News Where You Are

5

Frank had started working on Heart of England Reports in 1989. Since then he’d learned to smile patiently at the remarks about cats stuck up trees, presenters in bad toupees and roller skating ducks. He knew there was an assumption that anyone who spent their working life in regional news was either unambitious or had suffered thwarted ambition, but he knew also that neither was true of him. Local news was where he had always wanted to be.

His mother always maintained that it was something in his father’s dedication to the large-scale and concrete that had pushed Frank in the direction of the small-scale and human. It was true that as a boy, surrounded by plans and drawings, what had fascinated him wasn’t the shape of the windows or the relationship of the interior to the exterior spaces, but the people who might live and work in those buildings, of the potential stories they might contain.

Frank thought he’d made a good local news reporter. He had met many of the great and good of the city as a child through his father’s work and because of that link many of them had trusted him alone amongst local journalists. His promotion when Phil moved on made him the youngest presenter in the programme’s history. He knew he should be proud of the achievement, but part of him always missed reporting.

After twenty years in regional TV, though, he was no longer the bright-eyed enthusiast he once was. He appreciated that the small-scale and the local often equated with the banal and the inconsequential. He started to question the choice of what was featured in the news and what was omitted. It seemed to him that it was often the stories that didn’t make the broadcasts that said the most about the region and its people. In this too he sensed the shadow of his father. As his buildings were bulldozed one by one, Frank began to suspect that often what vanished revealed more than what remained.

In May 1991, around the same time as the first of the demolitions, Frank reported on the death of Dorothy Ayling. He was used to the ways in which news stories could creep up on him. The murdered women, abandoned babies and teenagers caught in the crossfire would not affect him whilst at work. In the preparation and delivery of his report, caught up in the adrenalin pulse of the newsroom, his mind was all on the job. It was later in the evening, having a drink with colleagues, or at home with Andrea, his mind spooling of its own volition through the events of the day, that something would snag. He would feel himself suddenly anxious, a small panic that something was terribly wrong, and then he’d remember the story, hearing the words of his report for the first time and finding himself affected by the details. He was used to this, and dealt with it as his audience did, by trying to think of something else. But Dorothy Ayling was different.

She was found nineteen days after her death. As often happened, the neighbours reported a bad smell. When the police broke in, they found her lying in bed. In the years to come he would find it strange how often the isolated were discovered in positions of repose — sitting in an armchair, lying in bed or on a couch. Their deaths had not surprised them in the middle of making a cup of tea or watering a plant. They seemed instead to be ready, waiting perhaps to see if anyone would notice their absence from the world.

He presented the report live from the studio itself. Just a few words into the report he felt an unbearable lump in his throat and for a horrifying moment thought he was going to cry. He managed to disguise his emotion with a coughing fit, and was able to compose himself enough to continue. Afterwards, though, his mind would not move on. As he read the item, he was overcome with a powerful sense that he was uttering the last record of her existence, that no one would speak of Dorothy Ayling again. A death so isolated and solitary that it seemed less like death to him and more like extinction. As the autocue scrolled and her name disappeared, so, Frank felt, did she.

He didn’t understand the anxiety he felt, but it lingered and grew. After Dorothy he started to keep a record of any similar deaths he came across, writing their names, dates and whatever other details he could find in a notebook. Sometimes there might be two in six months and then nothing for another year. Most never made it onto the bulletin, only the few that happened to be discovered on sufficiently slow news days. For the majority, their solitary deaths created no more ripple than their solitary lives. Frank thought they should be remembered, though. Something in him would not accept that people could vanish without leaving some trace. He made a note of all of them, even attending their funerals when he could, or taking flowers to their doors.

Dorothy Ayling’s funeral took place four months after her death, after all attempts to trace a next of kin had failed. The service was short and simple. The vicar recited the twenty-third psalm. Frank would come to know those words by heart. He would learn the different versions, the cups that overflowed and the cups that runnethed over, he would notice the different lines emphasized by the different ministers. He had always thought the words were intended to reassure the flock left behind, but over time he came to believe that their purpose was to comfort the Shepherd himself. A reassurance to him that this sheep had not felt abandoned, had not been lost and scared, that he had not failed in his duty to care and guide. When Frank heard the psalm as he would many times in the years to come, he wondered if the Good Shepherd was consoled. Could he believe that the person lying now in the plain coffin with no one but a stranger to mourn them had truly felt ‘Thou art with me’?

There was one other mourner at Dorothy Ayling’s funeral. A plump woman with blonde hair and an open face. Frank spoke to her afterwards and learned that her name was Jo Manning, a technical support officer at the coroner’s office. She always tried to get to the funerals of such cases when her workload allowed. For her, attendance was a simple mark of respect. Frank found his attendance less easy to explain but Jo seemed to understand. In time they grew used to seeing each other on separate benches in cold rooms. Jo would tell him of small triumphs in the cases of those where a next of kin was located — sisters who had lost touch, brothers who had moved abroad, as well as the sadness of those where no one was found.

Andrea asked him once about the list of names and dates he had in his notebook and he told her.

‘Is it very weird?’

She hesitated before answering. ‘A little.’

‘I’m not sure why I do it.’

She smiled. ‘Because you have a melancholy disposition.’

‘You make me sound like my mother.’

She looked at him. ‘Perhaps this has more to do with your father.’

Frank put the notebook away and gave a little laugh. ‘I’m hoping I’ll grow out of it.’

Andrea touched his face. ‘You’d say, wouldn’t you, if you ever found the job was getting to you? If it was making you too sad or depressed.’

He told her he was fine.