I should warn you you’re going to have to take a ticket and wait till your number’s called.’
‘Jeez, what’s up with you? You sound like you’re on the brink.’
‘I am.’
A pause while Rhys sounds like he’s weighing things up. When he speaks again, his tone is the most conciliatory I’ve heard in a long time. ‘Actually, I was ringing to see if you’d be up for going for a drink. I’ve got a gig in town next week, thought we could meet up first. Draw a line under a lot of aggro. Sounds like you’re too busy though.’
‘No,’ I say, weary. ‘No. I’d like to. I’ve got to sort a few work things out. Let me know, OK?’
‘Sure. Er … take care of yourself.’
‘I will. Thanks.’
After our goodbyes I find myself missing Rhys, badly. I miss how he would’ve sworn like a plasterer with a stubbed toe about this, given me a hug and made a crack about how I wouldn’t need their poxy job if I fired out babies instead.
He sounded different. Less angry. That was the first exchange where it seemed like he might want to talk like civilised adults rather than entrenched opponents in a never-ending civil war. I’m happy to hear him sounding happier and I’d like very much to be friends, as much as that’s realistic. Only I feel like a fraud at the arrangement, as ‘some time next week’, when I’ve weathered the storm tomorrow, only exists as some fantasy CS-Lewis-like land right now, where I may have the legs of a magical goat.
50
I attempt to stride purposefully through the early morning buzz of the open-plan office, internally repeating the mantra ‘no one’s bothered, yesterday’s news’. Only ‘yesterday’s news’ doesn’t count when it broke on a Sunday and today is Monday, the first opportunity to discuss it, and it’s this juicy.
Everyone looks over, and I could swear an expectant hush falls as I approach Ken, who’s busy hectoring a colleague on news desk. I stand and wait, before Vicky nods her head at me and he turns, fixing me with a cockatrice stare.
He heaves himself out of the swivel chair and stalks over to his office as I slope behind him, feeling multiple pairs of eyes bore into my back as I go.
‘Shut the door,’ he says, dropping into the chair behind his desk. I push it closed and stay standing.
‘I’m going to allow for having caught you on the hop yesterday. Today, I’d like the truth.’
I open my mouth to reply, and Ken cuts me off: ‘And I strongly advise you think before you speak, if you don’t want to see out your journalistic career spellchecking the letters page of Oxfordshire’s Banbury Cake.’
I teeter on a ledge. On the edge of a ledge. Caroline’s words about holding fast ring in my ears. I lick dry lips.
‘Natalie Shale never discussed any affair with me when I interviewed her. The name of that solicitor never even came up and he wasn’t my contact. Zoe’s worked off her own back and messed my story up. That’s all I know and I can’t defend or explain something I knew nothing about, even if it looks dodgy because Zoe and I worked together and I interviewed Natalie.’
I expect Ken to start screaming and shouting. Instead he simply nods.
‘That’s no more than I expected, unfortunately.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right, let me give you some home truths. There are two reasons you’ve still got a job, Rachel Woodford. One, I can’t sack you without proof you’re lying. Believe me, I’ve looked into it, because I can’t stand liars, or reporters who don’t have any loyalty to their paper, and you qualify on both fronts from what I can tell. Should I get any proof, things will change. Two, I haven’t got anyone to stick in court in your place. For now. In the meantime, you can send me a list at the end of every week telling me what stories you’re working on, and that includes ones you can’t stand up. So if there’s a fanciful rumour doing the rounds that a defendant’s wife is shagging her husband’s lawyer, I strongly advise you include it. I’ll decide what’s worth pursuing. And if I see a line like that turn up elsewhere and someone we have in court full time hasn’t fucking brought it to us, I’ll want to know what we’re paying you for.’
Ken pauses to let the slug-sized bulging vein in his neck shrink slightly.
‘You’re going to go back to Shale and ask for an interview about the latest twist in the saga, and use all your persuasive powers, knowing that you’re not likely to be getting entered for any awards here for a good long time, or so much as invited to the Christmas party, without doing some mop and bucket work on this massive fucking mess. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then get out of my sight.’
I spin round and open the door to face a newsroom that lip-read every word as it was enunciated clearly on the other side of a glass partition. Once they’ve ascertained I’m not crying, they look away again and pretend not to notice me. As unpleasant as being put on school report is, that could’ve been worse. Asking to interview Natalie is futile, Ken knows that and he knows I can’t say so. I have about as much chance of success as I would in winning the Burghley Horse Trials on a Shopmobility scooter. I will pretend I tried when everything has calmed down. Or, I’ll ask Simon.
As I’m about to win my freedom, Vicky beckons me over: ‘Rachel!’
I have less than no desire to talk to her but I can’t afford to make any more enemies.
‘What did Ken say?’ she says, casting a glance to make sure he hasn’t emerged from his office.
‘He’s not pleased,’ I say, flatly. ‘He’s not the only one.’
‘I told him Zoe Clarke might do something like this,’ she says.
Of course you did, you Zara-clad Nostradamus. ‘Did you?’
‘Yeah. There was all that hassle where she told some weekly paper she was a senior, when she hadn’t even done her NCTJ. They sent us a letter about her and she denied it.’ I open my mouth to ask more, but the story’s pretty much all there, and Vicky’s on a roll. ‘And then there was what she did to you over that cosmetic surgery thing.’
‘What?’
‘That lipo case. She covered the verdict for you, didn’t she? She sent it through with her name on it. I saw it and said to Ken “how’s she written something this size in an hour?” and we realised she’d put her name on your backgrounder. He gave her a rollocking and took her name off it completely. Didn’t you know?’
‘No.’
‘No, I suppose not, why would you? Not like she was going to tell you.’
‘I wish you’d told me,’ I say, stiffly. ‘I would’ve been more on my guard around her.’
‘Oh,
