‘He’s married?’ Sharon’s disappointment was predictable.
‘Well, he was. They split up rather publicly after he lost his job. It was only a couple of months ago, by the way. But how he got from London to Hailesbank remains a mystery. Connections, I suppose.’
‘Does he know about our sentence of death?’ It was Murdoch who, pushing his chair back, put the question.
They looked at each other in silence. If he didn’t know already, he soon would.
‘Jay Bond. Licensed to … to what do you think, Diz?’ Ben turned to her, one eyebrow raised quizzically.
Daisy shrugged and stuffed her hand in her pocket where Tiny Ted was nestled. She hated uncertainty.
An hour later and Ben was on his own, nursing the remnants of his third pint and thinking about having to face yet another home-cooked dinner with his parents. He was too old for this. He’d have to find himself a flat if he was going to stay here for any length of time.
Daisy Irvine. There was something completely artless about the woman. She was hardly the skinny girl he remembered, but he found himself deeply attracted to the curves that the shapeless garments she was wearing couldn’t really hide. Martina had been thin almost to the point of anorexia. Her refusal to eat anything except raw vegetables and fruit became one of the many issues that began to lie between them, great shadowy unspeakable obstacles whose presence gnawed away at what had once been a passionate relationship. She couldn’t talk about it – refused absolutely after one violent argument.
‘It’s my body! And I choose to eat this way. I feel good like this.’
‘It’s not healthy, Teeny. And it’s no fun. We never go out any more.’
‘We do go out. We walk. We went to the cinema last week.’
‘You know what I meant. We never eat out. We never see friends any more because you’re scared of being invited for supper. What kind of a life is this?’
She’d clammed up, defiant, angry, closing in on herself, shutting him out. He’d stuck it for a year or more, but at the end it became too dispiriting. What had once been a lively relationship turned into something under constant tension. He had to watch every word, measure every response for fear of sparking another outburst or a withdrawal that became, by the end, intolerable.
Ben scratched the short reddish stubble on his chin and rubbed his hand round the back of his neck restlessly. Thinking about Martina was still difficult. It hadn’t ended in a big row, more in a kind of mutual regret. But even mutual regret can be painful. No, maybe not that; maybe the ache came more from the loss of a way of life, a habit, the rituals built up and shared over the years. It was like stopping smoking. You knew it was bad for you, that you had to be firm with yourself, just walk away, but you missed getting the cigarette out of the packet, tapping it on its end, lighting up, missed the comfort of holding it between your fingers, using it to make a gesture, underline a point.
It hadn’t taken him long to gather his belongings together. He’d never hoarded material possessions. A few clothes, his iPod and laptop, the Delia Smith How to Cook books his mother had given him when he’d left to live on his own, that was about the size of it. He could get the whole lot into two suitcases and a few small bags. Apart from Nefertiti, of course.
Now that he thought about it, he knew what Daisy’s appealing curves reminded him of. He grinned to no one in particular. No wonder she seemed so delightfully familiar.
Chapter Nine
Morning arrived reluctantly, as it always did at this time of year, breaking through the darkness in dribs and drabs, peeking out from behind thick cloud cover until the forces of light could no longer be thwarted. Daisy rolled over in her bed and reached out, vaguely, to the side where Jack slept, before remembering, through the blur of half sleep, that she was a year and more out of date. Wrenching her mind from the same old feelings, she tried to visualise The Diary for today.
The Diary, filled in by the reporters to book her time, was what dictated her every move. Short of fire, flood, murder, pile-up, or other disaster, The Diary sent her to this school for nine, that meeting for eleven, down the High Street by two for a photo opportunity with Provost Porter and his dumpy missus or across the county to snap some lucky lottery winner by four. What did it hold for her today? More of the same, undoubtedly. Unless editor Bond had other ideas, of course. If she had a job at all this morning.
‘I am not happy,’ she said to her menagerie. They looked steadily back at her, their loyalty unwavering. ‘Not happy at all.’
