The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

by Lilly Miles

  After Princess Diana died I went to work with my heart in my mouth for a day or so, expecting to be lynched – not helped by the fact that the local newspaper I worked on at the time had its name emblazoned across our rusty old pool cars – but the righteous outrage at the paparazzi chasing her faded a bit when we all discovered the driver was drunk and the daft bint wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

  That’s not going to happen with the phone-hacking story. At first it was all about celebrities and politicians having their voicemails listened to by tabloid hacks, and everyone involved was thought so little of by the general public that it seemed to be of only passing interest. It was investigated by anti-terror police, who had more important things to do than check D-list celebrity phone bills from years ago. Most of us – journos and civilians – just shrugged at the idea of people who lived off public exposure complaining about press intrusion.

  Then it was revealed that years ago a private detective employed by a newspaper had hacked the voicemails of a missing schoolgirl and some of the messages were deleted, giving her family false hope that she was still alive, when in fact she’d been snatched off the street by a paedophile, murdered and dumped in a wood. There can never be a reasonable explanation for listening to them – the morality of whoever decided to do that is so far off the scale it’s not even in our solar system.

  That killer went on to kill again, largely because of flaws in the police investigation, but the revelation that phone-hacking was involved in those early days of the schoolgirl’s disappearance turned a gossipy Fleet Street scandal into a national disgrace. The private detective responsible for the eavesdropping – who earned six-figure sums for his work – wrote everything down in notebooks seized by a new police unit set up to investigate. The explosive contents sent the story around the world, wiped billions off share prices and led to the closure of that newspaper, summarily sacking hundreds of innocent staff and ancillary workers. The tale has spread out to take in the government, almost everyone in public life, and dozens of ordinary people who became newsworthy for a while and were targeted by a handful of bad hacks with bigger budgets than they had brain space.

  Now (and forgive me if I rub my hands a little here) Tania Banks has got herself involved. There was a tale today in one of the snoresheets that when Banks used to work on another paper a few years ago one of her stories had been got through hacking.

  Hacking, it must be said, of my voicemails.

  What happened was this. A female soap star had a story for sale. Although she had been a staple of family viewing for years, she had a drink problem and an extremely colourful love life. Her lovers included politicians, famous businessmen, and a kinky children’s television presenter. The actress had a taste for white wine before noon, and had just been thrown out of her last home for missing the rent, so decided to make a bit of money.

  She had gone first to a big newspaper with a huge budget. Tania Banks was working there at the time, and promised her a five-figure sum for the yarn. The soap star signed a contract, told Tania everything she could remember, dug out some photographs, and was surprised to find on deadline that the newspaper wanted to pay her only half of what Banks had agreed.

  The actress had pulled out of the deal, torn up the contract, and taken her story to a smaller, poorer newspaper, where I had the task of babysitting her until we published the story for even less money. She was nice enough, but interesting to deal with after lunchtime. On the day we ran the story Banks’ paper did the same, a trick known as a ‘spoiler’. It had ruined our exclusive and caused a great stink, with an inquest headed by Bish about how our story could have leaked.

  Up until now I had always assumed it was the soap star’s fault. She was desperate for cash and might have earned something for giving Tania’s paper a heads-up; and was, anyway, so unreliable that after her third bottle she could well have spoken to Tania just to taunt her about the story going elsewhere.

  But now the actress had been told by the cops she may have been hacked, and had engaged lawyers to sue for as much money as she could get. She was, rather marvelously, quoted as saying: ‘I am appalled that a tabloid newspaper has violated my privacy.’

  Never mind that she’d sold that same privacy twice over. And never mind that I could now recall numerous times when she’d phoned me drunk and angry because I hadn’t returned her messages, which means that if she was telling the truth then whoever was responsible was probably hacking my phone, too, and deleting them. Never mind that if you dance with the devil you’re bound to get burned.

