There was a tense lull in the chat, and for no other reason than to fill the dead air, she politely asked him how his studying was coming on, but he interrupted.
‘So, are you going to tell me what the hell is wrong with you tonight or not?’ he asked her straight out, cloud-blue eyes unflinching.
She looked blankly back at him, he guessed – correctly as it happened – unused to directness. In her line of work, Jake figured, everyone freely talked about you behind your back, but few people probably had the guts to say things straight to your face.
‘I don’t know what you’re taking about …’
‘Oh for feck’s sake, do I have to drag it out of you?’
‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, I’m just a bit tired that’s all,’ she went on to protest, rubbing her black eyes exhaustedly.
‘Eloise, are you familiar with the phrase “don’t kid a kidder?” You walk in here like the whole world around you is about to collapse on your shoulders. All I’m saying is if you need a friendly ear, then I’m here and I’ve all night to listen. The floor is yours.’
Then he shrugged as if to say, if you want to talk, talk. If you need quiet, that’s fine too. No pressure, up to you.
And so, slowly, hesitatingly, she began to tell him. Really open up to him, in a way he guessed she hadn’t done in the longest time and for some reason, didn’t seem able to do with anyone else. Out it all came tumbling, uncut and uncensored.
‘It’s just … All this pressure I’m under in work,’ she eventually told him, sighing almost painfully. ‘Gargantuan pressure, so intense that most of the time I feel like I’m trying not to drown, but I know one day – and one day soon by the looks of things – I’ll surely get dragged under. The way things are going, it’s inevitable. And it didn’t used to be like this, you know. Time was, I loved my job, adored it, hated being away from it. Couldn’t understand colleagues wanting holidays and time off. I lived to get into work. Whereas now …’
‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, now there are days when I honestly think I’m coming to the end of my life expectancy as editor of the Post.’ She patted her chest as she said it, like it was a physical relief just to articulate her greatest fear out loud.
‘I swear I can almost feel it in my bones.’
And he nodded and listened and encouraged her to go on and so she did.
She told him about the next bout of staff culling and redundancies that were only round the corner, which she’d have to deal with because, as she explained, no one else would. All the shitty jobs ultimately fell to her. Which was why everyone in the whole place, to a man, seemed to despise her. Told him about the board of directors she’d nicknamed the T. Rexes and their old-fashioned gentlemen’s club and the way they effortlessly expected her to turn around the online edition of the paper, with absolutely zero encouragement from anyone, just bucketloads of crap that kept getting thrown down on top of her for every financial target she failed to reach.
Then she told him with particular relish about a guy called Seth Coleman, the managing editor and her number two, who’d basically been champing at the bit to get his hands on her job and now seemed to feel that his hour had finally come.
Just hearing this alone made Jake immediately want to go into that shagging office and wallop the living shit out of him.
Then, saving the best for last, she went on to tell him about what was really troubling her.
‘So anyway,’ she said, gulping back a big mouthful of wine, ‘at about five this evening, I’m tied up in a meeting with union reps, safely out of the way in other words. And what does Seth decide to do? In a spectacular ‘et tu, Brute?’ blood rush to his greasy head, the insinuating little git decides to completely override me and goes up to the executive floor to meet with the T. Rexes alone.’
‘Gobshite. I’d sort him out in two seconds if you ever wanted.’
‘You haven’t heard the worst of it. He goes in to tell them that he strongly feels the paper’s slow and steady decline in sales is now in danger of turning it into nothing more than a white elephant that’ll end up facing extinction, just like the Tribune did not so long ago. And on the principle that if you’re sinking fast, you need a new hand at the helm, then the editorial job at the Post should be handed over to someone new and fresh immediately. Him, in other words. He basically said it’s been my hobby horse for way too long now, but I’ve had my shot and now need to graciously accept defeat and bugger off,’ she went on, really getting into her stride now.
‘All of that would be bad enough, but then the duplicitous little snake-arse even went as far as to insinuate – thus verbalising my single greatest fear, by the way – that with my contract up for renewal soon anyway, maybe it’s best not to just sideline me somewhere else, but to actually get rid of me altogether. Which of course would mean my chance of ever getting any kind of decent job in the industry again would be out the window.’
Jake sat back, then whistled.
‘Bloody hell. Makes all the backstabbing that went on in ancient Rome look restrained. How did all of that get back to you, by the way?’
‘I have ways and means,’ she said wryly. ‘The news filtered back to me fast, but then I make it my business to know everything that’s going on at the Post. In my job, you have to.’
‘Sounds a bit like working for the KGB in pre-Gorbachev Russia,’ he teased and for the first time since she got there, she cracked a smile.
‘Anyway, here’s the real question,’ she went on, taking another big, nerve-calming glug of the wine beside her, kicking her shoes off and curling her legs up.
Took every ounce of resolve Jake had to take his eyes off her long, slim legs and focus on her eyes instead.
‘What do I do now?’ she went on. ‘Seth’s playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship here, so I’m going to have to plot my way through it as carefully as in a championship chess game. Oh sure, one fine day I’ll gladly see the two-faced git bastard hang, head on a spike, burnt at the stake, the whole works. But for now at least, I’ve no choice but to bite my tongue, play a long game and choose my next move as cagily as a cat … Mind you, it still doesn’t stop me from wondering what in God’s name I ever did in a past life to deserve Seth bloody Coleman. A managing editor is supposed to be my consigliere, my right hand. Not someone who’s only waiting on their chance to stab me in the back, then dance on my grave singing Hallelujah.’
He just let her talk on and on, quietly listening, correctly sensing that this was a woman who’d never in a million years lie on an psychoanalyst’s sofa Woody Allen-like and spill out her innermost thoughts. So therefore, he instinctively knew she must really be at break point to even consider opening up to him. She left nothing out either; told him the awful things that were said behind her back at work, when all she was trying to do was keep the show on the road and keep everyone in a job. And how she tried not to let it get to her but how much it all hurt her deep down. That in spite of what everyone thought about her and in spite of all the bitching that was done about her, she was actually a human being underneath it all, with normal human emotions.
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ he murmured under his breath.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘From The Merchant of Venice. Go on. What other bitching are they doing about you? Say it aloud, we’ll have a laugh at it and then it’ll go away. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’
She was on the verge of tears