by Maeve Haran
Not that David had ever relished doing these things – who would? – but it toughened you up. It made you realize that journalism came from the streets. It wasn’t found in press releases or Government handouts, it was something you mined for and broke your back over and occasionally, very occasionally, you exposed Watergate. These kids probably thought Woodward and Bernstein were a comedy act.
‘There’s a good story Brian came up with about a granny who foiled a rapist with a hatpin,’ volunteered Bert nervously.
‘It’s not a good story,’ David snapped, ‘it’s a great story. It’s got everything we’re looking for. Bravery. Humour. Sex. I know. I read it in yesterday’s Star.’
Bert looked uncomfortable and glanced round at the assembled reporters for ideas.
‘I’m working on something that might make.’
David swivelled round to see who was talking. It was a new young woman reporter who’d just joined them from the Northern Echo. David thought her name was Susan. No, something funny. Suzan. That was it. Maybe they actually made their reporters leave the building once in a while on the Echo.
‘OK. Fire away.’
‘It’s a police corruption story. I got a tip-off about an officer in the Serious Crimes Squad fitting people up. It seems to check out. I think I’m close to cracking it.’
For the first time that day, David looked interested. And he realized why he’d remembered Suzan. It wasn’t just her funny name. It was because she was stunning. Trying not to notice how attractive she was but concentrate on what she was saying, David kept his eyes at a safe distance from her long legs, which she was making no attempt to disguise in a black miniskirt. ‘How close?’
‘Not close enough, David,’ Bert cut in. ‘I’m sorry, Suzan. It’s a good story, but it isn’t ready. Print now and you’ll blow the whole thing. It needs time.’
Suzan looked disappointed. David smiled at her, recognizing in her hunger an echo of his own fifteen years ago, not wanting to discourage the only sign of initiative he’d seen all morning.
‘So, there isn’t a single decent original story ready to make?’
David was greeted by a wall of silence as a dozen or so reporters shifted in their seats and each wished they had a scoop up their sleeves that they could produce like a rabbit from a hat and earn David’s good opinion.
‘There is one other possible splash . . .’
David couldn’t understand why Bert was being so coy about it. ‘Well? What is it?’
‘These. Mick Norman brought them in today.’ He pulled a series of black and white ten by eights out of a folder. They were candid photographs of an emaciated man lying in a hospital bed. Picking them up, David saw they were of Jim Johnson, until recently the top comic in England, the only comedian who could fill a house anywhere, anytime.
‘But Jim Johnson’s dying. The word is he’s got Aids.’
Bert looked embarrassed. ‘It certainly looks that way.’
‘Where did Norman get these, for Christ’s sake?’
‘From a freelance.’
‘And why didn’t he flog them to the World? The World pays twice as much as us. I’ll tell you why. Because even the fucking World wouldn’t stoop that low. For God’s sake, Bert, it’s out of the question.’
Bert looked relieved. ‘OK. OK. I just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Right. You mentioned it. You can all get back on the job. We’ll just have to hope that something turns up by this afternoon. Come back in an hour, will you, Bert, and we’ll run through some more options. And, Bert, try and see if you can come up with something better?’
David paced around, kicking the wastebin savagely until it showered paper all over the room. Then he took off his jacket, sat down and switched on his screen and began to whiz through the Press Association tapes. He’d find a bloody lead himself if he had to!
It was months since he’d rolled up his sleeves and he was engrossed in a promising story of how a bunch of mums had cleaned up the crime on their tough housing estate by tackling the young thugs themselves when the phone went.
‘David,’ Logan Greene’s PA cooed in the sultry tones that belied her terrifying efficiency, ‘would you mind popping up to see Logan for a few minutes?’
Logan was all smiles when David knocked on the door, so he knew something was wrong. And he wasn’t alone. Mick Norman was perched on the side of his desk, looking as though it were his own.
‘David, hello. I just wanted a quiet word about these shots of Jim Johnson.’
