Hens Reunited (20 page)

Although she did vaguely remember Gary – or was it Mick? – leaning in close to her, face looming as he tried to kiss her . . .

God. Please let me not have kissed him.
She wasn’t even sure if she had or not. How teenage was that?

She sat up carefully, wincing with the hangover as she levered herself upright. Ouch. She hadn’t been so drunk for a long, long time. And on a Monday night, too! What had she been thinking? It had seemed such a good idea at the time,
yeah, another jug, let’s do another jug
, and she’d been in a fuck-you-Steve kind of mood, so was up for complete debauchery.

Yes, but now here she was, stuck in Clifton, a good mile from her own place, with school to prepare for and . . .

An awful thought slammed into her. Oh shit. Shit! It was the Year 7s’ parents’ evening tonight at school on top of everything else, wasn’t it? Hordes of parents to whom she’d have to talk coherently about their son or daughter’s progress (or lack of). Even Katie – super-organized Katie – found parents’ evening a long slog of a day, and that was when she’d spent the night before preparing and writing notes. Which – obviously – she’d neglected to do this time.

Why oh why had she drunk so much?

She padded off to Laura’s monsoon shower filled with self-loathing and despair as she remembered the pile of marking she’d left at the school too, back on Friday afternoon before everything had gone so horribly wrong.

‘Standards are slipping!’ she heard Matt Dawson, the head, say in her ear. Yes, and he was right, too. Skiving off yesterday, having left her unfinished marking in school the whole weekend, no preparation for parents’ evening, and, worst of all, suffering the mother of all hangovers on a Tuesday morning.

Standards had plummeted, worryingly quickly. Any moment now and the standards would reach rock bottom.

She bit her lip, feeling ashamed and queasy all at the same time. This was just not like her. Katie Taylor was usually fully in control, hands tightly on the steering wheel, knowing exactly which direction to take. Steve teased her for her conscientiousness, and she was known for it in the staffroom too – a professional through and through, with her spreadsheets and highlighter pens mapping out every occasion in glorious detail.

But now look at her! Hungover, waking up in her sister’s flat presumably because she’d been too sloshed to make it home in one piece, whole hours of the night before a complete mystery, and totally unprepared for the working day ahead.

What had happened to her? How had she let her life get so messy so fast?

She stood beneath the shower spray and hung her head as the water rained down on her.

Chapter Eleven

Patience

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Georgia was fuming. It was Tuesday morning and she was on the train heading back down to London. She’d already been in a pretty foul mood by the time she got to Stockport station to set off for home, but this was the icing on the cake. The cherry on the icing on the cake, in fact. Georgia had picked up a copy of the
Herald
to while away the journey, and had nearly keeled over when she’d seen the front page: GIRLS ALOUD – GOSSIP SPECIAL! by Polly Nash, Showbiz Reporter.

Er . . .
hello?
Polly Nash was
not
the showbiz reporter. That was Georgia’s job, thank you very much. Which moron in the subs team had cocked that one up, then?

But then, when she flicked through to her page, there was Polly’s ugly mug splashed at the top of it for all to see. And worse –
Georgia Knight is away.

‘No, I’m not!’ Georgia had muttered furiously, gripping the pages so tightly the newsprint marked her fingers. ‘I’m on my way back to the office right now, and you bloody know it!’

The cheek of Polly Nash, muscling in on her territory like that! Talk about dog eat dog. She’d have that little mutt for breakfast next time she saw her in the office, with ketchup on.

Georgia glared out of the graffiti-etched window as the train rattled down the track. She hoped this wasn’t Isabella’s idea of edging Georgia out. As editor of the paper, Isabella would have undoubtedly given the front cover her approval before it went to print.
She
clearly thought it was all right for Polly Brown-Nose Nash to be labelled ‘Showbiz Reporter’, didn’t she? So where did that leave Georgia?

Hmmm. Georgia didn’t like to think about that too much all of a sudden.

‘Well, when can we expect you back?’ Isabella had asked, in a rather chilly way, when Georgia had phoned her on Sunday to say she’d be out of the office for a couple of days. Isabella didn’t like having surprises sprung on her. But then control freaks never did.

