I feel like a Top Forty DJ on the American West Coast in the Seventies here. Weeeellllll here we go folks lookin’ down on the old M25 which is bumper to bumper here in the rush hour home and looking up aroung good ol’ spaghetti junction there’s an accident with traffic backed up all the way to West Brom turning out attention to Beatles land now we’ve got not one folks but TWO IN A ROW of good Brookside episodes tell you what boys and girls ever since the old Guardiant put the chop out seems like good ol’ Uncle Phils got his finger out of his fanny and done something about it so comin’ in at number one this Wednesday evening we’ve got ANOTHER BROOKIE WITHOUT BABES ... Well, almost.
The camera pans slowly across a disgustingly filthy and untidy room. In the foreground of the scene, on a countertop, lies a stack of bills, one turned toward the camera to read in big letters: FINAL DEMAND.
The place is a tip, clothes scattered all over the place, dirty dishes and uneaten food accumulating, the mirror in the background smeared with lipstick, reading: LEANNE LOVES CHRISTY in a crudely drawn heart.
It’s Bev’s flat and this is what Leanne has done to it.
The key turns in the door, and Leanne enters, garishly dressed, but looking slightly the worse for wear. It’s clear she’s been out on the razz all night. Immediately she enters, her sixth sense tells her something’s not QUITE right. She stands briefly in the doorway and darts apprehensive glances about the room. Finally, unobtrusively in the corner, her eyes light on a set of luggage.
She relaxes a bit, assuming the best and warily calls out Christy’s name, thinking, perhaps, that the wanderer has returned.
Well, a wanderer HAS returned, but not the one she was expecting.
Suddenly, Bev enters the room, carrying a lacy black bra in her hands. And with this one entrance, any Brookside viewer of long-standing realises how immensely Sarah White has been missed. Her mouth is screwed into a little moue of sarcastic contempt, as if holding it in such a way prevents her from really letting rip at Leanne.
She holds the bra out to Leanne as if it’s suddenly become an offensive weapon. ‘I presume this isn’t Christy’s or Lance’s,’ she wisecracks, as Leanne suddenly looks as though she wishes the floor would open up and swallow her. Bev remarks caustically that she thinks that she’s due some sort of explanation from Leanne.
Brookside has revealed a heretofore unknown fact to its viewers. Adele Murray has more than one friend. She’s seen walking down the corridor of the Sixth Form Annexe with an exotically pretty, but well-spoken Scouser girl, who appears to have no name. She isn’t Michelle, but I can only assume that Michelle’s Oriental mien wasn’t attractive enough for TPTB that base all on the beauty and babe factor. This girl would pass with flying colours.
The nameless friend asks after Antony’s problem. Adele replies that he’s under the anti-bullying scheme now, but it’s still crap that he’s getting picked on. What’s more, it’s no fun for Adele, having to walk the lad to and from school. It’s like that at home too, she continues. Walking on eggshells around him, always being warned by her parents not to upset Antony. She was sixteen now (well, fifteen, but Brookside reserves the right to alter anything about its characters to suit the storyline; that’s been admitted on the Official Forum), and she wants her own space.
Bev has forcibly sat the recalcitrant and desperate Leanne on her sofa, ready to listen to an explanation of what’s been going on the past six months. Thinking to avoid the issue, Leanne tries to make small talk, asking politely after Josh.
Josh is in bed, sleeping off his jet lag, says Bev, shortly, which is exactly where she wants to be, only she’s got a right helluva mess on her hands to sort out. She spells her predicament out for Leanne. She’s skint, she snaps. She has no money, the brewery doesn’t want to know her, and the barmaid she THOUGHT she could trust has turned out to be a thieving, conniving, lying, little wotsit. She was three months in arrears with the rent, the brewery had cancelled her standing order -
Oh, Leanne interrupts her, jitterily, that! Honestly, Leanne thought that little misunderstanding with the brewery was all sorted out. Honestly, she witters, it wasn’t her fault. Why, Christy made her do all this. It was all his idea. Look, Leanne would do anything she could to make it right with Bev.
‘Give me my money, then,’ demands Bev.
