Wren
Forty-two days. Thursday, twenty to one in the morning.
The night Leeds sent a man to kill my show, I spent the first hour of it on the phone to a lad who'd proposed to his girlfriend by drone and hit her dad.
I didn't know about the killing part yet. I knew about the drone. You can only take in so much at one in the morning.
Hector told me at twenty to one. He slid a sheet of paper under the glass between his desk and mine, waited for me to read it, and then said, through the talkback, "Someone's coming from Leeds."
He said it the way he says gale warnings. Flat, early, and as if it's partly your fault.
The paper said nine thousand four hundred. That's how many of you were listening to Wren After Midnight on Scarholme Sound, ninety-seven point four, midnight till three, in an average week. It sounds a lot until you find out the bingo numbers on a Tuesday teatime get more, and the bingo numbers are read by a man who has to stop for breath between the fours.
I put a record on so I could swear properly.
"Who's coming from Leeds?"
"Didn't say," Hector said. "Name on the email's Ketley." He took his glasses off and polished them on his jumper, which only moves the dirt about. "Lanyard type."
"Hector, sunshine. What does Leeds want with us at one in the morning?"
He put the glasses back on. "Nobody drives up from Leeds to give you a pay rise."
That was the conversation. Hector's done nights in this building since nineteen eighty-nine, through three owners, two floods and a carpet warehouse underneath us that smells of glue when it rains, and he does not believe in saying a thing twice. He went back to his board. I went back to the lad with the drone.
"Small Hours Surgery," I said, and let my voice drop a gear, like it does after midnight when it's only you and me and the fridges. "You're through to Wren. What's broken?"
"Right," said Lee, from Morton. "So. I proposed Saturday."
"Congratulations, Lee."
"By drone."
I closed my eyes. You see these things better with your eyes closed.
"Go on," I said.
"It was meant to come over the back wall with the ring in a little basket," Lee said, "and land on the patio table where she was sat with her mam and dad. I'd practised. I'd practised in the park."
"And on the day?"
"Her dad stood up."
There's a sound nine thousand four hundred people make when they all wince at once. You can't hear it. You can feel it in the desk.
"How's her dad, Lee?"
"He's got a mark," Lee said.
"What sort of mark?"
"Ring-shaped."
Through the glass, Hector put his forehead down on the console, very gently, as if he were laying a wreath.
"And did she say yes?" I said.
"She said she'd think about it," Lee said. "In the ambulance. Her dad said something else. He said—"
Hector got him. Everything on this show goes out seven seconds after we say it, so Hector can bin anything rude before it reaches you. That's the delay. Her dad's opinion went in the bin, and Scarholme heard Lee breathing.
I could have done ten minutes on that. I could have done a whole series. Love Is in the Air, and So Is the Hospital Bill. But he sounded about nineteen and frightened of his own phone, and the Surgery voice came up on its own, slow and low.
"Lee. Here's what you do. Sell the drone. Tomorrow you go round there on foot. In daylight, where it counts. You take her dad a bag of frozen peas and you knock on the front door like a man with nothing in the sky. And you ask her again, on the step, with your hands where everybody can see them."
"What if she says no?"
"Then she says no to your face, and not to a basket."
"Right," said Lee. He breathed out. "Right. Thanks, Wren."
That's the job. I tell strangers to be brave in daylight, and then I go home at half three and sleep with the curtains taped. If you're listening and you're me: don't.
Between one and half past, the phones died again. I played a song about a lorry driver. I read out a text from a woman in Saltby whose husband had left her for her sister and then, after a fortnight, asked if he could have his air fryer back. I did the weather: sea fret, cold, worse later, which is the Scarholme forecast from October to May and could be printed on the tea towels. Line one stayed dark. Line two stayed dark.
Everybody looks at the clock on a Thursday.
At one forty-one the board lit up, and Hector didn't even check it. He just put him through, because that's how Hector does it, and Hector only does it one way. I faded the record out under myself and said nothing. You don't introduce him. You'd be introducing the weather.
