This Little Piggy (4 page)

“I love your car,” she told Clare. “I want a Mini. I want a red one like this. Hey, we had to say prayers for baby Jamie in assembly today.”

“You did?” Clare asked a few more questions about what the teachers said. Amy filled in the details.

“Loads of us were crying,” she added.

“You don’t seem very ill to me,” Tina said, narrowing her eyes at Amy’s reflection in the passenger seat mirror. “Did your teacher actually see you being sick?”

“Well, no, because she doesn’t come into the toilets with me, does she?”

Tina looked sideways at Clare and shook her head. “She’ll do anything to get out of school.”

Amy picked up Clare’s notebooks and pens from the back seat and started looking through them. “Your writing’s funny,” she said. “It just looks like squiggles. Is it in foreign or something?”

Clare grinned. “It’s shorthand.”

Amy didn’t know what that meant so Clare explained. “It’s a kind of writing that people do when they need to write things down very fast.”

“Is it like a secret code though? So other people can’t read it?” Amy was tracing a finger along some of the outlines.

“It’s not supposed to be. Though sometimes I have trouble reading it back myself.” Clare winked at Amy in the mirror. “It’s really good if you’re doing a report from court, because people speak quickly there and you can’t ask them to say it again.”

“You go to court? To see the prisoners? Do you go into prisons?”

Tina gave a sigh. “Police, prisons, detectives. She loves all that. I reckon she’s going to be a copper one day.”

“No, I’m going to be a reporter,” Amy said. “I’ve just decided. I’m going to drive a Mini and write the news and learn the code for writing fast.”

Clare pulled up the car and smiled at Amy. “It’s called Teeline. It’s quite easy, actually. I’ll show you some quick words sometime, if you like.”

“
Yessss
.” Amy looked as if Clare had offered to take her to Disney World.

Tina opened the car door. “Come on, you. Leave the poor reporter alone.” She glanced at Clare. “Can’t get her to do her homework, you know, but she’ll sit and learn bloody shorthand with you.”

“One thing,” Clare said, quickly. “Can we send a photographer to take a pic of you? And Amy,” she added. “It’ll be in an hour or so?”

“If you like.” Tina held the car door open.

Amy didn’t move. “What’re you doing now, Clare?”

Clare swivelled round in the seat. “I have to get back to my office and type up my story. And you’d better go and lie down, right?”

Amy frowned.

“You’ve been poorly, remember?” Clare reminded her.

“Oh, yeah.” Slowly, Amy heaved herself out of the car. She stood waving at Clare until she’d driven the car round the corner and out of sight.

Joe was lingering outside Clare’s office, drinking a can of Coke, his sleeves rolled up. “You took your time.”

“I’ve been talking to that Amy again. She makes me laugh. Says she wants to be a reporter. I’ve got some stuff about the school assembly and how scared the local kids are. I just need to send a photographer round to get some shots.”

Inside, Clare picked up the office phone and propped it under her chin, wriggling out of her jacket as she talked. “Anyone take some copy?”

Joe scribbled down some of Clare’s quotes as she dictated her story over to head office. He waited as she chatted to her news editor, Dave Bell, and watched as she put the phone down and grinned at him. “He loves it. He said it was all really good stuff. Says I can knock off early today if I want, for working late last night.”

“Jeez. My editor never says that to me. Swotty suck-up.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the press conference.”

“Not much to tell, except they’re not charging Jamie’s mum. The dad was there, Rob, and they meant him to make some sort of appeal for information, but he just broke down in tears and no one got a word out of him.”

“Except us. First and exclusive,” said Clare. “What a team we are. So Chris Barber didn’t get much from trying to pinch my story.”

“He’s a waste of space anyway. All he can manage is following up other people’s exclusives and pretending they’re his own. Chief reporter my backside.”

“Yes, okay. There’s loyalty, Joe, and there’s layering it on with a trowel. I’m over it, I promise.”

“You should’ve got the job though.”

Clare reached out and took a drink from Joe’s can. “Yes, I should. But if I don’t get the front page today, there’s no justice.” She grimaced. “That’s warm.”

“You will get the lead. There’s bugger all else going on. Even the picket line was quiet today.”

