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Chapter Two

Twenty minutes, one strong Americano, two Solpadene and three Berocca tablets later and I’m standing beside Katie, feeling an awful lot sparkier and up-for-it. More like myself. Even if on days like this, I almost feel like my nickname could be Solpachina.

‘Oooh, look at you! You look fabulous!’ Katie squeals in my ear. Which we both know is just a well-meant but polite lie. However, I will say this, the make-up girl deserves a BAFTA for at least managing to make me look like I didn’t sleep the night up a tree, before being savaged by werewolves on the way home; the only thing which might possibly account for the nesty, Russell Brand-esque state of my hair when I first opened the door to the camera crew earlier this morning.

‘Right then,’ says Katie, lining herself up in front of the camera, with a load of framed photos strategically dotted on the piano between us. ‘Ready to go?’

‘I’ve been ready for the last two hours, actually,’ the cameraman growls impatiently back at us, coughing and spluttering like a Lada.

Lovely. It’s going to be one of those days.

‘Well, as you can imagine, we’re all so excited about this very special edition of A Day in the Life and here’s the reason why…Presenting our fabulous hostess, Jessie Woods herself!’

So off Katie riffs in the air-hostess voice and I find myself wondering if anyone’s ever told her that there are, in fact, other adjectives than fabulous.

‘Oooh, isn’t she just like a little girl’s idea of what a princess should be?’ she says straight to camera and not actually looking at me. ‘With her beautiful, blonde hair and fabulous, trim, toned figure! It’s like skinny jeans were designed especially with this woman in mind!’

She giggles and I resist the urge to a) vomit, b) remind her that this is, in fact, TV, not radio, so viewers presumably can see for themselves and besides, you should never ever, EVER talk down to an audience. Instead, I just grin inanely and do a false TV laugh back. You know, head thrown back, jaw fish-wired into a grin: ha, ha, HA!

‘So, Jessie, we’re loving, loving, LOVING your fabulous home, but maybe you could tell us a little about some of the photos you have on display here?’

The camera does an obliging panning shot of some recent pics and just for a split second, I get to see my own life from the outside. It’s weird but somehow every single snap manages to look like a posed photo opportunity. Sam and I at the Derby with Nathaniel and Eva; me wearing what appears to be three table napkins strategically sewn together to cover up my girlie bits. The four of us on a ski trip, me in the centre; laughing, messing around, having great craic, the life and soul of the party. Two things strike me. One is that Sam is on his mobile in every single shot. The other is, our lives look so stunningly, dazzlingly perfect…Christ alive, no wonder we piss people off.

‘Ooh, here’s a terrific one!’ Katie sing-songs. ‘Just look at you! Like a classier version of Paris Hilton! What a stunning dress! So, tell us, where was this taken?’

OK. The real answer to that question is, Are you kidding me, Katie? The only thing I have in common with Paris Hilton is dyed blonde hair and a credit card. And the dress isn’t a bit stunning; it’s more like a big, flowery shower curtain from a Bed, Bath and Beyond sale bin. Lesson: if you are eejit enough to listen to stylists, then you deserve everything that’s coming to you. As long as these people garner column inches, believe me, they’re not bothered if you end up beaten into a skinny size zero pant suit, looking like a boiler that’s too big for its lagging jacket.

However, I go with the interview answer instead. ‘Why thanks, Katie. That photo was taken at the National TV awards, where Jessie Would was nominated for best TV show, can you believe it, for the second year running?!’ I omit to mention that we lost out to a home video programme where people send in clips of their dogs playing musical instruments, that kind of thing. It sticks in my mind because next day there was a pap shot of me rubbing my eyelid to try and get a bit of fluff out, with a headline, Who Let The Dogs Out? Jessie’s Tears At Being Upstaged By Mutt.

‘Oooh, look at this one, you brave girl, you!’ says Katie, picking up a still shot from the show of me skydiving. ‘Tell me, is that the hardest dare you ever had to do on Jessie Would?’

Real answer: Funnily no. Sure any eejit can skydive; you just hold your breath and jump. What was weird about that one though, was that some pervert actually texted in a suggestion that I do it in a bikini.

