The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

by Lilly Miles

  In my case I came home from work one day and he’d left his work emails wide open on the computer. I went to turn it off, the screen came to life, and everything imploded.

  I remember some screaming, but it wasn’t that high-pitched female kind you get with spiders or mice. They were low, guttural, they came from my stomach. They sounded like a gorilla was being tortured. And of course then I knew her name.

  After five minutes’ work on the computer I also had her home address in a rich bit of town, date of birth, family history, workplace, friends’ details and her phone number. Not many wives could have done that – this job is a blessing at times, as well as a curse.

  She’s posh and she’s young, and her name – Hattie, short for Henrietta – makes her sound like a consumptive Victorian damsel in a swoon. She probably has a collection of stuffed toys, too.

  I also knew from the emails that my husband was with her and not, as he’d claimed when saying he suddenly wouldn’t be home for dinner, with friends in Highgate.

  There is only one thing any reporter – hell, any woman – would do in this situation. Front them up on the doorstep, of course; stand the story up or get it knocked down. I had to know for sure.

  I drove there, although I couldn’t tell you how. At one point I realized I was doing 80 m.p.h. in a bus lane, and decided I didn’t care. There was no answer to my knocks at her door so I thought maybe they were out. I walked around some of the local pubs to see if I could spot them – no doubt scaring the customers who saw a demented, wild-eyed woman doing laps of the bar – and then went back to her flat, in the basement of a big Georgian house.

  As I went down the steps to her door a second time I saw one of the net curtains twitch, and realized they were inside, looking out at me and probably laughing. So I knocked on the door, then thumped on it, and as my anger built started to use my feet as well, anything to make them open up and talk to me. As they continued to hide I started roundhouse-kicking, which as I was in heeled boots just hurt my foot. After ten minutes or so the doorknocker fell off, and in my screwed-up thought processes it seemed the politest thing to do to post it through the letterbox, in case it got stolen. Then I carried on kicking for a bit, with some yelling thrown in. Some of the neighbours looked out of their windows, and I took great delight in shouting, ‘WHORE!’ at the top of my voice so they could all hear.

  Eventually I realized that my targets were prepared to wait it out until I got tired. I went back to my car, where I’d left my phone, and rang my husband. I can only imagine the scene inside the flat, but after ten or more rings he finally answered, in the jolliest high-pitched voice you’ve ever heard.

  ‘Hello! How are you? I’m in Highgate!’

  ‘I know exactly where you are. I read your emails,’ I said, quite calmly. ‘Get out here.’

  ‘Y-you read my emails? H-h-how did you . . .’

  ‘Least of your problems. Get out here NOW.’

  I hung up and as I walked back down the steps to her door, he opened it and stepped outside. He looked sheepish, and was doing up his shirt buttons.

  I had not really thought about what I was going to do, but it wouldn’t have been anything more than a shout and a scene. Seeing him having to get dressed when he left her made me furious, and from the top of the steps I launched myself at him, my hands outstretched. I didn’t have any intent in mind beyond trying to stop the thing that was hurting me. He caught my hands and when I tried to break free he threw me against the concrete wall next to the steps. I fought and yelled, and as I pushed off the wall we spun around and I was thrown against the wall opposite as I struggled and screamed. A neighbour came outside, and a passer-by tried to push between us, and told my husband to stop.

  ‘It’s all right,’ replied my husband, with one of his charming smiles, as though it was a reasonable explanation for a street fight. ‘She’s my wife.’

  The bystander looked at me.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘And that WHORE in there is going to explain what she’s doing with my husband!’

  The stranger backed away, the neighbour stared with his mouth open, and my husband smiled reassuringly at them both. While he looked away I grabbed the chance to deliver two solid kicks to my husband’s testicles. As he bent over I whirled and ran back to Hattie’s door, which was as shut as it had ever been. Next to it was a window and a dozen pots and troughs filled with dead plants she’d obviously never bothered to water, on the sill and on the ground.

