Singled Out (3 page)

She ground coffee, put it into the glass funnel of the Cona and poured over hot water from the kettle; it started to percolate through. Capital Radio announced the nine o'clock news. She must hurry. The lead item was once again the fighting between Egypt and Israel in the Sinai Desert. The oil states threatened to raise prices in protest against America's support for Israel. A woman had been found strangled in a West London car park. England's football team had only achieved a 1–1 draw with Poland and wouldn't qualify for the World Cup.

Laura perched on the back of an armchair as she sipped her coffee. Facing her on the mantelpiece was a small wooden-framed mirror and beside it the photograph of her mother. As she often did, Laura shifted position so that her face filled the mirror. She and her mother matched. The hair styles were different, but the features uncannily alike. The same dark hair, the same light hazel, almost honey-coloured eyes. Everyone had always said she was the spitting image of her mother.

But Laura was determined that any parallels between them would stop at their physical likeness. In every other particular, Laura Fisher's life was going to be totally different from her mother's. She was not going to trap herself in stifling suburbia. She was not going to tamp down her emotions into acquiescent passivity. She was not going to hide unpalatable truths behind a façade of middle-class conformity. She was going to rise above her background and, by sheer will-power, make her own destiny.

Above all, Laura Fisher was determined that her life, unlike her mother's, would not be prematurely ended by murder.

‘God, am I relieved to see you.' Rob's voice swooped in self-parodying campness as Laura entered the
Newsviews
office.

She looked at her watch. Bloody Michael's appearance hadn't made her late, had it? But no, she was all right. ‘I'm on time, Rob.'

‘Not what I meant, lovey.' His hand gestured languidly towards the day's bulletin board.

Amidst the usual pinned-on cuttings and notes about potential stories was a black and white photograph. It was grainy, passport-size blown up, and showed a young woman with dark hair and pale eyes.

‘For a moment thought it was you, sweetie,' Rob cooed.

‘Doesn't look anything like me, does it?'

‘Oh yes, dear, very like.'

‘I can't see it.'

‘No, well, we never can, can we? We all have this image of ourselves that's totally different from what the world sees. Source of most of the tragedies that ever happen, that fact, you know, Laura dear.'

‘Is it?' She grinned as she moved across to the coffee machine and filled herself a white plastic cup. As ever, it was almost too hot to hold. She took a scalding sip.

‘Oh yes,' Rob went on. ‘I mean, for example, I just think of myself as an ordinary-looking workaday sort of chap …' He smiled in apologetic mock-naivety, ‘… but you wouldn't believe the number of men out there who think I'm just
devastating – gorgeous
. I don't pretend to understand it, but they just can't seem to get enough of my body.'

He sighed, perplexed by the intractable oddity of human nature.

‘Do I gather from this that you had a good evening?'

‘Oh, my
dear
.' He coyly fluttered his long eyelashes. ‘Did I just? A good evening? I tell you, if there were Fucking Olympics, I could do it for England.'

‘Good for you.'

‘Mm, very good for me, thank you.' A modest little smile. ‘And, I'm fairly confident, not bad for the others involved. You?'

‘Me?' Laura was annoyed to find herself colouring.

‘Your evening.' Rob turned an incisive stare on her. ‘Did your evening turn out all right?'

She responded with a light ‘Uhuh'.

‘Good … Good …' He held her gaze and Laura was the one who turned away. There were times when she wished Rob didn't know her so well.

‘So what were you up to, Laura? Skulking round in a false identity, on the look-out for a bit of rough trade …?' She refused to be drawn, just smiled at him enigmatically. ‘Hm. Certainly what
I
was doing.'

He reached out, took her hand and planted a slobbery kiss on it. Like all his actions, it was heightened, as if the gesture were being sent up. ‘Anyway, glad to see you're all right.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘No, really got a
frisson
when that photo came in.' He nodded towards the bulletin board. ‘Thought for a horrid moment it
was
you.'

Laura moved across to look more closely at the girl's face. ‘Why, who is it?'

