Glares at Bel
.
‘What for?’
‘Whatever. D’you want it or not?’
‘How much?’ she asks doubtfully
.
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I’ve got money,’ she says, aggressively. ‘I’m not a bloody charity case.’
‘Yeah,’ says Bel, ‘but I didn’t pay for it, you see.’
The girl looks stunned. Then admiring. Then curious
.
‘Silly cow,’ says Bel
.
The girl laughs. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Silly cow.’
She takes the chocolate, finds a trench beneath the wrapper and runs a thumbnail down it. Snaps off a finger. ‘D’you want
some?’ she asks, unenthusiastically. Offering stuff to someone else comes uneasily to her. She doesn’t get much chance to
practise
.
‘No thanks,’ says Bel airily, and shows her paper bag of sweets. ‘I’m fine.’
The girl is relieved, but doesn’t say it. The two sit quietly for a while in blazing sunshine, savouring the twin pleasures
of sugar and summer holidays
.
‘I’m Jade,’ says the girl, eventually
.
‘I’m Bel,’ says Bel
.
Chapter Eleven
Martin tries Jackie again. He’s been ringing all day, and all evening, ever since she vanished in that minicab. Knows she’ll
answer eventually; and if she doesn’t, he’ll go back up there and wait for her to come home.
He fills in a couple of hours by googling Kirsty Lindsay, the journalist who tried to chat him up on the beach. A bit of him
had expected to find that she was just pretending to be a journalist – he’s never heard of her and thought she seemed pretty
unprofessional, the way she just started talking to him like that, without identifying herself – but to his surprise he finds
that she does exist; that she has scores of bylines, in fact.
He trawls through the Google hits to learn the nature of the beast while he waits for Jackie to answer. He knows that her
phone is working again, because he dialled it once when he was following her down Fore Street, heard it ring in her pocket
and saw her pull it out and check the display. It’s only a matter of time before she responds, he thinks. All women want a
man who’s loyal. They say so all the time. Well, if she wants loyal, he’ll show her loyal. No matter how long it takes. The
phone rings out, again and again. He wonders if she knows that her voicemail has been deactivated.
He wonders about journalists as he reads. About their intrusive nosiness, their assumptions, the way they damn entire groups
with a single sentence. The hacking scandal was just the tip of the iceberg,really. Lindsay doesn’t seem much worse, or much better, than the rest of them. She doesn’t seem to have any specialist knowledge,
or cover any particular subjects, other than that most of what she writes about happens in the south-east. But she’s certainly
got opinions. Plenty of those.
He rings Jackie. He waited, after she left in the minicab, until it got dark, until all the lights were on in her block and
the doors firmly locked, and then he left. He doesn’t give up easily, but he’s not a fool. She’s gone away for the night.
Has she got a new man? Replaced him that easily, that casually? No. It can’t be that. He’s seen enough of her life to know
that she’s not been dating.
He sits with the phone between his knees and glances at the clock radio: 10.45 – news over,
Question Time
in full swing. He’ll ring her once more, then he’ll watch to the end of that and try her again. She has to answer eventually.
He carries on reading Lindsay’s bylines as
Question Time
plays in the background. She’s very patchy, he notices. Sometimes she seems capable of doing her job and just reporting actual
news, but a good half of the time she inserts herself, shows her partisan attitudes, even makes jokes. It’s those articles,
he notices, that seem to carry her picture at the top.
‘Unprofessional,’ he mutters as he mouses and clicks. The way she digs and exposes and thinks it’s OK to be flippant about
her
.
‘What for?’
‘Whatever. D’you want it or not?’
‘How much?’ she asks doubtfully
.
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I’ve got money,’ she says, aggressively. ‘I’m not a bloody charity case.’
‘Yeah,’ says Bel, ‘but I didn’t pay for it, you see.’
The girl looks stunned. Then admiring. Then curious
.
‘Silly cow,’ says Bel
.
The girl laughs. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Silly cow.’
She takes the chocolate, finds a trench beneath the wrapper and runs a thumbnail down it. Snaps off a finger. ‘D’you want
some?’ she asks, unenthusiastically. Offering stuff to someone else comes uneasily to her. She doesn’t get much chance to
practise
.
‘No thanks,’ says Bel airily, and shows her paper bag of sweets. ‘I’m fine.’
The girl is relieved, but doesn’t say it. The two sit quietly for a while in blazing sunshine, savouring the twin pleasures
of sugar and summer holidays
.
‘I’m Jade,’ says the girl, eventually
.
‘I’m Bel,’ says Bel
.
Chapter Eleven
Martin tries Jackie again. He’s been ringing all day, and all evening, ever since she vanished in that minicab. Knows she’ll
answer eventually; and if she doesn’t, he’ll go back up there and wait for her to come home.
He fills in a couple of hours by googling Kirsty Lindsay, the journalist who tried to chat him up on the beach. A bit of him
had expected to find that she was just pretending to be a journalist – he’s never heard of her and thought she seemed pretty
unprofessional, the way she just started talking to him like that, without identifying herself – but to his surprise he finds
that she does exist; that she has scores of bylines, in fact.
He trawls through the Google hits to learn the nature of the beast while he waits for Jackie to answer. He knows that her
phone is working again, because he dialled it once when he was following her down Fore Street, heard it ring in her pocket
and saw her pull it out and check the display. It’s only a matter of time before she responds, he thinks. All women want a
man who’s loyal. They say so all the time. Well, if she wants loyal, he’ll show her loyal. No matter how long it takes. The
phone rings out, again and again. He wonders if she knows that her voicemail has been deactivated.
He wonders about journalists as he reads. About their intrusive nosiness, their assumptions, the way they damn entire groups
with a single sentence. The hacking scandal was just the tip of the iceberg,really. Lindsay doesn’t seem much worse, or much better, than the rest of them. She doesn’t seem to have any specialist knowledge,
or cover any particular subjects, other than that most of what she writes about happens in the south-east. But she’s certainly
got opinions. Plenty of those.
He rings Jackie. He waited, after she left in the minicab, until it got dark, until all the lights were on in her block and
the doors firmly locked, and then he left. He doesn’t give up easily, but he’s not a fool. She’s gone away for the night.
Has she got a new man? Replaced him that easily, that casually? No. It can’t be that. He’s seen enough of her life to know
that she’s not been dating.
He sits with the phone between his knees and glances at the clock radio: 10.45 – news over,
Question Time
in full swing. He’ll ring her once more, then he’ll watch to the end of that and try her again. She has to answer eventually.
He carries on reading Lindsay’s bylines as
Question Time
plays in the background. She’s very patchy, he notices. Sometimes she seems capable of doing her job and just reporting actual
news, but a good half of the time she inserts herself, shows her partisan attitudes, even makes jokes. It’s those articles,
he notices, that seem to carry her picture at the top.
‘Unprofessional,’ he mutters as he mouses and clicks. The way she digs and exposes and thinks it’s OK to be flippant about
her
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