David felt himself tense up. ‘What do you want to know, Logan? We didn’t use them because it would be a gross invasion of the man’s privacy. What’s more we’d be breaking the law, for God’s sake. Showing up at a man’s deathbed and recording his dying gasps is exactly what this new law’s trying to prevent.’
‘There is a way round that.’ Mick Norman spoke for the first time. ‘I talked to the photographer. He didn’t break in. He got the nurse’s permission. He wasn’t trespassing. The law just bans trespassing. So we could still use them.’
David looked at him in dislike. Mick Norman was twenty-seven, and a classic product of the Greed Decade. Ambitious and self-serving, he thought morals were old fashioned and expendable. Instead of a heart he had a private health-care scheme.
‘And how much did this “freelance” pay the nurse to let him in? Or are you suggesting she let him in out of the kindness of her heart because she so admires the methods of the tabloid press? For God’s sake, Logan, the whole thing stinks!’
‘We need those photographs, David,’ Logan said quietly. ‘The World is beginning to wipe the floor with us. We’ve got to stop the slide.’
‘Not by using disgusting photographs of someone’s dying breath. People love Jim Johnson, Logan. He’s an institution. They don’t want to see him like this, emaciated, covered in sores. The whole thing will backfire. Do you remember when the World showed a photograph of the victim in the Brentwood rape case? The girl who’d been gang-banged and tortured? People were so disgusted they actually lost readers. And we will too.’
Mick Norman looked as though he were going to interrupt but suddenly Logan waved him to be quiet. ‘OK. Maybe you’re right. We won’t use the photographs.’
David looked at Logan curiously. Why had he suddenly caved in? David would like to think it was the power of his own arguments, or some latent morality in Logan that had made him see sense, but he knew Logan too well. Logan didn’t have a moral sense any more than Norman did. There had to be another reason which David didn’t understand. Yet.
Assuming the interview was over, David got up to go. He was halfway to the door when Logan spoke again. ‘David?’
‘Yes, Logan?’
‘We need a scoop. Soon.’
‘I know, Logan. I know.’
David watched Liz lean forward over her dressing-table and finish doing her eye make-up for the party. She was looking beautiful these days. Success suited her. She’d never been one to bother too much with her appearance – in fact when Bruce Oldfield caused a stir by saying English women preferred spending money on ponies and school fees instead of designer frocks, she’d cried ‘Good for them! Very healthy too!’ – but all the same she’d bought a few more good clothes and they suited her.
But he wished to Christ they didn’t have to go to this party tonight. He was still wound up over that business with Logan this afternoon and the last thing he felt like was small talk with a bunch of self-important TV producers. At least it would be over by nine and they could go and have a decent meal. And fortunately the booze always flowed like water at Metro parties so if things got too boring he could always get drunk.
Gently he pushed a lock of Liz’s hair away from her neck and kissed it. To his surprise she flinched ever so slightly.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Sorry. I’m a bit jumpy. Conrad’s getting to me. He’s up to something and I don’t know what. He’s been overruling me at every turn. I’m trying to fig
ht for standards and he just thinks I’m a pain in the arse. Britt was right all along. He only wanted me for window-dressing. Now that he’s found he can’t walk all over me, I think he may want me out.’
‘Oh come on now, losing you would look terrible for Metro.’
‘Maybe. But it might be good for me.’ She looked up at him in the mirror wondering if he would understand.
But his face was closed and irritated. ‘Why, for God’s sake? You’re earning a fortune, everyone envies you . . .’
‘It’s just that I always seem to be working. I hardly ever see the children any more. God knows what it’s doing to them.’
‘The kids are fine. They’re blooming. They adore Susie.’
‘OK, God knows what it’s doing to me then. All I seem to do is work and fight with Conrad. What happened to fun? To seeing friends? Even to reading bedtime stories?’
‘The price of success maybe.’
‘Then I’m beginning to think it’s too high a price.’
For one chilling moment David saw the way the conversation was going. Liz was getting fed up with her job, might even chuck it in, just when he could any day find himself out on his ear. No longer the whiz-kid, the was-kid. And the fear made him sharp with her.
