Read the first part of First Sight, the uplifting, Wyoming-set love story about second chances in midlife.
The text might contain language or sexual references unsuitable for under 18s.
© Annie Holder 2018
Can a stranger fix your broken heart?
Everett McCann is a survivor.
Raised on the road, beaten to within an inch of his life, there’s no one harder to knock down than this cowboy.
Now a self-made man, healthy and wealthy on his Wyoming ranch, only one thing can bring Everett to his knees: loneliness.
Hope Howarth is hanging by a thread. Her husband divorced her after nineteen years because she failed to have a baby.
The doctors say there’s nothing wrong, but it must be her, because now her ex has a child with someone else.
Penniless, humiliated, depressed – how can she be called Hope when none exists?
When a chance to escape the daily drudgery presents itself, will Hope rise to the challenge? Is she daring enough to abandon everything she knows to marry a stranger for money on U.S. Reality TV?
Does she believe in love at first sight?
FIRST SIGHT by Annie Holder
PART I: ‘The How’
EVERETT
I’m pacing now, and I told myself I wouldn’t do that. I said I’d sit here all calm and quiet until they called me, and I’m not; I’m pacing…
HOPE
What happens if I bend forward in this; have a little jiggle…? Nothing. All good. Surprisingly secure! I thought it was a bit ‘saucy’ for a wedding dress, but maybe that’s America; or reality tv? It’s nothing like my first wedding dress. Mind you, this is nothing like my first wedding!
I’m glad they didn’t make me do strapless. You never feel as if everything’s going to stay where you want it. Strapless makes for a very fidgety, tense day – and I don’t think I need any help with that right now.
EVERETT
What’s the damn delay? Don’t they know I’m going nuts in here? There must be a camera somewhere. I can’t see it, but I bet they’re filming me sweating; pacing. They’re keeping me in here so I get my panties in a proper bunch. Better tv if I’m getting tense than if I sit still and pretend not to care.
HOPE
I’ll just turn sideways and see if my tummy looks bulgy…? Actually, it’s encouragingly all right. Even my bum’s behaving itself. Not sticking out. Not looking wobbly. There are some good things about two years of penury…at least you look fairly firm and thin to marry a stranger on the telly.
Oh God, I’m marrying a stranger on the telly!
I can’t believe my usually-so-suspicious mother fell unquestioningly for the ‘two-year US tv job’ line. Can’t imagine having to come clean that I’m doing it again, after the debacle of my divorce…and this time to someone I don’t even know for a potential cash prize! She’d disown me on the spot in a fit of feminist pique.
EVERETT
I’ve never had a suit made for me before, but it’s good. I feel pretty confident in my appearance right now. My shoes are shiny. I’m not creased. I’ve had a haircut; a shave; and I don’t stink of horse, or cowshit, or have mud on me – anywhere! No one I know would recognise me.
HOPE
If I catch his eye and he looks disappointed, or revolted, how will I get through the words I’ve got to say? What if he just laughs at the sight of me; mutton dressed as lamb in the clingy wedding dress I never would’ve chosen in a million years? How will I stand the mortification? I must stand it; that’s the deal. It’s what I signed up for. Rachel from Production was adamant this was the dress, and they’re paying the bill, so…
EVERETT
Jeez, I look old! I can see why they picked a grey suit – there’s so much grey in my hair now. When did I get this way? It just crept up on me. I can’t do anything about it…but what if she hates the way I look? What if my scar disgusts her? What if she’s a city girl and loves constant noise and bustle? What if she hates animals, and the wild, and being outdoors? What if she’s secretly dreaming of a stockbroker with a penthouse and a Mercedes-Benz; and she gets me, my dorm of unbridled young cowboys, and my ranch in the middle of nowhere?
What if I’m not good enough for her?
HOPE
I’m giving myself to a stranger… Bloody hell, what was I thinking? I was ok, and now I’m petrified!
What if I’m not good enough for him?
RACHEL DELANEY
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ‘FIRST SIGHT’
It started off, as the best ideas always do, prosaically enough; a bunch of women sitting around someone’s apartment drinking wine, eating take-out, and sharing maudlin stories as the evening got later and the line of empty bottles got longer.
Someone related the saga of a friend-of-a-friend, who’d met this guy on a dating site, it had seemed like a match made in heaven, but somehow nothing ever seemed to go right for them. They’d lurch from crisis to crisis until eventually he couldn’t take any more drama, and finished it. She was heartbroken, none of her friends could believe she hadn’t been able to hold on to this supposedly-ideal guy who’d seemed designed for her, and one girlfriend piped up dubious of the infallibility of internet profile-matching. The friend who was telling the story rounded on her and protested, ‘But on paper, they were the perfect couple! How could it not work out?’
The next day, I’m on the subway, and what she said popped back into my mind – everything in common, same demographic, same beliefs, same politics…how could it not work out?
It got a hold of me, and I started to ponder how trained specialists could surely do a better job of calculating who’s good for whom than a raft of narrow-category checkboxes and an algorithm or two? By the time I got to work, the concept of ‘First Sight’ was embedded in my head, and I was in the team office blurting ideas like a crazy person!
I had Suits in Boardrooms across town nodding sagely as we pitched to the Networks the concept of love at first sight, on camera, with the highly-watchable fascination of the stumbling courtship following the marriage rather than preceding it. Key to it were the subjects we chose – the guinea pigs for our social experiment! As we literally had no idea what we were doing, we got psychologists – top people in their fields, like Diana Maurice – to profile potential participants and do what the dating sites do, but with the subtlety and finesse of reality, not robotics. In my head, I was utterly convinced people could choose for people better than computers could, and I wanted to use my show to prove it.
