Up All Night

by Carmen Reid

  ‘So what vaccine damage will they pay out for?’

  ‘As far as I can see, if your child has an epileptic fit, a seizure, or is irreversibly brain damaged on the day of the injection. That’s fine, you can collect your money. But as soon as some time has gone by, they want to wriggle out of it as quickly as possible. No doctor at that hospital wants to put themselves on the line for us. Testify in court? Challenge the official line? I don’t think so. Far easier if they write it off as “one of those things”, “hereditary”, whatever. They’ve no proof it was the vaccine, but they’ve no proof of any other explanation either, as far as I can see.’

  Jo nodded and took notes at speed.

  She could hear Samantha talking to the boys as she made lunch for them in the kitchen while Mick gave her his side of the story.

  Finally, after what felt like a slightly awkward break in the conversation, he leaned over and said in a low voice: ‘Jayne didn’t say anything about how much you’d be paying us for this article.’

  Oh. The tricky moment. Of course newspapers paid for stories. But not for all stories. And they only paid big when they had to. In fact, some papers even paid reporters a bonus for big, free stories.

  Jo knew any payment for this story would come straight out of her own small departmental budget. The one which had to cover freelance photographers, news agency stories, the occasional expensive scoop, expenses and so on.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to pay anything for this interview, to be honest, Mick,’ Jo said as nicely as she could. ‘I thought you wanted to speak to us to highlight your situation, see if we can get some action on your sons’ behalf.’ Then the killer line: ‘Would you like us to make a donation to Jayne’s support group on your behalf?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking of money that would go towards the boys’ care more directly.’

  Of course he was . . . of course.

  ‘Will you leave it with me, I’ll phone you back and we can talk about that,’ Jo said, to draw this matter to a close.

  ‘We’re hoping to go really big on the whole vaccination issue this week,’ she went on, hoping to appeal to his altruistic instincts. ‘I’m sure you know about the whooping cough outbreak at the moment. Parents are really worried about all the issues surrounding this new injection.’

  ‘It’s just,’ he countered, ‘we’ve never gone to the papers before. Twins being damaged by a new vaccination, I thought that would be a big story for you. I thought that would be worth something. I’m not sure if I want to go through all this hassle and publicity without getting something for the boys out of it.’

  Uh oh. This was starting to look a little sticky. It crossed Jo’s mind that maybe he’d been talking to another newspaper, or had sounded out someone who claimed to know the papers.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to do something for you all. Will you leave it with me for a day or two?’ she asked him again. It was always best to leave hard money negotiations until as late in the week as possible. When there wasn’t time for anyone to back out.

  ‘I’d love to meet your boys properly,’ Jo said, wanting to move on quickly. As she stood up, she was relieved to see the photographer’s car pulling up outside the house.

  Chapter Seven

  A grandmother aged 59 has spoken of her happiness after giving birth to a second test-tube baby.

  Daily Mail

  Wednesday: 4.15 p.m.

  The screen was blurring in front of Jo’s eyes. No escaping the fact that her tired eyes needed her to put on her reading glasses. Reading glasses! Reading glasses? Just not what you were supposed to have at 35. She’d never told Marcus about the reading glasses, had she?

  Her mind wandered briefly to Demi Moore. Did Demi Moore have reading glasses? Or had she gone for laser eye surgery? Since everything else about her had been surgically corrected and perfected, surely her eyeballs must have been ‘done’ too?

  There had been a rash of emails to come back to. Press releases, press releases, she had scanned and deleted many:

  New Rural Recycling initiative launched . . .

  Small cars not as safe for pedestrians . . .

  Hospital waiting lists up . . .

  Then Green Tony with a few lines about how he’d put their idea to Savannah and she was thinking about it.

  Bugger was the only word for this. Jo really didn’t want to doorstep Savannah. It wasn’t just that her taste for badgering people on their doorsteps seemed to have diminished over the years. She admired Savannah too much. She was somehow hoping to make Savannah into a top contact one day. Turning up on her doorstep wasn’t exactly going to be the start of a beautiful relationship, was it?

