A Very Accidental Love Story

But that girl only existed B.L. – before Lily – and now in her place is a shadow of the old Eloise Elliot, a woman filled with darkness who’s expected to do the work of a dozen people and never ever crack, all the while eaten up with guilt like I’ve never known. And why? Because a little girl who’s nearly three will come home from preschool later on today, full of stories and chat that her mummy will never get to hear.

And now, on top of everything else, I’m nannyless. Yet again.

The six a.m. news comes on the car radio and I know this bout of unforgivable self-indulgence is over and it’s time to go and face into another day. So I make a huge effort to compose myself, knock back a large gulpful of Rescue Remedy (an editor’s best friend), pat a bit of concealer round my puffy, red-raw eyes and with shaking hands, drive on. I’m already a good fifteen minutes behind schedule so I put my foot to the floor to try and make up the time. If I dared to arrive in late, word would spread that something was up and rule one of survival in my job is simple; never let anyone see a chink in the armour for any reason, ever. They’re like a pack of barracudas in my office, I swear they can physically smell the fear.

Calmly as I can, I make a mental note to find another childcare agency and leave a voicemail message for Rachel, my assistant, telling her to start setting up interviews as soon as she gets in. Easier said than done, given that the last agency I went to fired me about two years ago. Which stung more than a bit too. But I managed not to let it show. You just can’t in my game, not for one second.

Anyway, by six fifteen a.m. I’m racing upstairs from the underground car park of the Post’s offices on Tara St., the only bit of exercise I ever seem to have time for these days, what with all the extra work that I’m now expected to do for pretty much the same money I was making three years ago. Which by the way, is a fairly standard change in the newspaper industry now, ever since the recession hit in a big way and our sales took a sharp decline. I.e. yet another stress-inducing source of sleepless nights, if you’re the editor and your contract is up for renewal later on in the financial year.

Particularly if you happen to be answerable to a board of directors who are all male, with a collective average age of about sixty-five. The T. Rexes, I call them; they’re like dinosaurs from a bygone era, representative of a time when all you could hear in the newsroom was the furious clacking sound of clunky metal typewriters. The days when senior editors swaggered in drunk after big, boozy lunches, where they’d all quaff cognac, wining and dining advertisers on fat expense accounts, then roll back to the office late in the afternoon pissed as farts and no one would so much as bat an eyelid.

A whole other age ago, during the glory days of the newspaper industry. And right now, frankly there are times when I feel like all I’m doing is fighting a brave rearguard action trying to sustain what I worry is turning into more and more of a twilight industry, with the internet now leading the field as the gutteriest gutter press out there. More and more each day, I’m starting to feel that my job is like trying to steer an oil tanker through a minefield and that it’s only a matter of time before the whole industry is declared as extinct as the dinosaur.

It’s as though the board of directors feel that survival is a form of success and as far as I’m concerned, that’s just not enough, not in this climate. Their old-fashioned attitude is that the Post is a bastion of tradition that holds up the sky, and while that may have been the case at one time, it sure as hell isn’t now. Times have changed and we either evolve or we die, simple as that.

What’s worse though is that redundancy is now in the air again. I can smell it sharp as you like; it’s hanging round every office corner, it’s in the stale, recycled air we’re breathing. And I know, just know without being told, that it’s only a matter of time before there’s yet another staff culling, another round of people being asked to exactly the same job, except for far less money, on a three-day week.

Oh God, I think, suddenly sickened just by the very thought that I have colleagues I pass on corridors each and every day whose days here are numbered and what’s worse, that I’m the only thing standing between them and a dole queue. Or more precisely, me and the amount of sales volume I can continue to generate for the paper. They may not know it, but they’re dependent on me and me alone for their job survival, and the pressure is at times overwhelming.

I quicken my pace, puffing and panting to make up time, thinking must try harder. Don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m just going to have to find more hours in the day, somehow. Because if it kills me, no one is going to lose their job, not on my watch. Not if I can help it.

Oh God, half of me wonders if I’ve got room for another stress ulcer.