‘For God’s sake, Liz. You have to make sacrifices if you want a lifestyle like ours. You have to fight for the things you want.’
Liz looked round their interior-designed bedroom with its vast bed canopied in Osborne & Little fabric. It had cost £25 a metre, and that was without the matching chairs and dressing table. Not to mention the subtly toning wallpaper in the en suite bathroom which the designer had insisted was a must.
‘Maybe I don’t want them that much any more.’
David sat on the bed angrily putting on his shoes. ‘Well I do! You’ve always had things too easily. All your life Mummy and Daddy coughed up for the school fees, the car, the holiday, the new dress. Well mine didn’t because they couldn’t afford to. And it’s made me want to fight for them myself. OK, so Conrad’s a shit. Of course he is. That’s why he got the franchise. But shits have their uses. You’ve got to learn to work with him instead of against him all the time. Give him a little of what he wants and he’ll do the same for you.’ David loathed himself for his hypocrisy. Had he given Logan what he wanted? No, he wanted the right to be honourable even when he was losing his temper with Liz for doing the same.
‘And if I can’t?’
David thought for a moment of the vast mortgage, and the school fees, and the nanny and the cleaner, and he felt like his father when he was two pounds overdrawn at the bank and it gave him an ulcer. He knew he should tell her that they weren’t as secure as she thought, but maybe she would despise him. Men were supposed to provide, that was their job.
‘Liz, don’t even think about it! You’d loathe it at home. You’d run back to work in five minutes!’
‘Ginny seems to thrive on it. And my mother.’
‘And what about my mother? Living her whole bloody life through my father and me instead of having a life of her own. Surely that’s not what you want?’
‘I don’t know. Would that be so terrible?’ She looked into his eyes, and found them wary, as though he were a tourist frightened of being conned into a sale by some fast-talking foreign trader.
‘It wasn’t the deal between you and me.’
‘When did we ever discuss it?’
‘We didn’t need to. We knew.’
‘Well maybe we’d better discuss it now.’
‘We’re going to a party. Your party. You’re supposed to be there to greet everyone. You’re the Big Cheese, remember, the most powerful woman in television.’
‘Yes,’ answered Liz bitterly, ‘I remember.’
‘He thinks I’m turning into his mother.’ Liz applied another coat of bright red lipstick in the Ladies at Metro TV and watched Britt smooth down her dress. It was the only explanation she could think of for why David was being so unsympathetic. It could be this circulation problem, of course, maybe it was more serious than he’d let on, but David had never let work get between them before. Ever since they were married he’d made it a cardinal rule not to dump his work problems in her lap. Sometimes she wished he would. She hated the idea of him suffering in silence without turning to her. But that was David, and she’d learnt long ago that you couldn’t change people, you had to love them for what they were.
All the same, maybe she should push him this time. This was too important to let it go. When they got home tonight she’d have a serious talk to him. If he was worried about work, maybe she could even help.
Liz put away her lipstick and looked at Britt as she dabbed perfume behind her ears. She looked sensational. Liz sniffed the musky, sexy tones of Animale, the perfume Britt always used. She was clearly planning something tonight.
Britt had noticed her friend watching her and wondered what she was thinking. Liz always seemed so preoccupied these days. She was looking stunning tonight even though she was so worried about David. Why don’t you just take him home and seduce him? That’ll take his mind off work, she almost advised, but some glimmer of self-interest stopped her. She put away her perfume and turned round.
‘And are you?’ Britt asked.
‘Am I what?’
‘Turning into his mother?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Britt. Of course I’m not! His mother is a suffocating bitch who martyred herself and then blamed her family.’
‘And she’s given David a lifelong complex about having women depend on him?’
‘Yes.’
‘How inconvenient of her.’
‘Anyway, for Christ’s sake don’t say anything about it to David. He’s very touchy at the moment.’
‘Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it.’
Liz ran a comb through her hair and made for the door.
