To Be Someone (41 page)

I lay motionless on my bed for the rest of the evening, not watching the flickering muted television, not listening to the mutterings of the radio, which I’d switched on for company.

It was eight-thirty
P.M
. when the call came from Cynthia at the hospital to tell me that Sam had died. Before I even picked up the receiver I was already wondering how my positive thought could have been so wrong, how
She’s going to be fine
could have dissolved into these final, terrible words across a phone line.

When the brief call was finished, some impulse made me turn up the volume on the radio by my bed, willing there to be a song on which I could hang my grief. Something fitting, something dignified, something for Sam.

It was a gift. Blur, “This Is a Low,” the opening trippy acoustic chord sequence climbing up my emotions: E, F sharp minor, G, A, just as I began to listen. The most emotive song about shipping forecasts ever written. It was like a tornado whipping all its power round and round into a tiny deadly funnel. I poured everything into that song. Volume up and up and up until the little speakers of the radio quivered and shook … I let it lift me up, too, and take me away from there. Away from the feeling of utter and complete loneliness and desolation, the feeling that nothing would ever be right again.

Damon Albarn almost howled the chorus out:
“This is a low, but it won’t hurt you / When you’re alone, it will be there with you/finding ways to stay solo …”

It did hurt me, though. God, it hurt me so much. But for the next five minutes, at least for that long, I could survive by letting the song take on my pain for me.

I couldn’t feel the light rising of Sam’s soul up toward a different world, but I imagined that this song was escorting her there, the chords and words, sentiment and volume, and my own feelings for her along with it.

As the song’s final bars faded out, it made it easier for me to understand that
She’s going to be fine
held much truer when it was not limited to a broken shell of a body.

FIFTY QUID

B
Y COINCIDENCE, OR PERHAPS SOME STRANGE SYNERGY, GUS FROM
New World phoned and left an urgent message for me to ring him back, on the day I was writing the final chapter of the manuscript. Whether it was urgent or not, however, I was utterly incapable of returning his call until the next day. By the time I’d completed the last words, about Sam’s poor broken body, I was absolutely
hammered
on vodka and was in no fit state to speak to anybody.

The only reason I even heard the phone’s distant ring was because I had just spilled an entire glass of vodka and pulpy orange juice all over my keyboard and had had to take a break from my frenzied weeping to try to wipe it up.

Drunkenness was essential to the operation. It was the only way I could bear to relive those memories without having “This Is a Low” to act as a dock-leaf on the sting, and I couldn’t play the record before the show. I’d set myself a strict embargo on all the tracks accompanying the manuscript, until the actual broadcast. When I listened to them all together for that one last time, I wanted them to have the maximum impact on me, in case I needed an extra spur to assist me in carrying out the Plan. They were not just little iridescent plastic CDs. They were computer disks with my memories stored on them, and I wanted them to remain as new and shiny as was possible under the circumstances.

Nonetheless, writing about Sam’s operation nearly finished me off. The vodka acted as an anesthetic, but not a particularly effective one. I had to keep drinking and drinking it, trying to remember the details objectively, and failing miserably.

On reflection, alcohol and sorrow never did go awfully well together. My brain-drilling headache informed me of this the next day, when the room had finally stopped spinning enough for me to locate the telephone and dial the number Gus had left on my machine.

“Gus? It’s Helena Nicholls. How are you?”

“Helena! I’m great, thanks—but more to the point, how are you? Why are you whispering?”

“Hideous hangover, that’s why. But otherwise fine, thanks. I got your message. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Right, well, I understand you sent Geoff a letter a couple of months ago, registering your interest in the two-to-four
A.M
. slot. He wrote you back, care of your agent, asking you to confirm a date, but we haven’t heard from you. Have you changed your mind? Or didn’t you get the letter?”

I guiltily remembered the letters I’d dumped unread in the bin, that day when Vinnie was lurking in the undergrowth.

“Um, no, I haven’t changed my mind.… Yes, I got the letter, I just, er, forgot to ring him with the date.”

“Not to worry. We’ve been having a reshuffle here, and if there’s any chance of you starting next week, Monday the twenty-eighth, that would be terrific. It would get us out of a hole, and it would just give us enough time to get your name in the listings.”

“I said I didn’t want any publicity!”

Raising my voice, even just to a faint, indignant squeak, caused the pressure in my head to build up still further, until I thought that steam would come out of my ears. I vowed not to drink another drop of booze until the day I died. Ho-ho.