We advertised across the US and Western Europe for English-speaking participants, casting the net incredibly wide thinking we’d have trouble generating interest. How wrong we were! As the trickle of applications became a torrent, we started to see what a job we’d taken on, and how it was going to be a learning curve for all of us just trying to get the thing onto the screen, let alone knowing if we could make a success of it as a tv show! It took nearly two years to get to a point where we thought we had twenty-four suitable candidates, and then whittle those down to six…one of the hardest jobs I’ve undertaken in a thirty-year media career!
Even throwing every expert we had at it, reams of questionnaires, hours of filmed interviews scrutinising every nuance of behaviour – every fidget, tic, shrug, and wink – we were still ultimately in the same position as my friend-of-a-friend and her matchmade guy. Perfection on paper couldn’t guarantee either attraction or compatibility. There’s something indefinable that draws two people together, and no one can really explain it…that was the part we couldn’t engineer with all the expertise in the universe at our disposal! Two years after that drunken girls’ night, about to unleash my project on the world, I was still asking the same question I’d been grappling with through my hangover on the subway that Monday morning.
Can you matchmake the thunderbolt?
PART I:
‘The How’
HOPE
Popping to the pricey supermarket near work to riffle through the dented tins and split packets of their Reductions shelf, I saw them. I recognised him first, of course, even though he looked different to how I remembered. He was a lot greyer, had grown a beard, and changed the style of his glasses.
I was standing, gaping, getting in everyone’s way, when he turned to speak to his companion and I realised it was her; Jocasta. Crushingly, she’d reverted to her willowy, pre-pregnancy figure, and sported an impossibly-trendy outfit accentuating her leggy slimness. She didn’t resemble the stereotype of a husband-stealing temptress. Rather, viewed objectively, she was simply an attractive girl with a pleasant smile, long, glossy black hair, and olive skin. She still did look terribly young to me. Well, she was young – that was what had stung most as she’d glared at me across the tiny room in family court, glowing with her advancing pregnancy. She was young and fertile, whilst I was old and barren.
She clutched reins in one hand, the other end of which contained a chubby, cheerful toddler, who was engaged in removing potatoes one by one from the fruit and veg display before his little nose, squatting and placing them onto the floor in front of him in an orderly line. He was beautiful; with lovely, chunky limbs like juicy sausages, huge blue eyes the colour of Wedgewood saucers, and a shock of tousled, carroty hair sticking out in every direction from his round little head.
The pain of the sight of that gorgeous red-haired boy took my breath away. Justin was dark, with brown eyes and hair, as were both his parents and all three of his brothers. Jocasta looked exotically foreign, with her dusky skin and the black curls she tossed spiritedly as they bickered about what to buy. I’m the redhead. I’ve got it all – pale skin, freckles, green eyes; the works! Take after my Scottish Dad, you see. That lovely little boy was what my son should have looked like! Like my Dad. Like me! I wouldn’t have ignored him while I rowed over the ready-meals! I would have bought a shop’s-worth of potatoes, taken them home, and made lines of them across the floor all day with him if that’s what he wanted to do! Where had the red hair come from? It must be some quirk in the gene pool, delivering the most Celtic of babies to his Mediterranean mother.
Finally, Jocasta noticed what her child was doing, and yanked sharply on the reins with a gasp of admonition, causing him to totter backwards and fall onto his bottom on the hard floor. A moment’s incomprehension as his pleasant potato-piling reverie was thus disturbed, and then the inevitable crying started. It took every ounce of my self-control not to rush over and gather him up in my arms, soothing his distress. Exasperated, red-faced with mortification, Jocasta seemed at a loss how to deal with the socially-embarrassing situation she’d created. Shoving her son at his father who, to his credit, did pick him up and attempt to distract him with a bunch of keys, she bent and hastily scooped up the potatoes, dropping them carelessly into the nearest container.
I moaned in my throat as the baby wailed on and, realising I’d done so aloud, glanced hurriedly around me. Tutting, glaring shoppers edged irritably past as I stood rooted to the spot in the centre of the aisle a maximum of eight feet from Justin and his new family. If they turned minutely to the left, there I’d be, with nowhere to hide! Taking a frantic step backwards, my cumbersome handbag caught and swept half a shelf of glossy periodicals across the shiny supermarket floor. Keeping my back to Justin, knowing I’d lost so much weight he’d never recognise me, I rushed to scrabble them up and restack them. In my haste, I trod on one and ripped the cover half off with my high heel. Swearing under my breath, I pushed it into the basket with the rest of my spartan shopping, and sprinted to the self-service checkout so I didn’t have to look anyone in the eye.
At home, I curled on the bed and shovelled in a meagre salad without tasting it, listlessly flicking through the overpriced magazine I hadn’t wanted and could ill-afford. The advertising was depressing, all the things I could once have had, and would still have been able to acquire with my husband’s ample income were it not for my malfunctioning ovaries. Reading articles trumpeting the successes of other women’s careers, wardrobes, interior decor, and sex lives, sent my mood spiralling further downward to a point where I felt so sick I was unable to finish everything on my plate. Before, I’d thrown things away the moment they reached the arbitrary date printed on the supermarket label. Now, I regarded wasting food as a heinous crime, given how insufficient my weekly budget had become over my two years as an independent woman.
