‘What, Pete?’
‘Woken you up?’ he asks, uninterestedly.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Have you seen the Sundays?’
‘Obviously not if I’m still in bed.’ Oh yuck, I mentioned being in bed to Gretton.
‘Go and get the Mail.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. Go and get it and call me back.’
‘Listen, this is shitting me up. What are you on about, Pete?’
‘Go and get it.’
Heart beating a little faster than I’ve told it to, I pull a jumper over my pyjama top and cast around for some shoes.
I decide on the way to the newsagents that I won’t read it in the shop so I can absorb whatever blow this is in privacy. The person in front of me buys scratch cards and Benson & Hedges and spends an excruciating amount of time counting out their change. I almost run back to the flat, slam the door behind me, throw the paper on the floor and kneel over it. The pages stick together as I scrabble through them. Some grotesque latest twist in the lipo story, perhaps.
I turn to a double page spread, headlined: ‘The Armed Robber, His Wife, His Lawyer – Her Lover.’
There are some long lens shots of Natalie Shale in a fedora, pulled low like a pop star exiting a hotel, arriving at a house that isn’t her own. The door’s held open by a thin, rakish figure that I recognise as Jonathan Grant, the twenty-something solicitor who’s often swaggered around court full of self-consequence, flirting with female QCs. There’s Lucas Shale’s arrest mugshot, and a photo of Natalie stood demurely behind Grant as he addresses a gaggle of press outside the court.
I can barely concentrate on the story long enough to do anything more than pick up the odd phrase. ‘Secret trysts at Grant’s £350,000 lovenest in Chorlton-cum-Hardy …’ ‘In public, Natalie Shale was a devoted wife and mother, who protested her husband’s innocence, in private, friends say she was “increasingly desperate” and Grant provided a shoulder to cry on …’ ‘The 27-year-old is regarded as a rising star at his firm …’
Then I spot it. The fact that makes something this bad a hundred times worse. The first name on the story is a well-known Mail staffer. But there’s a second name in the byline.
I spend longer than is respectable for someone with no formally recognised learning difficulties wondering if there’s another Zoe Clarke.
At a loss for what else to do, I call Gretton back.
‘Seen it?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘I feel for you, Woodford, I really do. What she’s done to you is a fucking disgrace. I presume this is something you’ve been sitting on and she’s nicked it?’
‘No.’ I feel feverish and dizzy. Gretton’s not going to be the only one who thinks I’m involved. Not by a long way.
‘How’s she got this then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, she’s certainly stolen your thunder and shat in your trifle.’
‘I can’t believe it … I don’t believe she’s done this. It could ruin Lucas Shale’s appeal … Jonathan Grant is going to lose his job …’
‘To give Clarke her dues, she had some brass balls to negotiate herself a job off the back of it.’
‘What?’
‘I hear she called in last thing on Friday saying she wouldn’t be back.’
‘She left on Friday? Why did no one tell me?’
‘I tried to call, you had your phone turned off. I left a message.’
The film, with Caroline. After I finished talking to Simon, I noticed I had a voicemail and decided it could wait. Gah.
‘She didn’t say why she was going,’ Gretton continues, and I realise he’s enjoying himself hugely. ‘She told them she didn’t have to work notice according to her contract, gave them the old back-to-front victory sign. I expect you were going to get the bad news on Monday.’
My phone starts beeping with another call. I have a good idea who it might be. I say goodbye to Gretton.
‘Have you seen the Mail?’ Ken asks.
‘Yes,’ I squeak. I wish I’d had longer to work out how to play this.
‘Then the explanation you’re about to give me better be nothing short of fucking miraculous.’
‘I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘Not going to fly!’ he bellows so loudly I have to move the phone away from my ear. ‘Not going to so much as taxi along the tarmac! Try again! You have the only interview with this woman and your friend in court takes this line to the nationals! You’re seriously telling me this is a coincidence? Do you think I was delivered with this morning’s milk? Is it my fucking silver top that’s confused you?’
When Ken starts delving into his rhetorical repertoire, you know you’re in deep shit.
‘I had nothing to do with this at all, I swear.’
‘Then how’d she get the story?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If you value being in employment, try harder.’
‘There were rumours.’ I’m desperately trying to think three steps ahead, with blood pounding in my ears and the phone slippery. ‘Gossip round court a while back that Natalie and her lawyer seemed too close, and maybe that was why he was moved off the Shale case. That was all. Zoe took a chance and it paid off.’
‘I’d say it paid off, yeah. Based on nothing more than a hunch, she went to the Mail and never once mentioned what she was doing to you?’
‘I’m guessing she kept it from me because she knew it would ruin my story and I’d warn you.’ That’s better, that’s good, Rachel. No one knows about the text. Oh God, what if Zoe’s told people about what I did and Ken’s merely seeing whether I own up? Fuck, fuck.
‘Why didn’t you take the rumour seriously?’
‘None of us did.’
‘Apart from the new girl?’
‘Seems so,’ I say, limply.
‘Here’s what I think. I think Natalie Shale confessed she was doing the lawyer in some girly confidential with you, and instead of bringing the story to us you gossiped to a junior reporter, who for all her backstabbing double-dealing has still behaved more like something resembling a fucking journalist.’
‘Why would Natalie Shale tell me? That interview I did with her was all about getting good PR. She wouldn’t want this in the papers.’
‘And this has well and truly shafted our exclusive, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I concede, miserably.
As the initial shock recedes ever so slightly and the truth of this turn of events sets in, a significant degree of humiliation takes its place. To think I trusted Zoe. To think she play-acted agreeing with my decision to drop it. Zoe was probably contemptuous of me all along, while I played the experienced old hand.
‘I’m going to have to explain this to the editor and you’ve given me precisely fuck all to work with,’ Ken continues. ‘I’ve