Sincerely, Yours

by Charlotte Barnes

  ‘Sarah, are you with me?’

  I rolled over then and made a comedy sketch of stretching. ‘Christ, what time is it?’

  ‘Too early.’ She leaned forward to kiss my arm. ‘I’ll go and deal with this.’

  ‘Stay in bed. You’ll freeze if you get out.’

  We’d reached the time of the year when the heating should be kicking in. But it was holding out for another degree to drop. She looked to the handset and then back to me. She didn’t say anything, but from the tight smile I knew it was a call she wanted privacy for.

  ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘You could tell them not to call on a Sunday.’ I tried to sound light. ‘It’s the Lord’s day, after all.’

  ‘I’m not sure spending the day in bed with another woman really fits into that.’

  ‘Pff.’ I rolled over and buried my head in the pillow. ‘Work doesn’t either,’ I added, but not loud enough for her to hear. Wren had been my only reason for taking Sundays off from work. It was a sore point, then, that her work could always get her: first thing in the morning; last thing at night; once in the middle of the night, although she thought I hadn’t heard her take the call.

  ‘I’ll bring tea back with me.’

  I could tell she was near the doorway from the throw of her voice. I grunted by way of replying and tried to feign disinterest – until the door closed. There’s no way I could pad across the laminate flooring unheard. But I sat upright and scrambled to the end of the bed, hanging as close to the open crack of the doorway as I could crane myself.

  ‘DS Brooks calling… Can you put me through…’ She flicked the kettle on. ‘I’m not in the office today, no… The paperwork should be on my desk… Is this something that needs to be done today, or are you that short of work?’ Her tone was curt. Whatever they’d called about, it wasn’t him – or about him. ‘The court case isn’t scheduled…’

  When Wren and I started sleeping together, we established the ground rules early on. She wouldn’t ask about my work and I wouldn’t ask about hers. If anything ever did slip out – or, for example, if someone were to overhear something they shouldn’t one Sunday morning – then it was always off the record and not something the speaker would publicly attest to. She had idly joked about drawing up a contract to outline the terms fully, but the suggestion had fallen down the back of her bed somewhere.

  Another ground rule had been that we wouldn’t tell anyone about us. Wren was a determined police officer and I was a pain-in-the-rear journalist; we weren’t exactly a match made. But we had enough in common to talk over a takeaway every now and then, and the sex was excellent. Beyond that, neither of us had put much thought into the pairing. Although we guessed that others would have something to say.

  It happened for the first time in the weeks leading up to Mum’s anniversary in 2016. Brooks had been in touch to see whether I’d heard from him. She’d turned up late at my office one evening, on the off-chance of catching me there; from there she’d walked me home. She’d left with her tail between her legs in the early hours of the following morning. On her way out the door she asked, again, whether I’d heard from him: ‘Would you even tell me if you had?’ No, I thought. But I said, ‘Yes,’ because our relationship had changed in sleeping together, and I reasoned there was even more need to lie to her then.

  ‘…I can’t come in today, no.’

  I threw myself back on my side of the bed seconds before she opened the door.

  ‘You’re welcome to call… No, this evening…’ She carried a cup of tea in each hand. ‘Call Wilson if there’s a real problem…’ She mouthed Sorry and then dropped on the bed next to me. She wasn’t fully committed though; her legs were down, her feet on the floor, as though she might run out on official business any minute. ‘Okay… Sure thing… I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.’ She disconnected the call and sighed.

  ‘I’m not asking,’ I said, with my hands cradled around my mug of tea.

  ‘I’m not telling. Do you want to go out for breakfast?’

  I paused mid-blow. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Breakfast. Do you want to go out for it?’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

  She laughed and rubbed hard at her forehead.

  Wait, my mind shifted over to suspicion, what have I missed? ‘Is there something you want to talk about that you want an audience for?’

