‘They’ve done you a favour. Wait for it to settle and you can resume telling your stories.’
‘I don’t know what stories to tell any more. I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong again.’
‘You won’t get it wrong, Kitty. You know, telling a story – or, as I like to say, seeking the truth – is not necessarily to go on a mission all guns blazing in order to reveal a lie. Neither is it to be particularly groundbreaking. It is simply to get to the heart of what is real.’
Kitty nodded and sniffed. ‘I’m sorry, this visit wasn’t supposed to be about me. I’m so sorry.’ She bent over in her chair and placed her head on the bed, embarrassed that Constance was seeing her like this, embarrassed to be behaving this way when her friend was so sick and had more important things to worry about.
‘Shush now,’ Constance said soothingly, running her hand gently through Kitty’s hair. ‘That is an even better ending than I originally wished for. Our poor caterpillar got to fly after all.’
When Kitty lifted her head, Constance suddenly appeared exhausted.
‘Are you okay? Should I call a nurse?’
‘No … no. It comes on suddenly,’ she said, her eyelids heavy and fluttering. ‘I’ll have a short nap and I’ll be all right again. I don’t want you to go. There is so much for us to talk about. Such as Glen,’ she smiled weakly.
Kitty faked a smile in return. ‘Yes. You sleep,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be right here.’
Constance could always read her expressions, could dismantle her lies in seconds. ‘I didn’t like him much anyway.’
Within seconds Constance’s eyes fluttered closed.
Kitty sat on the windowsill in Constance’s hospital room, looking down at the people passing below, trying to figure out the route home where the fewest people would see her. A flow of French snapped her out of her trance and she turned to Constance in surprise. Apart from when Constance swore, in all the ten years she had known her, Kitty had never heard her speak French.
‘What did you say?’
Constance seemed momentarily confused. She cleared her throat and gathered herself. ‘You look far away.’
‘I was thinking.’
‘I shall alert the authorities at once.’
‘I have a question I’ve always wanted to ask you.’ Kitty moved to the chair beside Constance’s bed.
‘Oh, yes? Why didn’t Bob and I have children?’ She sat up in the bed and reached for her water. She sucked the tiniest amount from a straw.
‘No, know-it-all. You’ve killed every plant you’ve ever owned, I can’t imagine what you’d have been like with a child. No, I wanted to ask you, is there any story you wish you’d written but for whatever reason never wrote?’
Constance lit up at the question. ‘Oh, that is a good question. A story in itself perhaps.’ She raised her eyebrows at Kitty. ‘A piece where you interview retired writers about the story that got away, ha? What do you think? I should talk to Pete about that. Or perhaps we should contact retired writers and ask them to write the story that they never wrote, especially for the magazine. People like Oisín O’Ceallaigh and Olivia Wallace. Give them their opportunity to tell it. It could be a special edition.’
Kitty laughed. ‘Do you ever stop?’
There was a light knock on the door and Constance’s husband, Bob, entered. He looked tired but as soon as he laid eyes on Constance, he softened.
‘Hello, darling. Ah, hello, Kitty. Nice of you to join us.’
‘Traffic,’ Kitty said, awkwardly.
‘I know the feeling,’ he smiled, coming around and kissing her on the head. ‘It often slows me down too, but better late than never, eh?’ He looked at Constance, her face all twisted up in concentration. ‘Are you trying to poo, my love?’
Kitty laughed.
‘Kitty asked me what story have I always wanted to write but never have.’
‘Ah. You’re not supposed to make her think, the doctors said so,’ he joked. ‘But that’s a good question. Let me guess. Is it that time during the oil spillage when you had the exclusive interview with the penguin who saw everything?’
‘I did not have an exclusive with the penguin,’ Constance laughed, then winced with pain.
Kitty became nervous but Bob, used to it, continued.
‘Oh, it was the whale then. The whale who saw everything. Told everyone who so much as inched near him about what he saw.’
‘It was the captain of the ship,’ she threw at Bob, but lovingly.
‘Why didn’t you interview him?’ Kitty asked, arrested by their love for one another.
‘My flight got delayed,’ she said, fixing her bedcovers.
‘She couldn’t find her passport,’ Bob outed her. ‘You know what the flat is like, the Dead Sea Scrolls could be in there, for all we know. The passports have since found their home in the toaster, lest we forget again. Anyway, so she missed her flight and instead of Constance’s great exclusive, the captain spoke to someone else who we shall not name.’ He turned to Kitty and whispered, ‘Dan Cummings.’
‘Oh, you’ve done it, you’ve killed me now,’ Constance said dramatically, pretending to die.
Kitty covered her face in her hands, feeling it wrong to laugh.
‘Ah, finally we are rid of her,’ Bob teased gently. ‘So what is the answer, my love? I’m intrigued.’
‘Do you really not know this?’ Kitty asked Bob. He shook his head and they watched Constance thinking, which really was an amusing sight.
‘Ah,’ she said suddenly, eyes lighting up, ‘I’ve got it. It’s rather a recent idea, actually, something I thought of last year before … well, it was somewhat of an experiment but it has occupied my mind since I’ve been here.’
Kitty moved in closer to listen.