‘Melanie Harris.'

A shrug. The name meant nothing.

‘Girl who was found last night strangled in a car park in Paddington,' said Rob.

The Conference Room was stale with the previous day's smoke and beginning to fill with that morning's exhalations. The table presented its customary chaos of newspapers, clipboards, spiral-bound notepads and coffee cups, some scrunched up, others garnished with floating cigarette butts.

The
Newsviews
production team liked, even nurtured, scruffiness, as if it reinforced their serious journalistic credentials, gave
gravitas
to what some might regard as a lightweight programme. This attitude came from the editor, Dennis Parker, who, though he'd moved some years before to the lucrative pastures of television, allowed no one to forget his gritty Fleet Street background.

He sat at the head of the table, jacket over the back of his chair, shirt sleeves unnecessarily held up by elasticated metal bands. A broad, garishly bright tie was loosened at the neck and curved over a large stomach, legacy of the hard lunching which Dennis Parker thought essential to his image. His face had the pumice-stone surface of a heavy smoker.

The producers, directors and researchers lolled around the table with studied casualness, as if self-consciously re-creating television's image of a journalists' meeting.

Dennis's secretary sat a little behind her boss, shorthand notebook and pencil at the ready, cigarette slotted into the corner of her mouth. Laura was the only other woman in the room; she and Rob were the only people not smoking.

‘I don't think we can do anything on this strangling,' said Dennis Parker definitively.

‘I think we should,' Laura countered.

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. He did not like having his judgement questioned, least of all by a woman. But he gave a conciliatory smile and said, ‘Listen, love. We're not in the hard news business.
Newsviews
is a news magazine programme. We're trying to make inroads into the
Nationwide
audience, not the
Panorama
one.'

‘I still think we can do features on more serious subjects when they come up.'

‘We are doing features on more serious subjects, love.' Each time he used the endearment he managed to make it more diminishing. ‘Today we're doing this report on alternative fuels that can be used if the oil really does dry up.'

‘But we're also doing the feature on how often fire brigades get called out to rescue cats caught up trees.'

‘Sure. We mix the serious with the more light-hearted. That's what magazines are about, what the audience wants. Come on, that's why you read your
Women's Weekly
, isn't it, Laura?'

This got the intended ripple of masculine laughter. Laura restrained her anger and continued in a level voice, ‘I still think we can use this murder as a peg for something on violence against women.'

‘Oh, come on.
Newsviews
is a news magazine, not a soapbox. We aren't the bloody
Guardian
women's page. We do women's stories, yes – like that one a couple of weeks back about the girl who'd set up her own mail-order trouser-suit business – but we don't do Women's Lib stuff.'

‘I'm not talking about Women's Lib, Dennis, I'm talking about crime. We always get good audience reaction when we do crime features.'

‘Well …'

Laura took advantage of the editor's brief moment of uncertainty. ‘That report I did on how easy it is to buy an illegal firearm in London got some of the best audience reaction we've ever had.'

‘Yes, maybe, but –'

‘And if we did a feature on the reasons why women are the target of so much violence … you know, get in a psychiatrist, round up some women who've been victims of –'

‘No, Laura.'

‘But, Dennis—'

‘I said “No”. I'm editor of this programme and I'm the one who knows what fits into the
Newsviews
brief.'

‘Yes, but I think you should be open to the possibility that the
Newsviews
brief can be widened.'

‘Laura!'

This time she'd got him angry. He'd interpreted her words as a direct criticism of his judgement. There was no point in pursuing the argument; it would only make matters worse.

Dennis Parker sank back into his chair with some satisfaction at her silence, and continued, ‘Now didn't somebody say they'd picked up a story about make-up for men …?'

There was a general giggle as a young researcher moved eagerly into the spotlight. ‘Yes. Found an American magazine article which said in ten years' time men'll think as little of wearing make-up in the street as women do.'

The editor chuckled. ‘The day you find me wearing the stuff, you have my full permission to have me certified.'