  ‘Wouldn’t I take you to the station for that?’ She raised an eyebrow. But I wasn’t feeling playful. ‘It was just an offer for breakfast, Sarah, outside of my house. But we can eat here.’ She pulled her legs back into bed and under the duvet. ‘Why don’t we do dinner one night this week?’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘I didn’t say a night.’

  I blew my tea again before taking a mouthful. ‘I’m busy all of them.’ I could see her disappointment from her profile. ‘I thought you were worried about people seeing you with me because of the case.’

  She half-laughed, half-sighed. ‘What case?’

  ‘Wren–’

  ‘Forget it.’ She leaned over and kissed me square on the mouth to stop whatever was coming. The moment might have been saved but the morning was ruined. Brooks had a nasty habit of assuming the killings had stopped – and it frustrated her that I disagreed. We avoided talking about it directly. But at one time or another we’d both fenced interview questions on the topic and our opposing views were obvious. In her defence, though, she didn’t have the information I did.

  ‘I’ll make breakfast,’ I offered. I was looking for an excuse to get out of bed.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to turn that down.’

  I swung my legs out of bed and took a sharp intake as my feet landed on the cold floor. Wren had offered to buy me slippers for when I was at her house, but I couldn’t think of anything more domestic.

  ‘I keep forgetting to say,’ I started, when I was facing away from her, ‘I won’t be around next Saturday night. I’m with Landon.’

  ‘You won’t come over after?’

  ‘It’ll be late.’ I padded towards the door without adding any more to the excuse.

  ‘Isn’t it the weekend after that you’re out of town for a while?’

  I stopped and tried to flit back through my bank of most recent lies. Wren had either caught me in the middle of a falsehood, or she truly believed I’d lost track of weeks. Given her profession the former seemed the more likely option, but she wasn’t confrontational enough to pull me up on it – at least, not while I was walking around the bedroom in her underwear.

  ‘Work.’

  ‘Christ,’ I made a show of remembering, ‘is that then?’

  ‘I might be wrong.’

  ‘You hardly ever are.’ I stood in the doorway but faced into the room, so I could afford her the courtesy of eye contact. Any more time spent hiding my poker face and there really would have been no chance of fooling her. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I’d got stuff back-to-back weekends. There’ll be other times, though. It’s just work, you know–’

  ‘I don’t know, no,’ she interrupted me, but at least she was playful with it. Before I could answer, she cocked an eyebrow and smiled. ‘You better make that a good breakfast, Wainwright, that’s all I’ll say.’

  31

  I collected my post from the delivery room on the ground floor on my way to the office. I didn’t wait for it to arrive on my desk anymore. I’d made it known around the office, too, that anything mis-directed should come to me as a matter of urgency. ‘Crime is time-sensitive and all that,’ I’d joked and people had bought into it. But the truth was I wasn’t prepared to miss a scoop on him again. We were only two months away from it being his time of year – Mum’s time of year – and I knew the break in killing couldn’t last forever. I skimmed through the envelopes on my way to Marcus’ office but, with no sign of the handwriting I’d come to know so well over the years, I wedged the squat pile into the side of my laptop bag and marked it as a job for later
.

  ‘Knock, knock.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, without looking up.

  ‘Hatch.’

  ‘Hatch who?’

  ‘Bless you.’

  He looked up then. ‘Sarah, that might be the worst of the bunch.’

  ‘I really don’t feel like my comedy is appreciated around here, Marcus.’ I wandered in and took the seat opposite him. ‘Is there someone I can complain to about that?’

  ‘I’d advise going straight to HR. But of course you’d have to knock to get into their office, and…’ he petered out and shrugged.

  ‘That was quite good for you.’

  His computer monitor pinged and he side-eyed the screen. ‘Oh, that’ll be Chandler Bing asking for his sarcasm back.’

  Marcus and I had built a rapport based on a shared interest in true crime, Yorkshire tea and terrible humour. Our morning routines typically involved some combination of all three. If he arrived first then I would go to his office and vice versa. He often had something that he wanted to be covered under the crime heading; I often talked him into letting me pass it to an intern for learning experience.

