Sounds Like Radio Episode 16
Arya was Mr and Mrs Chopra’s oldest daughter.
Cesca had met her on a couple of occasions around the time of the opening of Sounds Like Radio.
“Come in!” Arya said when she answered the door. “It’s great to see you!”
Arya’s children, a boy and a girl, had more than doubled in size since Cesca had last seen them.
The little girl fled when she saw a visitor had arrived.
“She’s ten, a funny age,” Arya said. “Paavan here is six, going on forty-four.”
Paavan was a solemn little boy who wore a polo shirt buttoned up to the top and square specs.
While Arya made tea, Cesca tried to chat to him.
“Do you play video games?” she asked, immediately spotting that he was too young. “Or watch telly?”
He was silent, looking steadily at her with his hands behind his back.
Arya came in with a tray.
“He’s more of a listener,” she said. “Have you heard from my dad recently?
“When I call and he answers I get the classic response – ‘I’ll fetch your mother’. It cracks me up.”
“He hasn’t called,” Cesca said, which was true: she had called him.
The child observed her as she sipped her tea. Then he trotted into the kitchen and turned a radio on.
A political show filtered into the sitting-room.
“He’ll listen to anything,” Arya said.
It gave Cesca an idea.
“Paavan, how would you like to look round the radio studios one day?” she called through.
His small, round face appeared in the doorway and his dark eyes shone.
“I think you’ve got a customer.” Arya smiled.
“Paavan is a real tinkerer. He loves making things and he’s for ever resetting all the buttons on my digital radio!”
Cesca felt bad for buttering up Mr Chopra’s family, but she also felt that sometimes the end justified the means.
There was a tiny hope that if Mrs Chopra heard about her interaction with Paavan, positive vibes might reach the Big Man himself.
There were plenty of examples of a person keeping a failing business going for sentimental reasons.
Gerry had been on a high for days. She could now, surely, describe herself as a sound engineer.
Even if nobody else said so, she knew she’d earned the title during that phone-in.
Gerry was walking home one evening, wondering if Cesca had made her trip to Mr Chopra’s daughter’s house yet, and noticed someone at the bus stop as she passed by, someone whose back she thought she recognised, with sleek black bobbed hair.
She walked round to the street side.
“Monica,” she said.
Monica jumped.
“Oh, hi, Gerry.”
“You look tired.”
“I’m in a good mood, actually. I am on my way home. Kevin and I are having a meal together.”
Gerry was unsure what to say. Monica laughed.
“I know, that’s a normal thing for a married couple to do.
“But I don’t think it’s happened in our house for months, not until he got ill.
“He has had to sit still for a bit. I’ve been able to shift the sheets of MDF propped against the dining table and make the place look half normal.
“He hasn’t been able to ‘nip back’ to the studio to do . . .” She sighed.
“To do whatever he does.”
Monica looked at Gerry.
“I know, I must look pathetically pleased, but this stir-fry may be my last chance before he’s back at work and back to muttering about a trip to buy seasoned timber in Suffolk for a fitted wardrobe.
“I’ve got some time with my husband.”
“I suppose that if you talked about getting a professional in –”
“I’ve tried, a hundred times,” Monica said. “He’s creating our perfect home. But I need it before I die!”
A double-decker appeared in the distance and Monica stood up.
“I had a really long phone call with my old friend Mae Ling in Hong Kong.
“If Kevin knew the cost of the international calls!
“What would I do without Mae? One old friend is all you need.” She picked up the bag.
“Oh, yes,” Gerry said. “Send Kevin my best.” She paused.
“You might mention that the mental health phone-in went off without a blip.”
“I will.”
As Gerry walked away she reflected on Monica’s Hong Kong friend. She felt lucky that she didn’t need other people to share her thoughts with.
But it had been interesting to hear Bronwen’s voice in the phone-in.
It had put her in mind of the old canteen at the council, the one before they moved buildings, with the damp tuna sandwiches and the dated posters about litter and benefit claims.
She wished now that she had taken Bronwen’s details – not to seek her out, just so she had them “up her sleeve”.