My office is all the way up on the fourth floor, a gorgeous, airy, spacious room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look down onto all the briskness and business of Tara St. below me. Not that I’ve ever got a spare second to enjoy the view, that is. Or indeed, to luxuriate in the early-morning stillness, a few precious hours before the phones start hopping and things really get pressurised round here.

And every single morning of my life when I flash my pass at the security doors and stride across the main open-plan office to get to my inner sanctum, there waiting for me on the wall above my desk is a giant portrait of one Douglas Merriman, our founder and first editor. Who by the way, would have sat in the very same office now occupied by me, all of a hundred and fifty years ago. He’s a heavily bearded geezer who looks exactly like Tolstoy, and when I feel those stern Victorian round owl glasses glaring down at me, I look back up at him, thinking the same thought that I do every single day since I took this job.

Bastard. You never had to work in a digital age, with email and mobiles to connect you to the office even on a Sunday at two a.m. did you? You never had to compete with twenty-four hour news channels or try to sell papers in the middle of the worse economic slump since the Great Depression, did you?

I’m just flipping open my briefcase and whipping out my initial draft of notes on today’s edition, always how we kick off the day round here: with a thorough going over of this morning’s early edition; where we scored, where we could have done better, where there’s vast room for improvement, that kind of thing. All department heads are required to be here for this, which means about a dozen people sitting round the conference room in total, ranging from political affairs, to foreign, to sports and culture.

Next thing, without even bothering to knock, Seth Coleman’s lean, slimy, Basil Rathbone-esque form is filling my office door. Looking like he always does, like he was dressed by his mammy. Funny, but for the longest time I assumed he was gay but still in the closet; no straight man would ever wear trousers that sharply ironed, for starters. But then a few years back, he made a bizarre and badly misjudged pass at me at the Christmas party. I remember looking at him in blank astonishment that he’d somehow misread my deep loathing of him for in-your-face lust and it now lives on forevermore in the comedy quadrant of my brain.

‘Morning Eloise. So what’s keeping you? In exactly one minute, you’re going to be late.’

Like this is an episode of 24, and I’m Jack Bauer.

‘Everyone’s already waiting for you in the boardroom, you know,’ he says in his nasal whine, slicking his hair back, even though there must be a half-pound of grease already holding it there. ‘All department heads, present and correct. Hope there’s nothing wrong with you, is there? Not like you to sail this dangerously close to unpunctuality.’

I say nothing, nod curtly and smile though gritted teeth.

‘So have you thought any more about my offer to escort you to the directors’ weekend this year? It’s just round the corner you know.’

A brief, unspoken thought filters between us, him mentally spelling it out to me: ‘and let’s face it, I’m the best offer you’re going to get’.

I totally ignore it, hide my annoyance behind a sheet of A4 paper, then briskly brush past him, ready to start the day.

And just when I think things can’t get possibly get any worse, da-daaa, they do. Course they do. What else did I expect? It’s already past two in the afternoon and I’m back in the conference room, feeling like I’ve never left it, chairing our first meeting about the mock-up of tomorrow’s paper.

This, by the way, is where we sit around and thrash out the overall shape of the news, what the lead item should be on the front page, what stories are developing and need to be closely monitored over the next few hours, what feature and opinion pieces should be placed where. Everyone’s here at my insistence, the political editor, foreign, financial, regional, culture, the whole lot of them, all pitching their stories and vying for the maximum coverage possible, with a front page slot the absolute Holy Grail.

Ordinarily I get a huge buzz out of this meeting; tempers tend to flare, passions run high – something I freely encourage – and it’s always exhilarating to hear each editor push their stories and battle to get the maximum number of column inches allowed. We’re a bit like a debating club, minus the alcohol, but bear in mind the department heads here are about as vocal, argumentative and aggressive a bunch as you’d care to fight in a bar-room brawl on a Friday night. For some reason though, I just don’t seem to be on the ball this afternoon.

Can’t concentrate, can’t focus. Impossible to after what’s unfolded since this day from hell began, and certainly not given what’s happening in my personal life outside of these four walls. Oh sure, no doubt about it, by about eight this morning I was supremely confident that I’d have a replacement for Elka before the day was out; someone far more suitable, I even went so far as to think smugly. Someone, let’s just say, a bit less moody and demanding, who understood what it was like to work for a busy, professional single parent.