Britt did a last-minute check of her expensive designer dress in the full-length mirror. She had paid an arm and a leg for it. But, as they say, money talks. The softly clinging wool jersey was perfect. Standing still it looked discreet and sophisticated. Yet when she moved, it moved with her, miraculously outlining every curve of her body.
How interesting, she thought. So David was touchy at the moment.
Of course he was. With his wife doing a Jekyll and Hyde from a high-flyer into a housewife and his boss trying to relaunch the News downmarket of the National Inquirer, who wouldn’t be? Maybe what he needed was a shoulder to cry on.
For a moment Britt wondered if he would be here tonight. And smiling at her reflection in the mirror, she undid another button.
CHAPTER 11
Britt took a long-stemmed glass of white wine from the waiter and walked into the crowded room. She loved making entrances, often arriving deliberately late for maximum impact. She enjoyed the way people stopped talking when they saw her and wondered who she was. It would be even better if they already knew, but they would soon.
There was a satisfying moment of quiet as she stood for a moment sipping her drink and looking around for Liz. But Liz was nowhere in sight. Instead a small energetic man was looking at her intently. Taking in his size and unfashionable clothes, Britt was about to dismiss him. Then she noticed his unexpected air of authority and that everyone round him seemed to be deferring to him.
The man detached himself from the group of hangers-on and came up to her. ‘Hello, young lady.’ She noticed to her surprise that his accent was transatlantic with a Midwestern edge, Chigaco perhaps or Des Moines. He wasn’t English. And certainly not polished. ‘Looking for someone? I’m Conrad Marks, I run this ramshackle outfit. And who are you?’
Britt grinned. Liz would kill him if she heard him telling everyone he ran Metro. ‘My name’s Britt Williams. I’m an old friend of Liz Ward’s.’
‘Ah ha. Now didn’t I just get a file of ideas from you on my desk this morning?’ He glanced at Britt’s newly opened button. ‘Very good ideas too. Very original. I liked them a lot.’
/> The truth was he hadn’t even opened the file, but he would now that he’d seen her.
Liz, who had spotted Conrad homing in on Britt and was coming to rescue her – until she realized that Britt didn’t want to be rescued – couldn’t help overhearing. What was Conrad talking about? Britt’s ideas were terrible. She hoped to God it was only his trousers talking.
To her amusement she noticed Claudia bearing down on them from the other direction. She’d clearly decided Conrad had been talking to Britt for quite long enough. Poor Claudia, she was quite an operator but she would be no match for Britt.
Claudia fastened herself on to Conrad’s arm and steered him off to a safe corner of the room as far away from Britt as possible. Liz wasn’t about to waste her sympathy on Claudia the Cow, but still, you couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for any woman if Britt got their man in her sights.
Liz felt a hand on her sleeve. ‘Phone call for you, Mrs Ward.’ It was amazing how the switchboard managed to track you down just when you were looking forward to a couple of glasses of wine.
For just a moment Britt felt at a loss and looked round for a familiar face, trying to fend off the slight sense of disappointment that David clearly wasn’t here, when she heard someone talking to her.
‘So what do you make of this outbreak of mother-mania, o white-hot queen of all the Yuppies?’
She almost jumped in surprise. He was here after all. He was leaning on a white trestle table, looking absurdly young and handsome, stopping every waiter who passed with a tray of drinks.
‘David, you’re pissed.’
‘Drinking to forget my problems. You haven’t answered my question.’
Britt looked at him. He was still as maddeningly attractive as ever. She didn’t know why men who were passionate about their work turned her on so much; maybe she recognized them as kindred spirits. And even now David had a way of turning a mocking eye on her that cut through her sophistication and made her feel twenty again. In anyone else she would have taken it for flirtation, but David had never been the flirtatious type. And since they’d split up all those years ago David was one of the few men she never suspected of still holding a candle for her. Though looking at him she wondered if there might not be a spark after all. Just a tiny spark that could be fanned into something more – a mild flirtation perhaps, or even a small affair. Nothing marriage-threatening, Liz was her friend after all, and anyway David was far too committed to her, which somehow made the idea safer, but something that would be fun while it lasted and would exorcize the past.