  I was not about to go running to lawyers or trying to find out if someone had hacked my voicemail. To tell the truth, I’d be offended if they hadn’t. There was no point taking Tania to task because by and large the reporters were unaware of hacking, which was outsourced to the private detective. I changed my PIN, deleted my messages – and shrugged it off. What had happened wasn’t great, but I didn’t care that much.

  If you deal with newspapers, work for them, sell your story, or maybe pose for paparazzi pictures and cut a deal for some of the money when they flog them, then it’s all part of the game, a step in the dance. Murder victims and innocents should be treated a little more kindly because they’re involved only by misfortune, not choice. The average hack’s moral compass may swing a little crazily some days, but so long as it points the right way 90 per cent of the time they’re all right in my book, and no worse than most of humanity. A phone-hacker’s not a Nazi.

  But needless to say, if Tania Banks’ reputation gets a little more tarnished then I won’t complain. One day she’s bound to embarrass the paper so badly that Bish will have to fire her – or at least, I hope she will.

  Leaning back in his chair, surrounded by his expenses forms and those of 650-odd MPs, Porter greeted the news of her potential disgrace with glee.

  ‘Marvellous,’ he grinned. ‘Maybe Teflon Tania’s arrogant reign is coming to an end. Can’t wait. And you’ll LOVE it if a fatty got the bullet, wouldn’t you? You’re so fattist!’

  I leaned against his desk, regarding the pile of paperwork. ‘Of course. Wouldn’t you be in my situation? Are you still doing MPs’ second-home claims? Hasn’t it all been done to death?’

  Porter spluttered in mock-horror. ‘My God, I’m not writing a story! Far too early in the day for that. I’m comparing my expenses claims with those of our politicians to see how I’m doing in the fraud stakes. So far Westminster is winning, the greedy, grasping, two-faced bastards! There’s no way I can hope to match them for avarice or cunning, although I shall give it a good try. Anyway what’s happening with your idiot husband? Come crawling back to you yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. He wants to talk but he’s still seeing Fatty. He says he’s not, and then one of my mates sees them at Glastonbury, or bumps into them in a pub. I don’t know what to think. I’ve got to make a decision somehow, but there’s nothing to base it on.’

  Porter cleared a patch on his desk for me to sit on, shoving papers out of the way and binning an elderly banana skin. I plonked myself down and he put his feet up on a corner of the desk, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers like the Old Man of the Newsroom. There is nothing a political reporter enjoys more than telling other people what to do.

  ‘You have plenty to base it on. Everything, in fact. How he’s behaved, and what he’s done since.’

  ‘But I haven’t – he never used to be like this,’ I protested. ‘We’d bought the house, and he had a new job, and it was really stressful. He just reacted badly. I know him, he wouldn’t seek it out. He just let himself be led because he’s weak.’

  Porter looked at me over his fingertips. ‘You’ve been through an horrific experience – and months of hell before that. You’re strong, surrounded by friends, and you’re pulling yourself out. He’s weak, indecisive, and floundering in his own mess. It goes a long way to show you the mettle of the man. And it seems to me you don’t have a lot in common with each other, if you can
react in such different ways.’

  His words echoed in my head as I left the office, echoing in time with my high heels on the concrete steps of the underground car park – ‘the mettle of the man, the mettle of the man, the mettle of the man’ – until I was back at my car, parked in its usual spot, and saw Twatface standing next to it. ‘Hi,’ he said, stubbing out a cigarette. ‘You wanted to talk?’

  We got in the car and I stared out of the windscreen at nothing much at all, thinking how acrid the lingering cigarette odour was. He always used to smell of soap.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘I’m sorry I threatened you about all that phone-hacking stuff. I was just, you know, upset. I’d listen to your voice messages if I could. Anyway, sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just wondering, you know, if you’d seen a lawyer . . . ?’

  I looked at him. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, she was really good, actually, but bloody expensive. She said you should get one, and it’d make everything easier, and we can divorce in maybe six weeks or so.’