By ten-thirty, when I’d clocked a look at the first few candidates for the job, admittedly I was taken aback, but still reasonably sure that it was just a matter of trawling through the dross before I hit on my perfect Mary Poppins. Candidate numbers one and two were just a bit of a blip, no more that that. Just a simple matter of doing a little bit more weeding, that was all, with absolutely no call for panic whatsoever.

By eleven forty-five, yes, okay … so the mood had shifted a bit and now I was starting to get tetchy, unable to figure out why in the name of God it was so bloody difficult to fill a perfectly simple job in the throes of an economic meltdown, but I still held onto a sliver of hope that so far I’d just been unlucky and it was simply a matter of hanging in there till the perfect nanny calmly strolled into my life. To stay.

And right now at two in the afternoon, after the last and final disastrous interview, there’s no other way to describe it: I’m in a blind bleeding panic. About a dozen voices are bickering for all they’re worth, clamouring for my attention across the boardroom, while I sit at the top of the table, looking and acting like I’m listening intently; but actually, I’m a million miles away.

Because now I know. It’s finally official. I’m on the brink of a crisis.

I Have. No. Childcare. As of the end of this week, I have no one to help me; not a single soul. And what in the name of God am I going to do then? Take Lily into work with me and stick her into a playpen in the middle of my office, hoping no one will notice? Yeah, right, some hope. If I were to even think about doing that, I might as well tie a large neon sign around my neck saying, ‘Have finally cracked up, kindly fire me ASAP as Seth Coleman is only chomping at the bit waiting to take over anyway’.

The more I dwell on the problem, the more my mouth begins to feel dry; and although I’m desperately trying not to let it show, I know that tiny beads of worry sweat are forming on my forehead, as my heart palpitates with anxiety. I hear nervous rattling and realise it’s my ring off the desk in front of me, so I snap open a bottle of water and try to focus on the length of my inhale and exhale, desperately trying to stay in the game. Because if I am in the throes of a full-blown panic attack, no one in this room can ever know about it. Try as I might though, the same sickening thought keeps playing like a loop in my head, over and over again, and there’s just no getting away from it.

Every available nanny out there is completely unhireable, I’m in the middle of the biggest crisis I’ve had since having Lily, there is no one, absolutely NO ONE out there to help me and what in the name of arse am I supposed to do now?

Earlier today, Rachel, my long-suffering assistant, managed to trawl through the few childcare agencies that I haven’t been blacklisted from as of yet and scraped together a grand total of four nannies for me to interview. Yes, that’s right, four. We’re in the middle of the deepest recession since the Dark Ages, no one is spending a red cent, property values have dropped so much that people’s homes have fallen back to the prices they would have been in Viking times and above all … There are NO JOBS.

And yet here I am, fully poised to pay top dollar plus bribe money to someone who’ll take care of a child who’s almost three years old, and move into a perfectly comfortable home in Rathgar, with their own bedroom and ensuite to boot. Not exactly a demanding gig; it’s not brain surgery, it’s not like running a global corporation, all I’m looking for is some reasonable, responsible person who’ll make sure a little girl eats up her vegetables, gets to pre school on time, takes her naps when she’s supposed to and doesn’t spend the entire afternoon watching CBeebies on telly … and can I find anyone to fill the vacancy? No, not a solitary soul.

It beggars belief. Three interviews in total today and each and every one has been an unmitigated disaster. You want to see the standard – and I really wish I were joking, but some of these people would make Mel Gibson look employable. And so now, there’s no getting around it; as of the end of this week when Elka buggers off, I can’t get anyone to take care of Lily for me. I have no one. No one.

And believe me, I’ve done everything. I’ve swallowed my pride and called Elka, offering to double her salary and negotiate more time off if she’ll only reconsider, but no joy; she’s had enough of the job and wants out, simple as that. In desperation, I even thought of calling on my sister Helen, but know without even bothering to ask that it’s not a runner.

