Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (8 page)

I pick up the phone and take a deep breath, then hang up the phone, then pick it up again, then do a quite creative visualization of me in the Vera Wang with my headless groom, then hang the phone up again.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.

Isn't there an easier way for me to find my husband? Maybe there's some internet chat room for
the over thirty-fives that I don't know about?
www.sadcow.com
? Just then, my eye falls on a TV monitor in the corner of my office, with a live feed from the studio floor.

It's a full close-up of Cara O'Keefe with glycerine tears (an old actor's trick so you can get the wet-eyed look, minus the dribbly nose) streeling down her over-made-up face.

Cara, I should point out, is
Celtic Tigers
's leading lady who plays the part of Glenda, a girl-next-door type of character, hugely popular with the audience, kind of our answer to Jennifer Aniston in
Friends
. But, unfortunately, life does not imitate art. In reality, she's vain, arrogant, self-obsessed and to call her a nightmare to work with would be an insult to nightmares. I'm not kidding, in interviews she describes herself as ‘a diamond in the audience's dull grey lives'. You'd swear it was her job description. Her strops are terrifyingly regular and have become the stuff of legend upstairs in the production office, where the running gags among us are (
a
) that her scenes have to be shot at night so she can go back to her crypt in daylight, and (
b
) that she signs all her autographs in blood. We even have a nickname for her: ‘Good Grief O'Keefe'.

‘I just want to stay married to you, Sebastian,' she's saying, mouthing her lines in a way I swear she's copied directly from Julianne Moore. ‘I want nothing more from this life than to be happily married to the right guy.'

It's a sign. Not a very well-acted sign, but it's a sign.

I turn the sound down on the monitor and pick up the phone again. How hard can this be? I'm a TV executive. When I was on current affairs, I used to produce shows that interviewed government ministers and asked them really difficult Jeremy Paxman-type questions. I'm not joking; we once had the Minister for Finance close to tears. Big ratings hit. OK, so I'm only deputizing on
Celtic Tigers
but I still make big important decisions about … oh, I dunno … cast coffee breaks and whether they should have digestive biscuits or Jaffa Cakes on said breaks, every day of the week.

My point is that if I can do all that, then I can make this one simple, albeit embarrassing phone call. If I'd put half the energy into finding my husband that I did into my career, I'd have been married years ago and now would probably be worrying about getting places for my kids in posh boarding schools.

Right. That's it. Decision made.

I'm poised, just about to dial, when my mobile rings.

‘Hey, Amelia babes, just HAD to fess up and tell all about my close encounter of the nerd kind on Saturday.'

Jamie. Straight to the point, as always. There's never any kind of preamble on the phone with him, nothing as mundane as a ‘hello' or a ‘how are you', he just cuts right to the chase.

‘So José Miguel asks me out for dinner after the audition and he takes me to that new fifties theme restaurant on Talbot Street. Well, all I can say is, the Hard Rock Café has better crap.'

‘Jamie, number one, I'm in work and number two, the Lovely Girls are barely speaking to you after you so callously stood us up on Saturday.'

‘Oh dear, I was hoping the bitch fest would be over by now.'

I smile in spite of myself. It's impossible to stay mad at Jamie for very long; he just uses charm and humour to get around me. With one hundred per cent success every time.

‘So we're sitting in this car crash of a restaurant eating chunky chips and cremated burgers and José Miguel says' – at this point he launches into a very passable impression of Manuel from
Fawlty Towers
– ‘ “If I cast you, you must have
passion,
real
passion
.” So I say, “I
do
! I do have passion. I have passion for the play, I have passion for the part,” and I'm about to say, I could very easily be persuaded into having passion for you, when he says, “No, no, you no understand. You must have
passion
with my English.” Geddit?'

‘Passion, passion …' I reply absently. ‘Oh, he meant
patience
.'

I can almost hear the sound of Jamie's eyes rolling. ‘You're like quicksilver. If I ever get on
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
will you be my phone-a-friend?'

