Friends Like Us (23 page)

Melissa ignore him. ‘So, technically six.'

‘But
actually
five,' said Jimbo.

‘Six, of course,' said Lulu, ‘my mistake. Anyway, it's a real honour to meet you.'

‘And it's very nice to meet you, Lulu. Did you pass? You know, your dissertation?'

‘Yes, I received a double first and have just been in the States – at the Columbia School of Journalism. And now I'm… here!'

Melissa fully expected her to do a twirl.

‘I have been reading your work since I was fifteen…'

‘That long? I don't know if I've been writing that long…'

‘It's not long, really,' Lulu assured her. ‘I'm twenty-five.'

‘That young?'

Lulu laughed again and Melissa and Jimbo exchanged eyebrow raises. And then Lulu suddenly stopped and looked deadly serious. ‘The thing is, I want to be you.'

‘Me? You want to be me?'

‘Yes! You, if you don't mind. Well not exactly
you
. You but me, if you see what I mean? Would you mind?' Lulu held up her phone and smiled at the camera and had tweeted it before Melissa knew what was happening, but she could see that in the photo she was open-mouthed and double-chinned. And those were definitely the remnants of her breakfast on her jumper. And why on earth would this fresh-faced 25-year-old want to be her when she could be
anyone
?

‘Thanks so much! I know we are going to be so close. Mentor!' Lulu put her hand out for a fist bump. Melissa bumped back, awkwardly. She could see Jimbo was laughing. Behind his beard.

Lulu was looking at her phone. ‘Right, I've got a meeting with Mr Connelly in eight minutes. He's asked me to bring a few ideas. I have forty-five. Is that enough?' She looked worried.

‘No, I think you have enough. Doesn't she, Jimbo?'

‘Aye, she does that,' he said, nodding. ‘Definitely enough. I haven't had an idea since 1986.'

‘And that was when you devised a plan to make a mobile out of Hula Hoops so you could eat crisps while you worked.'

‘Aye. Must see if that patent has expired…'

Lulu clearly wasn't quite sure if they were joking or not. ‘Excuse me a moment… see you in a while…' She disappeared.

Melissa and Jimbo just looked at each other.

‘Mentor?' Melissa looked perplexed. ‘Moi?'

‘Mental more like.'

‘Are all young people like that these days? Is that normal? I suddenly feel like I need a sit down,' said Melissa. ‘And my slippers. Maybe a nice watch of afternoon telly, like
Countdown
. And a mug of Ovaltine.'

‘That, my dear,' said Jimbo, ‘is the new generation. They are like a relentless robot army – shinier, newer, sleeker than us. We're over. We may as well go home.'

‘I feel useless all of a sudden,' she said.

‘Actually I feel the opposite. I need to rig up my Hula Hoop mobile… I had forgotten just how good my ideas used to be…'

‘Jimbo?'

‘Aye?'

‘I'm sorry.' The sight of Jimbo naked kept interrupting her waking thoughts, like newsflashes. She could only imagine Jimbo suffered the same mortification.

He looked at her. ‘It's grand,' he said. And that was it. They were moving on. ‘Let's have a custard cream, shall we?' he said. ‘I can't work on an empty stomach.'

Later, things were so normal that they went for a quick drink and a moan in their usual seats in Fallon's. Melissa was on the sparkling water – she had decided that a clear head was what she needed after what had happened with Jimbo - which made going to the pub an ordeal rather than a pleasure, removing the very point of a pub. She made the best of it by ordering crisps, which slightly enlivened and elevated the occasion.

They were moaning together – always a shared pleasure – about Liam and the direction towards tabloid populism. But, perhaps, higher circulation. This weekend's paper was not leading with Melissa's story but something by a freelancer. A mea culpa of a minor pop star who slept with his make-up artist while his wife gave birth in hospital. He manager had decided that he should say how difficult he had found fame, how stressed he was after the loss of his labradoodle who had been run over by the drummer in the band. It was the usual career-saving pointless exercise that meant little or nothing to anyone except the popstar, the wife and the dog.

Melissa was failing in her attempt to be magnanimous, but she was really furious. She usually led the weekend features section, as she was, after all, chief features writer, and the Saturday issue was their department's most important day. She pushed a handful of crisps into her mouth.

