Greatest Love Story of All Time (2 page)

My job was on the entertainment and culture desk, trailing around London in the wake of our correspondent; carrying his discarded Starbucks cups and broken tripods. Occasionally I’d look after studio guests, and Pierce Brosnan once complained that my hospitality had had a lot in common with sexual harassment.

It was pretty unglamorous stuff in spite of what Leonie and my mother believed: as often as not, I’d
spend shoots on bag-watch duty down a smelly alleyway with a coterie of crack addicts. But I loved my job and I gave it everything. It made me feel alive, challenged and useful. I entertained fantastical notions of one day being a foreign correspondent wearing linen trousers in a dusty land far away and in the meantime I plugged away merrily on cuts in arts budgets and the odd celebrity scandal.

Soon after starting I struck up a friendship with a cameraman called Dave Brennan. He was a big scruffy bear of a man who had been born with a camera in one hand and a roll-up in the other. He was renowned for his strange tastes: once I found him sitting in his van eating jellied eels and singing along loudly to soft rock; another time he turned up to a shoot at Buckingham Palace wearing a jumper that was covered with mating gnomes.

Dave was Glaswegian, tough as fuck, and had just transferred to domestic news after a long stint in Iraq. In spite of losing one of his fingers to a piece of flying shrapnel and being holed up in a besieged town for ten days without food, he hadn’t wanted to come home; he’d only done so because his girlfriend had threatened to further dismember him if he didn’t. I’d never quite worked out how old Dave was because of his sun-abused face and poor control of facial hair, but I suspected he was in the late-thirties bracket. Regardless, at ITN he was a legend, the best and bravest cameraman we had and generally believed to
be the wisest man in the world. Given the rather different nature of our news desks, I got to work with him only rarely but when I did I always sensed I was in the presence of a genius – a slightly hairy, unpredictable genius, but a genius all the same.

Dave and I bonded when he found me necking sausage and mash in a pub near work because I was too embarrassed to do so in front of my slim, tough, salad-eating colleagues. He had retreated to the same pub to down a pint of Stella after a particularly harrowing day at a murder scene. ‘Well, well, well. Another outcast. Welcome to my team of one,’ he said.

I blushed, mortified, while Dave got to work on his pint, drinking it like Ribena and finishing with a long, mellow belch. ‘Sorry. That came out wrong. It’s just nice to see someone round here who’s a little … a little less
corporate
,’ he said, and belched again. I smiled bashfully, feeling slightly less stupid.

Most weeks, unless he was in trouble with his girlfriend, Dave would join Leonie and me on Gin Thursdays, an institution the two of us had founded at the tender age of fifteen. The general rule for a Gin Thursday was to get drunk on gin on Thursday. We weren’t a complex organization. Ten years on, Gin Thursdays took place at the Three Kings in Clerkenwell, not too far from work. As per our remit, we would drink a lot of gin (Dave added it to his Guinness) and as a general rule Leonie would cop off with a hot lawyer while Dave tried to encourage me to do
the same. I always refused. ‘I’m after something a little more special than a one-night stand with a man in a pin-stripe suit,’ I had announced airily, a few months after we’d met.

‘Rubbish,’ Dave had replied. ‘You’re just shite at pulling, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said meekly.

He smiled and ruffled my hair. ‘Aye, I thought as much. Never mind. I’m sure some little scamp will whisk you off your feet soon,’ he said kindly.

‘Unbloody likely. Last time I tried to pull someone in here I pelvic-thrusted a Greek Cypriot and then asked him to take me home and feed me halloumi.’ Dave roared with laughter. ‘Oh, Fannybaws,’ he said. ‘You wee disaster!’

The only time I didn’t really enjoy Dave’s company was when his partner Freya turned up for a cheeky glass. This was not because she was anything other than nice; it was solely because she was so attractive that in her vicinity I felt like an animated rubbish dump. It was preposterous, a woman like her being let loose on an unsuspecting pub: all conversation shut down and everyone just
stared
. Freya was slim and horribly healthy; she possessed beautiful peaches-and-cream skin and gently waving hair. She wore things made of linen and always smelt amazing.

I had expected Freya and me to become excellent chums, but after a few months of stilted conversation I’d had to admit defeat. I wanted to blame this
on her but, deep down, I knew it was my fault: she was calm, spiritual and smooth; I was noisy, clumsy and foolish. I just wasn’t her cup of tea. Nonetheless, she tolerated Leonie and me – and our bawdy, studenty drinking – with remarkable patience. Once when he thought no one was looking I saw Dave plant a gentle kiss on her summery shoulder. I was envious. I wanted to kiss it too.

