Cecelia Ahern: One Hundred Names

Once they’d entered their solicitor’s nearby offices and had escaped the reporters, Kitty dropped her bag to the floor, leaned her forehead against the cold wall and took deep breaths.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped, feeling her entire body flush with heat.

‘Are you okay?’ Donal asked gently.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry about this.’

She felt a light pat on her back and was grateful for his support. She had caused this and he was perfectly entitled to have a go at her.

‘This is absolutely ridiculous,’ Paul raged to the solicitor in the next room, pacing before his desk. ‘Four hundred thousand euro, plus his legal fees. This is nothing like you said it would be.’

‘I said it might— ’

‘Don’t you dare backtrack now,’ he yelled. ‘This is appalling. How could they do this to us? We’ve already apologised. Publicly. At the start of our show on February the eighth. Four hundred and fifty thousand people saw that we apologised, that we acknowledged he was not guilty, millions more saw it on the internet and God knows how many more after today. You know, I bet we were set up from the start. Those two women, I bet they and Colin Maguire are in on it together, and they’re getting a cut of that money. I wouldn’t be surprised. Nothing would surprise me now. Jesus. Four hundred thousand. How am I supposed to explain this to the Director-General?’

Kitty removed her forehead from where it was resting against the cool wall of the corridor and stood at the door of the solicitor’s office. ‘We deserved it, Paul.’

There was a silence and she heard Donal’s intake of breath behind her. Paul spun round and stared at her as if she was nothing, which was a certain amount more than she felt right then.

‘We ruined Colin Maguire’s life. We deserved to hear every single word they said in there. We shouldn’t have made such an enormous mistake and now we have to take responsibility for our actions.’

‘ Our actions? No. Your actions. You ruined his life, I was just the idiot who assumed you had done your job properly and had actually done your research. I knew we never should have given you this story. Mark my words, the network will never hire you again, do you hear me, Kitty? You don’t know the first thing about covering a bloody story,’ he yelled.

Kitty nodded and backed away. ‘’Bye, Donal,’ she said quietly.

He nodded, and she left the building through the back exit.

She was afraid to return to her flat for two reasons. She wasn’t sure if the court’s decision would fuel the attacks on her home or if they would die down now that Colin had been further vindicated and financially awarded. The other reason was that she was afraid to be alone. She didn’t know what to do; she couldn’t spend another moment thinking about this, beating herself up about it, but she didn’t feel it was right not to either. She deserved to be punished, she needed to wait out this feeling of absolute shame. She retrieved her bicycle from the backstreets of the Four Courts and headed in the direction of Constance’s home. Paul may have accused her of not having the first clue how to cover a story but she knew someone who did know, and perhaps it was time to start learning again.

Constance and Bob’s home was a basement apartment in a three-storey Edwardian house in Ballsbridge, the rest of which housed the magazine. The basement flat had over the years become an extended office, which they shared and lived in together and had done so for twenty-five years. The kitchen, never used as they ate out almost every night, was hidden beneath the clutter of memorabilia and items they had collected on their extensive travels. Every surface was littered with an eclectic mix of art: ebony carvings next to happy Buddhas and Venetian glass naked ladies, African and Venetian masks placed on old teddy bears’ heads, and on the wall Chinese etchings and landscape paintings hung beside Bob’s favourite satirical comic strips. The entire place felt like them . It had personality, it was fun, it was alive. Teresa, the housekeeper, had worked for Constance and Bob for twenty-five years and was now into her seventies. She didn’t appear to do anything more than light dusting and watch The Jeremy Kyle Show , but Constance, who wasn’t one for caring about a tidy home anyway, couldn’t find it in her heart to let her go. Teresa was more than familiar with Kitty and so immediately welcomed her into the flat without question and returned to her armchair with a cup of tea to watch a man and a woman screaming at each other over a lie detector test that hadn’t gone in anybody’s favour. Kitty was thankful Teresa never watched the news and was completely unaware of the week’s drama, sparing her an inquisition. She went into Constance and Bob’s office.

Their desks were directly opposite one another and equally piled high with what appeared to be rubbish, but which was probably vital paperwork. Above Constance’s desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob’s viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her. The floors were as cluttered as the surfaces, with rug after Persian rug of busy patterns overlapping one another, so that it was difficult not to trip on the lumps and bumps. As well as the continuation of art from the rest of the flat, there were dozens of porcelain cats in various positions on the floor all along the room. Kitty knew that Constance hated them, real ones and the porcelain kind, but they had been her mother’s and when she passed away Constance had insisted on giving them a home. The room was so busy Kitty wondered how on earth they could concentrate at all, but they could and they were mighty successful at it. Constance had moved from Paris to Dublin to annoy her wealthy father and study English Literature in Trinity College. There she edited the college paper and her first job was writing for the Society section of the Irish Times , where she met Robert McDonald. Bob was ten years older than she, and was the Times ’s business affairs correspondent. When she eventually tired of being told what to do, which never took long, Constance decided to frustrate her father furthermore by leaving her respectable job with Ireland’s major broadsheet and instead start her own publication. Bob came along with her, and after cutting their teeth on various magazines, they set up Etcetera twelve years ago, their most successful venture yet. It wasn’t the highest selling magazine in Ireland, as it failed to divulge tips on how to remove cellulite or how to get the perfect bikini body, but it was widely respected in the industry. To write for Etcetera was considered an honour, a great step on the ladder to success. Constance was a straight-talking no-nonsense editor with an impeccable eye for a story and for talent; Etcetera was where many of the country’s successful writers had started out .

Kitty went to the filing cabinet and was immediately impressed by the neat system that Constance had developed. It was nothing like the rest of her home: every single article that had been written for Etcetera or any other magazine Constance had run, articles she had written for other publications and all ideas she’d had in the past and for the future were neatly filed on cards in alphabetical order. Kitty was unable to ignore her inherent nosiness and so read as many as she could before getting to N . And there it was, a simple brown manila envelope filed under ‘Names’ . It was sealed, and though she knew she shouldn’t break the deal she had made with Constance, she couldn’t contain her impatience and so sat down at Constance’s desk to open it. Teresa appeared at the door and Kitty jumped like a naughty schoolgirl caught smoking. She dropped the envelope on the desk and then laughed at herself.