“No, no, honestly, we won’t make a song and dance out of it. It’s just that we need a name to stick in the
TimeOuts
, and so on. Can’t leave a blank space, can we? Besides, no one’ll notice. Hardly anyone listens at that time of night, anyw—Well, what I mean is—”

“Oh, never mind, Gus. I know exactly what you mean.”

I could just see the headline:
DISGRACED DJ DEMOTED TO GRAVEYARD SHIFT
. Still, maybe a little bit of advance publicity for the Plan wouldn’t hurt.…

My feet suddenly turned into two immobile blocks of ice, at the realization that the endgame now had a date: Monday the twenty-eighth. The day I was scheduled to disappear off the face of the earth.

“All right, I’ll do it. Do I need to come in for a debriefing or anything?”

“No, you know the score. You’ve done it enough times. It’ll be just like the morning, only nighttime and without requests.”

What a wag.

Gus continued, “The security code is currently eight-one-five-seven. Don’t forget it, because no one else will be around at that time, unless you bump into Pete Harness and his producer on the way out. He’s taking over the eleven-to-two
A.M
. slot.”

“So who’s my producer, then?”

An important question, since he or she would be the last person to see me before I left. I found I’d stripped off a jagged piece of cuticle with my teeth, leaving a long white gash of flesh that instantly filled up with red spots of blood, which then dripped mercilessly onto the leg of my favorite combat trousers. Oh, well, I thought, won’t need to wash them again.

There was an embarrassed silence at the end of the line.

“I thought Geoff told you in his letter, Helena. You won’t have a producer at that time. Nobody does. Pete only has one that late because he does phone-in quizzes and things on his show.”

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this. If I’d planned to do the show long-term, I’d have been hideously affronted. It was like expecting Elizabeth the First to get dressed up for a state banquet on her own, with no one to lace her stays or hang jewels in her hair. It also meant that nobody would be manning the phones. It was just as well that I wasn’t intending to do a request show.

Gus must have picked up on my disgruntled train of thought. “No point having anyone taking calls at that time of night. We’d get all the axe murderers and child molesters ringing in if we did.”

“Oh, great,” I said, trying to sound like someone who cared who’d be listening. “My target audience.”

Maybe not having a producer was a good thing, if I could get over the humiliation. Practically speaking, it meant that I’d have the studio to myself.

I tried to be brisk. “Right, then, I think I’m set. Monday the twenty-eighth it is. I’ll give you a shout if I think of any other questions.”

“Good girl. Are you excited?”

How incredibly patronizing, I fumed. Were it not for the fact that Gus had given me my first DJ job, I’d have seriously gone off him by this point.

“No, Gus, to be honest, I can’t say that I am wildly excited by having to do the graveyard shift. But it’s a job, I suppose, and I’ll guarantee you this: It’ll be a show to remember!”

Gus laughed uncertainly. “You bet, Helena. Well, best of luck, then. I’ll check in with you after the first show, all right?”

On Saturday the twenty-sixth I donned my sunglasses, even though it was raining, and set off to Richmond for a very specific shopping mission. Sainsburys Home Shopping would probably have balked at delivering the items I wanted, so a personal expedition was required. I parked at a meter on the edge of the green and strolled cautiously into the town center, noticing how much less paranoid I felt being out in public—probably because I knew it was the last time. Oddbins was my first port of call, where I purchased a large bottle of gin—I didn’t care for gin, but the hangover was still too fresh in my memory to even think about vodka without retching.

Next I went into Boots and bought a jar of paracetamol and a Bart Simpson hot-water bottle cover (to try to make the pills look less suspicious). I’d planned to repeat the exercise in every other chemist in Richmond—minus the novelty hot-water bottle covers, of course—but after an hour of walking around, I had failed to locate any other pharmacies at all.

Bugger. I’d have to drive round instead, looking for those big green crosses outside buildings that signified chemists’ shops.

It struck me that buying booze and headache pills, and gathering together my favorite CDs, made it feel more as if I was planning a hen party with a bunch of girlfriends. Not that I
had
ever gone anywhere with a bunch of girlfriends, though. My girlfriends hadn’t come in bunches, like grapes, but as one perfect piece of fruit. Sam the Starfruit.

My meter was about to run out, so I headed back toward the green, going via W H Smith’s to buy a purple folder for the manuscript. The girl at the till got annoyed with me when I flung the money at her without waiting for my change, but I was paranoid about getting a parking ticket. It was funny how I could still be worried about such trivialities, I thought.