  ‘Six weeks?’ I was stunned he could be so certain, and so ruthless. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘What else can we do? I mean, that doesn’t sound like I meant it to. What else could we do, do you think? I’d like to know how you feel. Might we be able to sort it out?’

  ‘I think,’ I said, picking my words carefully, ‘that divorce is the easiest thing to do. If we tried to sort it out – if we said we wanted to try again, to fix things – that would be harder. It’s not impossible, but it’s a lot of hard work. Is it something you’re prepared to do?’

  ‘Define “hard”.’

  ‘Well, obviously we would have to go to counselling.’

  ‘Right. Then could I move back in? Maybe this week?’

  ‘NO! Bloody hell, no way! You’re already living elsewhere; the best thing would be for you to carry on doing that, and for us to see each other once or twice a week to find out how things go, with a view to you moving back later.’

  ‘Right. Well, that seems sensible. It’s really expensive paying my share of the mortgage and renting a flat, though.’

  ‘You could afford it fine if your wages didn’t disappear every time you went to the pub,’ I said. ‘And you should have thought of that before you took your trousers down.’

  I paused and thought, then spoke more slowly, feeling my way through the thoughts which had flooded my mind for the past few weeks.

  ‘We need to learn to trust each other again if we’re to have a functioning marriage, but more important is the fact that you did this to start with. I think you would have to figure out why that was, and fix it so it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s all my fault now, is it?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. But you can’t argue with the fact that there have been problems, and now her . . . I accept my faults, I know I nagged you and worried and shouted all the time, but a lot of that was because I was scared of what you were doing. I was so worried about you that it never occurred to me that I was miserable. But I was. Before we go to counselling to fix our marriage, I think you need to go to counselling to fix you.’

  He looked blankly at me as I spoke, then immediately acted as if I hadn’t. ‘Right. I see. Well, I need to think about what you’ve said. Can I see you at the weekend?’

  After weeks of being in limbo, unsure whether I was married, single, reconciling or divorcing, I decided I was fed up of dancing to his tune, waiting for him to try to mend the hurt. He was doing what he always did: following the path of least resistance and relying on me to make the decisions – which he would only stick to if they suited. I’d had enough. He had caused this problem, and he was going to have to decide what to do about it.

  ‘No. You can’t think about it. You either want to be married to me, or you don’t. You either want to fix it, or you don’t. How we do that is secondary. You only have to decide if you want to fix it.’

  ‘Of course I want to fix it – my parents want me to, all our friends want me to – I just don’t know if I can. If I do the counselling, do we definitely get back together?’ he asked, as though haggling with a car salesman for a better deal.

  ‘I’m not going to promise anything. You decide what you want, work at it for a bit, and then we’ll see if it’s working. But if we take the hard road, then we have to fight together. I’m not doing it on my own, not just putting up with everything and hoping it won’t happen again. You need to prove you’ve learned from this as much as I do.’

  He sighed, looking at his watch. ‘I really do need to think about it, I can’t decide this now.’

  ‘You’ve had weeks,’ I told him, my voice rising. ‘Weeks in which you’ve had plenty of time to swan around town with her while I sit in misery wondering what’s happening. You’ve had enough time. If you want me then you have to dump her, right now. The only way I’ll believe it is if you ring her on speakerphone, while I listen, and tell her it’s over. You can do it now, or get out of the car and we’ll get divorced. Take the hard road or the easy road – but you have to take it right now. I’m not waiting any more.’

  I had said it before my brain had noticed what I was doing. But once it was out I was relieved, glad to have reached a fork in the road. Then his phone rang and he looked at the number before hitting the red button to send it to voicemail. He told me: ‘I need to think, I can’t decide right now. I’m late for meeting a friend in Westminster. I have to go. I’ll think about it, I promise.’

  And with that he got out of the car and walked away, shoulders slumped. My heart in my boots, I watched him go with dry eyes and realized that no decision was still a decision – I was not something he was prepared to fight for. I drove home, then, knowing he would be on the Tube, I rang his number. It clicked straight through to voicemail and I keyed in his PIN code.