Tossing the magazine aside sulkily, a wadge of leaflets slid out. I looked hopefully through them, in case there were any free sample sachets of expensive face-creams, or money-off vouchers for food or toiletries I couldn’t usually afford. One leaflet was a different size from the rest, on unusual paper, and decidedly American in tone and appearance. In stereotypically-shouty style, it yelled: DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? I read it all and, in that moment, felt like an imprisoned princess craning out of her turret at the far horizon, sure she’s just caught the distant sound of chinking armour and thrumming hooves over the din of the dragon’s roar.
In a frenzy, I filled in the whole form without an instant’s hesitation, and only came to my senses when I was scratching in the dresser drawer, certain I still had an airmail envelope, somewhere… Telling myself aloud in a firm voice to get a sodding grip, I shoved the whole lot – magazine, leaflets, and all – into the recycling basket, stood at the kitchen sink, finally opened the vodka I’d been saving for a special occasion, and drank half of it in fast, urgent gulps as if it was medicine. Horrified that the unexpected sight of Justin had released the genie of feeling from his bottle, I went to have a bath to distract myself. Flopped drunkenly in three inches of lukewarm water, I sobbed uncontrollably until the force of the emotion I’d been holding in check for so long finally made me lurch from the tub, kneel dripping and shivering before the toilet, and vomit a throat-burning, misery-inducing combination of half-digested lettuce and so-recently-swallowed vodka.
Once sufficiently numb to cease crying and puking by turns, shuddering with long-suppressed shock, I dried myself ineffectually, staggered the mercifully-short distance from bathroom to bed, entombed my feeble body beneath the duvet, and prayed I’d die during the night of something quick and painless.
EVERETT
My shoulder had been bugging me all winter, so much that sometimes I could hardly move my arm with the agony of it. After more sleepless nights than I could count, I stopped trying to be brave and went to the doctor. He manipulated the joint, cranking my arm back and forth until the pain was so bad I nearly punched him, before saying I might have some arthritis in it, I needed a blood test, and maybe a scan.
I trooped down the hall with my chitty to wait in line for the nurse, feeling like a ninety-year-old. I knew I’d abused my body for a long time to earn my living, but not even fifty and arthritic already! There was a long line in front of me, so I picked up a magazine to pass the time. A leaflet slid out onto the floor. I retrieved it, glanced, read, inwardly scoffed, and put it back on top of the pile of magazines when the nurse called my name.
I answered her questions, sat quiet and biddable in the chair like a model patient while she took my blood and filled in the paperwork, and thought of nothing else but that leaflet and what it had said. When she was done and I was free to go, there was only one elderly lady left in the waiting area. I realised I wanted that leaflet, but I didn’t want anyone to see me take it. I killed time helping myself to a cup of water from the cooler in the corner. The lady’s name was called. She shuffled into the nurse’s office. As soon as the door closed, I darted across, snatched up the leaflet, and shoved it in my jacket pocket like a shoplifter in a Seven-Eleven.
I got out of there as fast as I could with shaking hands and a pounding heart, convinced someone had seen me, but what did it matter? No one wanted a free piece of junk mail from inside a tacky magazine. No one, that is, except me.
HOPE
After having been formally dressed-down in front of half the office for doing my internet banking on work time by my ‘Line Manager’, a recent graduate with a penchant for polka-dot tights and unfortunate acne to match, I was forced to make the dignity-shredding confession that I’d had to pay my electricity bill today before they cut off my supply. She imperiously questioned why, at my age, I was quite so disorganised. Tight-voiced, I muttered I’d only left it so late because I’d had to save up the money to cover it, and couldn’t pay said bill online from home because I had no computer. She blinked a couple of times and stared at me as if she thought I might be having her on. What sort of person didn’t own a computer? Dismissed from her uncomprehending, unsympathetic presence once she’d intoned aloud the various paragraphs from the company handbook she considered most relevant to my latest transgression, I marched red-faced straight from her desk into the stationery cupboard, and helped myself to an airmail envelope and the required quantity of stamps without permission.
Back home, still seething, I retrieved the already-completed leaflet from the recycling pile, addressed the envelope with a furious flourish, and ran through the driving rain to the post box at the end of the road.
EVERETT
Jesse and Mel gaped across the table at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Shane, their boisterous eight-year-old, stared from his parents’ frozen faces to my sheepish expression, and demanded, “Are you really going to be on tv, Uncle Everett?”
I stroked his short, blonde hair and looked down at his earnest little face, so like his Dad, “I don’t know, buddy. I’m on a list of possibles. They want to see what I do if they stick a camera in my face. If I clam up like this,” I snapped my fingers closed on the end of his nose and he giggled the way my brother used to when I teased him, “then I’m on the plane back home…but, if I don’t…?”
“Then you marry a woman you’ve never met.”
I’d never heard Mel sound so shocked in the twenty-six years I’d known her, “Everett, what were you thinking saying yes to this?”
For a second, a flash of resentful anger burned me, and I retorted sharply enough to make them all stare in amazement, “Says the happy wife and mother who got all the things she ever wished for!”
I was stung by their lazy assumption that this was all I could be. Continually, I’d defied every unfairly-stacked roll of life’s dice. Why couldn’t they accept my potential to do it again?
“Because you have all you want, Mel, you assume so do I?”
I turned to my friend, pleading with him to be on my side, “Jesse, don’t you think I might want a Mel and a Shane of my own?”
He scratched his cheek and took his time in replying, same as always, “I’d honestly never thought about it.”
I moodily shoved in a forkful of Mel’s homemade pie, and chewed crossly.
Melanie couldn’t let it go, “You’ve had girls, Everett, cartloads of ‘em! We just presumed you weren’t seeking commitment, otherwise why didn’t you choose one?”
