You Had Me at Hello (4 page)

‘About the picture,' he said, as he took it. ‘You look fine, but you might want to jack the seat up next time. It's a bit Ronnie Corbett.'

I slid it out again to check. There was an acre of white space above my dishevelled head.

I blushed, started laughing.

‘Spin it,' Ben mouthed, rotating an imaginary photo booth stool.

I went redder, laughed harder.

‘I'm Ben. See you tomorrow.'

In the style of a policeman in traffic, Ben waved me away with one hand and the next person forward with his other, mock imperiously.

As I dodged round the rest of the queue, I wondered if the well-spoken girl in the room next door to me was too upper middle class to go for a restorative greasy spoon breakfast. On impulse as I left, I glanced back towards Ben, and he was watching me go.

In some workplaces, everyone has clusters of framed family portraits on their desk, a tumbler of those novelty gonk pens with tufts of fluff at the end and a mug with their name on. From time to time they cry in the loos and confide in each other and any personal news is round the office in the morning before the kettle's gone on for a second time. Words like ‘fibroids' or ‘Tramadol' or ‘caught him trying on one of my dresses' are passed about in the spirit of full disclosure.

Mine isn't one of those workplaces. Manchester Crown Court is full of people moving briskly and efficiently about the place, swishing robes and trading critical information in low voices. The mood is decidedly masculine – it doesn't encourage confidences that are nothing to do with the business in hand. Therefore I've masked physical evidence of my emotional turmoil with an extra layer of make-up, and am squaring my shoulders and heading into battle, congratulating myself on my varnish-thin sheen of competent poise.

I'm getting myself one of the Crown Court vending machine's famous dung-flavoured instant coffees, served in a plastic cup so thin the liquid burns your fingertips, when I hear: ‘Big weekend was it, Woodford? You look cream crackered!'

Ahhhh, Gretton. Might've known he'd burst my bubble.

Pete Gretton is a freelancer, a ‘stringer' for the agencies as they're known, with no loyalties. He scours the lists looking for the most unpleasant or ridiculous cases and sells the lowest common denominator to the highest bidder, often following me around and ruining any hope of an exclusive. Misdeed and misery are his bread and butter. To be fair, that's true of every salaried person in the building, but most of us have the decency not to revel in it. Gretton, however, has never met a grisly multiple homicide he didn't like.

I turn and give him an appropriately weary look.

‘Good morning to you too, Pete,' I say, tersely.

He's very blinky, as if daylight is a shock to him, somehow always reminding me of a ghostly, pink-gilled fish my dad once found lurking in the black sludge at the bottom of the garden pond. Gretton's evolved to fit the environment of court buildings, subsisting purely on coffee, fags and cellophane-wrapped pasties, with no need for sunshine's Vitamin D.

‘Only joking, sweetheart. You're still the most beautiful woman in the building.'

After a conversation with Gretton you invariably want to scrub yourself with a stiff bristled brush under scalding water.

‘What was it?' he continues. ‘Too much of the old vino collapso? That fella of yours tiring you out?' He adds a stomach-turning wink.

I take a gulp of coffee with the fresh roasted aroma of farming and agriculture.

‘I split up with my fiancé last month.'

His beady, rheumy little eyes lock on mine, waiting for a punchline. When none is forthcoming, he offers:

‘Oh dear … sorry to hear it.'

‘Thanks.'

I don't know if Gretton has a private life in any conventional sense, or if he sprouts a tail and corkscrews into an open manhole in a cloud of bright green special effects at five thirty p.m. This topic of conversation is certainly uncharted territory between us. The extent of our personal knowledge about each other is a) I have a fiancé, now past tense, and b) he's originally from Carlisle. And that's the way we both like it.

He shuffles his feet.

‘Heard anything about the airport heroin smuggling in 9 that kicks off today? Word is they hid it in colostomy bags.'

I shake my head.

‘For once they really could claim it was the good shit!'

He honks at this, broken engagement already forgotten.

‘I was going to stick with the honour killing in 1,' I say, unsmiling. ‘Tell you what, you do the drugs, I'll do the murder and we'll compare notes at half time.'

