Hidden Heart (Love Is The Law 1) (6 page)

Or was it jealousy that Kayleigh
had had the guts to make a huge life change?

She leaned over the bath, her
skin sticking to the plastic rim, and rested her chin on her forearm. Scattered
over the floor were newspapers and magazines, open at inspiring articles. Articles
that had once inspired her.

Perhaps she ought to try for a
position in editorial. Entertainment, gossip, film, literature - return to her
original plan. How had she got so off-track?

The image of the homeless boy
flashed into her mind once more. The boy that had sparked it all off, and had
haunted her from the face of every down and out she'd ever seen since then.
Joel, with his young-boy face and old-man weariness.

She hadn't fallen for Joel. It
wasn't like the disasters that had plagued her recently. No, her attachment to
Joel had been so much purer and so much more meaningful.

That had meant her betrayal had
been so much more painful.

Her first big break, and it had
come out of nowhere, and catapulted her into the investigative journalism
world. She'd been so idealistic.

Remembering her innocence and
naivety now just made her wince. How stupid she'd been! She'd promised Joel his
life would change once his story was exposed but it was a brief spike in the
internet hits, and nothing more. One week later, all the talk was of a minor
royal and his exploits with a jar of ghee and a Bollywood dancer.

Fuck, fuckity fuckity fuck
fuck.
Every single news story and exclusive and exposé on the bathroom
floor was just fire-lighting material within hours of its publication. It was
all as shallow as entertainment writing - it just pretended to be meaningful.
All of it was hollow.

What did have meaning, then?

Her bills, for one thing. There
were a few payments due in to her over the next month or so, but her outgoings
would exceed all that. The last story she'd been working on had died a
catastrophic death, and she still couldn't quite face up to how badly she'd
messed up on it. The repercussions were wider than the damage to her heart. Her
current account was sinking fast and she'd never got around to starting any
savings.

So what was it to be? Temping
agency, staff writer, what?

God damn women's lib. If she
lived a hundred years ago, she wouldn't have these kind of decisions to make.
Her eye caught an article featuring a woman in some repressed country where
everything was decided by her husband and she had a brief pang of politically
incorrect envy.

Then she put herself in that
position more fully, and felt the old anger unfurl in her belly. No, it wasn't
right. There were still injustices in the world. She still got emails from
people who had been touched by her stories. Maybe her reports and her articles
didn't change the world but taken as part of a whole, perhaps they could.
Perhaps they would.

One voice couldn't do anything,
but as part of the collective…

The water was cooling around her
but she ignored it, scanning the periodicals that littered the room. Faces jumped
out at her. Headlines. Pull quotes. Things that she'd grown passionate about
were now reigniting her fire. She remembered how she'd covered a story about
abuses in a care home, and how the relatives had thanked her, crying as they
shook her hand. Yes, the care home was still running but under new management.
Was it any better? She hoped so. She
had
made a difference.

She might have let Joel down but
since then, she had tried to change things, and perhaps she really had. She
remembered how fiercely Turner had spoken of the prison system and how he now
felt trapped in a cycle of crime and punishment. There was work to be done.
Could she really walk away now, and start writing about novels and indie bands?

Her thoughts went in circles.
This, that, this, that. It was exhausting.
Adult life was a pain in the
arse.

The shrill scream of her mobile
phone made Emily jump. She launched herself out of the bath, patting her hands
dry on a towel as she wrapped it around her body and splashed through to the
living room where her phone danced across the table. It was the editor of a
newspaper she'd worked for in the past, and her heart leapt.
Yes! Let's make
some ripples in the world of social justice once more.

God, she was easily swayed.

"Emily!"

"Nathan! How are you?"

"Good, good. And you? Good.
Smashing. Right. Working much?"

Ahh.
That
question.
Unanswerable, really.
Yes
meant she might be too busy for him, and
no
meant she might have lost her touch. He would have heard some rumours about her
last job, no doubt. "This and that. Doing all right."

