Whatever You Are Is Beautiful

PROLOGUE

Not so long ago, I was sat on the side of a bridge, my legs dangling down. Beneath, a river flowed many times faster, it seemed, than the rush hour traffic behind. Next to me was a man in a silver bodysuit. Its reflective sequins caught the sunset, a rainbow of colours rippling across his body.

The man’s name was Bo, but he had lately taken to calling himself The Trout.

I explained to him that what had happened between me and his wife was a mistake and meant nothing, and my interests currently lay elsewhere, with people of his own kind.

Bo did not seem to hear me. Perhaps the traffic was just too loud. Or perhaps he didn’t want to. Or perhaps it was because he was wearing a heavy moulded plastic helmet that resembled the full head of a trout.

Within minutes, both of us would have fallen from the side of that bridge. This is the story of how we got there, and what happened next.

STAGE I

HEROS AT HOME

When I first met Bo, he was not The Trout. He did not wear a trout helmet and costume. He had no troutlike tendencies at all, as far as anybody was aware. In fact, there had been only one meaningful incident with trout in his life at that point. He was just an ordinary man, it seemed, living an ordinary life with his wife, Paynter, and his two small children, Mason and Skiff. They had a small house on the outskirts of the medium-sized, relatively affluent, town of Merriweather. His job in construction did not leave them financially comfortable, but at least they were stable. But Merriweather was not ordinary, and neither was Bo. Not anymore. Merriweather was one of several HEROS hotspots in the North-Eastern states of the US, and Bo had it.

Since the first appearance of HEROS (Heterogenous Enhanced Replacement Organ Syndrome) in a few isolated individuals a decade ago, the condition had fascinated and baffled the medical community in equal measure, as it had the world at large. With the sudden emergence of case clusters, or ‘hotspots’, in the past year, it felt as if we were perhaps entering a new, unsettling era.

‘Looks like we’ve found our Happy Place, Chas,’ Laura, my director, had said to me as we drove up on that fine summer’s day. We always needed a Happy Place in our programmes. It just couldn’t be so happy it was boring.

I looked out the passenger window. The sky was blue and the fences were white. It didn’t get much happier than this, in my mind. As we got out of the car, the smell of cut grass enveloped me like a blanket, and the squeak of a children’s swing sounded more beautiful than a choir of angels.

‘Hi! Great to meet you,’ said Bo, as he opened the door to me. I asked if he wanted us to take our shoes off, as I always did these days, after too many years of making a mess of carpets without a second thought. He pointed down at his own dirty crocs and laughed.

‘Is this it?’ he said, gesturing at the two of us. ‘I thought you’d have, like, a hundred people with you or something!’

‘This is it,’ I said.

Over the years, we’d stripped it down to the point Laura filmed all the programmes herself on a small handheld. Although it looked like something you could buy in a supermarket, it was broadcast quality, most of the time, and if the light wasn’t always great, then that just added to the authenticity. Throw in a couple of radio mics and we were a fully operational unit. I’d become something of a purist in recent years, passionate about truth, and it was important to me to capture my subjects living spontaneously. With just two of us, that was easy. Laura always told me not to get too hung up on keeping it real, that if we faked a bit here and there to make the programme go smoother, it didn’t affect its overall veracity, but I wasn’t convinced.

Laura caught the high heel of the towering boots she insisted on wearing on the doormat when we came in, and the camera was pointed at the floor at the crucial moment Bo shook my hand. I knew we wouldn’t be able to use the shot, and would have to stage it again later. She would have done that on purpose just to make a point. Every programme we made felt like a conflict between coming up with something that was honest and something someone might want to watch. It was my lot to be on both sides simultaneously.

I had seen a video of Bo earlier which Laura had recorded on recce, but I was still struck by how tall he was, with broad shoulders and a drooping hangdog moustache I presumed was non-ironic. ‘Chad, right?’ he asked, my hand still stinging slightly from his overly manly handshake.

‘Charlie,’ I said. ‘But Laura calls me Chas sometimes. We don’t really have that many Chads in the UK, to be honest with you.’

‘Really? I don’t know much about Great Britain. Just what I see in the movies. You live near Buckingham Palace?’

I told him that I lived in London, but not the part with Buckingham Palace in, as he showed us inside. There was the lingering smell of an American breakfast — coffee, pancakes and sausage. It was the most wonderful smell in the world. He led us through to the kitchen. It seemed like a wholesome place, the perfect environment for a happy childhood. Only a well-stocked drinks cabinet hinted at anything wholly adult. It was here that I saw Paynter for the first time. She seemed content to stay in the shadows, moving constantly, making the family work, a blur of denim and freckles.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘You hungry?’

I longed for the coffee, pancakes and sausage that Bo and his family must have just had. ‘A glass of water’s fine,’ I said.

