Rhys.’
‘Do I have to point out that a plan to find someone like your ex contains a fatal flaw?’
‘You’re wasting your time. I don’t fancy him and men like him don’t fancy women like me, they fancy women like you. Or they marry women like you and fancy slim-hipped Cuban boys.’
‘This is typical.’
‘What?’
‘You spend one evening with a perfectly charming man and because his background’s different to yours you don’t just rule him out, you accuse him of being a closet case or a paedophile. You’re a raging inverted snob.’
‘I didn’t literally mean he’s a paedophile! And “different background” hardly covers it. He says “hello” as if it’s got all five vowels in it. He’s got one of those drawls where it sounds like his batteries are running out.’
‘It’s harder to meet people at our age. I mean, is there anyone with potential at work?’
‘Huh. Not without leaping the species barrier.’
‘Ben, though. Wooooh,’ Caroline makes a low whistle. ‘Forgive me for using Mindy lexicon, but, please serve me a slice of that.’
I grind my teeth.
‘Were you never tempted?’ she adds.
‘By Ben?’ I snort, over-acting a little.
‘Yes. I mean, I know he doesn’t look like he needs a good wash, as per your usual type, as we were just saying.’
‘Oh, no. More like the brother I never had.’ The brother I never had if we were raised in a cult in the Fens, under surveillance by the vice squad.
‘You were the perfect friend for him, then. Shame you didn’t stay in touch. Why didn’t you?’
‘Is it that strange?’
‘I suppose not. You’re normally good at that sort of thing, that’s all, and he seems fond of you.’
I say nothing, replying both too risky and too painful.
‘So if we can establish Simon’s at least AC/DC, there’s still no potential?’ Caroline asks.
‘Don’t let me be single for more than five minutes before you try to pair me off, will you. Jeez-us.’
‘Kidding,’ Caroline says. She’s trying to lean over to nudge me playfully when the car takes a corner and she gets thrown back against the door.
22
My anticipation of announcing the Natalie Shale exclusive to my news editor, Ken, is put on hold when Vicky spies me as soon as I put foot on carpet inside the hum of the newsroom. Vicky is a news desk deputy, and a kind of half-maiden, half-serpent creature, like something out of Greek mythology.
‘Rachel!’ she barks.
Duly summoned, I pick my way through the desks to her side.
‘Your story about the cripple fraud trial that finally ended,’ she asks, tapping the screen with her pen, employing her usual charming turn of phrase, voice all honey laced with arsenic, ‘limped to the finish line, I should say. Why does Michael Tallack turn into Christopher, five paras down?’
I feel my face grow hot.
‘Does he?’ I say, a light sweat breaking out on my top lip. I’ve recently emerged from a sentencing for manslaughter, this story already a distant memory. ‘Sorry.’
‘Yes. Hopalong Cassidy’s brother was cleared of any involvement, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, sorry …’ Shit, shit.
‘Try to not to put actionable defamations in your copy, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Really sorry, Vicky, I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘It’s lucky I spotted it,’ Vicky concludes.
‘Yes, thanks.’ I bet she didn’t, and a sub-editor brought it to her. Certain members of news desk are known for dishing out bollockings, not their ferocious work rate. ‘A riding crop in one hand and an éclair in the other’ is how my friend Dougie once put it. He eventually tired of grumping and went off to Scotland to be a successful crime correspondent. Not for the first time, I have the feeling of being a barnacle-clad rock that time has flowed around like water.
Journalism, probably like most jobs, comes with the paradox that the more successful you get, the less you do the stuff that initially appealed: namely, finding stories and writing them. I could apply for news desk positions but I’d answer phones and argue with people all day. And have to sit next to people like Vicky.
‘Is Ken about?’
‘Yeah, somewhere.’ Vicky loses interest in me and picks up on a flashing phone line.
‘What up, Woodford? To what do we owe the honour?’
I turn to see Ken, the news editor, fishing in a bag of Wotsits, a copy of the paper tucked under one arm. He has a thatch of wiry grey hair that looks as if it’s clipped into a cube shape with shears. I’m sure it gets squarer every time I see him. He could wear a box as a hat.
‘I popped by to tell you some good news.’
‘Christ. You’re not pregnant, are you?’
‘No …’ Possibly the least pregnant I’ve ever been, cheers, Ken.
‘Thank God for that.’
Ken Baggaley is known for being ‘firm but fair’, even though he’s more than firm and not particularly fair. In newspaper-speak, it’s because his rages are reactions to actual events, rather than tremors in a psychological fault line.
‘I’ve got an interview with Natalie Shale,’ I conclude.
He looks unmoved. ‘She’s doing a press conference?’
‘No, just us. An exclusive. Her solicitor’s a contact.’
Ken lifts eyebrows, grunts, and I sense I am briefly Number 1 in interest stakes over cheese-flavoured puffed corn.
‘Good stuff. When?’
‘Date’s being finalised but it’ll be in the bag soon, before Lucas Shale’s appeal is heard.’
‘Let me know how it goes. Well done, Woodford.’
Ken drops into a chair and continues his assault on the Wotsits. I walk out of the office with a spring in my step: now that was Ken gushing. Ben’s a lucky charm.
On the way back to court, I decide to make a detour via Marks & Spencer. It was impressed upon me when I unpacked my rancid collection of underwear (from the ‘L’Amour Longtemps’ extra complacency range) that an upgrade is required. At first I thought ‘But who’s gonna see it anytime soon anyway?’, then I mentioned it to Mindy. She explained the feng shui of lingerie: that if I’m in old cotton faded saggy things, a size too small, good things will not come to me, even if I’m not looking. I’m not sure I accept her reasoning.
I don’t feel any degrees more sexually energised once I’m gingerly fiddling with turquoise lace balcony cups. I’m wondering if anyone will ever want to see me naked again, or more to the point, see me naked the first time and then want to see me naked regularly, on a rolling basis, going forward, as Ken would say.
Part of the pact of long-term relationships is that they’re sometimes as much about the things they take out of your life as put in. If it’s no longer a rollercoaster, more of a monorail, that means you avoid the lows as well as the highs. If your loved one barges