Pete eyes me suspiciously, wondering what devious tactic this ‘mutually beneficial diplomacy' might be.

‘Yeah, alright.'

Although I can get ground down by the bleak subject matter, I enjoy my job. I like being somewhere with clearly defined rules and roles. Whatever the grey areas in the evidence, the process is black and white. I've learned to read the language of the courtroom, predict the lulls and the flurries of action, interpret the Masonic whispers between counsel. I've built up a rapport with certain barristers, got expert at reading the faces of juries and quick at slipping out before any angry members of the public gallery can follow me and tell me they don't want a story putting in the bloody paper.

As I swill the remains of the foul coffee, bin the cup and head towards Court 1, I hear a timid female voice behind me.

‘Excuse me? Are you Rachel Woodford?'

I turn to see a small girl with a halo of straw-coloured, frizzy hair, a slightly beaky nose and an anxious expression. In school uniform she could pass for twelve.

‘I'm the new reporter who's shadowing you today,' she says.

‘Ah, right.' I rack my brains for her name, recall a conversation about her with news desk which now seems a geological era ago.

‘Zoe Clarke,' she supplies.

‘Zoe, of course, sorry, I'm a bit brain-fugged this morning. I'm doing the murder trial today, want to join?'

‘Yes, thanks!' She smiles as sunnily as if I had offered her a walking weekend in the Lakes.

‘Let's go and watch people in wigs argue with each other then,' I say. I point at the retreating Gretton. ‘And beware the sweaty man who comes in friendship and leaves with your story.'

Zoe laughs. She'll learn.

At lunchtime, I open my laptop in the press room – a fancy title for a nicotine-stained windowless cell in the bowels of Crown Court, decorated with a wood veneer desk, a few chairs and a dented filing cabinet – and check my email. A message arrives from Mindy.

‘
Can you talk?
'

I type ‘
Yes
' and hit send.

Mindy doesn't like to email when she can talk, because she loves to talk, and she's a phonetic speller. She used to put ‘Vwalah!' in messages to myself and Caroline, which we assumed was a Hindu word, until under questioning it became clear she meant ‘Voilà'.

My phone starts buzzing.

‘Hi, Mind,' I say, getting up and walking outside the press room door.

‘Do you have a flat yet?'

‘No,' I sigh. ‘Keep looking on Rightmove and hoping the prices will magically plummet in a sudden property crash.'

‘You want city centre, right? Don't mind renting?'

Rhys is buying me out of the house. I decided to use the money for a flat. Originally a city centre flat from which to enjoy single-woman cosmopolitan living, but the prices were a wake-up call. Mindy thinks I should rent for six months, get my bearings. Caroline thinks renting is dead money. Ivor says I can have his spare room and then he has a reason to finally kick out his flaky, noisy lodger Katya. As Mindy says, he could do that anyway if he ‘found his cojones'.

‘Yeees …?' I say, warily. Mindy has a way of taking a sensible premise and expanding it into something entirely mental.

‘Call off the search. A buyer I work with is stinking rich and she's off to Bombay for six months. She's got a place in the Northern Quarter. I think it's a converted cotton mill or something, and apparently it's uh-may-zing. She wants a reliable flat-sitter and I said you were the most reliable person in the world and she said in that case she'll do you a deal.'

‘Erm …'

Mindy quotes a monthly figure which is a fair amount of money. It's not an unfeasible amount, and certainly not a lot for the kind of place I think she's talking about. But: Mindy's encroaching madness. It'll probably come with an incontinent Maltipoo called Colonel Gad-Faffy who will only eat sushi-grade bluefin and has to be walked four times a day.

‘Do you want to come and see it with me, after work?' Mindy continues. ‘She flies on Friday and a cousin of hers is interested. She says he's a bit of a chang monster and she doesn't trust him. So you're front runner but you're going to have to be quick.'

‘Chang monster?'

‘You know. Coke. Dickhead's dust.'

‘Right.'

I think it through. I was really looking for something longer term than a fixed six months. Six months with option of renewal, I'd thought. But this might be a way to live the dream while I look for something more realistic.