Sammy Rogers sits despondently on the sofa in NNT, when Katie enters the room. Katie’s puzzled. Why isn’t her sister at work?
Sammy asks the same thing about Katie (especially as Katie is adroit at skiving off work). Katie says she forgot her purse and returned for it, but why is Sammy here?
Sammy admits that she’s been sacked. As soon as Jacqui Dixon found out that Sol had given her the receptionist’s job, Jacqui made Sol sack her. And the tragic thing about it was that Sammy was honestly good at the job.
Well, remarks Katie with a deadpan lack of sympathy, what did Sammy expect, after all that business with Max?
Sammy is obtuse, refusing to see that side of it. She thought Jacqui would have moved on from that. She thought they all could. At least, Katie and Jacqui seemed to have made amends. She wanted to apologise, but that nasty, stinking, little Jacqui Dixon wouldn’t let her. And all she wanted to do was move on, herself!
Ray’s got a bonfire burning in front of the bungalow ruins, having done a bit of clearing out, himself. He stands forlornly, tending the fire. Glancing surreptitiously around, he reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out the photograph of Sylvia, sneaking a look at it. He holds it in his hand tentatively, giving a thoughtful look towards the bonfire, then decisively replaces the picture in his pocket.
The young Antichrist walks nervously down the school corridor, ever alert. At the dead end of the corridor, he runs smack dab into his nemeses, Imelda and Paige. The girls glare menacingly at him, but they are accompanied by a tall, red-headed teacher, who ushers them away.
Jessie is seen peering through the windows of Ray’s caravan, calling for him and knocking on its door. Receiving no reply, she steps back and gazes reflectively at the bungalow. There’s been a lot of reflective gazing at this shell lately. So where is Ray?
Well ...
We next see Ray carrying a pint and a smaller drink back to a table in a pub - not The Black Bull, more likely, The Swan. Helen sits at the table, having heard all about the fire. She asks solicitously if Ray and everyone else is OK.
Oh, Ray answers, he’s well enough. Jerome’s ego was singed, however, he jokes. Mind you, it could have been worse if the neighbours hadn’t helped out.
Helen breathes a sigh of inordinate relief. She’s only just found Ray, she says, and she almost lost him in a most tragic way. She then asks how Jessie’s coping with things.
Well, Ray’s forced to admit, the whole thing’s been a big shock to her.
Helen assures Ray that she never meant to hurt anyone; in fact, she often wondered when she did find her real father, what sort of impact it might have on the rest of his family. (Well, that’s big of her!) She asks Ray when the last time was that he actually heard from Sylvia. She wants to try to figure out when exactly Sylvia moved from the area. (I thought she previously said that Sylvia had moved when Helen was ten - another Brookside continuity problem?)
Ray looks distinctly uneasy. The truth is, he says, Sylvia HAD been a friend of his wife, Reenie, before all this occurred. After all the brouhaha happened, he’s afraid he never saw her again.
Helen asks Ray if he thought Sylvia were in love with him at the time.
Ray avoids answering the question, hoping Helen doesn’t pursue this line.
She quickly realises she’s gone a step too far and hastens to make amends. She apologises by explaining that she’s only trying to fill in the blanks in her life. Ray’s the only one left living who can tell her about her mother.
It’s lunchtime and big Dire has rushed home to feed her fat gob. She’s seen entering the lounge and sitting down in an armchair with a plate, on which rests a real fat man’s sandwich. She opens her iron gob and takes a hefty hunk out of the sandwich, holding the sarnie away from her.
At that moment, Marty enters the room, bends down and HE also takes a mouthful of the sarnie, remarking how hungry he is. Dire begins to whinge because Marty’s scoffed some of her food, the greedy cow.
All hell’s broken loose at school, he says.
Immediately, Dire thinks the worst. Oh, NO! Antony!
It’s not Ant, assures Marty. It’s the head caretaker, who had a heart attack on duty. They were checking the fire alarms, Marty explains. One minute the bloke was up a ladder and the next minute - boom!
Dire rests her bleached helmet head against the back of the chair, whingeing about how tired she gets when she’s in her period.
Marty takes the hint and assures her that they’ll keep trying for a baby.
