The Talk Show: the gripping thriller everyone is talking about

by Harry Verity

  Just like his work on The Michael O’Shea Show, he found himself frequently in a room with people full of delusions of grandeur, their appetite for fame unquenchable, their desire for a quick fix to their sorry lives, unrelenting. It was his job – his moral and national civic duty – to put these people out of their misery.

  ‘So come on, who’s up first?’

  Last time Michael had sat through two female singers with the stage presence of a sloth and a man asking for money to fund a brewery business, though Michael’s suggestion that perhaps the money would be better spent on sending him to an Alcoholics Anonymous detox course, hardly curried favour with the audience who appeared to feel sorry for the drunken brute.

  As it happened the boy band who performed first were actually quite good. Not mind-blowing but decent. Michael’s offer to set up a meeting with a record producer, however, was overruled by the other three judges who decided they deserved to proceed further into the competition.

  All in all, it turned out to be a more productive session than Michael had anticipated. But, if truth be told, his mind had been on other things.

  Sure, his brother’s crimes seemed to have faded into obscurity – throwing the book at him, isolating him, had been a good decision – but it had been a stressful couple of days. He was glad he had a release, something mouth-wateringly exciting to look forward to.

  Now all he wanted was to speed through things. He would usually have stayed for longer: the audience were screaming his name and flashing their camera phones. He knew he couldn’t sneak out straight away, whilst the other judges did their bit, grinning like hyenas. Some bright spark would make a deal of it in tomorrow’s papers. So he made sure to sign at least two dozen signatures and waved before heading off.

  Of course, the press were waiting for him outside, as they always did. There was a car ready to whisk him away from the Palace Theatre and, predictably, a group on motorbikes.

  ‘Would you like me to try to lose them?’ Michael’s driver said. Of course, he knew there was no point.

  ‘The motorbikes never give up until they’ve got what they want. No, slow down, let them catch us…’

  ‘Very well…’ the driver said.

  Michael combed his hands through his hair as the motorbikes pulled up alongside them and he tried not to blink when the inevitable flashes of camera light flooded through the windows.

  ‘They shouldn’t disturb you for the rest of the evening…’ Michael’s driver said.

  No, Michael thought, they better not. Not tonight, of all nights.

  Of course, Michael’s driver was accustomed to this lifestyle. He had driven many celebrities before Michael had taken him on full time and had been trained in how to get rid of these pests.

  But not even Michael’s driver, as discreet as he was, could know anything about Michael’s little escapade.

  As the car pulled up outside his plush Chelsea home, he surveyed the area and then waved goodbye to his driver, waiting for several moments before he proceeded to head out. He wasn’t going home to his wife. There were other places he wanted to be. Driving the KA back from Manchester and then hiding it had been an extremely wise move. In the boot was a change of clothes – a hoodie, some dark glasses, and even a fake moustache – to make doubly sure he wouldn’t be spotted.

  All he had to do was hope and pray the car was still in the same place he’d left it.

  11

  In one afternoon, they had recorded a week’s worth of shows, the first of which involving Minnie and the twins was to be broadcast first thing on Monday evening, the show’s usual teatime slot. Violet seemed assured that the bar was always high for the first week and that there wouldn’t be half as much pressure to find good stories moving forward.

  Monday morning, as they prepared for the show’s debut later on that evening, was, therefore, supposed to be a fairly laid back affair. With virtually no one in the office and Violet not needing his immediate attention, Edward was even able to have a coffee break, almost losing himself in the hustle and bustle of Fleet Street as he searched for his favourite café chain.

  When he returned with an espresso for himself and a cup of tea for Violet, Edward noticed a freshly delivered stack of newspapers.

  ‘Thanks,’ Violet said, as Edward handed over her tea. She barely took her eyes away from the computer.

  ‘I didn’t realise we had to look through the papers every day. Is there not a PR team?’

  ‘No. Besides, if you want a job doing…’

  ‘Get me to do it!’ Edward joked, though Violet did not respond as he pulled the papers from under her nose.

  ‘I suppose it shouldn’t take so long.’

  Indeed, there was scarcely anything in the tabloids, just the occasional fleeting reference in an article:

  ‘…he looked like the sort of man who’d be caught with his pants down on Michael O’Shea.’

  Other than that there was precious little else. Edward flicked through the broadsheets, knowing that it would have had to have been a very slow news day for any self-respecting reporter or columnist to even mention the show. Indeed, the headlines of most of the broadsheets that day centred around when, not if, the prime minister would call an election. Beneath the national papers, there were also a few local ones. Though Edward assumed they were primarily to search for new stories, he checked them anyway, half out of wanting to do the job properly and half wanting to avoid doing something more taxing.

  It was what he found on the back pages that made him recoil in horror. It was only a small article, but he instantly felt overwhelmed with guilt. Minnie, the same girl who had been sat just a few metres below him had run away again only this time she had not returned.

  ‘The girl’s mother Jo is anxious for her to return in time for their all-expenses trip to Florida, following their appearance on The Michael O’Shea Show, due to air…’

  ‘Violet,’ Edward said, ‘look.’ He showed her the article. But she did not seem moved. ‘How did they even find out about it if it’s not been broadcast?’