‘As soon as possible,’ Georgia had assured her. ‘Wednesday at the latest. I’m going onto the
Coronation Street
set first thing tomorrow and ‘I’ll try to sew up the interview there and then. Hope you don’t mind, it’s just I bumped into one of my connections in Manchester yesterday and thought it was too good to turn down.’

‘Right,’ Isabella had replied. Deadpan, as if she were suspicious of Georgia’s motives or something. Mind you, she was quite right to be suspicious, seeing as Georgia hadn’t been anywhere near the
Coronation Street
set, and had had no intention of heading in that direction either.

Isabella didn’t have to know that, though. These things fell through all the time. Georgia could pretend the teenage actress had thrown a hissy fit and changed her mind at the last minute about being interviewed. ‘Pain in the arse,’ she planned to grumble once she was in the office again. ‘She’s a right diva by all accounts – but I’ll pay her back in the gossip column, you wait.’

And her boss would just have to swallow that. In the meantime, Georgia vowed to chase up some of her Granada contacts, see if they could get her a snippet of gossip that might conceivably have come from an on-set visit.

She sighed and closed the newspaper, folding it so that she didn’t have to look at Polly’s name any more. Tomorrow’s column was sure to run with Polly’s face on it again, much to the glee of that little amateur. Polly was probably already planning to move into Georgia’s nice corner desk just as soon as she could get her Topshop-skirted bottom into Georgia’s swivel chair.

Well, she could forget
that
idea. Georgia was going to work from home this afternoon, taking back her page with a mountain of articles and snippets that she would bash out. And she’d be back in the office proper first thing tomorrow and she’d bloody well stand over the layout person if she had to, making sure that her name and photo were back where they should be for Thursday’s column, and for every column from then on.
And
she’d make a point of reminding Polly Nash exactly where her place was by dumping some dreary admin stuff on her: updating their celebrity database or something equally tedious and time-consuming. That would shut her up for a while.

Shit. This was all Georgia needed. She scowled out of the window feeling bad-tempered.

It had been heartbreaking saying goodbye to Nan the night before. She’d planned to go back to London on the last train yesterday but had ended up staying and staying at the hospital, not quite able to bring herself to go. Just in case it was the last time, although even
thinking
that was unbearable.

Georgia had brought flowers as promised, but she knew that flowers didn’t make up for leaving. And oh, the twist of guilt at the sight of those tears leaking from her grandmother’s eyes, it had made Georgia wince.

She sniffed, just remembering, and blew her nose. She was all muddled inside, as if someone had stirred her up with a big stick. She didn’t feel the same Georgia who’d travelled north along this line just a few days earlier. She’d been so cocksure, so confident about her life then. In her mind, her family had been shut firmly in their own compartment, quite separate from Georgia, as if they were an accessory she could put on and take off at will. But now she felt as if it wasn’t quite so easy to shrug them away, or put them back in their box. The family ties seemed suddenly to be tight around her, like bindweed.

No, not bindweed. That was the wrong word. That made it sound as if the ties were a bad thing and, to Georgia’s great surprise, they didn’t feel like that any more. For the first time in years – perhaps ever – she didn’t have the usual upsurge of relief about saying goodbye to her family and leaving them behind. Instead, she just felt . . . sad. Sad, and a tiny bit lost. Which was very peculiar, and not at all pleasant.

As a student, she’d been envious of the relationship Alice had had with her parents – an easy-going, uncomplicated love. Her own family dynamic felt much more difficult – she’d always felt like the wild one in the family alongside sensible Carol; Georgia was the one who’d champed at the bit to be different and get away. She’d felt scornful of her parents – what did they know about anything? And what good were parents when they didn’t even realize you were so miserable you couldn’t wait to escape?

But now . . . now she was older and maybe even wiser too. She’d realized just how much her parents and nan were ageing, how much more fragile they’d become. She didn’t feel that desperate need to run away from them any more. It was very odd.

