The Turning Tide (14 page)

Rab whimpered. ‘Jesus fuck, someone shut him up,’ Billy said. Buster started to reach for his holster. ‘Nah man, I mean keep him quiet. Don’t kill him. Yet.’

Buster grabbed Rab’s shoulder and shook him until the smaller man met his eyes. ‘’Ere, mate, it’s only a broken finger,’ Buster said. ‘And if you keep up like that I’ll give yer something to cry about.’ Rab choked down a sob and nodded.

‘So that leaves us with nine hundred thousand,’ Erykah calculated. ‘After the divorce, four-fifty for me, plus whatever we get when the house goes, though with his mortgage arrears, who even knows.’

‘Divorce?’ Rab looked up at her with puffy, red eyes. ‘But I thought we could give it a go – give us six months . . .’

‘This buys out that second mortgage you forged my signature on, am I right? Right?’ Rab said nothing, just looked down at his fingers.

Rab hunched forward, still cradling the bent hand. His face twisted with pain and bitterness. ‘Fine time to start acting like you’re some kind of innocent,’ he spat. ‘I’m not the one whose photo has been splashed all over the news this week.’

Anger rose up like bile in her throat. ‘Darling husband, and I mean this most sincerely: fuck you very much. You’re lucky I don’t take it all and alert the mortgage company to your fraud,’ she said, rubbing her wrists. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You’re lucky I don’t phone the police.’

‘Erykah, you can’t do this,’ Rab said, switching back to pleading. ‘You said when it all blew over we would talk about us . . .’

In spite of everything that had happened that old button was still just about functional, the one he pressed knowing how desperately she wanted stability, to belong. She swallowed and it felt like a rock hitting her stomach. ‘How dare you get on me about the press finding that photo. If it bothers you so much, why didn’t you think of that before agreeing to front a scam?’

As she said it Erykah realised that in marrying Rab she had, in a way, married her mother. He might not have been an addict, but – no, that wasn’t right, he might not have used drugs but that didn’t mean he wasn’t an addict. He was sneaky and mercurial, ran cold and hot. And she had become conciliatory over the years, the peacemaker, just as she had as a child. She had learned to avoid him when things were at their worst. She knew from the sound of his key in the door whether it was a good day or a bad day. She turned down her own reactions, muted every feeling and conversation until, bit by bit, she became a ghost in her own life.

‘Hey, folks, we’re still here,’ Seminole Billy said. ‘Now, are you gonna cut these cheques or am I gonna have to let Buster do his thing?’

Erykah turned to her husband. ‘Face it, Rab, you’ve been an extreme disappointment. First as a husband, and now as a publicity prop,’ Erykah said. It came out far cooler than she felt.

She turned to the men. ‘Gentlemen, you deal with me from now on. Rab, why don’t you fix a pot of coffee while the grown-ups have a chat?’

: 12 :

Diana Stuebner perused the headlines of the free paper that littered every available surface in London, from the trains to coffee shops. She turned through the four thin pages before holding it over her head as she ventured from the Tube into the street.

A cold sleet that had been hanging over the city was turning to wet snow. Patches of black ice lurked on every street and pavement. The city was a blur of slow-moving humans who had the bad luck to be outside. Black taxis and white vans jammed up the narrow Soho streets. She was late for work, but not by very long. Still – when you had to be on air, it mattered.

The radio station was housed in a building over four floors off of Soho Square. Rumour had it the place had been built as a Georgian brothel, but if that was true, it had had a lot of renovation since. Diana doubted the rumour herself. It was all part of the station’s legend. The public were also told that the station itself had originated as a pirate radio outfit on a Norwegian ferry anchored off Margate, but that was a myth too.

Diana juggled the wet paper with her overflowing handbag outside the front doors of LCC 97.5 FM – ‘London Chat Central,’ as the tube and bus adverts put it. A crowd of God-botherers and Bible thumpers clustered outside the doorway, preparing for a day of harassing passers-by and handing out leaflets. Even the poor weather didn’t seem to deter them. Early evangeliser gets the worm, perhaps.

Huge images of some of the star DJs adorned the windows flanking the front entrance. The one of Diana had her looking straight on, eyebrow crooked and arms folded across her chest.
The Daily Edition
, screamed tall red letters over her head.
Bringing you the new before it’s news
, screeched yellow script below.

The station traded on her youth but also on her reputation for being solid, calm, measured. And her voice: a voice which had been described as crushed gravel filtered through a silk stocking and sounded as if it belonged to a forty-something chain-smoking
MILF
.

People were often surprised to learn she was only twenty-five and had been working there since she was a graduate of twenty-two. Three years since the job interview when she more or less blagged her way into the position, hands clenched so tightly that her nails had cut into the skin of her palms. ‘
LCC
is in danger of turning into a legacy brand,’ she had said in the interview. ‘I did some research and your core audience is ten years younger than your presenters’ average age. If you don’t bring in new blood, you’re going to lose share.’ She had gone in intending to audition as a continuity announcer but she knew she could handle the real stuff; she just needed a chance to show them. To her surprise, they put her straight in as a newsreader.

