The graveyard shift

The station reaches about forty kilometres on a good night. The overnight programme exists because the licence requires the radio to stay on air twenty-four hours, and it works out cheaper to pay two people than to leave the automation running, since the automation freezes and nobody notices until seven in the morning.

Marlene presents. Josué runs the desk and voices the ad breaks in a second-person delivery she finds ridiculous and has never told him so.

Eight months of it, Monday to Friday, three until five.

The studio has a glass panel down the middle. One side has the microphone and the running order, the other has the desk, the computer and a red light that comes on when the channel is open.

When the light is off, whatever is said in there does not leave the room.

Two minutes past three. Sting, and the light comes on.

"Two minutes past three on a Thursday morning. Anybody awake at this hour either has a good reason or a bad one, and we don't ask which. Josué, evening."

"Evening, Marlene. Evening to everybody out on the road."

"We've had a request in on the app. A woman over in Marden asking for the usual one."

"The usual one is already cued."

The light goes off.

"You haven't cued anything."

"I have now."

"You say 'already cued' every Thursday and every Thursday you're hunting through the folder while you say it."

"And it works."

Three thirty-four. A block of three, six and a half minutes clear.

"You've had your hair cut."

"Tuesday."

"It suits you."

"You saw it on Tuesday and you're telling me now."

"I said something on Tuesday as well."

"You said 'new hair'. That's an observation. It isn't a compliment."

"Then it suits you."

"Too late now."

She sat looking at his computer screen through the glass, which is a thing that cannot be done from where she was sitting, and both of them knew it.

Five past four. The light comes on.

"Four oh five. Message here from Mr Alderton over at Wells Head, on his way to work, who says he's listened since the very first programme. Mr Alderton, we hear you too. Josué, what have we got?"

"Something calm. We've lost the good ones who stayed up this far, so now we let go of anyone who wants to sleep."

"That makes no sense at all."

"It does at this hour."

The light goes off.

"One day you'll say one of those and somebody will ring up to complain."

"Nobody rings. Have you seen that phone go in eight months?"

"Yes. In March."

"That was Nivaldo asking whether the key was in the usual place."

"It was a phone ringing."

He laughed with the microphone shut, which is the only place he laughs.

On the subject of what gets talked about overnight: almost nothing. And the almost nothing takes eight months to turn into a subject.

For the first two months they talked about the rota, about travel expenses, about the manager who shows up once a fortnight, about the air conditioning that drips onto the rack. In the third month she mentioned the divorce in two sentences, between one record and the next, the way a person mentions a thing they would rather not have take up any time. He asked nothing, and the following night he brought coffee in a flask, which he had never done before and has not once failed to do since.

That is how anything gets built on overnight radio. In six-minute pieces, with an ad break in the middle.

Twenty-one minutes past four.

"Marlene."

"Mm."

"Why did you take the overnight?"

"Because it paid thirty per cent more and I owed money on the car."

"That's all?"

"Have you got a better answer ready?"

"I have."

"Go on then."

"I'd rather not."

"Then don't ask."

They spent the next four minutes without saying anything, with the music running, and neither of them got out of their chair or touched their phone, which in eight months of the programme had never gone on that long.

Four forty-one. The light comes on for the last time before the end.

"Four forty-one. We're going into a long block now, and I'll tell you why: Josué keeps one track of nine minutes twenty back for emergencies, and tonight the emergency is me, because I've got nothing left in me to say anything decent at this hour. Back at five to say goodbye."

"Nine twenty," he confirmed. "Starting now."

The light went off.

The door between the two halves of the studio is plywood, with a barrel bolt nobody uses, and it creaks over the last third of its swing.

It creaked.

Her chair is on castors and slides on that floor, so it was no use to anybody. The desk is eighty centimetres deep and bolted to the worktop. The worktop holds.

There are two things worth saying about nine minutes and twenty seconds. It is almost no time at all. And when it is the only thing that exists between two people, it is an absurd amount of time.

At eight forty he went back to his chair and set up the sting.

Four fifty-nine. The light comes on.

"One minute to five. It's been good being with you. From here on it's Mr Nivaldo's, and he'll be parking up outside about now, and we'll see you again tonight at three. Josué, good night."

"Good night, Marlene."

His voice was exactly what it had been at two minutes past three. She noticed that, and found it remarkable.

The light went off.

Nivaldo came in at four minutes past five with the key in his hand and his coat over his arm, the way he has come in since 1998.

"Morning. It's raining over at Ashcott."

Nobody answered him.

"It's raining over at Ashcott," he said again, hanging the coat on the hook behind the door. "Be here by six. If it comes in hard the aerial starts hissing, and the two of you are the ones who'll be apologising for it to everybody out in the villages tomorrow night."