by Carmen Reid
Her hands were on her hips and she realized how important this was to her. She needed his support here, she needed him to see it from her point of view too and not always side with his daughters.
‘I told her we didn’t like it, but she tried to force us, Dad,’ Mel, really riled now, shouted out.
Nettie, who had quietened down to listen to the argument, broke out into fresh wails, which sounded entirely unconvincing to Gwen.
Simon took a breath as he considered this moment. It was the kind of domestic scene he’d come back to far too often at the tail end of his marriage. He knew if he wasn’t very careful he could have Gwen weeping in the bedroom that she never wanted to see him again and why had she got involved in the first place. But he also realized that Mel wanted him to take a stand, maybe saw it as a simple, childish black and white choice – me or Gwen – and if he didn’t do it the right way, she would be deeply hurt.
He was anxious to learn from his past mistakes, but just wasn’t sure how to. Jo and now Gwen seemed to expect a level of domestic involvement from him that he hadn’t been prepared for. He didn’t know how to handle these tense little disputes, he didn’t really care if Nettie ate mashed potato or not, whether or not Mel had been cheeky to Gwen. Why couldn’t everyone just calm down and get along? If he thought back to his own childhood, he had no recollection of his parents being caught up in these fearsome debates. He and his brother had obeyed, his mother had just ‘got on’ with things, his father had come home from work, drunk a double gin and tonic while watching the news and been pleasant to everyone almost all the time.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said carefully, although he knew perfectly well not one bit of this was his fault. . . but then again, maybe it was all his fault. He was the one who’d been called to work unexpectedly, he was the one who’d asked his girlfriend, inexperienced in childcare, to cover for him, he was the one who had agreed to let his marriage end, who had assumed he could somehow look after his daughters by himself, at least for three days in the week.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘You poor old things, getting all het up.’ And he meant them all. He wasn’t going to take sides. Best to get everyone to calm down.
‘Gwen, why don’t you have a break? Take a shower if you like or something and I’ll sort the supper out. We’ll eat some of the things Gwen made and we’ll get some other things out of the fridge. Won’t we?’
For a moment, neither Mel nor Gwen looked convinced by this. He held his breath, anxious that Gwen would demand an apology and that he would be negotiating the most horrible stand-off between the woman he was seriously thinking about falling in love with and his seven-going-on-seventeen eldest daughter, who he knew beyond a doubt he loved more than anyone else in the world, apart from her little sister.
But after a long moment, Gwen decided to back away and take up the offer of a break: ‘OK then,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a bath and get some of this potato off my chest,’ and with a swivel of her heel she was out of the room.
‘Right!’ he rallied his girls. ‘Fish fingers, mmmm delicious, let’s eat some of those and then see what’s for pudding.’
‘I sorry Daddy,’ Nettie offered.
‘Good,’ he told her. ‘We’ll tell Gwen that when she comes back.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Porsche drivers are more likely to cheat on their wives than men who own other car brands . . . A total of 49% of male Porsche drivers admitted to adultery.
Gewis market research agency
Saturday: 7.20 p.m.
The small and shabby old Swan pub, a world away from the glossy wine bars and other drinking ‘venues’ that surrounded the newspaper offices, was the bolthole of choice for newsroom refugees on Saturday night.
The Swan had good old swirly carpet, sticky nicotine-tinged gloss paint on the walls and a fierce landlady with a terrifying cleavage. The pub was probably kept in business by the Friday and Saturday night drinking habits of the entire news group.
In the course of a long and frantic afternoon at her desk, Jo had filed her Savannah Tyler exclusive, her Quintet damage warning story – which came complete with three tragic interviews, including the Townells – and, perhaps most important of all to her, her story about the leak of an antiquated whooping cough strain from the Wolff-Meyer laboratory, which had made a cluster of already vaccinated children dangerously ill.