It began to rain again, just as I was circumnavigating the bald muddy patches of grass on Richmond Green, wondering once more why I bothered—I was planning to kill myself, but it was of paramount importance not to get mud on my Patrick Coxes or a parking fine before I did?

Head down, thinking aspirin, I was muttering to myself, “Only one bottle, well, that won’t get me very far, will it? Where else have I seen those big green crosses? Oh yeah, there’s that one in Twickenham, the Maple Leaf, and I’m sure there’s a couple in St. Margarets, too.… ”

“A couple of what?” said a familiar voice from behind my car.

I stood on a loose paving slab, and water squirted up my trouser leg. There appeared to be no escape from Vinnie.

“What are you doing here?” I glared at him as jaws of cold water sank into my left calf.

“Waiting for you, of course. Good thing you got back when you did; only a minute left on your meter, and a soggy, cross-looking traffic warden heading toward us as we speak. I’d hate to see you get a ticket, now.”

Vinnie tutted with mock-concern and leaned on my bonnet. As usual, my shock turned to fury.

“You’re happy to make a few hundred grand by selling pictures of me to the press, but you’d hate to see me get a parking ticket? Just go away, Vinnie. You make me sick.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong—I’m not happy to make money out of you, Helena,” he said, brushing a stray leaf off my windscreen. “That’s why I’m waiting for you. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Well, I don’t want to hear it,” I said shortly, pressing the button on my key ring to unlock the BMW. The little
pip
it made sounded as grumpy as I did.

“Oh, but you do,” said Vinnie, dancing round the driver’s side and putting his hand over mine as I tried to open the door.

I snatched it away. “Piss off, Vinnie, I’m not in the mood.”

Vinnie delved into a damp backpack and pulled out a hardback brown envelope. He thrust it at me. “There you go.”

“What is that?” I asked wearily.

“Prints and negatives. All there, none missing, I promise you.”

I stared at him. “None missing except the one you sold to the tabloids, right? When’s it coming out, then? I’ve been checking the papers, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

Vinnie laughed. “No, straight up. They’re all in there. I haven’t sold any of them. I’m giving them back to you.”

He dropped suddenly to his knees on the wet road and wrapped his arms around my thighs. “I’ve been a complete arse, Helena, I’m so, so sorry. You have to forgive me. For everything: Miyuki, Natalie, the photos—everything.”

Who’s Natalie? I thought.

“I miss you so much. Please take me back. I swear I’ll never let you down again. Marry me, Helena, please? I love you.”

My jaw dropped so far that even with its recently broken limited movement, it was close to clunking Vinnie on the top of his head as he groveled beseechingly before me.

I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever proposed to me before. Marry him?

It was lashing with rain now. I disengaged his arms and collapsed speechless into the car. Vinnie rushed back around and climbed into the passenger seat. We both sat there, dripping, until he turned and threw the envelope, Frisbee style, onto the backseat.

“What’s the matter with the photos? Were they all blurred or something?”

Vinnie looked hurt, more, I thought, because I was doubting his technical prowess as a photographer than because I was doubting
him
. He like to excel in all things.

“Of course they weren’t blurred. They’re great, as it happens, crystal clear. I’m telling you, I just feel like a heel for doing something so horrible to you. I was desperate, man. I got into a spot of bother with a dealer friend of mine—you know, I owe him some cash, and he’s not happy with me. That’s why I did it. If I’d been thinking straight, I’d never have done anything to hurt you.”

“But you didn’t sell them?”

“No. Look, I realized I was out of order.”

“So do you still owe him the money?”

Vinnie lit up a Gauloise, but I reached over, extracted it from between his lips, and threw it out my door. We watched it roll away across the tarmac, sparking red, to lie disconsolately in the gutter.

“I can’t stand you smoking in my car,” I said.

“Sorry,” Vinnie replied humbly.

I decided to make a generous gesture. He was obviously in trouble. “Listen. I don’t mind if you want to flog all that equipment I bought you—the computer and stuff—to pay off your debts.”

Vinnie looked away, and I realized that he’d sold them long ago.

“Oh, right, I see. Cheers, then,” I said.

I hadn’t realized he had such a bad drug problem. Or perhaps he owed money because he was dealing? I wouldn’t have put it past him. Either way, I didn’t really want to know.