Interview answer: ‘Ha, ha, HA. Not at all, Katie. As a matter of fact, I’m often asked that question…’

‘Oooh, or what about the time you had to spend the night alone in a haunted house?’

Real answer: Are you off your head? Best night’s sleep I ever had.

Interview answer: ‘Ha, ha, HA. Yes, that one did put years on me, but by far the most challenging dare I’ve ever had to do on the show was the time I had to work as head chef in a restaurant. Sixty covers in a single night. Nearly killed me.’ I might add that fifty-eight out of the sixty customers demanded their money back after they were kept waiting for almost two hours with nothing but the bread sticks in front of them to nibble at. And that was after I had to announce to the whole, starving dining room that if anyone happened to find my earring inside the fish pie, would they please mind letting me know? Oh and for the record, the two people in the restaurant who didn’t complain were Sam’s parents; God love them, they desperately wanted to be on the show and were just being kind. What people don’t realise though, when they’re texting in all their wacky dare ideas, is that the extreme stuff doesn’t knock a feather out of me. It’s normal everyday, bread-and-butter things that make me want to lie down in a darkened room listening to dolphin music and taking tablets. Like bank statements. Or Visa bills. Or anything with ‘Final Notice’ stamped in red across it.

‘Oooh, and look at this fabulous shot of you and the sexy Sam Hughes! Tell us, Jessie, how did you two first meet?’

I glow a bit, the way I always do whenever I get a chance to talk about Sam. OK, the real answer to this question is:

we met at Channel Six when I first started working there, God, almost nine years ago now. I was just twenty-one years old, straight off a media training course and working as a runner on News Time, which Sam seemed to appear on every other week, talking about GNPs and PPIs and whatever you’re having yourself. ‘Runner’, though, as everyone knows, is a glorified word for ‘dogsbody’, so my job basically involved getting the tea, emptying bins in dressing rooms and on more than one occasion, having to blow-dry under one newsreader’s armpits with a hair dryer, so her couture dress wouldn’t get deodorant stains on it. I’ll never forget it; her name was Diane Daly so all the floor staff, myself included, used to call her Diva Di. A nasty nickname I know, but she’d really earned it; this was a woman who’d regularly ring me at 6 a.m. before work, to order me to the fruit and veg market so I could buy supplies of sprouted beans for her, the time she was doing her whole wheat-free, gluten-free, lactose-intolerant thing. And who would think absolutely nothing of getting me to drop her kids to school, while she skipped off to get her Restylane injections. All of which I did happily, gratefully and without whinging because I was just so overjoyed to be working in TV. This, as far as I was concerned, was It, the Big Break, which could only lead on to bigger and better things.

Two things came out of that whole experience for me. One is that to this day, I always treat the runners on Jessie Would like royalty: iPods for their birthdays, posh spa treatments at Christmas; toxic debt or no toxic debt, the way I look on it is, they’ve earned it, the hard way. The other thing is…that’s where I first met Sam. Vivid memory; it was just before a live broadcast and there he was, patiently waiting behind the scenes to take part in a panel discussion piece about debt to profit ratios or something equally boring. Radiating confidence, not a nerve in his body. He ordered a coffee from me and I was so petrified, my shaking hands accidentally spilled some of it onto the lap of his good suit, but instead of ranting and raving about it, he couldn’t have been sweeter. Just laughed it off, said it was an accident, that he’d be sitting down behind a desk anyway so he could be naked from the waist down and sure no one would even know the difference. Then he smiled that smile; so dazzling it should nearly come with a ping! sound effect, and I was a complete goner.

Course it turned out every female on News Time fancied him, but he was dating some famous, leggy, modelly one back then, so it went without saying that we all knew none of us had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting near him. But just for a bit of devilment, myself and the make-up girls used to invent all kinds of imaginary sex scenarios about him, like he was the ultimate Prince Charming; utterly unattainable, but great craic to fantasise about.

‘Me and Sam Hughes, on a sun lounger, at sunset, looking out over the Caribbean…’

‘No, I’ve a better one, me and Sam Hughes in a dressing room, just before the show…’

‘No, NO. My go: me and Sam in a log cabin during a power cut with only a king-sized double bed for our entertainment centre…’

…was all you could hear along the corridors of Channel Six on the days we knew he’d be in. We even had a ‘hottie alert’ system, whereby the minute one of us saw his car in the car park, we were duty bound to text the others IMMEDIATELY, so everyone had a fair and equal chance to get their make-up on.