After three years in my rather junior job, I was fantasizing daily about becoming a fearless correspondent with a bullet-proof vest and a string of exotic admirers. ‘What do you think the chances are of me being able to apply for a job on the foreign affairs desk?’ I asked Hugh, the assistant programme editor, one day.

He looked up briefly from his computer. ‘Zero.’

I carried on plugging away with my ideas and late nights, and eventually Hugh came good. In February 2008 he summoned me to his glass fortress at the top end of the newsroom floor. He told me that I was ‘a lucky little fucker’ and that I was being given a chance to audition for Foreign Affairs by going out to help them cover the aftermath of Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence. I’d ‘better be fucking outstanding’ or ‘you’ll be working in the fucking canteen for the rest of your fucking life’.

Hugh Gormley was an enormously intelligent man with a swearing habit even worse than mine and a reputation for being a monster. Normally I was terrified of him, but the day he sent me to Kosovo I loved
him madly. It was all I could do to stop myself jumping into his lap and kissing him passionately.

As I left, gasping promises of outstanding journalistic vigour, Hugh softened a little bit and smiled. ‘You’re fucking good news, Fran,’ he said. ‘You’re doing really well. Now fuck off to the Balkans. And be careful. Spend the next two days in hostile-environment training, please.’

I punched the air discreetly and ran off to buy a celebratory can of Vimto, as I often did when life felt good. At last! Fran the Balkans correspondent had been born! I knew nothing about the Balkans, but who cared?

‘Don’t get any big ideas,’ said Stella Sanderson, as she strode past me at the vending machine with a huge folder marked ‘Kosovo’ under her arm. ‘You’re at the bottom of the pile. We’re going only because the main team out there need a break. It goes them, then me, then our correspondent, then Dave, then the entirety of Kosovo, then you. OK?

‘OK,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically. I’d wipe Stella’s bottom if I needed to.

After two days’ training in hostile-environment filming I began to read about Kosovo. A few moments later, I gave up and called Dave. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? ITN’s promising new talent learning her stuff from the cameraman.’ He chortled.

I could hear Freya’s pots and pans in the background.
‘You’re not a cameraman, you’re a legend,’ I said, feeling a bit silly. ‘Of course I’m trying to learn from you.’

After a pause, Dave started talking. I listened intently. By the end I was feeling pretty scared.

‘You’ll be fine, kid, I’ll keep an eye on you,’ he said at the end, stopping to puff on his fag.

I sighed. ‘Dave, I
wish
you wouldn’t smoke.’

‘Cut the wee princess act, Fran.’ He snorted. ‘I’m off for my tea now anyway. Pork chops. What are you having?’

I looked in my empty fridge. ‘Um, probably some dry Weetabix.’

‘You’re the fuckin’ pits, Fannybaws.’ He laughed, hanging up.

I made my nightly call to Mum, who was drunk and complaining about something to do with the gardeners, then packed my bag, wondering how she would cope over the weekend without me coming over to do her shopping and clean her house. Well, she’d have to. If this foreign-affairs thing took off, I’d be going away a lot more. I filed my prickly sense of guilt into a remote drawer in my head and wrote a Post-it note for when I got back:
sort out Mum
.

In spite of having spent his life either attacking me or pretending to hate me, Duke Ellington always got into a panic when I went away. Tonight was no exception. Every time I turned round to put something in
my bag he was sitting in it, refusing to meet my eye. ‘Duke Ellington, if I ever love a man the way I love you, he will be very lucky,’ I told him. He ignored me and moved over to sit down on my clean pants, purring loudly to indicate that he knew this was a bad thing to do. Cursing him, I braved a hand underneath him to fish them out but was unable to escape without toothmarks. ‘Why are you such a little bastard?’ I yelled, as I washed my hand. I kept a box of plasters by the sink for Duke Ellington attacks.

‘You’d better behave yourself when Stefania comes round to feed you,’ I told him, just as she arrived at my back door. His purring got louder. For the purpose of driving me mad, he
always
behaved himself with Stefania. I watched in frustration as he trotted flirtily over to her and sat, purring, while she stroked his head and crooned to him in an unidentifiable language.

After talking to him for a good thirty seconds, she glanced up. ‘Oh, Frances. Greetings. Have you been drinking ze barley grass like I said?’