It counted as one of the best weeks of her career, but she didn’t feel happy or elated. She was so wound up that she was seeking solace in a series of vodka and tonics in the rowdy bar, which was already filling up with other reporters.
The only story that was definitely, absolutely 100 per cent running was the Savannah piece. She’d seen that laid out, headline, picture and all. The other stories were still, after 7 p.m. on press day, ‘with the lawyers’.
Wolff-Meyer had finally contacted her to say they would only make a response via their legal team to the newspaper’s legal team. Spikey and possibly the group editor were involved. She’d seen them bobbing in and out of the lawyers’ office all evening.
‘It’s out of your hands,’ Jeff had told her. ‘Go to the Swan, have a drink, calm down, I’ll come and tell you when I know what’s happening.’ That had been over an hour ago now.
She could see Vince coming back in holding printouts of the first edition front page in his hands. He handed them out magnanimously around the bar.
‘No!’ The Swan’s landlady was gawping at the main headline. It was Vince’s child abuse allegation.
‘Not him! I don’t believe it. He’s got kids of his own. That’s terrible!’
‘You can go ahead and believe it . . . every single word. He’ll be officially charged next week.’
‘No!’
Unfortunately, Vince was coming over to stand beside Jo and she was going to have to force herself to take a look at the printout.
‘Savannah’s here,’ he told her. ‘Sidebar obviously,’ which meant it was the garnish at the side of the page, the words that framed his brilliant scoop.
‘Another drink?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’ she replied, knowing perfectly well how many reasons there were why not. She was not far away from sloshed, she had already forfeited the right to drive her car home, so would have to come back to work tomorrow to pick it up . . . She might need to have another conversation with the lawyers or her editor and she wasn’t going to be in a fit state to do it. Not to mention the fact that she’d used up her week’s entire alcohol unit allowance round about Tuesday: ‘Vodka and tonic, please.’
She heard him ordering it and adding: ‘Double please, it’s Saturday night after all.’
Turning back to Aidan and Declan, she tried to remember what they were all talking about before Vince and his front page appeared.
‘I really miss her, I really, really do. No one in newspapers is happily married, I can tell you that for free,’ Declan was informing Aidan.
Oh yes – Declan’s divorce. How could she forget?
‘Are they, Jo?’ Declan added, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘Jo’s just like me. Divorcing. Husband couldn’t take the paper pressure any more, could he?’
‘Erm, I think it was maybe a little more complicated than that. Anyway, don’t scare Aidan. He’s not even interested in marriage yet, he certainly doesn’t want to talk about divorce.’
‘And then there’s Jeff,’ Declan added.
‘Jeff’s been married for twenty-odd years,’ Jo smiled. ‘He’s the exception to your rule.’
Declan shook his head vigorously, causing the Guinness level to swing dangerously in his glass.
‘He’s moved out. The missus as well. They’re going to put the house on the market.’
Jo couldn’t believe what she was hearing: ‘Jeff’s splitting up from his wife?’ She wanted to be sure she’d heard this right.
Declan nodded.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know.’
‘W
hen did it happen? He hasn’t said a thing.’ Although obviously he had; he just hadn’t said a thing to her. Clearly this was what he had been planning to talk to her about tonight. Maybe he wanted to ask advice, or just have her shoulder to cry on.
‘I think it’s all come to a head this week. He’s been staying in a hotel since Wednesday anyway.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ was all the reply Jo could make to this.
‘So has your mystery techie been revealed, then?’ Declan wanted to know.
Jo, head still reeling with the Jeff news, nevertheless had an answer for this question: ‘Bexley Computing Systems Ltd. I had a tip, the tech department followed it up and it checked out. Don’t ask me how. The company won’t admit anything and apparently the program that was shuttling my emails about has been dismantled, but I’m getting a new super-secure desktop and laptop, courtesy of Mr de Groote.’
Jo didn’t mention the other mystery that the techies had solved for her: the anonymous emailer.
‘Got any good friends at the Green Party?’ head technician Manzour had asked her.
