guests … Just me.’
‘So, couple of minutes,’ he said doubtfully. ‘That leaves us well short, Jax.’
‘No, I need the time.’
‘Why? How the hell can you spin something as boring as a short story competition trail out beyond ninety seconds?’
‘Trust me,’ she said.
‘You up to something, Jax?’ he said suspiciously. ‘I hate it when you say “trust me”.’
She finally made up her mind, reached out a hand to rest on his thigh and smiled.
‘It’ll be all right, John,’ she said.
In a life of bad career moves, John Wingate wasn’t certain where he placed screwing Jax Ripley. She’d been a journalist on the Gazette when they first met and the chance of a one-night stand after a media party which Moira, his wife, hadn’t attended because she was over in Belfast visiting her sick mother had seemed too good to pass by. And it had been good. He grew warm now just recalling it and the other encounters that followed, one in particular which had taken place in his office a couple of weeks later when she presented herself for interview. ‘I’ve come about the position,’ she said, climbing on to his desk and spreading herself before him. ‘How about this one for starters?’
And under the doubtless approving gaze of the members of Unthank College Old Boys’ rugby fifteen whose photo, holding the Mid-Yorkshire Cup which they’d won some years ago under his captaincy, hung on the wall behind his chair, he accepted the invitation, after which she accepted the job.
She’d learned quick and her rapid advancement was easily justifiable in terms of sheer talent, or so he reassured himself whenever, as now, he gave way to her wishes. There’d never been any hint of menace from Jax and she’d always behaved with the utmost discretion, but this didn’t stop him from feeling that he had less control over his life, both professional and personal, than before her arrival. At least, thank God, he knew he didn’t have to worry she was after his job. She had set her sights over the hills and faraway, in the greener pastures of Wood Lane, and if golden opinions from himself could speed her on her way, all the better.
Maybe that was the explanation of her distraction today.
He said, ‘Big day next Monday, then. Getting nervous? No need. You’ll piss it.’
She said, ‘What? Oh, the interview. No, I’ll wait till I’m on the train before I get nervous.’
He believed her. She was, he reckoned, that controlled. She might let herself get nervous as she drew near to her interview for the job with the national news service because taut nerves made you sharper, pitched you higher. But she’d know exactly how far to go.
Yet, though Wingate didn’t know it, he’d hit pretty close to the mark.
Jax Ripley had a decision to make. Wingate’s assurances that with her record and his recommendation she’d walk into the job were very comforting and she had no false modesty about her abilities. Sex she might use as a shortcut but only to get where she felt she deserved to be. Yet though she rated her talents high, she was not so arrogant as to rate them unique. It hadn’t been difficult to come to the fore in the small show ring of Mid-Yorkshire, but the provinces are full of thrusting talents and it would take something extra to stand out among the ranks of competing clones nationwide, all desperate to march on the Big Time.
And now she felt she might have the something extra.
But there were risks.
It would be burning boats, that’s for sure. She was sworn to secrecy. Her revelations would this time be tracked unrelentingly to their source, and such a public act of betrayal would ensure that no one in Mid-Yorkshire would ever again open their mouths to her, not even with the promise that she would open her legs to them.
Plus, if it all went wrong and just came out as a bit of journalistic scaremongering, then she could even end up being dumped by BBC MY.
On the other hand, it was a good story. A couple of phone calls would alert some friends in London. National air coverage over the weekend plus the Sunday tabloids descending on Mid-Yorkshire to dig up – or make up – something really sensational could raise a news tsunami to sweep her into her interview on Monday. Once she got that job, it didn’t matter what happened back here in Sleepy Hollow. In the real world down there, no one minded if today’s scoop was tomorrow’s poop. It happened all the time. It wasn’t the apologies and retractions that stayed in people’s minds, it was the banner headlines.
So why was she pussy-footing around? In this life you were either a player or a stayer. And I’m a player! she told herself as she headed into her office to make the necessary wake-up calls. No point jumping off a skyscraper unless you had the audience you wanted.
It was, viewers opined later, by Jax Ripley’s usual standards a rather slow show. In her intro and her link passages she seemed somewhat muted, a little lacking in her usual sparkle. Usually she almost came out of the screen at you. But not tonight. Tonight she clearly had something on her mind.
The last of the filmed items was an interview with Charley Penn about the new Harry Hacker series starting on television the following week. It was a good interview, with Jax at her seductive and Penn at his saturnine best. It ended with her asking him about the doppelgänger effect which he often used in his books, with Hacker finding himself being warned or otherwise aided by glimpses of a mysterious shadowy figure which seemed to bear a close resemblance to himself.
‘Charley, tell me, do you really think it’s possible for a person to be in two places at the same time, or are you going to surprise us one day by revealing that Harry’s got a twin?’
Penn smiled at her, then looked straight into the camera.
‘I don’t know about being in two places at the same time, but I have no problem with a character being in two times at the same place.’
She’d laughed at that. She was one of those few people whose mouth wide open in close-up was an on-turning rather than an off-putting experience.
‘Too deep for me, Charley. But I love the new book. And though I say it as shouldn’t, reading it’s much better than watching the telly.’
End of film. Cut to Jax live in the studio, no longer relaxing, bare legs folded beneath her, on the white leatherette sofa she shared with her interview guests, but sitting on a hard upright chair, knees locked tight together, fingers closely clasped, face set and serious, looking like a young schoolteacher about to administer a stern rebuke.
‘Doppelgängers apart,’ she said, ‘it’s usually agreed that truth is stranger than fiction, but I did not realize just how much stranger it could be until a little earlier this week.
‘The fiction in the case is contained in most of the entries submitted to the Gazette’s short story competition. Entries close tonight, so those of you still scribbling had better get your skates on. I hope to announce the short list and perhaps interview some of the hopeful authors on the show next week.
‘But there is one person submitting material who probably won’t be rushing forward to be interviewed, the person the police are calling the Wordman …’
As she went on, around the county most listeners carried on with what they were doing, only gradually
