Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  Charlie turned away and went back into the offices behind him in a hail of questions and flashing cameras.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Scarlett’s voice cracked. ‘What happened?’

  Carol gazed at her with thinly veiled fury.

  ‘Last night Charlie Morgan was in a video conference meeting with Ron Waters, the Republican senator. Morgan was sending him some data to support a point he was making, but he inadvertently sent him a message of an explicit sexual nature, clearly intended for someone else. The message also mentioned this newspaper by name. To add insult to injury, the message went on to outline how boring and stupid Morgan thought Waters was. Waters immediately reacted and exposed Morgan, who has, about an hour ago, admitted that he is having an affair with a journalist, the person for whom the message was intended. In addition, he has told the world who that journalist is.’

  Scarlett felt nauseous. Blood thundered in her ears. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be. Charlie would never do anything like that to her. He couldn’t, he loved her.

  ‘I took a chance on you, Scarlett. You are only twenty-six, very young to hold the position you did.’ Scarlett heard her use of the past tense and every fibre of her being prayed that this wasn’t happening.

  Carol went on, her voice icy, ‘I appointed you over others who have more experience, and who felt they deserved it more than you. I thought you had something, that’s why I convinced the board to take you on. I’m at a loss for words. How could you throw everything away, everything you’ve worked for, and more to the point, how could you have dragged us into this mess with you? We pride ourselves on the highest standards of journalistic integrity here at the Examiner. You have let us down, very badly. To have an affair with a politician for someone in your position is to relinquish all moral and professional authority.’

  Carol’s tone conveyed nothing but disgust. ’Your in-depth interviews with him that we printed have made us look as foolish and corrupt as you are. But to be involved with a married politician, especially one whose unique selling point is his position as a family man, something you wrote about with such empathy… words escape me, Scarlett. I’m so disappointed in you. I thought you were so much better than this. Get your things now, rather than coming back for them, and try to get away without the gathering press outside seeing you leave, though they are already circling the wagons.’

  She paused, and then added coldly, ‘And Scarlett, if you give any interviews about this I’ll drag you through every court in the country. Do I make myself clear?’

  Carol got up and without a backward glance left the room.

  ‘There she is! Scarlett! Scarlett, over here! Just turn around! C’mon Scarlett …’

  Scarlett emerged from the car and pushed her way up the steps to the front door of her brownstone, blinded by the incessant flashing of cameras as she pushed through the heaving mass of bodies. Every hack in New York was out in force, circling like vultures. News anchors smugly did their pieces on camera down the street. The fact that the target was one of their own had obviously made it even more tantalising for them. Many of them resented her growing profile, and felt she was too young and had come out of nowhere, so they were thrilled to see her crumble. No such thing as loyalty in this business, she thought, while trying to keep her face immobile.

  She fumbled for her keys in the bottom of her new Prada handbag as the reporters jostled and pushed to get closer to her. Her red hair was escaping from the chignon she had hastily tied in the car, and she could feel the make-up slide from her face as she began to sweat. Despite her best efforts to look calm and collected, she was cracking. She couldn’t find the damn key, and her hands began to shake badly as she gritted her teeth, determined not to cry, refusing to show any weakness. They’d love that. Not that anything could make this situation any worse, but to have her tear stained face splashed all over every tabloid and gossip show in town would be the final straw.

  ‘Come on Scarlett, just one shot. At least this way you get to look good!’ There was a collective cackle.

  Would she have been any different if it was one of them? If she was to be honest, probably not, except that salacious sex scandals were not really her thing. Mercifully, she finally found the key, and despite her shaking hands, managed on the third attempt to get it into the lock. She quickly slipped inside and slammed the heavy door shut, leaning her back against it, adjusting her eyes to the relative gloom of the hallway. Relief flooded through her. Everything was as she’d left it this morning. The highly polished mahogany staircase gleamed, its snow white carpet runner fluffily breaking the austerity of the architecture. The house smelled exactly as it had done, of lilies and cleanliness, an oasis of serenity.

