are you doing?’ I mouth, and she puts her finger to her lips.
This time she doesn’t speak, and hangs up. ‘Bingo.’
‘What?’
‘Not many people answer a wrong number a second time. I got his answerphone.’
‘And?’
‘And, Natalie Shale is bonking someone called Jonathan Grant, who can’t get to his phone right now, the lying sod. All we have to do is find out who this Jonathan is,’ Zoe chatters. ‘Electoral roll might help. I tell you what, he sounded posh, not like some gangland hardnut … you OK?’
‘Zoe, I think I know who he is,’ I say.
‘Fuck. Who?’
‘He’s Lucas Shale’s last solicitor.’
We stare at each other, Zoe agape.
‘Fuckin’ aye!’ shouts a lad nearby, as a fruit machine spits out pound coins like gunfire.
45
‘I need to think clearly,’ I say, reinforcing this statement by lifting a third full wine glass to my lips, and Zoe nods gravely.
‘On the one hand, this is clearly a story,’ I announce, needlessly.
Zoe holds her inked skin up. ‘On this hand. It’s a cracking story.’ Her eyes sparkle, suddenly much brighter and clearer. ‘You are a flipping legend.’
Despite the sensation of having peered under a rock and found a creepy-crawly, I feel my head swell slightly. At least I’m showing Zoe a good time.
‘Not down to any journalistic nous. But thanks.’
‘On the other hand …?’
‘On the other hand, Natalie Shale will be hounded. Lucas’s appeal could be jeopardised by all the publicity. Imagine being locked up for something you didn’t do, and finding out something like this? Jonathan Grant will most likely lose his job. I don’t know exactly how it works in law. I think once you’ve done something this unprofessional, you get struck off.’
‘True. She decided to start shagging her husband’s brief, and vice versa. That’s not your responsibility.’
‘I know, but I wouldn’t have found out about it if I hadn’t snooped while I was a guest in her house.’
‘Where was she when you were looking at her phone?’
‘Outside talking to a neighbour.’
‘But you’ve got to remember, this is massive,’ Zoe says. ‘This is the story they’d talk about in your leaving speech. You could always call Natalie and see if she’ll talk to you about it.’
‘Somehow I don’t think that’s even slightly likely, and I can’t test the water without creating a big fuss. I’m friends with her husband’s current solicitor.’ More than friends, perhaps. ‘It’d end up with them freaking out and demanding I spike my interview, I guarantee it.’
Zoe gnaws her lip.
‘If I hadn’t called that number, you wouldn’t have to worry about this.’
‘S’alright,’ I say, tipsily. ‘I’m gonna go to the loo, and by the time I come back, I’ll know the answer.’
As I yank paper towels out of the dispenser with excessive force, a drunken thought worms its way into my mind, a worm in the rotten apple I have for a head. Leave Natalie to her affair, leave them all alone, because who am I to say how she’s found happiness, anyway? Lucas could’ve been a tyrant of a husband, for all I know. Jonathan may have swept her off her size three feet. It could all be over by the time Lucas is released. It might’ve been a ‘moment of madness’ she regrets, as politicians have it. What truly matters to me isn’t the morality of what they’re doing, or a front page splash. It’s a man in south Manchester. I want to do whatever would make him proud, even if he’ll never know a thing about it. Is there a way to break this story and not anger Simon or alienate Ben? Would I take it if there was, turn Natalie over and head off into the sunset? I ball the paper towels, aim a throw for the bin, and miss.
I rejoin an expectant Zoe at the table.
‘Well?’ she says.
‘Well, there was no thunderbolt. Which is frustrating as I usually have all my epiphanies in the bogs at The Castle.’
Zoe laughs. I feel pissed.
It’s time to stop pretending when I know what I’m going to do. ‘No, I’m going to leave it be, Zoe,’ I say. ‘Not the boldest decision I ever made, but I’ll be able to sleep at night.’
‘Really?’ Zoe says.
‘Really. Nothing good can come of what I did. It was wrong. Every instinct I have is telling me to steer clear.’
‘I think you’ve probably made the right decision.’
‘Do you know what, I’m absolutely sure it’s the right one. I can feel it.’
‘God, can you imagine what Gretton would do if he had this in his sticky mitts?’ Zoe giggles. ‘He’d die and go to heaven.’
‘Gretton’s not going to heaven, he’s off to the hot place,’ I say. ‘Speaking of hot, fancy soaking all of this up with a curry?’
46
I marked my twenty-first with an Indian meal at a restaurant in Rusholme. It was our favourite on the curry mile: the waiters recognised us, made a fuss of us and brought us free kulfi along with mints and the platter of plastic-sheathed tubes of hot, artificial lemon-scented flannels.
When I booked I explained the occasion, and on arrival we saw they’d kindly draped the table with streamers that ended up getting dragged through the mango chutney. It wasn’t much of a celebration, as twenty-firsts go, but we were on the verge of our finals and everyone was a little weary, tense and spent up.
As Ben didn’t know my friends all that well he brought his latest girlfriend, Pippa, who I’d been told had nursed a thing for him for a long time before they got together. I wondered if he was in love too. I’d heard a male friend of Ben’s admiringly describe her as ‘the whole package’. He pinned down exactly what made me uncomfortable about petite Pippa. Ben had been with many honeys but never such a nice one. River of Caramac-coloured hair, proportions like a porn Thumbelina and worst of all, the inner to go with the outer.
‘You look beautiful,’ she said to me earnestly, in her soft Dublin lilt, which made it sound even more earnest.
‘Thank you!’
I didn’t. I’d spent an hour creating a Shirley Temple do with curling tongs. I imagined loose, glossy ringlets, the type which bounce like telephone wire in the adverts. Instead I looked