Diana wove her way through the group of happy clappers. One of them, a man in a rumpled suit who was out there every morning, shoved a pamphlet into her hand. She smiled and nodded robotically. Same old same old. Station security had called the police a few times, but since it was a public pavement, there wasn’t much that could be done.

Barrington at the security desk buzzed Diana in. ‘All right D,’ he nodded, his eyes glued to a B-grade vampire flick he was watching instead of the camera feeds. Barrington was many things as a security manager, but being attentive with the
CCTV
was not one of them. ‘Why bother,’ he would shrug. ‘By the time you notice something’s wrong they’re already inside. Now you’re distracted from what’s going on.’ If pressed further he might also admit to being tired of watching the Bible-bashers from multiple angles all day long. On the other hand, in the event of a sudden zombie apocalypse outside the station, he was exactly the sort of person you would want on the door.

She glanced past his desk at the back doors where a tattered
out of order
sign had been taped up some months ago. On second thoughts, maybe he wasn’t.

‘Is he in yet?’ Diana asked. She shrugged out of her coat and shook the droplets of ice out of her hair.

Barrington chuckled, nodding his shiny bald head. ‘Yeah, ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Shouting at some poor girl about his dry cleaning. I told him you had already been in and gone back out.’

‘Thank you,’ Diana said. Her producer, Jonathan, was always cracking the whip. He was domineering in the way only short men can be: not at ease with himself or anyone else. It wasn’t enough for him to be top dog; he also had to make sure you knew about it. Even if he came in thirty seconds before she did he acted like he had been kept waiting for an eternity.

Barrington waved his hand and turned back to his console. On the screen, four screaming co-eds were being engulfed by clouds of blood-hungry bats. ‘You know I got your back,’ he said.

Up on the third floor, a series of meeting rooms and glass-walled studios carved up the space. The building was listed, so nothing could be done about replacing the thin, wobbly-paned windows that looked out over Soho, and the station had spent a bomb installing soundproof inner rooms.

Strict rules about how the buildings looked couldn’t stop Soho from changing. Once media moved in, attracted by large offices in central London at knock-down prices, the rest weren’t far behind. Trendy restaurants that catered to the new professionals, all exposed brickwork and tables that looked like they were built from construction offcuts but cost more than a month’s wages. The people who worked in these places were women in nipped-waist frocks with flicks of black eyeliner and the put-upon world weariness of the very young. Skinny men with tattoos who used to stand on street corners waiting for trouble were replaced by a different kind of skinny men with tattoos, the kind who oiled their beards and turned up the sleeves of their lumberjack shirts just so. Diana felt confused around men like that, ones who were her own age but dressed like Depression-era hoboes. She wondered how long it would be until the fashion world turned again and men went back to looking like 1950s professors or 1980s cokeheads.

The restaurants did well, though. She liked being able to get gluten-free bangers and mash for lunch. In the restaurants, urbanites could coo over hacked pieces of pheasant served on slates while sneering out the windows at what little remained of Soho’s sex trade. More money was flowing in now, more policing, more of a land grab to seize the old walkups and turn them into
desirable city centre living
. And yet Diana had the feeling that, too, was only temporary. The fashionably retro style nodding to a time of good, honest Victorian sweat and sweatshops was not entirely truthful. The real culture of Soho was made on the back of sex workers and when the slick of gentrification moved elsewhere, they would come back out from the wings to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.

Diana dumped her coat and bag on her office desk. She glanced at the pamphlet the pavement evangelist had given her.
Are You Ready To Receive Ultimate Love?
A smiling, bearded Jesus stretched his arms wide as kaleidoscopic rays of light emerged from behind him. Could be heaven, could be the entrance to a cabaret. She wondered if it ever occurred to the fanatics that, give or take a robe or two, the handouts they distributed looked like a poster from one of Soho’s nightclubs more than anything else. Or maybe that was the effect they were after – entrap the sinners and hope they stay? Ultimate Love indeed. She crumpled the paper into a neat ball and threw it into the bin.

The producer poked his head around the corner of Diana’s office. Jonathan, wearing his usual uniform of steel rimmed frames and mock turtleneck. He probably thought it made him look like Steve Jobs. Attractive enough for a middle-aged guy, if you ignored his habit of shouting at staff. ‘Morning, D,’ he said and perched on the corner of her desk. ‘So, headlines.’

‘Weather?’

‘Weather is done to death,’ he said. Jonathan rifled through a collection of press releases, printouts from news sites, and emails. ‘People are sick of hearing about how wet it is. If it’s wet where they are, they’ll ring in to complain about it. If it’s not wet where they are, they’ll ring in to complain we’re devoting too much time to it.’

‘Not our fault. It’s not like we’re responsible,’ Diana said. He nodded agreement. ‘But I take your point. Politics?’

‘Rumours of an opposition leadership coup still ongoing,’ Jonathan said. ‘Talk of removing Scottish MPs from some votes in Commons is causing a wedge, a few are speculating there will be defections to the
SNP
or Green parties. We’re expecting a statement from the Shadow Home Secretary later on to tamp down any rumoured splits in the party.’