Then there was the pause. It's long enough to boil an egg in. Under it you can hear the line, a soft wide hiss, like the sea's got into the wires, and somewhere far back a hum, and wind going past something hollow.
And then, down the line, slow, the voice you'd know with your eyes shut, low and rough like a cart on gravel:
"Thursday again, pet."
And nine thousand four hundred people in Scarholme lean towards their radios like the radio's a fire. I've had marriage proposals on this show. I've had a man ring from inside a wheelie bin to prove a point to his wife. Nothing gets them like the Lighthouse Man.
"Hello, you," I said, soft. I always say it. He never says it back.
The pause again. Then, on the line, he said, "Still no sign."
That's the bit. Every week, near enough, that's the bit, and every week it lands in me somewhere under the ribs like I've missed a step on the stairs. Three years he's been ringing about a woman who doesn't come, and three years Scarholme has stayed up to hear him say so.
"It's bitter tonight," I said. "You want to be wrapped up."
He didn't answer. He doesn't. There was a long breath on the line, and the wind behind him, and then he said, "Wore your red coat, I hope. It's bitter."
The city gave her that coat the first winter. You can't walk along the prom after midnight in anything red now without somebody slowing their car down to have a look.
"Wind's round to the north," the Lighthouse Man said. Pause. "Had the flask filled at half past. It's gone lukewarm, sat here." Pause. A sound like a cup being set down on metal. "Light's turning nice, mind. Clear up top. You'd see it from the Quay, if you looked."
I had my hand on my fader. I didn't touch it. You don't touch anything when he's on. You'd be moving furniture in church.
"Foghorn was at it all teatime," he said. "Daft thing. No fog."
Then nothing, for so long that Hector looked up from his board. Through the glass his face had gone how it only goes on Thursdays: not soft exactly, but unguarded, like a man who's taken his tie off.
"I'll keep it lit, then," said the Lighthouse Man.
Then the clunk. Same as every week, a heavy, settled sound, like a door shut in somebody else's house. And then the line went, and it was me and the hiss, and a city of people holding their breath on my behalf.
I eased my fader down a notch.
"That was him," I said. "Two minutes and forty seconds. He's been ringing three years and he's never answered a single question. I've asked him his name. I've asked him if he's warm enough. I've asked him, in a low moment last February, whether he thought I should get a fringe. Nothing. I'm not saying he's the love of my life. I'm saying he's the only man in Scarholme who rings when he says he will."
Then I played the longest record we've got, and sat with my hands flat on the desk till they stopped.
At one fifty-eight, line two.
Hector didn't need to tell me. He just held two fingers up against the glass, the way you'd order two pints, and put her through.
"Vi," I said. "Vi from the Headland. Good evening."
"It is not," Vi said, on air. "It is morning. It has been morning since midnight. You of all people should know that."
Vi has rung this show every night for longer than I've hosted it. She was a school secretary for forty years, and she talks like she's still got a register open in front of her and you're late. Every sentence has a full stop at the end you could stub your toe on.
"Did you hear him?" I said.
"I heard him," Vi said. "I hear him every week. That is not the point."
"What's the point, Vi?"
"You're encouraging him," Vi said.
"He's been ringing three years. He doesn't need encouraging. He needs a scarf."
"A grown man," said Vi, "stood out in that every Thursday, for a woman who isn't there. And you on the radio, telling him to wrap up. Telling him she might come."
"I never said she might come."
"You never said she won't," Vi said. "You let him go on hoping on your airtime. That's encouraging, pet. I've looked it up."
I laughed, and it came out wrong, a sort of bark, like a seal hearing bad news.
"Somebody's got to be on his side, Vi."
"Nobody has got to be anything," Vi said. "Goodnight."
And she was gone. She does that. She'll ring in, tell me my life is a car crash with the radio on, and hang up before I can thank her.
At two fifteen, line one, Gaz.