‘Lots,’ she’d told him.
‘The noreply@yahoo messages are generated by a sort of subsidiary of a Green Party chat list. Someone’s been quite clever to suss this out and get messages to you through it.’
Savannah: she had guessed immediately. Savannah had led her directly to the Wolff-Meyer story.
‘What’s the news on your stories this week?’ Declan asked next. ‘Are they all going in?’
Jo double-checked the time on her watch then fished in her handbag for her mobile. They really should know by now.
As she speed-dialled the newsdesk, she glanced round the bar and saw Jeff walking in. She clicked the phone off and waved him over.
‘How much have you had?’ was his first question.
‘Never mind that. Just tell me what’s happening.’
1 just want to know if I should get you another, or if you’re already dangerous.’
‘I do know I’m not in any state for jokes,’ she told him.
‘I’m sorry. Look -’ he took a glance at Declan, Aidan, Vince and the other professional nosy parkers all subtly pretending they weren’t trying to overhear this conversation – ‘Let’s go to a quiet corner.’
She picked up her bag, slid off the bar stool and followed Jeff to the decidedly unglamorous space at the top of the toilet stairs where the cigarette machine was parked. She had a bad feeling about this. He didn’t need to tell her things had gone tits up, he was here to tell her how.
Jeff fished in his pockets for change and began to feed coins into the machine.
‘We are going to run the Quintet damage stories: the twins, the other baby, all the parents and your Canadian case. OK? That’s all running. Even better than that, it’s running with a full admission from Wolff-Meyer that Quintet has not been trialled “extensively” and more research on the updated formulations should have been done and will be done.
‘They have also gone as far as to admit to “a possibility” of related brain damage in certain, extremely rare cases. So, I think you’ll agree that’s a major breakthrough. Well done.’
She managed a smile at this, despite the horrible sinking feeling building in the pit of her stomach.
Jeff had the packet of cigarettes in his hand now and was tearing off the cellophane wrapper.
‘In the Wolff-Meyer statement which now accompanies your story – headlined on the second edition front page, by the way, and all over pages six and seven – Savannah’s a full page three, Vince’s is one, four and five. But anyway, in the statement, Wolff-Meyer say they are developing a screening questionnaire to be given to every parent bringing their child for vaccination to try and pinpoint the rare children who could be damaged and prevent them from having the injection. They have asked for full information about your cases . . .’
‘Well, they can buy the frigging paper then,’ she interrupted.
‘And they insist they will enter into talks with any concerned families.’
Jeff paused to shake a cigarette out of the packet and as he held up the flame of his lighter to the tip, she was shocked to see that his wedding ring, the fat gold band which was as much a part of his hand as his solid fingers, was gone.
Since when?! How had she not noticed this crisis going on in his life?
‘But. . .’ He took a drag and turned to blow the smoke away from her.
‘But?’ she repeated. ‘There’s a very big but, isn’t there? You’ve struck a deal? The whooping cough story gets spiked, in return for all this, doesn’t it?’
He nodded slowly and took another drag.
‘They are not prepared to admit to any liability in the whooping cough outbreak. They are extremely, extremely pissed off about that. They have promised severe litigation action against the slightest suggestion that this has happened, that it’s their fault or in any way to do with them. They are overly interested in where our information comes from . . .’
‘I bet they are. Didn’t you tell them to have a look through the emails they’ve stolen from my computer?’
‘Our lawyers did put to their lawyers that we had evidence of espionage.’ Jo suddenly felt her heart squeeze. What if Wolff-Meyer likewise had evidence of espionage?
‘They said they would conduct an internal inquiry into the matter. We helpfully provided them with the name of Bexley Computer Systems Ltd, as provided by our technical department.’
‘Oh good.’
