Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

I also tried phoning someone who worked on the Sunday Telegraph magazine - a guy named Edward Jensen, whom I remembered as friendly - and had known Tony when they were both doing journalistic stints in Frankfurt. Once again, I had his direct number. Once again, I wasn't received well. Only unlike Walcott, he wasn't curt - rather, somewhat nervous.

'You've caught me at a bad time, I'm afraid', he said. 'How's Tony?'

'Well...'

'Oh, God, how foolish of me. I had heard...'

'You'd heard what?'

'That the two of you... uh... dreadfully sorry. And I gather you've been unwell'.

'I'm better now'.

'Good, good. But, uh, I'm due in conference any moment. Could I call you back?'

I gave him the number, knowing he wouldn't call me back.

And he didn't.

Judging from his embarrassed tone, it was clear that word had spread through Media London about our breakup. As Tony was the man with all the connections, the world was hearing his side of the story. Which meant that Edward Jensen had evidently been informed that I had gone ga-ga and threatened the life of my child... and should therefore be dodged at all costs.

At least, Jason Farrelly finally returned my calls. And, at least, he was outwardly friendly... though he made it known pretty damn fast that (a) he was super-busy, and (b) there was absolutely no hope of any work at Cable News Network right now.

'You know the cutbacks we've suffered since the merger. Hell, I'm lucky to be still in a job... and, believe me, Business News is not my idea of a good time. Still, so great to hear from you. Enjoying London?'

This was the American approach to the dissemination of bad news: be ultra-friendly, ultra-enthusiastic, ultra-positive... even though what you were actually communicating was ultra-negative. Whereas the English approach to giving inauspicious tidings was either bumbling mortification or sheer rudeness. Somehow I preferred the latter approach. At least you knew what you were getting - and your expectations weren't raised by a surfeit of false bonhomie... like the sort that Jason Farrelly practised.

'But hey, it would be great to see you, Sally. And you never know, maybe, I don't know, maybe we can find something for you here'.

I was suspicious about this last comment, but as it was about the first halfway positive thing that anyone had said to me for a while, I wanted to believe that, perhaps, he could help me out.

'Well, that would be just terrific, Jason'.

'One problem', he said. 'I'm being dispatched to run the Paris bureau for the next three weeks... our head guy there had to rush back to the States after a death in the family... so I'm only here for another two days. And my schedule's completely full'.

'Well, mine's pretty empty - so if you could just find a half-hour...'

'Would nine-fifteen tomorrow morning work?'

'Whereabouts?'

'You know a restaurant in the Aldwych called Bank? They do breakfast. I won't have much time. Half-an-hour max'.

I got my one decent black suit dry-cleaned, and dropped £30 I couldn't really afford to spend on a cut and a wash at a hairdresser's on Putney High Street, and showed up fifteen minutes early at Bank. It was one of those ultra-chic foody emporiums - all chrome and glass and sleek lines and braying well-dressed clients, talking loudly over the din of the action, even at breakfast time. Jason had reserved a table in his name. I was shown to it, and ordered a cappuccino, and read the Independent, and waited.

Nine-fifteen came and went. Nine-thirty came and went... by which point I was genuinely anxious as I had to be back in Wandsworth at eleven for my weekly supervised visit with Jack. Which meant I simply had to leave the restaurant by nine forty-five. I kept asking the waitress if she'd received a message from him. Sorry, nothing at all.

And then, just as I was calling for the bill, he showed up. It was nine forty-three. He looked a little frazzled, explaining that the Hang Seng had done this fantastic out-of-nowhere rally first thing this morning, it was a big deal story, and, well, you know how it is, don't you?

I did - but I also knew that I couldn't stay. At the same time, though, I didn't want to explain to him why I was leaving - and how I was now only allowed supervised contact with my son. I knew this was the one chance I'd have to pitch myself to him, and hopefully garner some sort of employment which, in turn, was crucial both in terms of earning a living and proving to the Wandsworth social services that I was a responsible person who could be trusted to bring up her son and attend to his needs.

So I decided to take a risk and splurge on a fast taxi directly to Garratt Lane after the meeting. And I explained to Jason that I really had to leave by ten-fifteen, no later. He ordered coffee, I joined him for a second cappuccino. For the first twenty minutes of our time together, he talked nonstop, telling me about the horrendous internal politics of CNN since the merger, and the number of lay-offs, and how nobody who had been made redundant in Atlanta was finding jobs in the 'news information sector', and how his ex-boss was now selling books at a local branch of Borders, work was so tight. The situation at CNN Europe, however, was a little better - because all their bureaus were streamlined operations, giving them room to hire freelancers on a short-contract basis.

I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking: he's going to offer me something. But then, suddenly, he changed the subject and said, 'You know, Janie and I are separating'.

Janie was his wife of four years. Like Jason, she was just thirty. Blonde, pert, aggressive, and (when I met her in Cairo) already voicing frustration that journalists made such dismal money (she had been a realtor in Atlanta before her marriage).

'When she met me, she was in her mid-twenties, a Georgia girl who thought it was dead glamorous to have an Ivy League boyfriend who was already a CNN journalist at twenty-five. But she hated the moving around - you remember how she complained all the time in Cairo and then she truly loathed the French when we were in Paris... but hey, I can say this now, she's the sort of American who always hates the French. And when London came up, I figured getting her back into the Anglophone world might help the marriage. Boy, was I wrong. The French were like fellow Confederates compared to the Brits. "The most depressing, ill-mannered, stenchful people I have ever had the misfortune to meet" and please excuse the Scarlett O'Hara accent'.

'Did she actually say stenchful?' I asked, wanting to sound politely interested, but also becoming increasingly worried about the passage of time. I glanced at my watch. Ten-ten. I had to cut him off, and somehow make my pitch. But now he was going on about how, just three weeks earlier, she'd returned from a fortnight's visit to Atlanta to inform him that she'd fallen in love with her former high-school boyfriend...

'And no, his name's not Bubba. But it is Brad. And he is one of the biggest property developers in Atlanta, and a keen golfer, and the sort of guy who probably drives a big White Merc, and' -

I cleared my throat.

'Oh, hell', he said, 'listen to me running off at the mouth'.

'It's just... I really have to go in about two minutes'.

'How are things yourself?'

'My husband and I broke up'.

'You're kidding me. But didn't you just have a kid?'

'That's right. Listen, Jason... you know I'm a very adaptable journalist. I've written copy, I've covered wars, I've run a bureau' -

'Sally, you don't have to convince me. Hell, you taught me so damn much those couple of months I was in Cairo. The problem here is lack of budget. I mean, I've been told to cut two staff-' -

'But you just said that CNN Europe was hiring freelancers...'

'They are. But not, for the moment, in London. If you wanted to try for six months in Moscow or Frankfurt, I'm pretty sure you'd have a very good shot at it'.