Chapter 3 #2
‘Oh my God, Mally. This is it!’
‘This is what?’
‘This is the feature that’s been waiting for you!’
Whatever she was thinking, I could pretty much guarantee she was wrong.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Okay, hear me out. You’re a successful, big-city career woman. You’re single and, as recent events with a certain Billy-the-bastard have proven, unlucky in love…’
‘Ouch.’
‘Sorry, but it’s true. And I – your ever-so-slightly annoying best friend and kind-of boss – am about to send you off on an absurd Christmas assignment!’
She began writing frantically in her notepad. She finished with a flourish and a dramatic full stop.
‘Honestly, Mally, this is brilliant. Here’s what I have in mind: I book you a cute little cottage out in the sticks in the run-up to Christmas…’
I had no idea where this was going. But I detected danger.
‘…I can expense the accommodation and you can take these bingo sheets and try and tick off as many tropes as you can manage in real life. And, best of all, you can write me an amazing feature all about your awkward English attempt to recreate the plot of a cheesy Christmas movie!’
Why did this always happen? All I wanted from tonight was to be consoled and plied with food and alcohol to try and distract me from my pathetic man-related misery. Yet right now I was feeling less at ease than I had been ever since Billy – and Livvie’s email account – had ghosted me.
‘This is the worst idea I’ve heard in quite some time. How strong is this sloe gin?’
I busied myself with the pretence of reading the label, my quickening heartbeat pounding in my ears.
‘I’m serious, Mally. This could be a really fun feature.
You could befriend some of the locals and find out what ridiculous regional traditions they insist on holding on to at this time of year.
You might even stumble across one of those “winter wonderland” immersive experiences that always end up being hilariously underwhelming. ’
I tried to swallow the lump of anxiety in my throat while I put the bottle back on the table among our bingo sheets and shot glasses. Elle had won the trophy, having ticked off almost all her tropes.
‘Yeah, it’s a great idea for a feature,’ I said, keen to let her down gently.
‘And I’d love to read it. But – and please don’t hate me – I just don’t think I’m the best person to write it.
You know what I was like back when I tried journalism during our student newspaper days: I couldn’t even pick up the phone, let alone conduct an interview. ’
And Elle should remember this. While she’d always relished being the student paper’s centre-of-attention music editor, I’d ended up as a desk-bound subeditor so I didn’t have to risk making an idiot of myself in front of important people.
All people, in fact. Plus, the thought of talking to well-meaning strangers only to send them up in a wry feature taking the piss out of the place they called home sounded, well, more than just a little bit cruel.
‘And this is all why it’ll make such a brilliant piece!
’ Elle said. ‘Think about how you’re feeling right now: you’re cynical and full of doubts.
You’re resenting me for even suggesting such a ludicrous idea.
Know who you remind me of? Hotshot advertising executive Sydney at the start of Hope at Christmas before she went back to Hopewell and discovered that box of ornaments at her dead grandma’s home she’d just inherited! ’
Yeah, but Sydney was a beautiful, confident, independent mum who had everything going for her. That description couldn’t be any further away from my own existence.
‘I’m impressed you remembered her name,’ I said.
‘What can I say, I enjoyed her character arc. I mean, who wouldn’t turn down that once-in-a-lifetime Manhattan job for the sake of a puppy-eyed English teacher, who she also discovered was a secret world-renowned novelist?
Seriously, though, you’re the perfect person to write this, Mally.
You know you are. You’re even planning to spend Christmas alone. ’
‘I’d rather be home alone than in some random town, Elle.’
She waved a hand dismissively and continued talking. Her mind was made up, wasn’t it? ‘You already have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Christmas movies, and… well…’
‘“Well” what?’
Elle put down her pen, turned to face me and placed her hands on my shoulders. ‘How to say this without coming across as a total bitch…’
‘That’s never stopped you before, pal.’
‘Fair. So… you’re stuck in a massive rut and it’s stressing me the fuck out.’
I braced myself for the onslaught to continue, as it always did.
‘You’ve been at The Helix for, like, nearly ten years now?’
I nodded.
‘And in that time, you’ve not gone for a single promotion or asked for any kind of pay rise?’
‘I’m happy with my salary, and the annual incremental increases are pretty…’
Elle removed her hands from my shoulders, scrunched up her face and knocked her balled-up fists against her head a few times.
‘Mally! Just, stop! Okay, I’m going to be honest with you here, and this information cannot – leave – this – room: Kyle called a crisis editorial meeting earlier this week.’
‘Oh. Right. Shit.’
‘Yeah. Our readership figures are dropping. Fast. The US team thinks we’ve reached peak irony and our audience is bored.
They want fresh perspectives. Authenticity over eyerolls.
Stories with heart that we can syndicate to other media outlets for extra revenue.
And Kyle has told me that I’m one of the people who has to find all of that.
Reading between the lines, I get the impression he’s desperate to turn things around and justify his position as editor-in-chief. ’
Kyle had been a surprise hire from The Helix ’s primary UK rival about six months ago.
