… no. It comes on suddenly,’ she said, her eyelids heavy and fluttering. ‘I’ll have a short nap and I’ll be all right again. I don’t want you to go. There is so much for us to talk about. Such as Glen,’ she smiled weakly.
Kitty faked a smile in return. ‘Yes. You sleep,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be right here.’
Constance could always read her expressions, could dismantle her lies in seconds. ‘I didn’t like him much anyway.’
Within seconds Constance’s eyes fluttered closed.
Kitty sat on the windowsill in Constance’s hospital room, looking down at the people passing below, trying to figure out the route home where the fewest people would see her. A flow of French snapped her out of her trance and she turned to Constance in surprise. Apart from when Constance swore, in all the ten years she had known her, Kitty had never heard her speak French.
‘What did you say?’
Constance seemed momentarily confused. She cleared her throat and gathered herself. ‘You look far away.’
‘I was thinking.’
‘I shall alert the authorities at once.’
‘I have a question I’ve always wanted to ask you.’ Kitty moved to the chair beside Constance’s bed.
‘Oh, yes? Why didn’t Bob and I have children?’ She sat up in the bed and reached for her water. She sucked the tiniest amount from a straw.
‘No, know-it-all. You’ve killed every plant you’ve ever owned, I can’t imagine what you’d have been like with a child. No, I wanted to ask you, is there any story you wish you’d written but for whatever reason never wrote?’
Constance lit up at the question. ‘Oh, that is a good question. A story in itself perhaps.’ She raised her eyebrows at Kitty. ‘A piece where you interview retired writers about the story that got away, ha? What do you think? I should talk to Pete about that. Or perhaps we should contact retired writers and ask them to write the story that they never wrote, especially for the magazine. People like Oisín O’Ceallaigh and Olivia Wallace. Give them their opportunity to tell it. It could be a special edition.’
Kitty laughed. ‘Do you ever stop?’
There was a light knock on the door and Constance’s husband, Bob, entered. He looked tired but as soon as he laid eyes on Constance, he softened.
‘Hello, darling. Ah, hello, Kitty. Nice of you to join us.’
‘Traffic,’ Kitty said, awkwardly.
‘I know the feeling,’ he smiled, coming around and kissing her on the head. ‘It often slows me down too, but better late than never, eh?’ He looked at Constance, her face all twisted up in concentration. ‘Are you trying to poo, my love?’
Kitty laughed.
‘Kitty asked me what story have I always wanted to write but never have.’
‘Ah. You’re not supposed to make her think, the doctors said so,’ he joked. ‘But that’s a good question. Let me guess. Is it that time during the oil spillage when you had the exclusive interview with the penguin who saw everything?’
‘I did not have an exclusive with the penguin,’ Constance laughed, then winced with pain.
Kitty became nervous but Bob, used to it, continued.
‘Oh, it was the whale then. The whale who saw everything. Told everyone who so much as inched near him about what he saw.’
‘It was the captain of the ship,’ she threw at Bob, but lovingly.
‘Why didn’t you interview him?’ Kitty asked, arrested by their love for one another.
‘My flight got delayed,’ she said, fixing her bedcovers.
‘She couldn’t find her passport,’ Bob outed her. ‘You know what the flat is like, the Dead Sea Scrolls could be in there, for all we know. The passports have since found their home in the toaster, lest we forget again. Anyway, so she missed her flight and instead of Constance’s great exclusive, the captain spoke to someone else who we shall not name.’ He turned to Kitty and whispered, ‘Dan Cummings.’
‘Oh, you’ve done it, you’ve killed me now,’ Constance said dramatically, pretending to die.
Kitty covered her face in her hands, feeling it wrong to laugh.
‘Ah, finally we are rid of her,’ Bob teased gently. ‘So what is the answer, my love? I’m intrigued.’
‘Do you really not know this?’ Kitty asked Bob. He shook his head and they watched Constance thinking, which really was an amusing sight.
‘Ah,’ she said suddenly, eyes lighting up, ‘I’ve got it. It’s rather a recent idea, actually, something I thought of last year before … well, it was somewhat of an experiment but it has occupied my mind since I’ve been here.’
Kitty moved in closer to listen.
Constance enjoyed making Bob and Kitty wait.
‘Possibly one of my greatest.’
Kitty groaned impatiently.
‘I’ll tell you what, the file is at home. In my office. Teresa will let you in if she’s not too busy watching Jeremy Kyle. It’s filed under N. Titled “Names”. You get it for me and bring it back and I’ll tell you about it.’
‘No!’ Kitty laughed. ‘You know how impatient I am. Please don’t make me wait.’
‘If I tell you now, you might never come back.’
‘I promise I will.’
Constance smiled. ‘Okay, you get the file, and I’ll tell you the story.’
‘It’s a deal.’
They shook on it.
Choosing the quieter back roads, and feeling like a rat scuttling along in the gutter, Kitty cycled home feeling exhausted. Initially on a high after spending time with a friend, she was back to feeling hopeless again now the reality of what lay ahead for both of them had sunk in.
Thirty Minutes, the television show Kitty had started working on the previous year, the show with which she had received her big break and which had then ironically broken her, had viewing figures of half a million, which was impressive for a country with a population of five million, but not enough for Kitty to become the next Katie Couric. Now, thanks to her disastrous story, she found herself suspended from reporting on the network and in court to face a charge of libel. The story had aired four months previously, in January, but it was the impending court case, merely a day away now, that had made headlines. Her face, her mistake, and her name were now known to many more than half a million