Being brutally honest, I have to admit that Helen and I have little in common and have never really been all that close, so she’s hardly someone I can expect to come to my rescue in my hour of need. Besides, since I had Lily, Helen’s gone and met a guy called Darren who runs a small seaside B&B in Cobh and within an alarmingly short space of time, she upped sticks and announced she was moving down the country to work side by side with him. Packed everything in for him; her job in a call centre, her brand-new flat, the lot. But then that’s my sister for you; she’s always struck me as someone who panic-dated, panic-settled and is now living with the consequences … in Cobh, miles and miles away from her old friends and her old life.

Total insanity, I thought at the time, and I still continue to think it. And although I’ve only met Darren a handful of times at Christmas dinners, or else on the rare occasions when they both come to Dublin and drop in to visit me and Lily, I can’t help wondering if Helen is actually happy living with him, two hundred miles away in a tiny remote village. But then, keeping up to date on what’s happening in each other’s lives is tough and apart from the odd ‘Hi, great to hear from you, but can I call you back? I’m running into a meeting’ type chat, we never seem to really get a chance to catch up properly.

And no, I still haven’t taken Lily down to Cobh to visit, in spite of all the child’s entreaties and in spite of the fact that she adores her auntie, because how could I possibly leave work? Every now and then Helen will email, mainly either to vaguely moan for a little bit about Darren or else, in a roundabout way, to ask for a lend of money; it seems people in the hotel business are even more savagely affected by the economic downturn than the rest of us. And I always oblige and fire off a cheque and never ask for it back, and she’ll gratefully accept, then send bright, breezy emails inviting Lily and me down for a freebie weekend anytime we want. Which is a nice thought and much appreciated, but come on … me? Get a whole entire weekend off? Saturday AND Sunday? One day after the other? Are you kidding me?

That aside though, I know Helen’s up to her tonsils with trying to make ends meet at the B&B à la Sibyl Fawlty anyway, so I’m sure she’s quite enough on her plate without me landing Lily on top of her too. Plus, no matter how desperate I was and no matter how much money I paid Helen to take care of her till I got sorted, it would mean I’d never get to see my little girl at all, wouldn’t it? And frankly the snatched glimpses of her slumbering little head first thing every morning and last thing at night are about the only thing keeping me sane after the daily grind I’m expected to get through. The one dangling carrot in my life that somehow makes the rest of it all that bit more bearable.

‘Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has just GOT to get a page one tomorrow, Eloise,’ Robbie Turner is thundering on, interrupting my incessant stream of worrying. Robbie is the Post’s chain-smoking, gravelly-voiced chief political editor; a likeable guy, young but never youthful looking, he just streels round the office night and day looking as washed out and baggy-eyed as the rest of us. But then, because of the time differences involved in covering any foreign story, the political editor is expected to put in hours almost as ridiculous as I do myself. The general rule of thumb is that if I’m here till the night editor takes over at eleven p.m., chances are I’ll catch a glimpse of Robbie’s thick, prematurely white shock of hair and John Lennon glasses still at his desk, bashing out a first draft of a story breaking in the Middle East while the rest of the Western world snoozes peacefully on.

So I happen to know that Robbie rarely gets any time off to be with his own young and growing family and to his credit, it’s something he’s never once complained about. I may not let it show, but I’m genuinely fond of him; as I’ve told the Board of Directors on many occasions, Robbie is someone who does consistent good work in the face of pressure that would drive a lesser personality straight to the nearest home for the bewildered.

The only slight downside in these meetings is that Robbie’s sole weak spot tends to come to the fore; his unhealthy obsession with Barack Obama, to the point that the running joke in the office is that he’s actually a tiny bit in love with him. I’m not kidding, he eats, drinks, sleeps and breathes Barack Obama and the highlight of his life to date was getting to shake the hand of The Mighty One when he visited Ireland. True, there were about four hundred other people in the room with him at the time, but Robbie still managed to wangle past the secret service and touch the hem of the garment of the Chosen One, so to speak. All while making it sound like they’d shared an intimate one-on-one meeting, just the two of them chatting about the re-election campaign over a nice cuppa and a plate of Hobnobs. He even had a photo of said momentous event taken and turned it into his personalised Christmas card last year.

