The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

by Lilly Miles

  If you’re lucky, The Editor does the rounds early in the evening but if 10 p.m. rolls around and that still hasn’t happened yet, then it’s time to move to water if you don’t want to wake up to a world of regret the next day. But as I’ve said before of all the bosses I’ve worked for – each of whom had only the flimsiest grip on sanity – the current one’s not so bad, and tonight was in fine drinking fettle. At around 9 p.m., just as The Editor wandered towards our merry band of idiots for the annual chat, the megamix switched to an Abba medley, which made the boss head to the dance floor so quick the straws were left spinning in our drinks.

  Watching The Editor throw a series of increasingly crazy shapes, we realized we’d escaped the drunken talk about How Are Things? and heaved a sigh of relief. Bridget had brought a collection of police contacts to the do, and, after initially trying to keep them as far away from Mike the Bike as possible, had given up, and was just sinking cocktails while chatting up a youthful Scotland Yard press officer.

  Valentine Lush, despite taking redundancy and going freelance the previous month, had wangled his way in and got stuck into what was left of the free bar alongside Porter and Cubby. Nancy was bellowing in my ear about her latest date, while I was drunkenly texting Cricket Boy in Leeds, who was demanding a picture of me in my low-cut tight red frock, which I had assured him made me look like Jessica Rabbit in a Wonderbra.

  Tania Banks, who had heard Cubby was considering early retirement for the sake of his liver and third marriage, had backed Bish into a corner where she was fluttering her eyelashes madly, and I listened with half an ear as she told him: ‘. . . but I really believe the most important role of any journalist is to investigate the scandals in our health service, I mean it’s a national institution. And have I told you how much I admired that spread you masterminded last week about the patients’ right to choose . . . ?’

  Bish, too seasoned a hand to believe that kind of bull or to be happy with someone stood between him and the bar, finished the dregs of his cocktail and grimaced. ‘Bluddy poncey drinks! There’s nowt wrong wi’ stout, yer know. Look, Banks, Cubby’s not resigned yet, so give it a rest and let me have one night a year where you don’t lick me flamin’ arse, all right?’

  With that he elbowed a deflated Banks aside, and I was so busy crowing about her putdown to Nancy that I failed to notice a new threat – Elliot.

  Once the worry of a chat with The Editor had receded, we’d all happily got smashed and forgotten that Evil Elliot, despite his tendency to snort cocaine off hookers’ bottoms in private, avoided alcohol. As such he was not only sober but, surrounded by drunken idiots, in an even worse mood than normal. The Editor can only sack you; Elliot can make your life a living hell. And he was homing in on Princess Flashy Knickers.

  She had been having a difficult few weeks with a tummy bug, an ex-boyfriend who wanted to try again, and a massive legal on a story which had come from a previously impeccable, but suddenly rubbish contact on the subject of a minor Royal’s fling with a pop singer. This had prompted a deluge of legal letters from barristers so strong that Crow the lawyer had been seen sucking his thumb. Princess did what every reporter in this situation does: she drowned her sorrows, thus making her situation magnificently worse.

  I saw her drunkenly lever herself up from a sofa and walk unsteadily towards the loos with a hand over her mouth. Thinking I should go after her and make sure she was puking in roughly the right direction, i.e. not on herself, I put my phone away, only to see Elliot zero in on her like a hungry leopard who’s just spotted an unattended fawn in a quiet bit of the Serengeti.

  ‘Sophia, is this wise?’ he hissed in her ear as he caught up with her at the side of the dance floor while Abba played for the fourth time that night, and where The Editor, by now inexplicably wearing a long red wig, was gyrating wildly.

  ‘Fnh?’ replied Princess, as her eyeballs corkscrewed wildly around her head. I was still several metres away, my feet apparently stuck in treacle as time slowed to a crawl, dozens of dancing bodies suddenly between us. There was no way I could get to her in time, but I could imagine what Elliot was saying as I watched his lips move and his eyes narrow as he bent towards the tottering Princess . . .

