psychic malarkey, then?”, which she ignored because she’s a bit stuck-up, being a) from Features, b) married to Brian Frampton, the deputy editor, and c) runner-up in 1997 for Broadsheet Stuck-up Feature Writer of the Year. Anyway, the bloke’s name was Lister. Mister Lister. He made us a cup of coffee and he was obviously quite nervous, coz his hands were shaking, but Juliet didn’t notice. What she did notice straight away, however, was that the poor old geezer couldn’t get the hang of who was in charge between us. He kept saying things like, “And would the, er, lady like sugar?” and all the while addressing me instead of her, even though I made a big show of deferring to Juliet. “Oh, Juliet’s the boss,” I kept saying. “She’s the words and I’m just the pictures.” In the end, she said, rather pointedly, “Would it be all right for Mark to scout for a good place for the photographs?” And Mister Lister looked confused but said all right.
It was a sad old house, really. Old bloke on his own. It felt like he’d been on his own for about thirty years. Pictures of his wife on the walls, the last dating from around 1970. Framed drawings in pastel of Arabs and Chinese – it all felt quite normal to me, to be honest, coz there was quite a bit of spiritualism in my dad’s family; my granddad had a spirit guide called Abdul and my Auntie Madge had one called Mister Chin. In fact, Mister Lister had a framed cartoon at the top of the stairs that would have amused that lot. There was this medium gazing into a crystal ball and saying, [he’s amused by this] “Well, Mr So-and-so, I’m afraid I can’t contact your late aunt, but there’s a horse here who’d like to say hello.”
[The thing is, Mark IS intuitive; he just doesn’t know it] This bloke Mister Lister could have been my granddad. His house had the same smell, you know, of old lino and hard cheese, and wet wool and calamine lotion. I took a dozen shots or so, and then [he shivers] I suddenly thought, “I hope this feature isn’t going to be one of Juliet Frampton’s famous chainsaw massacres, coz he doesn’t deserve that.” So I went back downstairs and knocked lightly on the open door to the living room and found Juliet and Mister Lister both looking a bit – well, uncomfortable. I sensed at once there had not been a meeting of minds.
“So would you let me say it’s about being OPEN?” she said, with pen poised above notebook. He winced and shook his head. Evidently she was pressing Mister Lister to unlock the secret of his craft, and he wasn’t having any of it.
I took a couple of discreet shots from the doorway, and Mister Lister looked up. [Relief] “Oh, but here’s our friend back at last! Young man, I’ve got a message for you!”
[Beat] I laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Juliet was pursing her lips, she was well wound up, so I grabbed a quick couple of shots of her to wind her up even more. It had exactly the desired effect. “Mark!” she said. “Could you please not interrupt?”
“Oh but this isn’t an interruption, dear,” said Mister Lister. “The spirits don’t interrupt us. We interrupt THEM. And there is someone here who would very much like to say something to Mark.”
[Laugh] “Is it a horse wanting to say hello?” I said.
Mister Lister laughed, and Juliet looked so confused that I snatched another shot of her. It was a classic, actually. I’m going to blow it up and use it as a screensaver. Evidently not only was this assignment foisted on her, you see, but it turns out, if she hadn’t been here, she could have been at the Hyatt Regency in Portman Square gazing into the eyes of Jude Law over a cup of steaming Lapsang.
But back with this message. “It’s a very practical message,” Mister Lister said. “Your dad is unusually straightforward, isn’t he?”
[Cheerful, affectionate memory] “Yes, he is. I mean, he was.”
“Well. He says, Marky, Marky, you’ve got a head like a sieve.”
I shrugged and laughed. It was true. Good old Dad.
“He says you forgot your dry-cleaning ticket for those combats of yours, didn’t you?”
I rolled my eyes at Juliet. Tsk!
“Well, he says luckily your mum will remember it in about ten minutes’ time, just before the shop closes, so you’ll still have your outfit for tonight.”
They both looked at me for my reaction.
“Ha!” I said.
“So that message does mean something to you?” said Mister Lister. He seemed anxious, I don’t know why.
[Not overwhelmed at all; as if it’s quite normal] “Oh yeah. Totally. Good old Dad.”
Juliet seemed to think this wasn’t an adequate reaction. “Mark, are you saying that sounded like a message from your father WHO IS DEAD?”
[A shrug; what of it?] “Yeah?”
She looked completely astonished. She also had the rather worrying look of someone whose brain mechanism is suddenly whirring very, very quickly.
“Any message for your father in return?” said Mister Lister.
“Oh. Oh OK. Could you say thanks a bunch, Dad? Blimey, I’d be lost without those combats.”
Scene Two: at home, at his computer, which hums. He’s looking at the pics
What a brilliant tool Photoshop is. [Keypad and mouse noises] That’s a nice one. Hello, Mister Lister! Ooh, that’s a very nice mauve cardigan shot, if I say so myself. I’ll have that. [Tap. Mouse] And enlarge. [Tap. Mouse] Lovely. Of course, this is the point in the movie when the guy says, “Hold it! What’s this strange shining mark to the right of Mister Lister’s head? Jeepers, I’d better call an archbishop!” Whereas in fact there IS a spooky light area, obviously, in every single one of these shots, but if I just – [mouse clicks and scrolls] airbrush it – [more clicks] like this – [more clicks] and that – [more clicks] Hey presto. The telltale spooky shining mark has gone!
I went to see Kippo straight after the job yesterday. Went back to the office and asked him to take me off the mediums. I mean, it’s not that I’m not interested. It was really nice hearing from my dad like that. I told Mum about it, and she said, well, if you get him again, could you please ask him what he did with the key to the coal-shed because we’ll have to break the door down sooner or later. No, the problem was working with Jules. She called me up when I was driving back and said, all urgently, “Look, Mark, we have to talk—” And the trouble was, I know her well enough to know where that was leading. I mean, nothing romantic, nothing like that. When our little thing finished a year or two ago, we agreed – well, we agreed we’d been lucky to get away with it, so leave it at that. It wasn’t as if our paths would ever cross professionally, what with me lurking round the Old Bailey with the other snappers doing my impersonation of a salmon leaping upstream, and her in hotel lobbies hypocritically sucking up to film idols. I don’t think either of us minded very much about splitting. We did quite suit each other, though. I mean, you know. For a woman, she’s not exactly deep.
How we managed to keep it totally quiet I don’t know, but we did. Amazing. I mean, it was obvious yesterday that Kippo had no idea, for a start, and Kippo is the biggest gosser on the staff; it was him that first sussed the two-jacket ploy that old sports editor invented twenty years ago: leaving the spare jacket on the back of the chair mid-morning as if he’d just popped to the canteen for a packet of fruit gums, and then legging it to the Waldorf to meet that woman from the Football
