| Today I was Kate Adie in Rocket Dogs. I was Donal Mcintyre without the camera crew and the talking to himself and I was Jeremy Paxman after a particularly uncomfortable day in those Marks and Sparks underpants. No one could see me here in the dark and I was going to uncover the true story.
Er, maybe.
I wished I'd eaten more at lunchtime. My stomach was growling in a way that nobody was going to mistake for a cat in the bushes. Oh God. A cat. I didn't want to be mistaken for a cat since he'd killed one of those too. His wife Elaine and the cat Brandy. Both in the pool.
Well, allegedly. Maybe it wasn't Michael, the husband. Maybe it was just co incidence that he'd gone missing on the very day his wife was found dead in their swimming pool. We weren't allowed to say that in our news bulletins of course. I'd invested the legal bit we were allowed to say with extra emphasis "Police are currently looking for a man in connection with their enquiries." and pictured lantern jawed, floppy haired Michael as I said "man" as if I could telepathically beam the image to all of Drive FM's listeners.
I keep picturing poor Elaine. From the photo in the Police press release, her hair was like mine. A kind of blonde, grown out version of the "Rachel". She and her husband ate out often in the pub where me and Tom had had a meal just last weekend. It was a proper country pub, not with pretend beams or anything. Someone's actual collection of gravy boats hanging on hooks from the real beams, an open fire. Me and Tom had both had a full roast lamb dinner, he'd teased me about leaving the boiled potatoes but eating all the roasties as usual. I'd felt grown up and normal. Like we were the sort of couple of whom people would say "They''re a lovely couple", just like Michael and Elaine in that photo.
My hand was gripping my little square Sony Mini Disc recorder in my pocket. I was cold now. I could see the two Police officers at the front gates of the house shifting from foot to foot. I didn't need to be there. Elaine's husband wasn't about to appear and shout "I did it!"
I just wanted to stand there a minute in the still and the dark. A woman had died. It felt like this. Still and dark and cold. Not rushing around from press conference to radio station, joking with the telly reporters about how we'd needed a change from all the slow news days, not writing a three line news story with the latest angle with two minutes to go until I read it out on air, not even driving the news car over the Pennines with James "She's a Star" at full blast on the speakers. One day I would find out why I always identified with the women who had been murdered. But not today. Today was a day to tell the world that something had happened, even if we weren't allowed to say what.
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Weight at Jan 2011; Too heavy
Goal by March 2011; Be less heavy |