Kelvin calls the pictures desk. ‘Can we please get a selection for Janice Rothschild? Maybe include a few of her inMadame Bovary... What? Oh, sorry – we’ve just heard she’s disappeared. I know – a bit shocking. Anyway, can we get a few of her with her husband? Just in case?’
Jeremy Rothschild presents theTodayprogramme on Radio 4; he and Janice Rothschild have been married for decades. I look up his Twitter account, but he hasn’t said anything in seventy-two hours. Everyone else on the obits desk is doing the same. As one, we look up Janice’s Twitter, which has been silent for three weeks, and Jonty goes off to make tea. ‘She is delightful,’ he says, angrily. ‘I really will not cope if she’s taken her own life.’
I put my headphones on, unable to listen to my colleagues any longer, and spend a few minutes looking at #Janice-Rothschild. It really is breaking news; there’s only a little more than five minutes of tweets. I watch an achingly funny clip of her guest-starring inAb Fab, and a very moving one of her overcoming chronic vertigo to climb a rock face for Sport Relief. By the time she reaches the top, everyone’s crying, even the cameraman.
None of these early tweeters seemed to have any idea why she’s disappeared. I run a quick check on our archive but only find one potential clue: a picture of her leaving a psychiatric unit nineteen years ago, a few weeks after giving birth to their son. Since then, nothing. She’s one of those relentlessly funny, upbeat women; the sort you wish you were friends with when you see them sparring with Graham Norton on TV. I wouldn’t have had a clue.
Sheila returns to her desk with a large bag of Wine Gums. She says she’s been unable to get hold of Jeremy. She doesn’t offer the sweets around. Instead, she eats, mechanically and in solitude.
‘Do not ask me to write a stock for her,’ she says, after a while. ‘I do not believe she could commit suicide. I’m not getting involved.’
‘But you know her so well,’ Kelvin tries, after a pause. ‘It would be a really personal piece.’
‘Which is precisely why I won’t do it.’ Sheila’s voice is crisp. ‘I’m not condemning a perfectly healthy, very precious friend to death.’
Kelvin nods his assent. He is the editor, and I’m his deputy, but nobody’s in any doubt that it’s Sheila who runs this desk.
Kelvin gives the obit to me, and I get writing. I know my colleagues at all the other newspapers will be doing the same thing; that we’re all now working against the clock, checking regularly for an announcement that a body has been found.
I try not to think about Sheila’s refusal to ‘condemn’ her friend to death. Is that what I’ve been doing, writing Emma’s obituary?
On the news floor TVs, I can hear someone from the Metropolitan Police confirming that they’re looking for a missing woman in her fifties. Then an actor, who has no idea where Janice is, saying he has no idea where Janice is.
Sheila eats Wine Gums non-stop and sends a lot of text messages, before announcing she’s going out. ‘Need to find somewhere that will serve me a brandy at ten thirty a.m.,’ she says. ‘I’ve already got lunatics emailing in amateur Janice obituaries.’
People seldom believe me when I tell them our desk is the most cheerful desk on the news floor; that our laughter is often a matter of irritation to our neighbours. But it makes sense, if you think about it properly. Current affairs and politics are perennially gloomy spaces to inhabit, whereas we spend our time celebrating extraordinary people. Besides, an obituarist’s currency is life, not death, and my mind is always trained on the qualities of my intended portrait: the colours, the light and dark; the choppy textures. There is a sadness to it, of course, but it’s gentle. Even writing advance obits is bearable if the subject has had a long life.
But this kind of advance obit, this preparation for a death that shouldn’t be happening – the tragic car accident with an army of press camped outside the hospital, the sudden terminal cancer diagnosis, or an unexplained disappearance – this is the worst part of the job.
Especially when you’re waiting for an appointment with your wife’s haematologist.
*
Sheila finally hears from Jeremy around lunchtime. She leaves her desk quickly, and is gone for a long time.
‘No real news,’ she says on her return. ‘It’s one of the actors from her play who leaked the story. Shot his mouth off in a pub – as if he didn’t know it’d spread across London like the plague. There’s a whole scrum of press outside Jeremy’s front door. He’s raging.’
I’d sooner throw myself under a bus than get on the wrong side of Jeremy Rothschild. He’s a national treasure, all right, but his ability to disembowel politicians is unnerving. He also once punched a paparazzo, although that I can understand.
‘He has no idea where Janice is,’ Sheila admits, sitting down. ‘She left the house for work three days ago. They’re rehearsing at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, and apparently the producers normally send her a car, but she wanted to drive that day. Rehearsals were going fine; she seemed fine – then she went to the loo and never came back. Her car was clamped and taken to the pound. No images of her on the tube.’
‘But it’s Camden,’ Jonty says. ‘Surely there’s street cameras everywhere?’
‘Primrose Hill end of Camden. By Regent’s Park. Hardly any cameras there.’
Kelvin shoots me a far-from-subtle look, checking my Janice stock is ready to go. Grudgingly, I nod. Sheila sees the whole thing, but doesn’t object. She knows we have to do it.
‘They’ll find her,’ she says. ‘And she’ll be fine. I don’t buy the depression story. I had supper with them a few weeks ago. She drank a fair bit, but then again so did I. We were singing Queen songs until two in the morning, it was disgraceful. She was on good form.’
‘No hint of strain in their relationship?’ Jonty asks. ‘You don’t think she’s just left him?’
‘I do not,’ she says, and there’s a warning in her voice.
Jonty doesn’t take the hint. ‘So there’s literally nothing untoward?’
‘Nothing,’ she snaps, and the matter is closed. I watch her tidy her desk, throw out the remaining Wine Gums and raise, then lower, her shoulders. This means she is shelving any feelings she might have about Janice until such time as she knows more. She’s one of the few people I know who’s genuinely able to do this.
Sheila is only about ten years older than I am but she’s already had high-ranking positions in both MI5 and the diplomatic service. To my great pleasure she chose me as her drinking buddy when she joined our team a few years back, and our lunchtime trips to the Plumbers’ Arms remain the high point of my working day. Sheila can put away three pints in an hour and still be the most cogent person in the room.
