The Love of My Life(36)

He tells me sure, it’s no bother. Behind him, fingers of sunlight poke through the clouds.

‘Can I assume that you and Emma worked quite closely?’ I ask, pulling my notebook out. ‘You’re the right person to talk to?’

‘Oh God yeah, we were together all the time,’ he says. He’s stroking a thumb self-consciously along his chin; a gesture better suited to an older man. ‘It was me who used to drive her around, check her into hotels, sort out her meals. We’d mess around while the cameraman and the director argued about how to shoot the next scene. Got on like a house on fire.’

I nod, as if to say, I thought as much! ‘I suppose it’s a much more relaxed relationship than that between, say, her and the director.’

‘Totally. I mean, to be honest, I was really doing an AP’s job, or at least a researcher’s job – definitely not a runner’s. But yes, I was with her most of the time. Bloody telly!’ he adds, as if I’m one of the inner circle. ‘We’re all working at least two levels below our pay grade.’

He wants me to sympathise, but I haven’t the time.

‘So – would you say she confided in you?’

There’s a fine-spun pause.

‘I mean, yes, of course,’ he says, carefully. ‘Although I’m not going to tell you all her shit!’

‘What shit?’ It bursts out of me and hangs in the air between us like a bad smell, refusing to disperse. I throw in a laugh and say, ‘Only joking,’ which just makes it worse.

He backtracks. ‘I suppose what I really mean is that as the runner you kind of see everything, don’t you? I’m sure it’s the same in your industry. So yes, she confided in me, but to be honest I saw everything that went down on that show, whether I was told or not. You buy respect by keeping your mouth shut.’

‘So no real gossip,’ I say, grinning, as if his answer doesn’t matter to me at all.

‘No, no gossip in particular,’ he says, but I can see it – there is something.

I know I’ll lose him if I push this now, so I invite him to tell me a few anecdotes from the series.

He doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. He mentions the lightning bolt that took out their tripod on a clifftop in Devon, the day Emma fell into a rock pool during a piece to camera. There are many details of their relationship – chatty, giggly – and he’s particularly emphatic about her not being an ‘arrogant dick’. (‘Most presenters are such arrogant dicks,’ he explains.)

‘To be honest, though, that second series was overshadowed by Em being dropped, straight after she’d recorded the voice-over. We were all so gutted, and her poor agent, Mags, was furious, but it was out of our hands. Commissioners are dicks too, by the way.’

‘I imagine it hit Emma very hard.’

‘It did,’ he says, remembering. ‘Emma went a bit mad and sacked her agent, Mags – Mags took it very badly.’

I’ve been noting this down in shorthand, but then I stop, rereading. ‘Actually, Emma’s agent sacked her. Not the other way round. I’ve – I’ve read about it.’

‘No, Emma definitely ditched Mags. I saw her at the RTS awards a few weeks later, she was still shocked. A little bit furious, too, if I’m honest.’

His phone rings and he excuses himself. He wanders off across the canteen, rapping his knuckles occasionally on the deserted tables. A man in a BBC Logistics sweatshirt sits down nearby, unwrapping a sandwich.

Emma told me she’d been dropped by Mags. She cried in my arms, for hours. The next day she went to Alnmouth to search for her crab, and didn’t come back for three weeks. When I visited her at the weekends she told me her heart was broken. And not just her heart, her pride.

Rosen returns to the table. ‘Where were we? Oh yes, Emma ditching her agent. And commissioners being dicks.’ He leans back in his chair, and I realise how much he’s enjoying this. I suspect he’s rather overlooked in his job.

‘The worst thing about Emma’s dismissal was that they did it because some Big Knob BBC presenter insisted they sack her. I mean, who hates Emma that much? And why? It must have been someone pretty famous to have that sort of leverage.’

After a shaky sip from my teacup, I express my own surprise. ‘I’ve heard nothing about enemies,’ I admit.

‘Well . . . This can’t go on the record – nor can anything to do with the BBC, of course –’ I nod. ‘But not everyone loved Emma,’ he says. He’s really energised now.

‘Oh?’

Then my phone starts ringing, and it’s my wife. I immediately cancel the call, but not before her name and face have flashed up on my screen. Rosen thinks my name is Steve Gowing, and that I have never met Emma Bigelow. I look at him carefully, but his face remains impassive. I think – I hope – I’ve got away with it.

Either way, though, the interruption has broken our spell. ‘Oh, look, I should get going,’ he says, and I know from my years as a hack that he’s lost his nerve. ‘Can we leave it there? Those stories should be enough, right? It’s just that I have a meeting soon.’

I could have scripted it.

I give it one more try, but he won’t say any more. He tells me he’s got to get back to work; reiterates that the stuff about Emma’s dismissal is one hundred per cent off the record. Then he shakes my hand and is gone.