News Where You Are

6

It was a forty-five-minute drive from Frank and Andrea’s home to Evergreen Senior Living. Today an hour had passed already and they remained trapped in the Crufts gridlock around the NEC. Andrea and a Great Dane in the next car stared at each other morosely. The same advert for a carpet showroom had been playing on the radio for what seemed a very long time. Mo sat in the back engrossed in her comic and Frank hummed a tune as the engine idled.

In the advert a sales assistant showed a husband and wife around a showroom. The husband was a reluctant customer. The sales assistant extolled the virtues of different floor coverings to which the husband invariably replied in a dour, no-nonsense Northern accent: ‘Oh aye? And how much is that going to set me back?’

Hearing the amazing low price would cause him to faint and his oblivious wife to say: ‘Come on, Jim, this is no time for a lie down.’

The scenario was repeated over and over again. The final revelation of nought per cent finance was too much for Jim who fainted for the last time and was unable to be revived. It was left unclear whether he was in fact dead, but his wife seemed unconcerned as she told the sales assistant: ‘I think we’d better take the lot.’

The voice-over gave the location of all the stores and then a helium-voiced speeded-up garbling of credit terms and conditions.

Andrea tore her eyes away from the Great Dane and looked at Frank. ‘Do we have to listen to local radio?’

‘I just wanted to catch the news. I want to see if they’ve picked up on the school closure protest.’

‘I can’t take much more.’

‘They’ll play some music soon — it’s not all adverts. It’s golden-oldie hour.’

She sighed. ‘Great — fingers crossed for some Phil Collins.’ A song started and Andrea instantly recognized the pizzicato strings. ‘Oh God, it can’t be …’

Frank beamed and turned the radio up. ‘Amazing! T’Pau! Hey, Mo, this is our song!’

Mo shuffled forward in her seat. ‘What?’

‘Your mother and I — this is our special song.’

Andrea turned round. ‘It isn’t, Mo. Ignore him.’

Frank looked at Mo in the mirror and nodded conspiratorially.

‘Why is it your song, Mom?’

‘It isn’t our song. Your father’s just saying that to annoy me.’

Mo listened to the song for a few moments.

‘How can you have China in your hands?’

‘Who knows, Mo.’

Mo listened for a few more moments and then wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like it, Mom. It doesn’t make sense.’

Frank shook his head. ‘You two have got no soul.’

*

It was 1988 when Frank met Andrea, but behind the smoked-glass doors of Birmingham FM every day was 1983. The playlist favoured the current top forty, but would squeeze in a power ballad from Tina Turner or Bonnie Tyler every chance it got. The women who worked at the station favoured big hair, and a kind of leather-and-lace rock-chick-gone-to-seed look. The men had blotchy blond highlights, wore large red-framed glasses, sky-blue jeans and colourful knitwear. Andrea soon noticed the uneasy contrast between the dour off-air personalities of many of the DJs and the larger than life clothes they chose to wear.

Frank was a recent graduate in his first job as a reporter; Andrea was still a student doing a work placement at the station. They instantly picked each other out as misfits. Andrea’s clothes and hair had something of the 1950s about them and she seemed to Frank intimidatingly cool and collected. He was incredulous to later discover that Andrea thought exactly the same of him, though less incredulous to subsequently find that this had been based on a mistaken impression.

When he’d got the job at the station, Frank had assumed that he should wear a suit and tie every day. His budget being tight, he bought his two suits at the local branch of Oxfam. As far as he was concerned, a suit was a suit and aside from checking that they didn’t have holes and weren’t outright flares he didn’t notice the width of the trousers or the shape of the lapel. The team at Birmingham FM, merely five years out of date, smirked behind Frank’s back at his ten-years-out-of-date clothes. For Andrea, however, never suspecting that Frank could be as clueless about clothes as he turned out to be, he was cutting edge in his adoption of new-wave retro style.

Like all work placements, Andrea was taken advantage of. Many producers and presenters believed the best experience they could offer her was either to be left ignored and forgotten in the corner of a room ‘observing’ or fetching drinks and lunch for the team. Aware that they should be providing something more enriching for her, but unwilling to take the time to do so, most staff felt irked by her presence and passed her on to another party as soon as possible. She eventually turned up at Frank’s desk. On their first morning together he got her a tea and asked her how the placement had been going. Andrea was surprised by the question; in three weeks there no one else had asked her.

‘It’s been really useful.’

Frank hadn’t expected her to be so positive. He’d observed her regular errands to the shops for coffees and chocolate bars. ‘In what way?’

‘Well, before I came here I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do after university and now I know.’

Frank couldn’t see her as a presenter. ‘Are you thinking of producer?’