Anyway, whenever I did see Sam after the whole, mortifying coffee-on-the-crotch episode, which was maybe about once a month or so, he always made a point of asking me how I was getting on in the new job. Always friendly, always playfully nicknaming me Woodsie, always encouraging, always respectful and never, ever someone who looked down on me as just a humble gofer with Pot Noodle for brains.

Then, one day about three months later, he found me in the staff canteen, hysterically trying to babysit Diva Di’s bratty eight- and ten-year-old boys, who were running riot around the place and ambushing me with lumpy cartons of strawberry-flavoured yoghurt. The pair of them had completely doused me in it; clothes, hair, jeans, everything, soaked right through to my knickers. And, of course, life being what it is, at that very moment, in sauntered Sam, as Darcy-licious as ever. He let out a yell at the kids, which did actually manage to shut them up, then sat me down and helped dry me off with a load of paper napkins. I’ll never forget it; he x-rayed me with jet-black eyes, laughed and said, ‘To think they say working in TV is glamorous.’ I gamely managed a grin, suddenly aware that he dated famous models and here I was, stinking of sticky, strawberry yoghurt-y crap.

‘So, tell me. Is this really what you signed up for, Woodsie?’

Now the thing about Sam is that he can be a bit like those motivational speakers you’d normally see on Oprah; you know, the ones who convince you that you can turn your life around in seven days, that kind of thing. It’s like he comes with a double dose of drive and it can be infectious.

So I told him everything. Out it all came; about how I wanted to work for Channel Six so desperately that I really was prepared to do anything without question. Including letting Diva Di take complete and utter advantage of me. I was so terrified of losing my job, I explained, that I just hadn’t the guts to point out that babysitting her horrible children and blow-drying under her armpits with a hair dryer, was well above and beyond my job description.

‘And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ I remember him asking, a favourite question of his.

‘In front of the camera,’ I told him without even having to pause for thought. That’s all I’d ever wanted or dreamed about. I can even remember the exact phrase I used, ‘I’d ring the Angelus bell if I had to.’ But then back came all the old insecurities; would someone like me ever be given a shot, would I even be good enough or would I fall flat on my face and make a roaring eejit of myself?

‘Are you kidding me, Woodsie?’ he grinned, wiping a bit of strawberry yoghurt off my hair with a napkin. ‘A knockout like you? They’d be bloody lucky to have you. And always remember that.’

Anyway, I think right there and then he must have seen some spark of ambition in me that mirrored his own, because any time I’d bump into him after that, he’d always make a point of asking me who exactly I’d sent my CV off to, what contacts I’d made, did I know what internal jobs were coming up? Kind of like a career guidance officer with a grinding work ethic, except one that I fancied the knickers off.

Then, by the end of that year, through an awful lot of grovelling/hassling/pounding down doors, etc., I eventually managed to land a proper front-of-camera gig. It was only doing the weekend late-night weather report (at 10 p.m., midnight, then again at 2 a.m.) but to me, it was the stuff of dreams. It was there I first met the lovely Emma, in fact; she used to do the news report, I’d do the weather, then the two of us would skite off to some nightclub and laugh the rest of the night away. We were exactly the same age, we’d both started working at Channel Six at the same time and what can I say? From day one, we just bonded.

The only downside was, I never bumped into Sam any more. In fact, apart from Emma, the only person I ever saw regularly was the nightwatchman at the security hut on my way to and from work. I kept up with Sam through the papers, but of course the only thing I was ever really interested in was who he was dating. An ultra-successful, Alpha female type usually; his identikit women always seemed to be groomed, glossy, gorgeous and it went without saying, high achievers. It was like his minimum dating requirement was that you had to work an eighty-hour week and earn a minimum six-figure annual salary. So I put him to the back of my mind and for the next few years just kept my head down and got on with it. Funny thing was though, the harder I worked, the luckier I seemed to get. It was miraculous; as though the planets had aligned for me and, even more amazingly, I seemed to be able to do no wrong. Job followed job at Channel Six, until eventually, hallelujah be praised, the Jessie Would show came about.

