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I had stayed in bed. Watched as the clock ticked around. Then, after a century or so, had dragged myself from sticky sheets, stood under a lukewarm shower, dressed without paying any attention to what I was wearing. Got to the newsroom early, empty desks, low morning heat.

I had thought I’d be alone. Had hoped it. But there was the low thrum of a listless fan, the soft click-click of fingers on a keyboard.

‘Hi, Lydia.’

Lydia was hunched over her desk, shoulders curled in like she’d taken a body blow. She looked up at me. Frowned. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Thought I’d get a head start.’

‘Okay,’ Lydia leaned back, arms folded across the rolling spare tyre where her waist should be, and I had felt a prickle of anticipation, ‘making up for yesterday?’

Shit!

‘Yesterday?’ I had tried to look nonchalant, tried to train my face, suddenly wishing that I was a better liar.

‘The council meeting. Yesterday afternoon. Why weren’t you there?’

Shit. Shit. Shit! ‘I . . .’

‘Charlie, don’t even bother trying to lie to me. We both know you’re useless at it. Look,’ Lydia had leaned forward, face hard, looking like she hadn’t slept in a month, ‘you need to understand the position I’m in. There are going to be cuts.’ She had waved towards the empty newsroom. ‘We’re going to be letting people go. I really don’t want that to be you, okay? You’re good at what you do. People trust you, people talk to you. But I cannot have a member of my staff pissing about. Not at a time like this. And you know what it’s like out there, Charlie. Newspapers are shutting down all over. There are no other jobs. So, I’m asking you: keep your nose clean. Go where you’re supposed to go, when you’re supposed to go. Turn in your work on time. Okay?’

I had stood there, in the doorway to the newsroom. Had felt like I was standing on a cliff edge. Watched her as she sank back in the chair, hands rubbed across her face. ‘Okay.’ I looked down, with a flush of guilt. ‘I’m sorry.’

Lydia nodded slowly.

‘Is it . . . it’s that bad?’ I asked.

‘It’s that bad,’ said Lydia.

‘Do you know, I mean, who . . .’

She had looked up at me, smiled. ‘Not you, you pain in the arse. At least, not unless you give me no choice. I, ah . . . a couple of names.’ Her gaze sputtered from me, hung on Dave’s desk. Then she looked down. ‘Nothing certain yet.’

I had hung there, in the doorway, watching as the fates shifted, pointing first this way, then that. Glanced across at my desk, the notes scattered where I had left them yesterday. Then across at Dave’s desk. Felt a knot in my stomach. ‘I’ll be a good girl, Lydia. I promise.’

‘Hmm . . . Anything new on that gunman at Mount Pleasant Hospital?’

I shook my head. ‘A possible sighting on Tuesday, but nothing since. Hardly surprising. The place is crawling with police.’

Lydia nodded, but I’d already lost her, her focus back on the computer screen. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

I walked slowly to my desk, dumped my satchel on the floor. Looked at the array of chaos that littered the faux-wood. I couldn’t lose this job. If I lost this job, what else was left? I should never have done it, should never have taken Aden to Harddymaes. It was stupid, impulsive, born of a desire to fix his hurt. Why do I do that all the time? Think I can fix everything. I shuffled through my paperwork without seeing it. It was out of my control. All of it. I took him there to try and make things better, ended up making things worse. I thought of his face, the muscles in his jaw, the burst of anger. Felt myself shrinking back into myself, all over again.

I pushed the power button on my computer, waited as the screen slowly began to crawl to life. It was none of my business. The shooting. Emily. Del said that Emily’s death was an accident, and in truth I had nothing. Just a gut feeling that something was off. Perhaps it was an accident, the call to the police just a coincidence. Perhaps she did get drunk. Perhaps she was down and had some drinks and then stopped caring about where she was, whether she was safe. And sometimes things just feel wrong. That doesn’t mean some big conspiracy is in play, it just means that they feel wrong. And you can’t fix everything, you can’t dig and dig and pester until finally somebody gives you the answers you are looking for and you can say ‘Aha’ and suddenly everything’s okay again.