Frustrated by her surprising lack of empathy, I growled, “They weren’t…right…and when I was young, I had to put Ralton before any relationship – “
“See? You had Ralton!”
Despairingly, I wailed, “Mel, Ralton’s not my son! I love him to the ends of the earth and back, but he’s not my kid! I didn’t want to raise him; I had to! I had no choice! By the time he was off my hands, no one wanted me, Mel! All the good girls got picked up a decade before. The ones that were left…either I didn’t want them, or they didn’t want me. I’m sick of being alone and pretending I’m ok about it. I’m not. I’m lonely. I’m so lonely sometimes it makes my insides hurt. I want to lie in bed with my arms around somebody. I want to sit in front of the fire and talk about life. I want to make someone laugh. I want to share a piece of myself I’ve never shared with anyone…and if this is the fast-track way to make it happen, then I’m going for it.”
“Everett, get real! You’re going there on some crazy, idealistic, romantic crusade to find true love. Don’t you think most of the girls who’ve applied are more likely to be interested in the $500,000 prize money and the chance to be a tv star? They probably couldn’t give a crap about finding Mr Right. This is just a means to an end for them.”
“Maybe that’s true for the young ones, but surely not the women my age? They’re going to pick three couples – one twenties, one thirties, one forties – “
Jesse was chuckling, “You’d better hurry up then. You’ll only just slip in under the wire…”
Irritated, I jabbed Jesse in the forearm with the handle of my fork, “Who rattled your cage, Grandpa? Just ‘cos you don’t qualify!”
Jesse merely smiled. I was irritated that Mel was acting as if I’d lost all reason, and Jesse was treating it as a huge joke. Why could neither of them see how much of an opportunity this was for me? I decided to give up and keep my feelings to myself, “Anyway, it’s only a maybe. Apparently, they’re still on the selection stages – “
Mel won’t quit, “What about those questionnaires thick as the White Pages you had to fill out about every aspect of your life?”
“I guess they’re a good way to whittle out the timewasters…”
“So, why do you have to go all the way to New York for more of the same?”
“This is my showbiz screen-test, Mel! Regardless of whether they liked my questionnaire answers, if I’m shit on camera, I’m coming home…”
Shane poked my leg and hissed, “You said ‘shit’!”
Jesse smirked. Mel rolled her eyes. I winked at Shane and whispered, “Shhh! Tell-tale! Mom hasn’t noticed yet…”
Melanie treated me to the death-stare they obviously take you aside and teach you as soon as you become a mother, “I noticed, Shane, I just chose to ignore it. I’m starting to think Uncle Everett is beyond help.”
“I might get there and not look right. I might be too old, or too scruffy, or too…”
“Clinically insane?”
“Melanie Cole, don’t you want me to be happy?”
“I do, Everett McCann! More than anything, that’s what I want. That’s what we all want. We love you and we want you to get the very best from your life…but, Sugar, this ain’t the way! If you’d said how you were feeling, I could have fixed you up with – “
“Oh no, Mel! I’ve met your friends – they’re all terrifying. I just want a normal girl…”
“Everett, normal girls do not apply to marry strange men for money on tv!”
Jesse leant back in his chair, pushed his plate away, and lit a cigarette, “The other problem, of course, is she could be a moose…”
“You know what? I don’t care! I don’t care if she’s got one leg and a lazy eye! If she’s a nice, kind person who will tolerate me, what the hell does it matter? What’s so great about me that I can afford to be choosy? I’m middle-aged, I’m possibly arthritic, I’ve got this scar like a movie villain – what makes me so darn special? I don’t care about looks…I really, truly don’t. What I care about is company. I just want someone to smile when I walk in the door, talk to me about their day, show an interest in me, share their life with me – “
“Until the stipulated minimum eighteen months is up, and the one-legged, boss-eyed Mrs McCann collects her prize-money and hops off into the sunset – and you’ll be in a worse state than you are now, because you’ll be lonely and heartbroken. Just let me fix you up with somebody, please! You remember Belinda? She’s single. She’s always liked you, Everett.”
“Belinda…?”
Jesse nodded, “You must remember, man! Busty Belinda? Had the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at the fancy dress dance?”
“Oh, that Belinda! Yeah, I remember…”
“Well, she’s had the hots for you for years. Why don’t I call her and see if she’s free Friday?”
“No Mel…thank you, but no thank you. I have no desire to be better acquainted with Busty Belinda than I already am.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s…she’s…oh, she’s dumb, Mel! Her head is emptier than that prairie down there!”
“Oh!” Melanie’s loyally offended.
“Sorry…look, I understand you’re both concerned for my welfare and you don’t want to see me get my hopes up for nothing – and I promise I won’t – but I need to crawl out of this rut I’m stuck in, or my life is never gonna change. I’ll be living like this ‘til they carry me out in a box. I don’t go, and I’ll always be wondering – what if? I’m not saying I’m miserable, far from it! The stuff I’ve been through compared to the comfortable way I live now, I’ve no reason to complain. I’d just like someone to share that comfort with. Even if this comes to nothing; I went, I tried, and I had a little East Coast adventure. I’ve never been to New York. If I don’t get picked, I’ll still have had a nice vacation, and I’ll have seen behind the scenes on a tv show; not everyone can say that! If I do get picked and it ends up being torture, well – it’s eighteen months of my life. Look how fast the time goes! You blink and another year’s vanished…and think of the promotion for the ranch! We’d never be able to afford a slick, professional tv advertising campaign, but if I get this show, we get one for free!”