‘Water? Bah!’ said Bo. ‘Chad, I know it’s early, but seeing as you’re here now and not later, I have the most incredible Scotch I want to share with you. It’s from a small distillery in Fife. That near you? Hey, come on, have a drop. You look like a man who would appreciate it.’

‘Oh, I am, but I couldn’t really...’

‘It was a birthday present from Paynter, but can you believe it? Paynter doesn’t drink! Ever!’

‘I just don’t like the taste of alcohol,’ she said. ‘Never have.’

‘Well, I think that’s a damned shame,’ said Bo. ‘Because I don’t think there’s anything better than a fine Scotch shared. So, how about it?’

‘Oh, well, maybe Scotch and water, then,’ I said. ‘But heavy on the water, please. It is very early.’

The sound of children playing came from the small piece of lawn that was their back yard. Bo stuck his head out the window and yelled for the kids to come inside and say hello. They carried on playing.

Paynter beckoned me to sit on a high stool and handed me a glass. She gave Bo his neat. He thanked his wife with a full kiss on the lips. They were clearly very much in love.

‘Bottoms up!’ said Bo.

Even watered down, the burning in my throat was something else. This was a serious Scotch.

‘Smooth,’ I said, riding it out with a smile that was probably a grimace.

Bo asked us about our flight, where we were staying. And then, eventually, he said, ‘So, do you want to see it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We want to see it very much.’

Laura gave the thumbs up.

‘Well, here goes,’ said Bo with a shrug.

He gripped the kitchen counter with both hands. He seemed to be straining slightly. And that’s all there was for what seemed like a minute, although probably just a few embarrassment-stretched seconds. But then, there was something. A vibration in the air. A pressure at the back of the skull. I glanced at Laura. Careful not to move the camera, she raised her eyebrows, a signal we had long established that meant, yes, the thing I think is happening is actually happening.

The sensation became a sound. Barely audible, but there. A rumble, somehow distant and close at the same time. Bo’s face was turning red, his lips sinking, following the contour of his drooping moustache, as if he were a child pulling a sad face. The sound got that bit louder, and I felt a tiny pain behind my eyes. A glass tinkled in a cabinet.

And then it stopped.

‘Well,’ said Bo, letting go of the table top. ‘That’s it!’

‘That’s it?’ I said. Did I sound sarcastic? However hard I tried to be sincere, a little drop of sarcasm always came out. Too many years of practice. Now it was ingrained.

‘That’s it. Something just happens in my throat and I make that really low noise, and...’

‘And what does it do, that noise?’ I asked him. Again, the sarcasm. Why couldn’t I lose it? It was a curse.

‘Not a whole lot,’ said Bo, laughing. I nodded, empathically, as I listened to the reply. That’s what I wanted to be known for now, instead of the sneer. An empathic nod. ‘It’s just that noise... sometimes it gives people a headache. As you heard, sometimes it’ll rattle a glass or something. But it hasn’t ever done any damage, as far as I know about, anyway.’

‘Tell him about the trout, Bo,’ said Paynter, laughing, from a corner of the room where it was too dark for her to turn up on camera well.

‘Oh, yeah, the trout! I did it near the river once...’ 

‘...and the trout jumped right out!’ Paynter finished his anecdote for him.

‘Yeah, onto the bank. Must have been ten of them. I guess they were spawning. You wouldn’t believe fish could throw themselves like that. Just lying there, flipping about. We had to throw them back in the water. Crazy.’

‘Maybe that’s really your thing,’ I said. ‘The ability to control trout.’

‘Well, maybe, Chad. Maybe you’re right.’

‘What you going to do with a power like that?’ said Paynter, brightly. We all laughed. It was then I noticed how joyful the sound of her voice was.

***

Two days earlier, I had been lying in bed back home with my partner, Sam. That evening she had cooked one of the several Sri Lankan dishes she had learned to make in childhood ridiculously well, while I packed. After watching some old Seinfelds, we’d had going away sex, and then, as we lay there, she’d said, ‘Hey, how about you stay here with me instead of going to silly America?’

She didn’t mean it, obviously. She had accepted at last the explanation that only long-term residents of a hotspot ran the risk of catching it. And besides, I had to go. Everything depended on me going. No one had said anything. Not anyone from the channel. Not my producer Jolyon. But there was a feeling in the air. A creeping sense of boredom from all sides. A boredom with me.

People had been bored of me before. I’d started out catching the tail end of the new lad movement. My programmes were freak shows. Has-been celebrities on the comeback trail, eighty-year-olds losing their virginity, a Loch Ness Monster-worshipping death cult, all of that. Comfort food for the people at home, telling them they were normal — it was these guys who were crazy! And all delivered with a barely concealed sneer that the interviewees never seemed to catch but the audience always did. But that was over. People finally got tired with my schtick. And I was more bored and disgusted with it than anybody. Had been since Season Two. Not that it stopped me doing Seasons Three to Nine. But it did send me into a cocaine spiral that lasted a near-decade, making me almost as famous for my using as my programmes. The industry in-joke was my nickname was the same as my actual name. And as far as the press and the public were concerned, I was as big a prick offscreen as on.