  ‘It’s a local paper. No one will read it.’

  ‘She went missing after she appeared on the show.’ Edward, distressed, buried his face in his hands. ‘We pushed her over the edge!’

  Violet seemed confused. ‘The girl had a history of running away. It was the stepdad and the mum who are responsible.’

  ‘But we…’

  ‘Our job is to source and research the show and to make good television. If you’ve got a problem with that, well I guess you’ve broken the record and not even lasted two weeks.’

  ‘But we caused the girl to run away, she could be in serious trouble.’

  Violet seemed genuinely agitated. ‘Looking after the guests is Braithwaite’s job.’

  ‘So I can go and tell him?’

  ‘Yeah, if it makes you feel any better. He probably already knows. It’s his job. Yours is to get back on with reading those papers.’

  Edward reclined into his chair. The two said almost nothing to each other for the rest of the day. On reflection, he didn’t know why he’d gotten so upset and supposed Violet was right. He didn’t want to make the same mistake as his predecessors. He tried to make things less awkward with Violet the following morning. Catching the Tube earlier so that he could stop off at a coffee shop, even buying her a cake as well.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, ‘but I’m on a diet.’

  He resigned to eating the cake himself.

  ‘We need to start sorting the shows for this week,’ Violet said.

  ‘More trips to council estates, then?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. We sometimes get very respectable people calling up the show.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. Someone phoned Braithwaite – he’d been recommended – but they wanted his help. Two retired solicitors. They think their daughter’s developing an eating disorder, that or drugs maybe. She’s seventeen. They’ve tried to g
et her into a clinic before. They think the Michael O’Shea treatment might work for her, she watches the show apparently, plus she wouldn’t turn down the chance to appear on TV. She wants to be famous…’

  Edward sighed. Another child. This time the parents at least sounded responsible. ‘I see. Are we going to interview them?’

  ‘Already scheduled in for the afternoon. The daughter has agreed to speak to us as well.’

  ‘We’re going to speak to the girl separately?’

  ‘It’s the best idea. Her parents have agreed to it and she wants to. They live in a quiet village, it’s about an hour from here. We’ll leave about two.’

  ‘Right.’

  The train journey was quiet as usual. Knowing Violet’s proclivity for ignoring him, Edward had bought a novel by PD James to read as Violet, right on cue, once again took out her phone.

  ‘I mentioned Minnie to Braithwaite,’ Violet said, rather suddenly, ‘he already knew what was going on.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Edward said, ‘I didn’t mean to lose it, I wasn’t… it’s just I–’

  ‘Bernard Braithwaite, for all the hassle he causes us during the filming, has an important role to play. He talks to the families, makes sure they are coping. He’ll coax Minnie back. But you should know if you start worrying about all the stories we work on you won’t sleep at night.’

  Edward thanked her for the advice and tried to smile at her, but she remained straight-faced and returned to her phone.

  As they pulled into the station, Edward immediately felt that this was a town he would feel comfortable in. Even if he had somehow not spotted the ancient stone church, the cobbled streets or the gated mansions from the window of the train as they came gently to rest at the platform, Edward could not have avoided the grand three-storey bookstore which stood before him as he left the railway station. With its iron gates and ornate stone gargoyles, it reminded Edward of a saying his father had once shared with him, that you should judge a place not by how friendly its people are or how green its parks are, but on the size of its book shop.

  It was quite a walk to the small private road where Mr and Mrs Butler lived. Barrington-Stoke was so rural that virtually every road was separated by at least one field. The Butlers’ house was not quite as big as some of the properties they had passed but it still boasted a tall black gate and a wide sweeping driveway to match.

  Violet pressed the buzzer and they were promptly let in by an elderly well-dressed man.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming. My wife is just about to make tea,’ he said, and Edward instinctively took off his shoes.

  ‘So you think we can help your daughter?’ Edward took the lead, as his greying wife joined them. They were led into a plush pink suite in the corner of a large room filled with books and a grand piano.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Butler replied. ‘Jessica. Bless her. We don’t know what’s up with her. At first, we thought it might be drugs but we simply don’t know. We think she might have an eating disorder.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ Violet asked, taking a notebook from her bag.

  ‘She keeps disappearing all the time,’ Mr Butler said. ‘She fell out with her friends a while ago and ever since then she’s been hanging around with… well, with people who want the same thing as she does.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘She wants to be famous. At first, when she was fifteen, she said she wanted to be a model. We tried to tell her to do well at school and then she could decide what she wanted to do later, that she’d have loads of options but she was quite adamant that she wanted to become a model and be on the telly. She told us that next year, when she turns eighteen, she wants to apply on that show. What is it? The one where they send ordinary people and celebrities to an exotic country, and film them to see how they get on?’

  He was obviously relaying what his daughter had told him, verbatim.

  ‘Celebrity Holiday Home,’ Violet said, and when she said it Edward remembered that Liv had once been a contestant.

  ‘But you wouldn’t have to be particularly thin to go on that show?’ Edward asked, sipping his tea. It was too weak for his liking.