Jesse nudged his wife, “Now, Mel, that is a damn practical idea, you can’t deny it.”
Melanie scowled, and began collecting up the dirty plates, “Well, Everett, you’re obviously in full self-destruct mode, and nothing I say will make any difference.”
“You know what you should say, Mel?”
“What?”
“Good luck. God Speed. Enjoy your vacation.”
“You’re crazy, you know that? And you’ve been no help!” She rounded aggressively on her husband, who held up his palms in a gesture of surrender.
“You’re wasting your breath, that’s why. He’s always been demented and he ain’t gonna change now. He’s a big boy, Honey. He’s made his choice, let him do his thing.”
Later, Jesse and I leant against the fence of the nursery paddock, watching two of the newest foals suckling enthusiastically. Jesse kicked the toe of his boot up onto the fence, pushed his hat back on his head and grunted, “I didn’t know you were lonely.”
I smiled grimly, and shook my head. Did the two of them really understand me at all?
“Jesse, imagine no Mel, no Shane, and picture your life. Imagine there’d never been a Mel, so there wasn’t the remotest prospect of a Shane. Imagine sitting in that great big house of yours all alone day after day. You’d go nuts! Why d’you think I choose to live in with all the farmhands? Because it’s company, man! It’s someone else to talk to, to eat meals with, to fight with over the tv remote!”
“Yeah…I guess it is. I’d never thought of it like that…”
“When you feel like crap, what do you do? You wriggle across the mattress and snuggle up to that gorgeous wife of yours, don’t you, and she makes you feel a whole lot better. What if she wasn’t there? What if there was no comfort to be had? You’d just have to lie in the middle of your big, cold bed and feel shit until you fell asleep, wouldn’t you? You’ve had a wife for so long you’ve forgotten how fortunate you are…and now you’ve got your beautiful little boy too. You’re lucky, Jesse. I’d like to have a tenth of your luck. That’s why I’m going to take my vacation, go to New York, and do my best to get picked for this thing. If I get chosen, I get a chance; I get a wife! Yeah, she might arrive here and hate me…but she might not! One day, she might even be able to love me the way Mel loves you and, to me, that slim chance is worth the risk.”
HOPE
When one of the American tv show’s producers rang my mobile at 3.00pm on a dreary Tuesday, I thought it was a nuisance call and nearly rejected it. It took a moment to realise it was a New York number! Snatching up my phone, I left the switchboard ringing off the hook, and charged into the stationery cupboard.
A chatty woman called Rachel informed me, with typical US pizzazz, that I was down to the last four in my age group, my presence was required in New York for final selection, and I was provisionally top of their list!
After absorbing this marvellous bombshell with as much composure as I could muster, scribbling down the details with a handy nearby pad and pen, and ringing off from the effervescent Rachel with gushing gratitude, I did a secret, silent, high-kicking conga up and down the cramped cupboard, wiped the smile off my face with difficulty, reopened the door, and almost walked slap-bang into ‘Spotty’, my manager, who’d clearly been listening outside. She stood before me with one eyebrow raised and the company bible clamped under her arm like a nervous swimmer clutches a float.
I smiled expansively, carefully closed the cupboard door, steered a circuitous path around her, and walked unhurriedly back to the Reception desk.
Eight incoming lines buzzed with insistent electronic urgency from the switchboard, red lights flashing.
Spotty flicked to a particularly well-thumbed section of the handbook and began spouting corporate policy on irresponsible employees receiving personal calls during work time, and abandoning their posts outside of designated breaks.
Still smiling broadly, I let the ‘phones ring on, put on my coat, and swung my handbag over my shoulder. Her officious, plummy voice died in her throat as I cheerily explained I had been ‘headhunted for a US media role’, and must leave for New York within the week. After a second or two of absolute silence – apart from the trilling telephones – she burbled some vindictive pettiness about working my full notice if I expected to get paid. With breezy unconcern, I took great delight in informing her that my paltry wages were of no consequence, my new salary was $500,000, and I would greatly appreciate her posting on my P45 with appropriate urgency.
Halfway to the main door, I caved in to temptation, turned smartly on my heel, and strolled jauntily back to her frozen figure. Leaning forward, I placed my hand on her arm, and advised condescendingly, “A little tip for the future, when you’re a proper grown-up. I’d stop matching my tights to my complexion, if I were you. As you talk out of your arse most of the time, it makes it almost impossible to determine which way up you are.”
I left her staring after me, mouth opening and closing like a dying turbot. Free of my veneer and glass prison, I ran all the way to the tube station like a child on the first day of the holidays.
EVERETT
New York was the noisiest, smelliest, dirtiest, rudest place I’d ever been. Have you seen that movie ‘Crocodile Dundee’, where he tries to stroll down the sidewalk to take the place in, but is powerless against the tide? That’s how I felt. I got sick of being jostled. At first, I’d apologise, but I soon gave that up because no one reacted, or even broke their stride. The wall of ceaseless noise; the sea of hard, unemotional faces…in the end, I mostly stuck to the hotel. At least it was quiet in there, and I could pound the gym when I got too stir-crazy from being cooped up indoors. Out in the street, even in the park, I couldn’t hear myself think.
There were twelve of us guys – four in each age group. Some of them were chatty, but most treated the communal evening meals (filmed, naturally) as a chance to score points off one another. I didn’t think that was the way to go about it. I figured if you just behaved how you always would – no bullshit, no machismo – then they could see how you’d be through a lens. If your personality lacked the spark they were searching for, they wouldn’t pick you, no matter how many pithy shots you landed at your rivals’ expense.