Constance enjoyed making Bob and Kitty wait.
‘Possibly one of my greatest.’
Kitty groaned impatiently.
‘I’ll tell you what, the file is at home. In my office. Teresa will let you in if she’s not too busy watching Jeremy Kyle. It’s filed under N. Titled “Names”. You get it for me and bring it back and I’ll tell you about it.’
‘No!’ Kitty laughed. ‘You know how impatient I am. Please don’t make me wait.’
‘If I tell you now, you might never come back.’
‘I promise I will.’
Constance smiled. ‘Okay, you get the file, and I’ll tell you the story.’
‘It’s a deal.’
They shook on it.
CHAPTER TWO
Choosing the quieter back roads, and feeling like a rat scuttling along in the gutter, Kitty cycled home feeling exhausted. Initially on a high after spending time with a friend, she was back to feeling hopeless again now the reality of what lay ahead for both of them had sunk in.
Thirty Minutes, the television show Kitty had started working on the previous year, the show with which she had received her big break and which had then ironically broken her, had viewing figures of half a million, which was impressive for a country with a population of five million, but not enough for Kitty to become the next Katie Couric. Now, thanks to her disastrous story, she found herself suspended from reporting on the network and in court to face a charge of libel. The story had aired four months previously, in January, but it was the impending court case, merely a day away now, that had made headlines. Her face, her mistake, and her name were now known to many more than half a million people.
She knew she would be quickly forgotten in the minds of the public, but that her professional name would suffer in the long run; it had already been destroyed. She knew she was lucky that Etcetera, the magazine Constance had founded and edited, was continuing to employ her, though the only reason she had a job was because Constance was her biggest supporter. She didn’t have many of those right now, and though Bob was deputy editor and a good friend she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d keep her job without Constance there to throw her weight around. Kitty dreaded the day that her mentor wouldn??
?t be in her life, never mind her professional life. Constance had been there for her since the beginning, had guided her, had advised her and had also given her the freedom to find her own voice and make her own decisions, which meant that Kitty owned her successes, but also meant her name was stamped all over every single one of her mistakes, a fact that was glaringly evident now.
Her phone vibrated again in her pocket and she ignored it as she had been doing all week. Journalists had been calling her since news of the case going to trial had broken, people she had considered friends were close to harassing her just to get a quote. They’d all chosen different tactics. Some came straight out with asking for a quote, others had gone for the sympathy vote: ‘You know how it is, Kitty, the stress we’re under here. The boss knows we’re friends, he expects me to have something.’ Others had randomly and spontaneously invited her out for dinner, for drinks, to their parents’ anniversary parties and their grandfathers’ eighty-fifth birthdays without mentioning the issue at all. She hadn’t met or spoken with any of them but she was learning a lot and slowly crossing them off her Christmas card list. There was only one person who hadn’t called her yet and that was her friend Steve. They had studied journalism together in college and had remained friends since then. His one desire had been to cover sport but the closest he’d got to that so far was covering footballers’ private lives in tabloid newspapers. It had been he who had suggested she go for the job at Etcetera. He’d picked up a copy of the magazine in a doctor’s waiting room while she’d gone for the morning-after pill after their one and only dalliance, which had resulted in the realisation they were destined only ever to be simply friends.
Thinking about Steve and her constantly ringing mobile gave her a sixth sense and she stopped cycling and reached for her phone. It was him. She actually debated not answering. She actually doubted him. The consequences of the Thirty Minutes story had played havoc with whom she could and could not trust. She answered the phone.
‘No comment,’ she snapped.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, no comment. You can tell your boss that you haven’t spoken to me, that we fell out, in fact we may be about to because I can’t believe you have the nerve to call me up and abuse our friendship in this way.’
‘Are you smoking crack?’
‘What? No. Hold on, is this part of the story? Because if they’re now saying I’m a drug addict then they can—’
‘Kitty, shut up. I’ll tell my boss that you, Kitty Logan, who he’s never heard of anyway, has no comment to make on Victoria Beckham’s new line because that is about the only thing that I am allowed to talk about to anybody today. Not the impending match between Carlow and Monaghan, which is critical because Carlow hasn’t been in an All-Ireland final since 1936 and Monaghan hasn’t been in a final since 1930, but nobody cares about that. Not in my office. No. All we care about is whether V.B.’s new range is a hit or miss, or hot or not, or two other words that mean the opposite but which rhyme, something I’m currently supposed to be inventing but I can’t.’ He finished his rant and Kitty couldn’t help it, she started laughing, the first proper laugh she’d had all week.
‘Well, I’m glad one of us thinks it’s funny.’
‘I thought you were allowed to write football stories now.’
‘She’s married to David Beckham, so apparently that qualifies it as a football story. Apart from needing help with the ridiculous piece I have to write, I was calling to make sure you weren’t decaying inside your flat.’
‘Well, you were right. I was rotting away in the flat but I had to leave to visit Constance. I’m going back there now to continue where I left off.’
‘Good, I’ll see you soon. I’m outside your door. Oh, and, Kitty,’ his tone turned serious, ‘I suggest you bring some bleach and a good scrubbing brush.’