  Without any thought, I picked up a rectangular trough about a foot long and six inches wide. My husband reappeared and tried to grab it from me, and we wrestled over the terracotta for a few seconds before it flew from our grasp – intentionally or otherwise, I honestly don’t know – and smashed through the window.

  For some reason I followed it, as frenzied and set on killing as a zombie in a film, with my eyes out on stalks and spittle flying everywhere.

  I came to my senses somewhere in the middle of Hattie’s broken window, my head and shoulders swathed in a net curtain, hands and knees in broken glass, nails dug into the wooden sill like a lioness’ claws in a gazelle, and with my husband trying to pull me out by the ankles.

  Somehow it dawned on me that the police were coming – I think he told me – and I realized that being arrested inside the building was technically burglary, and a lot more serious than being arrested outside, which was an entirely different kind of crime. Terrorism of some sort, perhaps. The homicidal rage ebbed away and I reversed gingerly back on to the pavement.

  Immediately I heard approaching sirens, and my husband said: ‘You’d better go.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I replied, folding my arms and planting myself facing the door. ‘I’ve nothing to hide, and when the police turn up she’s going to have to open that door and look me in the eye.’

  Two constables appeared in great haste and there was an unpleasant conversation in which my husband explained to the officers that this was his wife and in there was his girlfriend.

  One of the officers stood next to me while the other knocked on the door, which did not open. ‘Can you open the door, please?’ he said. There was a pause, while he listened to someone squeaking in terror on the other side. ‘No, you have to open the door or we’ll break it down. You called us, and we have to verify that you’re safe.’

  There was another moment before the door opened a crack. The officer pushed it open further, then stepped inside and shut it behind him.

  During the journey my brain had whirred with putdowns, witty remarks, catty one-liners that would have left her a quivering wreck and him begging for my forgiveness. But when I had that brief glimpse as she opened the door all I could do was stand there like a guppy fish, mouth open, eyes wide, brain reading ‘Error 404: Witty remarks could not be found.’

  She was in silhouette with the summer evening sun coming in a window behind her. I saw a bob haircut, an A-line fifties-style dress, and flat shoes.

  She had very sturdy calves, I noticed abstractedly as my eyes passed over them, and while logic told me she had to have ankles there was no obvious sign of any.

  My husband was stood next to me. I looked at him, pointed at the now-closed door, and said: ‘Are you serious . . . ? But . . . she’s FAT.’

  The policeman next to us made a coughing noise.

  My husband took a drag on his cigarette – he had only lit it because he knew I hated them – and said: ‘She’s not that big.’

  ‘Not that big? She’s got calves the size of my torso! She’s fucking HUGE!’

  The policeman spluttered, then clamped his lips tight.

  ‘We haven’t had sex yet,’ muttered my husband.

  ‘I’m not bloody surprised! You’ll probably have to send off for a small stepladder and some kind of pulley system. Fuck ME!’ I exclaimed, hands on hips, shaking my head in disbelief.

  The policeman turned to face the wall and compose himself as his colleague came out of the flat. The first officer told me
I was being arrested and my husband stood and watched as they led me away to the patrol car.

  I sat on the back seat and caught sight of the computer display on the dashboard, which read: ‘Caller says partner’s ex-wife has turned up and is causing a disturbance.’

  EX-wife?

  PARTNER?

  WTF?

  Then it was off to the cells, to wait for a lawyer, to call my parents from the custody suite, asking them to come and get me, to pace and cry and be interviewed on tape and have my fingerprints taken, before accepting a formal warning, get given my shoes back and be released.

  My state of mind has not improved much since then. I’ve since found out that Hattie’s a reporter, too – only she hates the tabloids, which are where the most successful and well-paid journalists end up, because they sell more and it’s harder work. She told one friend of mine: ‘Oh, I simply couldn’t bear to work for the popular press. I only want to work for serious papers.’

  So, the unpopular press, then? I see.

