You Had Me At Hello Part 20

Then I have a stern word with myself, open it.

'Hi! Did you have an OK time on Sat.u.r.day? Sorry for Simon being ... Simon. Ben.'

I reread this several times, then type: 'h.e.l.lo! It was very enjoyable, thanks for inviting me. How did you get my email address?'

A reply arrives inside a minute with 'I hope you're not an investigative reporter' in the subject line. The message reads '... it's under all your stories in the paper.'

I laugh out loud, and reply: 'DOH. Simon's amusing ...!'

Ben responds: 'We weren't trying to set you up, I apologise if it looked that way. A few other people dropped out and we only realised it might be misinterpreted when it was too late.'

From the conversation I overheard, I feel sure that if this is true it applies only to Ben, not Olivia. It doesn't sound like Simon's told Ben that we're going on a date. Not sure I quite believe it either.

'It was fine,' I type. 'And in return I want to invite you and Olivia to my flat warming.'

Uh? I'm having a flat warming? Nice of my subconscious to tell me.

Ben replies 'Love to! Just tell me when/where. Anyway, back to the grindstone. B.'

I type a cheery goodbye and reread the conversation. I'm interrupted by Gretton, the smell of cigarettes clinging to his clothes.

He hums to himself as he flicks through a stack of tabloids to see if his stories have been used. As he's not a staffer, most papers put another employee's name on it, or simply the paper's t.i.tle and 'reporter'. He still gets paid if it's used, which is all he cares about.

'You're chirpy,' I say, suspicious.

'Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep,' Gretton says, tapping his nose. 'Chickens coming home to roost.'

'What grade have you been smoking, Pete?'

He produces the Sport from his pile of papers, shakes it out theatrically and disappears behind it.

An email arrives from Simon with the details of my interview with Natalie Shale. It has a 'PS let's go out for that drink when this is done. Business before pleasure and all that.'

This makes me smile. Simon's canny enough not to wine and dine me before I've closed the deal for him. Closed the deal ... he won't try to come home with me on a first date, will he? Doesn't seem likely, yet I've been out of the dating arena for so long, all the rules could've changed. I'm not sure I should be going on a date with someone I can't quite ever see myself wanting to take home, but Caroline says this is what I ought to be doing, and Caroline's sensible.

Zoe walks in, plonking her clingfilm-wrapped b.u.t.ties and paperback down.

'Zoe,' I say, 'will you be OK to take over this lipo case on Friday? I've pretty much done the backgrounder. If there's a verdict, I'll email it to you.'

'No problem,' she says. 'I'll mention it to news desk but I'm sure it'll be fine. Is this to free you up for your interview?'

'Yep.'

'Nice one. Anyone want anything from the cafe?'

I shake my head and Gretton watches Zoe leave. 'Do you have no pride, Woodford?'

'Uh?'

'She's a story stealer if ever I saw one. Don't expect a joint byline on all that work.'

'Have you ever trusted someone and been repaid for it, Pete?'

He opens and smacks wet lips together, ruminatively. 'I'd have to say no.'

'That should tell you something.'

'Given that I'm ten years older than you, that should tell you something.'

'Ten? Fifteen if it's a day!'

33.

Natalie Shale's house is a bay-fronted pre-war redbrick semi, the sort that Manchester suburbs specialise in. I press the doorbell and hear a tinny tune bouncing off the walls inside. I stamp my feet and wonder if neighbours are watching from behind their nets. Natalie opens the door and I'm struck again by how exquisite she is, even in her daytime-mum attire of vest top and jogging bottoms.

'Rachel?' she asks, warily, as if there has been a procession of fraudulent Rachel Woodfords at her door this morning. I get a vision of Gretton in a dark wig, hairy legs sticking out under a too tight pencil skirt. Urgh ...

'That's me, Simon arranged this ...? Thank you so much for offering us the interview.'

'Yes, course, come on in.'

I follow her to the lounge, lower myself on to the sofa and get my notepad out, noticing Natalie already has a Dictaphone on the coffee table.

She notices me eyeing it and asks: 'You don't want to record it too?'

'No, I prefer shorthand. I don't trust tape recorders.'

'Oh.' She glances at the device in confusion, as if it might bite her. 'Simon said I should record it, sorry.'

Why doesn't that surprise me?

'Sure,' I say, and Natalie looks grateful there's not going to be a confrontation.

'The photographer's coming at two,' I remind her. 'Is that OK?'