Then, flash forward to about two years ago, when I was at the Channel Six Christmas party with Emma, both of us pissed out of our heads. She was celebrating the show being commissioned for a second series, I was drowning my sorrows having just found out that my then boyfriend was seeing someone else behind my back. During Christmas week too, the worthless, faithless bastard. Everyone kept coming over to say congratulations on the show and I was obliged to beam and act all delighted. All whilst sending Cheater Man about thirty text messages, ranging in tone from disbelief to accusation by way of pleading. Waste of time though; every one of them was completely ignored. It was beyond awful; Christmas is when I lost my darling dad and God knows, given the highly dysfunctional background I come from, it’s a hard enough time of year to get through without adding ‘serially single man-repeller’ into the mix as well. And then I saw Sam. Also alone, also dateless. My heart stopped; I’d forgotten how uncomfortably handsome he was. He came straight over, congratulated me on the show’s success and then, sensing something was amiss, asked me what was up. Now it takes an awful lot for me to start snivelling or bawling, but the combination of too much Pinot Grigio and being dumped and missing Dad was all just too much for me. I knew if I didn’t get the hell out of there immediately, I was in danger of making a complete and utter holy show of myself in front of him and everyone else, so I blushed scarlet, mumbled some lame excuse about having another party to go to and bolted for the door.

But when I replay it back in my head now, it seems almost like a scene from a French movie, complete with mood-enhancing smoke machines and violins playing as a soundtrack in the background. There I was on the road outside Channel Six, in the lashing rain, holding back the tears and frantically trying to wave down a cab; next thing a sleek black Mercedes pulls up beside me on the kerb and the window elegantly glides down. It’s Sam. Who knew I was upset and who followed me, bless him. He coaxed me out of the icy rain and into the warmth of his car, gently asking me what the problem was and how he could help fix it. And so, not for the first time, I ended up pouring out my whole tale of woe to him. All about Cheater Man and how he actually broke up with me…via text message, the cowardly gobshite. Didn’t even have the manners to dump me for someone younger or thinner either.

Sam flashed his Hollywood smile at that, then turned to me. ‘Woodsie,’ he said, strong, clear and firm as ever, ‘any guy that would treat a gorgeous girl like you that way is an idiot and why would you want to be with an idiot? Get rid of him.’ Then the scorching black eyes gave me the sexiest up/down look before he cheekily added, ‘So then…’

‘So then…?’ I swear, I could physically feel my heart thumping off my ribcage.

A long pause while we looked at each other, exchanging souls.

‘So then…you can go out with me.’

Well, it was like something religious people must experience. Could this really be happening to me? Sam was too rich, too cool, too out of my league. I couldn’t get my head around it. Then when we sailed through our first few magical dates and when it became obvious he was slowly morphing from fantasy fling to proper boyfriend, I worried so much about what he’d see in someone like me. Turned out the answer was the very thing that I thought would turn him off me; the fact that I’d never had any of the luxuries he took for granted and was now acting like a kid in a sweetshop, loving every second of the high life he introduced me to. Until he met me, he’d often say, he was becoming jaded with his fabulous lifestyle, but seeing it all fresh through my excited eyes somehow kept it all real for him. Every time he’d see me bouncing up and down on the bed in some posh hotel or gasping in awe at some view he’d long since tired of, like the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building, he said it made him fall in love with life all over again.

And in love with me too, I’d silently hope.

‘Jessie?’

Oh shit. The interview. I almost forgot.

‘You’d drifted off there for a moment,’ Katie sing-songs. ‘We were asking you about how you first met Sam?’

I go with the standard interview answer. Of course. ‘Through work, Katie. You might say Channel Six brought us together. Ha, ha, HA.’

‘And, tell us the truth now, any wedding plans?’

Real answer: Ehhh…no. Mainly because he hasn’t asked. At least, not yet, he hasn’t. But then, with Sam you never know what’s around the corner, so I live in hope. I mean, this is a guy who’s big on spontaneity and we have been together for just over two years now, my longest relationship by a mile.

‘Jessie?’

