This Little Piggy (10 page)

“’Fraid so.” Clare worked at keeping the glee out of her voice. “Don’t worry, I’ve got all the details.”

“I don’t suppose…”

Clare raised her eyebrows at Barber and he stopped. “Okay, forget it.” He turned to McKenna instead. “Can I ask you for a comment on what happened on the picket line this morning?”

Clare made an eye-rolling face. “He’s being charged with assault, Chris. That means he’s not in a position to say anything about this morning.” She resisted the urge to add, ‘You should know that.’

“What are you up to then?” Barber demanded.

“I’m doing a profile,” Clare told him. “And I need to get on, Chris. Sorry. We’ll have to meet another day.”

Barber handed McKenna one of his business cards as they walked away.

“He seems full of himself,” McKenna said, dropping the card in the nearest litter bin. “That flashy car of his didn’t make him any friends on the picket line.”

Clare just smiled.

McKenna insisted on paying for drinks and a quick lunch, in spite of Clare’s arguments. “I’d never live it down if the lads heard I’d let you pay for your own drinks,” he said.

“What century are they living in?”

McKenna laughed and shook his head.

It turned out that Finn McKenna was exactly the same age as Clare and they shared a passion for seventies punk music.

“You don’t look like a punk,” Clare said.

“Not now,” McKenna said, with a grin. “I had a few piercings though. Anyway, you can talk about not looking like a punk. You could pass for a model.”

“I’d need to be a few inches taller.” Clare’s face felt warm. “Anyway, I’ve still got my ripped-up leather jacket. The last vestige of my teenage rebellion.”

“I’d love to see that sometime.”

Clare found McKenna easier to talk to than she’d expected.
The Miners’ Leader Banned from the Picket Line
was going to be a very easy write-up. And it had driven Chris Barber mad to see her walking off with a prized interviewee. The day was turning out to be not quite as bleak as she’d expected.

Back at the office, she dictated her string of court stories, then put in a call to Joe.

“I’ve been hearing your name from the other side of the office,” he told her. “You’ll enjoy this. Chris Barber was shouting at your newsdesk and accusing them of giving you all the good stories. The ones they’re supposed to be giving to him, of course.”

“Cheeky sod. What did Dave Bell say?”

“Something about you getting your own stories, all by yourself. I was doing my best to listen in, but I couldn’t catch it all.”

Clare grinned widely. “This day keeps getting better. Barber wouldn’t know how to find his own stories. He thinks being chief reporter means you get given the best story of the day, by some sort of divine right.”

“So what’re you up to now?”

“I’ve got this profile to type up.”

“I’m pleased to hear you’re not going off and mothering that little stray from Sweetmeadows.”

“No need for that sort of comment.”

But Joe had touched a nerve: Clare was indeed wondering whether she ought to drive past the estate just to check on Amy. Or maybe that was entirely the wrong thing to do. She tried to push the little girl out of her mind and concentrate on typing up her profile of Finn McKenna, who was also taking up more space in her brain than she wanted him to.

five

Clare stood outside the door to her spare room, with her fingers around the handle. She hadn’t been in the room for more than six weeks. She found her heart was thudding and her hand felt slippery. When she swallowed, her throat felt thick and dry. She pressed down the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was the dark brown mark on the floor. Dried blood on a cream-coloured carpet. She should’ve dealt with it straight away. She wasn’t likely to get it out now. It would mean telling the landlord… what? Telling him something. And offering to replace the carpet.

Clare wrapped her arms around herself. The room was cool but the air was stale and dusty. She found herself staring into the stain and noticing that there were flecks of blood around the room and a dirty-looking smear along the door. That would have come from her own hand as she struggled to make it to the hallway. Clare didn’t want to look at the rest of the room but she forced herself to turn her head.

A sudden hammering at her front door gave Clare such a shock that tears came to her eyes. She shut the bedroom door hard and stood behind the front door, not opening it. “Who is it?”

“It’s
uuusssss
!” The voices were the women from the paper’s head office. “Open up, we’ve brought wine! And food!”