  ‘You’ll want to give this to Eleanor, I suspect,’ he said, handing over a Post-it.

  I took the note. ‘Eleanor hasn’t been an intern here for twelve months.’

  Marcus narrowed his eyes. I felt as though I could hear him physically riffling through mental paperwork, searching for the right name. ‘El – something?’

  ‘Elliot.’

  He clicked his fingers. ‘That’ll be it.’

  I looked over the note. In Marcus’ scrawl were the details of local break-ins; all the victims were women. Why would I pass this to an intern? I wondered, pocketing the note. ‘Can I take it myself?’

  ‘If you don’t have anything better to do.’ He flashed a tight smile. ‘Expecting him?’

  I forced a similar smile in return, grabbed my bag and stood to leave. ‘Wrong time of year. But it sounds like an interesting thing to poke around in, and I think a female reporter looks better than a male intern.’ It was an easy semi-truth to tell. I turned and headed for the door without further instruction, but Marcus pulled me back.

  ‘It’s a PC who tipped me off, Sarah, so tread carefully.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Brooks is probably your best bet.’

  I was glad to be facing away from him. ‘Why?’ I turned then. ‘She’s the lead?’

  ‘Bound to be, isn’t she?’

  Of course she is. I nodded and carried on my way to the office. Thinking, maybe it isn’t too late to pass it to an intern after all…

  The break-ins had already been covered by a handful of small papers in the area. I didn’t know how it had flown under my radar for so long. But from everything I’d read online it looked as though the police were looking for a run-of-the-mill panty-sniffer. I winced at my own use of the term – but I had to call it how I saw it. Brooks had been quoted in one or two reports already, so Marcus’ guess about her involvement was right. I couldn’t decide, though, whether that made me more or less inclined to follow up the story myself. After hours of back and forth – and another chat with Marcus, who wanted to know whether I’d be out in the field for the story or working from my office – I decided the only safe middle-ground was to give it to Elliot and closely supervise his work.

  ‘This seems like your sort of thing,’ he said, half-reading through my notes. He looked up in time to catch my raised eyebrow. ‘I don’t mean – I just meant…’ He took a deep breath in. ‘I didn’t mean anything bad by that. Only that, it seems potentially big, and you usually keep that stuff for yourself.’ He shook his head. ‘Rightly so, I mean, because you’re the senior reporter. Not senior because of your age either but–’

  ‘Please stop.’ I smiled.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I just think it’ll be a good chance for you to get field experience. I’ll happily supervise, particularly given that you’re a male intern handling a case that impacts primarily on women. And, of course, it’s likely to be a man committing the crimes, so–’

  ‘Why?’ Elliot interrupted me, with the flat tone of a man ready to defend his gender.

  ‘It’s just statistics, Elliot, don’t take it personally.’ I waited for him to push back but he decided against it. ‘Your best way in is going to be to contact the police. Now, I’ve done a little digging around…’ I talked him through the process of contacting Brooks – or trying to. She was a hard woman to get a hold of, and the task of trying was one I was desperate to delegate. She and I had managed to miss any uncomfortable brushes against each other in a work capacity – through strategic distribution of workloads on my part. Although there had been one occasion where I couldn’t avoid contacting her – and she tactically avoided the phone call, getting one of her juniors to get back to me instead. A minor incident, but it had made me realise how desperate we were to keep our sex lives apart from our work ones; which is why we worked as well as we did.

  ‘She won’t find it strange that she’s getting a call from an intern?’

  No, I thought, as I handed over the slip of paper with Brooks’ office number scribbled on it, because she’ll understand why I’ve done it. I shrugged. ‘You’re here to learn the ropes. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be contacting the police about cases. Not if you really want to work on the crime desk, but then I suppose–’

  ‘No, no, I do want to work here,’ he interrupted.

  Good boy. ‘Okay, great. Well, why don’t you go ahead and give her a call and then head back my way when she gets back to you?’