‘Eloise, you have to listen to me,’ Robbie’s insisting, getting red-faced now as his voice rises to be heard about the clamour. He doesn’t lose his cool often, but when he does, it’s almost like watching a cartoon: eyes popping, red veins bulging out of the side of his neck, white hair nearly standing up straight on the top of his head, the whole works.

‘This is getting to be too big a story just to tuck away on page three in world news beside David Cameron making a speech about landmine victims in Angola, like we did yesterday.’ He has to almost shout to be heard above the racket in the room. ‘The primaries are in full swing, the election proper is only round the corner and it’s high time it got the front page! Can I remind you that it’s page one on every US national daily and has been for weeks now? So why are we lagging behind US coverage, when we need to keep pace with this story!’

Robbie might sound narky and aggressive, but I know he’s not; this is just how he comes across and I know him well enough to know it’s not bolshiness on his part, it’s purely because he cares so much.

Sign of a good political editor.

On and on he goes, enthusiastically firing off statistics about Democratic versus GOP expenditure on the President’s re-election, to heated shouts of ‘ahh, not this again! Give it a rest, will you?’ from the rest of the room, while a few hacks start humming a sarcastic chorus of The Star Spangled Banner.

Next thing, Seth Coleman sits back, arms folded, and throws in his two cents’ worth.

‘Yes, we’re all aware there’s an election coming up in the US, thanks for that Robbie,’ he spits dryly, with his lizardy unblinking eyes focused on me. ‘As ever, your fundamental grasp of the obvious is overwhelmingly helpful. Can we please move on to some actual hard news?’

And although I’m nodding, giving the outward appearance of being focused and interested in the game, the truth is … to my shame I’m actually miles away, utterly and totally absorbed in my own worries. I may look like I’m listening but all I can really hear is the sound of the blood singing in my ears as my pulse rate feels like it’s soaring well up into triple figures.

Then, dimly in the background, like a kind of accompanying soundtrack to all my stressing and fretting, our Northern correspondent, Ruth O’Connell manages to successfully shout Robbie down, take up the intellectual cudgels and is now aggressively pitching a two thousand word story on a car bomb that went off in Newry last night, injuring a high ranking senior sergeant in the PSNI.

Ruth’s from Belfast, thin and wiry with severe jet-black bobbed hair and the whitest skin you ever saw, which kind of gives her the look of Louise Brooks, except with muscles. Even her teeth, which are irregular and uneven, seem to strike an attitude. She wears skinny little trouser suits like they’re a uniform, always in varying shades of black or grey, and has exactly the same washed-out, bleary-eyed look on her pale, gaunt face as the rest of us.

Ruth’s also a terrific sub-editor, feisty and like a dog with a bone when she’s on the verge of a breaking story, always with an uncanny sixth sense for what will be next week’s big lead. On the down side though, she’s a bit too fond of the sound of her own strident voice and tends to try and dominate these meetings, pushing her own agenda with the aggressive tactic of simply yelling down the rest of the room. At the best of times I’m always glad to have her here because, hard as it is to believe, she and I are the only two women in the room. But I’m even more so today; her banging on about Catholic versus Protestant attitudes to joining the PSNI and the resultant socio-economic effect on whole communities gives me space to think a bit more clearly about the disastrous interviews I had to suffer through earlier.

Ohgodohgodohgod. Where do I start? Maybe by asking Rachel if she’s accidentally rung up a theatrical agency and told them I was holding open auditions for ‘third thug from the left’ in some TV cop show? Maybe then I’d be able to understand the parade of headcases I had to deal with. And to think that these people were actually vetted and approved by a nanny agency? It’s just beyond comprehension.

Candidate number one sauntered in earlier this morning, ten minutes late and wearing a tracksuit with a tight leather jacket over it, with – and I wish I were joking here – the words Mega Revenge written in flames across the back of it. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, she had a pierced nose and eyebrow with a black tattoo all down the side of her hand. I caught a glimpse of her in the reception area outside my office and that was frankly enough. The very sight of this one was enough to make my bowels wither and I knew Lily would take one look at her then either start crying, or else innocently ask me who was the scary lady and why did she have an earring coming out of her nose? Not a runner. So I called Rachel in and told her in no uncertain terms to get rid of her. And that if she wouldn’t leave, then to threaten her with security.

