The Cows. Dawn O’Porter

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       1

       A Late Friday Night in April

       Tara

      I see a bead of sweat pop out of his forehead and flop down his face like a melting slinky. He’s nearly there, I can tell. Just a few more gentle pushes from me and this guy will explode with everything I need. He sniffs and hits his nose with the side of a clenched fist. I think it was an attempt to wipe it, but ends up being more of a punch in his own face. The sweat runs over his chin, down his neck and settles on his white collar. It rapidly spreads, forming a little wet patch then, as if on a factory line, another pops out and follows its exact journey. He’s going to break any minute, I know it.

      We’ve been alone in a small bedroom in a Holiday Inn just off the M4 for over three hours. I deliberately requested a room facing the road so that I could insist the windows had to be closed because of the noise of the traffic. It’s boiling in here; the hottest day of the year, and I had to shut down the aircon because the camera picked up the noise. He won’t be able to take it much longer. Me? I’ll endure anything to get the soundbite I need.

      He agreed to do the interview purely on the basis that it was just me and my camera in the room with him. The sleazy creep seems to have forgotten that the basic function of recording equipment is to capture a moment that could potentially be broadcast to millions.

      I’ve been making a documentary about sexual harassment in the workplace for months. Shane Bower is the MD of Bower Beds, and I have interviewed multiple female members of his staff who have all told me about his wandering hands. Yesterday, I door-stepped him at nine a.m. as he left the house for work. I told him about the accusations and asked him what he had to say. He denied it, of course, and got into his car. I threw a business card in and instinct told me he’d be in touch. I was right; two hours later my phone rang. He asked me what my programme was about and what I wanted. I told him I was making a short film about sexual harassment for a new digital channel, and that I wanted to know if the allegations were true. He denied it on the phone, but I told him I had mounting evidence against him, and that he would be wise to try to convince the viewers of his innocence, because the footage would be broadcast with or without his contribution. Hearing that, he agreed to an interview. With only me. In a bedroom. I made sure the camera was recording the second he walked into the room.

      ‘I don’t doubt that you’re telling the truth, Shane,’ I say from behind my camera. I’m lying. He’s so guilty you can smell it on him.

      ‘I just think the audience will be confused as to why so many of your staff seem to tell the same story. The one about you asking them to jump on the beds, then asking them to jump on your—’

      ‘OK, OK, please, stop saying it,’ he says, spitting and spluttering from all of his orifices, the wet patch on his collar now creeping down onto his shoulder. ‘I love my wife,’ Bower continues, and I see genuine fear in his eyes. He is stunned, like a spider in the middle of the night that freezes when you turn the lights on. But if you leave the lights on long enough, the spider will move. It has to.

      I keep the camera rolling, he doesn’t ask me to stop. I am always amazed by how people resist the truth to this point but then explode with it, almost like it’s a relief to just get it out. He could shut this down and storm out, giving me no concrete proof and leaving himself open to wriggle his way out of all of this, but guilty people so СКАЧАТЬ