‘Their lawyers told our lawyers – under legal privilege, so no chance of us reporting it – that Wolff-Meyer are in private talks with the Theroux family and all the other whooping cough victims. Also, that the Department of Health has been issued with guidelines to quarantine cases, and all those in contact with those cases have been given a special vaccine by Wolff-Meyer. There haven’t been any fresh cases for two days, so they are hoping the illness has been contained.
‘But no, there’s no way we can run that story,’ he added. ‘We don’t have the evidence in black and white. So we can’t go with it unless we want to feel the force of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit up our arses.’
For a long minute, Jo couldn’t reply. This was how it was sometimes. The best ones got away. The paper lived to fight another day.
Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. Didn’t mean that she wasn’t burning with a furious sense of injustice, tears pricking at the back of her eyes. But then, that was just a bit of selfish pride really, wasn’t it?
All the whooping cough families would be cared for and compensated privately.
But then again . . . she would store all their names and addresses and maybe pay them a follow-up visit in a few months. Maybe they would want to talk about this in the future. Maybe it would all come out in the end, despite the best fire-fighting efforts of the pharma co.
And meanwhile, wasn’t the Quintet promise a victory? Parents would be fully informed and children would be screened. There would be even less chance of what had happened to Ellis, Ben, Darren, Casey and others happening to anyone else’s precious child.
She squeezed at her nose to try and make the tears that were threatening go away.
‘We all fought your corner,’ Jeff told her. ‘Spikey’s very proud of you. Obviously he doesn’t know anything about your Friday night computer hacking mission and never will.’
‘Thanks,’ she said finally, tears successfully squeezed. ‘I think maybe I’ll have a cigarette, if that would be OK with you.’
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘I don’t think you should. Don’t let the buggers bring you down.’
‘What? To your level?’
‘Exactly.’ He laughed at this.
‘Your wedding ring?’ she asked. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice . . . and you didn’t say anything . . .’
‘Yup,’ he broke in, then sucked in another fresh lungful of smoke. ‘Come and sit down with me. I’ve been wanting to speak to you about that.’
At a small table in one of the quieter corners of the bar, Jeff lined up two drinks for them.
‘Something soft . . . orange juice for me,’ Jo had insisted.
Then he began the story of how he and Frances, his wife of nineteen years, the mother of his two teenage sons, had come to the decision to separate. ‘I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it would have been our 20th wedding anniversary this summer,’ was one of his admissions. ‘Every so often we’d talk about the anniversary and have these open-ended discussions about what we’d do to celebrate it. Were we going to have a big party? Go on a second honeymoon?
‘The more we talked about it, the more time we seemed to spend wondering if we were happy . . . wondering where all the years had gone . . . wondering if just another twenty years of the same was ahead for us.
‘I don’t think I was as bothered about it as Frances. She’s been really down for months. She went off to Majorca on her own in April, said she was looking into property over there, started talking about selling up, moving . . . early retirement!’ Jeff spluttered at this. ‘Early fucking retirement,’ he repeated. ‘I’m 46, not 60!
‘I know my hours are long, I know I’ve never spent as much time with my family as they would like me to have – but does anyone?’
Jo had to shake her head.
‘I’ve been as good a dad and as good a husband as I could be. I don’t have any regrets about that.’
Emphatically he added, ‘I am not leaving my job.’
He picked up his beer glass and took a drink.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘if Frances had me with her in Majorca for 24 hours a day, we’d be divorced within a week.’
Jo’s image of Frances filled her head. She’d met Jeff’s wife at office parties and for the occasional chat in the car park when Frances had arrived to collect a three-drinks-down Jeff from the pub and drive him home to what Jo had always imagined would be a big, comfortable, conservatory-clad home in the outer reaches of north London. Jeff’s wife was a glamorous forty-something with long blond hair, a tan, a taste for suede, heels and pink nails. She worked in interior design, drove a stonking big suburb-mobile, smelled exotic, joked, gossiped and chatted constantly, doted on her teenage boys and had always seemed to be warm, loving, caring and super-tolerant of Jeff and his all-demanding job.