  What else was in this list? Jayne asking how the interview with the Townells had gone. A few lines from parents she’d interviewed in the past asking if she would like them to comment on the current outbreak. New research from a meticulous, reliable scientist she’d used before about pollution causing a huge rise in brain diseases. Nice one. She transferred that to the holding file and sent a return message to ask if the story had gone out to everyone yet or could they hold it for her exclusive until Sunday?

  There was an email in her basket from noreply@yahoousergroups.com, an email address she didn’t recognize. She double-clicked to open: It was an early news report about the whooping cough outbreak that looked as if it had come from the BBC’s website. It named the first official whooping cough case, a girl from Bedfordshire who’d been so severely affected, she’d been hospitalized.

  A quote from the child’s father, Morris Theroux, was included: ‘I had whooping cough when I was young and I don’t remember it as being more than a week of coughing and feeling hot and bothered, it certainly wasn’t anything like this. We can’t understand how this has happened because Katie had been vaccinated.’

  Underneath in a different typeface were the words: ‘Not all cases of whooping cough are the same.’

  And that was it, nothing else. Jo typed out a reply: ‘Hello, who are you? Would you like to tell me more?’ and sent it, but as she’d suspected, it just came back with a Delivery Failed notice.

  No time to worry about that. Her desk phone and her mobile began to ring at the same moment. She asked Dominique to deal with the desk call and answered her mobile.

  The receptionist from the private clinic where she was planning to have Annette injected against whooping cough was on the phone, offering an appointment in two weeks’ time.

  ‘You really haven’t got anything before that?’ Jo pleaded.

  ‘If you can come at fairly short notice, we can put you on standby for a cancellation.’

  ‘Well, OK, if that’s the best you can do,’ she answered, knowing Simon was going to freak out at this. Two weeks!

  Dominique was looking quite animated at the call she was taking, scribbling down lots of notes.

  ‘I’m meeting my Oxford Green pal tonight—’ Aidan was up at the side of her desk. ‘I think he’s going to be quite useful. He’s in with them all without being too tied up in party politics. There are maybe some things he could find out for us, maybe some things he’d like to leak, that’s what I’m hoping.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Jo wasn’t really very comfortable with this. She had her own relationship with the Green Party to maintain, she didn’t want Aidan stumbling in and upsetting things – or nicking any exclusive stories, come to think of it. But then, she pulled herself up, this was a free country . . . free-ish anyway. There must be plenty of other hacks Green Tony cosied up to as well.

  Aidan was leaning over Jo’s desk in a way that made her push her chair back slightly from him. He was dressed in one of his soft, tactile corduroy suits that matched his soft, chocolaty hair which flopped constantly to one side, so he was always pushing it back. His face was creamy pale, punctuated by a large mole in the middle of one cheek, and he had high cheekbones and naturally arched eyebrows. He was clever, very smart, very well read, idealistic in the way almost everyone who becomes a reporter is to start with.
And Jo knew perfectly well that she was just a little bit too taken with him.

  Sometimes she wondered if Jeff had assigned Aidan to her department as a sort of morality test; if there was a bet on somewhere in the executive upper echelons, odds on as to whether or not she was going to do what certain male department heads had been doing for decades: seduce the fresh-faced new talent on the news floor.

  Of course, if she didn’t have any shame, or morals, or sense of decency, she could take Aidan under her wing, devote some special attention to him . . . She looked up from his expressive hands to the smooth face.

  ‘Aidan,’ she began. He was looking at her just a little too intently, probably about to take notes on what she was going to say to him. ‘Journalism isn’t just about stitching people up. You can make friends, you can do stories on people you admire and with people you admire, just as much as you can do stories on people you’re trying to expose.’ She gave him a smile. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that. Don’t go looking for trouble that isn’t there. That’s what I mean. You can get pretty far as a journalist that people like, that people trust. It’s not all Watergate – you know: Bernstein and Woodward – conspiracies, secrets and cover-ups.’

