Paradise City (13 page)

He casts his mind back to the night he’d spent at the hotel. The room. The bath. The curtains drawn. The chambermaid.

‘She’s claiming you sexually assaulted her.’

His spine tingles. A weight drops onto his chest. His tie feels too tight. A dissonant note sounds from the orchestra pit and at the same time his mind jangles in a minor chord.

‘Christ.’

Esme

Doorsteps.

In her previous, non-journalistic life, she’d innocently assumed they were inanimate objects. She’d never realised ‘doorstep’ was also a verb. She hadn’t ever done one before starting at the
Tribune
. There wasn’t much call for them on
Trucking Today
.

Esme had first read about doorsteps in the second-hand journalism manual she’d bought off Amazon when she got the Hunter Media traineeship. The manual was written by someone called Geoffrey Beechcroft and had a grey-green cover with the title picked out in white italics:
A Guide to Newspaper Journalism
. It had been published in 1985, which didn’t bode particularly well for its accuracy in the modern age and, when she’d Googled the author’s name, it turned out he’d never actually been a newspaper journalist – or at least, not on any publication she could find. His Wikipedia entry, written in suspiciously self-congratulatory language, described him as ‘an auteur and academic, with a particular interest in cultural interconnectedness’. Whatever that was.

The previous owner of Beechcroft’s
Guide
had clearly used it a lot: the pages were dog-eared and heavily annotated and there was a strange stickiness on some of the pages, as though something had been spilt on the book and forgotten about. Or worse.

In the weeks leading up to her first day at the
Tribune,
she’d pored over Beechcroft with the feverish conscientiousness of an eager new student. She remembers turning down the corner of the page on doorstepping, to remind herself of what it meant. It had come in useful over the last eighteen months. In fact, she had read Mr Beechcroft’s analysis so many times, she could recite the definition by heart:

‘“Doorsteps are events where journalists make calls on people at their homes, businesses or leisure activities that have not been previously agreed with the individual. These calls are usually made with the intention of asking questions or getting a reaction to an event or development. Doorsteps can be hostile and confrontational but are also simply unexpected by the individual with no negative effects.”’

That just about covers it. Apart from mentioning the fact that they’re a bloody nuisance.

There are some journalists who actively enjoy them, who think that any excuse to get out of the office is worth it, no matter what they have to do in exchange for a paltry few hours of fresh air. Sanjay is one of these. His job as health editor means that, these days, he spends most of his time chained to his Mac, skim-reading the latest reports from the
British Medical Journal
in the hope of landing a scoop about calcium pills increasing the risk of heart attacks. If Sanjay gets sent on a doorstep (an increasingly rare occurrence, owing to his supposed seniority), he genuinely leaps at the chance – grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair with the gleeful expression of a toddler who has been allowed out of his playpen. Most of the time, Sanjay will come up with a convincing excuse as to why he had to stay out for the whole day. He’ll ring up the newsroom and say that no one is in but the neighbours have told him they’ll be back soon.

‘I think it’s worth sticking around, Dave,’ Sanjay will say. ‘I’m happy to do it.’

And Dave inevitably says yes, knowing full well that Sanjay will be scouting out a suitable nearby restaurant for a spot of lunch as soon as he hangs up, saving up the receipt to claim back on expenses once a seemly interval has elapsed.

Then there are those who take pride in being good at them, who see the doorstep as some hallowed rite of passage into real journalism. These hacks recount their door-knocks like battle-wearied Spitfire pilots might recall a succession of shot-down Nazis. Cathy, one of the longest-serving members of the
Tribune
newsroom, is one of these. A few weeks ago, Esme had been cornered by Cathy on a Saturday night in the pub after the last pages had been sent.

‘The thing is—’ Cathy slurred, filling up an enormous wine glass with another slosh of the House Sauvignon. ‘People want to talk. I should know that better than anyone . . .’

She had gone on to regale Esme with a run-down of all the many exclusive, award-winning interviews she’d snagged for the paper simply by turning up on a stranger’s doorstep with a notepad, a killer instinct for a story and an appropriately earnest expression on her face.

