The snow had cleaned up the Eastfield Star beautifully. All the roofs on the cottages matched, and the unmanaged gardens looked tidy. With a blanket of snow the overall design of the scheme was clear and coherent. Even the broken cars and tattered fencing looked clean and pretty. Lights blazed bright and warm from every home. Flocks of wily pigeons gathered on the snow-free roofs of uninsulated houses. Paddy felt proud to come from such a solid working-class background. She wished McVie had some friends at work he could tell about it. Maybe word would get around and people would respect her for it. Maybe Billy would tell someone.
She got out and leaned back through the door, telling Billy and McVie to come back to her house if they got stuck: they would be more than welcome to spend the night there, please don’t hesitate.
“Fuck off,” said McVie, pulling her door shut. “We’re not coming back to your scabby wee house.”
She watched the car roll away until it was swallowed by a white curtain. It was only when her back was turned and her face was hidden in her duffel hood that she burst into a smile. She was a journalist. She had to run around the block twice to burn the buzz off before she went home.
NINE . ON THE LIGHT TABLE
I
Paddy smiled to herself and leaned her head on the window of the early-morning train, looking up at the passing tenements, dark and full of sleep, households warmly savoring the last delicious half hour before the alarm. She was thrilled by her night in the calls car. She could do that job, she knew it.
Beyond the cold windowpane, frosting and cleared by her breath, the thin blanket of snow had blunted the edges of the landscape, softening bare trees and jagged buildings, rounding the coal carriages in the sidings, sitting inch-thick on the overhead cables. The sun rose abruptly, turning the sky a brilliant crystal blue. Paddy could see her whole future in the same color.
II
A large portion of the staff at the Daily News had inexplicably been made late by the melting inch of snow. The building was half shut, the car park almost empty, and even the clattering of the print machines was subdued.
Through the open printworks door Paddy could see that only two of the three presses were working. The side door was still locked and chained, and she had to make her way through the main reception. Inside, a single Alison was sitting at the desk wearing her furry-collared coat.
“D’ye get in all right?” asked Paddy.
Alison shrugged, reluctant to chat. “S’pose,” she said, picking her ear with a manicured fingernail.
On the way up the stairs Paddy picked up a copy of the paper and was delighted to find the street suicide story about Eddie and Patsy in its own boxed paragraph on page five. McVie had managed to edit it into a noble story about thwarted love, a death with meaning.
The newsroom was half dead. They were so short staffed that even Dr. Pete had been drafted onto the news desk. He sat dumbly with his jacket off, staring at a typewriter as if it had just insulted him. Before Paddy had time to hang her coat up inside the door he raised a hand to call her over. As she walked across the floor he typed three consecutive letters and sat back, staring at the machine suspiciously.
“Go and ask a news sub if I have to do this.”
Paddy looked around the newsroom but could see only one sub, and he was on the phone. The lights were on in the pictures office. Sometimes subs and journalists hid in there to make a private phone call or have a quiet smoke.
There was no answer when she knocked at the door. The light seeping underneath seemed unusually sharp. She opened the door and a hyper-white light erupted through it. The light table, three feet square of buzzing brightness used to view negatives, had been left on at the back of the room. Next to it sat Kevin Hatcher, the perpetually drunk pictures editor. He was sitting in a desk chair at a strange angle, his head hanging to the side, his hands loose in his lap. He looked like a posed corpse.
“Kevin? Kevin? Are you okay?”
He blinked his bloody eyes to signal that, yes, he was fine, and blinked again. The harsh light seemed to be drying his eyes out. She stepped across to the white panel and found two large-format pictures sitting on the burning surface, the photographic paper arching away from the heat. She lifted the pictures, stacked them on the tips of her fingernails to avoid burning her fingertips, and turned off the light table.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She was blinking down at the top picture as it came into focus. It wasn’t printable quality. It had been taken through the tiny window of a moving police van. A third of the frame was a flash-bleached hand slapping at the outside. Inside, a policeman was sitting on a bench, slightly off his seat, next to a small blond boy clutching the edge of the seat, his knuckles white, his head down defensively so that the whirl of his crown was visible. The second picture was taken one window farther down. A dark-haired boy sat on the other side of the policeman, eyes shut tight and lips pulled back in a terrified grimace. The scalding picture fell from her hand, zigzagging to the floor.
Paddy knew this boy. It was Callum Ogilvy, a cousin of Sean’s.
She bent over to look at the picture on the floor. She hadn’t seen Callum since his father died and Sean had taken her to his funeral a year and a half ago, but his face was the same shape, his teeth still gray and dun, set in long gums.
The boy was related to Sean through both their dead fathers, who were cousins or brothers, she couldn’t remember. Callum’s family lived in Barnhill, on the opposite side of the city from Sean, and his mother suffered from an unnamed mental illness no one liked to talk about. Paddy had only met her at the father’s funeral, and she’d looked like a colorless hippie, with frizzy graying hair and leathery skin. The Ogilvy children were very subdued, that much Paddy did remember, but their dad had just died, so it hadn’t seemed that strange. She remembered Callum trying desperately to get attention from the older cousins, guessing Sean’s favorite footballer and showing off by jumping fearlessly off a wall. Sean had tolerated the boys politely enough, but he didn’t like them. He had never been back to see the family.
“Kevin?” She picked up both pictures and held them in front of his face. “Kevin, what are these pictures of?”
Kevin looked at them. “Bibi Bri.”
“Baby Brian?”
He nodded, shutting his eyes at the effort.
Paddy dropped the pictures to the floor and walked out of the room.
III
Ignoring calls from journalists, Paddy marched straight through the newsroom and out the double doors, running up the canteen stairs two at a time, ignoring the twinges in her lungs and her aching knees. She was surprised to find herself breathless as she pushed open the double doors.
Terry Hewitt sat alone at a table, about to take a bite of a sandwich. The sharp smell of eggs wafted across the room. Through the window behind him she saw snow dropping lazily from black clouds. She had never spoken to him directly before.
“Have you seen Heather Allen?”
Terry lowered his sandwich, looked surprised, and shook his head, his face composing itself into a smug smile as he inhaled to speak. Paddy didn’t wait. She pushed back through the doors and walked away.
The ladies’ toilet on the editorial floor was Heather’s private office. It was a particularly nice toilet, and because no woman was ever promoted to editorial it was private, used so little it only needed a clean once a fortnight. Paddy opened the door to the smell of smoke and Anaïs Anaïs perfume.