  ‘How much have you had to drink? Is this the way you should be behaving in the current economic climate, considering the likely size of the legal payout we will be making, thanks to you?’ he was probably questioning softly. ‘I would have thought that you would be doing all you could to appear professional, rather than an impersonation of Oliver Reed. It’s not the sort of thing The Editor would approve of, I’m sure.’

  Matt the Missile hoved into view, blocking me off from Princess as he said: ‘Would youuuuu liiiike a driiiiii . . .’

  Oh God, Matt, not now! Not now! Biting it back, I smiled, gripped his arm and firmly moved him aside as I told him I’d be right back, there was something I just had to sort out. Two metres away and closing, I saw Elliot lean in and deliver his coup de grâce stealthily into Princess’s ear, which I caught just as I arrived at her side.

  ‘There are going to be compulsory redundancies, you know. I’ve been asked to draw up a list.’

  Princess looked up at him sadly, like a puppy who knows it’s been bad. Her chest heaved, her face distended, and a stomach full of mini-sausages, mini-vol-au-vents, and a big pile of brown sludge that may once have been marshmallows dipped in chocolate sauce emptied itself in a technicolour fountain out of her mouth and splattered on to the front of Elliot’s pristine white shirt.

  All three of us stood and stared as the sludge dripped slowly and softly on to his shiny shoes. Behind me, I heard Porter and Buffy guffaw over the music, and Bish say: ‘Well, thank fook it weren’t me . . .’

  Princess lifted her teary face to Elliot’s burgeoning, red-eyed fury and said: ‘Oh.’ She hiccupped. ‘Sorry.’

  She put out a hand to wipe the mess away, but Elliot, horror writ on his face as if he were an agoraphobe dumped in the desert, shoved it away. He turned on his heel, put his nose in the air and strode, still dripping, out of the bar, as I led Princess to the toilets to clean herself up.

  Ten minutes later we came back out, and Bish stumbled over, clutching a bottle of light ale he’d managed to find, clapped Princess on the back and said: ‘Fooking well done, love! Bluddy brilliant, that were.’

  Almost inevitably everyone wanted to buy Princess a drink, ostensibly to make her feel better, but more likely to see if they could make it happen again, and she refused to go home on the grounds that, ‘I’d just be the drunk girl at the party if I leave early.’ I tried to chaperone her for a bit, but was too drunk myself, and gave up entirely after she took a swing at Buffy for throwing peanuts at her.

  Meanwhile Valentine and I re-enacted the entire closing sequence of Dirty Dancing, including the lifts, which he was very keen on until I realized he was not so much picking me up as just lifting me high enough to rub his face in my boobs.

  The Editor was still dancing, oblivious to the drama which had unfolded, along with a variety of secretaries and sub-editors. Even Porter, who never dances, had entered the fray, waving his arms over his head in-between spinning The Editor’s squealing secretary around in a series of dizzying loops.

  Nick the Wop finished his fourth bottle of red and his final audience with the junior snappers, and apparently decided it was time for the don to dance. The Marlon Brando of Fleet Street lumbered on to the floor to join us all, and then suddenly had his attention caught by an apparently new backside.

  He artfully manoeuvred himself until his groin was jiggling alongside this new pair of unknown buttocks, and I watched in fascinated horror as he pressed himself against the target, leering myopically and growling into the stranger’s ear: ‘Ah don’know who you ah . . . butchu ah fakkin’ boodiful.’

  The Editor, feeling a hairy hand about the waist and something unmentionable behind, stopped dancing, turned around, and fixed him with a steely glare.

  ‘Nick, isn’t it?’
The Editor said coldly, just as I grabbed the Wop’s arm and dragged him off the floor, while he demanded I tell him he hadn’t just done what he had. At 3 a.m. the bar threw what was left of us into the night; Mike the Bike went off to a rave in Highgate, while Nancy and Banks shared a cab home. The Wop wandered into the night singing what he thought was something by The Three Tenors, and an almost-dead Princess finally agreed that it was time for her to go home in a taxi. Bridge, Porter, Bish, Buff and I tried to find a bar but failed, and then, since we were shorn of the most troublesome members of our little band, one of the barmen let us back in for a bottle of port and the final jelly baby while we waited for minicabs to arrive.