Clare didn’t know what to say. She slipped the chain on the door and opened it a tiny crack. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Yeah, surprise!” There stood Nicki, Jools and Di, her drinking partners when she was based at the city office. They were waving bottles and supermarket carrier bags. “Come on, open up. This wine’s getting warm out here.”

Clare didn’t move the door chain. “I’m sorry, girls, it’s not a good time for me.”

Nicki squinted back at her through the narrow gap. “Clare, what’s up? We haven’t seen you for ages. Joe told us you seemed a bit down. We reckoned you must be fed up, all on your lonesome in that horrible, cramped old office. So we thought we’d come and cheer you up, that’s all.”

Clare glanced back at her dusty hallway with its piles of newspapers and unopened post. “That’s sweet of you, honestly. But I’m all at sixes and sevens in here. I’ve… I’ve had a little flood. It came from the upstairs flat. The place is all dust and plaster. I need to sort it out.”

“We’ll help,” Nicki said, and the others all chimed in. “Don’t worry about that.” “We’ll clean it up quicker if there’s a few of us.”

“No.” Clare’s tone was sharper than she meant it to be. “No, sorry. I just need to sort it all out myself. Look, I’ll come to the pub tomorrow and buy you all a drink.”

Nicki looked quickly round at the others. “Tell you what, Clare, we’ll drive down to the seafront and if you get sorted out you can catch us there. We’ll be somewhere near the car park, okay?”

“Okay.” Clare shut the door fast and breathed out. She went into the bathroom, doused her face in cold water and looked at herself in the mirror. “Pull yourself together,” she told her reflection. “They must think you’ve lost the plot.”

She dug out some clean clothes, freshened up her makeup and spritzed on some perfume. Then she called a taxi to take her down to the seafront.

“Someone’s been very organised,” Clare commented as Nicki handed her a plastic glass full of still-cool wine.

“That’d be Jools,” said Nicki. “She thought of everything. Wine coolers, ice box, cheeses, bread, strawberries. The girl’s a genius.”

Jools did a mock flutter of her eyelashes. “Never mind me, though. What’s going on with you, Clare?”

Clare pulled a face. “Been better. It was one thing being sent to the district office wasteland, but then as soon as the decent stories started happening, that git Chris Barber tried to muscle in on them. It’s driving me mad.”

Di put an arm around Clare’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “You mustn’t let him get to you. We all thought you should’ve got the job. He knows it, that’s why he’s too insecure to watch you get any by-lines at the moment.”

“You never told us what went wrong,” Nicki said. “You know, not turning up for the interview and sort of disappearing for a few days afterwards. Sharon Catt would still have you sacked for that, if she had her way.”

“Sharon’s such a bitch.” Jools offered Clare the punnet of strawberries. “I don’t get what her problem is.”

Clare shrugged.

“Never mind that,” Nicki said. “We want to know that you’re coping, Clare.”

“Yeah, sort of. I suppose I’m going to have to look for another job though, or else working with Sharon and Barber is going to do my head in. And I like it here, otherwise.”

“Joe’s worried about you.” Di raised her eyebrows at Clare.

“Right.” Clare nibbled at a strawberry. “There’s no need for anyone to worry. And he’s got no business to go round talking about me like that. I’m just a bit down about the chief reporter’s job. And this baby story…”

“What about the story? It’s a belter,” Nicki said. “Your stuff with the grandma was great.”

“It’s depressing.” Clare licked pink juice from the end of her fingers.

“Right.” Jools folded her arms. “I suppose it is, if you think about it too much. It’s not like you to get so involved with a story, though.”

“What’s Joe been saying, exactly?”

Jools widened her eyes. “Nothing, really. Just that. That he thought it had got to you, a bit too much.”

Clare shook her head. “No, it hasn’t. But murdered babies don’t make me happy, Jools, not even if they come with a big by-line.”

Clare was aware of the looks passing between the other women. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, as the grass beneath her spun a little.

“Clare?”

Clare screwed her eyes tight to rid herself of the flashing lights behind her eyelids. This had happened a few times, since… but she couldn’t let it get to her. She just couldn’t.

Jools put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve lost a stack of weight, too. What happened to our curry queen?”

Clare shook Jools’ hand away. “I’m fine, for god’s sake. Will everyone stop acting like my mother?”