Still, everything considered, it was hardly surprising she felt peculiar. Since arriving in Stockport on Saturday she’d seen her grandmother, old and dying in a hospital ward. She’d suffered a panic attack over Michelle Jones walking past her in a corridor. And she’d had her job rubbished by Owen, just when she was starting to really like him, too . . .

She bristled. Owen was another reason why she felt mixed up inside. He hadn’t shown his face at the hospital yesterday. Not that she’d been looking out for him or anything – she so
hadn’t –
but all the same, she was half-expecting him to seek her out and apologize for his temper tantrum the day before. Flinging her phone into the bin like that – her expensive prized-possession phone, thank you very much! – sheesh, talk about a strop. Just because she was trying to do her job! How would he have liked it if she’d chucked his stethoscope into the bin, or his stupid clipboard?

Idiot. She’d been annoyed ever since. Who did he think he was anyway, speaking to her like that? Some morality crusader? Layla Gallagher was public property and so was her unborn baby. Didn’t Owen Goody-Two-Shoes McIntosh know anything about celebrity life? That was how it worked: if someone had done their utmost to secure tabloid column inches in the past with their footballer boyfriends and dirty-dancing nightclub displays, then they were fair game. Law of the red-top jungle, wasn’t it? He was naive if he didn’t know that much.

All the same, something had prevented Georgia from filing any copy on the story. For some inexplicable reason, even though she knew a juicy headline about Layla Gallagher miscarrying would sell another few thousand copies of the paper and therefore earn her Isabella’s praise and thanks, Georgia hadn’t quite managed to press the Send button on the scoop email that lingered, unwritten, in her mind.

Not because of Owen. No way! But because . . .

She fiddled with her music player, flicking past a mournful song that had just come on.
Oh all right, perhaps a little bit because of Owen, then
, she admitted to herself. She had felt so judged, so criticized, the way he’d yelled at her. What was it he’d called her, in that horribly cold voice? A muckraker and a bully. Her, Georgia!
Have a bit of respect!
, he’d shouted before stalking off in his huff.

Her skin prickled as she remembered. A bully – he’d actually called her a bully! Georgia knew about bullies – oh yes, she knew all about them. And she was certainly
not
a bully. She despised bullies after everything she’d been through at school. Loathed them. And for Owen to turn around and lump
her
in with the likes of Michelle Jones . . .

Well. It took her breath away. It was pretty much the worst thing he could have called her.

That wasn’t the only thing that had shocked her. It was the unexpected surge of empathy she’d felt for the pampered model afterwards, remembering her vulnerable and frightened, crying in the ambulance like that, when she was usually dolled up to the nines and flicking her hair around for the snappers. Sure, Georgia knew that celebs were real people too, with feelings and fears, she wasn’t
completely
dehumanized. But in her job, it was easy to see these people as meat on a rack. Puppets manipulated by their PR maestros. All players in a game.

Owen’s words had broken the spell. And what had been front-page headlines suddenly became a woman in pain, a frightened, crying woman who thought she was losing her baby.

Tears pricked Georgia’s eyes. She of all people should have known not to dehumanize a person in that situation. She’d been there herself, same spot, bleeding and scared in an ambulance. How had she become so numb, so desensitized?

She found a tissue from the depths of her bag, wiped her eyes and then slid her shades down to cover her damp lashes. A tricky weekend, that was what it had been. Everyone made mistakes, didn’t they? And now she was going home, thank goodness, and back to normal life.

She stared out the window, feeling numb, not particularly looking forward to being back in London. And wishing she could stop thinking about Owen for five bloody minutes.

Two hours later, Georgia was there. She lived in an airy top-floor flat in a large Victorian house overlooking Clapham Common, a stone’s throw from the bars and restaurants of the High Street and Old Town. She’d bought the flat a few months after splitting up with Harry, once she’d got her head together again. That had been a mad, mad time – one that she didn’t like to think about too much. By then, Katie had tired of London and was studying for a PGCE in Bristol, but Alice was still in town, designing costumes at the theatre, having worked her way up from skivvying, and her flat in Streatham was the first place Georgia thought to take refuge.