  The next morning the newsroom was silent apart from the occasional groan and the rustle of greaseproof around hot bacon sandwiches, coupled with the hushed concentration required to apply brown sauce to bread and slurp tea. Even Bish was quiet for once, although traces of marker pen could still be seen on his redder-than-usual forehead.

  Porter cleared his throat. ‘Why do my knees hurt?’ he asked the world at large.

  ‘You were dancing on them for an hour,’ I replied, in my usual role of being the only reporter with a perfect drinking memory. ‘You thought The Editor’s secretary was a bit short for you, and told her so, then pretended you were a dwarf.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Porter. ‘Did she laugh?’

  ‘Eventually,’ I told him.

  Just then Princess arrived at her desk, wearing the previous night’s tight black minidress and a shamefaced expression.

  ‘Who have you been up to?’ demanded Nancy, before Princess shushed her, grabbed her clothes from the previous day, and staggered to the toilets to change and scrub up. We all exchanged looks.

  ‘Who saw her last?’ asked Bridget.

  Porter replied: ‘She was at the bar with the Bike when they threw us out.’

  Buff chipped in: ‘I saw her outside when we were trying to find a cab.’

  ‘I saw her get in a taxi with Jock,’ interjected Tania Banks, primly. ‘But isn’t he married?’

  ‘Ah, shit,’ said Bridget.

  Princess spent the rest of the day hiding behind her pride, refusing to answer questions, avoiding Elliot, and scuttling off to the corridor to make calls on her mobile. Jock’s a family man, so it’s a surprise anything like that happened, although Princess insisted she’d woken up with her clothes on. I suppose it’s a tradition at Christmas parties.

  We’ve all done things we’d like to erase – there’s a sizable chunk of me which wishes Twatface had never darkened my door – but whatever we are today it’s as a product of all those yesterdays, a sum of our parties if you like. They should be the foundations you stand on, not the mistaken beliefs that keep you down in your hole.

  They say that some things never change, and it’s often a waste of energy trying to stop the waves, whether it’s vomit at the Christmas party or the flood washing away what’s left of your marriage.

  But sometimes, very rarely, things do alter. The tide of faith goes in as well as out, and occasionally brings with it some driftwood or a Cricket Boy you can cling to or do something useful with – like build a bridge, and get over it.

  DAY TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR

  THAT’S it; I declare defeat. I am over, broken, empty, finished, done. I woke up this morning feeling as spent and faded as a tattered five-pound note that’s been passed around between too many grimy hands.

  And no, before you jump to conclusions, it’s not just as a result of having seven Christmas parties, lunches and/or dinners in eight days, too much wine and not enough fresh fruit; nor is it related to the festive feeling of gloom I always get at this time of year, when I realize I’ve not done very much in the previous twelve months, and that Christmas, these days, just bores me rigid. This time it is down, purely and simply, to one thing: seven solid, pointless months of Twatface and his unending twattery.

  The initial screaming pain which stabbed through me day and night has not gone. It’s still there, down at the bottom of my heart, echoing sadly. It is now being suffocated by layers of worry, anxiety, hatred, debt, angst, self-loathing and paranoia. If someone says, ‘Anyway, how are you doing? You know, with things?’ I can’t even summon up the righteous indignation which has kept me upright this far. My outrage has run out of steam, leaving me becalmed on a featureless ocean where bugger all happens, and every day, when it dawns, seems the same as the last.

  After spending my last grain of effort on doing that deal with Twatface for me to keep the house, I thought that maybe we’d forced through the last logjam of the divorce and we could get the decree absolute, set each other free and get our lives back again. But he changed his mind after talking to his lawyer, who has in turn peppered my giggling solicitor, Maurice, with a series of demands with which I must comply before Twatface agrees the financial settlement – the final chain still tying us together, and which, until it is cut, is choking both of us slowly to death.

  First he demanded I pay £500 for a survey to verify the value of the house, or he wouldn’t agree the deal. I told him to fuck off. Then he said he’d bought a sports car, and was broke, so couldn’t pay half of the survey, and again I told him to fuck off. Then he insisted on half a dozen estate agent valuations, or he wouldn’t agree the deal. I sent him some from three months earlier, and he said they were too old and he wouldn’t agree the deal. I didn’t even bother swearing at that, just sighed down the phone to Maurice, who said: ‘I’ll tell him to fuck off, shall I?’

