Kirsty shakes her head.
Stan adopts a Universal Northern Accent. ‘“Nowt to do wi’ me,”’ he says. ‘“He’s out o’control, that one.”’
‘Yes, but…’ she begins timidly. She never knows how to argue this subject.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Stan sighs again. But it would be so nice if just occasionally people would try not acting up to their stereotypes, wouldn’t it? And at least F’s mum was honest. Know what the other one said?’
His voice goes high and sappy as he imitates Child M’s mother. ‘“I love my kids. I don’t care what he’s done, I love him anyway.”’
Kirsty remembers her own mum, glimpsed on a TV screen before someone hurriedly switched it off: flower-patterned polyester tent-blouse, fresh-bought for court, and trousers straining around the apron of stomach lying on her thighs, her hair scraped greasily back off a defiant face. Same thing, same phrase exactly; and after that, silence. Not a visit, not a birthday card. Love and presence, as Kirsty discovered, are not the same thing.
‘If she’d loved her kid,’ he says, ‘she’d have done something to teach him right from wrong.’
The hotel’s plate-glass door opens and several representatives of the New Moral Army exit, the placards that have recently decorated the conference suite under their arms. Kirsty grins. ‘You sound like you’re about to sign up for that lot.’
Stan laughs. ‘Yeah, I do, don’t I? Anyway. How many words have you got to scrape off the bottom of the barrel about this lot, then?’
‘About six hundred. News feature. You?’
‘Same. But for Features.’
‘Lucky sod.’ Features tend to allow more leeway in terms of letting their writers express opinions, draw analogies, recall similarities between the story at hand and ones from the past. Which, in the case of a story like this, can be a blessing. The launch she’s driven an hour to attend lasted fifteen minutes, and consisted of a speech of Cameronesque moral blandness followed by a Q &A of New Labour evasiveness. She’s going to be hard pushed to extract a couple of hundred quotable words from her digital recorder, and her shorthand pad is mostly filled with desperate descriptive squiggles about the set-dressing. ‘Have you got any more idea about what they stand for than you did when you went in?’
Stan shakes his head. ‘The world’s going to pot and Something Must Be Done? Something like that.’
‘Mmm,’ says Kirsty. ‘That’s what I thought too. And what is the Something?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ he says. ‘This Gibson bloke made his money from “What would Jesus do?” merchandising, didn’t he? Keyrings and flip-flops and that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I should think he’d do whatever Jesus would do, then, wouldn’t he?’
‘Good point.’
‘Though I think Jesus would have started by providing sandwiches. What have you got lined up for the rest of the week?’
Kirsty shrugs uncomfortably. The silly season is not the best time to be a freelance journalist in a world that feeds itself by recycling the news wires. Especially not one with a redundant husband and half the staff of News International still morbidly freelance. ‘Nothing much. I’m pushing to go in for shifts, but they’re not biting.’
‘I know what you mean. My patch has got so big I’m buying a van to kip in. I hardly ever get home these days.’
They eye the young followers of Dara Gibson. Dark suits, tidy haircuts. They certainly look businesslike.
‘What we need is a nice juicy serial killer,’ says Stan. ‘Or an industrial disaster. Something that’ll get us over the holiday slump.’
‘Mmm,’ agrees Kirsty. ‘Only not too glamorous, or they’ll be sending people down from London to steal our jobs.’
Someone from London walks past: Sigourney Mallory, from the Independent, talking on her mobile and ignoring them. The two stringers eye her with suspicion. ‘What’s she doing here?’ asks Kirsty.
‘Dunno,’ says Stan. ‘Slumming it. She’s not been outside the Circle Line in years.’
The conference has been unusually well attended for an event of such little importance. People launch political pressure groups every day of the week. If the NMA had made their pitch once Parliament had come back and news had restarted, they’d have got a two-inch ‘News in Brief’ if they were lucky.
‘D’you think they’re Scientologists, maybe?’ asks Stan. ‘They certainly look like Scientologists.’
Kirsty shakes her head. ‘Too much Jesus talk, not enough conspiracy theory. No. It’s just a rich man’s vanity project, isn’t it? Nothing to see here. Move along.’
‘Right,’ says Stan. ‘I saw a pub on the ring road that said it did food. You coming?’
Kirsty jumps down from the wall, hoicks her bag on to her shoulder. It’s already two o’clock, and she has a five o’clock deadline. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Got to get home and file.’
‘Christ,’ says Stan. ‘File from the pub like a normal person.’
Her phone goes off in her pocket. She gets it out and looks at the display. Withheld. It’ll be the Tribune, or the bank, one or the other. One offering money, one asking for it. It’s not likely to be work, she thinks. They know I’m on a deadline, and anyway, it’s not commissioning time of day; it’ll just be starting to get frantic. The daily tides of newspapers wash the editors to the phones to dole out pieces between morning conference and the first rush of copy; after that they’ll just be calling to shout at you for filing late. It’s the bank, she thinks. It must be. Oh shit, I can’t talk to them. Not when I’ve got to have my brain together. She lets it ring out, puts it back in her pocket, feels the buzz of the incoming message a few seconds later.
‘Come on,’ wheedles Stan. ‘A quick drink and a sausage-an’-chips will set you up a treat. I’ll lend you my dongle.’
‘You know how to get to a girl, Stan,’ she says. ‘No, look, I’ve got to get the kids’ tea on once I’ve filed. I can’t be sitting there on the lager with you all afternoon.’
Stan tuts. ‘I dunno. Journalists aren’t what they used to be, are they?’
His phone too starts up in the pocket of his mouldy old parka. He gets it out, doesn’t even bother to look at it, answers. ‘Stanley Marshall?’
He puts his computer bag down on the tarmac, listens intently. Then: ‘Fuck me. Where did you say? In the hall of bleeding mirrors? Someone’s got a sense of humour.’
Kirsty gazes round the car park as she waits for him to finish, sees that all her colleagues are glued to their phones, nodding animatedly, scribbling stuff on the back of their hands. Shit, she thinks, that was work, wasn’t it? There’s some sort of big story kicked off, and I went and sent it to voicemail.
‘Yeah,’ says Stan. ‘Yeah, sure. I’m in Kent anyway. Yes, with the car. Don’t worry. New Moral Arsewipes? Yeah. Sure. I can probably be down there in couple of hours. Fine. Yes. I’ll call when I’m in situ.’
He’s already picking his bag up as he hangs up, pulling a pack of Drum from his jacket. Looks down at Kirsty as he drops his phone back into his pocket. ‘If that was the Trib, you’d better call ’em back pronto,’ he says. ‘You don’t want this going to anyone else.’
‘What’s up?’ she asks, her heart sinking and leaping all at the same time.
‘Well, looks like this lot are off the news agenda, that’s for sure. A murder. Down in Whitmouth. Third this year, and it looks like there were two more with the same MO last season.’
‘Whoa,’ says Kirsty.
‘Yup,’ says Stan, with a happy chuckle. ‘Looks like I’ve got what I wished for. We’re off to the seaside!’
Chapter Seven
‘Living the dream,’ says Jackie, and cracks open her tinny.
‘You’re easily pleased.’ Amber throws her a grin.