Andrea shook her head vigorously. ‘No. A translator. Spanish. My degree is a big mistake. I never want to work here. Or anywhere like here. I’m not interested in working in the media. I’m going to quit and re-enrol on a Spanish degree. I should have done that in the first place.’

Frank nodded. ‘Right. Good. Well, that’s a positive outcome, then.’

*

Andrea worked with Frank for the remaining week of her placement. Despite her decision about her new career direction she appreciated Frank’s genuine efforts to tell her about his job and the way he worked, and she found going out with him to cover stories to be a welcome relief from the studio where the voice of Carol Decker seemed to boom from every speaker. Although younger than most of the rest of the staff, Frank seemed more solid and mature in ways that Andrea couldn’t quite put her finger on. He took his job seriously not just for the sake of ambition and advancement, but because he cared about the work he did and wanted to be good at it.

Frank discovered quickly that Andrea was not as intimidating as she had at first seemed. She had an acute ear for the vocal tics and traits of those around her and was a brilliant mimic of certain presenters. She had a keen sense of the absurd but also appreciated the ways in which the apparently trivial and laughable were often nothing of the kind. By their third day of working together Frank realized that he kept finding new things to like about Andrea. He tried to stop, but still they mounted up, unignorable. He liked her Leeds accent, he liked the way she unwrapped Kit Kats, he liked the perfect clarity of her face. Although it made him slightly nervous he even liked the way that she assumed he knew about the kinds of obscure bands she liked. He had no idea where she’d got the impression that he had a clue about such things, but he couldn’t help but be flattered.

*

Mo shuffled forward on the rear seat again. ‘Mom?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think is yours and Dad’s special song?’

Andrea thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that we have one.’

Mo was insistent. ‘I think you should have one. I think it’s important. Try and think of one.’

Andrea thought again and then smiled. ‘Okay. I think maybe something by the Pixies.’

Mo looked happy. ‘Can we listen to them when we get home?’

‘Yeah — you’ll recognize them — I’ve played them before.’

‘Why is that your song?’

‘Oh, your father was a big fan when we met. A big expert on the Pixies.’

Frank shook his head slowly and glanced at Andrea. ‘You’re a regular funny guy, aren’t you?’

Andrea smiled sweetly and hummed ‘Gigantic’.

Frank thought back to the final lunch hour of their week working together. Andrea had been sitting reading a music paper, something Frank always found unnerving. She looked up at him and asked, ‘Have you heard Surfer Rosa yet?’

Frank considered various high-risk strategies in answering this, but decided in the end for the simplicity and honesty of a simple head shake.

Andrea continued. ‘It’s an amazing review, but you know, I don’t want to be disappointed.’

He picked up on the doubt in her voice and thought he could safely venture something here without revealing his ignorance.

‘Yeah, I mean can she really live up to that kind of hype?’

Andrea looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. He liked her laugh — it was a deep, open giggle that always made him laugh too, though in this case the effect was slightly more disconcerting.

When she’d stopped, she said: ‘You’re a regular funny guy.’

He shrugged, having no idea what was funny, but unwilling to rebuff the compliment. He didn’t like pretending to be something he wasn’t, but he thought he could save letting her know for another time. He was almost sure there would be other times.

Mo had finished her comic now and was waving half-heartedly out of the window at a large poodle who was in turn ignoring her.

She moved forward in her seat to speak. ‘Dad, there won’t be anyone in the building, will there?’

‘What building?’

‘The one we looked at. When they demolish it. There won’t be any people still inside?’

Andrea gave Frank a warning look before saying. ‘You asked me that the other day. Do you remember what I said?’

‘You said there won’t be. You said they emptied it months ago, but I just thought what if a homeless person went in there to shelter from the rain? Or what if some little boys went in to explore? Or what if one of the people who worked there realized that they’d left their umbrella and they went back to get it?’

Frank answered. ‘But no one could get in. You saw it — there are big high boards all around, and the men will go and check last thing before they demolish it. Buildings get demolished all the time and never, ever in all the time I’ve been doing the news has anyone ever been trapped in the building.’

‘What if a pigeon flew in the window, or a dog jumped in?’

‘There are no stray dogs in town, and a pigeon could just fly straight out again.’ Frank thought for a moment. ‘Do you want to come and watch it being demolished? You’ll see then and you can stop worrying.’

Straight away he realized he’d said the wrong thing. Mo’s face was horror-stricken. ‘People watch it being demolished? But what if it falls on them?’

‘It won’t fall on anyone. The people have to stand a long way away, and the men are clever; they know exactly which way the building will fall.’

Mo was shaking her head. ‘Don’t go, Dad. Mom, tell Dad not to go. It’s dangerous. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to see it.’

Frank looked at Mo’s eyes in the mirror. ‘That’s okay. We won’t go.’ He suddenly felt as if he might cry. He reached back and squeezed her leg. ‘I don’t really want to see it either.’