Prologue
INTERIOR: ANNIE AND ROO’S HOUSE
I’m so glad I got to kill Tony Barton before I left Newcastle.
‘I wanted to really show people what I could do,’ I tell Roo. ‘I wanted to leave on a high note.’
Roo hands me a mug of tea and joins me on the couch where I’m snuggled under a blanket. It’s a Sunday evening in early May and the weather is still chilly.
‘You definitely did,’ she says. ‘It was an excellent murder. Very dramatic! Tony didn’t know what hit him.’
‘Aw, thanks.’ I’m genuinely touched. ‘I did my best. I was lucky it turned out so well.’
‘And don’t worry.’ Roo takes a sip of her own tea. ‘I’m sure you’ll get to kill more people in Dublin too. Or at least cause a few accidents.’
‘I know!’ I say. ‘Ooh, I can’twait.’ I beam at her over my mug as I think of all the lives I’m going to ruin now I’m back home. All the deaths and fights and disasters. The fires and floods and robberies, the betrayals and arrests and jiltings at the altar.
And, not for the first time, I think how incredibly lucky I am to write soap-opera scripts for a living.
I’d just finished working on the Tony Barton murder episode ofOur Toonwhen I got the call that brought me home to Ireland. When my phone rang I was so exhausted after some last-minute rewrites that I almost didn’t answer. Then I saw it was an unknown Irish number. I always answered if I got a call from an Irish number, in case it was a family emergency.
‘Is that Annie McDermott?’ said an unfamiliar male voice.
‘It is.’ My stomach lurched. He sounded serious. Oh God, was something wrong with Mam or Dad? Or my sister? Was this a doctor calling from a hospital? Was it—?
‘My name’s Bernard Brennan,’ said the stranger. ‘I’m the executive producer atNorthsideat IBC.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’
‘Oh!’ I said. Now the butterflies in my stomach felt like excitement, not fear.
Suddenly I wasn’t tired at all.
Every television writer has a show that made them want to be a scriptwriter. And for me, that show wasNorthside, the soap opera that’s been a staple of Irish television for five decades. My whole family were addicted toNorthsidewhen I was growing up, and when Roo and I were younger we religiously watched the omnibus every Saturday. We loved how funny it was, how despite the melodramatic storylines it still felt authentically Dublin in a way that we never saw on screen elsewhere. We loved the residents of the fictional Charlemont Street, from the villains everyone loved to hate to the no-nonsense matriarchs like Maureen ‘Mozzer’ McCaul and – above all – the legend that was Ma Cusack. In college we briefly pretended that our love forNorthsidewasironic, but it wasn’t really. We were genuine fans. When the actress who played Ma Cusack suddenly left the series eight years ago, I got texts from no fewer than four separate people breaking the shocking news.
Roo: Have you seen Ma Cusack’s quit Northside? It made the actual headlines here! Wish you were here for the DRAMA.
Laura: Our parents are taking Ma Cusack’s departure as well as can be expected.
Mam: Who does Honoria Quigley think she is, leaving a show like that?
Dad: It’s a sad day for Irish television, Annie. A sad, sad day.
Northsidewas simply a part of our lives.
And of course I knew who Bernard Brennan was. I was living in England when he got the top job atNorthside, but I remembered reading about how he’d shaken up the show. He was the man behind the sensational fortieth-anniversary episodes when a train crashed off the embankment at the end of Charlemont Street, killing several main characters and destroying the community centre. There hadn’t been anything like it on an Irish show before, or indeed since.
The man was a legend. And he had a proposition forme.
‘I believe you’re based in England?’ said Bernard.
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said Bernard, ‘would you consider moving to Dublin?’
Then he told me that, after fifty years, instead of hiringfreelance scriptwriters, they were creating aNorthsidewriters’ room.
Which was where I would come in.
‘So you mean I’d have a secure staff job?’ I said. ‘WritingNorthsidescripts?’