'Yeah,' she smiles. 'Don't worry, I'll have changed by then. Tea?'

'Thanks. White, no sugar.'

While the kettle boils windily, I look around Natalie's living room and make some mental notes for 'colour' in the article. I could make actual notes, but it feels impolite to be jotting things down about her house while she's dunking the Tetley's. There are photographs of her daughters on almost every available surface. I might be tempted to show off if I'd pushed out children as attractive as her twins. The most recent pictures show them in hers'n'hers OshKosh dungarees, their hair pulled into cloud-like afro bunches. In most of the photos they're giggling, open-mouthed, revealing little goofy milk teeth pegs. A huge football pitch-sized frame over the mantelpiece shows Natalie with the girls, in a formation as if they're sitting in an invisible canoe, hands on each other's shoulders.

It's the sort of barefoot everyone-in-Levi's studio portrait that strives so hard to portray a happy family that it somehow only reminds me of dysfunctional American ones where the strange b.u.mfluff-chinned twitchy son eventually herds everyone into the garage and picks them off with a shotgun.

The television is on at a low murmur, showing some kind of heavily studio-lit, imported US soap. The atmosphere is one of contentment and calm. You'd never guess the trauma the people living here have been through.

'Hope it's not too weak,' Natalie says, returning with a cup. 'Lucas always says I like mine like Horlicks baby tea, he calls it.'

As she pa.s.ses it to me I see it has 'World's Best Dad' on it. I wonder if she noticed this, or if she was merely concentrating on making the tea.

'It's fine,' I say, sipping it. I've had many dodgy cups of tea while out on jobs cracked mug, the smell of stale milk, poorly washed-up vessel handed over by kindly host with failing eyesight, usually accompanied by spectacularly bendy biscuits and I've made a point of finis.h.i.+ng them all. I'm rarely imposing on them because they've had good news, after all.

'Your little girls are so cute,' I say, pointing at a picture.

'Thank you,' Natalie says. 'They're at nursery, it'd be bedlam otherwise. Do you have kids?'

'No.' In case statement of the blunt fact makes me sound like I'm pa.s.sing judgement on her having kids, I add apologetically: 'Sure I'll get round to it.'

There's a beat of silence while we sip our tea.

'So Simon says we can talk about anything other than the details of the appeal case?' I ask.

'Yeah, that's fine.' Natalie lays her phone down on the coffee table, next to the tape recorder.

I flip to a clean page in my notebook, wondering where I should begin ... at the start, when she and Lucas met, or cut straight to the drama and work backwards? Some interviewees need warming up, others have short attention spans.

'There she is!' Natalie squeals girlishly, suggesting she might be the latter sort, craning to look out of the window. 'My friend Bridie, she's just got back off holiday and I need to talk to her about her cat ... sorry, do you mind?'

'No, no,' I say. 'Go ahead.'

I watch Natalie hurtle down the front path and ambush the scatty-haired, sizeable Bridie. She's practically ovoid, clad in a black jumper, and looks a likely customer for Jonathan Cainer's daily zodiac forecasts.

Natalie starts gesticulating, presumably about the moggy, and I think how impressive it is to care about your neighbour's pet when your other half is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. I turn away and try to concentrate on the telly, which is now running adverts. Ambulance chasers and loan sharks that can save you from all the other loan sharks in one affordable monthly payment, and something that makes child's play of slicing vegetables with its multi-function blade.

If I really give this exclusive some welly, I think, and add enough thoughtful flourishes, I might get a press award. Then Natalie can be proud to know that her trauma has sent me to an industry back-slap jolly in Birmingham or London where I can neck warm white wine from Paris goblets, get a round of reluctant applause and fight off unwanted attention from p.i.s.sed-up sports desk nominees.

Natalie's still talking ten to the dozen. A text message beeps on her clamsh.e.l.l phone, the circular window lighting up electric blue.

A wicked thought occurs, so wicked it surprises me. Read the text. Here you are, alone with her phone why not? Most reporters I know wouldn't hesitate. We use enough backroom bargaining and wiles and wheedling to get into homes in the first place that outrageous nosiness once inside doesn't rate as that big a crime. Some reporters would think it was bad journalism not to read the text. Am I one of them?

My mind starts racing. I'd have to delete it, obviously, or she'd realise I've read it. What if it contains urgent information, and I can't relay it without revealing what I've done? Or what if the person who sent it wants to know why she didn't reply, mentions when they sent it, and they work out the timing ...?

