Sounds Like Radio Episode 25
Cesca wanted to know more about how Miriam had been transformed from a distracted and sad young woman into a spark of pure joy.
Gerry described the extraordinary studio interview in which Miriam had fallen under the spell of a chocolate expert, and he for her.
“I think she’s wise enough to know that if you see a chance of happiness and love, you have to grab it with both hands and run,” Gerry said.
Cesca laughed.
“In her case, straight out the door during her shift!”
“But you get my point,” Gerry said. “Why hesitate when life is short and magic moments rare?” She picked up the office phone.
“By the way, there was a message from Daisy Grahame, the phone-in producer, so I’d better get hold of her.”
Cesca left the office to set up in the editing channel.
She knew that Gerry was right. Since the beginning of their conversation about Miriam she had been thinking of Bill.
There was no escaping the truth – she thought about him all the time.
She would hover on the pavement like a love-sick teenager every time she left the studio, just in case he came out.
And yet she had been tying herself in knots finding ways not to confront the issue.
She was scared of failure, rejection, or entanglement with a man she barely knew but who (according to his friend Travis) had “issues”.
Cesca didn’t need any more issues in her life.
But if Miriam could follow a man she’d met only hours before out into a love affair, then what was paralysing her boss?
Maybe the answer was to throw herself at Bill and see what happened. It was certainly a technique, though it carried a great deal of risk.
Making a complete fool of herself was the least of it.
Travis, Bill’s friend from Australia, was still around, and that same day, when Cesca went out to top up the fridge milk supply, there was Travis, sitting on the wall just as Bill had that first fateful day, fiddling with his phone.
Bill came out of the house next door. He gave Cesca a wave, plonked himself on the wall beside Travis and looked up at the clear sky.
“I’m off to the corner shop,” Cesca said. “Need anything?”
“No, thanks,” Bill said to a cloud. “All good.”
Cesca turned to go.
“How long have you been here?” Travis asked, stopping her in her tracks. “The studio, I mean.”
“Nine years,” Cesca replied. “That makes me feel old. Though I was only twenty when I arrived.”
“You look great,” Travis said. “Doesn’t she look really great, Bill?”
Bill’s head dropped and he began to lace his shoes.
“Travis is the direct type,” he said to the trainers.
Travis laughed.
“It’s got me into hot water before. There was this girl in Sydney.
“I told her she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and she hit me.”
“Oh, I get you,” Cesca said, glancing at Bill, thinking she might test him.
“Practically throwing yourself at somebody and feeling a fool afterwards. We’ve all done that.”
“Exactly,” Travis said.
Cesca had never thrown herself at anybody. But before Bill became a distant memory she could try one last thing.
“One time, in a club in Brum centre . . . well, I don’t want to go there!
“A handsome guy on a dance floor, ten minutes of conversation, a banquette seat in a corner, then a month regretting it . . .”
Bill had sat up again and he began laughing – a big, hearty laugh.
“How embarrassing! How really embarrassing!” He laughed some more and Travis scowled at him.
“Thanks, Bill,” he said. “I think we get the point.”
“Well,” Bill said, “it’s funny, that type of thing.”
Travis looked at his phone again.
“Gotta go,” he said, and he gave Cesca a look of apology.
“Bill,” he said, “you can be such a . . .” But he didn’t finish the thought, and went striding off.
Cesca left Bill, fetched the milk and retreated into the studio. Kevin, unusually, was making coffee in the kitchen.
“How does this stupid thing work?” he said. “The old one was fine. Why did we spend money on a new one?”
“The old one wouldn’t make coffee any more, Kev. Apart from that it was great. And this one arrived in 2018 so it’s not exactly new. Here, let me.”
Kevin moved aside, still facing away from Cesca with his hands braced on the counter.
“Latte?” she said.
“I don’t want a coffee,” Kevin said. “It’s for . . . oh, I don’t know what it’s for.”
“Kevin, are you OK?”
There was a long pause before he turned round and leaned heavily against the kitchen cabinets.
“This is what I do,” he said. “It’s my career. My life.”
Cesca nodded.
“If I can’t record and mix and send programmes out of that door – what am I?”