Except, Mike thinks back, looking at his cider in the ridiculous decanter, he wasn’t happy at all. Did he know he wasn’t happy? No, he had enough booze, and enough local adulation to keep him sedated, to keep his train on the tracks. He’d started to become a little more irritable, sure, a little bit more demanding of those he worked with, probably less fun to be around. But that, to his mind, was just professionalism, in a world where the people around him started getting younger and younger. As the teams he was used to working with started drifting off to bigger things, to London, or, in one particularly galling case, to Los Angeles.
But Mike was not happy. And the reason that Mike was not happy was that Mike was not authentic, and Mike was not real.
And who taught him that lesson?
Bethany Waites.
How old was he when Bethany arrived? She was a researcher first, so maybe 2008? Wikipedia will tell you that Mike Waghorn was fifty-six in 2008, but he was sixty-one. Bethany would have been early twenties, he supposes, down from Leeds, with a Media Studies degree of all things. She would make him tea, he would tell her what a waste of time a Media Studies degree was, she would bring him stories her more experienced colleagues had missed, he would buy her a pint after work, she would challenge him, goad him, encourage him, and he would make sure she got safely into a taxi at the end of the night.
A year or so in, Mike told Bethany she should be appearing on air. Bethany, typically, did not disagree with this assessment. So she started filming reports. Then, every now and again, she’d pop into the studio to discuss those reports. Then, when Mike’s co-host was on an ill-advised holiday, Bethany would step in, and, before you knew it, Mike and Bethany were the team at South East Tonight.
One evening they had been having a pint near the studio, as they often did, and there was a copy of Kent Matters on the bar. It was a local magazine, just photos from events, adverts for spas and expensive houses, that sort of thing. There had been a picture of Mike in the magazine. He was looking very suave, wearing a tux, at some business event or other. The Kent Accountancy Awards maybe. He remembered that one because he had fatally mispronounced the name of the awards very early on, and had the crowd firmly on his side from thereon.
He had taken Pauline as his ‘plus one’， as he often did in those days. She liked a drink, and he liked having someone else to talk to other than an accountant from Sevenoaks who hadn’t heard of him but demanded a selfie nonetheless.
Bethany had pointed the picture out, his arm around Pauline’s waist, and Mike had smiled, and told her about the ‘Kent Accountancy’ slip-up. Bethany then began the long process of making Mike a better, happier man.
‘You should have been there with your boyfriend,’ she had said. Very matter of fact, bag of peanuts torn open and spatchcocked on the table in front of her. Mike can see it and hear it now.
They had another pint, and another, and another. Mike had never really spoken about being gay before. Not openly, in a pub, with a colleague. He was old enough to have kept his sexuality hidden, a rolled-up secret in a deep pocket. It had never seen the light of day before.
And why? Well, a hundred reasons. A thousand reasons. But those reasons were all tied together with a knot of shame. And it was that knot that Bethany began to unpick. Bethany refused to let Mike feel shame. She was from a different generation. A generation Mike envies. He sees them sometimes, out on the streets. He is certain they have their vulnerabilities and their insecurities, and they certainly still have many fights, but the joy with which they choose to present themselves – it makes Mike so proud and so jealous all at once.
The process wasn’t quick, and the process wasn’t easy, but Bethany was by his side throughout. Mike came out to friends. He came out to colleagues. He remembers telling Pauline for the first time. He was very serious, very solemn as he told her his secret. Pauline gave him a huge hug and just said, ‘At last, my love. At last.’
Mike sometimes wonders why Pauline hadn’t been the one to confront him, but, again, different generations.