Chapter Thirty-Five
Joe
I was standing outside the BBC on Langham Street plucking up the courage to go in. Carl was already inside waiting for me, and had texted me multiple times to make sure I was on time. We had a meeting with the head of comedy and drama, the head of output, the head of format, director of creativity and inclusivity, and someone else whose title I hadn’t yet been made aware of. This was it. I’d had a meeting with Carl two weeks before where he had told me that the BBC loved the script, loved the idea of working with me again, and all I had to do was show up for a meeting to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. They were so worried about losing another sitcom to Channel 4, Netflix, Amazon, or basically anyone else who might be interested, that Carl was convinced everything was in my favour. I wasn’t letting myself get carried away though because this was television and it was, if anything, fickle. One moment you were the flavour of the month and the next you were the flavour nobody ordered and had to get taken off the menu because they literally couldn’t give it away.
I took a deep breath, then I started walking towards the building, ready to hopefully begin the next chapter of my life.
The last few weeks with Freya had been challenging to say the least. After our big argument we had barely spoken, but then we got together to celebrate Dolly’s A-level results, and I laid everything on the line. I was ready to try again, I would see a marriage counsellor, and I told her I still loved her because I did. Perhaps it had taken losing her to realise just how much I wanted her, but I had been too late. She hadn’t wanted to discuss it then, said she needed space and time, and I had given her nothing but space and time and still she hadn’t said anything. She had moved home at least, and we had settled into patterns of uneasy communication around each other, which was somewhat unsettling. Obviously, I was too late with my big speech, and now it felt like we were just waiting for Dolly to move to Durham at the end of September. Freya was off to New York for a week with her Cold Water Club ladies, and I had this meeting. All talk of us had been postponed until an unknown time in the future. I had been trying not to think about it too much because I needed this meeting to go well. This felt like a tipping point.
I met Carl in reception, and we were greeted by a young girl called Lottie, who took us up to a meeting room where we were met by the BBC team, headed by the head of comedy and drama, Peter Darcy-Hopkins. He was fifty-something, tall and dressed in a navy suit.
‘Joe, it’s wonderful to finally put a name to a face,’ said Peter, in a posh voice.
‘You, too,’ I replied.
‘Carl, welcome. Right, Lottie, umm, coffee for everyone, and pastries,’ said Peter, and then Lottie left the room. ‘Right. Joe, this is Magda Blackman, head of output, Jacinda B, senior communications officer, Jasper Hynes, head of format, director of creativity and inclusivity, and that was Lottie Whitehall, my personal PA.’
‘It’s lovely to meet you all,’ I said, and we sat at a long wooden table in a trendy and contemporary meeting room. The energy of the BBC was just as I remembered it when I first met to discuss The Mornings all those years ago. The people had changed but the vibe was very much the same. It felt good to be back on the inside again, after years of feeling like I was in the wilderness.
‘Right, let’s start by talking about The Mornings ,’ said Peter.
‘Loved it!’ said Magda Blackman. ‘I must have watched it at least ten times.’
‘Yes, we all loved it,’ said Peter. ‘But that was very much then, and this is definitely now.’
Lottie opened the door to our room, and returned with a tray full of coffee, before she left and then returned with another tray of pastries. Everyone immediately started helping themselves. Carl was next to me, and he just had a coffee, while I grabbed an apple Danish and a coffee. After she was done, Lottie took a seat at the table.
‘The thing is, Joe, that we love House Shared ,’ said Peter, a pain au chocolat in his hand. ‘And it’s exactly the sort of thing we want to add to our line-up.’
‘Right, great,’ I said, taking a sip of coffee, which had definitely improved over the years.
‘Yes, it is rather great,’ said Peter. ‘The thing is, we had an idea, or rather Jasper had an idea, didn’t you, Jasper?’
‘I did,’ said Jasper. Jasper was younger than Peter, perhaps early forties, dark hair, well groomed, with a colourful yellow tie, and he had a northern accent of some sort. Leeds? ‘And this is the idea. Are you ready?’
I looked at Carl, who nodded at me.
‘Ready,’ I replied.
‘What if, and this is very much a what-if scenario, but what if we took House Shared and expanded it, this way, that way, and perhaps if needed, another way?’ said Jasper, using his hands to fully demonstrate all the ways in which House Shared could be expanded.
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me,’ I replied. ‘What do you mean by expanded?’
‘That’s the exciting bit!’ said Jasper. ‘That’s entirely up to you!’
‘In many ways, what Jasper is trying to say,’ chipped in Peter, when he could see the look of complete and utter bafflement that had moved onto my face, ‘is that we love House Shared in its current format, but perhaps there is room to add to it, certainly in terms of content and perhaps also format.’
‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ said Carl. ‘What is it that you’re saying, exactly?’
‘The thing is, we loved the show, but I also thought that maybe it could be more than just a sitcom in the literal sense of the term, “sitcom”,’ said Jasper, not really adding an awful lot of clarity.
‘I think, and correct me if I’m wrong here,’ said Jacinda B, senior communications officer. ‘What we’re trying to convey from a communications perspective is that we think House Shared has the potential to be a flagship programme for the BBC, and instead of the usual six episodes and a Christmas special format that historically most sitcoms tend to follow, we’d like to really expand it and take it further.’
