One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

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