Hot on her heels was candidate number two, who tiptoed pale and shaking into my office, stinking of cigarette smoke. No CV, no experience, nothing. Her boyfriend had just left her, she immediately told me, and now she not only had nowhere to live, but absolutely no reason to live either. ‘So, what have you been doing for the past few years?’ I asked, anxious to get off the subject of her private life. I’ve been a patient in the John of God’s, she told me, suffering from bipolar manic depression. But according to her, the good news was she was officially off suicide watch and fully prepared to mind my child for forty euro an hour. I was half afraid she’d throw herself out of the window if I told her there and then that she wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so I gave her the more cowardly ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ line, and gently shooed her out of there ASAP.

This is what should be on the front page, the complete and utter lack of childcare for busy working parents, I find myself silently ranting while Ruth thunders on. Now she’s rolling up her sleeves – always a bad sign with her, means a row is never too far off – and spouting on about a recent survey indicating the tiny minority of Catholics who now are fully paid-up members of the PSNI and the general unfairness of it all and how it’s setting the whole peace process back a full decade.

That’s another thing about Ruth; she’s superb at what she does, but never in your life have you come across anyone carrying as many chips on their shoulders.

Anyway, Kian O’Sullivan, sports editor, former Irish rugby international and something of a lust object among just about every female P.A. up and down the building (who I happened to know have collectively nicknamed him Don Draper), playfully fires a rolled-up ball of paper over at her. Then in no uncertain terms he tells her to shut up and demands to know why sports always gets considered last on anyone’s list of priorities when we’re blocking out tomorrow’s paper.

‘Because people only really care about sports results on a Sunday after all the Saturday games, you gobshite,’ growls Robbie in his twenty-fags-a-day voice, but coming from him that could be deemed a term of affection.

‘Seriously Eloise, you have GOT to listen to me on this!’ Ruth is almost screeching to be heard over the racket, waving a fistful of notes in front of her, like that’s going to catch my attention. ‘It’s front page stuff and if we don’t run with it, make no mistake, The Chronicle will and then it’ll be my head on the block, won’t it?’ On and on she spews, thumping her fist off the table in angry frustration now.

Meanwhile out of the corner of my eye, I’m dimly aware of everyone looking to me, waiting on me to call the lot of them to order, like some overly strict school headmistress whose class has sensed that she’s a bit distracted and is now all acting up accordingly.

‘Eloise?’ says Seth Coleman from directly across the table, de-latticing his fingers, slicking back the lank, greasy hair and giving me one of his unblinking, lizard-like stares. Very disconcerting, if you’re not used to him. ‘We really do need to wrap this up. Tempus fugit.’

I hide my irritation and point out that we haven’t heard from our finance editor yet, throwing the floor open to Jack Dundon, a bespectacled, grey-haired, grey-skinned, softly spoken guy with a background as an award-winning economist; someone who rarely shines at these meetings, but who’ll consistently come up trumps and turn out impeccably researched stories written in language readers can grasp, unlike those on some of our rivals’ finance pages, that you’d nearly need a Harvard master’s in finance to get your head around.

He draws the air of experience deep into his lungs and addresses the now silent room. The European Central Bank have announced an interest rate hike of half a per cent, is his calm opener, which mightn’t exactly be the sexiest lead story at the table, but it’ll affect hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders and so therefore it has massive bite. On and on he goes, giving me the freedom to let my thoughts take me back to my more pressing concerns and back to about noon today, when in sauntered a slightly more promising candidate for the job of nanny/lifesaver.

But when I say ‘slightly more promising’, all I mean is she was young, reasonably well groomed and at least had the courtesy to turn up for the interview appropriately dressed, even if her eye make-up did happen to be the exact colour of bright yellow hazardous waste. Trouble was, she had precious little experience in childcare and when I asked her why her CV only had one reference on it, her answer was that she was really an out-of-work actress and thought this would be a nice little earner until her big break arrived.