You can always hear Gaz before he says a word, because his indicator's going. Tick, tick, tick, through the whole call, like he's about to pull out from the rank into a life he's never quite committed to.
"Wren!" Gaz said, on air. "Gaz. Quiet as the grave down the Quay. It's me, two other cabs and a seagull with a limp, and the seagull's had more fares."
"Evening, Gaz."
"That Lighthouse fella," Gaz said. Tick, tick. "Got me right in the throat tonight. Him stood out there. It's tragic, Wren, honest to God. It's like that Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed loafers."
Through the glass, Hector wrote something on his pad and underlined it twice. I think he's keeping count. I think there's a league table.
"Lovers, Gaz."
"That's what I said. Anyway, I've a fare. Lad in a hen-do sash, don't ask. Gaz, rank two, over and out."
Tick, tick, gone.
And that was a Thursday. A lad with a drone, a man on the line, Vi telling me off and Gaz getting Shakespeare wrong. A dead night, and I loved it, and I had a sheet of paper on my desk saying nine thousand four hundred and Leeds was coming.
I forgot about Leeds. At ten to three I was reading out the last of the texts, feet up on the bin, and I'd forgotten about Leeds altogether, so I nearly went over backwards when the booth door opened.
Nobody opens the booth door. It sticks. You have to put your shoulder into it and say something rude. He'd put his shoulder into it and said nothing, which meant he'd been stood out there a while, working himself up.
He was tall, in a good dark coat the sea fret had got at, shiny on the shoulders. Thin face, grey eyes, a good haircut gone flat in the damp, and the look of somebody who hadn't slept since the motorway. Round his neck, on a blue ribbon, a lanyard. Northshore Media. Under that, his name: Sam Ketley.
He looked round Studio B. It's not a long look. Studio B is the size of a wardrobe and smells of carpet glue and cold toast. He looked at the desk, the two mics, the guest chair with the stuffing coming out, and me.
"Which mic's yours?" he said.
And it went out. Of course it went out. The guest mic has been stuck open since a man from the council leaned on it, and Sam Ketley was standing a foot from it, and nine thousand four hundred people heard a southern voice in my booth at ten to three in the morning asking which mic was mine, the way you'd ask at the vet's which one was being put down.
I did the only thing you can do. I kept going.
"Bit of news, Scarholme," I said. "We have a visitor. He's got a lanyard. I don't know what that means yet, but I know it's not good. He'd like to know which mic is mine. Sunshine, they're both mine. It's my show."
Through the glass, Hector mouthed one word, Leeds, and went back to his board.
I pulled my cans up, which is what radio calls headphones so it can feel tough, and I did the sign-off with a Leeds coat touching my elbow. I gave it everything. Especially in front of him.
"That's us," I said. "Thanks for staying up. Thanks to Lee, and good luck with her dad. Thanks to Gaz, and to Vi, who was right, and who I will never tell. Thanks to him, wherever he is, and to her, wherever she is. Go to bed, Scarholme. Ring her in the morning."
The meters went up into the red. They always do on my sign-off. I run hot. Hector's been telling me for years.
Sam Ketley winced.
It was a small wince, the face you make when somebody scrapes a fork on a plate in another room, and it went across him and was gone, and his hand came out of his coat pocket, towards my desk, towards my fader.
I didn't look at him. I just put my hand on top of the fader, still talking, and left it there.
"This has been Wren After Midnight," I said. "Same time tomorrow."
The pips. The news. Hector killed my mic, and the red light over the door went out, and Studio B went very quiet.
I took the cans off. I turned my chair round, slowly, all the way.
My phone buzzed on the desk. Mam, one minute past three, same as every night: Alive? I thumbed back the usual without taking my eyes off him, which is a thumbs-up, which she hates. I was busy. I was glaring at a man from Leeds.
He didn't sit down. He didn't take his coat off. He looked at the clock over the door, like everybody in this building does, and then back at me.
"Well?" I said.
"Six weeks," he said.