Maximum Exposure (4 page)

‘Ben Gillies? Was he the nice-looking guy with the reddish brown hair?’ Lizzie was full of curiosity over the spaghetti.

‘Nice looking? I guess,’ Daisy said, helping herself to more parmesan.

Ben, grown up and filled out though he was, was just Ben to her. Ben who had buried her up to her neck in the sand on the beach at North Berwick; Ben who’d gone mushroom picking with her in the woods, daring her to eat some disturbing-looking specimen then defended her against her father’s wrath when they’d arrived back ten minutes later than the deadline he’d set; Ben who’d helped her with her homework when she couldn’t, really couldn’t, remember her table of elements or the French for ‘impecuniary’.

‘I thought he was quite cute,’ said Lizzie, shovelling her pasta into her mouth with a speed that was almost indecent. Daisy was used to the spectacle. Lizzie Little, unfairly slim, ate impossibly fast and had a surprising appetite. It was as if every inch of her height required endless nourishment.

‘By cute you mean beddable, I suppose,’ snorted Daisy, remembering gloomily that she hadn’t been bedded herself since she and Jack had split up.

‘So?’ Lizzie liked men. She brought them home with her, rather as if they were lost dogs she’d found roaming in the street looking for someone to love. Daisy was all too used to meeting some half-clad stranger emerging from the bathroom on a Saturday morning, or sharing her late brunch on a Sunday with the most delicious-looking youth Lizzie had befriended on one of her sales trips to Edinburgh and invited to visit. Half the time she’d have forgotten she’d done so and had to get to know them all over again when they appeared at the door.

They certainly liked Lizzie. What’s not to like, Daisy thought, eyeing her friend with well-accustomed envy. It wasn’t that she was jealous of Lizzie – she wouldn’t have been comfortable with the relaxed casualness of Lizzie’s approach to life, men, and love affairs. But if she only had a tenth of her sex appeal, what couldn’t she do with it? Get Jack back, for a start – and that was all she wanted.

‘Well hands off Ben,’ she said without really knowing why, except that for some reason she couldn’t bear the idea of Lizzie sneaking her childhood friend into her room.

‘Ooh. Could Daisy Irvine be getting real about Jack Hedderwick at last?’

‘I
love
Jack,’ Daisy said crossly. She did, she really did.

Lizzie sighed, but she left it at that.

Chapter Six

‘Hello Daisy!’

‘Oh hello, Hammy.’ A weekend is never a weekend for a newspaper photographer. Rugby wasn’t Daisy’s thing, but at this time of year, the rugby ground was often where she found herself on a cold Saturday afternoon, with her warmest fleece and a long lens.

‘Good game.’

‘For some.’

Hamilton MacBride,
The Stoneyford Echo
’s photographer, was one of the old school. He’d been snapping since the days when you had to take magnesium flares with you on a shoot – or so, at least, it seemed to Daisy. Now, she noticed, he had the latest camera, the one she craved with the auto voice over for recording captions. With the Hailesbank Hawks currently 14-3 down to the Stoneyford Saints, he was looking disgustingly smug.

‘Yaaaay!’ A roar went up from the crowd at the Stoneyford end – or what would have been a roar at Murrayfield Stadium. The ragged crowd in Hailesbank managed a small cheer. It was another try.

At least, Daisy thought glumly, she’d managed to get a good shot of the Stoneyford forward who’d just thrown himself showily on the ground behind the posts.

‘Heard about your new editor.’

‘Oh yes?’ Daisy’s attention was caught. ‘What?’

Hammy looked sideways at her, his fat round face smug about his scrap of information. ‘Sacked from some trendy TV programme. Caught sniffing the white stuff. So I heard.’

‘Yeah?’ Daisy tried not to look shocked, or indeed, interested. ‘We knew that. Just a one-off.’ She was making it up as she went along. ‘He’s OK though. Great editor. ’

Hammy laughed. ‘Good try, Daisy my dear. But you can’t fool me. The
Herald
’ll be closed within a year, mark my words.’

The action had moved towards the Hailesbank end of the pitch and he moved off, chuckling.

Drugs, thought Daisy dully. Shit. That was all they needed. She thought of the letter with a shudder. ‘
We will be forced to close the offices in Hailesbank and merge the paper with
The East Stoneyford Echo …’ Unthinkable.

She watched Hammy MacBride climb into his smart 4x4 and head back to the office as she wrenched open the door of her old run-around. Smug bastard. Just like all that lot at the
Echo.
How come he could afford a posh car and all she could manage was a bashed old work-horse? She turned on the ignition and prayed, but the car started first time and she sighed with relief. She still had to go back to the office to download the pictures.

A couple of streets from the office she found a parking space – the town was busy on a Saturday afternoon – and grabbed her camera bag from the back seat.

‘Hi Dais.’ She glanced up, startled at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Jack. And Iris. Hand in hand and looking as though they’d been together for always.
Jackanddaisy
, it should be, not Jack and Iris.

