Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

She sighed, ‘I don’t know how you do it, Colin. If I was you I’d want to go out there and do God knows what to her. Okay, I’ll be late if I don’t go now. If you change your mind about lunch let me know. We’ll be there from two on, okay?’ She kissed her brother on the head and left.

Colin made sure his sister drove the other way, not trusting her not to mow down the reporter. When she was gone and the house returned to the quiet he still couldn’t get used to since Simone said she needed time to herself to think about their future, he took the paper from behind the cushion in the couch and he laid it out on the coffee table before him. He looked at the photo of Katherine Logan on the front of the paper, the happy smiling face, and then inside, the woman who left the courthouse and he read the article again.

When he looked out the window again, she was gone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The door to Etcetera ’s offices was left open when Kitty arrived, which added to her anticipation and overall impending sense of doom. It said to her, come on in if you dare, the door’s open, you have no choice now. The office was deserted – it was Sunday morning – and Pete could do anything to her here and nobody would hear her scream. She was pinning all her hopes on Bob coming to her rescue but the article was probably enough to send him over the edge too, as Etcetera were implicated as losing advertisers and being in financial trouble. Not good press.

When she entered Constance’s office, Pete was standing, as usual, at the desk with the phone glued to his ear. He was wearing his weekend casuals, a look Kitty wasn’t used to seeing on him, and again it struck her that he looked younger, more attractive than the jacket-wearing stressed-out egomaniac who patrolled the offices. He looked up at Kitty’s approach and his face darkened.

‘Gary, can I call you back?’ He hung up abruptly. ‘That was Gary. A solicitor that I’ve been on the phone to all morning trying to figure out where we stand on all of this.’

‘What do you mean, a solicitor?’

‘You did read the paper this morning?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘But I forgot, you didn’t need to, you already knew what the story was before it was printed. You see, there’s a little bit there about Etcetera ’s advertisers apparently pulling out if you are not suspended.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And so the other advertisers who weren’t going to pull their money are now in a panic as to whether they should do the same or not, because paying for advertising in this magazine apparently makes them look bad,’ he ended in a shout.

Kitty’s eyes widened and she jumped a little at the volume of his voice. She had never seen him this angry before. Bitching, stressed and bad-tempered, yes, but never like this.

‘You think I did this deliberately?’ Her voice cracked. ‘Jesus, Pete, if I wanted to tell my side of the story, I’d have done it a whole lot better, don’t you think? I was on my way home from working on the story when I ran into an old college friend who seemed to have no idea about what happened with Thirty Minutes . So we went for drinks to catch up and in the space of an entire night – yes, an entire night, Pete, because it wasn’t enough that he used me for a story, he had to go and degrade me and make me feel like a complete whore in the process – I talked about what had happened, of course I did, because I was upset. It’s all been very stressful and I decided to talk to somebody about it, somebody who was totally unrelated to this world, a man who told me he was writing a novel, for Christ’s sake, and who seemed to care, and when I woke up this morning I find that crap splashed all over the paper and I’m really exhausted because I had to sleep on a friend’s couch so I am humiliated and mortified and extremely sorry, okay? I’m really sorry.’ She hadn’t realised she was crying until Pete held out a tissue to her and she felt her wet cheeks and her nose running.

‘Okay,’ he said gently. ‘Okay, that’s a different story entirely. I’m sorry for getting the wrong idea.’

Kitty simply nodded her thanks and continued wiping her streaming eyes.

‘Is it true about the attacks on your flat?’

‘Last night it was firecrackers. A firecracker roll, apparently. Five thousand of them. Hence the sleep on a couch.’

‘Jesus, that could have been dangerous,’ he said, face full of concern.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Did you call the guards?’

She shook her head.

‘Why not?’

She shrugged but she knew exactly why.

‘You haven’t had an easy time of it, have you?’

Her tears started up again at the sympathy. ‘I made a stupid mistake, Pete, a really bad, unprofessional mistake, and I ruined a man’s reputation, possibly his life, and for that I deserve to be punished, but,’ her tears took over again and she struggled to speak, ‘I’ve had enough now. I just want to write nice stories about good people, I want to get back to doing what it is that I love, what makes my world normal again. And I want people to believe in me again. I want you to look at me and listen to me without the doubt that I can see so obviously. I’m second-guessing myself enough as it is, Pete. I don’t need it from everyone else too.’

Pete looked at her, full of sympathy. ‘Would it be unprofessional to offer you a hug?’

‘Would it be unprofessional to accept?’ she sniffed.

Though when she thought of it after, it was rather unprofessional behaviour, but sometimes when people are involved, business has to stop being business and the human must win. However, Kitty couldn’t ignore the underlying truth that they both hung on to that hug for a little too long.

The curtains were still closed in Bob’s flat when she left the office and she contemplated calling in to give her version of events before he heard it from someone else but she decided against it. If her sleepless nights were anything to go by, she was certain he needed his rest.

‘I’ll tell him,’ she heard Pete say from the top of the stairs as he locked the door.

‘Thanks.’

He looked around the car park. ‘No bike today?’

‘It was stolen.’

He looked at her with a half-smile in disbelief. ‘Jesus, Kitty, the same people?’

‘No, no, other people. I’m a popular lady.’

He shook his head. ‘So it seems.’ He looked at her as if he had never seen her before, as if this was their very first meeting. As if it just occurred to him that she was a person in the world he had an interest in getting to know. And to her surprise, she liked it. She liked him looking at her like that. He came down the steps and they started walking together.

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No, thanks, I’ll walk.’

‘To Fairview?’

‘No, I’m just going as far as town.’

They reached his car and he opened the passenger door, extended his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman.

Kitty laughed. ‘I forgot that you don’t take no for an answer.’

It felt strangely intimate sitting next to him in his car.

‘Where am I driving you to?’

‘BusÁras, please.’ It was the main central station for bus routes nationwide.

‘Is this your attempt to run away?’

‘Not a bad idea. No, this is just a day trip. I’m interviewing another person on Constance’s list in Straffan. A woman named Ambrose Nolan who runs a butterfly museum and conservation site.’

‘A butterfly museum? Never heard of it.’

‘Well, then, it will make a good read.’

‘So how is this butterfly woman linked to the others you’ve met?’

‘I thought I had until Friday to tell you that,’ she said in mock indignation.

‘It’s only a week until we go to print,’ he shot back. ‘I was hoping to know what the story is before then.’