‘So did you get the part?'

‘Won't know till later today. I'll call you the minute. I think he fancies me though. Well, could you blame him? He's only human.'

‘OK. You need to get off the phone now, honey. I'm about to call Teri Taylor and you're eroding my resolve.'

‘Oh my Gowwwwd! And what'll you say if she answers the phone? Hi, remember me? Your son was my first boyfriend all of twenty years ago and I'm trying to track him down so I can figure out where I'm going wrong with all my exes. Be sure and tell her you're sane, won't you? She could so easily get the wrong idea.'

‘I know, I know,' I reply, nervously doodling on the Yellow Pages in front of me. A bridal veil/headless groom doodle … ‘I'm well aware of how it sounds, but if I don't do it now, I never will. Anyway, what's the worst that can happen? It's not like I'm ever going to see these people again.'

‘Any idea of what Greg did after college?'

‘Well, I did bump into Teri in the supermarket, years and years ago, and she said he'd gone to the States. Apparently he was working as the night manager of some flashy, posh hotel.'

‘Nightwatchman, more like. So what will you do if he's still abroad?'

‘I don't know. I'll think of something.'

‘Have you really thought this through?'

‘Yes. I mean no. I mean … Well, I don't have to meet up with him. I could just talk to him on the phone, couldn't I? Probably a lot easier too. Less embarrassing.'

‘Honey, I've had rectal examinations that were less embarrassing than what you're about to do.'

‘Well, I don't expect to come out of this smelling like guest-room soap, but it's worth a try.'

‘So there's nothing I can do to talk you out of this?'

‘No.'

‘Great, because, if I'm honest, there's nothing I want to do. It's such fun being in the same century as you.'

‘Hang up, I'll call you straight back.'

Jamie's right, of course. It has, after all, been over twenty years. Greg Taylor could be in any part of the world, doing anything for all I know. He was always smart and ambitious when I knew him; when he left school, he was voted ‘Person most likely to do anything'. Happy, successful and married with a large family by now, most likely.

Come on, I tell myself sternly. Concentrate, regroup. What's my end goal?
A husband by the end of the year …
Yes, it's a tall order on the universe, I know, but if this is what it's going to take …

I pick up the phone and dial.

‘Good morning, Teri Taylor Design Consultants, how may I direct your call?' A woman's voice, bright and chirpy.

‘Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I'd like to speak to Mrs Taylor please.'
Keep it cool and businesslike
, I tell myself.
Try not to sound like a mumbling stroke victim …

‘Oh, I'm very sorry,' says the woman, sounding like she really means it, ‘but Teri has retired. She does come into the showrooms to see us occasionally, but doesn't actually work here any more. Can anyone else on our design team be of any help to you?'

‘Well, it's kind of personal really. Do you have an address where I can contact her?'

‘You're very welcome to contact her care of this address. I'll make sure she gets it. Is she a friend of yours?'

What the hell, I figure; I've absolutely nothing to lose by being honest. ‘Actually, it's her son Greg that I'm trying to contact. We've known each other since our school days.'

‘And you're organizing a class reunion, are you?'

Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?
‘Yes, it's a kind of reunion. Of sorts. I don't suppose by any chance you know what corner of the globe he's in, do you?'

‘Should be in Raheny by now.'

‘What did you say?' In all my imagined scenarios of where Greg Taylor could possibly be living and working now, Raheny didn't figure at all.

‘Yes, he's driving our delivery van and he had some curtains to drop off for a client there. He should be back in the office very shortly, though. Can I get him to contact you?'

Great embarrassing places of our time where your mobile can go off.

1. While in a public loo.

2. While driving the car with a motorbike cop right beside you.

3. While in the middle of a crisis meeting with the head of television to discuss the sharply falling ratings on
Celtic Tigers
and, even more worryingly, the consequential drop in advertising revenue.