  There she was, saying she was just leaving work, would see him in twenty minutes and had bought salmon for dinner. The ‘I love you’ at the end was particularly awful to hear.

  But it was all I needed. Tears pouring down my cheeks, I rang the merry solicitor, Maurice, and booked an appointment to sign the paperwork and get things started. Somehow, even though I knew it was the easy path, it felt very hard indeed.

  DAY THIRTY-NINE

  IT all started so well.

  My thirtieth birthday. A tiny, slinky frock. Vast quantities of soon-to-be-ex-husband’s booze. What could possibly go dreadfully, humiliatingly, awfully wrong?

  When I woke up this morning I lifted my head off the pillow and presumed someone had suspended a slab of granite six inches above the bed. It was the only explanation for the sudden pain rampaging around my skull. After some moments of extreme agony I decided life would be better with my head in the toilet, and dragged myself down the hall and into the bathroom.

  Where I stopped in the doorway from shock, hangover completely forgotten.

  The toilet seat was up.

  Now, this hadn’t happened for some time. Twatface, for all his faults, usually managed to put it down. In recent weeks everything in my house had been de-boyed: no more CDs of miserable music, no more socks on the floor. The house is a boy-free zone, and I love it like that.

  But there was a boy in it now. A boy who had left the toilet seat up. And I was naked.

  With a sense of foreboding, I turned around and crept quietly back to my bedroom. I peeked through the door. There, in the marital bed, was a head covered in short, curly blond locks. I don’t know any blond men. Arse.

  Back to the bathroom. Sat down for a bit on the toilet, resting my forehead on the cold porcelain of the sink next to it, waiting for the nausea to pass. One thing was clear – I had to get rid of this person. The thought of having a boy in the building was making my palms sweat. I was actually scared, and it wasn’t just the hangover. Men are scary, men hurt you, men are stronger and you don’t know if they might flip out and hit you. I certainly didn’t know anything about this one. But how the hell was I going to get rid of hi
m? I’d known Twatface since I was twenty-three, and hadn’t been round the block much before that. I had zero experience of booting people out after one-night stands. What’s the etiquette? Call them a cab? Cook them breakfast? Or, the way I was feeling, vomit on them and scream ‘TOILET SEAT! OUT!’

  I gathered my strength, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and crawled downstairs to make a cup of tea. Everything looks better with a cup of tea. I put my head around the living-room door. There were mini-sausage rolls and jelly all over the carpet, a set of still-flashing disco lights on one of the bookshelves, a pile of half-opened presents and a gunked-up chocolate fountain on a table – and a pair of tiny feet sticking out from under a duvet on the floor.

  ‘Fifi?’ I enquired of the heap. It groaned Welshly.

  ‘Tea,’ it said.

  I made us both a mug and brought it in. A hand snaked out from under the duvet and took it back under the covers. I heard a slurp and another groan.

  ‘Fi,’ I whispered. ‘There’s a boy in my room.’

  ‘Faberluss,’ she rasped.

  ‘How do I get rid of him?’

  Cough. ‘Tea. Cab. Ow.’

  Right. I could manage that. I made another mug, took it upstairs and put it by the bed. ‘There’s some tea,’ I said.

  ‘Oh thanks,’ he said, rolled over and looked at me with a smile. Oh, it’s Tim from the sports desk. I remember now.

  There was some chit-chat. We sipped our tea, not knowing quite what to say. Then there was a stamping sound like a herd of bison coming up the stairs, which stopped just outside the door. There was a tap and it swung open, to reveal tiny Fifi in a sequinned frock, false eyelashes awry and back-combed hair stood up like she’d been plugged into the mains.

  ‘What am I doing on your floor, izzeht?’

  I was at a loss, so Tim said: ‘You fell asleep about four o’clock in the morning, and we put the duvet over you.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Faberluss.’ Then she took in the scene – me in bed with a boy. ‘Did you just bring me some tea?’