‘Call off the search. A buyer I work with is stinking rich and she’s off to Bombay for six months. She’s got a place in the Northern Quarter. I think it’s a converted cotton mill or something, and apparently it’s uh-may-zing. She wants a reliable flat-sitter and I said you were the most reliable person in the world and she said in that case she’ll do you a deal.’
‘Erm …’
Mindy quotes a monthly figure which is a fair amount of money. It’s not an unfeasible amount, and certainly not a lot for the kind of place I think she’s talking about. But: Mindy’s encroaching madness. It’ll probably come with an incontinent Maltipoo called Colonel Gad-Faffy who will only eat sushi-grade bluefin and has to be walked four times a day.
‘Do you want to come and see it with me, after work?’ Mindy continues. ‘She flies on Friday and a cousin of hers is interested. She says he’s a bit of a chang monster and she doesn’t trust him. So you’re front runner but you’re going to have to be quick.’
‘Chang monster?’
‘You know. Coke. Dickhead’s dust.’
‘Right.’
I think it through. I was really looking for something longer term than a fixed six months. Six months with option of renewal, I’d thought. But this might be a way to live the dream while I look for something more realistic.
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Great! Meet you by Afflecks at half five?’
‘See you there.’
As I walk back into the press room, I realise why I’ve dragged my feet in moving out of the house, however uncomfortable it is. My decision to leave Rhys is about to turn from words into action, become real. Splitting equity, dividing up our worldly goods, coming-home-at-night-to-empty-rooms-and-a-big-yawning-maw-of-an-empty-future real. Part of me, a shrill, cowardly part, wants to scream: ‘Wait! Stop! I didn’t mean it! I want to get off!’ Motion sickness kicking in.
Yet I remember the text I got from Rhys a few days ago, saying, in what sounded as much like sorrow as anger: ‘I hope you’re looking for places because the end of living together like this can’t come fast enough for me.’
I flip my notebook open and wonder if I want another cow-shit coffee.
Zoe enters and hovers, giving off a static buzz of nerves.
‘Feel free to go and get something to eat. You can leave your things here if you like,’ I say.
‘Thanks.’ She puts her coat and bag down, and places her notebook on the table carefully.
‘Unless you fancy going to the pub for lunch?’ I continue, not sure where this magnanimity is coming from. Trying to atone for what I’ve done to Rhys, possibly. There will never be enough entries in the good deeds column of the Great Ledger of Life to offset that one.
‘That would be great!’
‘Give me five minutes and I’ll show you why The Castle has earned the accolade of “pub nearest court”.’
Zoe nods and sits down to transcribe her copy, longhand. I glance over while I’m typing. I knew it – her shorthand’s so perfectly formed you could photocopy it for textbook examples.
Gretton saunters in, squinting from me to Zoe and back again.
‘What’s this, Bring Your Daughter To Work Day?’
Zoe looks up, startled.
‘Welcome to the family,’ I say to Zoe. ‘Think of Gretton as the uncle who’d make you play horsey.’
6
I apologise to Zoe for not drinking alcohol when we get to the pub. I feel like I’m letting the profession down in moments like these. At every paper you always hear tales of great mythical beasts of olden times who could drink enough to sink battleships and still hit deadline, get up at first light the next day and do it all again. They’re legend, usually because they died in their fifties.
‘It’s soporific in court at the best of times, what with the heating and the droning on. If I hit the bottle I’d probably end up snoring,’ I say.
‘Oh, it’s OK, I’m a lightweight anyway,’ Zoe says. ‘I’ll have a Diet Coke as well.’
We scan the laminated menus on the bar, hearts sinking. The Castle’s menus have clearly been written by marketing managers who think they are conversant in the foreign language of ‘funny’. We try merely pointing at our selected lunch items to save our dignity. No dice with the morose barman.
‘I’ve got astigmatism,’ he says, as if I should know this.
‘Oh,’ I reply, flustered, trying for the last route out. ‘Then we’ll both have the Ploughman’s.’
‘Naked, Piggy or Extra Pickly?’
Dammit. ‘Piggy,’ I mumble, defeated. ‘Naked for her.’
‘You want that as a melt?’ he sighs, in a way that suggests most of the world’s problems are down to people like us wanting melts. We decide we do, but both pass on a squirt of the chef’s special sauce, given we’re not on nodding terms with him.
We make small talk, battling the octave range of Mariah Carey and multiple televisions, while two microwave-warm plates are banged down under our noses. As soon as Zoe finishes her meal, she says ‘Here’s what I wrote’, brushing crumbs off her hands and producing a spiral-bound notepad from her bag, flipping to the right page. ‘I wrote it out longhand.’
I feel a twinge of irritation at being expected to mentor while I’m still eating, but swallow it, along with a mouthful of rubbery cheese. I scan her story, braced for, if not car crash copy, a fender bender at the very least. But it’s good. In fact, it’s very fluid and confident for a first time.
‘This is good,’ I nod, and Zoe beams. ‘You’ve got the right angle, that the father and the uncle don’t deny that they went to see the boyfriend.’
‘What if something better comes up this afternoon? Do you stick with your first instinct?’
‘Possible but unlikely. The wheels turn pretty slowly. We probably won’t get on to the boyfriend’s evidence this afternoon.’
I hand Zoe’s notepad back to her.
‘So how long have you been here?’ she asks.
‘Too long. I went to uni here and did my training in Sheffield, then came to the Evening News as a trainee.’
‘Do you like court?’
‘I do, actually, yeah. I was always better at writing the stories than finding them, so this suits me. And the cases are usually interesting.’ I pause, worried I sound like the kind of ghoul who goes to inspect the notes on roadside flowers. ‘Obviously it’s nasty sometimes.’
‘What’s it like here?’ Zoe asks. ‘The news editor seems a bit scary.’
‘Oh yeah.’ With the flat of my knife, I push away a heap of gluey coleslaw that must’ve been on the plate when they heated it. ‘Managing Ken is like wrestling a crocodile. We all have the bite marks to show for it. Has he asked you the octuplets question yet?’
Zoe shakes her head.
‘A woman’s had octuplets, ninetuplets, whatever. You get the first hospital bedside interview, while she’s still whacked up on drugs. What’s the one question you don’t leave without asking?’
‘Er … did it hurt?’
‘Are you going to have any more? She’ll probably try to throw the bowl of grapes at you but that’s his point. You’re a journalist, always