He knew she was keen. But what he
said next just stunned her.

"Look, this isn't your usual
thing but we're a bit short on people. Made a load of staffers redundant. You
know what it's like. Now we're got a story coming up and every other ink-stain
is on holiday or something. August. Crap."

Emily immediately felt like the
scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, but she knew not to interrupt the
editor in mid-flow. After all, she currently was the scrapings.

He continued, his squeaky voice
irritating her more and more with each high-pitched sentence. "So anyway,
we need two thousand words on the Baileys who are doing that husband-and-wife
arthouse funky multimedia collaboration in the city centre. I know it's totally
not your thing but…"

Emily squeezed her eyes shut
momentarily. It was pretentious claptrap of the very lowest order. When she
opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw were her notebooks scattered
before the computer. Turner's name was circled in heavy black pen, and spidery
lines radiated out, the results of a late-night brainstorm.
Chances. Rehab.
Perceptions. Opportunities.

And she found herself saying,
"Ahh, sorry. You're right, Nathan. It really isn't my thing…"

* * * *

Emily had stood in the centre of
her flat, clutching the now-silent phone, while her bath-foam flecked skin
dried and her brain caught up with what her mouth had said.

Oh shit.

This
has
to work, now.

She groaned and flung the phone
to the desk, where it slid right off the edge and dropped to the floor, the
case pinging free from the battery.
Yup. Seemed appropriate.

Once she was dressed and had a
fresh coffee in her hands, she sat down on her sagging sofa and clipped her
phone back together. She sent a quick text to Kayleigh. God, she missed having
her friend around. They'd shared a flat until when Kayleigh's job had taken her
to Belgium. It was great to have the space to herself but Kayleigh had also
talked her out of lots of mistakes.

It was telling that the debacle
with the last story had happened
after
Kayleigh left the country.

I'm having one last go at
social commentary,
her message read.
I've got to make this work.

There was no reply and Emily
drank her coffee while surfing a few websites and sending some exploratory
emails. She hit up old contacts and found a few messages returned instantly,
undeliverable.
Perhaps she ought to do some footwork, get back out to the pubs and clubs, find
some new leads.

What would 90,000 prisoners in
the UK
do
on release?

She hopped from website to website,
looking at arguments of every political hue. Was it really all a capitalist
conceit, designed to keep an underclass so that the whole edifice of
consumerism could be built from the bottom to the top? It was an interesting
idea, and she was soon drawn into the debate.
I wonder what Turner thinks of
this?
She jotted a few things on her notebook.
I must ask him.

Her phone zinged with Kayleigh's
reply, jolting her back to the real world. One word.
WHY?

Emily thumbed through the apps on
her phone, while trying to conjure up a reply in her head. None came.
Because.
Why not. I must. I feel. There is.

In the end, she didn't reply at
all. Instead she scrolled through the list of contacts and lighted up on the
editor of a national weekly that dealt with gritty, hard hitting issues. He was
the one for this. She considered sending an email, but she'd worked with him
before, and a phone call was often a quicker way of getting a response for a
known writer like she was. She ignored Kayleigh's text, and instead rang the
editor's desk.

But it was an unfamiliar female
voice that answered.

"Oh, hi. I was after
Julian…" Emily stammered.

"Ahh, sorry. He's on leave
right now. I'm the office manager. Can I ask who's calling? I might be able to
pass you on to the sub-editor."

Emily's toes clamped tightly in a
curl. She knew the sub from college, and they'd never got on. He was a
supercilious little prick who had not forgotten how she'd turned him down for a
date. "Ahh, no, you're all right. Thanks."

"It's okay, do you want to-"

Emily never heard what the woman
was offering because she terminated the call and tossed the phone onto a
cushion. Whereupon it slid, once more, to the floor and disgorged its contents.

I really ought to get a cover
for that thing.