  And now here I sit, close to evaporating in despair as sprawled out before me is something called a ‘financial disclosure form’. In these unpleasant pages I am expected to map out, via tax codes and pension lump sums and twelve months of payslips and bank statements, six years of my life, so that a court can weigh up all the monies and agree that what the two parties have already decided is reasonable. I hate figures and forms at the best of times, but a big pile of things I just don’t understand about Expected Total Outfalls and Cash Equivalent Transfer Values and Taxable Brackets leaves me reeling.

  This is my marriage – my longest-ever relationship – something built on feelings, which now all comes down, in the end, to bits of paper and boxes to fill in. Where’s the bit that says, ‘How are you?’

  Just reading this form was enough to make me want to slash my wrists. The only thing that sustained me through the deeply unpleasant task was the knowledge that Twatface was infinitely worse at this kind of thing than me, and was bound to be making a hash of it.

  How did it get to the point where the interaction of two human beings over the years, their tears and joys and plans and hopes and love and hatred, could be boiled down to bits of paper they can shove in a drawer and forget about? I shouldn’t have been stapling tax statements from my savings accounts to this form, it should have been photocopied love letters he addressed to ‘The Most Beautiful Girl In The World’, the beer mat I kept from the bar we had our first date in, and photographs of holidays and days out and picnics in Richmond Park. That’s what it all meant, that’s what it was about – not pensions and the hire-purchase on my car, for Pete’s sake.

  I’d put this form off for weeks, and after struggling with its heartlessness for an hour, I rang my mum for a weep. ‘You’ll just have to get your head down,’ she said. ‘It has to be done.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but it’s wrong,’ I sniffled. ‘So wrong it makes me want to put my foot through the wall. It’s all anodyne, polite, financial crap when what we should really be doing is each saying what went wrong, so that someone tells us off and we learn not to do it again.’

  ‘Well, after everything he’s done to you he should have to pay,’ said ever-loyal Mum. ‘Is there no back page or something where you can get things off your chest, at least?’

  I thumbed through the obscene, bald pages, full of words I didn’t like. ‘There’s one here . . . it says, “Bad behaviour by the other party will only be taken into account in very exceptional circumstances
when deciding how assets should be shared.”’

  ‘Well, he was horrible. That counts,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Yes, but I think they mean if he tried to kill you, or ate a baby. He was a git, but he wasn’t Idi Amin,’ I pointed out. ‘I could probably write something. Do you think I should?’

  ‘Do it,’ said Mum.

  So I sat and wrote and rewrote for hours and hours, and tore up and sweated blood and then wrote again, until I had something which I felt explained eloquently what had happened to my world.

  Maybe Twatface will never see it, no doubt the judge will never read it, but I feel better for writing it and it means that somewhere in a court file there will be a record of what really happened to my marriage and the man I loved, once.

  It ended like this: ‘In law, as the only spouse to have been arrested, I am the only one to have done anything wrong, and our divorce, despite his admission of adultery, is officially “no fault”. But I want the record to show that morally and in every other sense this marriage ended principally as a result of his behaviour; that I worked my hardest in the best way I knew how to help him and to make the marriage work; and that my decision to seek a divorce was taken with a great deal of regret for the loss of the man that he used to be. I have no right in law to ask for anything by way of damages for the loss I have suffered, or recompense for the mistrust and lack of self-confidence he has left me with. I have no right even to ask for an apology. But in these respects the law is wrong.’

  Which is really so much teeth-gnashing; pointless, worthless and likely just to make you ache unhappily. But I’m a journalist, and if there’s one thing that every hack holds close to their heart, it’s the foolish belief that if they write something down someone, somewhere, will take note. So I stapled my missive to the form and posted it back to Maurice, and there was a kind of satisfaction in setting it down, in black and white, so it sat in the court’s archives. Maybe in a hundred years’ time a researcher would come across it, and think, ‘God, what a twat! Why’d she marry him?’