Tasmina Perry - Original Sin

Tess stood up, smoothed down her Armani skirt and slipped on her sharply tailored jacket; it was time to show them who was boss. Every morning at ten a.m. the Sunday Globe had a news conference for the editorial team and, as today was Friday, the urgent item on the agenda was the splash for the Sunday front page, the first edition of which was sent down to the printers at six p.m. on Saturday night. Friday was therefore the most hectic time of the week, with the staff often working right through the weekend until the early hours of Sunday morning, ready to change the splash if a better story came in. In newspapers, the front page was everything.

‘So. Nothing obvious for the splash yet,’ began news editor Ben Leith boldly, when the key editorial staff were gathered around the oval conference table. Tess narrowed her eyes. She knew Ben was after her job, but there was no need to blatantly undermine her at the first opportunity.

‘Well, what do you have?’ asked Tess pointedly. ‘Speaking as news editor.’

Leith sighed. ‘There’s still the air hostess/prostitutes story hanging around. But the lawyers think the airline might sue.’

Tess grimaced. That particular story had been filed three weeks earlier and so far Andy had passed it over, leaving it for a dire week when there was nothing to splash with. Tess certainly didn’t want to run the lame-duck story in her week as editor.

‘We have Serena Balcon’s hen-night shots,’ said Jon Green, the Globe ’s photo director eagerly. ‘She’s in Miami topless.’

Tess shook her head. ‘Great for inside, Jon, but we can’t run a nipple shot on the cover.’

‘Yes, the nips are out in every shot,’ replied Jon, looking a little deflated. ‘Although we could always put globes over her tits for the cover-shot. Readers might think it’s funny,’ he said, gaining a few sniggers from the younger members of staff.

‘I think people want to see Serena’s nips,’ said Ben Leith, seizing another opportunity to put pressure on Tess. She reminded herself that the news editor was best friends with the editor, Andy, and would no doubt be reporting everything back to their boss.

‘Maybe we can run something next to the logo,’ said Tess, firmly, ‘but it’s not the big story.’

Leith looked sulky and muttered something about feminist bullshit under his breath, but Tess ignored him.

‘Let’s take a view at four o’clock conference. Ben, can we meet after lunch? I have a stringer working on a story which we might be able to turn into the splash.’

She stalked back to her office, sat in her chair, and swivelled it to stare out of the window. Her reflection stared back at her. Dark green eyes, a strong brow, creamy skin with good bone structure; a face to be reckoned with. A glamorous newspaper editor’s face , she smiled grimly. That meeting was exactly the reason she was struggling to enjoy this week as editor. There had been none of the empowering buzz she always thought she would feel in the editor’s chair, and she had been tense and crotchety all week. It was not that she didn’t think she was up to the job – she had spent her whole adult life wanting to be a newspaper editor, from the first time she’d seen The Front Page and His Girl Friday as a little girl, to the day when she had got her first paying job as news assistant at her local rag in Suffolk, where she’d covered village fetes and bicycle thefts, and she knew she could do it better than anyone. What bothered her was the acknowledgement that she was just wasting her time. That the new editor and the CEO were just biding their time until they could get rid of her in the most inexpensive way possible.

Just then, the phone rang. It was Andy’s assistant Tracey.

‘I have a Mark Wilson in reception for you.’

Tess didn’t recognize the name, but had an instant intuition that whatever Mark Wilson wanted it was going to be trouble.

‘He says he’s acting for the Asgills, if that makes any sense to you?’ said Tracey.

‘Oh shit,’ groaned Tess under her breath. This was exactly why she hadn’t broken the Asgill story in the meeting: she wanted to be sure of it; she didn’t want word to get back to Andy of the story that never was. She walked over to the small window of her office and snapped the blinds shut just as there was a sharp rap on her door.

Mark Wilson was in his mid-forties, dressed in a conservative tailored suit and carrying a silver briefcase. He held out a card, but Tess simply slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t need Mark Wilson to tell her he was an expensive lawyer, because he looked exactly like every other expensive lawyer she had ever met.

‘Tea? Coffee? Water?’ Tess asked, motioning towards a seat in front of her desk.

‘Straight to business I think, Ms Garrett,’ he said as he settled down. ‘Some illegal photographs were taken of my client at a party in St John’s Wood last night.’

‘I know,’ said Tess, refusing to be intimidated. ‘Sean Asgill was partying so hard he ended up in a high-dependency unit at a North London hospital.’

Wilson looked slightly taken aback by the blunt, attractive woman seated across from him, but quickly rallied.

‘Well, Ms Garrett, you’re an experienced journalist, one assumes ,’ he said. ‘So I don’t need to remind you of the privacy laws at issue here. Sean Asgill was enjoying a night out in a private place and that privacy has been invaded. Run these pictures and the legal ramifications could be punitive for your newspaper.’

Tess looked at him, determined to stand her ground, particularly after Wilson’s snipe about her experience. In fact, Tess had been in this situation many times before. Andy Davidson didn’t do much hands-on editing and was more often to be found schmoozing politicians and publicists; he certainly never dealt with Rottweiler lawyers. It was Tess who was sent to deal with them, and, as barely a week went by without some celebrity publicist or media lawyer threatening the Globe with injunctions, Tess knew the law backwards.

‘I’m well aware of the law, Mr Wilson,’ said Tess, counting the points off on her slim fingers. ‘Number one, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t this incident involve heavyweight drug usage? Heavyweight illegal drugs, I might add. Number two, it didn’t happen at Mr Asgill’s private residence; in fact it was at a public event, and a morally controversial public event at that.’

Wilson smiled thinly. ‘That’s rich. Your newspaper talking about morals.’

Tess took a sip from the glass of water in front of her. ‘This is a drug overdose at a sex party, Mr Wilson. It’s not as if we stormed into the Pope’s bedroom. You and I both know that no judge in England will grant an injunction on those photos based on privacy. Besides, as your client is very high profile, I believe we could argue public interest, given the circumstances.’

‘Please, this is a young, vulnerable man who ingested ketamine mistakenly,’ said Wilson in a more conciliatory voice.

‘Vulnerable?’ snorted Tess. ‘Well, I don’t know Sean Asgill, but from what I read he’s hardly Tiny Tim. He’s a playboy whose fast living has finally caught up with him.’

Mark Wilson’s face was impassive but Tess knew she had got him. He stared at her for a few moments, then shrugged slightly.

‘I take it you haven’t written your splash story yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Who owns the photographs?’

She paused for a moment. ‘We do,’ she said. Actually, this was technically true, even if the paper was unaware of it. Tess was paying cash-strapped Jemma a one-hundred-pounds-a-day freelancer rate and hiding the fee in her office expenses. That meant the Globe could claim copyright to Jemma’s photographs, although no one except Tess and Jemma – and Sean Asgill’s people – even knew of their existence. Mark Wilson nodded slowly.