Lifesaving for Beginners

Howth Road that I realise I have more to learn about media savvy-ness.
    There are more trucks. Television trucks. Outside my parents’ house. Only two of them but enough to give me a jolt, nonetheless.
    Ed yells, ‘Holy smoke!’ when he sees them. He’s enjoying all the cloak and dagger.
    Dad says, ‘I can’t drive around for much longer. We’re nearly out of juice.’ He never says ‘juice’. He says ‘petrol’.
    Minnie says, ‘If we go in there, we’re trapped. We’ll be like fish in a barrel.’
    That’s when Mum says, in a quiet voice so we have to strain to hear her, ‘I want to go home.’
    Dad says, ‘OK.’
    And that’s how we end up barricaded inside the house where I grew up, with the media, swelling in numbers by the hour, camped outside the door and up and down the street.
    We pull down the blinds. Put on the kettle. Ed says he’s starving but when I check the fridge there are a few stalks of celery, a tub of natural yoghurt, a hard triangle of Edam and a withered bunch of thyme. Looking in this fridge it’s hard to believe it will be Christmas Eve tomorrow.
    Dad says, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t had the chance to go shopping.’
    Ed says, ‘But I’m hungry.’
    I say, ‘I’ll ring Domino’s.’
    Minnie says, ‘How’s that going to look on the news? World famous author stuffs face with Domino’s Mighty Meaty?’
    In the end, I find potato waffles and fish fingers in the freezer, possibly left over from the days when I used to live in the house. I steam the celery to make it a bit more healthy-heart-ish for Ed but he refuses to eat it because I forgot to chop the stalks into chunks and I tell him I’ll do it now but he says, ‘It’s too late, Kat.’
    Sky News have the story running on a loop.
    The revelation today, of the author of the hugely successful Declan Darker series of novels, has sent shock waves through the publishing world, the reading world and the world at large. Katherine Kavanagh – known affectionately to her friends and family as Kat – revealed today, at a press conference, that she has been writing under the pseudonym Killian Kobain for almost twenty years. Following a short statement from Kavanagh, the writer left the press conference, refusing to answer any questions. The media-shy Kat is hiding out at her parents’ house in Dublin, where her brother, Edward, who is autistic, is said to be recovering from the recent removal of a brain tumour.
    There’s no point screaming at the television screen but I do it anyway. With each report comes a fresh inaccuracy.
    Kat Kavanagh received a six-figure advance in the spring of 1992 when she submitted a mere three chapters of Dirty Little Secret , which she had written longhand into several shorthand notebooks, to publishers Hodder & Stoughton.
    That’s rubbish. Minnie sent the entire manuscript. And I used legal pads. And it was July. That’s bloody well summer, the last time I checked.
    Brona Best – Kat Kavanagh’s editor for the past twenty years – spoke today of the lengths that she had to go to, to protect her top writer’s identity. Describing Kavanagh as deeply paranoid and unpredictable, Best said that, with Kavanagh’s murky past, the writer’s behaviour is understandable.
    Brona rings almost immediately. She is weeping. ‘I . . . I . . . I ne . . . nev . . . never . . . told them that . . . Kat . . . I swear . . . I di . . . I di . . . I didn’t t-t-tell them anything.’
    It takes me ages to get her to stop crying. Eventually I have to yell, ‘Stop crying,’ which works a treat.
    Brona says, ‘They’re camped outside on the street. The phones won’t stop ringing. One of the camera crews has rented a scissor lift.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know. We’re on the sixteenth floor, for Christ’s sake.’
    Brona never blasphemes. Things are serious.
    ‘Look, Brona. Don’t worry. It’ll blow over. Just keep your head down and your mouth shut.’
    Brona starts crying again. Quietly this time.
    She says, ‘You were right.’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘The leak. It came from our office.’
    ‘WHAT? HOW?’
    ‘Bloody Harold.’
    ‘Harold? Jeremy’s boyfriend?’
    ‘Ex-boyfriend, remember? Apparently, he was up to his neck in debt. He was an addict.’
    ‘A drug addict?’
    ‘Cosmetic surgery. He’s had everything done. He looked like Joan Rivers in the end, Jeremy said. Anyway, he must have been poking around Jeremy’s home office and he found something about you. Jeremy is