The Rachel Incident(41)

Afterwards he petted me on the head, like a horse. “That was a treat for a Tuesday morning,” he said, and I didn’t see him for two days.

In my heart, I didn’t believe I would be moving to London. Some plans get made and they drop right into your hand like a warm egg. Dr. Byrne’s book launch, for example. Others feel vague from conception, and carry on feeling vague no matter how many details you hammer onto them.

This was not how the plan worked for James. He saw himself in London, and spent hours researching different neighbourhoods he thought we could live in.

“Look at this flat I found in Mile End,” he said. “Two bedrooms. A thousand a month.”

I looked at the pictures. It looked dismal, and like it was high off the ground. From the sliding door I could see the tops of buildings.

“A thousand pounds?”

“Split three ways. That’s not much more than we pay now. Of course, there’s council tax and all that in the UK.”

“We still don’t know if Carey is coming.”

“And we won’t know if you don’t ask him.”

“I will ask him.”

I did not ask him.

A week later, James came tearing down the stairs, holding his laptop. “RACHEL!” he yelled. “RACHEL!”

I was reading a week-old magazine and feeling depressed about money.

“I’ve got an email! An email about Discs!”


Hi James,


Thank you so much for submitting your script Discs to us. Unfortunately we are not able to take this any further as we are unable to produce unrepresented writers. However, I wanted to reach out personally and say that I thoroughly enjoyed your writing, and find myself very curious about what happens next with Michael and Alice.


I expect you will run into many of the same issues with other production companies. Can I recommend you try submitting it to the BBC Writersroom, or perhaps Sky?


Many thanks,

Jennifer Romley

Development Executive

Elephant Feet Productions



It was a rejection email, but it was all he needed. The facts of this email warped rapidly to suit a new mythology, one where James almost had a TV deal, and the only reason he didn’t was because of not having some poxy agent. He followed Jennifer Romley’s advice, submitting to Sky and the BBC, and including the line “I’ve had serious interest from Jennifer Romley, at Elephant Feet” in every cover letter.

“It’s all about who you know,” he repeated. Jennifer Romley was probably someone not much older than us, and tasked with going through the slush pile just like I had to go through Deenie’s. In the 2010 fantasy, though, she was a huge person in the industry, someone whose name would be recognised anywhere. We imagined her in the Groucho Club, talking about “this fabulous new Irish writer,” and being overheard by someone from the BBC. Someone who had coincidentally received Discs that afternoon.

The agent thing was proving more troubling. No one was returning his emails. He called and called, and eventually received some curt advice from a receptionist. “Listen, mate,” she said, “no one knows who the fack you are.”

She became more English every time we told the story. It became a thing we shouted at each other, up the stairs, across the street. “No one knows who the FACK you are!”

“Why are ye always saying that?” Carey asked once, when he was round. “Doing the English voice?”

“For the craic,” I answered brightly. It was a good enough excuse. It was why we did everything.

“This is why I’d never live in England,” he said, rolling a cigarette. “That voice. Nails on a chalkboard.”

“Never?” I said, my guts trembling.

“God, could you imagine me?” He chuckled. “I’d be singing ‘Come Out, Ye Black and Tans’ on the tube.”

He was joking. Or he wasn’t. It’s hard to know. His wider family had seen a fair amount of persecution during the Troubles, as many Catholic families in Derry had. It was difficult to parse how serious his grudge against England actually was. Should it matter? Plenty of people moved to England who hated it.

In any case, I took it seriously. Which is all that really mattered, in the end.



* * *





“I need you to come to Fermoy with me on Sunday,” James said. “I’m going to come out to my mum.”

I was in the shower when he said this. I was sure that I heard him wrong. “What?”

He raised his voice. “I said, you need to come to Fermoy with me on Sunday, because I need to come out to my mum.”

I turned the water off and put on my towel. Out in the kitchen, the door was open, and James was smoking a cigarette in the beam of sunlight coming in from the yard.

“What are you coming out to Nicola for?”

There is a friend of a certain vintage who will take too much comfort in a mother’s name. James and I were of that vintage. We were best friends, despite not knowing one another very long, and we were determined to make up the time lag in our friendship with family intimacies. I was always asking after Nicola and Frank; he wanted to know about Bridget and Paul.

“She needs to know, doesn’t she?”

He had received an additional email, identical to the one he got from Jennifer Romley at Elephant Feet. It was from another bizarrely named production company, another probably quite junior person. They said his writing was “lively” and that it was refreshing to see “rounded gay characters” in a script. They also suggested the BBC Writersroom.