Road to Recovery

Chapter 31

  Sandra Bolting (nee Goodison) was the archetypal ‘middle England’ child; she had everything that a child could ever wish for, ponies, the latest Cindy’s, invitations to all the right parties, and up until her seventh birthday party blissfully happy parents. Especially for her birthday party her doting father had gone out and purchased a movie camera and was happily filming the hordes of screaming children gorging themselves to destruction, and then being sick down the sides of his Chesterfield sofa, when his gorgeous little Sandra looked down the business end of the camera - and realised her life’s ambition. She grabbed a nearby hair brush, and with daddy following her every move with the whirring camera, she rammed the business end of the microphone (nee hairbrush) into her mother’s smiling face and said, smiling primly into the camera, ‘and what are your thoughts on daddy sleeping with the maid?’

  Her privileged upbringing didn’t seem to falter as the only child in a single parent family, in fact it improved two fold, she now had twice as many ponies and Cindy dolls - and two maids! Her father of course forgave his lovely daughter, ‘after all she was only imitating what she had seen on television, it was a passing phase’, but unfortunately the urge to become an investigative reporter didn’t ‘pass’, and with each passing year it grew stronger. As soon as it was prudently possible Sandra was dispatched to a variety of boarding schools, and her education didn’t seem to suffer in the slightest from frequent relocations. At regular intervals her parents (they were still talking, just) were asked to make alternative arrangements for their daughter’s education. She was developing a nose for a scandal and this request always seemed to follow a resignation or two at her current school. All her time was geared to journalism in all its forms; at every school that she attended she became the editor of the school’s news sheet (if they didn’t have one, then she started one), until of course her parents had to quickly move her on to the next unsuspecting school, she loved it; ‘the truth must always prevail’.

  While at University she started doing a series of articles for the Uni-rag on ‘promiscuity’ among her peers (which was very well received by the boys, it saved them a fortune in wasted drinks and chat up lines), and quickly came to the conclusion that she must be the only virgin left in town. Her ex-friends were always saying ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ so at one of the regular Saturday night parties at her shared house she selected a likely looking candidate - and decided to try ‘it’. First she got a little tipsy, to loosen herself up, and then she had a few more for ‘Dutch’ courage, then heart in her mouth she grabbed the very confused (drunk) young man (whose boyfriend had just dumped him) and dragged him off to her room. Five minutes later, as they lay back enjoying a quick cigarette she noticed the unused condom on her bedside table, ‘oh bother’ (or words to that effect) she muttered, in her haste she had forgotten all about it, and for the next two weeks she sweated it out, but fortunately in the end she was not ‘with child’, although it was a wakeup call for her - definitely no more rumpy pumpy until there was a wedding band wrapped firmly around her finger.

  On leaving Uni she started at the bottom at a local daily newspaper, but within a week, with her breeding and connections she soon had her own column, unfortunately though it was the society column and she hated it. No one else wanted to ‘do’ society so she was very much left to her own devices, but slowly, over the next few months her ‘column inches’ grew longer, and inched their way ever closer to the front page. Within twenty-four hours her final article for the local newspaper (as she was literally packing and ‘getting out of Dodge’) went ‘National’, but fortunately the proprietor (oops, I nearly said ‘that dirty old man’) of a ‘fair to middling’ national multi media group took an interest in her and her career. He offered her his ‘protection’ and a new job, and from then on her career really blossomed. He of course tried it on, but surprisingly only the once, when they were going to a fancy dress party (dressed as Laurel and Hardy), usually he was quite content for her to be just his ‘arm candy’. Over the next few years, as her career gained momentum (with more and more corpses in the metaphorical undergrowth) she repeatedly asked her benefactor, who was many years her senior, to move her to the burgeoning Television News side of his empire. He of course refused, with her tenacity and looks that would be the last he ever saw of her, so instead he asked her to marry him. He was in the running for a Lordship, but rumours were starting to circulate about his ‘extracurricular activities’, so he had to do something desperate: they were married in Westminster Abby. After several months of being the ‘little housewife’ Sandra realised that there was something missing from their marriage, no rumpy pumpy. She had thought that their honeymoon had been a little strange, separate rooms and him popping into the hotel every few days to change his clothes, but she assumed that he was either ‘shy’ or ‘on a story’, and things didn’t improve in that department once they returned to England either. Her mother, who was desperate to become a ‘Nana’, and was starting to listen to some of the rumours that abounded about her son-in-law (who was almost as old she was), confronted him, ‘get her pregnant - or else’. She didn’t specify what the ‘or else’ was, but he assumed that it had something to do with changing rumours into facts. Casting his mind back to the one and only time that they had ‘nearly done it’ he went to the local fancy dress hire shop and hired his wife a ‘Laurel’ outfit. Two bottles of wine and another cigarette later she was pregnant - this time it took nearly ten minutes.