‘Morag the Moaner,’ Diana said. ‘Can’t wait.’

‘Even if she knew what you thought of her, my guess is she wouldn’t care,’ he said.

‘True. What’s the take online? Are the defections a rumour that’s trending, or are we in danger of putting the denial in front of the horse?’

Jonathan adjusted his wire rims. ‘Fuck online,’ he said. ‘Said it before and I’ll say it as many times as it needs to be said. We’re news media, not bloody Facebook.’ So maybe not so much like Steve Jobs after all.

Diana pretended this was the first time she’d had the pleasure of being subjected to this particular rant. Or the first time she had trolled him into it. ‘Well, Jonathan, it seems to me that our presence out there is looking a little bit thin, compared to the rest of the news media these days. Just saying.’ He wasn’t the one who had to deal with the callers, she was. ‘We’re missing out on large audiences if we can’t connect with people online in any meaningful way.’

‘Twitter this and blogging that,’ Jonathan fumed and pounded the desk. ‘You know, I’m sick of hearing about it. Ten years from now no one will even remember what it was, much less why we cared.’

‘Maybe so,’ Diana said. ‘Or maybe ten years from now we’ll be looking at the scorch marks on our arses and wondering how the hell we ended up getting ripped a new one by teenagers and their vlogs. Everyone who’s anyone is out there, you know, J,’ she continued. ‘All the main editors, give or take a broadsheet. Every last head journalist, and don’t get me started on the columnists. They’re getting their content out minutes after news breaks. I know it’s not your favourite topic, but news is happening all over social media, and we’re missing out.’

Jonathan’s face scrunched up. It was a look Diana knew too well, and if she wasn’t pulling such good ratings, she knew he would be screaming his head off at her for even questioning his decisions. ‘Fuck’s sake, D,’ he said. He stabbed the pile of papers with his pencil. ‘Nothing of value, and I mean nothing, ever came from the Internet. Not when it comes to news.’

‘Would you have said the same thing about
Huffington Post
?
Slate
? People are breaking news online, we should be right there with them,’ she said coolly. Yes, winding Jonathan up was one of the subtler perks of her job.

Diana watched him gurning and chewing his cheek, trying to find a way to put words into sentences without throttling her. Finally he spoke. ‘When you say breaking news, what you mean is mean spreading libel and pictures of cats. We should be leaving that sort of nonsense to the New Politician and their ilk,’ he said. ‘I will not let the station stoop to clickbait. It’s undignified.’

Jonathan stood up, well into his flow now, and punched the air. ‘No, what the world needs more of now is quality analysis, not dodgy opinions and worse grammar. This is what we made our name on.’ He jabbed a finger in her direction. Diana smirked behind her hand. ‘The in depth debate. The whole conversation, not the sound bites. Real content. You don’t get that in 140 characters or less.’

Or fewer
, Diana thought. Jonathan’s features sank together like a handful of dried currants dropped into a steamed pudding. She knew the look well. It meant he was about to shout at someone, or break something. She was enjoying this, but it probably wasn’t good for his blood pressure to keep it going. Not to mention the rest of the staff, who would bear the brunt of his temper. ‘Sooo, today’s headlines. What else are you looking at?’

Jonathan, panting and overheated from his screed, scanned the rest of the printouts. ‘Scotland Liberal Unionist Party sent through a release, looks like a good one,’ he said and sat down again.

‘Scotland Liberal Unionist Party?’ Diana asked. ‘Some anti-independence thing? Never heard of it.’

‘Not just anti-independence, but anti-devolution as well,’ Jonathan said. ‘They claim to be resurrecting the spirit of a party that existed until 1912 and then was merged in to the Conservatives.’

‘1912, huh? Well, that’s sure to grab the imagination of young voters.’ Though given the hipster aesthetic, perhaps they weren’t far wrong.

His face unclenched slightly. ‘You know, I like this. Protest voting is still hot. Even people who voted for the current government are starting to turn their opinions. We should get on top of this before anyone else gets the story.’

Diana shrugged. ‘What, more English votes for English parliament stuff?’ she said. ‘We’ve done that topic to death.’

Jonathan shook his head. ‘Beyond that. Returning Parliament to the pre-1999 settlements, they say. Capitalising on the mood post-referendum. Not broken big yet. My hunch is it’s going to explode this week. There’s a tip that those lottery winners are giving a big chunk away for the party to fund a run on the European Parliament.’

‘Not how I would have chosen to spend it,’ Diana said. The couple had been all over the papers a few days before: good-looking, riches-to-rags-to-riches story. Wife had a bit of a past, nothing serious, just tittle-tattle. Husband was some City prat who’d lost his job in the recession. Seemed a bit odd for them to turn round and hand it all away. But if news had taught her anything it was that the one predictable thing about people was their unpredictability. ‘What’s their angle?’

‘Blah blah Scottish heritage stuff, taking the fight to Brussels, et cetera. Who knows? Maybe they like the lottery spotlight so much they decided to stay in it for a while.’