‘Exactly,’ said Peter, still with a pain au chocolat in his hand. ‘The idea of it, of two people trapped in a marriage, under the same roof, but clearly still in love, but not, separated but together, and the daughter, Cold Water Club… the whole thing felt, to me at least, like it was such a wonderful concept that we wanted to see what you thought about making it bigger.’
‘Bigger?’ I asked.
‘Basically, in a nutshell, what we are suggesting is either to expand the number of episodes in a series, or, and I think this is really quite interesting, to make each episode longer,’ said Peter.
‘We’ll need time to think about this,’ said Carl. ‘It will require more time, money, and Joe will need some specifics on what exactly it is you’re after.’
‘Right, yes, of course,’ said Peter. ‘But I think I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that we have the time, the money, and the specificity required to make this happen.’
I was completely blown away by the meeting because they were clearly already on board with the show and wanted more of it. In my head, it was already six episodes long, but perhaps we could expand it and either write more episodes or make each episode longer if that’s what they wanted. We spoke more about the specifics of the new expanded version of the script, and of what might actually happen, given it was now going to be bigger. There was talk of large amounts of money being offered to me to spend the next six months working with the BBC to develop the show. They were essentially offering me the keys to the BBC kingdom because they believed in the show and thought it could be something quite special.
I sat with Carl, who did his best to chip in with suggestions, and Carl and Peter were going to meet later in the week to discuss the details of the contract. All in all, the meeting was a triumph. Once all the coffee and pastries were gone, we wrapped up the meeting and it was time to leave, but Jasper had one last question for me.
‘I’m intrigued,’ said Jasper. ‘Do you see Kate and Dan getting back together at some point?’
‘I, umm, honestly don’t know. Perhaps, but it would depend on the direction of the show. Why do you ask?’
‘Because it seemed to me, reading the script, that the couple were still very much in love.’
‘But the whole point was that they were separated and trapped in this now loveless marriage,’ I replied. ‘Surely that came across in the script, too?’
‘I mean, yes, of course, but there was definitely still a lot of love,’ said Jasper.
‘I got the love, too,’ said Jacinda B.
‘Yes, me too!’ said Magda.
‘I mean obviously it’s your script,’ said Peter. ‘But it seemed pretty clear they still had feelings for each other.’
‘Deep-rooted feelings,’ said Jasper. ‘Hidden beneath the layers of resentment that had built up over the years, but yes, still very much there.’
‘Right, okay,’ I replied, confused and slightly bewildered that the love between the main protagonists was that clear. In my mind, I had made Dan and Kate – the fictional versions of Freya and myself – pretty much hate each other at the beginning, and then gradually over the arc of the first series, they began to have some feelings for each other again, but at no point did I think it was so overtly love. Had I added more love because that was how I really felt about Freya? Was I unloading all of my actual feelings for her into the script without even realising it? Was I that so fucking unaware of myself?
Outside the BBC with Carl, my mind was completely and utterly frazzled, and I had no idea what to think. Carl started talking about how wonderful it was, and that he would meet with Peter, and bash out the best possible deal for me, but it was definitely happening, and it was going to be really great. Finally, after years of professional failure and making no money, I was back in the game.
‘Carl?’ I said after he finished speaking.
‘Yes, mate.’
‘Do you think Dan and Kate are still in love?’
‘In the script?’
‘Yes, in the script.’
‘Well, yes. It’s obvious there’s still quite a bit of love there. In the script.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me this?’
‘I mean, I thought you knew. You wrote the bloody thing.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? The thing is, Carl, I think I was in love with Freya the whole time.’
‘I’m sure you were. Freya is great. Too good for the likes of you.’
‘Thanks, Carl.’
‘You’re welcome. Right, I have to dash. I have another meeting across town to get to, but this has been splendid. We’ll circle back later in the week?’ said Carl, already walking away, and looking down at his phone. ‘Congrats again, this is going to be monumental!’
‘Okay,’ I said absently, but all I could think about was Freya, and whether what I had actually written was a sitcom about a loveless marriage or a show about a couple that still loved each other very much but had just drifted apart. Was the feeling I had when I told Freya how I felt and that I wanted to give us another go more than just a fleeting moment and had I felt the same way all the time, but I had been too stupid, too self-absorbed by my own work to see that, actually, all I really wanted was my wife back?
I stood outside the BBC, frozen by my own question. I wanted Freya back. It was the only thing that actually mattered, and I would do anything to make it happen, and that was when it came to me. The conversation I’d had with Karen and the question she had asked me: What if Freya asked you not to make the show at all? To scrap it completely. Would you? I knew I had to do something big to win her back, and surely nothing was bigger than giving up my career for her. It was a bold move, but when faced with the prospect of losing the only thing in the world you actually needed, it was a small price to pay. For so long, I thought I needed to be a successful writer to be happy, and I needed to be happy at work to be happy in life and with my marriage, but I’d been wrong the whole fucking time. What I needed to be happy was my wife. I took out my phone, dialled her number, and then I waited…