The grief-stricken mother of a dead soldier. The wife of an actor imprisoned for paedophilia. The teacher accused of sleeping with her pupils. The politician embroiled in a corruption scandal. Cathy had, apparently, done them all.

‘That’s what journalism’s about,’ she said. ‘Real people.’ She pointed at Esme, extending one finger, her hand wobbling. ‘Don’t you forget it, missy. I’ve seen your type before. Straight out of university, think you know it all . . .’ Cathy patted Esme on the hand. ‘No offence.’

Esme looked at her older colleague, taking in the carefully blow-dried hair and the rheumy, unfocused eyes. Cathy must have been in her fifties but she looked trim, with sculpted arms and a neat, attractive way of dressing. She’d never married or had children: her entire life had been devoted to scoops and deadlines, to proving that she was as good as the men in the office, that the casual misogyny of Fleet Street didn’t bother her, that she could banter along with the rest of them. She had succeeded, in a way. She was the chief feature writer on the paper and Dave rated her highly. But Esme couldn’t help feeling that, somewhere along the way, something integral had been lost, some intangible human quality that made Cathy seem unreachable. She was – not unfriendly, exactly – but hyper-aware of her own position, constantly on the defensive in case someone was making fun of her.

She wanted Esme to be her ally. But Esme shrank away from Cathy’s overtures without quite knowing why. Partly it was that she couldn’t compete with Cathy’s prodigious drinking and Esme’s failure to match her glass for glass was seen by the older woman as yet further evidence of her prissiness and naïvety when in fact it came from a deeper-seated mistrust of alcohol. Partly it was that the other reporters were wary of her. There had been more than one occasion where Cathy had removed a junior’s byline even though they had done all the spadework. Mostly, it was that Esme couldn’t make her out. Cathy was capable of immense charm and friendliness but without ever sharing a confidence that would show her in a bad light. You came away from a conversation with her fearful that you’d said too much, that you’d shared too many secrets, and realising that Cathy had given nothing in return.

Of course, that’s what made her such a good journalist. And so gifted at doorsteps.

Unlike Cathy, Esme hates doorstepping. The problem is that she seems to be good at them. People warm to her, she has discovered, possibly because her distaste for the direct form of attack marks her out as someone who is unlikely to screw them over. Either that or she’s a good listener.

‘People love to talk,’ is one of Cathy’s favourite maxims. ‘Give ’em half a chance and they’re spewing out their whole life story. Cheaper than therapy.’

Maybe, thinks Esme. But she wanted to be a reporter, not a psychiatrist.

When Dave had called her across this morning, signalling to her with a look that made her stomach twist, Esme thought he wanted to ask her how the lunch with Howard Pink went. No such luck.

‘Ever heard of Jo Feenan?’ he said, running his extended forefinger across his right eyebrow, smoothing down the wayward hairs.

‘Yes,’ Esme lied. What was it about men of a certain age that made hair grow in the most unexpected places? A broad thicket sprouting out of an earhole. Shivering wisps protruding from the nasal passage. Wiry curlicues winding through eyebrows . . .

‘He’s a writer of humorous novels,’ Dave continued. ‘Big in the ’80s. We’ve had a tip-off that he had an affair a few years ago and fathered an illegitimate daughter.’

‘Who’s the tip-off from?’

‘None of your beeswax,’ Dave said, tapping his nose.

Who says that, thought Esme. Who, actually, in real life, says ‘beeswax’ like they’re a character from some jolly 1970s sitcom?

‘It’s a good source, that’s all you need to know,’ Dave said. ‘We’ve got an address for the woman. She lives in Winchester. Short train journey out of Waterloo. Check it out, would you?’ He passed her a torn slip of paper with the address, written in Dave’s recognisable scrawl of capital letters. A graphologist had once told her only egomaniacs or psychopaths wrote entirely in capital letters.

Which one was Dave, she wondered?

‘OK,’ Esme said, her heart plummeting at the thought of a wasted day on public transport. ‘I had a page lead I was working on, about the House-builders’ Association—’

‘Forget it.’

