so, then I’ll just have to nip this in the bud, here and now.

  ‘There’s a huge gang from here coming, so you’d be more than welcome. Sure the more the merrier.’

  Phew. Not a date then. Hallelujah be praised. All embarrassment avoided. ‘Fantastic, sounds lovely.’

  ‘Tell you someone else who’d really love to see you again. Hannah.’

  Shit.

  I keep forgetting about Hannah. Worse, I’m constantly saying that I’ll definitely call over to see her definitely sometime very soon, then not doing anything. I am a horrible person and a very bad friend. Or ex-friend, rather.

  ‘In fact,’ Steve grins down at me, ‘she’s having her little baby daughter christened this weekend, why not come along to the party afterwards? You could bring your family along too.’

  ‘Great!’ I say, delighted that yet again, this couldn’t sound further from a cosy à deux tête-à-tête.

  Next thing, a pale, skinny guy so young he looks l
ike he should still be ID-d in bars comes in and introduces himself as Ian. He’s wearing a U2 T-shirt from their 360 tour with jeans and trainers and looks like he survives on about two hours’ sleep a night.

  ‘I’m going to be looking after you,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘I produce The Midnight Hour, but don’t worry, there’s nothing to fronting the show. Bit like spinning plates in the air and never letting then fall. Piss easy once you’re used to it.’

  ‘OK,’ I say a bit nervously. ‘But here’s the bit where I have to tell you both that I’ve never done anything like this before. Presenting on TV, yeah, but that was different.’

  ‘If you can handle TV,’ says Steve kindly, ‘as far as I’m concerned, you can handle anything. Ian here will spend the next few days showing you the ropes. Besides,’ he adds, playfully punching Ian on the arm, ‘nothing this eejit does can be that complicated.’

  ‘I’ll pick my moment, but I will get you back for that,’ Ian grins back at him, messing, as though they go on like this all the time. ‘OK, Jessie, ready when you are. Bring the coffee into the studio with you, it’s cool. The station manager here lets us get away with murder.’ Then, smirking, he adds, ‘He’s a terrible gobshite, really. Mind you, I think he’s only here on some kind of temporary secondment from St John of Gods. Kind of like a work experience programme for loonies.’

  I turn to Steve, ‘So, emm, well, thanks for bringing me this far and everything, but … what will you do now? I mean will you head off, or …?’

  ‘Ehh, Jessie?’ says Ian, looking like he can’t contain the laughter any more. ‘Steve is the station manager.’

  *

  Without exaggeration, this has been the best week I’ve had in months. I LOVE my new job so much, I almost wonder why I never got into radio instead of TV in the first place. I haven’t started broadcasting yet, this week has all been about training or ‘learning the decks’ as they say here, but according to Steve and Ian, I should be ready to hit the airwaves as early as next week! I still can’t believe it. But from midnight until 2 a.m., the airwaves at Radio Dublin will be mine, all mine.