  She went into the kitchen at the end of the hallway and immediately shut the blinds. Alone, in her new beautiful home, she disintegrated into wracking sobs. The strength that held her together for the past two hours suddenly drained out of her. The paintings, mirrors and everything else she had gathered so lovingly over the years were invisible to her now. That was it, it was all over. Her life was over. This just couldn’t be happening. That press conference playing over and over in her head.

  How could Charlie have hung her out to dry like that?

  Dreading what she was about to see, she typed ‘Charlie Morgan confesses all’ into YouTube. She watched in horror as he explained that he was a weak, foolish man who loved his family, and he deeply regretted his inappropriate liaison with the political correspondent Scarlett O’Hara.

  Facebook, Twitter and bloggers were already on the puns. Torturing herself, she scrolled through, “Charlie’s Scarlett Woman,” “Morgan really has Gone with the Wind,” “Frankly my dear.” It went on and on and on.

  Scarlett hated her name. She used to dread meeting new people and enduring their shocked expressions, the attempts to hide a smirk, or the all too common ‘did you know there was a movie...?’ When she met Charlie, he told her he wanted to be her Rhett Butler. She felt a sharp stab of pain at the memory. Normally anyone who would have said such a thing would have felt the sharp end of her tongue, but he was different. Even though he constantly joked and teased her about it, she forgave him. She forgave him everything, and then he betrayed her.

  Chapter 2

  Scarlett sat on her Roche-Dobois oatmeal sofa that had cost almost a month’s salary. She fought back the panic at the thought of her mortgage and credit card bills now that she was unemployed. She could hear the raucous laughter of the journalists outside the door. She longed for someone to help her, somewhere to go, but she realised that in recent years she had had no time to keep up friendships. She avoided her mother, and she had no other family. Charlie took up any spare time she had, waiting for him to call, or grasping precious moments with him. Without him and her job she had nothing, absolutely nothing. A feeling of hopelessness, something she had not felt for so long, came creeping back.

  She was drawn back to another time, another sofa, in a dingy run-down apartment in Yonkers. The familiar feelings of terror threatened to choke her as she remembered sitting on her mother’s lap, in the calm after the cops had picked her father up yet again. She could only have been four or five, trying with her little hands to stem the blood from a cut on her mother’s face or holding frozen peas to a swelling injury. She would say prayers to the many Catholic saints represented on the damp walls of the room, that her mother wouldn’t die. Lorena took her faith seriously, and the only thing that equalled her faith was her love of movies. She would tell Scarlett how she was named after the most beautiful woman in the world, and then, when she knew it was safe, her mother would draw out her old cookie tin from under the table and show her the pictures from her old movie magazines. To Scarlett, the names of Vivien Leigh, Fred Astaire and James Dean were as real as her mother and father. It was one of the many things about his wife that drove Dan O’Hara mad, and when he was mad he was terrifying.

  She remembered the titters from the other children a
nd the outrage from Sister Teresita in St. Peter and Paul’s Elementary when she announced that she was not, as was Catholic tradition, named after a saint, but instead after the most beautiful woman in the world.

  As she became a teenager, though, she learned to hate her name. The childhood innocence was laughed out of existence by bullies and teachers who jeered and mocked. She tried several times to shorten it and did everything she could to get a nickname, but nothing would stick. She was born Scarlett O’Hara and Scarlett O’Hara she was going to stay. She was teased mercilessly.

  Dan O’Hara, Scarlett’s father, was regularly to be seen staggering drunk around the streets of Yonkers, bellowing abuse at passers-by and scaring kids. He was from County Mayo in Ireland and had come over to the United States as a young man full of dreams and ambition. Life was going well for a time, and he met and married Lorena, a fragile hot house flower from Georgia, whose southern charm beguiled the young Irishman. But things soon turned sour. Dan was a charmer, good looking and smart, but work-shy. He always wanted to make a fast buck but never did any actual work. He had a friend who worked in construction who offered him job after job, but Dan would scoff, claiming that manual labour was for ‘fellas too thick to do anything else.’ He always had a scheme going, some kind of a scam to get rich quick. He convinced several people to invest in his so-called business opportunities, and to a man they lost their shirts on them. Eventually, he was untouchable and started drinking. He was unwelcome in the more respectable establishments, so he hung out in grotty, smelly bars, and over time, he was even barred from them.