Kitty’s stomach churned.
‘Journo Scumbag Bitch’ was what Kitty found spray-painted across her door when she eventually made it to the top of the stairs with her bicycle in her arms. The studio flat was in Fairview, Dublin and the proximity to the city meant that she could cycle, sometimes walk, into the city. The fact that it was above a dry-cleaners made it affordable.
‘Maybe you should move,’ Steve said as they got down on their knees and started scrubbing the door.
‘No way. I can’t afford anywhere else. Unless you know of any available apartments above dry-cleaners.’
‘That’s a requirement for you?’
‘When I open any of my windows day or night, I am showered in dry-cleaning chemicals called tetrachloroethene, also known as tetrachloroethylene, perchloroethylene, PCE or, most commonly, PERC. Ever heard of it?’
Steve shook his head and sprayed more bleach on the door.
‘It’s used to dry-clean clothes as well as degrease metal parts. It’s considered a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Tests showed that short-term exposure of eight hours or less to seven hundred thousand micrograms per cubic metre of air causes central nervous system symptoms such as dizziness, sleepiness, headaches, lightheadedness and poor balance. The red is difficult to get off, isn’t it?’
‘You do the green, I’ll do the red.’
They switched places.
‘Exposure to three hundred and fifty thousand micrograms for four hours affects the nerves of the visual system.’ Kitty dipped her sponge into her bucket of water and continued scrubbing the door. ‘Long-term exposure on dry-cleaner workers indicates biochemical changes in blood and urine. PERC can travel through floor, ceiling and wall materials, and there was a study on fourteen healthy adults living in apartments near dry-cleaners that showed their behaviour tests were lower than the average score of unexposed people.’
‘So that’s what’s wrong with you. I take it from that verbal diarrhoea that you did a story about PERC.’
‘Not quite. I researched it, then I told the landlord downstairs that I was doing a story on it and that I’d circulate it to all the neighbours and I’d tell their staff about the effects of working with PERC, so he reduced the rent by one hundred euro.’
Steve looked at her, shocked. ‘They could just have got another tenant.’
‘I told them I’d tell the next tenant and every other tenant they found. They panicked.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re …’
‘Smart?’ she smiled.
‘A journo scumbag bitch,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should stop cleaning this now, they’re right.’ He continued looking at her as if he suddenly didn’t recognise her.
‘Hey! They’re the ones using PERC!’
‘Then move somewhere else.’
‘It would be too expensive.’
‘Kitty, you can’t just threaten people like that. You can’t use your job to get what you want. That’s called bullying, you know.’
‘Oooh.’ She rolled her eyes, but dropped the sponge into the bucket in frustration and opened the door to the flat. She left the door open, sat at the kitchen table and waited for him to follow her. She bit into one of the cupcakes she’d brought back home. Steve closed the door behind him but he didn’t sit down.
‘Is there something you want to get off your chest, Steve?’
‘I came by to make sure that you were feeling okay about the trial tomorrow, but the more you talk, the more I can’t help but not feel sorry for you.’
The cupcake felt like a rock in her mouth. She swallowed it quickly. And then, finally, it came.
‘You accused a well-respected PE teacher, who is married, with a young family, of sexually abusing two students and fathering a child. On television. In front of the entire country. And you were wrong.’
She looked at him, her eyes stinging. Her heart hurt from the way he was speaking to her, and though she knew she had been wrong, she had made a mistake, she still didn’t feel that she deserved to be spoken to like that.
‘I know all of this, I know what I did,’ she said more confidently than she felt.
; ‘And are you sorry?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sorry,’ she exploded. ‘My career is destroyed. Absolutely nobody will ever hire me again. I’ve cost the network who knows what, if he wins his case, which he probably will, and God knows how much in legal fees, and their reputation. I’m over.’ Feeling unnerved, Kitty watched her usually calm friend struggle with his composure.
‘You see, this is what bugs me, Kitty.’
‘What?’
‘Your tone, you’re so … flippant about it all.’
‘Flippant? I’m panicking here, Steve!’
‘Panicking for yourself. For “Katherine Logan, TV journalist”,’ he said, using his fingers as inverted commas.
‘Not just that,’ she swallowed. ‘I’m really worried about my job on Etcetera too. There’s a lot at stake, Steve.’
He laughed to himself but it wasn’t a happy sound. ‘That’s exactly what I mean, you’ve just done it again. All I’ve heard from you is how your name, your reputation and your profession are ruined. It’s all about you. When I hear of you doing stupid things like threatening your landlord with a story, then it bothers me. You bother me.’ He stopped pacing back and forth and fixed his eyes on her. ‘You have for the past year.’
‘The past year? Oh, okay, I think somebody has definitely been hanging on to a few issues,’ she replied, shocked. ‘I made a mistake in my story. The thing about the apartment? That was harmless! Hold on, I remember you pretending to find a pubic hair in your burger on the very last bite just so you could get another one for free. And you did too. That poor manager, you embarrassed him so much in front of the other customers, he had no choice.’
‘I was eighteen,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re thirty-two.’
‘Thirty-three. You missed my last birthday,’ she added childishly. ‘It’s the way I am; I find stories in everything.’