‘Yeah, sure.'

‘Great! Meet you by Afflecks at half five?'

‘See you there.'

As I walk back into the press room, I realise why I've dragged my feet in moving out of the house, however uncomfortable it is. My decision to leave Rhys is about to turn from words into action, become real. Splitting equity, dividing up our worldly goods, coming-home-at-night-to-empty-rooms-and-a-big-yawning-maw-of-an-empty-future real. Part of me, a shrill, cowardly part, wants to scream: ‘Wait! Stop! I didn't mean it! I want to get off!' Motion sickness kicking in.

Yet I remember the text I got from Rhys a few days ago, saying, in what sounded as much like sorrow as anger: ‘I hope you're looking for places because the end of living together like this can't come fast enough for me.'

I flip my notebook open and wonder if I want another cow-shit coffee.

Zoe enters and hovers, giving off a static buzz of nerves.

‘Feel free to go and get something to eat. You can leave your things here if you like,' I say.

‘Thanks.' She puts her coat and bag down, and places her notebook on the table carefully.

‘Unless you fancy going to the pub for lunch?' I continue, not sure where this magnanimity is coming from. Trying to atone for what I've done to Rhys, possibly. There will never be enough entries in the good deeds column of the Great Ledger of Life to offset that one.

‘That would be great!'

‘Give me five minutes and I'll show you why The Castle has earned the accolade of “pub nearest court”.'

Zoe nods and sits down to transcribe her copy, longhand. I glance over while I'm typing. I knew it – her shorthand's so perfectly formed you could photocopy it for textbook examples.

Gretton saunters in, squinting from me to Zoe and back again.

‘What's this, Bring Your Daughter To Work Day?'

Zoe looks up, startled.

‘Welcome to the family,' I say to Zoe. ‘Think of Gretton as the uncle who'd make you play horsey.'

I apologise to Zoe for not drinking alcohol when we get to the pub. I feel like I'm letting the profession down in moments like these. At every paper you always hear tales of great mythical beasts of olden times who could drink enough to sink battleships and still hit deadline, get up at first light the next day and do it all again. They're legend, usually because they died in their fifties.

‘It's soporific in court at the best of times, what with the heating and the droning on. If I hit the bottle I'd probably end up snoring,' I say.

‘Oh, it's OK, I'm a lightweight anyway,' Zoe says. ‘I'll have a Diet Coke as well.'

We scan the laminated menus on the bar, hearts sinking. The Castle's menus have clearly been written by marketing managers who think they are conversant in the foreign language of ‘funny'. We try merely pointing at our selected lunch items to save our dignity. No dice with the morose barman.

‘I've got astigmatism,' he says, as if I should know this.

‘Oh,' I reply, flustered, trying for the last route out. ‘Then we'll both have the Ploughman's.'

‘Naked, Piggy or Extra Pickly?'

Dammit.
‘Piggy,' I mumble, defeated. ‘Naked for her.'

‘You want that as a melt?' he sighs, in a way that suggests most of the world's problems are down to people like us wanting melts. We decide we do, but both pass on a squirt of the chef's special sauce, given we're not on nodding terms with him.

We make small talk, battling the octave range of Mariah Carey and multiple televisions, while two microwave-warm plates are banged down under our noses. As soon as Zoe finishes her meal, she says ‘Here's what I wrote', brushing crumbs off her hands and producing a spiral-bound notepad from her bag, flipping to the right page. ‘I wrote it out longhand.'

I feel a twinge of irritation at being expected to mentor while I'm still eating, but swallow it, along with a mouthful of rubbery cheese. I scan her story, braced for, if not car crash copy, a fender bender at the very least. But it's good. In fact, it's very fluid and confident for a first time.

‘This is good,' I nod, and Zoe beams. ‘You've got the right angle, that the father and the uncle don't deny that they went to see the boyfriend.'

‘What if something better comes up this afternoon? Do you stick with your first instinct?'

‘Possible but unlikely. The wheels turn pretty slowly. We probably won't get on to the boyfriend's evidence this afternoon.'

I hand Zoe's notepad back to her.

‘So how long have you been here?' she asks.