Chapter 8
Melody
Yes.
The simple one-word texted reply from Belinda, in answer to Melody’s question.
Melody sits up on her bed, her mind racing as it slots together pieces of information.
Multiple newspapers shift on the bed covers as she wriggles around excitedly.
She’d been working late at a club the previous night, and had spent the morning reading a week of newspapers in bed, preparing for the podcast later, when she’d had an idea.
Belinda and Derek had broken up on a Thursday.
As had her friend Gemma and her husband.
As had the night club owner she’d worked for last night and the young man working at the cloakroom.
As had Filip Wozniak who keeps texting her.
What had happened on that Thursday? Was there something in the zeitgeist?
In the water? In the moon cycle? She’d fallen down a rabbit hole of crazy events and conspiratorial online chat groups, before moving to Friday’s newspapers – she’s as old-school with newspapers as she is with vinyl – and there it was, the answer she was looking for.
She texts her friend Gemma the same question she’d asked her mum.
Did you have a love lock on the Grace Plunkett Bridge?
Yes. Y?
Melody throws the covers off, sending the newspapers sprawling to the floor, and gets dressed for the podcast.
Melody isn’t concentrating on the road. A white van driver shouts at her when she runs a red light on her e-scooter.
In her head she runs through her piece for the podcast, not wanting to mess up like she did last week.
She still hasn’t spoken to Louise or Sam but she’s going to up her game this week.
She has a good story for today and she can’t wait to share it.
At the studio she expects to find Prunella in her usual spot eating avocado and chia seeds, TV make-up still on, dressed in an outfit fit for the pages of an editorial magazine, but she’s nowhere to be found.
Melody sits with Ed and waits, unused to being first. When Prunella’s Golden Goose trainers appear through the window, coming down the external stairs to the basement office, Melody sits back and puts her boots on the table.
She got here first and she’s going to make a meal of it.
Prunella’s sunglasses hide half her face, but still something seems off.
The glasses come off and Melody’s smile quickly fades and she removes her feet from the table when she sees Prunella’s face.
Prunella doesn’t look like Prunella. Her eyes are small and red and the skin around them is swollen.
At first she assumes it’s a facial procedure of some kind. Melody has yet to fall foul of anything cosmetic but the latest treatments and injections are Prunella’s favourite hobby and she’s starting to resemble a pin cushion. The air around Prunella tells Melody that it’s more than that.
‘What happened?’
Prunella quickly slides the shades back on.
‘It’s an allergic reaction. There were feathers in a thing.’ Tears roll down her face. Ed tactfully slips away.
‘Are you crying?’
‘No,’ she says in surprise. And then she starts crying, shoulders shaking up and down, while saying, ‘No, I’m not crying.’
She’s sad Barbie. Melody is so taken aback by this alien view that she forgets Prunella is real and hurting. She suddenly snaps to it and moves to her, offering her arms in a hug. Prunella accepts and breaks down.
‘Do you want to talk about it … in the pod?’ Melody asks, joking.
‘No.’
‘Do you want to talk about it with me now?’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’ She doesn’t want to push. ‘Just one of those days?’
Prunella purses her lips and nods, a kind of squeak comes out as a response. She sits down, exhausted, removes the glasses and Melody is concerned. Puffy eyes, with a gaunt face.
‘Please tell me you’re not sick.’
‘I’m not sick. Just distract me, please.’
‘Okay. Well, I’ve a whopper of a story, a theory I’ve been working on, which I’ll share with you on the podcast.’
This piques Prunella’s interest. Ten minutes in the bathroom, make-up fixed, and Prunella is glitch-free again. They sit in their places in the studio, Prunella on the couch, Melody in the chair.
‘I don’t know about you, but in my life, it feels like everybody is breaking up,’ Melody says as an opener.
‘Are they?’
‘And not the obvious ones, not the people who have no right being together in the first place, it’s the good ones. The ones who’d almost make you believe in love.’
‘So you should be happy about this, Ms Anti-Love.’
Melody thinks of her discomfort over Belinda and Derek’s separation. It has rocked her in a surprising way. ‘I’ve realised it’s quite nice to have people around me in love. Like when I gave up smoking but liked standing around smokers and made them blow smoke in my face.’
