Page 40 of The Love of My Life
Chapter Twenty
LEO
Present day
Robbie Rosen is seven and a half minutes late. Claire, the old friend who signed me in, has long since returned to her desk. The only other person in the BBC canteen is a woman cleaning the now-empty serveries.
I stare out of the windows at the Glasgow skyline, pierced by blackened church spires. It’s stopped raining but droplets of water are still beetling down the floor-to-ceiling glass, and rain has pooled on empty plastic tables on the roof terrace outside. Further down the river, traffic queues on the motorway bridge.
I found the death conference oddly unsettling this morning. Emma’s illness has made death feel personal, suddenly; as if I’ve been stripped of my vocational ability to separate a person’s beginning and middle from their end. I was relieved when it was over; for once I didn’t stop to talk to anyone.
A young man the shape of an apple walks into the canteen. Tight jeans he’d probably be better without. He has a fashionable beard, but for some reason it doesn’t quite hit the mark – I think because his face is so youthful, so pink and plump. He sees me and raises his eyebrows in greeting.
We sit down and he asks if I know how Emma’s doing. He was ‘really upset’ to hear she was so poorly.
I tell him I’ve heard on the grapevine that Emma is doing well, and he seems genuinely relieved. Then I give my rehearsed speech about how I’m writing Emma’s stock obit and wanted to talk to someone on the production team forThis Landabout Emma’s time in front of the camera. I explain I’ve been just round the corner all day, at a death conference of all things, haha! ‘I thought it’d be easiest to drop by. Just ask a few questions.’
He tells me sure, it’s no bother. Behind him, fingers of sunlight poke through the clouds.
‘Can I assume that you and Emma worked quite closely?’ I ask, pulling my notebook out. ‘You’re the right person to talk to?’
‘Oh God yeah, we were together all the time,’ he says. He’s stroking a thumb self-consciously along his chin; a gesture better suited to an older man. ‘It was me who used to drive her around, check her into hotels, sort out her meals. We’d mess around while the cameraman and the director argued about how to shoot the next scene. Got on like a house on fire.’
I nod, as if to say,I thought as much!‘I suppose it’s a much more relaxed relationship than that between, say, her and the director.’
‘Totally. I mean, to be honest, I was really doing an AP’s job, or at least a researcher’s job – definitely not a runner’s. But yes, I was with her most of the time. Bloody telly!’ he adds, as if I’m one of the inner circle. ‘We’re all working at least two levels below our pay grade.’
He wants me to sympathise, but I haven’t the time.
‘So – would you say she confided in you?’
There’s a fine-spun pause.
‘I mean, yes, of course,’ he says, carefully. ‘Although I’m not going to tell you all her shit!’
‘What shit?’ It bursts out of me and hangs in the air between us like a bad smell, refusing to disperse. I throw in a laugh and say, ‘Only joking,’ which just makes it worse.
He backtracks. ‘I suppose what I really mean is that as the runner you kind of see everything, don’t you? I’m sure it’s the same in your industry. So yes, she confided in me, but to be honest I saw everything that went down on that show, whether I was told or not. You buy respect by keeping your mouth shut.’
‘So no real gossip,’ I say, grinning, as if his answer doesn’t matter to me at all.
‘No, no gossip in particular,’ he says, but I can see it – there is something.
I know I’ll lose him if I push this now, so I invite him to tell me a few anecdotes from the series.
He doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. He mentions the lightning bolt that took out their tripod on a clifftop in Devon, the day Emma fell into a rock pool during a piece to camera. There are many details of their relationship – chatty, giggly – and he’s particularly emphatic about her not being an ‘arrogant dick’. (‘Most presenters are such arrogant dicks,’ he explains.)
‘To be honest, though, that second series was overshadowed by Em being dropped, straight after she’d recorded the voice-over. We were all so gutted, and her poor agent, Mags, was furious, but it was out of our hands. Commissioners are dicks too, by the way.’
‘I imagine it hit Emma very hard.’
‘It did,’ he says, remembering. ‘Emma went a bit mad and sacked her agent, Mags – Mags took it very badly.’
I’ve been noting this down in shorthand, but then I stop, rereading. ‘Actually, Emma’s agent sacked her. Not the other way round. I’ve – I’ve read about it.’
‘No, Emma definitely ditched Mags. I saw her at the RTS awards a few weeks later, she was still shocked. A little bit furious, too, if I’m honest.’
His phone rings and he excuses himself. He wanders off across the canteen, rapping his knuckles occasionally on the deserted tables. A man in a BBC Logistics sweatshirt sits down nearby, unwrapping a sandwich.
