‘Okay, do you mind if I go for a quick one?’
‘Go for as many as you like,’ she says, laughing.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’
‘Tempting as it is, I have a rather pressing engagement with a book and a scented candle.’
Matt laughs. ‘Okay, as long as you’re sure. I’ll give you a call as I’m heading home.’
‘Have fun.’
Her head drops onto her chest and she lets out a sigh of disappointment as a flurry of grainy images fill her screen. She doesn’t know whether it’s because you can barely make out it’s a woman, let alone an international pop star, or that a member of the public has deemed it acceptable to invade someone’s privacy from fifty metres away. Either way, she knows she can’t print them.
‘We need something else,’ she says, pulling out her chair and falling heavily onto it.
‘There’s that premiere tonight,’ offers Daisy quickly, as if she’d already anticipated Kate’s response.
Kate nods thoughtfully. ‘Have we got a photographer there?’
‘Yes, Ben’s on it.’
‘Okay, great,’ says Kate. ‘Let’s see if we can get a handle on what and who the leads are wearing and as soon as the pics are in, can you write a caption?’
‘Me?’ says Daisy in surprise.
Kate normally wouldn’t trust anyone but herself or her deputy Karen to write copy, but for some reason, she doesn’t feel quite as conscientious as she once did. She suspects it’s because she’s pregnant, and knows that in a few months from now, her life will be so far removed from the one she’s currently living that she won’t give two hoots about what film stars are wearing or who pop stars are dating. She’s also coming to the conclusion that she’s simply lost the taste for exposing the private lives of people who try so hard to keep them private.
‘Yes,’ says Kate. ‘Do you want to give it a go?’
‘Absolutely,’ says Daisy, smiling enthusiastically. ‘If you think I’m capable.’
‘I tell you what,’ says Kate, looking at her watch. ‘I’m going to go to the pub for a bit. Give me a call and let me know what you come up with once the pics are in. That way, if there any problems, I can come back to the office.’
‘Okay,’ squeaks Daisy.
It isn’t quite the evening Kate had envisaged, but if it means she can get off work early, she’ll take it. She certainly knows someone who will be pleased with the change of plan.
She calls Matt as she’s walking up the street towards his office, sidestepping the suits that move towards her like ants as they spill out from the high-rise towers and disperse in different directions, most with the sole purpose of finding the nearest watering hole. She wills him to pick up – although there are only a handful of pubs Matt would head for, in this heat she’d rather not have to do a solitary pub crawl to find him. It goes to voicemail and when she reaches his building she tries again, but still there’s no answer.
She sits on a stone bench, reaching surreptitiously into the cereal box in her bag and lifting out a handful of dry cornflakes, unable to determine if the odd sensation in her tummy is hunger or nausea. If she can’t reach Matt soon, she might pop to the Tesco on the opposite corner of the square for some ginger biscuits. She’d once run a feature on how Kate Middleton had allegedly relied on them to get her through the severe sickness she’d endured with each of her pregnancies, and if it was good enough for royalty . . .
Her thought process is interrupted by Matt emerging from the revolving door of his building, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun. Relieved to see his lop-sided grin, Kate moves towards him, holding her stomach with a protective hand as the tide of bodies moves against her. It doesn’t occur to her to wonder what he’s smiling about, though if it had, she’d probably hazard a guess that it’s the thought of her and the little life that they’re incubating.
But as she gets closer to him, something stops her dead, rooting her feet to the concrete. She wants to call out his name, to stop him in his tracks, but her throat is dry and contracting in an involuntary spasm. It’s as if she’s trapped in a nightmare. She wants to scream, but when she opens her mouth, no noise comes out.
She watches, open-mouthed, as the man she loves guides the woman who’s threatening to destroy her family across the concourse. He and Jess are close as they sidestep the horde and move in the direction of the footbridge and the bars of West India Quay. Kate stands there numbly, her brain blocking out the noise of everything but her own thoughts. It’s as if they’re scratching incessantly at a scab – pick, pick, pick – until they expose the wound. Only then do they throw her back out into the cacophony that surrounds her, raw and bleeding.
A text pings through on her phone and she looks at it as if through a blurry haze.
Had a couple of missed calls – all okay? Matt asks.
She looks up in disbelief as he walks away from her, his head lolling back as he laughs at something Jess says.
What the fuck? Kate asks herself, again and again as she follows them across the bridge. She quickens her step, not knowing whether she wants to catch them up or not, but her warped need to know what’s happening pushes her on.
They go into Brown’s restaurant on the quayside and Kate lingers outside, debating what she should do. If she applied her usual forthright mentality, she’d storm straight in there and call them out. After all, she