  Yet she’s having an affair with a married newspaper executive who works on one of the country’s biggest tabloids. She obviously doesn’t mind the popular press when they’re buying her dinner.

  And what was he thinking? A journo married to a journo and shagging a journo who expects not to be found out by all the other journos they both know? I spend half my life catching people having affairs. It took me less than a fortnight after they had met to realize what was going on, and mere minutes to prove it was true. Fleet Street is a tiny, incestuous little world – everybody knows everybody else, or at least someone who met them in a bar once. He was always going to get busted, if not by me then by any one of two dozen other people.

  Well, I know what he was thinking. He was thinking: ‘She’s not that big.’

  Hattie’s a nice, girly name, and it suits her about as well as I suit hot pants. She’s not nice, and while I’m prepared to take someone’s word for it that she is a girl, there’s no obvious external clue. And if you think I’m being vindictive – she had the bloody cheek to press charges, which is pretty nasty considering it’s my husband she’s stealing. In her shoes I would have had some sympathy for the wronged wife, and something approaching a sense of shame.

  And all over a flowerpot through a window. Although I admit, had I got inside the flat I’ve no idea what I might have done. Part of me wishes the police had found me cackling over their dismembered corpses with a power tool in each hand. A flowerpot and a broken window sound pathetic.

  Bollocks to nice Victorian names – she is Fatty to me for evermore! If she ever walks into my newsroom I shan’t be responsible for my actions.

  (Except in the next 365 days, which is the period during which I must not get arrested for anything else, according to the police caution she has so thoughtfully arranged for me.)

  DAY TWO

  OH, it’s morning. Quick check – yep, just as rubbish as yesterday. Fab.

  The days are becoming circular, a constant spiral of hurt as though I have been strapped to a Catherine wheel and tortured by a cackling hag. Today is just as painful as yesterday, and I am just as broken.

  I tossed and turned for hours last night, reliving the fight, and in the darkest hours I simply buried my face in the pillow and cried, horrible stabbing pains tearing through me. The physical agony is very real, although it must be purely in my head – who knew that love could be this bad? Even when the grief recedes, it still feels like my skin’s being slowly sliced off from the inside.

  Eventually, exhausted and desperate for a few hours of unconsciousness, I decided to search my parents’ bathroom cabinet for anything that might bring sleep.

  Milk of magnesia won’t do it. Nor will thirty-year-old Strepsils, crusty tubes of Germolene, or ancient cotton buds. Why do they never throw anything away? That old bottle of cough syrup has probably fermented long enough to be a type of whisky, but I am too young to die.

  Instead I settled on a cup of warm milk, and ended up stumbling around the house trying not to wake the folks up. This is quite difficult when your teenage bedroom has been turned into a geriatric gymnasium and you don’t want to turn any lights on. It’s not my familiar smelly pit any more; the giant Daniel Day-Lewis poster is long gone. It’s all treadmills and exercise bikes, and my poor limp teddy bear sitting on the bed, with worn paws and a face faded in the sun.

  I managed to fumble my way to the kitchen, but coming back crashed into a door frame, spilt hot milk all down myself and swore. I don’t know if it was the thump or the swearing that woke her, but mums are attuned to the tiniest instance of either, so mine put on her dressing gown and came to sit with me for a while.

  She’s sleeping as little as I am, and it made me feel even worse to see the worry she feels for me. I simply cannot go on without sleep, I told her, and it doesn’t feel like I will find it any time soon. It could be weeks before any kind of calm returns, and in the meantime, after three nights of being awake, it feels like my mind is going. My vision swims, my head throbs, and my hands shake. ‘We have to go to the doctor to get something,’ I said. At first she refuses, worried what I’ll do with a handful of sleeping pills. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid,’ I said. ‘Dish me out one a night if you like; but I cannot go on like this.’

  She tucked me into bed just as she used to, sat with me and stroked my cheek softly with her knuckles like she did when I was a little girl, until my eyes finally drifted shut and for a while the thoughts ceased their constant circle.