Or stop throwing it around.
One or the other.

What now? Julian, her best hope
for this article, was away. Write it on spec? Dangerous. Could be a big waste
of time.

Her future fogged over, uncertain
once more. She pushed the sense of foreboding away, and sat up straight, drinking
the last of her tepid coffee before turning back to her online research.

* * * *

The quayside area was different
at night. Emily stepped off the Metrolink tram and walked briskly, streetwise
enough to know she had to walk with the confidence that she didn't always feel.
Over the past two days since her decision to keep trying with investigative
journalism, she had done a lot of work and research but she was still no nearer
a commission. She'd tried ringing Turner but he hadn't returned her calls until
that afternoon, apologetic and claiming to have been away somewhere.

She'd suggested the meeting. He
sounded non-committal on the phone, but it was hard to really tell. He was the
one to suggest the quays, and she was happy enough to agree. The streets were
buzzing. It was a Friday evening and already the bars were filling up with
office workers who hadn't even bothered to go home and eat. They went straight
from sober workplace to drunken carnage, passing only the cashpoints while on
their journey to get as wasted as possible.

She had dressed up a little, and
had been hesitant about how much to reveal. Now, though, as she tottered
through the crowds on her three-inch heels, she felt almost dowdy next to the
red lips and low tops of the partiers. Emily's usual green bandana had been
abandoned, letting her hair fall in waves, and she had applied some silver eye
shadow that she found lingering at the bottom of her make-up bag. Her skirt was
an eighties-themed pencil one, teamed with a tight cashmere cardigan that she
hoped screamed "casual sex kitten".

Though as soon as she admitted
that she was even trying for the sex kitten look, she felt annoyed with
herself.
This was business, right?

She concentrated on hunting out
the tapas bar that Turner had named, and her heart flipped when she saw his
broad form waiting under the pink neon lights. He was taller than many of the
people around him. In his jeans and black suit jacket, he looked like a louche
James Bond, and she found her mouth had gone dry. Unlike the last time they'd
met, when he was clean-shaven, now there was a few days' worth of stubble on
his chin, and she just wanted to stretch out her hand and touch it.

She slowed as she neared him, but
he sprang forward to greet her. She wiped her hand on her skirt, anticipating
that he'd shake it like he had done last time, but he took her off-guard by
planting a society air-kiss on each cheek before stepping back and grinning at
her. His aftershave tickled her nose.

"Oh!" she mumbled,
then, "Hello. How are you?"

"Fine, thanks. Yourself? You
look nice. I like the cardigan."

He said the word
cardigan
with
all the undertones suggesting elderly women, mumsy types and cosy, frumpy
figures. She winced. "Er, thanks. Yeah. It's… retro."

"If I'd known, I'd have dug
out my old lilac and green shell suit."

"Eww, really?"

"We all have secrets,
Emily." He looked sideways at her, winking. "
Dark
secrets." Then he returned to a normal voice. "Enough of that - come
on, I've sorted a table. Do you like tapas?"

"Yes, sure."

He led her through with sure,
confident strides, walking just a little ahead of her and steering her to a
secluded table along a side wall. It wasn't tucked in a corner but it wasn't
slap bang in the middle of the room. She liked it.

Once the wine had been served, and
the little dishes were arriving, she tried to steer the conversation to matters
of prison in general and social justice, without referring to his past
directly, but he seemed unwilling to engage.

"I've been camping," he
said, surprising her, when she asked about how his job hunting was going.
"I've always been an outdoorsy type, and I used to dream about being able
to just go off on my own. So I've been in the Peak District. That's why I
didn't answer your call. I can't stand people who go and get away from it all,
and take their bloody mobiles."

"Oh. Yeah, quite." She
allowed a polite pause, then tried to steer back on topic. "With this
article, I think I'm going to concentrate on the jobs angle…"

He nodded but he was looking at
the olives as he said, "Do you like camping?"