Suddenly I was fifteen years old again, just brushing my head against sixteen, and waiting. Because soon the whole world would open up before me. It was a day, just like any other, when I came home from school, pushed open the door and knew instantly that something was wrong, that something had changed beyond all recognition. My mother sitting at the kitchen table, crying. I should have reached out, touched her, but it’s never been easy between my mother and I, so I didn’t. I just stood there, wondered what catastrophe had befallen us. I looked around for my father, not piecing it together. Because why would you think the unthinkable? Then she had said it. Didn’t look up; it was like she couldn’t face me as she delivered the news. Your father’s gone. He’s left. I’m looking at her like she’s demented, because I know she’s lying. He wouldn’t leave. Her, maybe. Me, never. We’re a team. Daddy and daughter. He would never leave me. I ran up the stairs, pulling open their bedroom door, his wardrobe, the empty carcass of it hitting me like a punch to the gut. Back downstairs, because somehow, in some way that I couldn’t possibly define, I knew that she was to blame. Where is he? Where has he gone? My mother shaking her head, crying, holding out a hand to me, but it’s empty and I don’t want it. He hadn’t left a number. An address. He had simply vanished.

I waited a week. A colossal amount of time for a teenage girl. Every day more sure that today would be the day he would return. But at the end of a week my patience ran dry. I skipped school that day, caught the bus into town. I would wait outside his office. He had to come out at some point. Never mind that it was raining, that I had no umbrella. I sat on a low-slung wall. Waited. My father came out, hours later. Pushing open the glass door. Whistling. He stopped when he saw me. A look fleeting across his face. Sometimes now when I think of it, I think it was panic. Then a smile, eerily bright. He crossed the car park towards me, pulled me into a bear hug. I’m so glad that you’re here.

Why did you leave, Dad? I tried to find you, but I didn’t know where you were. Why haven’t you called me? Why haven’t you come back?

He lowered his head, a slow shake. I’m sorry, my love. Your mother, she won’t let me. She wants me to stay away from you. A small smile, brushing my hair from my eyes like he always did. It’s only for a little while. You’ll be sixteen soon. Old enough to make your own decisions. Hugged me again. Never forget how much I love you. Kissed me on the forehead, made some noises about how he had to go, a meeting – I understood, didn’t I? Then he left. I never saw him again.

I hang now in the breathtakingly hot stairwell. Suck in a breath of stale air. I can hear the voices through the flimsy wooden door, the chatter of the newsroom, and I pull at the door. They are working hard, solid rows of reporters, their heads down, fingers thudding against keys. Every now and again one of them will look up, stare at Lydia’s office. I glance across, the door is shut, blinds pulled down. If I didn’t already know, I would have known now. It is hanging in the air, the ghost of a conversation, and you can see it in the reporters’ eyes, the steadfast rhythm of their fingers. They know it too.

I drop my satchel down onto my chair. Look at Dave. He is leaning over his computer, his fingers poised, like he is about to pounce, but unmoving, seems frozen in place.

‘Dave? Dave?’

He doesn’t answer for a moment, still staring at his screen. Then seems to hear my words all at once, looks up at me with a start. ‘Hi. How was the magistrates’ court?’

I shrug. ‘Hot.’ Hot, and stuffed with neighbour disputes and car prangs, and drunk-and-disorderlies. Sitting there, and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. ‘You okay?’ I say it casually, like it doesn’t mean anything.

Dave grimaces, gaze rolling towards Lydia’s door, back to me. ‘Fucking awesome!’ Drops his voice to a whisper. ‘Something’s going on.’ Nods towards the closed door.

I try not to catch his eye. ‘Well, let’s not get carried away.’ I sink into the chair, pull my mobile phone free from my bag. There is a text message waiting, one I hadn’t heard coming in. Aden. I click it open, try to pretend that my heart isn’t thudding.
Missed you this morning. Sorry about yesterday. I was a prick.
I stare at it, feel a heat rush through me.

‘You got messages.’

‘Huh?’ It takes me a minute to realise that Dave isn’t talking about the text. I look at him, but he’s gesturing to the desk phone. I glance down. The red light is blinking.

‘You got a call earlier.’ Looks at me with a flat look. ‘Steve Lowe.’

I stare at the blinking light. Sigh. ‘Great.’ I shake my head, pick up the receiver and punch the voicemail button. There is a tumbling static on the line, then his voice, hard. ‘Miss Solomon, Steve Lowe. I need you to call me back. My wife, she says you came to see her, so thanks for that. I know you’ll want to hear from me too, so ring me back, okay?’

I close my eyes, fight back a groan. Listen as he fumbles to disconnect, thinking about the livid bruise on his wife’s abdomen, a perfect indentation of her husband’s fist. And now, God, now I’ve let him think I’m writing his story, or at least she has let him think that. And when he finds out I’m not, it’s Carla he’s going to go after. Dammit. I pull the phone away from my ear, cradle the receiver against my forehead and want to scream. What the hell is wrong with me? When will I ever learn? Dammit!