  I woke up at 6.14 a.m., and waited for sounds of movement before I went to talk to the elders. Seeing them sitting up in bed, the morning sun on their faces, it was shocking to realize how old they have become. Perhaps it was only the events of the past few days, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed before, but Dad’s hair seemed suddenly grey, and his laughing blue eyes were dull. Mum’s unlined face appeared to sag as she sipped her tea and asked if I had managed to sleep.

  Dad is keen on the idea of brisk, vigorous exercise as a cure-all for heartbreak and mental anguish. At his insistence I nibbled half a Weetabix and was dragged out to the garden to help him prune a tree, but after a few minutes I started to shiver and tremble and he sent me indoors.

  I rang Cee, my oldest friend. She said: ‘You’re probably better off without him.’ Mum, who was quite positive yesterday and saying things like, ‘All is not lost,’ changed her tune, too, and said: ‘Maybe it’s for the best.’

  The upshot is I am considering starting a game of cliché bingo. Others still to collect in the set include: ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ ‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ and ‘We can work it out,’ plus many, many more. ‘You’ve still got your health,’ is the gold-star clincher.

  We went to the chemist and got some herbal sleeping pills, then because I had nothing else to do I checked my husband’s emails – he used to tell me his password, the plonker. There was a receipt for an Interflora order, and I was getting irritated by his pathetic apology when I noticed they weren’t for me. They were for Tania Banks.

  Now, Tania Banks has been a friend of both of ours for years. Another reporter, she had sat next to me in the newsroom for a while, and through me met my husband. Lately I had begun to be annoyed by her: there were rumours among the photographers that half her stories were made up, although for some reason she seemed able to dodge the usual consequences. She was always banging on about her latest diet, and wore a bra that was too small in the mistaken belief that it made her boobs look bigger, when in fact it just gave her back-fat. But we still shared gossip and mutual friends, and I always covered for her when she disappeared for two-hour manicures.

  Anyway, Tania came to our wedding, made a catty comment about my shoes which I chose to overlook, drank vast amounts of champagne and in return gave us, oh, all right, a quite nice set of saucepans. Tania, during the few weeks since Fatty’s name was first mentioned, has been a shoulder for me to cry on while I’ve wondered where he is, been confused by his suddenly
-offhand treatment and caught him out in silly lies which now, finally, make a dreadful sense. I told her all my suspicions while they were still forming in my head, and she told me I must be wrong.

  Tania is also friends with Fatty. She introduced her to my husband at a dinner party which I was going to go to until he said: ‘No, boo, you’re tired after a long day at work. You go home, and I’ll see you later.’

  He’s been staying with Tania for the past few days. And Tania, apparently, deserves flowers. But I don’t.

  So I emailed her and begged her to tell me anything, anything at all.

  This is her reply:

 
  From: Banks, Tania

  Oh, my love – I cannot begin to imagine how dreadful you must feel, poor thing. It is simply awful, and you’ve all my sympathy. Obviously, as their friend my first loyalty is to the other two parties, who I should say are wretched. Anything I could tell you about their relationship would just cause you more pain. We are all concerned for you, so if you need anything, just let me know.

  Tania

  PS I imagine you won’t be able to show your face at work so let me have the number of your Cheryl Tweedy contact and I’ll crack on with that toilet story.>

  My. Bloody. GOD. All her sympathy? What, both grains? Their friend? Wretched? RELATIONSHIP? And now she wants my Cheryl contact, too? Christ on a bike, is there anything life won’t take off me?

  After the spluttering ceased I wrote a reply which hopefully, like poison, will find its way to Fatty’s ear.

 
  From: Foxy

  Tania – I don’t blame you for wanting to stay out of it, but I’m sure you can understand my need for answers, considering that in the space of ten days my husband was capable of trying for a baby with me and then watching calmly as I was led away to the cells.