“Speaking of which.” Clare told Joe about the man in the newsagent’s shop and his comments to Jai.

“I still can’t see it,” said Joe. “Yeah, the strikers are angry about the men who’ve gone back. They’ll probably never have a pint with them again. But they wouldn’t do anything so violent. Surely. And especially not to a baby.”

Clare shrugged. “That’s what Amy’s mum said. Then she didn’t seem so sure. The thing is, otherwise, there’s absolutely no motive, is there? If it’s not the mother run ragged at the baby crying and it’s not revenge on Rob, then what is it? It’s a completely senseless death.”

Joe nodded. “I know what you’re saying. But it just seems like a stage too far. The miners are single-minded, but they’re not psychotic.” He drained the can, crumpled it and threw it into Clare’s bin. “Want to go for fish and chips then? Celebrate your splash?”

Clare wouldn’t budge from the office until the delivery van arrived with the first editions. She took two stairs at a time on the way down and fidgeted while Jai cut the string around the pile of papers.

“Here you are, Miss Beautiful,” he said, handing her the top copy.

Clare held it in front of her and stared at it. She looked up and blinked as Joe came down the office stairs. “It says Chris Barber on the story,” she said. “They haven’t given me a by-line.”

Joe swore and took the paper out of Clare’s hands. “But this is all your stuff. There’s just one line about the press conference. This is all your work, from being out on the estate.”

Clare nodded. She didn’t want to speak aloud, in case Joe realised how choked she felt.

“Bunch of bloody bastards.” Joe rolled up the paper. He reached out to put an arm on Clare’s shoulder, then drew it back again. “Come on, let’s go out. I’ll buy you a glass of wine and you can leave the car here again.”

Clare shook her head, lips tightly pressed together. “Sorry, Joe. Not in the mood anymore.”

“What will you do? Just head home?”

Clare’s shoulders slumped. “Don’t feel like doing that, either. Shit.”

“Come on, slugger. What happened to the stroppy mare that used to be Clare Jackson? I know they’re behaving like gits. You should’ve got the chief reporter’s job and you should’ve got a by-line today and you don’t get paid anything like enough. But we all feel like that from time to time. You’ve been down in the dumps for weeks now.”

Clare didn’t look up. “Yeah, I know.”

“What is it?” Joe sat on a stair and folded his arms. “Something else?”

Clare shook her head. “Nothing. Just the usual bitterness. Ignore me.”

“You’re my mate. Anything I can do?”

Clare shook her head again. Upstairs, the phone rang. Clare ran up to the office and answered to find Sharon Catt on the end of the line. “Clare? Dave says he’s sending you home early because you worked late last night.”

“That’s right.” Clare made a face, for Joe’s benefit, at the phone. “Is there a problem?”

“I just wanted to warn you that it’s your turn for picket duty next week. Seven-thirty Monday morning, outside the Sweetmeadows Colliery as usual.” She paused to let this sink in. “Enjoy your long weekend.”

Clare dropped the receiver into the cradle and swore. “I don’t call finishing an hour early on a Friday and starting at seven-thirty on a Monday morning a particularly long weekend, do you? She’s done that on purpose.”

Joe groaned. “Not the picket line on Monday?”

Clare nodded. “Everyone’s favourite job.”

Joe got up and gave Clare a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Watch yourself out there, won’t you? And try to have a good weekend.”

Clare raised a hand. “You too.”

The thought of picket duty would loom over the next two days, Clare knew. Ever since the miners’ strike started, the paper sent a reporter and photographer to wait outside the pits early every weekday morning, in case there was any drama. The editor’s regular hard-line editorial columns, denouncing the strike, meant that the miners would turn on the paper’s car, kicking it and spitting on it, and reporters that got out of the car risked getting the same treatment. Clare hated it. She wore ‘Coal Not Dole’ stickers on her jackets and always put money into the NUM collection tins, but it didn’t stop her from the queasy feeling that she was part of the other side. Or certainly that was how the pickets saw all the press, tabloids and local papers alike.

