One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

were you up to?’
    Kitty couldn’t help but laugh. Constance would love seeing them all huddled round, scratching their heads.
    ‘It’s hardly funny, Kitty,’ Pete said. ‘The feature won’t make much sense if we don’t have a story from Constance.’
    ‘I disagree,’ she said, surprised. ‘It’s the last piece Constance suggested for the magazine.’
    ‘I’d still prefer to include Constance’s story,’ Pete said stubbornly. ‘It’s what I want the other stories to revolve around. If we don’t have Constance’s story, I’m not sure about the idea at all.’
    ‘But Constance’s story is just a list of names,’ Kitty said, losing confidence in herself. She didn’t want the entire tribute piece to rest on her ability to piece together what on earth this list meant. There wasn’t enough time, and the time that they did have happened to be the worst time of Kitty’s life. She was feeling far from inspired and her self-belief was at an all-time low. ‘There’s nothing to explain where Constance was going with it or how she was feeling about it.’
    ‘Well then, Cheryl will do it,’ Pete said quickly, taking them all by surprise. ‘She’ll figure it out.’ He snapped his folder shut and straightened up.
    ‘With all due respect, I think Kitty should do it,’ Bob said.
    ‘But she just said she didn’t think she could.’
    ‘She just needs a little encouragement, Pete,’ Bob said, a little firmer then. ‘It’s a daunting task.’
    ‘Fine,’ Pete said suddenly. ‘We have two weeks until we go to print. Kitty, keep me up to date with how you’re getting on. I’d like daily feedback.’
    ‘Daily?’ she asked, surprised.
    ‘Yep.’ He gathered his things and made for Constance’s,
his
, office.
    With Pete’s demand for daily updates, Kitty knew that her suspension from the television network, the vandalism to her flat, her relationship breakdown and the court case loss had just scratched the surface, and now the real repercussions of
Thirty Minutes
were beginning.
    Kitty reluctantly sat behind Constance’s desk in her home office, her hands up in the air as though she was being shot at, afraid to touch anything, afraid to ruin the order of how Constance had placed things, knowing they would never find their way back to their rightful place without their rightful owner to fix them. Last week she had loved the feeling of being there but now she felt like an intruder. Bob had given her free rein in the office; there was nothing she couldn’t read, no territory she wasn’t allowed to examine. The previous Kitty – the Kitty who had Constance in her life and who hadn’t a court ruling against her for irresponsible journalism – would have jumped at the chance to be meddlesome and would have read everything she could get her hands on, whether it was related to the story or not, but now it was different.
    She spent the afternoon doing fruitless but time-consuming searches through the filing cabinet, trying to see if any other paperwork matched up to the one hundred names. It was pointless because she had no idea what the names meant and how they could be linked to anything else. She Googled the names but nothing of interest came up; everything led her down deceiving paths.
    By the end of day two, after an embarrassing meeting with Pete in which she had nothing to report, she returned home to find her flat with red-paint-splashed toilet paper hanging in strands across the front door as if to mimic a crime scene.
    Despite going to bed without an ounce of hope and a blocked toilet from when she’d tried to flush away all the toilet paper at once, she managed to wake up somehow feeling vibrant and full of possibilities. A new day meant a new start to her search. She could do it. This was her moment to redeem herself, to make Constance proud. Her final thought of the night had been that the people on the list could be absolutely anyone – and where else do you find people who could be anyone? Not bothering to get dressed, she retrieved the phone directory and sat at the table in her pants.
    She had made various photocopies of Constance’s list, not wanting to damage the original, which she had placed back in Constance’s filing cabinet. Kitty’s own copy was now covered in thoughts, questions, cartoon squiggles and shapes and so she took a fresh copy, a new notepad, the phone book, a fresh mug of coffee – instant, as Glen had taken his coffee machine and fresh coffee beans –