  The blame for his failure was never his own. No, it was Lorena and Scarlett’s fault. They were holding him back, he used to snarl. If he didn’t have them hanging on to him, he’d be making a fortune out west. His disappointment with life was expressed by using his beautiful young wife as a punch-bag. Scarlett had hated him.

  When Lorena opened the door to the police, the winter Scarlett was fifteen, they told her Dan had walked in front of a truck. She tried her best to compose her face into that of a grief-stricken widow. Scarlett remembered Sergeant Kane, who’d been coming to arrest Dan for all sorts of offences over the years, not the least battering his family, sending the other officer to wait in the car. He sat down in the tiny living room and said, ‘That’s it Lorena. You and Scarlett are safe now. It’s over.’

  Lorena looked as if a huge weight had been removed from her, though she was in a daze of disbelief. Scarlett remembered Sergeant Kane explaining how her father had been killed instantly; he would have known no pain. Witnesses said he seemed to be very unsteady on his feet as the truck approached.

  ‘What kind of truck was it?’ she asked, only mildly curious.

  The sergeant tried his best to remain composed, professional, but he’d known this misfortunate family a long time. Though he normally hated bringing news of this nature, in this case it was a blessing. Fighting a smile, he said, ‘A Guinness truck.’

  Scarlett’s abiding memory of her father’s untimely death was of her mother and Sergeant Kane weeping with uncontrolled gales of laughter.

  Life got much easier after that, in lots of ways. Lorena, who was becoming even more zealous about her Catholic faith as the years progressed, gave the teenage Scarlett enough freedom to do as she wished. Lorena had been raised Baptist, but Catholicism appealed to her dramatic nature, so she had converted when she married Dan. She loved all the pomp and ceremony, and every spare wall of her house was adorned with icons and statues and holy pictures. She had a particular love of the more gruesome ones. In the hallway there was one of St. Stephen being stoned to death that really used to freak Scarlett out. The house was a source of cringing embarrassment, but since she wasn’t that close to anyone anyway, she didn’t have to endure kids from school seeing the macabre décor of her home.

  School was fine. She loved English and had a great teacher who inspired her to think for herself. He often lent her books or printed out articles for her to read about world events. She wished she had blonde hair and tanned skin. Failing that, she would have really liked to look like Gloria Estefan, but her Irish heritage gave her flame red hair, alabaster skin and emerald green eyes. Boys tended to steer clear, their parents warning them off because of Dan, so she kept herself to herself. One guy had asked her to the prom, but she declined. He was good looking and seemed nice, but there was no way she was having him come to the house. Scarlett remembered her mother’s disappointment when she said she wouldn’t be going. Lorena had bought her a dress, but Scarlett couldn’t face going, nor could she explain to her mother why, so she sat in her room and read instead. She loved travel books, especially the books by the BBC World News Editor, John Simpson. He wrote with empathy and intelligence about places Scarlett could only dream of, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia. She devoured his books and dreamed of one day visiting those places.

  In her final year at school, she signed up for a trip with her political science class to hear a Bostonian congressman who was touring high schools in the tougher areas of New York. He was a noted self-server, and it looked good for the electorate that he cared about those less well off. He was part of a National Education Taskforce that was allegedly asking the students what they thought should be done to improve educational standards in disadvantaged school districts. He was a pompous ass, as she recalled, and patronised and flirted with the girls in her class. He tried to flatter her during the coffee break, asking her questions while all the time ogling her breasts. He repulsed her. At the end, the girls were given an opportunity to ask him any questions. The teacher, Miss Fletcher, was obviously a fan of the congressman and giggled and fawned whenever he addressed her. She’d prepared a long list of sycophantic questions and distributed them among the students, giving him ample opportunity to explain just how wonderful he was and how marvellous it was that he would ask their lowly opinions.