‘The Axeman cometh,' Dave Bruton whispers to me as we all file into the television centre's very scary-looking boardroom for a last-minute emergency summit meeting. All the department heads have been hastily summoned; everyone's just had to drop everything. And by everyone, I really mean everyone. Scripting, design, wardrobe, make-up: they're all sitting
round the table, with the same bewildered look of ‘what's about to happen?'

The meeting is chaired by one Philip Burke, the head of television, a man so important he's actually my boss's boss.

I've never met him before, although I know him by reputation as someone tough and uncompromising, slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. He's young to be doing such a huge job, no more than late thirties I'm guessing, slightly grey around the temples and with that washed-out, exhausted look all television executives seem to develop after a couple of years at the top. He's not handsome, he's not ugly, he's somewhere in between … Pugly. If he was played by a Hollywood actor it would have to be … Sean Penn.

I also note with interest that he's single.

It's almost like a reflex action with me now. Whenever I meet any semi-attractive man, my eye will instantly fall to the ring finger of their left hand to clock whether or not there's a wedding band. Which, in this case, there isn't. Well, can you blame a girl for keeping her options open?

He shoots straight from the hip. ‘OK, people. Bad news and worse news. Which do you want first?'

There's a long silence. After all, there's direct and then there's stealth-missile direct. Eventually someone pipes up, ‘Let's get the bad news out of the way, then.'

Philip Burke picks up a computer printout ratings
sheet. ‘The episode of
Celtic Tigers
broadcast last Saturday night attracted a viewership of fewer than four hundred thousand; that's an overall drop of
thirty per cent
on last month's Nielsen ratings. Not to put too fine a point on it, this trend is not good enough and can't be allowed to continue. Any ideas why this is happening?'

Sharon Quinn, head of marketing, pipes up. ‘Well, Philip, we've recently experienced a lot of fundamental shifts in our audience demographic—'

‘Coupled with the overall crappiness of the show, you mean,' he cuts right across her.

More surprised looks. We're not really used to straight talkers round here.

‘I'm sorry,' he goes on, not raising his voice and being all the more effective for it, ‘but aside from the Angelus and reruns of
The Little House on the Prairie
, this is now our lowest-rated programme. Did any of you people actually bother to watch Saturday night's transmission? One character comes out of a coma and half an hour later is engaged to his ex-wife's identical twin sister? Have you people lost all grip on reality?'

God, he's
really
scary …

‘Excuse me, Philip,' Sharon retorts defensively. ‘I agree with you that some of the plotlines are a tad far-fetched, but surely you accept that that's a conceit of soap opera? It's probably the only medium where
characters can walk out of showers and we can claim the last few years have all been one big dream. All drama is about suspension of disbelief.'

‘Not a good enough argument,' says Philip. ‘Which one of you is Amelia Lockwood?'

I gingerly put my hand up.

‘Oh, there you are, hi,' he says, as if he hadn't really noticed me before. ‘OK, I know you're only babysitting the show till Jayne Lawler gets back, but as deputy producer, what are your thoughts?'

He's looking at me the way a scientist looks down a microscope and it flashes through my mind that he'd be a terrific boss on one of those reality TV shows like
The Apprentice
. A bit like Donald Trump, I'm half expecting him to swivel around in his leather chair and say, ‘You're fired.'

I have to tread very carefully here because (
a
) I'm the new girl on the block; (
b
) the storylines have been in place for at least six months before I was drafted in, so in a way, I inherited all the I am-your-long-lost-twin-sister stuff which is being aired at the moment; and most importantly of all, (
c
) I actually find myself agreeing with Philip Burke. What he
doesn't
know is that there's even worse to come. Only last night I was reading ahead on next month's shooting scripts and found myself wincing at yet another outlandishly farfetched plotline, this time involving one character who's convinced he's seen a UFO driving through the
fog one night, but it turns out to be the lights from a late-night Multiplex cinema.