  He smiled back, a charming dimply, arched-eyebrow thing. So she quickly picked up the phone and dialled the first number to come into her head, to make sure he went away, stopped leaning over her like that.

  There was a whole list of contacts she phoned at least once a fortnight to check on, to make sure nothing had happened or was about to break that she didn’t know about. She was already behind on this week’s calls.

  ‘Hi, Dr Wilson’s office, please.’

  ‘Putting you through.’

  ‘Is Dr Wilson about?’

  ‘Who’s calling please?’ She recognized the voice of Ted’s secretary.

  ‘It’s Joanne Dundas.’ Her married name and alias.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s available.’

  After a moment or two she heard Ted’s warm hello.

  ‘I’ve nothing for you yet,’ he added. ‘God, woman, leave me alone for a week or two and maybe I’ll get some work done.’

  ‘Nothing! Are you sure, not even the slightest little preliminary indication?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But how am I going to make sure you come to me first if I don’t phone you up regularly and flirt?’

  ‘I will come to you with a lovely big leak, you have my word, you know you do. But you can flirt away anyway.’

  ‘Oh Ted. But how can I be sure your partners won’t be giving some lovely big leaks to someone else?’

  ‘Leave them to me.’

  ‘So when, can I pencil in a date?’

  ‘For dinner?’ he asked, almost certain that wasn’t what she meant.

  ‘No, for leaks. Dinner! Pah. I’m far too busy to have dinner, even in my own home.’

  ‘No time for dinners. Single life can’t be much fun for you then, can it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. Honestly. We will do drinks soon, OK. Meanwhile should I keep my phone in my handbag? Should I hold it 12 inches from my head when I’m talking to you? Or what’s your entirely off-the-record, unofficial advice?’

  Jeff was at her desk now, a big notepad in hand, ready to get an update on how the day’s stories were progressing.

  ‘You are absolutely outrageous and shameless. I’m not giving you anything yet. Not one word.’

  ‘Do your children have mobiles?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not telling,’ was his answer to this.

  So no word on the three-year-long, government-funded study into the long-term damage caused by mobile phones yet. . . But one day very soon. She was looking forward to that story. One night, after a very nice dinner and two bottles of decent wine, Ted had told her that he was expecting to break very bad news. Manufacturers might face radically altering the designs of their phones, having to put health, exposure and age restrictions on them and site all mobile phone masts well away from built-up areas.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw something flick past. Then again. What was that?

  She bent down, phone still against her ear. Flick. It was a wire poking out of her top drawer.

  What the hell was that attached to?

  ‘OK. Speak to you soon, Ted, take care.’

  She put out her hand to catch hold of it when it moved again, and she realized it was a long, straight tail.

  Her scream was tempered a little by the fact that she was on the phone and in the middle of a busy office.

  She tried to strangle the last of it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ted asked.

  Jeff’s face, as he stood on the other side of her desk, was the picture of concern. Aidan and Dominique had both turned to stare in her direction.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Jo managed. It’s a . . . it’s a . . . thing . . . in my drawer. I have to go.’

  ‘Are you sure? Are you really OK?’ Ted asked.

  ‘Yup, yup fine. Speak soon,’ she said, pointing frantically at the drawer, hoping Jeff would go and investigate, while she tried to move as quickly as she could round to the other side of her desk, stretching the receiver wire as tight as it would go.

  ‘Bye.’

  She put the phone down.

  ‘Jeff, there’s a frigging rat in my drawer!’ she burst out.

  Jeff didn’t waste any time, he pulled open the drawer and they both caught sight of the tail and the brownish-grey back legs of the rodent. Inside the drawer, a packet of nuts Jo had no recollection of bringing in, had been shredded to pieces.

  ‘Jeez,’ Jeff shut the drawer abruptly. ‘It’s a mouse,’ he said in an effort at consolation.