‘But—’

He stared at her blackly.

‘I want you to concentrate on this.’ A pause. ‘Are we clear?’

She nodded. Dave could switch from light-hearted to brutal in the space of a breath. It was one of things she both disliked and admired. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, what he was like at home, when he argued with his wife. She couldn’t imagine him ever giving ground or admitting he was wrong.

‘Lucky bitch,’ Sanjay says when she tells him she is off to Winchester. ‘Lovely cathedral. Nice little craft shops.’

‘I wish you were going instead. I can’t be arsed today, I really can’t.’

She sits down and takes her trainers out of her bag, sliding her feet out of her high heels.

‘Ugh,’ Sanjay says, wafting a hand in front of his nose. ‘Can’t you invest in a more glamorous pair of sensible shoes?’

She laughs. ‘These are comfortable.’

‘Comfort is the death of chicness.’

‘Who said that?’

‘No one, darling. Just one of my off-the-cuff bons mots.’

He turned back to his computer, typing frantically with two fingers. It was one of the things she’d been most surprised by when she started here: the sheer number of journalists unable to touch-type. Beechcroft had informed her the skill was essential.

She left the office with a clutch of cuttings, rapidly printed off from the online archive, a headache and a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. What was she doing with her life? Going to ask some poor woman whether she’d had an affair with a writer no one had ever heard of. Who cared, really? She spent most of the tube journey to Waterloo sighing loudly at the pointlessness of it all. She wonders if everyone feels like this or whether existential gloom is the particular preserve of journalists, a species unforgivably prone to questioning everything. Occasionally Esme catches herself thinking she’d love an undemanding office job as someone else’s PA. No responsibility. A lunch hour. Clocking off reliably at five every day. Getting to wear impractical but sexy tailored suits and high heels.

Waterloo Station is filled with criss-crossing commuters, walking with shut-off eyes as though pulled by an invisible string from one side of the terminus to the other. She is fascinated by commuters, by their sense of self-importance. They do not deviate from their course for anyone, these grey-suited men and women with their harried expressions and fly-away hair and dirt-bled shirt collars and click-clicking shoes in need of reheeling. They move with a purposeful sense of their own superiority, wordlessly conveying the extreme necessity of wherever it is they need to be, whatever crucial appointment they have to make. In their hands, they brandish the blue square of a prepaid Oyster card as simultaneous talisman and symbol of identity – proof of belonging to the big, messy rush of the city. They tsk-tsk at tourists taking too long to understand the tube map and quickstep with disapproval around the groups of schoolchildren loitering with intent in WH Smith. Everyone else seems to be in their way, Esme notices, and she forces herself to slow down and dawdle so as not to be one of them.

A man in a bulky anorak shoves past her, his shoulder colliding into hers as though tackling her for possession of some unseen ball. Her bag swings back against her waist as he passes. She swears at him, the rapid dart of the expletive ripping out of her with unexpected force.

On the train, still angry at Dave and the rugby-tackling man, she reads a magazine out of spite. Then her natural conscientiousness takes over and she takes out the cuttings. When the buffet trolley comes through, Esme treats herself to a coffee and a flapjack. By the time she arrives, she feels almost normal.

Now here she is, with a printed-out map of the woman’s address in one hand, trying to work out her bearings. Spatial awareness has never been her strong point. When Esme had done her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh, she was the only one in a group of six schoolgirls who had been absolved of all map-reading duties. She should use the maps function on her iPad but can never work out how to turn it round without the streets melting confusingly in the wrong direction.

After several minutes, she admits defeat and asks a passer-by the way to Parchment Street. It turns out to be only a few hundred yards away and, when she gets there, she discovers a pleasing row of terraced cottages, each one painted in a contrasting pastel colour, the front doors set back slightly from the road. Does everyone on the street get together and agree on the colour scheme, Esme thinks, or is it just fortuitous good taste that they all want to paint their houses in complementary shades? She can’t imagine that ever happening in Shepherd’s Bush. The house three doors up from her is a crack den.