  ‘Yes, precisely,’ Mr Butler said. ‘…and she’s worried that these magazines, the newspapers, that they’d take photos of her and point out what she perceives as her flaws. She keeps talking about working on herself before she goes on the show. But whatever the newspapers wrote about her when she’s on that show would only make her situation worse, she reads negative things into everything.’

  ‘I see,’ Edward said.

  Violet took another sip of her tea.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you quite a lot of personal questions. We need them for the show,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Mrs Butler said. Mr Butler, however, did not look impressed. He said nothing.

  ‘And we’ll also need to talk to Jessica as we agreed.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Edward smiled at them and tried to make them feel comfortable.

  ‘Right,’ Violet said, ‘how long have you been married?’

  ‘Er… thirty years.’

  ‘And just to confirm Jessica is your own daughter?’

  ‘Yes. We tried to have children for a very long time. It took us years but eventually, we had beautiful Jessica.’

  ‘And have either of you ever had an affair?’

  Mr Butler stood up. ‘Good God! I shan’t be asked that.’

  Mrs Butler gently pulled him back down.

  ‘I’m sorry, these are questions we have to ask. We have to know the full picture.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Mrs Butler said.

  And for the next twenty minutes they answered Violet’s questions with not a hint of hesitation. No, neither of them had ever taken drugs, nor suffered from depression. They had never mistreated their daughter and couldn’t even remember the last time they’d raised their voices at her. Everything, it seemed, was whiter than white. There was only one thing that Violet needed to ask before Edward followed her upstairs to Jessica’s bedroom. ‘Would you give us permission to have your daughter followed, to find out what she’s up to?’

  Both Mr and Mrs Butler looked incredibly uncomfortable.

  ‘But she trusts us,’ Mrs Butler said, ‘she’d be horrified if she knew we were spying on her, what if she never speaks to us again?’

  Edward wondered if Jessica actually watched the show. For if she did then she must have realised that it was at least a possibility that they would make use of a private detective: ‘research’, so to speak.

  ‘I believe you’ve spoken to Dr Braithwaite, he is very qualified,’ Violet added, appealing to Mr Butler’s rationality. Why would a qualified psychiatrist allow a private detective to follow his daughter if he thought it would seriously damage her?

  There was silence until finally, Violet got up.

  ‘Have a think, perhaps we can discuss it on the phone tomorrow or later in the week.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Butler said, getting up as well. ‘Yes, I do think that is a better idea.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Violet said as Mr Butler moved to shake her hand.

  ‘Would it be possible to see your daughter, Mr Butler?’

  ‘Certainly, she should be in her bedroom,’ and Mr Butler led Edward and Violet out of the living room and to a plush pink staircase with brass handrails. Up they went until they reached the third floor and a plain white door with a fluffy pink sign that read: ‘Jessica’. Inside was a sitting room complete with beanbags, sofas and a television, the other was a small study with a pink desk and a bookcase but it was in the final room, the bedroom, that the girl was sitting, upright on her double bed, surfing the internet on her laptop.

  ‘Jessica, sweetie, these are the people from The Michael O’Shea Show, they want to ask you a few questions,’ Mr Butler said.

  She beamed and leaped off the bed.

  ‘Now, darling,’ her father said, ‘if they ask you anything you feel uncomfortable with, if th
ere’s anything you don’t want to answer, then remember you don’t have to, you can come downstairs and get us. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Dad.’

  ‘Okay, well, we’re going to leave you now.’

  Mr Butler closed his daughter’s bedroom door behind them and Mrs Butler followed him out. Violet waited for a few minutes until he could be sure they had started their descent back down to the living room.

  Jessica was only seventeen and yet Edward couldn’t help feeling that she was trying too hard to fit into the stereotype that usually graced reality television; lots of make-up and far too much perfume. The meeting wasn’t supposed to be an audition. Or at least that wasn’t how Edward saw it.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Violet said, bluntly.

  Jessica blushed.

  ‘Why? Is your friend trying to chat me up?’ She pointed at Edward.

  He went bright red as well.

  ‘No.’ Violet laughed. ‘We need to know for the show.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Have you ever had boyfriends?’

  ‘No, nothing serious…’

  Violet moved on quickly.

  Next, her alleged eating disorder. Violet asked her directly and studied her reaction intently. She fidgeted and seemed particularly edgy at the prospect of being probed on the subject during the show; there was undoubtedly something going on.

  ‘What about drugs?’ Violet said.

  ‘I’ve tried them,’ Jessica said. ‘Cannabis a few times and cocaine at a party once but I’m not addicted… my parents don’t know.’

  ‘And what about your home life? Are your parents mean, abusive?’

  ‘They can be rather annoying, sometimes, but they’re wonderful and give me everything I want. I do feel bad for keeping secrets from them.’

  She knew they’d be ashamed at her drug use, but she was careful to point out that she definitely DID NOT have an eating disorder. She wanted to go on O’Shea because she wanted to get noticed and to help put her parents’ minds at rest, to show them that she was capable of getting the career in the media she wanted.