Dire then goes all coy and tells him that practice makes perfect and he needs all the practice he can get.
Bev is still continuing her interrogation of Leanne, who’s resorted to trying to convince Bev of her innocence in the matter of the downfall of Bev’s Bar. Honestly, Leanne says for the umpteenth time, it wasn’t her fault. Christy brainwashed her!
Bev stands opposite her, arms akimbo, staring at her sceptically. Leanne might be conniving. She might be thieving. Indeed, Bev continues, Leanne is really two-faced, but one thing Leanne most definitely is not - and that’s stupid. It was obvious to Bev now, sadly, that Leanne could not be trusted. No, she gave Leanne her chance, even when EVERY PART of Bev’s body was screaming at her that she would live to regret it, and still she thought that maybe, just maybe, Leanne would come up trumps for her.
Bev explains that she thought that Leanne had been a thieving scally once, but perhaps she had changed. Well, Bev sighs, it looks like she was wrong. Once a thieving scally, always a thieving scally.
Please, Leanne pleads, frantically. Bev had to believe her. None of this was down to her. It was really Christy’s fault.
Bev starts shouting at Leanne, saying that NO ONE was going to take the bar off her. It would ALWAYS be Bev’s Bar. Now, she says, calming down a bit, she was off to have some kip, and while she slept, Leanne was going to give the place a clean from top to bottom. And when Bev woke up, she and Leanne were going to have another little chat - this time about how Leanne and that Munchkin boyfriend of hers were going to repay Bev’s money ... Because if they didn’t, she was going straight to the police and Leanne would find herself going straight to prison. Then Leanne would enjoy a lovely, long break - at the pleasure of Her Majesty.
Ray sits listening to Helen as the woman explains that she has no one else to turn to with this predicament. Her husband isn’t around anymore.
Ray confesses that he truly doesn’t know where Sylvia is, or even if she’s still alive.
It’s funny, Helen muses, when she found out she was adopted, she would often wonder if either of her parents were still alive, or if they would want to see her. Sylvia made no effort to get in touch with her, after all these years. Suddenly, she looks sharply at Ray, asking him what she should call him. Somehow, she observes, ‘Dad’ just doesn’t seem right.
How about Ray, Ray suggests.
Adele and her new articulate friend are discussing holidays. The friend reminds Adele that the two of them have been planning on having a holiday together since third year of secondary school. Now they had the opportunity to do so. Angela, another mate, was arranging a holiday for 12 girls to be taken that summer on the island of Ianapa. They had heard loads of good things about the place - loads of DJ’s and more. It was the only place to go - sun, sea, sand and ...
The two laugh. But, the friend urges, they have to book asap. It’s that much cheaper if lots of people in a party book. She tells Adele that she’ll need her deposit and a letter of consent from her parents, as the girls were under eighteen. She bids Adele good-bye, telling her she’ll see her tomorrow.
Ray is trying to soothe Helen, who’s gently crying. Sylvia must have thought putting Helen up for adoption was the best thing, he says, and wasn’t it? Helen was happy as a child. It must have been very hard, he says, for Sylvia to have walked away.
Helen moans that she doesn’t know who she is. Her mum wasn’t her mum and her dad wasn’t her dad.
Ray uneasily admits that he’s done wrong by everyone concerned in this mess - Sylvia, Helen and Jessie. In fact, he’d had a chat with a mate of his, Jimmy - not just any mate, mind you, this bloke had been through a lot, himself. Ray thought at least Jimmy would back him up. But Jimmy told him some very harsh home truths.
He’s done some dire things in his life, old Jim, but he’s never walked away from a woman who had had his child.
Helen says she was devastated when her dad died, even though she knew now that he wasn’t her real dad. She couldn’t bear losing another dad again.
Ray looks ashamed.
Katie seems to have forgotten about work and is still trying to calm Sammy down. Can Katie believe what Jacqui Dixon did! Sammy wails.
Katie listens patiently. Sorry, she replies, but Sammy can’t be surprised at Jacqui’s reaction after what the two of them tried to do to her and Max.
Sammy ignores the remark and continues wailing. And that Sol had no backbone either! She says.
