‘Hi!’
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine!’
‘It’s Ben.’
‘Hello, Ben!’ I say this in a voice that people usually reserve for ‘Hello, Cleveland!’
‘Are you sure you’re OK? You sound a bit odd.’
‘I am, I was – I was …’ Christ, I don’t want to admit I’ve been asleep this afternoon, like an eighty-two year old ‘… having a lie down.’
‘Ah. Right. I see.’ Ben sounds embarrassed and I sense he thinks I mean some sort of afternoon singleton lie down, with company. ‘I’ll call back.’
‘No!’ I virtually shout. ‘Honestly. I’m fine. How are you? It’s weird you called now, I was just thinking about you.’
Mouth, open. Foot: placed inside.
‘All good things I hope,’ Ben says, awkwardly.
‘Of course!’ I squeal, with the ongoing note of hysteria.
‘Uhm, I wanted to see if you wanted to meet my colleague after work one night next week to discuss this story?’
‘Yes, that’d be great.’
‘Thursday? I’ll come along, if that’s OK?’
‘Totally fine.’ Totally, amazingly, wonderfully fine.
‘He’s all right, Simon, but he’s a bit full of himself. Don’t let him take any liberties if he starts up about the evils of the press.’
‘I’m sure I can give as good as I get.’
‘So am I,’ Ben laughs. ‘Right, I’ll email a time and a place at the start of the week.’
‘Great.’
‘Have a nice weekend. I’ll let you get back to your lie down.’
‘I’m standing up now, think I’ll stay that way.’
‘Whatever works best.’
We say a stilted goodbye and ring off, with me on a strange, pain-free, woozy high. Onscreen, the patient’s heartbeat has returned.
15
I should be listening to the details of when, on or about the 26th of August last year, Michael Tallack of Verne Drive, Levenshulme, obtained monies by deception by strapping on his brother’s leg iron and claiming spurious disability benefits.
Instead, mentally, I’m far, far away and long, long ago: part of a group watching a fireworks display at Platt Fields Park in the autumn of my first year of university. I ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ as each explosion bloomed and faded into spiders of glittering dust. I turned to Ben to say something and saw he was watching me instead of the night sky. It was an intent look and gave me a sensation similar to when you think a fairground ride has come to a stop and it hasn’t, quite.
‘Uh …’ I stumbled over the words that were previously on the tip of my tongue, ‘I’m cold.’
‘In those?’ Ben asked, sceptically, pointing at my gloves. They were Fair Isle, multi-coloured. Admittedly, the size of hot water bottle covers.
‘They’re nice!’
‘If you’re seven.’
‘Aren’t you cold?’ I asked him.
‘Not really,’ Ben said. ‘Hadn’t noticed.’
His eyes sparkled. In the freezing atmosphere, I felt heat rise to the surface of my skin. I breathed deeply and clapped my mittens together.
A girl joined us, winding her arm through Ben’s in familiarity. I angled my body away from them and when I turned back to say something, they’d slipped away. I found myself craning my neck to try to spot them in the crowd. I felt ever so slightly abandoned. Which was ridiculous, and clearly a sign of how much I was missing Rhys.
‘All rise,’ barks the court clerk, snapping me back to the here and now.
I wait politely for everyone to file out ahead of me, instead of overtaking to slice the fastest path to the door, in my usual tetchy work mode. My mind’s very much on my after-work appointment with Ben. Equal parts terror, anticipation, excitement, guilt, confusion …
I get a cow-shit coffee and go to the press room to drink it in peace. I see Zoe has got there before me. Despite her doubts, she’s taken to court reporting brilliantly. The ability to spot a story is one you can’t really teach, and she clearly has it. She’s also had the confidence to leave a courtroom where nothing much is happening and seek something better. It took me ages to find the guts to do that. I’d be pinioned to the bench listening to a ten-a-penny aggravated twokking, doing side-to-side slotting eye movements, like a portrait in a haunted house when backs turn.
‘Sodding Gretton,’ she says, by way of greeting, over her takeaway spud, spearing discs of cucumber with a white plastic fork and placing them in the opened lid.
I sip my coffee. ‘Is he stalking you now? I thought I’d seen less of him.’
‘Yeah. I got this nice story about a have-a-go hero pensioner chasing toerags off his allotments, think I’ve got it all to myself, and then I turn round and he’s breathing down my neck.’
‘Uh oh, there wasn’t a joke about hoes, was there?’
‘The deadly or dangerous weapon was a rake, thankfully.’
‘Take it as a compliment. He wouldn’t bother if he didn’t think you knew what you were doing.’
‘I suppose.’
I reflect that this is truer than I’d like. It’s an uncomfortable discovery that Gretton’s instantly switched to targeting Zoe. Am I that dispensable? I haven’t had anything great lately. This must be how fading movie stars feel when they lose a stalker to a younger rival. Even rodents like him are fleeing sinking HMS Woodford. Admittedly, Zoe looks like she’s going to go far. I think people once said that about me. This bothers me more than it would have done, now that I’ve broken off my engagement. Funny how, when one part of your life falls away, the other bits that are left start looking rather feeble. I’ve always thought I had a good job. Now I’m thinking I’ve never exactly chased promotion, and here’s Zoe, probably going to overtake me in a few weeks flat and then be on to the next thing.
‘I’m getting off on time today. If news desk ask, I was here until the bitter end,’ I say. ‘I don’t need to file anything until tomorrow and the progress in Court 2 is on the stately side.’
Zoe makes a salute. ‘Understood. Anything fun?’
‘What, in Court 2?’
‘What you’re off to.’
That’s a good question. ‘A drink with an old friend.’
‘Ooh. A friend friend or a friend?’
For some reason the question irritates me. ‘Friend, female,’ I snap, then realise my guilty conscience is making me antsy.
Zoe nods, spearing a slice of woolly tomato and then plunging through potato flesh the way gardeners work over soil.
16
The Tallack trial continues, and my afternoon passes in a similar reverie. This time I’m back in my study period before first year exams. Ben left me a cryptic note in my pigeonhole in the university’s