He and Elle didn’t have the greatest working relationship given that Elle had had her eye on a promotion before Kyle was parachuted in without so much as a cursory job interview.
In truth, Elle still had her eye on the role.
‘You don’t think this is related to the extra week off in December, do you?’ I asked.
‘I do, yeah. And, seriously, you cannot tell anybody this, but I think jobs are on the line. Lots of jobs. In fact, a skeleton editorial team might be the only thing that survives.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah. Fuck. So, you can see why putting yourself out there now could be a wise move for you, right?’
‘I honestly had no idea things were this bad.’
‘They’re bad, all right. The editorial team’s practically climbing over each other to prove they can create viral content. But, as Kyle reminded us this week, so far our December traffic is even worse than normal. Apparently we’re in desperate need of “festive feels with a Helix twist”.’
She pretended to be sick. Yet my own nausea was very much genuine. Not only was I at an ever-growing risk of having to write this feature for her, but my job security was plummeting by the minute. I made a mental note to dig out my CV this weekend.
‘Can you now see why I’m basically begging you to do this, for both of us?
I know it’s totally out of your comfort zone, but I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t absolutely on my knees here to try and save our jobs.
Every original voice and fun idea I can commission at the moment will really help to keep Kyle off my back – especially if it’s got a Christmas angle.
And if you make enough of a mark, there’s a chance I could make you a permanent part of the features team. ’
I took a long sip of my sloe gin, giving Elle’s tirade the chance to settle in my bloodstream alongside the growing concentration of alcohol.
Did I want to become ‘a permanent member of the features team’?
No. But did I have any other employment prospects or professional connections whatsoever that I could fall back on in this horrendous job market?
Also no. As much as I hated to admit it, writing this article would – at the very least – help to keep my options open if the shit did indeed end up hitting the fan.
‘Jesus, this is a lot to get my head around. Okay, so say I agree to do this – which I haven’t, by the way.
What if I didn’t strike the right tone? All your usual writers would put some witty spin on all of this.
But going somewhere new would be a big deal for me.
And I’d feel really uneasy putting my name to something that could end up hurting the people who actually lived there. ’
I drained the rest of my drink, watching Elle as she turned something over in her mind.
‘I reckon we can work around that.’
‘How?’
‘We won’t name the town. Thinking about it, we could even come up with a fictional name to add an element of mystery. And you can change the names of anyone you happen to encounter to protect their privacy.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And, if it was the dealbreaker, you could even write the piece anonymously. Come to think of it, all these secretive elements might even make it more compelling and shareable as readers try and figure out what small town we visited.’
‘You’re not going to let me say no, are you?’
‘Probably not. But, c’mon: what else are you going to do with all this time off work before Christmas? I really think you can do this, Mally. Even if you won’t do it for yourself, will you do it for me? Please?’
I blew out the air from my lungs while pouring myself another extra-large measure. I downed it in one go, so I could at least later pretend I’d agreed under the influence of too much booze.
‘Fine. But those anonymity conditions are non-negotiable, okay?’
Elle squealed and bundled me into a tight hug. Uncomfortably tight.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is going to be so much fun to organise! Right, first of all we need to figure out where I can send you. Does anywhere spring to mind?’
‘Nah, not really.’
But I wasn’t telling the truth. Because, if I was the leading lady in a made-for-TV Christmas movie, the obvious place for me to go to would be my hometown: Scarnbrook, a sprawling village on the very furthest outskirts of Bristol, where Elle and I had grown up.
Despite the painful memories it held, I’d been thinking about my hometown more than ever this year, since it was the twentieth anniversary of What Happened – not that anyone had bothered to acknowledge it.
And, now that the digital connection I’d had with Livvie had been unceremoniously severed by a faceless Silicon Valley algorithm, it suddenly felt as if Scarnbrook might be the only thing I had left of her.
But I knew that sharing this ice chip of an idea before it had fully taken shape would backfire.
Elle would quickly melt it with a blast of hot air, just like she’d done with all my other attempts to suggest a trip there in recent years.
She’d always insisted I wasn’t ‘ready’ to return after what happened back then.
My family had always made it abundantly clear through their actions, as well as their total absence of words, that they had no desire to show their faces there again.
And Elle herself no longer had a reason to go back, since her mum had moved out of the area a couple of years ago.
As far as Elle was concerned, Scarnbrook was a mere footnote to the ever-growing tome of her exciting life.
Whereas for me it was the formative prologue and opening chapters.
Was I ready to return now? Yeah, probably not. But I reckoned it was more or less impossible to ever be ‘ready’ to go back to the place I’d been so happy for the first eighteen years of my life, before my sister died, my family dispersed and everything changed.
I rolled the notion around in my head while Elle yabbered on.
The longer I did so, the more frozen matter it collected that hadn’t seen the light of day for years.
By the time I turned in for the night, drunk and apprehensive about what the hell I’d agreed to, the idea was no longer an ice chip, but a snowball-sized plan.
The question was, would I ever be brave enough to throw it?