“You should meet my boss,” said Trisha. “You two would really hit it off.”
Fogarty fell silent once more before resuming his theme.
“If that lot in the house had any idea of the contempt in which we hold them from our side of the mirrors, the cruel nicknames we give them… ‘Nose-picker’, ‘Sad slap’, ‘the Farter’… If they knew the damning assessments we make as we chop up their comments to suit our needs, the complete lack of respect we have for any of their motives… well, they’d probably wish they’d
DAY THIRTY-ONE. 3.00 p.m.
Coleridge and his team were becoming increasingly frustrated with Woggle. The problem was that he kept getting in the way of the other housemates. The people at Peeping Tom had thought him such good telly that large chunks of what footage remained from the early days of the show concerned his exploits and the other housemates’ ever more frustrated reactions to them.
“If it had been Woggle that was murdered we could have made a circumstantial case against any of them,” Coleridge complained. “I’m sick of the sight of him myself and I didn’t have to live with the man.”
“You can’t blame the producers for pushing him,” Hooper said. “I mean, for a while there the country was obsessed. ‘Wogglemania’, they called it.”
Coleridge remembered. Even he had been aware of the name popping up on the front pages of the tabloids and on page three or four of the broadsheets. At the time he had not had the faintest idea who they were talking about. He had thought it was probably a footballer or perhaps a celebrity violinist.
Hooper ejected the video tape that they had just finished and put it on the small “watched” pile, then took another tape from the colossal “have not yet watched” pile and put it into the VCR.
“You do know that the ‘have not yet watched’ pile is just a satellite of a much bigger one, don’t you, sir? Which we have in the cells.”
“Yes, I did know that, sergeant.”
Hooper pressed play and once more the sombre Scottish brogue of Andy the narrator drifted across the incident room.
Coleridge sank a little further into his chair. He knew that he couldn’t allow himself another mug of tea for almost fifty minutes. One an hour, fourteen pint mugs a working day, that was his limit.
DAY FOUR. 2.10 p.m.
“I want to have a house meeting,” said Layla. “So would it be cool if everybody just chilled? So we can all just have a natter maybe?”
Across the room Moon’s bald head poked out from the book she was reading, a book entitled
“It’s dead spiritual, this book,” Moon said. “It’s about self-growth and development and personal empowerment, which at the end of the day I’m really into, if you know what I mean, right?”
“Yeah, Moon, wicked. Look, um, have you seen the state of the toilet?”
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s not very cool, right? And Dervla and I…”
“I’m not fookin’ cleaning it,” said Moon. “I’ve been here four days and I ain’t even done a poo yet. I’m totally fookin’ bunged up, me, because I’m not getting my colonic irrigation, and also I reckon the electrical fields from all the cameras are fookin’ about with me yin and me yang.”
“Layla’s not asking you to clean the toilet, Moon,” said Dervla gently. “We just think it would be good to organize some of the jobs that have to be done around the house, that’s all.”
“Oh. Right. Whatever. I’m chilled either way. But at the end of the day I’m just not scrubbing out other people’s shite when I haven’t even done one. I mean, that would be
“Well, I don’t mind doing heavy work, like lifting and shifting,” said Gazzer the Geezer, pausing in the push-ups that he had been doing pretty continuously since arriving in the house, “but I ain’t cleaning the bog, on account of the fact that I don’t mind a dirty bog anyway. Gives ya something to aim at when you’re having a slash, don’t it?”
The look of horror on Layla’s delicate face filled the screen for nearly ten seconds.
“Well, never mind the toilet, Garry. What about the washing-up?” Dervla enquired. “Or do you not mind eating off mouldy plates either?”
David, beautiful in his big shirt, did not even open his eyes when he spoke. “Perhaps for the first week or so we should just do our own chores. I’m detoxing at the moment and am only eating boiled rice, which I imagine will be rather easier to clean off plates than whatever bowel-rotting garbage Garry, Jazz and Kelly choose to gorge themselves on.”
“Suits me,” said Gazzer. “I always clean my plate with a bit of bread anyway.”
“Yes, Garry,” said Layla, “and I’m not being heavy or anything, but perhaps you should remember that the bread is for
Gazzer simply smirked and returned to his push-ups.
“Wouldn’t doing our washing-up individually be a bit silly, David?” said Kelly.
“And why would that be, Kelly?” David opened his eyes and fixed Kelly with a soft, gentle, tolerant smile that was about as soft, gentle and tolerant as a rattlesnake.
“Well, because… Because…”
“Please don’t get me wrong. I feel it’s really important that you feel
“I didn’t mean… I mean, I didn’t think…” Kelly said no more.
David closed his eyes once more and returned to the beauty of his inner thoughts.
Hamish, the junior doctor, the man who did not wish to be noticed, made one of his rare contributions to the conversation.
“I don’t like house rotas,” he said. “I had five years of communal living when I was a student. I know your sort, Layla. Next you’ll be fining me an egg for not replacing the bogroll when I finish it.”
“Oh, so it’s
“I was giving an example,” said Hamish hastily.
“I’ll tell you what’s worse than a bogroll finisher,” Jazz shouted, leaping into the conversation with eager enthusiasm: “a draper! The sort of bastard who finishes the roll, all except for a
Jazz may have been a trainee chef, but that was just a job, not a vocation. It was not what he wanted to do with his life at all. Jazz wanted to be a comedian.