Having got that off her chest she felt well enough to swing her legs out of bed, use her feet to find her slippers, wrap herself up in her old candlewick dressing gown, and shuffle through to the kitchen. She hoped Lizzie might already have made coffee, then remembered that she had disappeared into her room with a new man last night and hadn’t reappeared.
Lizzie had a relaxed view of relationships. Undemanding and happy, she attracted men like bees to nectar, waving them adieu with such sweet grace when she tired of them that they left uncomplainingly, each feeling that he had been the luckiest man in the world. It was a gift that Daisy had dissected endlessly in her mind, wishing she could emulate both the ease with which Lizzie attracted men and the facility with which she moved on, untouched by sorrow, from each.
It put her in a class quite different from Shagger Sharon.
‘Shagger Sharon?’ Daisy swung round. Damn. She must have been mumbling out loud. Lizzie had appeared, her thick brown hair lying untidily round her shoulders. Uncombed, unwashed, her face completely without make up, she still looked gorgeous. ‘What’s she up to now?’
Behind her lurked a man, unashamedly naked to the waist. Tattoos adorned his upper arms and he boasted a six-pack any gym-goer would be proud of. Grinning at them from the shadows, he pulled on a sweatshirt and emerged into the kitchen.
‘This is … er … meet …’ Lizzie waved at him vaguely.
‘Dougie,’ the vision supplied, grinning from an attractively unshaven face. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Daisy said dutifully as Lizzie made coffee.
‘You were saying …?’
‘About?’
‘Sharon Eddy?’ Lizzie loved getting the gossip from Daisy’s office.
‘She’s after the new editor. At least, I think she is.’
‘Will she get her man?’
‘You know Sharon,’ Daisy said dismally.
Where Lizzie was kindly, generous in bestowing her favours, Sharon’s sexual rapacity had a more desperate edge to it. With Lizzie, sex was simply something she needed to do as part of her work-life balance, like cleaning her teeth or washing her hair. Sharon, by contrast, generally flaunted her conquests triumphantly before, for one reason or another, each moved – or was moved – on.
‘Poor Mr Bond,’ said Lizzie, but despite a twinge of sympathy, Daisy couldn’t really bring herself to feel sorry for him.
‘Apparently dog poo doesn’t do it for our swanky new editor,’ Murdoch muttered to Daisy as he drifted over to join her by the kettle.
‘Really?’ said Daisy, her mind half on how she could get from Hailesbank to Jordanbank to catch the local Member of Scottish Parliament’s visit to a recycling plant, then back to Hailesbank in time for the photo shoot with the cleaners who were stripping the graffiti off the public toilets in town. The reporters on The Herald, in her opinion, never made enough allowance for travel, especially at harvest time when the combines were all out or in winter when the roads could be lethal.
‘He’s axed the story I was working on.’
‘No, really?’ Daisy said sympathetically, working out that she’d have to take the shortcut via Heriton and pray there were no tractors to slow her down.
‘And there’s no way your butcher shop photo’s going to get front page.’
Now he’d caught her attention. ‘What?’
‘“Stupid trivia. We must do better.” I quote.’
‘You’re joking!’
He shook his head. �
�Would I joke about something like that? No, you’ll find out soon enough. He wants “real news”. “A big story.” “Less of this provincial nonsense.”’
‘Like what?’
Murdoch shook his head. ‘Sharon’s in with him just now, discussing it.’
‘They can’t make up news. If it happens it happens.’
‘Maybe he wants something international. A take on Obama. The state of the yen. Famine in Africa.’
‘The Herald’s a local paper, for Chrissake.’ Daisy’s jaw had dropped. ‘We publish local stories. Stories that interest people locally. That’s the definition of a local newspaper.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ Murdoch grimaced. ‘“Drama. Something hard-hitting”,’ he went on in a reasonable approximation of Jay Bond’s cut-glass tones.
‘Blimey,’ said Daisy. ‘Where are we going to get that?’ She was cross about her sausages. How was she going to top that as an image?
Dishy Dave, seeing their huddle, joined them.
‘Heard about the sausages, Dave?” Daisy asked.
