years ago I was on a fast track in the Home Office, and now I can’t keep a job in a petting zoo. Now I agree with you and your mum about my “MTs” and having no willpower whatsoever, and I keep it a secret if I find joy in anything, so my husband can’t say I’m unbalanced. No children. Didn’t we work and worry strenuously to avoid children? And of course it never helped the mood exactly to have Steve breaking off to run downstairs to check the fridge was shut. And it was me who wasn’t normal, apparently. I’m beginning to wonder what normal is, Steve. I’m beginning to think it’s not really normal to sweep your front lawn for landmines.
Scene Six: home, happy music
It was just after DS Law left that it all happened. I was putting the biscuits away in the cupboard and I saw the old biscuit tin, and I thought, “Now, what am I going to use you for?”, so I picked it up and opened it and inside there was this letter from Steve with my passport and quite a lot of cash in used notes. He had stuck a note saying “Don’t Lose” on the passport and sealed up the letter in an envelope.
“To my wife,” it said on the outside. “Urgent. Private. By hand.” I turned over the envelope to open it and found on the back “Destroy After Reading”. I opened it. I sat down. This had better be good, Steve, I thought. “Dear wife,” it said. “This evening, June 15, I returned home from Fawley’s at the usual time and found no sign of you. Alert to the Danish experience in this morning’s Times, I naturally fear you have been abducted according to the same pattern; I also fear that if you have been abducted, they are really trying to get to me, so I am leaving immediately for Our Special Place, and hope you will join me there to prove my fears are groundless. However, if you do not follow me within three days I will conclude you are lost to me, even dead, and will remain abroad. I will place this letter in the biscuit tin as I know from twenty-five years’ experience that reaching for the biscuit tin is always the first thing you do, my dear wife, having no willpower whatsoever. Buy your ticket with CASH. Check under the car VERY CAREFULLY. Steve. Above all, don’t WORRY, I know what you’re like.”
I rang DS Law and told him. He said they’d just confirmed Steve had taken a flight to Malaga – our special place – but that otherwise they had no information. “You realise your husband is insanely paranoid?” DS Law said. I asked him, is it insanely paranoid not to have children because you’re afraid they’ll be used at some later date as hostages – and he said yes, that was more or less a definition of insanely paranoid, in his opinion. “You seem to have missed his three-day deadline,” he said. And I said, [almost stunned; can’t believe her luck] “Yes, that’s my reward for going mad and buying a new biscuit tin.” Then I counted the cash, which was over three thousand pounds, and rang Mrs Bryan with the good news. She said I could start back tomorrow, and the job of manageress was still open if I wanted it. She also said the goats had missed me, which I think was her way of apologising for thinking I’d stabbed my husband to death.
It said on the news, by the way, that the Danish woman hadn’t been kidnapped after all! The lovely Elsa had run off with her younger lover and hadn’t known how to mention it. The adulterous carefree pair were last seen, funnily enough, in Malaga.
MARK is a casual, laid-back and rather shallow character who takes everything in his stride. He has been a staff photographer on a newspaper for twenty years. He loves his car and is proud of all the equipment, but isn’t much bothered about his art.
Scene One: driving. He’s humming while driving, and interrupts himself to comment on the traffic
All right, mate, you go. No, YOU go. Right-o. [Hums. Reads sign] Bexleyheath, right. What’s the time? Oh. Cushti. Just me on this job today. No poncey lady feature writer saying, “Oh take no notice of Mark, he’s just the photographer.” No, this is more like it. Simple news desk job. [Happy sigh; contented with the normal routine of his life] Find house, ring doorbell, “Hello, Mr Watts, you’re some sort of news story I understand, no don’t bother telling me about it, I’m not remotely interested, yes, hello, Mrs Watts, well I wouldn’t say no, two sugars, can I move this lamp, is that a jaffa cake, ta very much, does that window open, can I use this socket, flash bang wallop, back in the car, laptop, mobile, bit of quick image manipulation, send, send, send, and back to me mum’s in Fulham in time for The Weakest Link.
[Manoeuvring] Bexleyheath. [Remembering instructions] Left at the roundabout. [Manoeuvres] Straight on for three miles. [Sigh]
So, not like yesterday, that’s what I’m saying. Yesterday was well weird. I said to Kip on the picture desk, “Kippo, mate, you know me, I’m not into the arty stuff. I didn’t sign up for that. I’m more of what you might call an all-rounder, only with a particular aptitude for prison vans. That’s right, I’m a legend outside the law courts. The only snapper who can ALWAYS get a shot through the window of a moving black maria. And that’s not fluke. David Beckham practises free kicks round the wall. I practise black maria technique. You’ve got to jump EXACTLY the right height, see, at EXACTLY the right moment, holding the camera above your head at EXACTLY the right angle.” Kippo looks at me. “Straight up?” he says. And I say, [confidential, as if giving away his secret] “Well, yeah, fairly straight up, but with a crucial last-minute kick in the direction of travel.”
“Well, doing a few portraits won’t kill you,” he said. [Kippo doesn’t understand it himself] “Seven mediums,” he said. “It’s for the magazine. Juliet Frampton’s doing seven interviews, and they want a pic for each one. Hang on, I’ll ring the mag.” He reached for the phone while I just stood there, rolling my eyes and hoping he’d suddenly think of someone better suited to the job. “David?” he said. “Jimmy Kipling, picture desk. These seven mediums of Juliet’s. Yeah, I got your list of addresses. Yeah, got a great bloke here. Mark King, you know him? Good. You’ll have seen loads of his stuff, he’s been on the paper for, what?” [He’s asking Mark; Mark has to think about it; a bit astonished] “Twenty years,” I said. “Twenty-five years,” he said. “What? [Lying] Yeah, Marko’s VERY sensitive, yeah. Very. Very, what’s the word – [a prompt from the mag man] what? Oh yes, that’s right, intuitive, yes. And if you need any specialist jumping done at the same time, incidentally, he’s your man. Anyway, just one question. This word mediums. Shouldn’t that be media? Oh. Coz I’ve been trying to visualise. What’s a medium then? Oh. Oh, I see, I’ll call you back, then, cheers.” He turns to me. “Er, Marko, you’re going to do seven very sensitive and intuitive portrait photographs of psychics. In between your normal jobs, of course. And the first one’s this afternoon in Hackney.”
I gave him one of my looks. Although I don’t know why I bothered because my looks have never had an effect on anyone. At home, when I was little, I’d do one of my looks and everyone else would laugh like drains. [A happy memory; he loved his dad] My dad used to fall off his chair, the bastard. “Jill’d be good for this, Kippo,” I said. “Or even the Giant Padster, if you can spare him from Cheltenham. I mean, seen one photo finish, you’ve seen ’em all.” Kippo looked at the list. “Tell you what, one of these is in Middlesbrough next Tuesday. You could catch the Lazio second-leg at the Riverside. Johnners could get you in. He might even get you an armband.” Well, that was a bit of a decider. “I’ll pack a warm jacket,” I said. “Good man,” said Kippo. “Good man.”
[More driving required, slowing down] Hang on, left here. Sutherland Road. That’s it. Should be down on the right. [Reading house numbers] Sixty-eight. Ninety. Hundred and six. Hundred and ten. Hundred and twenty. [Stops the car] Here we are, then. Number one-four-four. And what’s the time? Twenty past? Great. [Switches off engine] Oof. I’ve even got a few minutes to spare.
So
