The Making of Minty Malone. Isabel Wolff

And now he was printing something out.

      ‘I really haven’t the faintest.’ This was ridiculous.

      ‘The same interview recorded in two different places and edited together later.’ He was scanning the page with his eyes.

      ‘What’s a segue?’ he asked.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I didn’t like this. I was on my feet.

      ‘Music or speech which follows on from something else without an intervening explanatory link.’ He folded the printout in two. ‘What’s a “Lyrec”?’

      ‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said. ‘And I don’t really care any more.’

      ‘It’s a portable reel-to-reel tape-recorder, rather oldfashioned but still used for OB’s. What’s an “OB”?’

      ‘An Outside Bloody Broadcast,’ I said, sweeping up my bag from the floor. ‘These are just boring technical terms,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to know them. I want to be a reporter, not a sound engineer. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I think I’ll try somewhere else.’ I reached for the door handle, but Jack was holding that piece of folded paper out to me. I took it and opened it up.

      ‘Right,’ he said. He was behind his desk, staring at me with his dark brown eyes. ‘That’s a news despatch about the environmental protest in Lambeth. There are plans for a hypermarket there, with a new link road, and the eco-warriors are creating.’

      ‘I know,’ I said. ‘In fact, my Moth-’ I bit my lip. I decided to keep Mum out of it. ‘It’s been in the papers,’ I said.

      Jack clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his chair.

      ‘I want you to go down there and collect some material. I want some wild-track of the bulldozers, and a few vox-pops from the protesters – no more than six – which will accompany an interview we’re running tomorrow. My assistant Monica will get you a tape-recorder,’ he said, as he turned back to his computer. ‘Make sure you hold the lead still so that it doesn’t crackle, and keep the mike no more than a hand-span away from your subject’s mouth. When you get back I’ll find a spare producer to help you cut it down.’ He looked at me, seriously. ‘I expect you to mess this up a bit, because you’ve never done it before. But if you screw it up completely, I don’t want to see you again.’

      That’s how I got started. And because Mum was there, collecting for the pressure group Eco-Logical, she knew all the campaigners and helped me get some really good quotes. Jack was happy with what I’d done, so he gave me a freelance reporting shift. Then, a week later, he gave me another. And then another. Soon, I began to compile longer pieces, quite complex ones – they took me ages to begin with. Sometimes – though I’d never tell anyone this – they took all night to do. Then, a few months later, it happened: one of the staff reporters was poached by Channel 4 News and there I was, on the spot. That was three years ago. My life seemed complete. I had fallen in love with radio; and then I fell in love with Dominic too.

      ‘That weely is cwap!’ Melinda screeched again, as I sat down in the boardroom on my first day back.

      ‘I thought Wesley’s idea was rather good,’ Jack said.

      ‘Oh, thanks, Jack,’ simpered Wesley. ‘Do you really think so?’ And then Wesley noticed me, and smiled.

      ‘Oh, hel-lo, Minty,’ he said. Then his features folded into an expression of sympathetic concern. ‘Minty, look, I’d just like to say –’

      ‘Wesley!’ Jack cut in. ‘Kindly tell us all who you would invite into the studio for this item on astrology.’

      ‘Well,’ he began. ‘Well …’ Wesley never has any ideas. His mind was clearly as empty as the Outback as he pursed his lips, then stared at the floor.

      ‘How about an astrologer?’ Jack prompted crisply.

      ‘Yeah!’ said Wesley. ‘Fab! Brilliant idea. There’s that woman from the Weekly Star …’

      ‘Sheryl von Strumpfhosen?’ I offered.

      ‘Yeah. Thanks, Minty.’

      ‘She’s no good,’ I added bitterly.

      ‘Minty, look,’ said Wesley, ‘I’d really just like to say-’

      I felt my face redden, and my heartbeat rise, but Jack deflected him again.

      ‘What other ideas do you have, Wesley?’

      ‘Well …’ Wesley began. ‘Well …’ He ran a limp hand over his balding head, then fiddled with the top button of his polyester shirt. He cast his watery blue eyes to the ceiling, and made funny little sucking noises with his teeth, but inspiration clearly eluded him.

      ‘Anyone else?’ said Jack tersely. Silence. As usual, none of the producers had a clue. They always leave it to Sophie, our new researcher. She’s just out of Oxford, ferociously ambitious, and as sharp as broken glass.

      ‘Sophie, are you prepared to help your clueless colleagues?’ said Jack.

      She consulted her clipboard, tucked her hair behind one ear and pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose.

      ‘There’s a report out today on drug-taking in schools,’ she began crisply, ‘and there’s another appeal being launched to save Bart’s. I see from the publishing catalogues that a new biography of Boris Yeltsin is published this week, so I’ve put in a bid for the author, and of course the shortlist for the Turner Prize is being announced in three days.’

      ‘Excellent,’ said Jack. ‘Anything else?’

      ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Peter Greenaway’s publicist and I’ve set up an exclusive interview pegged to his new film. We’ve also got another special report coming down the line from the Edinburgh Festival.’

      ‘Good,’ said Jack. But Sophie hadn’t finished.

      ‘There’s been yet another resignation at the Royal Opera House; and I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a very interesting new survey on the declining popularity of marriage,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘The statistics show that marriages have fallen to an all-time low, so I thought we could get Minty to compile a report on “the myth of wedded bliss” – it’s an absolutely fascinating subject, you know-’

      Jack opened his mouth to intervene, but Melinda got there first:

      ‘How can we possibly ask Minty to do that?’ she enquired indignantly. ‘The poor girl’s just been JILTED!’

      My face reddened and my bowels shrank. Bloody Melinda. Stupid cow. Then, to my horror, Melinda stood up, and placed two fat, richly bejewelled hands across her vast stomach.

      ‘I’d like to say that I think we should all be vewy kind to Minty,’ she announced, ‘because she’s just been thwough something tewwible. Something weally, weally, humiliating. And I just want to say, Minty, that I think you’re VEWY BWAVE!’ She had finished. She sat down and beamed at everyone, as though expecting a round of applause.

      In the embarrassed silence they all looked at the floor, while I tried to remember when Melinda’s maternity leave was due to start. It wasn’t that long now. Two or three months? I couldn’t wait. And then I looked at her again and I thought, Amber’s right. She’s right about the horrors of pregnancy, and here was the living proof. Melinda’s fat, bare legs were veined like dolcelatte; she needed iron girders in her bra; short and plump to begin with, she looked as though she’d swallowed a tractor tyre. Particularly in those defiantly tight maternity clothes she sometimes wears. Today a skimpy T-shirt was stretched over her epic bulge. ‘Let Me Out!’ it read. No, let me out, I thought. And she’s a really terrible broadcaster. She can’t say her ‘R’s, for a start. And she makes so many fluffs – it’s appalling. You could stuff cushions with them. I mean, she’s always mis-reading