Yet again, out comes the interview answer: ‘Well, you know how it is, we’re both so busy at the moment; honestly, it’s just something that’s never come up. But if it does, you’ll be the first to know. Ha, ha, HA!’

‘Oooh, but, look what I found here; what are you hiding from us?’ says Katie, waving at the camera to pan right to the very back of the piano.

My heart skips a beat; something embarrassing I forgot to clean up? A pair of knickers from the last party I had? An empty tin of beer stuffed with cigarette butts? A final notice bill from the gas board? It’s OK, I think, breathing normally again. Nothing too offensive, thank Christ; just an old photo of me when I first started out as a weather girl, with a horrible mousey brown bob, which kind of gave me a look of Julie Andrews from certain angles. Then another one of me in studio with Emma, my hair as spiky as a toilet brush and far, far blonder, taken when we first started working together, all of five years ago. Emma looks neat, be-suited and pristine, with her chestnut hair elegantly groomed as always, like she’s ready to start reading the nine o’clock news at the drop of a hat.

Actually, at the time that photo was taken, I only had a tiny little five-minute feature-ette on what was then Emma’s chat show; the wacky sidekick to her more sober, grounded TV persona. The balance of personalities seemed to work though; me wild and scatty, her cool and ordered. Then by some miracle (and a lot of encouragement from the mobile phone companies, who made a fortune out of all the texts people bombarded us with) my mad dare piece took off, and got so big that now the whole show is about me making an eejit of myself out on location, while Emma acts as anchor back in studio. Lesser women than Emma may have been slightly peeved at me stealing her thunder, but like I say, the girl is a walking saint and has never been anything but super-cool and encouraging about the whole thing. If there are angels masquerading as people wandering round this earth then Emma Sheridan most definitely is one.

Back to the interview and by now the camera is panning in on a photo of me with a broken leg, which I got after a bungee jump dare. But no, it was nothing as dramatic as whacking it off a bridge while suspended upside down by knicker elastic or anything; just a piece of camera equipment fell on me as I was clambering back into the van on our way back to base. My hair is longer in that shot and still blonder again; in fact, it flashes through my mind that the more successful I got on TV, the brighter the highlights got, right now the hair is almost platinum, the exact colour of Cillit Bang.

Then, out of nowhere, eagle-eyes Katie grabs up a photo which I’d forgotten all about. ‘And here you are as a teenager. So pretty, even then! Tell us, Jessie, who are your two friends in the photo with you?’

Oh God, I’d completely forgotten. That’s the trouble with airbrushing your past; the people you knew back then can sometimes seem like ghosts from a bygone age. OK, so the real answer to her question is that yes, that’s me, aged about fourteen, with my then best friend Hannah and her older brother Steve, who lived across the road from us and who were amazingly kind to me during a very rough time in my life. We were thick as thieves, Hannah and I; after we left school, we even shared a flat for a few years, which suited both of us down to the ground. We were both eighteen and she wanted her independence, while I had just lost my darling dad and had to get the hell out of our house for…well, let’s just say for personal reasons. Anyway, Hannah and I had a ball together. My life was slowly starting to turn a corner; I was working as a lounge girl in a bar at night so I could put myself through a media training course during the day, right up until I landed my first gig as a runner at Channel Six. Meanwhile Hannah was doing an apprenticeship in hairdressing and it seems like we just spent the whole time laughing and messing and getting on with our young lives. Steve worked as a handyman doing odd jobs wherever he could, but was always hanging out with us too, and it was just such a happy, joyful time all round. But then Hannah got married, I moved from behind the camera to in front of it and the last I heard of him, Steve had upped sticks and moved to the States. And so the three amigos drifted apart a bit. The way you do.

It’s no one’s fault or anything, these things just happen. You know how it is; you try meeting up whenever you can, but then realise that actually you don’t have all that much in common any more. And in an alarmingly short time, old pals become shadowy people who you exchange Christmas cards with and scrawl across them, ‘We must meet up sometime, it’s been too long!!’ But you never do.

God, I wonder what Hannah would say if she could see me now, given that this is exactly the type of show that we used to crack ourselves up laughing at, slagging off the D-list celebs desperate enough to go on them. ‘For feck’s sake, Jessie, what are you doing, dressed up like a dog’s dinner and throwing your home open to these eejits?’ most likely. ‘You look like a right gobshite.’ Hannah was never one to pull her punches.

