One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

but in there …’ he blew air out of his mouth ‘… it’s pretty hardcore.’
    ‘What did you hear?’
    He looked at her uncertainly. ‘It’s kind of … private, isn’t it?’
    ‘I have to know this stuff,’ Kitty said simply. ‘Otherwise how can I write about it? And it’s not like you have some priestly confidentiality clause that says you can’t tell anyone.’
    ‘Still,’ Archie shrugged. ‘I’d rather not. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. People don’t usually pray when they’re happy. And if they do, they don’t go in there at nine in the morning on a weekday to do it.’
    They stopped walking on the Liffey boardwalk, a promenade hanging over the river, a south-facing set-up for al fresco lunch and coffee. The mousy woman went to the coffee kiosk next to O’Connell Bridge and started setting up for her shift.
    ‘What do you think I should do?’ Archie asked.
    ‘I think you should help who you can. I think it will help you. And I think you should start with her.’
    They watched her.
    ‘People are going to think I’m crazy when this comes out.’
    ‘Won’t it be better than what you say they think of you now?’
    He pondered that, then watched for a gap in the traffic and hurried across the road to the kiosk.
    ‘I just think you should give her another chance,’ Gaby was saying to Kitty over her second espresso in the Merrion Hotel in Merrion Square.
    Kitty had called her the previous night to arrange a meeting, Gaby had chosen the venue and so far had done all the talking, and Kitty was hoping Gaby planned on picking up the tab too for what seemed like the most expensive coffee she’d ever drunk. They were sitting outside in the garden, meetings going on all around them, and Gaby had one eye and ear on everybody else’s conversations and the other on her and Kitty’s. She lit up another cigarette. Gaby appeared to be under the illusion that Kitty had the intention of dropping Eva from her story and had launched into a tirade of Eva’s career history, starting with celebrity clients and magazines she had been featured in, and while that was partly correct, as Kitty was reluctant to waste more of her precious time on Eva after being fobbed off with the My Little Pony present response, this wasn’t actually something she had yet shared with either Eva or Gaby. However, they weren’t foolish women. Kitty had turned down an opportunity to meet Eva twice over the past few days, unsure that she was ever going to get anything from Eva about herself as a person as opposed to her business. Kitty simply didn’t have enough time to spend with such a closed book.
    ‘She’s been mentioned in
Vogue
on their “Who’s hot” list and was in
Cosmopolitan
’s “Young and Happening” slot. She really is
incredible.
’ She shut her eyes and squeezed her entire body to emphasise the word, then opened her eyes and took another puff of her cigarette.
    ‘She’s a closed book, Gaby. Each time I ask her a question she either refuses to answer or she brings it back to work. I know that she is a hard worker and that she is passionate about her company ethos but I have to have more to run with than that. The other people that I’m interviewing are more …’ she tried to think of a polite way of saying it but realised it was Gaby she was speaking to and politeness counted for nothing ‘… substantial. They intrigue me. I want to find out more and when I dig a little deeper, I discover more. Eva isn’t willing to open up to me and I don’t want to force her into talking about anything she doesn’t want to talk about. That’s not the kind of journalist I am.’
    Gaby raised one eyebrow, thinking otherwise.
    ‘At least, I’m not any more.’ Kitty raised her chin haughtily.
    ‘She’s difficult to get to know, I realise that. The problem with Eva is that she is …’ Gaby paused for dramatic effect, which worked as Kitty hung on every word ‘…
creative
.’ She said it like it was a bad word. Then she lowered her voice so that nobody could hear the dirty secret to come. ‘She’s one of these types who thinks that their
art
speaks for themselves.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Honestly. I deal with this crap all the time with my writers. They think their work is their voice, they don’t understand that
they
have to give it one. They don’t realise that it’s people like me and you who help them sell their bloody
art
. Do you know how long it took me to get Eva to start that