One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

everybody has been working their arses off to meet this deadline, and you are swanning around—’
    ‘Excuse me, I have put every single second I have into this story and you know it. Fine! I’ll find a way to get there on time.’ She hung up and bit her nails.
    Steve looked at her, eyebrows raised.
    ‘Pete’s a prick,’ she said simply. ‘If I don’t get there by six o’clock he’s pulling my story.’ She didn’t mean for everybody else to hear but unfortunately that’s what happened.
    ‘No, Kitty.’ Jedrek stood up. ‘We can’t let this happen. You must run the story. What can we do to help?’
    ‘Oh, Jedrek, thank you,’ she said, touched. ‘I appreciate you all caring for me so much but I just don’t know how to get to my meeting by six. If Molly doesn’t come out of there in the next five minutes there’s no way I can make it to the office.’
    ‘No offence, Kitty,’ Jedrek said seriously. ‘Of course we respect you and your duty to your editor and friend, and we know that your job is important to you, but we have put our lives in your hands. We have told you our private stories and given you the pen to write it. It is not just you who needs this story written, it is us. It is our story.’
    Kitty looked at Steve, who was looking back at her as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. The penny finally dropped: this wasn’t about her, this wasn’t merely about honouring Constance’s story and saving her own professional skin. This was their lives, their stories, and she owed these people. Feeling humbled, she snapped into action.
    Thirty minutes later, Molly had been freed from custody and they were on the road back to Dublin.
    ‘I don’t understand, Kitty, what did you say to them?’
    ‘I just got on the phone to the nursing home, to Bernadette.’
    ‘No, not Bernadette! She’ll fire me for sure,’ Molly moaned.
    ‘She won’t fire you,’ Kitty said confidently, ‘but she’ll probably make your life a living hell for a few months. I just explained the entire thing to her, what we had done and why, and told her to drop the charges and tell the guards to let you go. They’re using the local school bus for the Pink Ladies today instead, so we have time so can you please step on it and follow my directions?’
    ‘Why, where are we going?’ she asked, startled.
    ‘A little detour,’ Kitty said, biting her nails and watching the clock as it got dangerously close to 6 p.m.
    At six thirty, they pulled up outside
Etcetera
’s offices in the bus. Pete was close to calling the entire thing off but Kitty had phoned regularly en route and was insistent they could make it.
    ‘Okay, everybody, I promise this will be quick. Follow me, please.’
    ‘Good luck.’ Steve winked at her.
    Ready for another adventure, the party all climbed off the bus and followed her.
    Rebecca, the art director, was standing at the open door looking out anxiously.
    ‘Kitty, thank God,’ she said, when Kitty ran up the stairs. ‘He’s going insane in there. I don’t envy you right now.’ She pulled Kitty’s coat from her shoulders, and then looked at the team of people who followed after her, in shock. ‘Who are all these people, Kitty? Kitty …?’ she followed them all, wide-eyed.
    ‘Can you all just wait here a moment, please?’ Kitty said to them, took a deep breath and entered the meeting room. It smelled of coffee, sweat and anger. There was also a lot of frustration and irritation emanating from the pore of every person at the table and it was all directed at her.
    ‘Hi, everyone,’ she said, breathless. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late. You wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get here.’
    They groaned and mumbled something about what they’d been through to get there too but Kitty hurried on, glad to see Bob was in attendance, which meant that Cheryl was no longer in her acting deputy editor role. Kitty looked from Pete to Cheryl and smiled sweetly. ‘Hi, guys, nice to see you again.’
    Cheryl reddened and looked away.
    ‘Two weeks ago I was given the task of writing Constance’s final piece. Something I was hugely honoured to do, and something I thought hard about because as we all know Constance was a true professional, a perfectionist, never accepted anything but the best, and I didn’t have a huge amount of faith in myself in delivering. I know many of you in this room felt the same and I understand why.’ She swallowed as there were a lot of shared