Dear Diary
How do I change my life?
God. How is she still pondering the same question eighteen years later?
It’s been oddly compelling to revisit her words from all those years ago. Reading the diary’s pages back has been like time travel. A strange mixture of ick-worthy, hilarious and brutal. It gets harder when Anika thinks about the reason why she stopped keeping it, when she was seventeen and just six months shy of five years of daily recordings of her life …
The train doors beep a warning before closing at the next stop and Anika releases one of her long twists of hair from where she’s wound it tightly round her fingertip. She focuses back on her phone screen, tapping through to some old sent messages. The space underneath the five-digit text number for the radio station displays her regular, anonymous messages to the breakfast show. The thrill of hearing her missives read aloud on the air from Cam Asiedu’s lips is ridiculous, but real. She fires off another.
LMAO. How are you gonna ask the man if he knows what misogynistic means? A. L., SE LDN.
The song on the radio eventually finishes and she turns the volume back up. Anika can hear the sarcasm dripping throughCam’s voice as it nestles back into her ears. He repeats the name of the song that just played, then chuckles his trademark chuckle.
‘OK, we’ve got some texts here … let’s get into a couple of these. Shout out to … ah, A. L. in south-east London – OG listener!’ He laughs, clearly reading the rest of Anika’s message to himself. ‘I aim to entertain. Good to hear from you. Um, shouts to the 893, don’t forget to leave us your name … Right, people! We still have King Grease up in the studio, any questions for him or on this new album, hit us up on double five, three, two, one. You’re listening to Cam Asiedu in the a.m.; we’ll be back right after this.’
A honeyed RnB singer trills out, ‘Cam Asi-ayy-Doooo,’ then drops into a sultry bedroom voice to say, ‘I wake up with Cam Asiedueverymorning,’ before jaunty commercials start to play and Anika dips the volume again. She hears enough of those as part of her job.
Anika would have no issue with waking up next to Cam either. When he says her initials on the radio with that dose of oblivious familiarity, it sends self-conscious warmth spreading through her body. Especially because every weekday she heads to the very place where, in a studio in the lofty heights of the glass building where she works, Cam Asiedu is broadcasting from. SpinRadio is part of the same media corporation as the book publishers, newspapers and, of course, radio stations that make up the dubious empire in which Anika is a tiny cog, working in the on-air ad-sales department.
As more passengers crowd in around her on the train Anika looks up, realising they’re already halfway through the disappointingly short journey to Victoria. This is where she starts losing her digital signal. She rummages in her bag for the book on radio production that is meant to help her take a step towards her real goals, but then gets distracted as her eyes fall on the new press photo of Cam Asiedu in the radio-player app.How does he look even better in this one than the last?He wears a simple, oversized bomber-style leather jacket, his hair is a low-cut fade, his dark, smooth skin is pearlescent, and his lips, surrounded by a trim moustache above and goatee beard below, curve in a sexily knowing smirk that seems to pierce right through Anika’s screen and into her—
Buzzzz.
As the train trundles out of the tunnel, a missed-call notification pops up on her phone, disrupting the image of the DJ. It’s from the GP’s office. Did the blood-test results from the sexual-health clinic come back already? For a split second she worries she might be pregnant or something but then she remembers her period, which came on over the weekend, explaining the ongoing stomach aches she’s been experiencing lately. Anika ignores the message for now and a few minutes later the train pulls into its final stop. She puts her unread book away again and joins the throng crowding off the train – after waiting back for those entitled people who feel the need to push, of course. She’s nowhere near as eager to start another working week.
This job was meant to be a gateway, but climbing up the ranks of radio-advertising sales is hardly what Anika envisioned for herself when she was first hired. Her plan was to getanyrole at the umbrella broadcasting company, Format Radio, to get her foot in the door – which she did. Then she imagined a nimble move to Production Assistant before swiftly becoming a producer at SpinRadio, the foremost ‘urban’ music station in the UK. She thought that in no time she’d be producing late-night specialist shows, then maybe even working her way up to overseeing one of the highest-rated breakfast shows alongside a certain someone … The reality? She’s still stuck in this isolated, dead-end ad-sales job pretending to care about rate cards and targets, and not even for the good stations. She primarily coversnostalgia channels and talk radio. She’s so close yet so far away from the golden jewel of her dream job.
At least it’s comfortable. Predictable.
Anika brightens up when her 5G revives so that as she’s finishing the five-minute walk to her office building, she’s able to catch the final part of the animated but subtle dragging that Cam Asiedu is giving this morning’s guest.
‘I get you, man, I get you – reusing a sample we’re all overly familiar with does at least give that recognition factor, for sure. What do we reckon, listeners? Let us know. I mean, imitation’s the sincerest form of flattery and all that …’
Anika smiles to herself at the husky laugh Cam emits into the mic. Heading up the escalators in the huge, echoing foyer of her building and on to the crowded lift, Anika decides to stop off in the canteen on the tenth floor and pick up a coffee. She pulls out her earbuds, realising that Spin is being piped in there today, rather than one of the dry Format radio stations. As she laughs at another one of Cam’s jokes while she waits in the queue for hot drinks, Anika hears someone join her from behind and recognises the breathy trill. Her neck stiffens.
‘The way Cam’s trying to draw this idiot out. I don’t know why he’s even bothering to get into it with the guy,’ the voice says, and Anika turns around grudgingly to be met with the shiny smile of Nia Ojo-Westcombe – a woman whohasbeen working her way up the production side, having just been promoted to AP. Her perfectly defined 3b dark-auburn curls dance above her shoulders and she’s wearing a form-fitting, sleeveless denim jumpsuit that Anika doubtsshe’dget away with at all, let alone consider wearing to work. She forces out a smile in return.
‘Mm. He’s definitely holding his feet to the flames.’
‘Makes fucking good radio, though, doesn’t it?’ Nia’s grin stretches.
Anika’s short laugh sounds fake in her own ears, not that thewoman is wrong. She was thinking the same thing, obviously.
‘Yeah,’ she says, then turns and is grateful to see the expectant face of the perennially smiley Italian barista at the coffee concession stand. She orders her usual – black, no sugar – and pays quickly.
‘See you at ten,’ Nia calls after her and Anika flickers her lips up and down around the edge of her coffee cup in Nia’s general direction. Oh, joy, the production meeting first thing. She heads towards the stairs so as not to get caught in more small talk for a couple more glorious minutes before she reaches her open-plan desk.
But just as she reaches the top of the stairs, an aggressive blast of Outkast’s ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’ punctuates through the sleek RnB that Cam is playing as she returns to her earbuds. Looking at her phone screen, she sees it’s the GP.
‘They’re ringing again?’ she murmurs.
Anika turns and starts to walk back down the stairs, letting the call go to voicemail until she’s made her way to the ground level.
Stepping back outside into the baking sunshine, still holding her coffee, Anika scoots away from a trio of colleagues having a final pre-work cigarette near the entrance to the office building and dials into her voicemail.
A slightly dismissive-sounding message greets her. ‘Er, hi, Miss … Lapo. This is Dr Ogden calling from Glendon Hill GP. We’ve had your blood test back from Trent Gardens sexual-health clinic? There were some abnormalities, so if you could give us a call back …’
What?Her stomach lurches. Anika hits redial and glances over her shoulder through the large glass façade of the building and the people bustling through the security gates and up the escalators.