Clare put a key in her front door and pushed it open with an effort. More mail and today’s free-sheet paper were blocking the movement of the door. She picked all the papers up and, without glancing at them, shoved them on top of the growing pile of envelopes, flyers and magazines on the little hall table. She clicked down the deadlock and flung her bag down on her living room floor. Then she lay down on the sofa and stared at the grey-white ceiling. Shoals of dust flecks floated around this room too, highlighted in the bright afternoon sun. Everywhere needed a good clean. She wasn’t even sure if the flat smelled too fresh. There was probably some vegetable, long-forgotten in the back of the fridge, which had converted itself to a noxious gas, a faint but detectable odour. She should definitely scrub the kitchen, properly, not merely running the odd glass or cup under the tap to make it just about fit to use again. Maybe clean sheets on the bed would help her to sleep through the night.

She could even emulsion the living room walls, put some posters up… Then again, she ought to wait until her wage cheque went into the bank. So next weekend, not now. With a vague sense of relief, Clare closed her eyes.

It was almost seven in the evening when she woke up, her neck painfully twisted, and her brain too fuzzy to recognise the ringing of the phone for a few moments. She let it ring. She ought to get one of those answerphones, she thought, so it could lie for her and pretend she was out. Another thing to do after pay day.

three

Monday 16th July
Clare had had enough of the day already, and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. She sat at her typewriter, staring at the wedge of blank copy and carbon paper waiting on the table and held in place by the little metal fingers. It was no good writing about what had happened to her on the picket line, because she’d always been trained to believe the reporter was never part of the story. So the miners could shout and spit and gesture at her all they liked and it would all go unreported. Anyway, Clare thought, she knew why they were angry. She wanted them to be angry. Her newspaper, along with almost all the others, was doing the miners over. And she felt like swearing at the strike-breakers herself.

A few weeks ago, she’d mentioned to her news editor that the picket lines were tricky places for women reporters.

“It’s not just that they’re furious with our paper because of these editorials Blackmore keeps writing,” Clare said to Dave Bell. “All the reporters get the backlash for that. But when they see a female reporter it’s worse, because they shout ‘get your tits out’ and all that stuff, all the bloody time. It’s a pain, Dave.”

Her news editor shrugged. “Yeah, sorry, but think of it this way. At least as a woman you’re less likely to get thumped.”

Sharon Catt had been listening. “Anyway,” she’d cut in. “If Dave didn’t send the female reporters out to the picket lines you’d probably call it sex discrimination, wouldn’t you, Clare?”

Clare glared at the ceiling for a moment. “No, Sharon, I don’t think I would.”

She caught Dave Bell’s eye. His mouth was twitching. Clare shook her head at him and walked away. There was no need for male chauvinist pigs in her newspaper office, when Sharon did such a good job of demeaning all the other females at every opportunity. Why was it some women were so horrible to each other? A philosophical question for the girls in the pub later, Clare decided. Catt never bothered coming out for a drink with them. Just as well.

The mood on the picket lines outside Sweetmeadows Colliery was both angry and resigned today,
writes Clare Jackson.
As the bitter strike drags into its nineteenth week, the miners are more determined than ever not to give up. Shouts and insults were hurled at the heavily protected van that rushed the handful of strike-breakers past the pit gates this morning. But the continued police presence, with lines of officers armed with riot shields keeping the picketers at a distance, meant the miners were prevented from physically attempting to stop it going through.

The number of men who’ve broken ranks with the union is so tiny that no production can be taking place inside the pit. But the very principle of their action means…

Clare’s phone rang. At the other end of the line, there was a silence, breathing and a muffled giggle. For a second or two, Clare thought it was some kind of prank caller. Newspaper offices were prone to them. Then something told her who it was.

“Amy? Is that you?”

“Hiya, Clare. How’d you know?”

“Hi. Just a guess. You okay?”

“Yeah. I just thought… I just wondered… are you coming to teach me the fast writing today?”

“Today?” Clare ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t think so, Amy, sorry. Not today. I’m quite busy.”

Clare could hear Amy’s breathing but the child didn’t say anything. Clare could almost hear her disappointment, coming in waves down the telephone. “Sorry,” she said again. “Another day?”

“I stayed off school today, ’specially.”

“You did?” Clare bit her lip. “You shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t promise.”

“I know you didn’t. I just thought.” Amy’s voice sounded livelier, suddenly. “Are you doing a story about baby Jamie today?”