‘These count as one of your five a day, don't they Jimbo?' she asked.

‘Aye, if they're cheese and onion. It's the onion that makes them healthy.'

They shared the packet, like an old married couple eating chips at the seaside, licking their fingers.

‘Another one of those… whatever it is. Is it even a drink?' Jimbo pointed at her glass, the lone lemon looking as appropriately desultory.

‘Yes, Jimbo, water is a drink. You can have it all on its own as well. It's not just a mixer for whiskey, you know?'

Jimbo pulled a face as if to say, ‘I have no idea what you are saying', and stood up to get a round in. A voice interrupted.

‘I'll get them. My pleasure for the hardest working writers in Ireland.' They looked up. Liam was standing there, smiling his infuriating smile. ‘G&T for you, Melissa? Pint, Jimbo?'

‘She's on the water. The bubbly kind,' said Jimbo.

‘Melissa!' Liam pretended to be shocked. ‘And you a journalist. What is the world coming to? They'll be asking for your NUJ card back next.'

They reluctantly shifted up in their seats to make room for him, annoyed that their moaning session was at an end. Liam returned with the drinks balanced in his large hands, packets of bacon fries in his teeth.

‘Not still sulking are you? Surely you are loftier than that?' he asked Melissa. ‘Or maybe not?'

She scowled unprofessionally. ‘It's a good story. It should have been the lead.'

He looked at her and… shrugged. ‘It's all right. I mean, it's not Watergate. It's not even Pat the Hat.' The latter was last month's big scoop, broken by the
Evening Express
, their rival newspaper. It had involved a senior politician who had a penchant both for headwear and young men while extolling the primacy of the heterosexual home.

‘Maybe not. But it still deserves Page One.' Melissa began to doubt herself. Maybe it wasn't that good. Maybe her story about a couple who had been denied council housing because of complaints on the estate wasn't such a good story. Maybe she was losing her touch. She didn't know what to say.

‘Melissa…' he grinned at her, showing that he knew he was annoying her, ‘I like you. I think you are a great girl…'

‘A great
girl
?' She raised an eyebrow. She knew he was goading her, but she was too exhausted to resist the bait.

‘Woman, then. And you, Jimbo…'

‘A great man?'

‘I am sure you are, Jimbo. I'm sure you are. You're mother, I imagine, would be the first to concur.'

‘I wouldn't be too sure of that,' said Jimbo.

‘But…?' said Melissa.

‘But?' Liam took a long soak from his pint glass.

‘But what?' said Melissa. ‘I'm great, Jimbo's great, the paper's great. We're all fecking great. But where's the but?'

‘But…' he said, ‘we are not selling papers. The point of our very existence is to sell papers, but we are failing at that quite spectacularly. And we are not selling them. Our circulation is going down. And so, my dears, things have to change. Which I know no one likes and no one finds easy.' He was smiling at them. He wanted them to understand that this world they were in was changing and they had to find a way of changing with it. ‘We need to increase our on-line presence and stories about people on the breadline are not click-bait.'

‘We know that,' said Melissa. ‘But you place so much emphasis – too much I would say - on entertainment and not the important things…'

‘What?' Liam was laughing now. ‘Is it the fact I'm from the West of Ireland and not the posher parts of Dublin, like the rest of the media mafia?' He shrugged again, looking distinctly unbothered.

‘I'm from Belfast,' said Jimbo. ‘There's nothing fancy about Belfast.'

‘Well, here's to us outsiders,' said Liam, clinking his pint to Jimbo's. ‘Here's to Belfast.'

‘No… it's not that, it's…' Melissa tried to get the conversation back on track but struggled to explain herself.

‘Melissa, listen to me.' Liam put down his pint. ‘This paper is fecked. This country is fecked, if you hadn't realized. And if you have been working all fecking week doing a shitty job and then on Saturday, your glorious day of leisure, your paper of choice, decides you should read about people with even shittier lives than you, then that's a bit fecking depressing, don't you think?'