By Season Ten, after the big crash and rehab, I reinvented myself, not just because I was getting called out on social media for being ‘problematic’, but because I literally could not make another programme like the old ones, prodding vulnerable people with a stick for laughs. Now I was seeking to empathise with the strange people I talked to, make them human, even when their weirdness had taken them to dark places. I was caring. I even cried on camera once. Some critics didn’t buy it. Said it was a cynical turnaround. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know what it was like to drop the sarcasm, the irony, and say something and mean it. To stop looking for the skewer and give a natural human reaction to people in pain. After years of hiding in plain sight, the only thing I cared about now was being true.

And it paid off. The public liked the new me, for a little bit. But Season Ten’s ratings were down on the year before. It shouldn’t have mattered. The channel, which I was better than but evidently not so much better I could easily go to another one, filled its schedules with bad US imports and reality TV, but had an obligation to make the occasional doc to keep their licence, however low they scored in the ratings. And yet, there were younger faces coming through to do them, with new perspectives, fresher styles, and who could attract that lovely advertising revenue that bit more easily than I could. Worse, I was coming to the end of my contract. They hadn’t said they weren’t going to renew, but why would they? What I did didn’t cost that much, but the new kids on the block, farmed over on YouTube, could do it cheaper and from their bedrooms. I’d already reached out, seeing if there might be any interest in me doing a podcast or even a bit of radio work. And there were some who would be happy to have me, as long as I came cheap. So that’s where I was heading. Not out, but a lower profile. Low enough to be labelled a has-been. A blow that even my post-coke ego would struggle to handle. Unless I turned it around this time. Unless I really delivered.

I’d made a programme about HEROS when the first cases appeared. It was way back in my sneering phase, so I made fun of the costumes and their silly names, pretended that I wanted to be like them and dressed up with a cape and a mask and my underpants outside my trousers. Jolyon had been on at me to return to the subject for several years as the story got bigger, but I had always said no. It would be a step backwards, I said, exactly the sort of thing we were trying to get away from. But when the hotspots appeared, I saw that this was perfect. It was about communities now, families. And now that it was a recognised condition we could go for the medical angle too. It was so obviously the shot in the arm my career needed. But I had to be fast. Hotspots were giving the HEROS story a second wind, and it was getting bigger than Asperger’s and white-collar psychopaths put together. If I didn’t get my doc on by Christmas, someone else would make a HEROS House reality show or something and that would be it. And besides, me saving my career wasn’t the only reason to do it. It gave me the chance to tidy up a mess I’d made. Back in the old days, I’d got people to laugh at HEROS. Now I could get them to care about it.

Still, lying in the bed with Sam, nearly half of me wanted to stay and never leave the flat again. I used to long to head to the US for filming. There was something about the iconography — the suburban houses with their little fences, the fast food joints, the healthy-looking girls with big smiles — that made me think of the Hollywood movies I’d watched growing up about kids with pet aliens living in their lunch boxes, before shit got real and I was snorting more than I was eating. I never stopped half-thinking that Heaven would be an American kitchen with a big fridge.

The other half of me thought that Heaven would be Sam, forever. And if I played my cards right, that’s what I would get, at least until I died of old age and forever ran out. It seemed like we were in it for the long haul, even though we never quite said it. She had been my publicist, dragging me round radio and daytime TV studios for interviews, just before I fell apart. Then, when I was alone in the flat unable to leave and the phone wasn’t ringing, it was her who got in touch. And it was her who got me into rehab, and into it again when I relapsed. Even though she must have looked at me and seen a sad wreck back then, she must have also seen there was someone worth looking out for. Now I’d much rather be with her than at the Groucho or anywhere. Not that I go anywhere there’s cocaine, and my friendship circle has been shrunk to those who don’t take it, so pretty much no one.

Sam had been the final nail in the coffin of the old Charlie, and midwife to the new. Incredibly, I’d been faithful to her since Day One. A big thing for me. Up until then I’d been a serial monogamist. Or at least I would have been if I hadn’t also been a serial cheater. But those days were far behind me now. I barely even connected to that cynical, charming bastard, now I had my morning affirmations and occasional yoga. They say you’re always an addict, but with Sam in my life, I didn’t feel the urge for either of my old indulgences, save for the very occasional pang. It was like a childhood hobby I’d outgrown. Without the coke to give me absurd levels of confidence, I was awkward around women who weren’t Sam. It would be difficult to believe I was ever anyone different.

I buried my head in her tummy and kissed her belly button, the black hairs that led downwards tickling my nose. ‘I want to stay,’ I whimpered. ‘Please, mummy, please let me stay.’ Since I’d become the new mature me, Sam was the