I recalled how it had felt to talk into the compere’s microphone at a big rodeo, and just imagined I was back in the competition arena, addressing a crowd of people who didn’t know me, but thought they did; who liked the idea of me, and what they thought I represented.
I flirted, I joked, but I also disarmed with direct answers when they expected flippancy, and candour when they anticipated avoidance.
I tried to extract as much from the experience of being in New York as I could, if only to recount it to Shane when I got home, but I wasn’t disappointed to leave the city. I didn’t know whether I’d be chosen. I couldn’t get a feel for what they thought of me. The other three guys were smart, suave, slightly younger and more sophisticated than I; all college-educated like my brother Ralton. I was certainly the odd-man-out. It had previously been somewhat of an advantage in making me notable, but tv shows are aspirational, and who’d aspire to be me – a worn out old cowboy who just wanted a quiet life and someone to share it with?
Members of the ‘FIRST SIGHT’ Production Team:
RACHEL DELANEY – Executive Producer
DIANA MAURICE – Programme Consultant/Psychologist
VASQUEZ HERNANDEZ – Series Editor
Hope Howarth
Rachel: Picking in the female 40s category was a no-brainer, wasn’t it?
Vasquez: Oh, for sure…I mean, we chose Hope just on the basis of the forms she submitted.
Rachel: Yeah, she came over as a real ‘tragic heroine’, you know? Shouting from between the lines of everything she wrote on her forms was this frantic – help me, help me, rescue me, I’m going under! But when she got here, she was hyper-aware of the cameras, and seemed to be trying to behave as she thought we expected, rather than how she actually wanted to. We kept pushing her, asking the same questions over again to illicit a more emotional response. We knew she had it in her because of the forms, but we couldn’t get her to show any true feelings once we placed her in front of the camera.
Vasquez: She was definitely holding back. She obviously felt she needed to behave a certain way, but it wasn’t her true self.
Rachel: The more we pushed, the more she clammed up. It was…bad tv, basically. I was on the verge of saying to Di – let’s forget Hope, she’s a cold fish – and throw our energies into gearing up one of the other three, but I felt disappointed at the idea of quitting on Hope. The other three ladies, lovely though they were, had only ever been the ‘reserve-list’, because we were so unanimous about the selection of Hope, until we put her in front of the camera.
Vasquez: We’d almost given up hope! Sorry… Eventually, we decided one of us needed to take her aside and tell her if she didn’t relax, she was going home. It was harsh, but it did the trick. I don’t really know what had happened to her to make her apply, but we definitely got the impression from her questionnaires that this was a final attempt to keep her sanity. Threatening her with dismissal if she didn’t start showing some true personality was like flicking a switch. It was almost as if she decided – fine, if I’m going out, I’m going out like me.
Rachel: Once she elected to ‘be herself’, she aced the screen tests.
Vasquez: Knowing it’s a bit crazy doesn’t mean you can’t take it seriously and give it your best shot. Hope entered into it all with an awareness that it was just a tv show, but also that it was supposed to be entertaining, and it was having a significant impact upon her own and someone else’s life. She brought optimism to the table, and an intention to do her best to make it work. That’s all we asked of all the participants, that they bothered to try…
Everett McCann
Diana: Oh. My. God.
Rachel: Vasq, you can’t speak to this, but all the girls on the team were head over heels in love with Everett.
Vasquez: And he was the ‘wild-card’ pick, as well!
Rachel: Yeah, he was! The other three suggested themselves early on as good, safe bets…and then Everett’s application came in quite late.
Diana: It was so different, he was too intriguing to ignore.
Rachel: Sure, and when we met him, he was such a sweetheart, wasn’t he? He called us all ‘Ma’am’ and opened doors for us, and carried heavy stuff and…you ended up wanting to throw your arms around him and squeeze him…and it wasn’t just me!
Vasquez: No, it was all of them. They all went completely insane over him. He was very laid back and seemed to be making no effort at all, but was a total babe-magnet. For the younger guys, it got under their skins a bit, I think.
Diana: He ended up being the most surprising of all the twelve guys we’d selected to screen test, because he was so understated about his life. When he was interviewed, he was articulate, self-aware, successful – but he’d written ‘farmer’ as his profession on his initial entry form. When we found out he actually co-owned a five-star hotel and a big ranch, he’d had this really chequered past in childhood poverty, and then in professional rodeo and as a bullriding champ…he was fascinating to sit and talk to! He was a genuine self-made man, but when I did interviews with him, he was…not evasive, but incredibly flirtatious, and I did find it difficult to deal with, because I was certainly under his spell – “
Rachel: Diana!
Diana: I know! But the professional part of me was saying – no, you must get past this and get answers out of him. Things it would embarrass me to talk about, he was completely candid and open, but some stuff from his past…? I’d ask questions about his parents and his childhood and – boom! – the barriers would come down and he’d refuse to be pressed. When I questioned him about the scar on his face, he said ‘teenage fight, broken bottle’, and that was as much as I could get out of him.
Vasquez: As we got further through the process for the 40+ age group, it became abundantly obvious we had a damsel-in-distress and a lovable home-grown hero, and both were hurting at a fundamental level they weren’t prepared to discuss. You couldn’t help but want to know what had happened to put them in that place. Of the three couples, it became the easiest decision to make that we’d put Everett and Hope together, and see if they could heal one another’s emotional wounds.