I don’t get a chance to go with the interview answer though. Because by then Katie has snatched on another, even older photo that brings a whole new set of memories flooding back.

This time it’s an ancient, grainy shot of me aged about four, up a tree in our back garden at home, with my dad standing proudly at the bottom, arm rested against the tree-trunk, like he’s just planted it all by himself. I’m in a pair of shorts, with a dirty face, scraped knees and a plaster on my arm.

‘Oooh, look at little Jessie…such a cute little tomboy!! I think you must have been a daredevil even from a young age!’

Real answer: Funny thing is I can remember that photo being taken so clearly. It wasn’t long after my mum died and I remember spending all day every day up that tree. Coaxing me down was a daily ritual for my poor dad. He used to call me his little firecracker and would proudly tell neighbours and aunties that I was afraid of nothing. But then, losing your mum young makes you fearless. Because the worst thing that can possibly happen has already happened, so what’s there left to be afraid of? I can’t say that though, because, even after all these years, there’s a good chance I might start sniffling.

Interview answer: ‘Yes, Katie, that’s me with my darling dad, who passed away almost twelve years ago now.’

A pause, while Katie fingers the old photo frame thoughtfully.

‘And you’re an only child?’

‘Yup, certainly am.’

When I was younger, during interviews I used to do a wistful look into the middle distance whenever it came up about my being orphaned. I stopped though, when it was pointed out to me that actually, I just looked constipated.

‘But your father remarried, didn’t he?’

Shit. How does she know that?

‘Emm…well, I suppose he did, yes, but…’

‘And in actual fact, you grew up with your stepmother and two stepsisters, didn’t you?’

‘Well…the thing is…’

‘She’s called Joan, and her daughters are Maggie and Sharon. Isn’t that right?’

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, she even knows their names? OK, now the saliva in my mouth has said, ‘I’m outta here, see you!’ Come on Jessie, think straight. Right then. Nothing to do but brush it off. I mean, everyone has family skeletons in the closet they don’t necessarily want to talk about, don’t they? And believe me, this is something I never talk about. Ever. In fact the only person in my new life who knows is Sam and that’s only because he was giving me the third degree about my deep background and I’d no choice but to ‘fess up and tell all.

‘Well, you’ve certainly done your research, haven’t you Katie?’ is what I manage to come out with. Perfect answer. I even tag on the false TV laugh for good measure, because that’s how cool I am talking about this. ‘Ha, ha, HA!’ Then I go into distraction mode; anything just to get off this highly uncomfortable subject. ‘So, em, anyone fancy a coffee then? I’ve a lovely new espresso maker in the kitchen that I’m only dying to try out.’

No such luck though, it’s as if Katie smells blood here and isn’t budging.

‘Yes,’ she nods slowly and for the first time I can see steel in her eyes. Bloody hell, is all I can think, this one will make a brilliant investigative reporter in years to come. ‘In fact, I’ve done an awful lot of research on you, Jessie. For starters, your Wikipedia entry said that you went to school at the Holy Faith School in Killiney, but when I called them, they had absolutely no record of you at all. So they suggested I try their sister school on the Northside, who did have a Jessie Woods on file. Yes, they said, you’d been a pupil there right the way through secondary school. They were incredibly forthcoming with information, you know; they even had your old address on file. Which is how I eventually tracked down your family.’

No, no, no, please don’t use the F word. You don’t understand, I have NO family, I had nothing to do with those people and they have nothing to do with me…

‘Emm…or we could shoot out in the back garden if you like?’ I’m gabbling now, panicking a bit, while thinking, Curse you, Wikipedia. ‘Ehh…there’s a gorgeous water feature out there that looks lovely when it’s switched on. I mean, it’s a bit clogged up with dead leaves at the moment, but apart from that, it could make a great shot for you…’

‘In fact, as it happens, Jessie, I’ve already spoken to your stepfamily. We interviewed all three of them only yesterday. For the full afternoon. Fabulous interviews. And you know, they were all so generous with their time, we couldn’t have been more grateful. So, it’s in the can, as you might say!’

Oh no no no no no no no no no no no…