‘What about them?’ said Dave, who had just filed the story.
‘Axed. Well, butchered at least. Relegated to inside.’
‘You’re kidding. Why?’
‘Not hot enough,’ said Daisy.
‘You should’ve griddled them,’ grinned Murdoch. ‘Very funny.’
‘So what’s hot?’ asked Dave.
‘Not the public toilets anyway,’ Daisy conjectured, thinking of her Diary.
‘Meeting’s over,’ warned Murdoch, seeing Jay’s door open and Sharon emerging.
‘Time out, everyone,’ Sharon called, slapping her file onto her desk and waving her arms, beckoning. ‘I need to brief you all.’
It was unusual, to say the least. Being a small office, they were all pretty much aware of what was going on and Sharon normally kept tabs on all the stories simply by keeping her ears open and wandering round chatting to the reporters. Formal meetings were a rare event.
‘New priorities. More punch. Bigger stories. Less trivia. Murdoch, you’re to make Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, and international affairs your priorities –’ Murdoch gaped, his fading eyes round with surprise, ‘Dave, you’ll concentrate on the prison, the hospital, and the Council, taking over my responsibilities, and I’ll be doing more investigative work.’
They all stared at her before Murdoch, a cynical hack to the core, challenged, ‘Investigating what, precisely?’
Sharon was evasive. ‘Whatever comes up. I’ll get leads. We’re looking for big stories.’
Dave asked tentatively, ‘What about the small stories? The school plays, the local WRI meetings, the charity stuff?’
Sharon waved an airy hand. ‘We’ll use fewer of those, of course. We’re going to pull this paper up by its bootstraps.’
‘Jesus,’ said Daisy, stunned.
‘But what about …’ Murdoch started before Sharon cut in again, ‘It’s about standards, Murdoch. We’ve let them slip. We’re going to be a campaigning newspaper. We’ll take up big issues. The economy. The environment. The health service.’
‘What?’ said Daisy.
‘And in the meantime,’ Sharon rounded on her, ‘you’d better get out there and get a big picture. We need a front page.’
‘Big picture? Of what, precisely?’ Daisy felt panicky. She glanced over to where Tiny Ted was sitting on her desk, surrounded by coins and sweets from her pocket.
‘I dunno. Use your imagination, Daisy. Surely you have one?’ snapped Sharon.
‘Do I still do the Member of the Scottish Parliament at the recycling plant?’
Sharon sighed. ‘I suppose so, yes. We’ll need to cover it.’
‘And the toilets?’
‘We can do without toilets, surely,’ Sharon said crossly. ‘They’re not exactly big news, are they?’
‘There’s lots of people feel they can’t do without them,’ muttered Murdoch.
‘We’re on to bigger and better things than toilets,’ snapped Sharon.
‘Thrones?’ said Murdoch as everyone – except The Herald’s chief reporter – laughed. But nervously.
Ben, watching the scene quietly from his desk, put the final touches to the back page (sports) and mentally shook his head. Jay Bond hadn’t a clue. That was obvious. What he did have was delusions of grandeur. But if he wanted to get The Herald closed down, he couldn’t have picked a quicker way of doing it.
Local papers sold on local news. People bought them to see their friends, to read about what was happening in the neighbourhood, to get the results of the local darts league or find out who won the best apple tart category in the WRI. Public toilets were important. A local shop closing was important. These were issues that affected them all and which they got involved in. No one cared about the Scottish Parliament, still less about what was happening at Westminster, unless it was fiddled expenses, higher taxes, schools, or hospitals nearby closing, or local lads being sent to war. Then they were interested all right. How long would Jay Bond get before sliding sales forced him to realise how wrong he was? And Daisy, standing there looking as though she was about to burst into tears over her sausage picture being made into mincemeat – how would she cope?
The truth was, Daisy didn’t cope too well. Distracted by events, she forgot to pick up the brief for the Jordanbank assignment, couldn’t remember where the recycling plant was, and phoned Ben in a panic just a few minutes before the photo shoot was due to take place.
‘Ben? Ben, I need help.’ Her voice, though lowered conspiratorially, sounded anxious.