  ‘Don’t lie, it’s a fucking rat.’ Jo realized her hands were shaking. A rat. A rat’s tail and she’d tried to grab it. Aargh.

  Dominique was on her feet, Aidan was coming over to see and so were a few more interested parties.

  ‘It’s a young one, though,’ Jeff said, still looking at the drawer. He moved slowly round her desk, assessing the rat’s chances of escape. ‘Anyone got a big padded envelope?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no way, you are not rat-catching on my desk.’

  ‘Got any better suggestions?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to wait the month it’ll take janitoring or pest control to make it up here?’

  ‘No! Get the rat out! But I can’t look. I really can’t.’ This was horrible.

  Aidan, with a slightly incredulous look, handed Jeff a big brown envelope: ‘I don’t think it’s going to just hop into this, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Jeff, eyes fixed on the drawer. ‘I’ll have to stun it with something first.’

  A little crowd had gathered round, while Jo tried to back away from her desk as far as possible. She really did not want to see an agitated rat scampering out of her drawer and across the floor.

  Jeff armed himself with the nearly full 1.5-litre bottle of Evian on Jo’s desk and carefully opened the top drawer. About fifteen people had gathered round the desk now. There was the hush of amused suspense.

  ‘He’s not here any more,’ Jeff said in a low voice, slightly conscious that his authority over the newsroom was possibly at stake here. He slid the top drawer shut, opened the one beneath it then put his head down low to peer into the stacks of papers and files Jo had stashed in there.

  ‘Nope. OK, third and final attempt.’ He opened the last drawer with something of a flourish, paused for a split second, spied the rat and banged the water bottle down on it. Twice.

  A cheer erupted from the onlookers. Jeff put his hand into the drawer and pulled the animal out. He quickly stuffed it into the bag Aidan was holding out for him.

  ‘Is it dead?’ Jo wanted to know, feeling both horrified and impressed with Jeff’s hitherto unknown talent for rat-catching. She knew he was always calm under pressure, but this was a new level of grace under fire.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jeff replied.

  ‘What are you
going to do with it?’

  ‘I’ll go down to the back courtyard and let it go there. Either that, or find it a new home in Spikey’s office.’

  ‘Why are there rats in our desks?’

  ‘Because we leave food all over the place,’ Jeff replied. ‘Or maybe it’s because the accountants on floor five have still not pulled the plug on the cleaning contractors even though they were investigated by our own reporters and found to be not only useless, but employing illegal immigrants at half the minimum wage,’ he added. ‘Funny old world.’

  It was nearly 6.30 when Jo arrived at her friend Sue’s house. Sue Greer: former human resources director at a bank, now career mummy. She ran her home, her husband and her children with the love and smooth efficiency she had once channelled into her job. Every Wednesday and on other occasional emergencies, she looked after Jo’s daughters. Jo returned the favour most Mondays.

  Ringing the bell on the shiny red front door, Jo listened for Nettie’s shouts in the corridor.

  ‘Mummy!’ she heard. ‘Mummy’s here!’

  Then Sue was at the door – neat blond bob, comfy jeans and T-shirt – letting her in.

  ‘Hello, hi, how are you?’ Jo said. ‘And baby!’ She knelt down to scoop Nettie into her arms. ‘How are you?’

  Nettie leaned her face in for a kiss, then answered: ‘Fine,’ and wriggled out of her mother’s grasp so she could take another bite from the biscuit she was holding. It was a nubbly chocolate chip, unmistakably home-made. Once Jo was inside the house, she realized that the edible fragrance of fresh baking was wafting from the kitchen.

  ‘Smells gorgeous,’ she said, giving Sue a smile. ‘You’ve been busy?’

  ‘Everyone was starving,’ Sue explained. ‘After they’d eaten every single morsel I had in for supper, I thought I’d better make biscuits with Nettie. The others are upstairs, doing homework, pop star worship, Game Girl, all the usual stuff.’