Therapy

papers enquiringly. I took off the headphones momentarily and said, “Knee.” Sally nodded and went back to her reading. I went back to the news. The main story was a development in the James Bulger murder case, which has been dominating the media for days. Last week the little boy, only two years old, was enticed away from a butcher’s shop in a shopping mall in Bootle by two older boys, while his mother’s attention was distracted. Later he was found dead, with appalling injuries, beside a railway line. The abduction was recorded by a security video camera, and every newspaper and TV news programme has carried the almost unbearably poignant blurred still of the toddler being led away by the two older boys, trustingly holding the hand of one of them, like an advertisement for Startrite shoes. It appears that several adults saw the trio after that, and noticed that the little boy was crying and looking distressed, but nobody intervened. Tonight it was announced that two ten-year-old boys have been charged with murder. “The question is being asked,” the TV reporter said, standing against the backdrop of the Bootle shopping mall, “What kind of society do we live in, in which such things can happen?” A pretty sick one, is the answer.
     
    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
     
    Sunday 21st Feb. 6.30 p.m. I’m writing this on my laptop in the break between the dress rehearsal and the recording of The People Next Door, sitting at a Formica table in the Heartland Studios canteen, surrounded by soiled plates and cups and glasses left over from an early dinner shared with the cast and production team, and not yet cleared away by the somewhat lackadaisical catering staff. Recording begins at 7.30, after a half-hour warm-up session for the audience. The actors have gone off to Make-Up for repairs, or are resting in their dressing-rooms. Hal is doing a last check on the camera script with his PA and vision mixer, Ollie is having a drink with David Treece, Heartland’s Controller of Comedy (I love that title), and I have just managed to shake off the attentions of Mark Harrington’s chaperone, Samantha, who lingered after the others had gone, so I have an hour to myself. Samantha Handy has a degree in Drama from Exeter University and is doing the job faute de mieux, as Amy would say. Looking after a twelve-year-old boy whose chief topic of conversation is computer games, and making sure he does his homework, is obviously not her natural vocation. She really wants to write for television and seems to think I can help her get a commission. She’s a good-looking redhead, with amazing boobs, and I suppose another man, Jake Endicott for instance, might be tempted to encourage her in this illusion, but I told her frankly that she would do better to try and persuade Ollie to give her some scripts to report on as a first step. She pouted a little and said, “It’s just that I have this fabulous idea for an offbeat soap, a kind of English Twin Peaks. Sooner or later somebody else is going to think of it, and I couldn’t bear that.” “What is it?” I said, averting my eyes from her own twin peaks; and then added hastily, “No, don’t tell me. Tell Ollie. I don’t want to be accused of pinching it one day.” She smiled and said it wasn’t my sort of thing, it was too kinky. “What’s kinky?” said Mark, who was working his way through a second helping of Mississippi Mud Pie. “None of your business,” said Samantha, flicking him lightly on the ear with a long, tapered fingernail. She asked me if I thought she should get an agent, and I said I thought that would be a good idea, but I didn’t offer to introduce her to Jake Endicott. This was entirely for her own good, but naturally she didn’t appreciate my chivalrous motives, and took her young charge off to Make-Up slightly miffed.
     
    I never miss these Sunday recording sessions if I can help it. It’s not that I can contribute much at this late stage, but there’s always a kind of First Night excitement about the occasion, because of the studio audience. You never know who they’re going to be or how they’re going to react. The ones who write in for tickets are usually fans and can be relied upon to laugh in the right places, but there’s always a risk that because the tickets are free people won’t show up on the night. To be sure of filling the seats Heartland relies mostly on organized groups, like social clubs and staff associations looking