Chapter 10
Melody
‘Thanks for getting on the call so early,’ Ed says, seeming unusually hyped.
Ed, Prunella and Melody are on Zoom at the behest of Ed to speak as early as they can.
‘As you can probably tell from your own social media accounts, the reaction to the trailers that we dropped for this week’s episode has caught fire,’ Ed explains. ‘Your love lock conspiracy theory has gone viral.’
Both are stunned, Melody a little frightened as it’s her in the video doing all the talking and not at all Prunella. Melody’s followers have bumped up and the figure is moving up as they speak. Prunella is silent on the Zoom.
‘Look at all the comments,’ Ed says. ‘They’re coming in from all around the world.’
- Hello from Berlin. Me and my boyfriend broke up the day the love locks were taken, we had a love lock on the bridge.
- I’m in Denmark, my husband dumped me the day the love locks were removed, we had a love lock on the bridge.
- Sadly this is true. My girlfriend and I broke up. My decision but nothing to do with the love lock. But we did have one on the bridge.
- What is wrong with Melody’s voice? Does she have a throat infection?
- After thirty years of marriage my husband and I ended our marriage. We too had a love lock on the Grace Plunkett Bridge, we put it there while travelling through Ireland. Heartbroken. Is there any way we can get the love locks back?
New Zealand, Cincinnati, Boston, Essex, Cologne …
Melody looks at all the towns, cities and countries these responses are coming from.
On and on they flow. Three thousand, four hundred and seventy-four comments so far and they’re continuing to flow in.
They sit in silence as they all take time to scroll through them.
Melody finally looks up from her phone and watches them both for a moment.
‘Prunella?’ She’s not saying anything. ‘Has her screen frozen?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Listenership in the recent episode has increased, subscriptions are up in two days. I think that people are interested in this particular topic. They’ll want to hear more about it. What more do you know about it, Melody?’
‘Nothing,’ she laughs.
‘I can find out,’ Prunella says, sitting up and putting her phone down. ‘I’d be happy to research it, get someone on the phone or do an interview on the podcast. We definitely have to respond to this reaction.’
Melody looks at Ed in a frozen smile. This is Melody’s item that Prunella had no interest in.
She’s night and Prunella is day, this is Melody’s anti-love piece, not Prunella’s, but now that it’s successful she’s all over it.
Ed’s mulling it over, she can’t bear it.
She has to assert herself before Prunella takes it away.
‘I brought it up on the pod because I’m fascinated with it. My mum and her husband broke up, and they had a love lock on the bridge. It feels personal to me, so I’d like to keep going myself with it.’
‘Okay,’ Prunella says, sitting back.
‘Do we actually think it’s a thing though?
’ Melody asks. ‘The love locks being linked to the break-ups? It couldn’t actually be the case, could it?
It’s just coincidence. Or does it show that relationships are fragile things hanging on by a thread and the love locks are the hope, the glue, and when that was gone, relationships lost their glue. ’
They look at her, surprised.
‘Yeah, you should definitely look into it, Melody,’ Ed says. ‘You brought this one to the table.’
Prunella is poker-faced. She’s in her dressing room at the TV studio. Hair in curlers. Under-eye patches to cool and soothe her under-eye area, make-up on, a rail of clothes and shoes behind her.
‘If there is something in this,’ Prunella says, ‘then maybe we could help couples reunite by returning love locks to their owners. Including your mum.’
Melody’s not sure if getting her mum and Derek back together again is her intention.
This is not some attempt to make inner-child Melody feel better again.
But. But she does feel as if the world is upside down with Belinda and Derek apart.
If her mother can fall out of love with Derek then her mother can fall out of love with her.
It’s already happening, isn’t it? Belinda is already disconnecting from her.
If the love locks being removed from the Grace Plunkett Bridge has reduced her mum’s capacity for love then she’ll try anything to bring it back.
‘I have to go, we’re filming a piece for the show later,’ Prunella says. ‘Talk later.’
It’s six thirty a.m. It feels like the middle of the night for Melody, she had driven home from a gig, a student night in Limerick, and arrived home at five a.m. She felt like she’d only climbed into bed when she had to surface for the early Zoom.
She wishes she could get back into bed but now her mind is alert, and like a ping-pong ball bouncing everywhere after being on social media.
She ends the Zoom call just as Claire appears with her bicycle.
