Troublemakers

by Catherine Barter

  ‘I didn’t come here to talk to you,’ he says. ‘So you can save your explanations. I’m here to talk to your brother.’

  ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it.’

  He stares at me like I’m some strange creature he’s never encountered before. ‘How old are you?’ he says.

  Before I can answer, the lift door pings open, and we all turn to look as my brother steps out. He has his bag slung across his chest and he’s texting somebody but as soon he sees us he stops dead for a second, and then comes quickly towards us.

  ‘Whoa, hey, OK,’ he says. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ He catches my eye for a second as he gets to the door, and then he steps round Jake so that he’s standing directly in front of me with his arms held out at his sides, either like surrender or like he’s making himself a bigger target. He doesn’t look at me again.

  I have to step out from behind him just so I can still see. Jake looks at me for a few seconds, and then turns to Danny. ‘Will has just called me and offered to resign,’ he says.

  Danny is breathing too fast. ‘Will has just – OK. What? The thing’s not even online yet.’

  ‘But it will be in a couple of hours, is that right?’

  He pauses. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what do you think I should do about it?’

  ‘It might not get picked up,’ says Danny. ‘I think this is an overreaction. It might not be that big a thing. There’s plenty of other stuff going on this weekend.’

  ‘It will get picked up. It’ll get picked up straight away. Our whole campaign has been about this, Daniel. How is this going to make us look?’

  ‘I’ve asked him not to post it.’

  ‘Asked who?’

  ‘Mike Feghali.’ He pauses. ‘Mike Feghali. That’s who she sent it to.’

  ‘Is Mike Feghali the person who’s been trying to contact me all morning?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘From the Hackney Standard.’

  ‘And how did she know how to get in contact with the Hackney Standard ?’

  ‘We know him. He’s a family friend.’

  ‘How touching,’ says Jake. ‘You’ve asked him not to post it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he was going to post it in a few hours.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Jacob. ‘Very well done, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘I’ve just come from his house. He says he’s confirmed it. She didn’t make it up or anything.’

  ‘How has he confirmed it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. I got the impression he spoke to someone else who’d seen it. Mike’s very good at his job. He’s very thorough.’

  ‘Who else would have seen it?’

  ‘How would I know?’ says Danny, starting to sound rattled. ‘I haven’t seen it. The point I’m making is that she didn’t make it up.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be impressed by that?’

  I am standing right here, I think. But it’s hard to make myself speak when they’re both suddenly acting like I don’t exist.

  I do exist: this whole conversation is about me. I made this happen.

  Danny lowers his arms, slightly. He is still holding his phone in his hand. ‘So you can’t – I mean, that’s the actual text of the email?’

  ‘How would I know?’ says Jake. ‘I don’t even remember the email. I doubt I even read it.’

  Danny says, carefully, ‘It was only yesterday. You replied to it.’

  ‘I have no memory of replying to it. I probably didn’t even read it.’

  ‘That might be difficult to argue,’ says Danny.

  There’s a shakiness in Jacob Carlisle’s voice, I realise suddenly, like he’s genuinely upset. ‘Do you know what this is going to do to us?’ he says. ‘This campaign has a few weeks left. Do you understand how this is going to look?’

  ‘Yes.’ Danny’s voice has gone very flat, and Jacob’s is getting louder.

  ‘For god’s sake, you’re telling me a girl, a teenager, who thinks she’s some kind of – did I even approve her coming into the office? What was she even doing there? Was she just left to run wild? Do we have any basic security procedures on this campaign?’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ Danny says. ‘She’s not a terrorist. And she’s not – this is out of character. She’s never done anything like this.’

  ‘I just can’t conceive how she managed to end up reading a private email exchange. Am I being told that she deliberately—’

  ‘I haven’t really had a chance to ask her—’

  ‘Well, she’s right here, so let’s ask her now.’

  I open my mouth to speak and Danny says, ‘No. She’s not talking to anybody right now. You can talk to me.’

  ‘Danny,’ I say, and he glances at me. ‘All I did was—’

  ‘Not now.’

  Jake is shaking his head. ‘I’m just finding this hard to understand,’ he says. ‘From you, Daniel. You’re the one who turned this round for us.’

  ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it,’ I say. ‘He wasn’t even—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ says Danny and something in his voice makes me do what he says.

  ‘She saw this email and you didn’t know anything about it?’

  Danny doesn’t answer. He folds his arms.

  ‘You are responsible for her, is that right?’ says Jake, with another quick glance at the flat like maybe there’s an actual grown-up around.

  ‘Yes. I’m responsible for her.’

  This hangs in the air for a moment, and I wonder what that even means, that he’s responsible for me. Like he’s responsible for looking after me or like he’s responsible for everything I do wrong, or both.

  ‘I was advised not to come here,’ Jacob says, and then stops, and rubs his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Everyone’s always got a lot of advice. This is my life. This isn’t a game, this isn’t a children’s—’ He stops, glances at me. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have any conversations in front of this young lady,’ he says. ‘I can only assume the transcripts will end up on the front page of The Times.’