‘No. It tasted of shit,’ I replied.

My neighbour Stefania was simultaneously the best and most ridiculous human being I’d ever met. Since she had barged into my kitchen the day I moved in, bearing a ‘dish for health’ in an earthenware pot – ‘It vill grow ze hairs on your chest’ she hissed – she had become my friend, cat-feeder and source of inspiration.

The converted garage in which I rented my flat had retained the inspection shed that was used to assess cars on their arrival, and this shed, just inside the lopsided wooden gates, was where Stefania lived. By anyone’s standards it looked from the outside like a shack in a Comic Relief appeal, but inside it was delightful – a childhood fantasy den full of exotic silks and mad plants and just about enough floor space for her to contort herself into strange yogic shapes.

Stefania’s country of origin was nebulous: when I’d first met her she’d told me she was a Yugoslavian princess; another time she’d claimed to be related to the Polish prime minister, and recently I’d heard her introducing herself to another neighbour as a descendant of the oldest family in St Petersburg. Whatever the grandeur of her past, however, the reality of her present was not so impressive. Apart from making enormous pots of stew for the local homeless shelter, she appeared to have no job and even less desire to discuss the matter. I knew that I was probably paying her gas and electricity bills but I couldn’t give an arse. I loved her and her barmy ways: I wasn’t prepared to lose her over a detail as minor as money. I
wanted
her there. Apart from anything else, Duke Ellington worshipped her.

‘How are you anyway, Stefania?’ I asked, as she removed my house key from the bunch of spares.

‘I am blessed,’ she replied, putting the keys down and placing her hands flat on the work surface. Just to emphasise the fact, she closed her eyes.

I smiled. This was textbook Stefania. ‘Oh, good. Are you in love?’

‘Do not be silly.’ She kept her eyes closed.

‘Well, then, what is going on?’

‘Today I make the perfect seaveed lasagne. It is touched by ze hand of God, I tell you, Frances.’

‘That’s amazing. Congratulations.’

Stefania nodded. ‘Sank you. It is truly amazing. As I tell you, I am blessed.’ She scooped up Duke Ellington, who put up no fight whatsoever, and left my house, shouting, ‘Take peace viz you to Kosovo, Frances!’

On the train to Gatwick, Dave was unlike his usual self. He was quiet and serious, even rougher round the edges than usual. ‘You OK, Dave?’ I asked, fishing a fag out of his mouth before he got us thrown off the train.

‘Yep,’ he said briefly. ‘Yep, all good. Just up late with the missus. Tired.’

This was obviously Serious Dave, the Dave who’d lost one of his fingers in a war zone. I resolved to be Serious Fran during the trip, although I was less keen on losing part of my hand. As if he’d read my mind, Dave picked up my bandaged thumb and raised an eyebrow. ‘Duke Ellington?’ I nodded. ‘He’s a little fuckwit, that one.’ Dave grinned, and returned to his paper.

I’d been sitting at the MAC counter in Duty Free for about fifteen minutes when Dave strode in looking
agitated. ‘What’s up?’ I asked him as a pearlescent black eye shadow was brushed into my eye sockets.

‘Stella,’ he replied, staring at my glam-rock aesthetic with confusion. ‘Get out of here, Franny, we’re in trouble.’

I shrugged guiltily at the makeup girl as Dave strode off. She gazed at me stonily. Not only was I leaving in the middle of her story about having it off with a minor league football player but I was scarpering without buying any makeup. ‘Sorry,’ I tried. ‘We’re journalists. There’s an emergency in progress.’

‘You – you are
journalist
?’ she asked, with a raised eyebrow.

Damn her! ‘Yes,’ I said, drawing myself up to my full height of five foot four. ‘Actually, I’m a foreign correspondent.’

The girl looked me up and down and smiled. ‘No. I think you lie,’ she said, handing me a face wipe.

When I met up with Stella in the Ladies, I saw why we were in trouble. She was crouched around the toilet bowl with a grey face and shaking hands. ‘Crayfish,’ she muttered in anguish.

‘Oh dear, I, erm …’ I said, dabbing ineffectually at her brow. It was cold and clammy. I withdrew my hand swiftly and ran as she heaved.

I left the loos to find Dave outside, his phone in his hand. ‘She’s not flying, is she?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘No. Let’s get on to the office urgently. If
someone leaves now they’ll get here in time.’ He peered at the departures board. Our flight was to leave in under two hours. ‘No, they won’t. I think we should go alone, Fran,’ he said.