One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

or reach beard stage. He lived in leather jackets and jeans and would have appeared more at home reviewing the alternative music scene than as a sports journalist, or at least a frustrated sports journalist. Even when going to matches he never wore a jersey, his love for the game not having to be proved by his T-shirt. He was the eternal student, never seeming to have any money and sharing houses and flats with unusual characters, chopping and changing accommodation according to their recent behaviour. He was currently living in the suburbs in a nice semi-detached three-bedroom house with a married couple who needed help from a third party to meet the mortgage payments of their negative equity. Living in non-violation of the married couple’s strict household code for the past six months, Steve found his lifestyle now mirrored theirs, and it was almost like he’d grown up a little.
    ‘Actually,’ he shifted in his chair, a movement that told Kitty he was preparing to say something he deemed interesting, ‘I no longer work for the paper.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I no longer work for the paper,’ he said in exactly the same tone.
    ‘Yes, I heard you but … they fired you?’
    ‘No,’ he said, insulted. ‘I left.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why? I thought that would be obvious. Because a million reasons, but mainly because you were right about what you said a few weeks ago—’
    ‘No, no, no,’ she interrupted, not wanting to hear whatever it was that she’d said. ‘I was wrong. Completely wrong. Don’t ever let anything I say be of any value to you in your life at all.’
    He smiled. ‘Mostly it isn’t.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘But you were right about one thing. I was hardly setting the world alight by writing the stories I was writing, and even then the editor would change them so much I could hardly call them my own. And the thing is, Kitty, I never wanted to set the world alight with my writing. I just like sports. I like to watch sports, talk about sports, I like to read about sports and I wanted to be one of those people who wrote about it. It was never about anything else.’
    ‘So who are you writing for now?’
    ‘No one.’
    ‘I thought you left so you could write about sport?’
    ‘I left because I
couldn’t
write about sports. So what’s the point in staying there? Writing ridiculous articles that aren’t even true about people I have never met and have no interest in is not a job I want. It suits Kyle, who leaves meetings to watch breaking headlines on
E! News
. It’s for Charlotte who wants to be in every VIP room in every club in the world so she can stand at the wall and write about people she has odd obsessions with. The morning after our … chat, I went into work and the first thing I was asked to do was write one hundred and fifty words on how a certain footballer was allegedly having an affair with a glamour model.’
    ‘Oooh, who?’ Kitty leaned in.
    ‘It’s not the point,’ he said brusquely. ‘I didn’t want to write about it. It’s not what I’m about. Never mind not writing ground-breaking stories, stories that do nothing but numb the human mind is not my gameplan either.’
    ‘Yeah, but who was the footballer?’
    ‘Kitty.’
    ‘Okay, fine. Who was the glamour model?’
    ‘Not. The. Point.’
    She sat back, disappointed.
    ‘How could I lecture you about your stories when that’s the work that I was doing? I have more self-respect than writing that crap. That kind of journalism … it was killing my soul.’
    Kitty tried not to wince at the constant digging in her ribs. ‘I get it, it was an honest, self-sacrificing move, aimed to take a stance at the smut that the public are being forced to ingest, which is very honourable of you and I respect that, now cut the crap and tell me who the footballer and the slag were?’
    ‘I’m going to throw this prawn cocktail at you.’
    ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
    He picked up a prawn, which was more of a mini shrimp, placed it on his fork, held it back like a catapult and let it go. The prawn flew through the air and landed on Kitty’s boob, the Marie Rose sauce splodging on the satin.
    She gasped. ‘You little prick.’
    ‘Don’t talk about the size of my prick.’
    ‘My top is stained.’
    ‘So take it to the dry-cleaners. I know one that’s open all night.’
    ‘I’m going to stink of fish.’
    ‘Will go nicely with the shit.’
    And they were right back at college lunch hour, having meaningless back-and-forth