Look, Katie explains, Jacqui is Sol’s boss. She says, ‘Jump,’ and Sol says, ‘How high?’
Sammy keeps maintaining that she truly did want to apologise to Jacqui, but Jacqui never gave her the chance.
In the background, we see that the Ratchild has entered the room and is practicing Antony’s party piece of eavesdropping. She approaches her selfish mother from behind and puts her arms around her, telling Sammy not to worry, that she’d get another job.
Antichrist Ant, walks warily down the corridor, glancing every so often over his shoulder. He does this so much, that he fails to see a boy stick his foot into his pathway and trip him. Ant goes sprawling. He looks up to see Adele standing over him. She asks him what happened, but he refuses to say. It doesn’t matter, he tells her. He’s part of the Anti-Bullying Scheme. He may as well have ‘target’ written on his back.
As Ray comes back onto the Close, Jessie approaches him, asking where he’s been as she’s been looking for him. Ray lies and tells her that he went to see the insurers about their claim. Anyway, Jess shouldn’t worry about him, he says shortly. He was more than capable of looking after himself.
Jessie tells him that she’s worried he’s not warm enough in the trailer.
Ray tells her that he needs some time on his own, to think about everything that’s happened - specifically about the fire and Helen.
Jessie reminds him that he can’t keep everyone waiting about this predicament. It’s not fair on either her or Helen. Why doesn’t he come back with her to Jimmy’s?
No, thank you, replies Ray, summoning some dignity. Jimmy made his feelings quite clear.
Oh, he’s all right about that now, Jess says, persuasively.
Ray tells her he’s not ready to come back. Not yet.
Bev emerges from her nap to see that Leanne has got the flat spotless. She gazes around the room suspiciously. Leanne awaits her approval. Well, the flat’s clean, Bev says, dubiously, but it would take more than a spit and polish to repair the damage Leanne’s done to Bev’s good name. How exactly did Leanne propose to repay Bev’s money?
She doesn’t know, wails Leanne, helplessly.
‘But it was easy enough to rob me, wasn’t it?’ Screams Bev. Christy and Leanne need to sort this thing out between them, Bev says, and quickly. Bev’s got no time to wait, she says - not with the rent, the phone and the brewery wanting payment!
You know, she observes to Leanne, Ray and Jessie were lucky, really. The fire that destroyed their home was a total accident; but Leanne’s robbing Bev blind was deliberate and calculated. Leanne stole Bev’s life and now Bev wants it back. Now Leanne could high-arse out of there and tell that poor excuse of a boyfriend of hers that Bev wants her money back or the pair of them were in deep shit.
Suddenly, Leanne’s frightened and demure guard drops and she reverts to form. ‘Whaddya gonna do when you find him?’ She snarls at Bev. ‘Give him a hiding?’
Bev warns Leanne not to get on her bad side, instead suggesting that Leanne crawl back under the rock from whence she came. At that moment the doorbell of the flat sounds and Bev answers the door to find Jimmy there, greeting her.
She tells Leanne to get out and throws her out of the flat.
Jimmy ignores the scene and enters the flat, asking Bev brightly when she planned on opening up the bar. He’s being eaten out of house and home, he jokes.
Bev suddenly begins to cry, and like silly Anthea and sillier Dire before her, leans her helpless head on Jimmy’s shoulder.
‘It’s all gone!’ She sobs. ‘All those years with nothing and I’ve got nothing now!’
Dire and Marty are locked in a yucky grip when the front door opens and Adele and Antony enter. Their parents greet them, but Ant is taken aback. What’s this? He demands. No one asking endless questions about how he got on at school today. (Well, I have a question: Why hasn’t Dire gone back to work after her lunch break, and why hasn’t Marty returned, for that matter? As a caretaker, shouldn’t he be arriving home AFTER the children?)
Smiling indulgently, Marty asks the lad how he fared at school that day.
Ant hesitates, briefly exchanging glances with Adele, before answering that things went OK. He did his lessons and had lunch with Adele.