I stay like that for longer than you’d think you could in a crowded office. But no one is looking at me; they are all too freaked out about the thought of losing their jobs to care about the possibility that I’ve lost my mind.

I’ll have to speak to him. Will have to call Steve up, tell him I was trying to pursue the story, that Carla was right, but that we haven’t got the budget for it, or I’ve been fired. Or I’ve emigrated.

There is a bang, the sound of a receiver crashing into its cradle, and I open my eyes. Stare at Dave. Can feel the others turning, momentarily pulled away from their fiscal woes by the sound. But that doesn’t last. Within moments they have turned away again, click-clacking like their lives depend upon it.

‘You okay?’

Dave isn’t looking at me, is staring at the phone, and for a moment I wonder if I need to duck, if he’s about to throw the thing across the room. ‘Yeah, just . . . It’s nothing. I was just trying to call someone, that’s all.’ His face is clouded, a sky full of storms.

I open my mouth to ask a question, then close it again. I need to learn when to mind my own business.

Then my desk phone rings, and my heart sinks and I brace, waiting to hear Steve’s rough tones. ‘Hello,
Swansea Times
. Charlotte Solomon speaking.’

There is a long silence and I figure that it’s a wrong number, am about to hang up, when she speaks. ‘Charlotte?’

‘Yes. Who’s this?’

‘It’s . . . I’m terribly sorry to bother you. It’s Alexandra Wilson. Emily’s mum.’ A shuddering breath in. ‘I’m so sorry to be a nuisance.’

‘No, Mrs Wilson, no, of course. What can I do for you?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing really. I just . . . I was wondering if you were going to write that article. I mean, I know you have a lot of other stories – it’s just that I’ve been keeping an eye on the paper, you see, and I hadn’t seen it, and I wondered if I’d missed it or . . .’

‘Oh, okay. Well, the thing is . . .’

‘See, they’re talking in church. People – you know how people can be. And they are saying things when they think I’m not listening, about how she must have been drunk . . .’ Her voice fractures, breaks. A moment when she’s not saying much of anything, and I can tell that she’s fighting, trying to control the tears. ‘And you knew Emily. That wasn’t her. And that . . . it’s just not right. So I was thinking that the story, if you were writing it, that the story would help, you know, put people straight.’

I listen as Alexandra cries. I have to tell her that I can’t. I have to tell her that I’m not allowed to, that my job is on the line. I glance over my shoulder at Lydia’s door, listening as this mother’s heart breaks.

‘Give me a little time.’ I say. ‘Okay?’

‘
I DIDN’T SAY
nothin’.’

The man stood at the centre of the small office, spindly legs akimbo, his fingers knotted across the top of his shaven head. He was looking at Aden, was trying not to, but couldn’t seem to help it, his eyes pulled inexorably towards him, down towards the gun. Aden shifted, resting his hand on the Glock that sat at his hip, the man jumping, like he had been shot through with an electrical current. Aden suppressed a grin.

‘Right, look, maybe I did say it, but I was jokin’. Can’t take a fuckin’ joke, that’s the problem, innit?’ Beads of sweat had begun to form across the man’s brow line, creeping silently down his temples.

‘So, you told the doctor that you were going to stab her, and everyone else on the ward, as a joke?’ Del ran his hands across the back of the man’s greased T-shirt, the underarms ringed in sweat, his face pulled up into a curl of distaste.

‘I was just messin’ around, like.’

‘Oh, right. Arms up higher.’ Del patted at his waist. ‘So, have you got a knife then?’

‘No, butt. Like, it was a joke.’ The man shook his head vehemently, like a child caught in a lie.

‘Oh, right. Ha-ha. Funny.’

Rhys glanced at Aden, rolled his eyes. Was standing, half-blocking the door. Didn’t seem to notice the doctor, the one who had met them as they arrived at the hospital, dark-blonde hair tugged up into a high ponytail, pretty, unfeasibly young. He’s been kicking off, she had said with a puff of impatience, has been threatening the nurses, saying that he’s going to go all Dunblane on us. Her gaze had lingered on Rhys as she spoke. They’ve got him in the security office. Had walked with quick steps, keeping up with their longer strides with apparent ease. I don’t know – the crap we have to put up with. Had glanced at Rhys, a quick smile. Thank you for coming. Aden had looked away, had suppressed a grin. She was sitting now, behind the desk in the office, her arms folded across her chest, ostensibly watching as Del completed his search, but her gaze wouldn’t stick, kept trickling back to Rhys.