You Had Me at Hello (20 page)

‘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!'

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 bumfluff-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 passes 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 finishing 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 passing 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 pissed-up sports desk nominees.

Natalie's still talking ten to the dozen. A text message beeps on her clamshell 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. Xxx 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?'

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 relationship.
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 competition 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.

The photographer calls me to check the spelling of the twins' names. ‘Weird she didn't have any photos of her husband out, wasn't it? She had to go searching for one we could use.'

‘Probably too painful for her to look at,' I say, and cut the conversation short.

Every job has its small perks and mine comes with the occasional burst of free stand-up comedy or, to give it its formal title, contempt of court. Whenever an unhinged or flamboyant character takes to the stand, word goes round. And it's not just journos – solicitors and court ushers join in with the whisper. ‘Get in 2, quick' spreads like wildfire – and suddenly the court fills up with people pretending they have a reason to be there. The favoured pose is sliding into a seat at the back, vaguely scanning the room as if you have an urgent message to deliver to someone you can't immediately locate and don't want to disturb proceedings.