Clare Layton - Those Whom the Gods Love

Ginty Schell.

Harbinger sighed for her lack of self-protection. He really was going to have to take her in hand. Didn’t she know yet that you shouldn’t express doubts about your own work when you submitted it? Or that you should wait until the deadline to make sure what you’d written didn’t seem stale when the final decision on the week’s contents was made?

But as he read he began to smile. Beginner though she was, she hadn’t done badly. The piece could do with tightening here and there, hardening up once or twice too, and it needed the few telling personal touches that would lift it out of the good-exercise category and into something the Sentinel could publish. But he was reasonably pleased. And he was dead pleased to know she was safely back. That might let him sleep tonight. He reached for the phone.

‘Ginty? John Harbinger here. How are you?’

‘Fine. Did you get my e-mail?’

‘Yes. You’ve done a good job so far. It needs work, but for a first draft, it’s not too bad. I thought we might go through it over dinner.’

‘This evening?’ She sounded suspicious. Almost like bloody Kate. He wondered who’d been talking to her.

‘Yes. I need the finished version by Monday evening, as you know, so that would give you the weekend to knock it into shape.’

She was knackered, she told him, and needed an early night. After a second, she added in a rush that she wasn’t trying to avoid him, only making sure she got enough sleep.

‘Enough for what?’ he said with a suggestion of a laugh.

‘I’ve just been phoned to ask if I’ll go on Annie Kent’s Saturday radio show tomorrow morning – to discuss rape. Radio always makes me nervous and if I’m too tired, I’ll make a fool of myself and my voice will be all croaky.’

‘Good for you,’ said Harbinger, seeing the opportunity for a little publicity. ‘You will say something about the Sentinel , won’t you? After all, it’s not the BBC, so there are no rules against advertising.’

‘If I’m allowed to,’ Ginty said, adding more briskly: ‘And if you e-mail me with the changes you want to the interview, I’ll get you a revised version by the end of Monday. And by then I should have prints of the photographs Rano’s men took – and some of my own – in case you want illustrations.’

‘Good. That’ll help. Now, are you sure about dinner? Editing is always more satisfactory face to face than via e-mail. You sound like a woman who needs food.’

‘Honestly, I think I’d fall over if I tried to go out tonight. Like I said, I need to get my head down. I’ve got a hell of a lot of work on, and it’s my mother’s fiftieth birthday tomorrow. I’ve got to drive straight down to Hampshire after Annie Kent’s show, which means I’ll lose most of the rest of the weekend. But I’ll do your rewrite on Monday. I promise.’

‘What about having dinner with me then, as a celebration?’

‘All right. Fine. Yes, thank you. I’ll look forward to it. Bye.’

‘Me too. Before you go, Ginty: how was it? I mean, face to face with Rano? It sounds as though it might have been pretty rough.’

There was a high-pitched gasp down the phone as though she was about to giggle. Damn! It would be a bugger if she turned into another silly girl after all the trouble he was taking for her. But it turned out that she wasn’t laughing.

‘It was vile, while it lasted, but they didn’t actually do anything to me. And I got back in one piece, so I’m filing it under “useful experience”. That should deal with the nightmares.’

‘Great,’ he said as casually as he could with the word ‘nightmares’ sticking in his mind. ‘I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend.’

Putting down the receiver, he wondered what she was really like. The first time they’d met, she’d reminded him of those East European gymnasts, with her childish body and the big hurt eyes. She was pretty enough, and rather sweet, but not his type, so he’d been surprised Janey Fergusson had thought he might fancy her. Then, glancing around the room, he’d seen a long-legged blonde with big tits and a taut torso stretching her skimpy black dress and realized Ginty had been invited for someone else.

But the blonde had turned out to be a self-obsessed vacuous pain, in spite of her amazing body, so he’d started to pay more attention to Ginty and been reluctantly impressed. She’d laughed when he said he’d seen some of her work. Most wannabes were left gasping – or grasping – by the mildest of compliments from anyone in his position. And once she’d got over her evident surprise that he wanted to listen to her, she’d talked well. But there’d been nothing in what she’d said, or how she’d looked, to justify the conviction that had been growing in him ever since, that she had something he needed.

If so, he was clearly going to have to work hard to get it. There weren’t many young, female, freelance journalists who turned him down when he offered them dinner, even when they were doing some radio the next day. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might refuse, so he hadn’t set up anything else. Still, there’d be plenty of parties; there always were.

He riffled through the clutch of invitations on his desk. They were all from PR girls, desperate to drum up some publicity for yet another ghastly new book or an artist no one had ever heard of. One, which he’d been avoiding ever since it arrived, made him wince as it reached the top of the pile again. A nephew of Steve’s had become a painter and was having a private view next week. Harbinger put that on one side, then dumped the rest in the bin. He was too tired to go on the pull anyway.

The first three mates he phoned were busy, so he rang the local takeaway for a curry instead. It ought to reach the flat pretty much at the same time as he did.

The moment he unlocked his front door, he was hit by a peculiar smell, sickly and rotten, like decomposing bodies.

Oh, Christ! he thought. I am going off my trolley.

A second later he realized something must have gone wrong with the drains and felt better, even though he had no idea what to do about getting hold of a plumber. That sort of thing had never been his job. Bloody Kate had always done that.

As far as he could see, he hadn’t got anything out of their twelve-year marriage in return for working his arse off to pay the mortgage. He’d had to put up with Kate’s ghastly family, her PMT, the sleepless nights, the babysick and nappies, and all he’d got back had been constant carping about the time he spent at work and his inadequate sexual technique. Bloody women.

He was sniffing round the bathroom, leaning down towards the basin’s plughole, which smelled only of the toothpaste he’d spat into it that morning. The bog was OK, too, and the bath, so maybe it wasn’t the plumbing. He sniffed his way all round the flat like a customs’ dog. The sheets could do with changing, but it wasn’t them; they were just a bit grubby. And there were no sweaty games clothes either. He hadn’t played squash for weeks. Perhaps that was why he’d been sleeping so badly.

He followed the stink round the flat, ending up in the kitchen, staring at a virtually clean saucepan. All it had in it was half an inch of vaguely green water, but it stank. He’d boiled some frozen peas in it a few days ago, just after the cleaner’s weekly visit. He hadn’t known water could turn rancid like this.

Pouring it down the sink, he thought he might throw up. A gush of cold water from the tap washed away the slime, but he couldn’t get the smell out of his mouth and nose. It really was like decomposing bodies. Oh, God! Somehow he had to stop thinking about dead bodies or he really would go bonkers.

A good slug of whisky would take away the memory of that smell, he thought, as the bell rang. It was his curry. Damn good, too. He ate it, watching his video of Cape Fear . That and the whisky got him through the evening until it was time to go to bed.