  For no reason other than to knock him off his stupid perch, Scarlett raised her hand to ask a question. It was not the one on the card distributed by Miss Fletcher.

  ‘Where do you stand on the subject of Gay rights?’

  It was 2007 and the St Patrick’s Day parade in the city was drawing the usual controversy by continuing to ban the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender groups from marching. She had read about it in the paper that morning over breakfast. Miss Fletcher went pink and stammered, ‘I…I’m sorry Congressman Bailey. That was not an authorised question…’ she glared with unconcealed horror at Scarlett.

  The congressman gave a slimy grin and said, ‘That’s quite alright Deanna... I mean Miss Fletcher.’ The teacher had blushed and giggled again. ‘I’m sure this little lady didn’t mean any offence.’

  He turned towards Scarlett. ‘Now then my dear, a nicely brought up girl such as yourself need not concern herself with such things. I’m sure that nobody at St. Peter and Paul’s wants its young ladies discussing a matter that is, after all, a mortal sin. The church is very clear on its position on that subject, and as a devout Catholic I would vote with my conscience.’ His smug self-satisfied smile made Scarlett want to punch him in his stupid fat face.

  That was the day the Scarlett decided she would be a journalist.

  Chapter 3

  She walked into her beautifully decorated bedroom. The kingsize bed dominated the sunny space, and dust mites danced in the shaft of sunlight that streamed through the glass doors that led to a small balcony. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the full length mirror that formed the doors to her walk in closet. She looked awful, pale and dishevelled, eyes red from crying. Though the room overlooked the little communal garden at the back, she quickly closed the blinds in case one of the hacks managed to get in and perch himself in a tree, waiting for the perfect shot with his long range lens. She sat on her bed, and held a pillow up to her face. It smelled of him, of his faintly spicy cologne. How often had she gone to sleep in his arms, only to wake alone. Always the same story. She was transported back to the early days o
f their relationship, before she became used to his early morning disappearances.

  Scarlett recalled vividly how the alarm of his cell phone cut through the darkness. She stirred, wrapping her legs around him, willing the piercing ringtone to stop, her face buried in the back of his neck, her arm around his chest.

  Charlie groaned and gently removed her arm. ‘I have to go.’ He kissed her palm as he tucked her arm under the sheet.

  ‘But it’s only…’ Scarlett picked up her phone, ‘2 a.m… for God’s sake.’

  Charlie ran his hand through his tousled brown curls. ‘I know but I said I’d take C.J. to school. First day and all that. I can’t just rock up at 7 a.m. You know that.’

  ‘What will you say?’ her voice was steady, betraying none of what she felt.

  ‘Oh, a meeting ran on, something like that. Don’t worry about it. I’ll try to call later.’ He padded into the shower, washing all traces of her and her house from his skin. He asked her not to wear perfume in case Julia smelled it on his clothes, even the shower gel she bought was fragrance free.

  Feigning sleep, she heard him slip out. He’d walk the two blocks to the subway and take a cab from there. Despite his passionate nature, Charlie Morgan was very careful. She tortured herself imagining him slipping into bed with Julia, she all concerned that he worked so hard. Then she’d wake in the morning, looking fresh as a daisy and prepare their two adorable children for school. She was beautiful in a really natural way, no botox or plastic surgery. Her hair was naturally blonde and her skin tanned to a golden brown since she played often on the beach with the kids. She was on several worthy committees and was always in the papers. The perfect politician’s wife.

  Scarlett lay down on the bed and pulled the cover over herself, glad of the warmth. Though filled with self-loathing, she tried think. It wasn’t all her fault. She had never intended for things to turn out like this. She was doing a profile piece on him in the run up to the election and had met him and Julia at home. Carol was amazed and delighted she had managed to secure a feature piece on him. He was notoriously private about his family, and Scarlett knew it was a really good mark for her, especially since she had only been with the Examiner a few short months. He repeatedly explained to the media that his children and his wife did not run for election, and so he wanted them to have as normal a life as possible. This ‘family comes first’ attitude had won him lots of votes in a world where most politicians used their kids to further their own campaigns.