Dire’s nosey antennae immediately suspects something isn’t right. Is Ant absolutely sure everything’s all right at school. Ant assures her briefly that it is and goes upstairs to his room. Adele remains behind, and Marty asks her if anything has happened to Ant at school. Adele lies, saying everything was fine at school.
Upstairs, Ant is rummaging in his closet, which houses the stored religious paraphernalia. Adele barges into his room, unannounced, to be told off by the little prig for not knocking.
Adele replies that Ant lied downstairs and made her lie as well. Why didn’t he own up to his parents that the bullying was still going on?
Ant despairs of never doing anything right. His dad and Plank had both had goes at him, telling him to act more normally, be noisier, play football and not go to church. Well, he’s done all those things, and now the school have implemented this anti-bullying programme with him. And what happens now? Kids who were all right to him before are now picking on him. What was the point in telling his parents that? Better, he just got on with it!
Katie has returned home from work to find the Ratchild sitting on her own. She asks Sammy’s whereabouts and Louise tells her that Sammy is tidying up the bedroom. Katie is surprised. That’s a first! Louise tells Katie that Sammy is still upset about losing the job at the Health Centre.
Katie asks Louise how she’s coping and the child begins to cry. Katie sits down beside her niece and puts her arm around her. The Ratchild, I surmise, is the natural successor to Kylie, but in addition to her monotone and monotonous voice, there’s her unsuccessful effort to achieve a ‘posh London’ accent. It doesn’t surprise me, however, that Brookside is too cheap to employ a dialogue coach, if they couldn’t be bothered to hire a bona fide child actor from either Anna Sher’s or Olivia Conti’s in London.
The Ratchild wipes her eyes, nobly telling Katie that she tries not to get upset, but sometimes she can’t help it.
Katie tells her not to worry about Sammy, but it’s not Sammy that’s bothering the Ratchild. It’s the fact that she might not be able to return to her school, or a private school, per se. You see, she explains to Katie, Sammy could never afford her school fees. It was always Richard who paid.
Well, says Katie, hopefully, maybe Sammy could work something out with the school.
Louise shakes her selfish, little head sadly. She was afraid she’d have to go to another school, a state school. And that would be terrible, because then she would be picked on because she was different.
Oh, come on, urges Katie, not all kids at state schools were bad kids. They weren’t all scallies.
Sammy emerges, unseen, from the bedroom and stands quietly, listening to Louise’s woes.
But she wasn’t like these other children in state school, wails Louise. She misses her old school, she misses her friends and she misses Richard.
Sammy makes her presence known and gives her daughter a comforting hug. She soothes Louise by telling her not to worry about Sammy losing her job. Didn’t she tell Louise that Auntie Katie was big mates with the boss? She would sort things out for them. And she sends Louise off to the bedroom.
Katie is aghast at Sammy’s remark. Where did Sammy get off saying something like that? She demands.
Well, says Sammy, nonchalantly, Katie and Jacqui were best mates.
That may as well be, says Katie, but she could never ask Jacqui to do something like that. Sammy had lied her way into that job, and now she could just lie her way into another.
That job was just perfect for her, Sammy maintains. It was well paid enough to guarantee enough money for just her and Louise. If Katie didn’t want to do anything for Sammy, then think about Louise and what she’s going to miss out on.
Katie tells her sister to stop using emotional blackmail with her. There were plenty of other jobs going begging out there. How DARE Sammy pull a line like that in front of Louise!
She was more than qualified for that job at the Health Centre, says Sammy. And besides, she’s already done the rounds of the agencies and the job centres. There are no jobs. (I beg to differ. There ARE jobs. Why do there never seem to be any jobs in Liverpool?)
Katie scoffs Sammy off yet again. Sammy shouldn’t expect Katie to bail her out of this one.
OK, Sammy concedes, but if Katie won’t do it for Sammy, then please, would she do it for Louise? Oh, Sammy admits, she knows she’s a worthless mother; but Katie was the only family she and Louise had. (Er, what happened to their mother and Geoff? Also Lyn? Bev?) Louise NEEDS Katie, Sammy pleads. It’s up to Katie to fend for Louise now! (Well, that’s big of Sammy!)
Summary © 2002 Marion Watts
Brookside and all related materials are © Mersey Television 1982-2002