Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

Frank smiled and stood up to kiss her. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been enjoying the ambience.’

‘Oh, I bet.’ Michelle sat with her back to the other tables and ordered a spritzer. She asked lots of questions about Frank and Andrea and Mo before Frank was able to speak.

‘What about you? How have you been?’

‘Fine, yeah fine.’

Frank frowned at her.

‘You don’t have to say that.’

Michelle smiled. ‘Okay.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Well, since the funeral, in chronological order, I’ve been bad, really bad, terrible, better and now okay, I think, or close to it.’

‘We tried calling, but it was always the answerphone. You should have called us when you were having a rough time.’

‘No offence, Frank, but what could you do? What could anyone do? I had to get through it. I went away. After the circus of the funeral I had to get out of the country. The scale of the reaction just freaked me out. I know it wasn’t that extreme — Phil wasn’t Princess Di — but even at his level of fame it felt so inappropriate, so invasive.’

‘Were people bothering you?’

‘I’m probably overreacting, but I never really got it. I never got who those people were who used to write to Phil when he was alive — his agent got letters every week from fans. Who writes to TV celebrities? Maybe if you’re a kid and you have a crush — but to Phil? I can’t see him being a teen pin-up. So it was just more of that, much more. Death seems to bring them all out of the woodwork. I had letters from people saying they’d cried more than when their own fathers had died. Can you believe that? Maybe I should have been touched, but I just thought they were tapped.’

Frank thought of the kinds of letters and emails he received each day, the endless ways in which people construed and interpreted you once your face was on television. The baffling array of purposes they thought you served. He had letters asking him for directions and for recommendations of dry cleaners, letters telling him about Jesus, letters telling him he was a wanker, letters telling him he brightened up their mother’s day, letters asking for photographs and letters containing photos of their own. He knew the number he received each week would be nothing to the volume that Phil had got. Phil hadn’t looked and certainly hadn’t acted like a man in his early sixties when he made his transition to national TV. In just fifteen years he’d become an institution. The nation’s favourite older man, twinkly yet suave.

Michelle shrugged. ‘I suppose people can’t deal with the shock of death. Even at seventy-eight. It’s something that we never really absorb. He was on telly every Saturday night; he couldn’t just suddenly die.’ She fell quiet for a moment. ‘I felt the same way.’ Tears started to leak.

Frank gave her a tissue.

‘I still can’t believe it. It’s so stupid. Of course I knew the age difference when I met Phil. Nearly forty years — you can’t overlook that — but I always just thought of that in terms of him being elderly before me. I never thought of him dead. I thought I’d have to look after him in his old age and that was fine. I know it’s corny, but I believed in the wedding vows. It never occurred to me that he’d go so suddenly, before I even had a chance to take care of him properly, when he needed it.’

Frank shook his head. ‘You were together twenty years. You took care of him.’

Michelle smiled, but she looked unconvinced. ‘So, anyway, I went abroad — Spain, Portugal, Italy. I don’t know what the hell I was doing. Running away, I suppose. Lying on beaches, eating too much, drinking too much, feeling lonely and a mess. I came home, spent time with friends, got my head straight, sold the house and then this whole TV thing came along.’

The TV thing was a new career for Michelle as the host of a makeover programme called Tough Love . During her marriage to Phil she had become a regular guest on chat shows and celebrity quiz shows. She was pretty, laughed in the right places and was married to a famous man; no other reason was needed. Since Phil’s death, though, her career had taken off with Tough Love . Andrea loathed it; Mo loved it.

‘Now I get the bloody letters. Only mine are more extreme. I’m their inspiration or they want to kill me. Women are so vicious. Anyway, I’ve got a place here that’s handy for the studio, a place down in London and a villa in Almeria. I’m busy working and sorting the houses and busy is good.’

Frank smiled. ‘How do you like life in Byron’s Common?’

‘It’s weird, isn’t it? Toytown. My sister visited and said she thought a big white ball would chase us if we tried to leave. I like it, though. It’s wipe-clean.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Mo liked it for the same reasons.’

‘You know, on the programme, it’s all before and after. And the before is always rubbish and ugly and sad. I like it here because there’s no before, only after.’

Frank thought that with him it was always before. It was after he had a problem with. He remembered Michael Church. ‘While you’re here, I wanted to ask you something. Will you look at a photo for me and tell me if you recognize a face?’ He pulled the photo out and placed it on the table in front of Michelle.

She looked puzzled for a moment and then smiled. ‘Oh my God, it’s Phil. Wasn’t he handsome when he was young? I mean he was handsome when he was old, but just look at him. Those eyes. I’ve never seen one of him this young before. His old photos got lost along the way somewhere. What a charmer. Who’s the other boy?’

‘That’s what I was hoping you might tell me. His name is Michael Church. Do you recognize him at all? Can you remember Phil ever mentioning him?’

Michelle peered at the photo for some time. ‘No, sorry. I don’t recognize him.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Maybe the name … I don’t know. “Michael” is ringing a vague bell, but I can’t think from where. It’s not an uncommon name, though, so it’s probably the wrong one.’

Frank shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was just trying to figure out who he was. It’s not important.’

Michelle looked at her watch and swore. ‘Shit, I’ve got to go. My whole day is half an hour out of whack. There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, but it will have to wait. I’ll call you, okay?’

He stood up to kiss her goodbye. As she left, all the women in the bar turned and watched her go, their faces as unreadable as the skulls on the walls.

There isn’t any discernible transition between sleep and consciousness, no gradual surfacing, no sudden disturbance. He just finds himself fully awake, lying in bed, and when he looks at the clock it’s always around three. It’s jet lag without the long-haul flights. His body clock has shifted to a rhythm that beats out of time with his life and his routines. He’s had a year of it now. He knows that nothing he tries will send him back to sleep until the half hour around six, when his thoughts will lose their edges and he’ll drift into dreams for two hours before he hears Michelle moving around and making their morning cup of coffee.

Michelle has a remarkable aptitude for sleep. Like a doll her eyes seem to close automatically as she lies down, and then stay shut for the nine hours or so until she sits up again in the morning. She is able to sleep at will, and Phil has often envied her ability to simply switch herself off for the duration of long, dull journeys or tedious plays. He knows she won’t wake, but still he moves the duvet gently and shuts the door quietly behind him.

He’s never sure which is worse, lying in bed awake, or wandering around the house in the middle of the night. He seems to feel more isolated when he gets up. When he lies awake in bed, he knows that he is at least in the customary place and position for three in the morning. Once he’s up he feels as if he is setting himself against nature. Something about turning lights on in cold, empty rooms and seeing the blackness outside the window makes him feel nauseous.