Kate wondered what an alien would make of the scene. Dozens of people sitting in isolation in front of computers, not speaking or looking at each other. It was a bit like the lost souls in Las Vegas casinos, perched for hours at the slot machines, with dead eyes, mechanically pressing buttons in the hope of a jackpot.
Alert! News editor approaching, she thought.
Terry had a winning smile on his face. He obviously wanted a favor. Kate pretended to be absorbed by something on her screen.
“See you managed to get in this morning, then.” He attempted a light touch but his banter clanged to the floor.
“Sorry, bad traffic, Terry,” she said, her fingers resting on the keys as though in mid-sentence.
“Yeah, yeah. Terrible out there. Anyway . . .”
Here it comes, she thought. The task of death.
“Kate, the Editor has got his eye on one of the new young reporters and he wants you to take him under your wing.”
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “My wing?” she said, tartly.
“He’s very bright,” Terry said. Her heart sank. “Very bright” was code for “extremely irritating.”
“And you’re the best reporter on the paper.”
The Crime Man cleared his throat in a warning growl at the slight.
Kate felt herself soften, despite herself. Compliments had been thin on the ground lately. Her star billing after the Widow Taylor exclusive had begun to wane. It was two years since she’d broken the story of what really happened to little Bella Elliott, the toddler who vanished from her garden. The story, with its twists and setbacks, had consumed her, and when the truth finally emerged in the pages of her newspaper, there’d been lunch with the Editor, an award, and a pay rise.
But that moment had passed, as they always do. The Editor’s focus had moved increasingly from investigative journalism to the sort of instant news that got the online community clicking and commenting. She now found herself ever more redundant in this new world order. She could write a picture caption with the best of them, but it was hardly a job for a grown-up, she told herself, as she tried to hold on to her dignity.
And she felt a growing paranoia every time Terry sent one of the kids on a story instead of her.
“Saving you for the big one,” he’d say when he caught her eye. But the big one hadn’t come for a while. Now, she was being put in charge of the office crèche.
“I’m too busy for ‘work experience,’ Terry,” she said.
“He won’t get in your way. He’ll be learning on the job and you’ve got so much to share, Kate. Simon says . . .”
Put your hands on your head, she thought, back in her primary school playground.
“Where is he, then?”
“Joe, can you come over?” Terry called across the room and a short lad with a floppy fringe and his shirt hanging out of his trousers leaped up and bounded over.
“Hi, Kate. It’s an honor,” he said without a hint of sarcasm.
Oh my God, he’s going to say he loves my work.
“I love your work,” Joe said.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Terry said, his work apparently done.
“But . . .” Kate spluttered.
“Sorry, Kate. Got a call waiting,” Terry said and scuttled back to the safety of his news desk.
Kate swallowed an expletive, indicated the chair next to her, and tried not to catch the eye of the Crime Man.
“When did you join us, Joe?” she said.
“A month ago. Straight from uni. I’ve always wanted to be a journalist—it’s in the blood.”
“How do you mean?”
“My mum’s a journo.”
“Oh?”
He named the Editor of the Herald on Sunday, a woman with a reputation for coarseness and brutality—the tyrant in knickers, the old guard called her. The male old guard, Kate reminded herself. Mandy Jackson had embraced the nickname, hoisting it like a war trophy as she scaled the career ladder. Any woman who rose beyond features editor was popularly deemed to have either slept her way to the top or broken balls. Kate wasn’t sure which route Mandy had taken, but she was still there, queen of the dunghill.
And this was her little boy.
She looked closely at Joe Jackson—his mother had clearly already been thinking about his byline when she named him—as he busied himself setting up his laptop at her right hand. He looked as if his voice hadn’t broken yet but maybe he could be useful—she wouldn’t mind a job on the Herald on Sunday.
“What story are you doing, Kate?” he asked, sitting up expectantly with a notebook in hand to capture her golden words.
“I’m looking at e-mails, Joe. Give me ten minutes. Why don’t you go and get us a coffee?”
She dug in her handbag and gave him a handful of change.
“The chief reporter’s bitch,” the Crime Man snorted after Joe had disappeared through the swing doors.
“Shut up, Gordon. You’re just jealous you haven’t got one. What the hell am I going to do with him?”
“Well, don’t sleep with him or Mandy will tear your head off.”
The crassness of his remark made Kate burn, but she laughed with him, a survival technique learned early on in a world dominated by men and drink.
“Just go along with it. You don’t have to mean it,” an older woman colleague had advised her many years ago. “The sexist jokes will never stop. You need to show them you’re as good a reporter as them. That’ll shut them up.”
And they hadn’t all been woman-haters. She’d worked with some brilliant men but there remained the occasional dinosaur lurking in the primeval swamp. One night news editor liked to tell female reporters to “break up the knitting circle” if they were discussing a story. Another executive would ask “On the rag?” if a woman challenged an idea and laugh uproariously as if he were the new Oscar Wilde.
The Crime Man was pretty harmless and she knew his wife. He was on a short leash at home so Kate allowed him the occasional burst for freedom.
“Have you worked with Mandy?” she asked.
“Yeah. She was a ball breaker.”
? ? ?
Joe arrived back with the drinks and a cake for her.
“Thought you might like one,” he said.
“You have it,” Kate muttered irritably. “You’ll burn off a double chocolate muffin faster than me.”
He laughed and unpeeled the paper.
The Editor appeared behind them—Simon Pearson had an unnerving ability to materialize without warning and Kate suspected he’d been a cat burglar in another life—and clapped Joe on the shoulder, sending a shower of crumbs over the desk.
“Don’t make our new protégé too comfortable, Kate. He won’t find any stories eating muffins. Need to keep him hungry and get him out there.”
Joe looked stricken as Simon left to continue his silent patrol.
“Take no notice. It’s his way of being friendly,” she said. “You’re very privileged to have been singled out for any kind of notice at all. Anyway, let’s look busy. Have you got any story ideas? We’ve got a news meeting in half an hour and we need to come up with three good ones.”
His face was noncommittal as if he were considering his answer but his eyes said no.
“Well, you read the papers and see if there’s a follow-up we can do, and I’ll ring a contact who’s emailed me. These news meetings are bollocks, really. Bit of grandstanding for the specialists and a chance for the news editor to tell us all we’re rubbish. Welcome to journalism.”
FOURTEEN
Emma
MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012
My yoga teacher is doing a guided relaxation, her voice purring over the tinkling of finger cymbals, lulling us into a coma. I love this bit of the class normally, but today I’m lying on my mat trying not to think about the ghosts of Howard Street. About the baby. About Professor Will.