Her voice came out louder than she’d meant. There was a second or two of silence. Then Nicki said, “Any more of that wine?”

Back in the flat, Clare poured herself a huge glass of water to put by her bed, spilling it in globs on the kitchen bench when she tried to add some chunks of ice. It was going to be another sleepless, airless night and past form meant that she would go over and over the evening’s conversation, wishing she hadn’t been quite so brusque with the friends who were trying to do her a favour.

She couldn’t decide whether she was furious with Joe for telling people that she wasn’t coping, or touched at his concern. Her feelings for Joe switched from impatience to something like fondness, at least a few times every day. There certainly had been days recently when she didn’t even want to look at him, and she also knew that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t going to let him know any of this, though: she’d be sure to tell him to keep his nose out of her personal life in future.

In the end it was Finn who made his way, unasked, into Clare’s dreams. When she woke up after an hour or so, she felt warm inside, for just a few moments. Until she remembered, and the chill inside came back.

Friday 20th July
At seven-thirty the next morning, Clare found herself sitting in the newspaper’s most beaten-up car with Stewie, one of the staff photographers. She hadn’t been scheduled for picket duty but once again Tony Warton, a new-ish young reporter, had called in sick when it was his turn for the job. Sharon Catt, who’d phoned Clare at home at around six in the morning, was unapologetic. “Get yourself turned round and down to the picket line. The Sick Man of Europe’s having another day in bed, apparently.”

“Tony?” Clare happened to be wide awake, after a predicted night of very little sleep, and she was proud of her ability to sound alert at that time in the morning. “Sounds like there’s something seriously wrong with him. He’s had a lot of time off. Has anyone spoken to him about it?”

“I’ll tell you what I think is seriously wrong with him,” said Sharon. Clare could hear her leafing through the morning papers on her desk. “He’s an idle tosser who doesn’t fancy doing the difficult jobs. He’s always ill on the days when he’s down to go to the picket lines. I told Dave Bell that if it happened one more time we should give him an official warning, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

“Maybe he’s got some personal reason…” Clare started to say.

“Reporters don’t have personal anything,” Sharon snapped. “You want to be a decent reporter, forget about your own lives. Otherwise you won’t get anywhere.”

Not with you in charge, at any rate, Clare thought. Poor Tony, with his startled expression and his Marks and Spencer shirts and co-ordinating ties, so obviously chosen by his mother. Maybe he was genuinely ill, but news editors have a habit of automatically assuming that anyone who rings in sick is faking it. Clare knew this at her own cost. More likely, the thought of covering the volatile picket lines left the poor lad terrified. Either way, Catt would make him suffer.

So Clare sat doodling on her notebook while Stewie played around with his camera.

“Nice to have you for company, anyway,” Stewie remarked. “You’re easier on the eye than Tony.”

“He’s heading for trouble,” said Clare. “Catt’s got him down as swinging the lead.”

Stewie shook his head. “It’s not that. Some of his family are strikers. They gave him a hard time the last shift he did. I think he’s trying not to fall out with them.”

Clare sighed. “Trouble is, he can’t keep avoiding it forever. If he claims to be ill one more time, Catt’s out for his bollocks.”

“I think he was hoping it would all be over quickly. I mean, none of us thought we’d still be here four months on, did we?” Stewie looked out of the car window at the row of men standing at the colliery gates with their placards:
No Pit Closures. Victory to the Miners. Coal Not Dole.

“I guess not. You have to admire them, though. Can’t be easy, living off nothing for all this time. Yet we’re more worn down than they are.”

“Here we go.” Stewie jumped out of the car as the minibus carrying the handful of strike-breakers headed towards the gates. The line of police officers pushed back the picketers as they took up their shouts of “Scabs!” and tried to get at the bus. Clare watched as the bus went in, someone behind the window giving the picketers the V-sign, and Stewie’s camera making its constant clicking, whirring sounds.

Once the bus had gone through the gates and the shouts quietened down, Clare went up to the picketers as they stood, swearing, shaking their head in the direction of the pit. “Smell that bacon,” one commented, glaring at the line of police officers. “Bunch of pigs.”

“How’s it going?”