Oh, stop being such a banana, Rachel, I think. Most texts are about as important as Rhys's regular ones from the pub, sent covertly under the table during quizzes: 'What is year Dirty Dancing came out. Quick.' Or as much fun as my mum's: 'Have you had smear test yet this year. Wendy at work has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.' Cancer, that's something to worry about, not reading a text that's not intended for you.

I put my hand out and then pull it back sharply. What am I thinking? Where are my principles? I look out of the window, where Natalie's still talking. The seconds tick on.

A further thought, the clincher: it's from Simon, asking how it's going. Bound to be. Will he say anything slighting about me? This is someone I'm contemplating dating. Seeing the proof that he can be pitiless could save me a lot of angst. Sod it, I think. One slight slip of the standards and I'll be discreet about whatever the text contains. Natalie need never know. Responsible snooping. Checking she's still at a safe distance and absorbed by her neighbour's feline kerfuffle, I flip her phone open and click on the message. A stranger's words sit in my sweaty palm.

'How are you today, N? I miss you so much. Can't stop thinking about the other night. x.x.x PS What are you wearing?'

Eyes wide, I look out of the window, back to the text, out the window again, trying to make sense of it. Her phone doesn't recognise the sender as a name from her phonebook, only a number.

It's from her husband, I reason, snapping the phone shut and replacing it on the table. Obviously. He must have access to a mobile. Don't some cons smuggle them into jail, hidden in unholy places? Yes, that's right. That's it.

But it mentions 'the other night'. Lucas hasn't had a 'other night' with his wife since last year. Ah wrong number! Yes, it's a wrong number. No. That can't be it. The message calls her 'N'.

I glance out of the window again. Natalie's still talking. Panic hits me: I forgot to delete the message. She'll know I read it. I pick up the phone again, open it, hesitate, scribble down the number. One check against Simon's number, then I'll get rid of it. I delete the message and replace the phone on the coffee table, careful to turn it back so it's pointing towards where Natalie was sitting. I gulp down a huge swig of tea, as if she's going to walk back in, inspect the volume in my cup and say: 'That's two millilitres too full.'

I wait, heart beating a pitter-patter, thoughts tumbling over themselves.

'Sorry about that, her cat did a runner while I was feeding him. Total nightmare,' Natalie says, flopping back on the sofa. She checks her phone. My heart goes kathunk-kathunk-kathunk.

She switches on the Dictaphone and checks it's running.

'Where do you want to start?'

I clear my throat.

'When the jury read out their guilty verdict, how did you feel?'

34.

Natalie's fragile physical appearance belies her steely resolve, the kind required to raise two young children alone and coordinate her husband's campaign for justice, and above all, keep the faith that he is coming home soon. Can she still believe in a system that has, she believes, wrongly convicted her husband? Her reply shows how a former optician's a.s.sistant from Bury has had a crash course in the judicial process and the power of positive thinking.

'The courts can make mistakes. The appeal system wouldn't exist otherwise,' she says, 'and Lucas's legal team are confident that the fresh evidence will be enough to get the verdict quashed, and they won't order a retrial.'

In her visits to Lucas, she says, they never discuss the possibility his appeal will fail. 'We talk about the girls, whether I've paid the bills. Boring stuff, but Lucas says it keeps him sane.'

While other family and friends collapsed and openly wept when Lucas's sentence was delivered, Natalie remained composed. What was going through her mind, in those terrible moments? 'I knew I had to be strong for my husband,' she explains. 'He's innocent, that's all that matters, and the truth will come out. If I broke down, how would that help him? He looks to me for support. He depends on me.'

I glance up from my notes, feeling light-headed, as if I can't quite get the ground underneath me to lie flat.

If this is the way it looks, and Natalie is having a fling, I wonder if it pre-dates her husband being locked up. Once upon a time, I'd have been appalled at this. But really: only two people really know what's going on in a relations.h.i.+p. And sometimes, not even that many, a voice says.

An hour later, I'm running the spellcheck and preparing to send it to news desk. No more than a workmanlike job, not up to compet.i.tion standard, but I want it finished, done with. I don't want to think about the number that wasn't Simon's.

Ken emails back within twenty minutes. 'Nice read,' the message says. 'We'll hold it until the week of the appeal. Good pix too.'

If we were on the phone, I'm sure he'd add 'She's bang tidy!' On email, he's a politician: never get caught out by the reply-instead-of-forward faux pas, never leave electronic record.