Allowing time for the sycophantic laugh to subside, the young researcher went on, ‘The article says it's a natural progression. Ten years ago a lot of men couldn't envisage wearing aftershave or deodorant … or washing their hair more than once a week.'

‘I still think that's a bit iffy,' said the editor, who habitually went round in an aura of what he regarded as a ‘natural, masculine' smell. ‘All right for the pinkos and the perverts, but …'

A visionary look came into his eye. ‘Hm. I've had a thought …' This was one of Dennis Parker's catchphrases. The meeting was appropriately silent, awaiting the revelation of their editor's latest brainwave. ‘We should do some
vox pops
on the idea of men wearing make-up … that'd be good, yes. Ask people in the street … women, men, try and get the odd coon … usual mix. Right, who'd better set that one up …?'

He scanned the table, enjoying his power of allocating work. The researcher who'd brought up the idea looked almost pathetically hungry to be given the job. Dennis Parker's eyes lingered on the young man for a long, tantalizing moment, before moving on.

‘You by any chance know anything about make-up for men, Rob?' The editor spoke with a hint of a lisp, and his audience provided predictable sniggers at the innuendo.

As ever, Rob played up to expectations. ‘Well, maybe the teensiest bijou bitette,' he confided with a lowering of his eyelashes.

The meeting guffawed its appreciation of this sally.

‘Good.' said Dennis, ‘You'd better research it then.' Ignoring the disappointment in the other researcher's face, he looked round the table. ‘And who shall we delegate to direct the
vox pops
…?' His eyes came to rest. ‘Think this could be a good one for you, Laura.'

‘The bastard!' she muttered as they walked back to the office.

‘Oh, come on, lovey, don't get so heavy about it,' said Rob. ‘You ought to know by now … Suggest an idea Dennis doesn't care for and you get rapped over the knuckles. “All right, Laura, for that you're going to have to stand in the corner with a dunce's hat on” – or go out and do some dreary
vox pops
, which comes to the same thing.'

‘But it
is
a good idea – it really is.'

‘Never said it was a bad idea, just said it was one Dennis doesn't care for.'

‘Hm. He'd like to get me off the programme, you know.'

‘I'm sure he would. But he's not going to. Dennis may be a pompous old fart, but he's not stupid. He knows you bring more original ideas to
Newsviews
than the rest of the team put together.'

Laura didn't appear comforted by this, so Rob went on, ‘What'll happen is what usually happens. In a couple of weeks' time, dear Dennis will suddenly bring an editorial meeting to a standstill.' He slipped into a camp parody of the editor's fruity tones. ‘“I've just had a thought … We ought to do something on
Newsviews
about violence towards women.” And we'll all clap our little hands and say, “Gosh, what a brilliant wheeze! Aren't we lucky to have such a creative editor to work for!”

‘Laura, the only thing you have to remember with Dennis is – wherever an idea originally came from, we've all got to pretend it's his. Allow him that little indulgence and he's an absolute pussy-cat.'

‘It's so ridiculous, though, isn't it – that we have to go through that kind of pantomime?'

Rob shrugged. ‘Worse things happen.'

‘God, and the way he patronizes me.'

The researcher flicked his eyes heavenwards. ‘You think you've got problems.'

‘Yes, why do you put up with them all sniggering at you, Rob?'

‘My dear, when you've been a screaming queen as long as I have, you hardly notice the sniggering any more.'

He swanned through the door into the
Newsviews
offices. ‘Any messages, Esther my love?'

The senior production secretary looked up from her desk. ‘Nothing for you, Rob.'

‘Huh. “Nobody loves a fairy when she's forty.”' He flounced off to his desk. But through the self-parody, Laura got the feeling that Rob had been expecting a message and was hurt not to have received it.

‘Couple for you, though, Laura,' said Esther.

‘Oh?'

‘Somebody from … TV Training Company, something like that … asked if you'd be interested in tutoring a course on producing magazine programmes …?'