you—’
‘I’ve been proofing biographies for the awards supplement?’
I nodded. It sounded feasible.
‘I want you to know, I have, like, so much respect for your experience and how you’ve come up the ranks. It’s inspiring. I also really want you to know, I’m so embarrassed about the Gem-making-us-do-copy-camp-thing. I basically begged her not to make us do it. But she’s got her “own ideas” about how she’s going to run things, even though she has basically zero experience in journalism. But who are we to talk her down?’
We.
I liked how that sounded, so much. Too much. It resonated around my loneliness, arousing something deep and dormant. You and me: friends. The cub reporter and the grizzled editor, an alliance across generations against ‘the man’, or woman, in this case.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I said, swallowing the end of my second gin.
‘But I really do. I’m such a worry-wort. Are you a worrier? Sorry, I’m not talking about, you know, your time off or anything.’
‘My beige period?’ I tried to laugh.
‘Could I ask … was there a trigger for what happened to you?’
I sighed and looked at you side on, my head cocked to show you I was trying to decide whether to share my private thoughts with you or not. But at that point, it was just that: a show. The sad fact was, I was dying to tell you everything about me. While I was still, apparently, thinking about it, you added, ‘You don’t need to worry about me. You can trust me.’ And I wanted to believe you. I wanted to forget about the taxi ride and your holding back the truth about how you came to my magazine. I wanted to put all that to one side, chalk it up to coincidences and let myself believe the only thing for me to worry about was my failing talent. I wanted to let you convince me this was the case and at times like those, you were so dreadfully convincing.
‘I’m not worried about you.’ Probably the greatest lie I told myself about you, worse than convincing myself you were a friend-in-waiting.
‘Because I think you’ll find I could be very good for you. If you give me a chance.’
And your smile shone at me again as you moved one hand out across the table in my direction, reminding me of my young self again, that combination of steel and softness.
It’s then I saw it clearly: I could mentor you. We could go through the whole copy camp charade, but I’d bring you round to my way of doing things, share with you everything I knew. I would mentor you and in return you could teach me the ways of your digital world. We’d be unstoppable. We’d propel the magazine and website into the stratosphere. More readers, more advertisers, more sponsors, more everything. I would initiate our partnership by conceding to your absurd millennial vocabulary.
‘Triggers for my illness … Well, I would say it wasn’t just one thing and I’m not sure I wholly believe in triggers, not for me anyway. I’d had hard times before and they hadn’t got me down, not down-down. If anything, the dark days got me up, off my feet. Then when I got ill, it was just … total. I felt flattened, the world didn’t look like the world anymore. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t think it was just a case of, “Oh my god, we’re broke,” or “Oh my god, am I really celebrating my fortieth birthday at Leadership?” or any one thing that pushed me over the edge. It was nothing and everything.’ I shrugged, as if I was talking about some mysterious thing that had happened to me a very long time ago. You changed tack.
‘Wow. So from the late nineties to now, that’s like, a whole bunch of time. Leadership must be like a home-away-from-home.’
‘It is, or it was, before everything changed.’
‘Maybe it can be again?’ you said softly and I had to look away so you couldn’t see how much you’d moved me.
‘Sometimes I … I feel as if I’ve let Leadership down. I’ve let myself down. I know we’re going to be OK; I know we can survive using a rolling buffet of interns to keep the lights on and sponsored content to pay me.’ You visibly bristled at this, I ignored it. ‘But I can still see it, we’re slipping behind editorially. Readers, they’re so fickle these days. I’ve seen the data. They skip through a story that took a week to put together for the magazine in fifteen fucking seconds on the website and I don’t know why. You know, I did see the digital revolution coming? I thought I could ignore it, but it got bigger and bigger, so much bigger than I thought it ever would, until it changed fucking everything and it feels like I don’t get anything anymore.’ I saw some bubbles of spit land on my sleeve on the ‘m’ of ‘more’. I was literally, as you would say (correctly for once), frothing at the mouth. ‘Sorry. I—’ I began and you rubbed my forearm. ‘I don’t usually spill my guts like this.’
‘Well, get used to it, boss. OK? Shall we get a bottle of something red and warming?’
‘Yes! Allow me. Fuck it all, right?’
I noticed you recoiled slightly whenever I swore. I suppose I naturally swear a lot, but I’d always thought most journalists were prone to sweariness, whatever their age. As much as I believe people like you need to toughen-up, I didn’t like the faint tell as the skin under your eyes tightened at each curse. Before too long into our night, I stopped the ‘fucks’ and ‘cunts’ and even the ‘arseholes’. I started to feel less angry in doing so. You helped me soothe myself. Maybe you millennials were actually onto something.
It began to feel, as we sat there in the corner of The George that night, when tourists and beery workmates came and went around us unnoticed, that you and I were really communicating. I felt the warmth of a couple of gins and a bottle of Rioja and the full flush of releasing all the conversation I had pent up in me. And it was thrilling to observe your pristine complexion up-close, the swell of your cheeks, the way you tapped the white triangle of skin above your tangerine v-neck from time to time. My skin once glowed like yours.
We both looked at our glasses, only a drip in each of them. You poured the remainder of the bottle into my glass. I sensed our evening drawing to a close. I didn’t want it over yet.
‘Writing was a real escape for me. Not just journalism, writing my own stuff too. I wrote my first manuscript, just for me, to get my head together about … childhood stuff, I suppose. Does your blog help you get your head straight?’
‘I guess. That and my diary. I try to work out my future by processing the past and reporting on the present there.’
‘I used to keep my notepad with me at all times in case I ran into a story, but also if I had a thought about something or other I wanted to get down. Iain used to call it my “little book of lottery tickets”. One of them had the winning line on it, the one that would help me write the next manuscript. The One. The one that would save me, get me out of Leadership and put my life where it deserved to be …’
‘Wow. It sounds like, what did you say your husband’s called again, Iain? He sounds super-supportive.’
‘Iain. My partner, not my husband.’
You’d invited him into the conversation and then I really let myself go, encouraging you to excavate me, draw things to the surface. Because when I spoke about Iain, it felt so good to share all the gestures, big and small, that made him so wonderful. When our relationship