  ‘Then we should go somewhere else,’ says Danny. ‘Because I’m actually really not comfortable with you coming to my home and talking to her when she’s here on her own, anyway.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re in any position to be the one who’s angry, here, Daniel. This whole incident raises some very serious questions.’

  ‘I know. I know that.’

  Then Jacob looks directly at me. ‘It seems very strange to me that you would want to do this,’ he says.

  ‘It seems very strange to me that someone who works for you would say something like—’

  ‘Alena,’ says Danny. ‘Shut up.’

  Jake looks back to Danny and there’s a long silence. ‘I don’t know what to do, here,’ he says.

  ‘I can come into the office and we can talk about it with Will. We can work out how you’re going to respond, we can work out—’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll need you to come into the office. I don’t think that would be appropriate right now.’ He pauses. ‘In fact, I’m not sure that it’s appropriate for you to continue coming into the office.’

  Without meaning to I reach towards Danny, grab the sleeve of his shirt with my hand.

  ‘You don’t want me to finish the campaign,’ says Danny, flatly.

  ‘People are very upset about this.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘It’s not appropriate that you continue. It’s just not appropriate. I’m sorry.’ Then: ‘People will find it hard to believe that a fourteen-year-old engineered this by herself.’

  ‘She’s fifteen,’ says Danny, like that’s any better. ‘And I think people will be more interested in the contents of the email than in who leaked it.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ says Jake.

  I let go of Danny’s shirt
and try to speak again. ‘This isn’t fair, he didn’t even—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ says Danny, eyes fixed forward.

  ‘If anyone should be in trouble it should be—’

  ‘Shut up, Alena.’

  The woman in the corridor has stopped typing into her phone and she says, gently, ‘Jake. We need to meet with Des.’

  Jacob nods, still looking at Danny. ‘Is Mr Feghali going to reveal his source?’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suggest you sit down and have a very long conversation with this girl about why exactly she felt the need to get involved with something I assume she knows nothing about.’

  And then, I suppose because he’s just lost his job, Danny says, ‘I don’t need any advice, thanks.’

  They look at each other for a very long time. ‘This isn’t constructive,’ Jacob says.

  Danny doesn’t answer.

  ‘I came here to talk to you,’ Jacob says. ‘I didn’t come here to intimidate her.’

  ‘I hope not,’ says Danny.

  ‘Someone from the office will be in touch with you,’ says Jacob, and there’s a short, uncomfortable silence, and then they turn and walk back down the corridor.

  They take the stairs instead of the lift, and you can hear the doors in the stairwell slam an echo on each level as they go down, like gunfire getting further and further away.

  Danny closes the door but for a few seconds he doesn’t turn round. I can hear him breathing like he’s just finished a marathon. When he does, he looks at me and his face is totally blank and when he folds his arms I can see that his hands are shaking.

  ‘Danny,’ I say, my mouth dry. ‘I didn’t know—’

  ‘I got a phone call at nine o’clock this morning,’ says Danny. ‘I got a phone call from my friend Mike saying that last night he’d had an email from my little sister, and he thought I should know about it. He wanted to give me a couple of hours as a courtesy before he posted it online.’ He’s shaking his head slowly as he speaks like he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. ‘And so before I do anything I have to phone up the people I work with and warn them that this is going to happen, and they all say, But how did this happen?, and I have to say I don’t know exactly but it has something to do with my little sister who I brought into the office with me and who for some reason, despite her recent behaviour, I thought was responsible enough to leave on her own for a few hours.’

  There’s a long silence. Then Danny says: ‘You actually do hate me, don’t you?’

  I don’t know if it would make it better or worse if I started crying. I can feel the tears building, pressure somewhere behind my eyes, but I can’t make myself cry, can’t make myself do anything. I have no idea how everything got this bad this quickly. The expression on his face is terrible.

  I try to think of the right words to explain, wanting to say something smart and brave like the women on the Greenham Common video, to explain what I did, but nothing comes together. The idea is all broken up in my mind. I know there’s something I have to say but I don’t know what it is.

  When I don’t answer, Danny says, ‘Forget it. I can’t talk to you right now. I can’t talk to you right now. I need you to go somewhere else.’

  ‘Where do you want me to—’

  ‘Just go to your room,’ he says. But before I can even do this, he’s gone into his own room and slammed the door so hard that the coffee cup on the counter shakes.

  I’m still wearing the clothes I was wearing yesterday, so when I go to my room I change into a grey hoodie and an old pair of cropped jeans. I sit on the bed and look at my toenails, which I painted purple a few weeks ago and now the paint is all chipped. I think about summer and wearing flip-flops and whether we’ll go anywhere this year. My laptop is lying on the desk but I don’t power it up, don’t look at the Hackney Standard website or at anything else.

  I get a message from Teagan. It says, I might have been being a stupid idiot last night. Then, a few seconds later, What’s happening at yours? xxx

  I text her back. Me too. don’t know yet. big trouble. xxx

  Nick gets home at exactly ten minutes past one. I hear him open and close the door and then stop because the living room’s empty, and I wonder which room he’ll try first.

  He tries mine.