I personally thought the twenty-somethings would be the most watchable pairing but, as we all discovered, we might as well not have bothered with Regis and Sylvie, the young hotties, or Monica and Bill, the thirty-something go-getters, because it was Everett and Hope, the bruised oldies just looking for a quiet life, who ended up delivering the tv gold.
EVERETT
The Registrar-lady seems nice. Her smile’s genuine. She can obviously see I’m bricking it. I know I’ve signed a contract and everything, but what would they actually do if I pegged it out of here and just kept going? Would they bother to try and catch me?
They’re doing it again, keeping me waiting…this time, in front of at least three cameras I can see, and I’m miked-up now too. My heart is pounding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the microphone’s picking it up. It never used to beat this fast even waiting behind the chutes. Am I in breach of contract if I have a heart attack at the altar? It sure would get me off the hook right now. Melanie was right, I am clinically insane! Why have I done this to myself?
Oh, the door’s opening. Jesus Christ, this is it! Stand up straight, Everett, look presentable. Holy shit, my legs feel like string. If I faint on camera, is that good or bad tv?
HOPE
They’re starting to wind me up now, in and out like a fiddler’s elbow…nearly ready…not quite…maddening!
I’ve talked myself into this, it just needs to happen, now, before common sense talks me out of it again. If it’s really terrible, it’s a maximum eighteen months of my life. It can’t be any worse than the last eighteen months have been, and I got through them, so I can get through this.
Right, they’re back. I think it’s time. Whatever happens, remember this beats that idiotic office and mind-numbing switchboard hands-down. Wherever I end up with my new husband has to be better than a cockroach-infested bedsit. Head up, Hope, shoulders back, tits out – let’s do this!
Stupid dress…it’s caught on something now. Oh, it’s stuck under the door! Ah, good old Britney. The things they make that poor girl do. She’s definitely got the worst job on the team. She’s reduced to hands and knees, trying to ease my dress out from under the door so it doesn’t rip. Not an auspicious omen.
Ok, she’s done it. Give her a smile, thumbs up, well done Britney…can’t see any of the rest of them lowering themselves to do that. Right, act like nothing’s happened – the show must go on! Blimey, those lights are bright! Don’t squint, just keep walking straight; smile… I can’t see a thing!
EVERETT
There’s gotta be a mistake here! That is not the body of a forty-something woman. Maybe they’re screwing around? Perhaps I’m getting the twenty-year-old, and it’s all some big tv joke at our expense?
She’s stopped. Has she taken one look at me and changed her mind? These lights are so bright I can hardly see anything! Oh, her dress is caught on something. Am I supposed to help, or just wait here?
They’ve done it. That poor little Britney-girl who does everyone’s running around has fixed it. She’ll go far, that chick. She’s not afraid of getting her hands dirty to get the job done.
Ok, this is it.
She’s checking her dress, turning her head, looking, smiling…
Wow.
There’s got to be some mistake. Surely this girl can’t be for me?
HOPE
I can’t see anything, it’s too bright! I’m marrying a silhouette.
He’s a big chap, broad shoulders…that’s better, they’ve moved that light over… Oh, my husband is handsome! Gorgeous tan, blue eyes, blonde hair – bit grey, but we are the over-forties. Big smile – from ear to ear! He’s a lovely colour. He looks as if he’s spent his entire life outside. Perhaps he’s a sailor or something? Stop grinning, Hope, he’ll think you’re a simpleton. He looks lean, strong…maybe he’s an athlete or a climber? Thick neck, square jaw…big scar through his lip and right across his cheek. I wonder how he got that?
Oh God, what must he think of me in this tarty dress? He’s certainly smiling…a lot. Maybe he’s trying not to laugh at the state of me? Why didn’t I put my foot down and demand they dress me in something more appropriate to my age? I’m on the flippin’ telly looking like this, for Christ’s sake! Probably half of America has just thrown up into their tv dinners at the sight of me!
He’s so dishy! There’s got to be a downside, but I can’t see one from here. He’s still smiling at me. His eyes are kind. I’ve just thought – the downside is probably me…
EVERETT
The nice Registrar whips us through our vows in record time, while I try not to fluff my lines or sound too much like a dumb hick.
Before I can get my head around what’s happening I’m a married man, and my new wife and I are shunted into an adjoining room while the cameras turn to capture the second ceremony of this unaccountable day.
We’re left alone, standing in the middle of a small lounge with a fixed camera in one corner, facing one another; not touching, not talking, just staring.
Hope.
My wife’s name is Hope. The significance of that isn’t lost on me. She has a soft, clear voice, and an English accent. She has flame-red hair pulled into a thick bun on the side of her head, secured with a ring of flowers. Her skin is pale, and there’s a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes are very green and bright, and her smile is wide and infectious. When she beams up at me, I can’t help but grin back like an idiot. She’s tiny; thin and small. Her arms are like sticks. I think my hands could span her waist, she’s so little. She barely comes up to my chin – and she’s probably got high-heeled shoes on.
Her dress is cream lace, and it shows off every curve. If she’s really in her forties like she’s supposed to be, then she’s got the figure of a woman half her age. I try to avoid being a typically-oafish guy and gawping at her body, but it’s impossible not to want to see what’s underneath the lace. To take my mind off the contents of Mrs McCann’s wedding gown, I try to picture Jesse and Mel’s faces when I take her home and introduce her. Not a lazy eye or a wooden leg in sight! I’m troubled by the sudden notion it’s all too good to be true; what’s the downside? My self-confidence stutters when I consider the downside might be me…
I can’t think of anything intelligent to say. I just stand and gaze at her and try to figure out what she makes of me. Does she look disappointed?