‘No…' But she didn't sound convinced. ‘I…'

‘Well, believe me it is. It's pretty fecking depressing to read about the hovels that some people are forced to live in, and their crappy lives. It may be important, we all know that. We know we should be reading about people on the breadline, but we don't actually want to. And that's why we are not only haemorrhaging readers, my dear bleeding heart liberal, we, as a newspaper are barely alive. We are on life-fecking-support. People, after five wrecking, horrible days of cleaning toilets, driving buses, or being shouted at by pricks like me, they want a bit of… what do you fancy folk here in Dublin 4 call it… is it razzmatazz? A bit of fun, a bit of enter-fecking-tainment. Is that too much to ask?'

‘No.' Her voice was quiet.

‘You nice Dublin 4 girls, you don't know what it's like to throw a shovel on your back and break your bollocks for some bollocks on a building site, do you?'

‘No.'

‘Well I do, and the last thing I would want to read about is fecking lesbians. I don't care about their rights, not here, not on this paper. It's called escapism. And that's what we want – it's what we need – in the paper if we are to survive. I mean, for feck's sake, hardly anyone reads fecking newspapers anymore and they certainly don't want to read anything serious. We'll do it, but it's not our lead.'

He took a long drink of his pint. He put it down and smiled broadly at them. ‘Just had to get that off my chest,' he said. ‘Feel better now.'

‘So glad for you,' said Melissa. ‘So what do you want me to write about? What do you think would get people so amazingly excited that they would actually get off their arses and buy the fucking paper?'

‘Oh I don't know. Just not fecking lesbians! Anything but lesbians… you're obsessed with them! Every fecking copy has a lesbian in it…'

‘They don't! Jesus! Anyway…'

He wasn't listening but he was smiling. ‘Now, here's an idea. What about going off and having a fecking vajazzle – or whatever it's called – and telling everyone about it.' He laughed at his own brilliance while Melissa perfected her most withering of looks. Jimbo took a large slurp of his pint.

‘I'm a journalist. Not a… a… an idiot,' she said.

‘Yes… but, and this bit is crucial, people would read it. It's called entertaining people.'

‘So what
are
we leading with? What's this idea of Lulu's?'

‘Lulu's done a piece on sexting.'

‘
Sexting
?'

‘You know, when you send a photograph of your genitalia to someone and they forward it on to all their friends and it ends up on Facebook and you lose your job. It's all the rage. That never happened to you, Melissa?'

‘No. No it hasn't.'

‘Jimbo?'

‘Not lately,' Jimbo admitted. ‘But I'm hoping I won't have too long a wait. I don't want to deprive the world of my magnificent tackle.'

Liam laughed loudly but Melissa squirmed in her seat. She didn't want to be reminded of Jimbo's tackle and she didn't recall anything particularly magnificent about it.

‘People will read it, Melissa,' said Liam, appealing to her. ‘It has everything: lurid, funny, and gossipy.
You
would fucking read it! And by Sunday it'll be yesterday's entertainment and the world moves on. People work hard, Melissa, let's just give them a bit of fun. Is that too much to ask?' He did big puppy-dog eyes. ‘Please?'

‘Liam, you're wrong. People need the serious stuff, the important things…'

‘Yes, but not if you want readers. Bring me something fun, Melissa. Just don't make it about lesbians.'

Melissa finished her water. ‘Gentlemen, if you'd excuse me. I will see you in the morning but I think I'm going home. And by the way, Liam, I'm not from fecking D4.'

‘So where are ye from?'

‘Glenageary!'

He laughed. ‘Same thing! Same thing!' he hooted.

In the bed at the hospital was Mrs O'Malley, Charlie's mother. Oh dear, Eilis thought. I hope she's okay. Poor Charlie. He'd be so worried. She suddenly was desperate that he might be there with her and looked around but no handsome head lurked anywhere.

‘Mrs O'Malley? You're back again?' Eilis smiled at the small and frail figure on the bed, a sheet pulled over her, her handbag on the chair beside her. She'd just been seen by Mr Kapil and was now waiting for tests.

‘I can't keep away it seems.'

‘No, we have that effect on people… we're the place to be.'

The old woman tried to smile.

‘So…' said Eilis, reading the notes, ‘you fell again. We're going to have to do something about that. We'll have to have a special bed for you.'