‘Oh hi, Diz, what can I do you for?’ he said cheerfully.
‘I’m lost,’ she hissed down the line, ‘Listen, don’t tell anyone, they’ll just laugh at me. Just find my sheet, can you, it’s got the directions on it.’
‘Right. Hold on.’ He placed the receiver on his desk, found the missing instructions, and read them down the line to her. ‘Got it now?’
‘Yes, left, right, then third left. Thanks Ben, you’re a star. I’ll love you for ever.’
If only that were true, thought Ben, replacing the receiver slowly.
‘Ditsy Daisy lost again?’ said Murdoch, dropping a printout of a page plan on his desk.
Ben grinned at him. It was impossible to keep secrets in an office like this.
The challenge of getting a big story was mercifully solved that week when some poorly stored fertiliser exploded in a barn next to the main road south to England. The incident not only sparked a major blaze at the farm and its outbuildings and killed two workers, but also caused smoke to billow across the carriageway, with an inevitable multiple pile-up and further deaths.
Sharon was happy. ‘It’s not my way to be pleased at the misfortune of others,’ she said sanctimoniously amid barely suppressed sniggers, ‘and I’d really prefer to get a thorough investigative story on the front but –’ she held out the paper at arm’s length and admired it. ‘– it’s not bad, is it? And we did get there before The Stoneyford Echo.’
Daisy had surpassed herself with an image that captured the full drama of the incident taken from Tarbert Knoll, a small hill near the scene. She’d reached the spot before any other photographer was in the vicinity, realised she wouldn’t be able to get a good photo from ground level, and had puffed her way up the hill, cursing her extra pounds and general lack of fitness, until she could get a decent view.
It was a stunning shot. The flames from the farm were clearly visible, the smoke was drifting away from where she stood, carried by a light breeze, and the carnage on the road was crystal clear. Only the nationals, fielding helicopters, got anything better, and in some ways Daisy’s image, taken from closer, had the advantage of a riveting kind of intimacy.
She was proud of the photograph. She’d run down the hill and managed to sneak in close to the accident by dint of pleading with one of the policemen at the scene, an officer she’d dealt with before. Daisy might be disorganised, but she could
be very determined. The advantage of local knowledge and local contacts paid off – the officer turned his back for just long enough for her to do her job. The heart-wrenching photos of crunched metal she managed to snatch before she was shooed away complemented her main picture perfectly.
‘Not bad,’ said Jay, admiring the front page. ‘Well done, Sharon. Fancy a drink?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’ Sharon smiled up at him, flicking her hair back self-consciously and twisting her body towards him in a come hither pose.
As the door closed into the silence behind them, there was an explosion of indignation.
‘Bloody hell, Daisy, that front page was all yours!’ said Dave.
Murdoch concurred. ‘Sharon’s copy was fine, but a bit on the sensational side for my taste. Your photos now, they told the story brilliantly.’
‘They’re right,’ said Ben. ‘Fancy a drink, Daisy?’
Daisy, who’d been hurt by Jay’s lack of recognition, was slightly mollified by the support of her colleagues, but turned Ben down unthinkingly. ‘No thanks, Ben,’ she said, ‘I’ve got other things I have to do.’
Heading for the door, she missed the look of disappointment on Ben’s face.
The first edition of The Hailesbank Herald under the editorship of Jay Bond rolled off the presses and out to the shops the next day. Jay called his staff together. They clustered apprehensively round the water cooler.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, looking from face to face and smiling. Daisy, observing, was forced to acknowledge that he had charisma, when he chose to use it. Today he was wearing a checked shirt in crisp cotton and smart navy trousers, their creases like knives. He’d rolled up the shirt sleeves – to look more like one of the lads maybe? She watched Sharon, too. The chief reporter’s face said it all; she was smitten.
Who could blame her, thought Daisy. If you disregarded the cocaine story and the fact that he was married, it seemed that Jay Bond had it all; a great body, money, style, looks, charisma.
Maximum Exposure: The Heartlands Series Page 6