of flats a mere ten minutes’ walk from her flat. There was a strong sense of community around these parts. The immediate neighbours were tight: if you were from around there they had your back, if you weren’t … they didn’t and Kitty lived just outside this zone. While Archie Hamilton operated three locks to open the door, she waited on the balcony of the fourth floor. A young boy with bright red hair and freckles, sitting on a basketball, watched her and a crowd of kids on the ground floor hovered a little too closely to her bicycle, which was tied up at the railings.
A final lock was slid and the door opened until a chain stopped it from going any further. A pair of eyes stared back at her, bloodshot, rheumy eyes that looked as if they hadn’t seen the light of day for years. Kitty couldn’t help but take a step back.
‘Archie Hamilton?’ she asked, and the eyes looked her up and down, then the door slammed in her face.
She looked around, unsure whether to knock again or leave. The boy sitting on the basketball sniggered.
‘Do you know Archie?’ she asked.
‘Do you know Archie?’ he responded in exactly the same voice, mimicking her perfectly, getting the high-pitched tone and the slight country accent. In fact she felt he exaggerated the accent a little too much but either way it had a disturbing effect, which she was sure was intended. She debated leaving but she suddenly heard a voice inside calling Archie’s name and she stayed where she was. More locks turned, quicker this time, the chain slid across the door and the door was suddenly pulled open wide. A man, not the man who had first answered, but who replaced intimidation with anger and exhaustion, stared at her. He examined her as he put on his denim jacket, then, as though not liking what he saw, he stepped outside and she jumped back. He slammed the door and locked it. Then he put the keys in his pocket and charged off towards the stairs.
‘Excuse me?’ Kitty called out politely.
‘Excuse me?’ she heard her voice echoed behind her from the boy on the basketball.
The man kept on walking; she ran after him. He skipped down the concrete stairs. She gave up on politeness.
‘Are you Archie?’
‘What if I am?’
‘Well, if you are, I’d love to talk to you,’ she said, breathless as they started on the third flight of stairs.
‘About what?’
‘About … well, if you stop racing, I can tell you what.’
‘I’m late for work.’ He upped his speed just as she had managed to catch up with him.
‘Maybe we can make an appointment to meet at a time that suits you better. Here’s my card …’ She rooted in her handbag, which slowed her down, and he was then a level ahead of her. She retrieved the card and jumped down the steps in twos and threes to catch up.
He didn’t take the card. ‘I don’t talk to journalists,’ he said, hitting the ground floor and walking away from the flats.
Kitty eyed the crowd of kids around her bike and chose to jog alongside Archie.
‘How did you know I was a journalist?’
He looked her up and down as if to answer her question. ‘You have that desperate look.’
She was only mildly insulted as, judging by their cat-and-mouse routine, he was correct.
‘You left a message on my phone.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t call me again.’
They rounded the corner and she expected him to keep walking but suddenly he stopped, took a sharp left and disappeared into a chipper. Kitty had to backtrack a few steps. She watched him through the window: he lifted the counter barrier, took off his jacket and disappeared in the back. There was a queue of two people inside the shop. Kitty glanced at the sign above the window: ‘Nico’s’. Archie Hamilton reappeared wearing a white hat and apron. His colleague filled him in on the orders and left him alone. She pushed open the door.
‘You could be done for stalking,’ he said, barely looking at her. A stalking offence to add to her woes was all she needed right then.
The two in the queue stared at her.
‘I’ll have a single of chips,’ she ordered.
He stopped shovelling chips then and looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed or if he wanted to throw boiling hot chip fat at her. There was a fine line. He made a decision and lowered the basket of frozen chips into the bubbling oil. Kitty debated waiting for the one customer ahead of her to leave, then thought against it. She didn’t need super investigative powers of journalism to know that this was her one chance with Archie.
‘I’m going to leave my card here,’ she said, placing it on the counter.
He glanced at it, then back at his work. He made a burger, chips, bagged it, took money at the till and the customer left.
‘I’ve never talked about it. Not then and I won’t now. Nothing’s changed.’
Kitty was most definitely missing a trick. ‘I’m not sure who exactly you think I am but—’
‘You’re a journalist, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re all the same.’
‘I won’t talk to you about anything you don’t want to talk about.’
‘I’ve heard that before too.’
He shovelled her chips into a small white paper bag, then he put the bag into a larger brown bag and shovelled extra in.
‘Look, I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what you’re talking about or what it is that you don’t want to talk about. I have no idea who you are. I found you on a list of one hundred names as someone I had to interview for a story. I don’t know you or any of the other ninety-nine people and I don’t know what the story is. All I ask for is at least thirty minutes of your time, any time – morning, noon or night – so that we can talk. It may not be about the thing you think it is, or maybe it is, and if you don’t want me to write about it I just won’t write about it, but I can promise you that I’m an honest writer and I’ll keep my word.’
For Constance, for her own sanity, more than anything Kitty wanted to do things right.
He seemed amused, or at least he was now something other than what he had been, which was threatening and intimidating. She guessed he was in his late fifties, maybe sixties, though he could have been younger and the stress was ageing him. He clearly was stressed; he carried it in bags around his body. His hair was completely grey, his skin was red, dry and unhealthy, he appeared overweight but his arms were muscular beneath his T-shirt. He was to Kitty the epitome of stressful living, unhealthy eating and not enough sleep. She wondered how far off she was from looking like that. She couldn’t read him at all. Finally he looked at her and she felt a swell of relief that her words had made some kind of difference.
‘Salt and vinegar?’ he asked, and she sighed.
‘Yes,