  He hesitated. ‘You don’t think she’ll talk to me on the spot?’

  No, she’ll let it go to voicemail and then call you back – if she wants to. ‘Sure, there’s always that chance, too. Maybe make some notes before you call? Bullet-points of what you want to ask her, that kind of thing.’ I flashed a smile. ‘Can’t hurt to be prepared.’

  ‘Thanks, Sarah.’ He backed out of the room and I almost expected a bow when he got to the doorway. ‘Look, before I go, can I ask you about something? It’s kind of personal.’

  Since I’d joined the newspaper applications for intern positions, with an emphasis on crime coverage, had sky-rocketed – and my salary had gone up a notch or two because of that, too. Whenever Marcus put out an opportunity, there were even more applicants than the time before. Applications had to be capped on the last round because he and I hit a limit on how many pleading emails we could read. Elliot must have been among the brightest, although by the time he’d started with us I couldn’t have picked his CV out of a line-up. Since he’d started, though, he’d been quiet, friendly and eager to please; although his tea-making was nothing on Eleanor’s, but I’d managed to overlook that. Quiet and friendly aside, though, every intern arrived at the stage of wanting to ask a personal question, and it was always one of two: What are my chances of this turning into a full-time position? Although this wasn’t their favourite, it had been high on the list of some. The other one – the more likely one – was:

  ‘The second book you’re writing…’

  My stomach turned over.

  ‘…is it about the killer?’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘What killer?’

  ‘You know.’ He shuffled awkwardly. He was right to feel awkward; his phrasing was terrible. ‘The killer.’

  I thought carefully about how to word my response. ‘No, Elliot, I don’t think there’ll be a permanent position at the paper. We’ll be looking to recruit a new intern.’

  His head jerked. ‘But I didn’t ask…’ The deer-in-headlights look came seconds later. His expression made me feel a little like I’d dashed his hopes and dreams. I imagined how he might think back to this moment as a learning curve one day. I flashed him a tight smile and then glanced around my desk to find my reading glasses. He left without another word.

  Seconds later another intrusion. ‘Why does Elliot look like he’s about to cry?’


  I looked over the rim of my glasses at Marcus in the doorway. ‘Beats me.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Why do you assume that I did anything?’

  He thought for a second. ‘You’re right. What did he do?’

  ‘He asked the killer question.’ I laughed. ‘Literally.’

  ‘Oh, Elliot.’ He glanced down at an A4 sheet in front of him. ‘Anyway, real issue. I’ve got you down for holiday from the middle of next week.’

  There was a long pause where neither of us said anything.

  ‘I’m sorry, did I miss a question?’

  Marcus laughed. ‘Sorry, I more just wanted to confirm. Anywhere nice?’

  ‘Out of town for a couple of days, that’s all.’ I looked back through my lenses and carried on reading over my notes for a fresh story. Marcus lingered in the doorway. I didn’t know what he was hankering after, but I wasn’t going to bow to it.

  ‘Sarah,’ he caught my attention in the end, ‘you’ll be careful?’

  Marcus and I never talked about my extracurricular activities. But he knew. I never worked out how he knew exactly – but from the way he looked at me sometimes, I felt it.

  I nodded my understanding. ‘Always.’

  32

  The lovechild that blossomed from mine and Landon’s morbidity turned out to be a godsend for more reasons than either of us expected. After his first interview with me, his show went from strength to strength and he was bumped to a prime-time slot, as well as orchestrating the late-night interview series that I’d been a part of.

  For me, though, our work together gave me something to keep my publisher happy with. The long-awaited second book was slow in the making, but the powers that be were kept at bay by the fact that my book was a constant bestseller. There had been fluctuations over the years. But every anniversary that rolled around warranted more coverage and then, to capitalise on our new-found statuses in the city and afar, Landon and I teamed up for Canonical: a true crime podcast. Not only did the opening episode hook a number of loyal listeners, but we gained more coverage as the weeks and months rolled on – thereby securing my book the sales it needed.