  Sandra took to motherhood like a duck to water, and for several years she doted on her son Algernon, but unfortunately he wasn’t destined to become a ‘Right Honourable’. Her husband didn’t get his ‘Lordship’, or even a ‘Sir’; what he got was arrested, for doing naughty things with minors in Bangkok (in the same hotel that they had stayed in on their honeymoon). With the use of copious amounts of money he managed to flee the Country, after first purchasing bail and forged travel documents, under an assumed name, and returned to the arms of his ever loving wife, who promptly threw him out onto the street, literally (as recorded for posterity on the front page of a rival’s newspaper). Unfortunately before she could get him through the Courts his Empire virtually collapsed, although there was still enough left in the final settlement to keep her comfortable for a good few years to come.

  With Algernon safely away at boarding school she returned to journalism with a vengeance, the years had been spectacularly kind to her, so with her mane of blond hair blowing in the breeze she started to carve a niche for herself in TV journalism. Over the next few years, following the resignation of many high profile political and high finance figures she gained the reputation of being the one to be wary of at a press conference, which brought her to the attention of Sky. They were well aware of her capabilities so took her on as a political editor; and she quickly became one of ‘the’ faces of Sky. As she was financially independent Sandra could occasionally afford to take liberties with her assignments, so when she heard about the fly on the wall assignment on the Lady S she put her name forward, forcefully; her trophy cabinet was looking decidedly bare at the moment. Her assigner approved her request, but only if she helped with some on the job training for Lucy Crosby. Lucy was a very beautiful and very experienced Weather Forecaster in her own right, and a few years earlier she had successfully made the transition from forecasting to presenting the weather reports, but it still wasn’t ‘rocking her boat’, she wanted to be stretched even further. Sky, with ever an eye to the future, decided to go along with her request to move into mainstream presenting, who knows, they might one day soon have need of her considerable talents, with all the global warming issues looming on the horizon. After exiting the British Airways A320 at Gibraltar Airport Sandra switched on her mobile phone, and was immediately inundated with calls. Her team - Lucy, 2 cameramen and a Director had wangled a couple of extra days in Gibraltar to acclimatise themselves (top up their tans), so she wasn’t expecting anything earth shattering, wrong. The Lady S had
come in early and was about to embark on yet another rescue mission, and the message came over loud and clear - ‘if you want to keep your job, be on it’, so they barged their way through immigration, waving their press cards and passports to all and sundry. They left two bags in baggage reclaim as they were taking too long to come through (and fortunately there was nothing of any importance in either of them, only the cameramen’s clothing), and they grabbed the first two taxies that appeared on the horizon. If anyone in the queue had felt the urge to object, no one did, one look from her steely blue eyes shut them all up. As her taxi screeched to a halt (it is surprising how fast a taxi can go when you shove a fist full of notes on its dashboard) she realised that she had to stop that gangway from being removed, so she clambered out of the taxi, stormed up to it and leapt onto the ‘about to become airborne’ gangway, and started marching purposefully towards the top (which was by now well and truly in the air). Clunk, the gangway landed back on the Lady S’s weather deck again, just as she reached the top. She stood there, handed Andrew Michaels her brief case - and hoped that he would last more than ten minutes!!!!

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