Prunella laughs.
‘So I have a theory,’ Melody says, excitedly leaning in. ‘I think I’m really onto something here. Ed, drumroll please.’
There’s silence. Ed grins. Prunella snorts.
‘All the people I know who broke up, all broke up last Thursday. Everyone on the same day. Just sit with that for a moment.’
‘Okay,’ Prunella says, after a beat.
‘At first I thought there must be something in the water. Or maybe to do with the moon cycle.’
‘Naturally,’ Prunella says, playing along.
‘Then I scoured the newspapers for something that would explain why so many people just fell out of love on the same day and I came across a news article that explains it all. I now know what happened. I know why these couples have broken up.’
She leaves a dramatic pause. Ed finally finds the drumroll button.
‘Why?’ Prunella asks impatiently.
‘All of their love locks were removed from the same bridge on the same day.’
Prunella looks at her in stunned surprise. She wasn’t expecting that.
‘Do you know what a love lock is?’ Melody asks, hoping for a bigger reaction.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Do you know the Grace Plunkett Bridge in Kilmainham near the gaol? The one where people attach padlocks aka love locks to the bridge.’
‘Yes.’
‘On Thursday the love locks were all removed,’ Melody says in a conspiratorial tone.
There’s complete silence.
Apart from Ed who has clamped his hand over his mouth to prevent his laughter from exploding out.
‘Even Ed believes me,’ Melody teases. ‘He’s so into this. If you could all see his face right now.’
Ed is vehemently shaking his head no.
‘Honestly, there’s something in this. I’ve checked with my friends who broke up last week.
All of them broke up on Thursday, very specifically and very suddenly, and all of them had love locks on the bridge.
Now I know what you’re going to say, there are probably thousands of love locks on the bridge and not everyone has broken up, so I sent the question out on my social media this morning and you will not believe the response.
’ Melody checks her phone. ‘At least two other people have replied with yes.’
Ed laughs out loud.
‘I know it’s only two! But that’s two couples, which is four people, and added to my five other couples that’s fourteen people. So it’s not nothing.’
‘It’s a conspiracy theory,’ Ed says, because Prunella is not saying anything.
Something flickers across Prunella’s face. It’s like the robot is truly malfunctioning today. Maybe she and Jasper have a lock on the bridge and if Melody’s theory is true then Prunella and Jasper have split up, which would explain the tears before the podcast.
Melody continues. ‘For listeners who are confused, a love lock is a padlock, usually with initials and flowers and hearts and anniversary dates, and gooey lovely things all over it, and it’s secured to a bridge.
The Grace Plunkett Bridge is a pedestrian bridge near Kilmainham Gaol known as a love bridge that people attach love locks to.
People come from all over the world to lock their padlocks on the bridge, as a sign of their everlasting love, and then throw the keys into the river.
I found a quote by the bridge guy who did a report about the effects of the love locks on the bridge.
Obviously a man after my own stone frozen solid heart, Al Collins from Bridgespan, Ireland’s bridge maintenance service, said, and I’m paraphrasing, that the love locks needed to go before someone died as a result of some selfish people’s love. ’
‘He didn’t say that,’ Prunella says, trying to grab the newspaper that Melody is reading from. Melody holds onto it.
‘No, he actually said …’ and Melody reads: ‘“While visitors find them romantic, the locks and specifically the weight of them, were not something the engineers thought about when designing the bridge. The thousands of locks were moved as part of Bridgespan’s perpetual battle for preservation.” They literally cut them all off with a bolt cutter, and in my opinion thereby severed the love of possibly thousands of people around the world.
’ Melody looks at Prunella with a satisfied grin on her face.
She might even have convinced herself. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think … it’s an interesting theory.’
‘I think I’m right. In fact even after saying it out loud, I believe it even more.
If anyone is listening and has a love lock on the Grace Plunkett Bridge and has now broken up, please let us know.
If you haven’t broken up, please explain why you bothered attaching a love lock to a bridge at all, because I can’t figure out why anyone does it.
What value does it bring to a relationship? ’
‘You’re such a love Grinch,’ Prunella finally says, finding her voice. ‘Please contact Melody and tell her why you’ve clamped your love lock to a bridge. Fill her dark cold heart with some love.’