The Maybridge Wish-List fairy might be draped over the masthead, but it was her story that was the lead. ‘“Closed for Fun…” It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’ she said, doing her best to sound enthusiastic.
‘It was a slow news day.’ Tim Mayhew, the sports editor, made a virtue of being a grouch.
‘This is Maybridge, Tim. It’s always a slow news day. The ambitious journalist has to get out there and create her headlines.’
That would be the journalist who was desperate to hang on to her job. The journalist who wished she hadn’t promised the news editor a constant feed of Hal North stories.
‘There’s nothing wrong with ambition,’ Tim said, ‘but you’re going to have to come up with something better than local landowner closes footpath if you’re going to repeat your local-boy-makes-good coup.’
She didn’t need him to tell her that. Brian was already on her case.
‘It’s not the footpath that makes the story, Tim, it’s the “new,” “millionaire” and “landowner” that does the business.’ Along with the tall, dark. The classically handsome element was cancelled out by rich and available.
‘People will soon get fed up of being fed a diet of Hal North stories.’
The sooner the better. She couldn’t wait to get back to the WI meetings, meanwhile…
‘I’ve just heard that he’s cancelled the traditional Teddy Bears Picnic. Just who the heck does think he is?’ she asked, trying to put some real feeling into it.
‘Henry North? New millionaire landowner?’ he said, quoting her own words back at her.
She stared at the front-page picture of the pile of scrap metal blocking the footpath across the Cranbrook estate.
The photographer had used a marker to write “Closed For Fun” on a piece of cardboard and propped it against a handy piece of junk. It made a great picture, she didn’t deny it. And Brian had found a photograph of Hal at a white-tie dinner. The juxtaposition suggested arrogance, distance, a man who didn’t care.
Tim grunted. ‘Personally, I don’t blame him for refusing to have dozens of kids running riot on his newly acquired country estate.’
‘Next to you the Grinch is warm and cuddly.’
Hal wasn’t like that.
She mentally rolled her eyes. She kept telling herself that ‘Hal wasn’t like that’; she hadn’t a clue what he was like. All she had was this fantasy figure she’d created in her head—a cross between Prince Charming and the Beast. And if she’d cast herself in the role of Beauty, it was because she’d been a kid and didn’t know any better.
What she did know was that it hadn’t been ‘Mr Henry North, millionaire businessman’ who’d mocked her, reminded her that she had once had a goal in life. A place at a good university, every advantage, and she’d wasted it. And it sure as heck hadn’t been ‘Mr Henry North, millionaire businessman’ who’d kissed her socks off. Well, her tights, anyway…
That had most definitely been Hal North, Cranbrook bad boy, doing what he did as naturally as breathing. She’d put his bad temper down to the fact that she’d run into him. That must have hurt. But having reinvented himself it must have come as quite a shock to discover that she was still on the estate and working for the local newspaper.
He’d got off lightly, she reminded herself.
She could have got a lot more quotes to liven up her original front page if she’d had a mind to, but she’d kept that to herself. She wasn’t about to annoy the man who had it in his power to put up her rent.
‘It’s really tough on the charity that relies on the event,’ she said. Concentrate on that. Not on Hal.
‘It must have come as a real shock when Cranbrook Park was sold overnight to a man who doesn’t buy into the whole noblesse-oblige thing.’
‘It was quick, wasn’t it?’ Almost as if Hal had been watching, waiting…
‘Once you’re in hock to the tax man you’re done for. They won’t wait for the market to pick up. As long as they’re covered they don’t care how cheap they sell. And it would need to be cheap. The place is going to take a fortune to restore.’
‘I suppose.’
‘No doubt North will finance it with a high-end executive estate on that meadow running beside the May. It’s a prime riverside location and out of sight of the Hall. Perfect.’
‘What? But that’s Archie’s meadow!’ she protested. He was right, though. It was perfect. Forget dancing on Sir Robert’s grave. How much more satisfying would Hal find it to make Sir Robert watch as he trampolined a thousand years of Cranbrook family history into the dirt. ‘He’d never get it through planning,’ she objected.
‘You think a man like North is going to let petty bureaucracy stand in his way? If the local planners prove obstinate, he’ll put in a appeal to the Secretary of State on the grounds of the local need for jobs, houses.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re probably mates. There’s a story for you.’
‘I can’t print that!’
She wouldn’t have to. All it would take was a photograph of them together and people would leap to their own conclusions. And there was nothing like a suggestion of dirty doings at the Town Hall to boost circulation.
She would be flavour of the month. And if it made her feel just a little bit soiled? The way she’d felt as she’d listened to gossip about him in the café near his office, well, it was her job. It paid the rent, kept Ally warm and fed.
‘Besides, what will happen to poor old Archie?’
‘Oh, please. If North has any sense that donkey was cats’ meat within a week of him moving in. You should sue him for not keeping him under control,’ he added. ‘Or are you saving that for another headline?’
‘Of course not. He’s always been a lamb with me.’ As long as she had an apple to buy him off. ‘Archie,’ she added, rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth. Hal North was something else…
‘Kebabs, then. Millionaire Makes Mincemeat of Maybridge Mascot…’
‘Shut up, Tim,’ she muttered as Brian walked through the office.
‘Children, children!’ Jessica Dixon, the features editor raised her head from her PC. ‘The only thing that should concern you on today’s front page is who is going to be this year’s Fairy Godmother. Or Godfather,’ she added, looking at Tim over her spectacles. ‘This is an equal-opportunity chance to volunteer.’
‘Tim in a tutu and wings.’ Cheered at the thought, Claire grinned. ‘Now that I would pay good money to see.’
Maybridge wish week!
IT’S Maybridge Wish Week! Time for the Maybridge Observer’s Fairy