  ‘Come in,’ I say when he knocks and my voice still sounds normal, still doesn’t sound like I’m going to cry. He opens the door and leans in. ‘What’s going on?’ he says.

  ‘Danny’s in your room,’ I say. ‘I think he lost his job.’

  Nick’s expression doesn’t change as he absorbs this information. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he says, and closes my door again. Like there’s anywhere I could go.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  So then, nearly an hour later and after Nick and Danny have been talking in their room very quietly and not so quietly for ages, there is the most awful and excruciating family conference ever which the only good thing you can say about it is that it doesn’t last very long.

  It starts with Nick knocking on my door, and saying ‘OK, Alena, can you come into the living room and talk to us please.’

  When I go into the living room, Danny is standing in front of the window, looking at his phone. ‘Mike’s just posted it,’ he says. He scrolls down the screen. ‘He posted it – seven minutes ago. Front page.’ He looks up at me. ‘Pleased with yourself?’

  ‘What does it say?’ says Nick.

  ‘In an email leaked to the Hackney Standard yesterday afternoon – et cetera et cetera – Jacob Carlisle’s campaign manager describes the East London bombing that claimed the life of an Italian tourist as “great timing”—’

  Danny stops and shuts his eyes for a moment.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Jacob Carlisle’s campaign manager goes on to say – blah, blah, blah – Jacob Carlisle responds to this email with the words “Have to agree.” Mr Carlisle, whose response to the tragedy has been credited with his unprecedented rise—’ Danny stops. ‘Well, great day for the Hackney Standard,’ he says. ‘You and Mike must be really pleased with yourselves.’

  I take a deep breath and I’m about to speak, but Nick interrupts.

  ‘I think we should all sit down,’ he says. He gestures towards the table.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ says Danny, and he pulls out a chair and sits down abruptly, his phone on the table in front of him. He crosses his arms and stares at the table like he wants to kill it, and I take a seat opposite and Nick sits between us at the head of the table. I try to start speaking again but Nick says: ‘I think we should start with why you were looking at somebody else’s email in the first place.’

  This isn’t where I wanted to start. ‘It was an accident,’ I say, and attempt to explain the computer log-in thing which admittedly doesn’t sound that much like an accident when I say it out loud.

  ‘So you saw it by accident,’ Nick says. ‘She saw it by accident, Danny.’

  ‘And then she accidentally fell on the keyboard and forwarded it to Mike?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I did that on purpose.’

  ‘No kidding.’ He is looking at me like he doesn’t even recognise me.

  ‘Have you seen what those emails actually say?’ I ask. ‘Will Rofofsky goes, Hey, brilliant, someone’s dead so you’re going to win the election and Jacob Carlisle goes, I know it’s really brilliant isn’t it. That’s what they’re saying.’

  Nick clears his throat. ‘And so that – what? That made you angry?’

  ‘Doesn’t that make you angry?’

  His mouth twitches and you can tell it does make him angry. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes Nick angry.

  ‘And so you decided you wanted people to know about it because – what? You wanted to get this guy fired?’

  ‘His name is Will,’ says Danny.

  ‘No, I just – it’s not about him. I don’t even care about him.’

  ‘Clearly,’ says Danny.

  I can feel my resolve falling
apart. ‘I didn’t know that Mike would actually post it,’ I say.

  ‘What did you expect him to do with it?’ says Nick.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is this about me and Danny?’

  ‘No. No. It’s what they’re saying. It’s about what’s morally – you know, what’s morally wrong. Don’t you think that people should know about—’

  ‘You know what?’ says Danny. ‘You know what? I am sick to death of hearing about what’s morally right and what’s morally wrong. It’s bad enough with him and now you’ve started up as well. This is some line you’ve got from Nick, and you’re doing it to get at me or punish me for something and that’s fine, go ahead, but I’ve given up half my life for you, you know, so don’t tell me about what’s morally wrong—’

  ‘Danny,’ says Nick, putting a hand on his arm.

  ‘—because if that’s what this was really about then you would’ve spoken to one of us first instead of deliberately sabotaging me, and you know what, if you’re that angry with me for doing nothing except doing my best for you like there’s nothing else I ever wanted to do with my life—’

  ‘Danny.’

  ‘—then maybe I should never have bothered, maybe I should have said, Fine, take her to Australia, maybe we’d all have been happier—’

  ‘Danny.’

  He shuts up, finally, and puts his elbows on the table and his face in his hands.

  Nick’s hand is still on Danny’s arm, gripped so tight that his knuckles are white, it probably hurts. I see that Nick knew what Danny was going to say and that he tried to stop it. Too late.

  Nick is shaking his head, obviously trying to come up with the right combination of words to erase what Danny’s said, but I don’t want him to. If that’s what he thinks then why shouldn’t he say it.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d lose your job,’ I whisper, since that’s true.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ says Danny without taking his hands away.

  ‘Danny, I don’t think she could’ve known.’

  ‘She’s not stupid.’ He takes his hands away and looks at me. ‘Those people are my friends,’ he says. ‘Will is my friend. They all think I had something to do with this, Alena.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, but my throat is closing up now and it comes out wrong.