‘Morning,’ Melody says. ‘Apparently I’ve gone viral.’
Claire sees to her gown and wig for court. As a junior counsel barrister she must wear the black gown and white collar for court, the white wig is optional. One in ten people wear it and Claire is one of those people.
‘I hope it clears up soon,’ she says drily.
Melody realises that her viral news is of very little importance in comparison to the day Claire has ahead of her, and again feels like an airhead.
‘Could I use you as a model for a moment?’ Claire asks.
‘Sure.’
Claire leans her bicycle against the wall, and pulls a wooden spoon from a display rack. She stands behind Melody, so close Melody can feel her body, and she wraps her left arm around Melody’s neck as if she’s going to strangle her.
‘Uh, Claire …’ she says in a nervous voice.
‘I just want to test something. I want to see if he could have … you see, he’s left-handed …’
She starts prodding Melody in her sides with the spoon, which tickles. Melody starts laughing and squirming.
‘Don’t move.’
Melody giggles and tries to be still.
Claire swaps the arm over and wraps her right arm around her neck, muttering to herself. ‘But what if he did this … he could have used his left hand not to hold her but to …’
‘That’s a bit tight.’
‘Sorry.’ Claire starts to prod her in the other side and Melody giggles again.
Claire, fed up, releases Melody from her grip.
‘Sorry,’ Melody says, feeling more giggles bubble up inside. ‘I feel like I let you down.’
‘No, it’s not you. It’s just not possible …’ She thinks, then shakes her head.
‘Did he do it?’
‘Probably,’ she grumbles, going for her bicycle again. ‘Oh, by the way, I won’t be home tonight.’
‘Again?’ Melody asks, feeling like a child whose mother has told her she’s going out.
‘Yes,’ Claire says, and Melody thinks she sees a hint of a smile on her lips as she wheels the bike through the apartment. ‘Again.’
Melody waits outside Bridgespan offices at eight thirty a.m. She couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t rest. She needed to get out of the apartment and do something about the messages that are flooding into her Instagram account.
The articles she’d read in the tabloids about the love locks being removed from the Grace Plunkett Bridge had all mentioned and quoted a man named Al Collins.
There weren’t any available photographs of him in the newspaper but a visit to the company website reveals a ‘Meet the Team’ tab where lo and behold there is Al Collins.
Though as he stands in the team photograph next to his colleagues, he looks like Al Collins’s grandson, his handsome broad-shouldered grandson who has the height of a basketball player and the shoulders of a rugby player.
Melody had been expecting a grumpy old troll who’d worked with Dublin City Council for centuries, protecting the bridges, from tourists and progressives.
She isn’t sure why. Maybe because of his obvious delight in removing the love locks and extinguishing the joy of thousands of couples across the globe.
She’s beginning to think she’s underestimated how hard door-stepping him would be, and considers phoning to make an appointment like a regular person, when he appears head and shoulders above the rest of the cold pedestrians marching to work and breathing out puffs of cold January morning air.
Al didn’t just provide a good photo, he is a walking good photo.
Somewhere in his thirties, he wears navy trousers with smart navy trainers and a puffer coat.
He wears black Beats headphones. She can hear the music as though it’s playing live, the unmistakeable sound of ‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police.
She’s pretty sure her mum slept with someone from that band in the Eighties.
The original stalker song. He wears an intense look on his face, bright blue eyes that are gazing intently at something in his mind.
He has a strong, chiselled jaw, Ken’s better-looking, edgy friend.
He stands out from the crowd, and she can’t take her eyes off him, feeling suddenly shyer as he gets nearer.
He’s too beautiful to approach. She’s standing at the door, feeling like a stalker herself, her scooter beside her. She steps forward to greet him.
He looks right at her and she smiles, broadly, sweetly, rehearsed. You can trust me. Then he looks away and enters the building.
She swears and leans her scooter against the wall hoping that she can beat the odds and it won’t be stolen.
Then as she looks back at it, she changes her mind and tries to take it through the auto-revolving door, but it’s an awkward size and it gets trapped between the doorframe and the revolving door, causing the door to stop.
She’s stuck inside the revolving door. As is Al Collins, the bridge guy.
An alarm sounds.
Everyone in the reception area stares at her. Her scooter is caught in the door. The brake and back wheel free on the other side.