“Is it two ‘n’s?”
“Huh?”
“McCann – two ‘n’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok.” She nods once, decisively. Typical female practicality – get the admin done first. I guess it is important to know how to spell your own name.
She looks at the floor for a moment, as if plucking up courage, and then asks quietly, “How did you get that big scar?”
I knew it. She hates the way I look. Goddam Martin Parker; the man’s been dead for thirty years and he’s still screwing everything up for me!
I whisper, “Do you hate it?”
Concern fills her bright eyes. She takes a tentative step forward, and places her tiny fingers on my forearm, “No, it’s not that! It’s…I just wondered how…that’s all…”
I like that she’s trying to spare my feelings. It’s thoughtful of her.
I wink, smile, and tease, “How do you think I got it?”
She beams at me, relieved I’m not offended, “Duelling? Lion taming? Very, very undercooked shark sandwich?”
She’s funny. I’m chuckling even as I weigh up whether to tell the whole truth. I decide I’m going to treat her the way I want to be treated. I’m not going to keep secrets from her. She’s my wife. This is for real.
“It’s not as much fun as any of those.”
“What happened to you?”
“My Mom’s boyfriend cut me with a broken bottle.”
“Bloody hell! How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Why did he do it?”
I hesitate, then remind myself – no secrets, “He was trying to hurt my Mom, and I was trying to stop him. I put him on his ass and he didn’t like that, so he came at me with a broken bottle and sliced my face open.”
Her eyes are round as saucers. Her mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ of astonishment. Eventually, she gasps, “You could have lost an eye!”
“I guess I was lucky.”
“If you can call it that…is he still on the scene?”
“No…he died…shortly after…”
She grunts mirthlessly, and mutters, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. What about your Mum?”
Mentioning Mom always stings, deep inside. I manage, “She’s dead too.”
She doesn’t spout empty platitudes about being sorry over people she’s never met, and I like that about her. She nods thoughtfully, and asks, “Is your Dad still alive?”
I shrug, “I don’t know. I’ve never met the guy.”
She slaps one little white hand over her eyes, “It’s the put-your-foot-in-it Olympics here, isn’t it? As you can see, I’m a gold medal contender!”
I laugh. She has an easy way about her. I don’t feel she’s judging me, and find I’m not ashamed to admit, “My family’s a bit of a hornet’s nest. Poke around and a whole swarm of trouble comes flying out. You weren’t to know.”
“Is there anything good about them?”
“Oh yeah!”
She beams again, any excuse to smile, “Excellent! What?”
Proudly, I explain, “I’ve got a little brother. I’m very close to him. He has a good job, a lovely wife, four kids, big house, pool in his backyard, fancy car…”
“Compared to the rest of it, that does sound very good.”
“It is good. He’s done very well for himself. He’s more than a brother, really. He’s the son I never had.”
“What’s the age difference?”
“Ten years.”
“So, he looks up to you?”
“Probably not now…but when he was little he did, I think.”
“A nice look comes on your face when you talk about him.”
“I love him.”
“I can see that.” She’s watching me very intently. I wonder why she’s here, going through with this crazy stunt. She seems so…steady…
“Is your family as much of a train-wreck as mine?”
“Less so, by the sound of it. My Dad left when I was twelve, they got divorced, and he went to work abroad. He spent a lot of his working life outside the UK. When he retired, he came back to Scotland where he’s originally from, but I don’t have much to do with him. He sends the odd Christmas card. Some years he remembers, anyway…” A regretful smile crosses her face, “He’s not senile or anything, he’s just not that bothered about being a Dad – so I’m not that bothered about being a daughter in retaliation. Petty really.”
“How about your Mom?”
“She’s a formidable character! Single Mums are, aren’t they? We struggled a bit with money, but I never went without. I do love her and everything, but she frustrates me because she always sticks her oar in. I think, it’s because she wants the best for me…?”
I smile encouragingly at her, “I’m sure it is.”
“She just has a lot of opinions – quite vocal ones – about the life-choices I make.”
“She must have been off the chart about this then!”
“I haven’t told her.”
“Whoa!”
“I know. She will skin me alive when she finds out. I told her I’d got a job ‘in the American media’.”
“Hmmm…it’s not exactly a lie.”
“No. It’s not exactly the truth though, is it?”
“You’re in big trouble then?”
“Massive.”
“Wanna hear something funny?”
“What?”
“I haven’t told my brother either!”
She throws her head back and laughs unselfconsciously.
“I was just going to rock up on his doorstep with you – surprise!”
She’s giggling, “That sounds quite fun…good telly!”
“Well, in that case, we’ll do it. Gotta keep the ratings up!”
“It could be our Honeymoon.”
“Oh yeah…we’re supposed to have a Honeymoon…” I ponder how nice it would be to curl up somewhere cosy and quiet with Mrs Hope McCann, and slide her luscious-looking body free of the cream lace… The door opens behind me and makes me jump. I feel as if I’ve been caught doing something naughty, and detect the first heat of a blush on my cheeks and neck.
It’s Rachel from the production team, who explains, “Press call! Photos, a few questions from journos, and a couple of pieces to camera. You ready?”
I look at my new wife, who nods enthusiastically. I offer her my arm. She doesn’t hesitate, but slides her delicate hand around it and holds on tight as we follow Rachel back out into the harsh glare of the lights.
© Annie Holder 2018
Annie Holder has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Annie Holder in 2018.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Place and public names are sometimes used for the purposes of fiction. Resemblance to any person, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.
With sincere apologies to all Americans for the liberties I have taken with your language…