‘Hello.’ Irritated, Daisy realised she must be looking her frumpiest, in her old jeans and fleece, still smeared with pig shit from the celebrated ‘bacon sarnie’ shoot she’d done last week. Belatedly, she wished she’d thrown it in the machine before pulling it on again. She sneaked a glance at Iris. What did Jack see in her? He couldn’t admire her for her looks, surely.? Her lank mousey hair was badly cut and much in need of a wash, her round face was devoid of any particularly pleasing feature, but she was still hand in hand with Jack. It wasn’t right. That was her place.

One morning a year ago Jack had taken her for a walk by the river and said the words that inevitably presage disaster: ‘We have to talk, Daisy.’

No we don’t. We don’t have to talk, Jack. You just have to look after me, for ever and ever.

He’d found someone else. Someone who, apparently, was more organised than she was, less dependent. Jack hated her messiness, apparently. Not that he’d ever told her that before. Not that he’d ever given her the chance to change.

‘Been working?’ Jack gestured at the camera. He was looking drop dead gorgeous, wearing a cord cap she’d given him for Christmas, the year before last. The blonde tendrils of his hair drifted out from the bottom of the cap and wound themselves endearingly round his neck. Daisy’s heart twisted as she remembered that Christmas. They’d been happy then. Jack had still been taking care of her and Iris smugsy Swithinbank had been minding her own business.

She nodded and forced a smile. ‘Yup. Rugby.’

Jack laughed. ‘Poor Daisy,’ he said. He knew she wasn’t interested in the sport.

‘I don’t mind. I like it,’ Daisy protested, defending her career, not wanting him to feel sorry for her. She felt like saying ‘Better than sitting counting money all day,’ but managed to restrain herself. The effect of counting money all day was manifest in the spread of Iris’s large bottom, she thought with a thread of maliciousness. Then, thinking of her own battle of the bulge and acknowledging that her own backside could benefit from a little toning, she determined to find time to go to the gym, soon.

‘Who won?’ It was Iris this time.

Daisy avoided meeting her eyes and shrugged, still looking at Jack. ‘The Saints, I’m sorry to say. Listen, I must go.’
Don’t let me go, Jack. Tell me to stay
. Daisy’s hand stole into her pocket. TT was there at the ready. She felt his nose nuzzling against her pinkie then saw that Jack had noticed the gesture and drew her hand out hastily. He knew her too well – and her attachment to her menagerie was one of the many things he’d called ‘childish’.

‘Yeah. So must we.’ Iris was smiling up at Jack, her plain face shining with adoration. ‘We’ve still got to get eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.’

Why couldn’t Jack have put his money in a building society? Recognising the cashier at his local bank one evening at his Introduction to Cookery class, they’d apparently got talking and something about Iris’s way with a whisk had obviously appealed to him. For the thousandth time, Daisy cursed herself – she had been the one to suggest that Jack learned to cook. Why the hell couldn’t she have suggested an art class, or French lessons, or Bridge for Beginners?

‘Bye,’ she said, making her voice sound casual.

She watched for a minute as they made their way down the High Street, past the pastel-painted houses, the laundry, the Chinese take-away, the Post Office, into the butcher’s. Sometimes the prettiness of Hailesbank irritated Daisy beyond measure. It looked cosy, orderly, perfect – but when your heart is broken other people’s cosiness and orderliness can be infuriating. She yearned for the dismal stone and ragged broken harling more typical of other Scottish villages – miserable, out of sorts, dour.

Turning, she walked the last few yards to the
Herald
office and punched in the code for the door. The office was empty, but she was used to that. She was often in here alone. As she booted up her computer, it occurred to her that she might like to work with Ben Gillies. He was still, after all, the same Ben she’d watched
Dirty Dancing
with when their parents were out, sharing a Hawaiian pizza and fighting over the pineapple, sneaking vodka from the booze cupboard and topping it up with water so that no one would notice.

The rugby pictures were safely uploaded. She shoved her camera back in its case and picked up her bags. On the whole, she was glad Ben was back – but there was something in Jack’s eyes when he looked at her …

He still cared, he definitely did.

Ben Gillies slipped from her mind as she started plotting, yet again, about how she could win back Jack Hedderwick’s love.

Chapter Seven

Sir Cosmo Fleming abandoned his Volvo estate about two yards from the pavement outside the
Herald
offices, stuck his mother’s disabled sticker in the window, reached across to the passenger seat for the envelope containing his horoscopes, and opened the door. There was an angry shout and a cyclist, clad in skin-tight Lycra shorts and fluorescent jacket, swerved and shot past, missing the door by a fraction of an inch.

‘Oh. Sorry!’ Cosmo waved a tweed-clad arm at the youth apologetically and was rewarded with a torrent of abuse, which mercifully faded into the distance as the cyclist resumed his frenetic pace. Perhaps he’d thought about stopping for a confrontation, but he could not have failed to hear the chorus of barking from the back of the estate car. Three dogs can make a sensational amount of noise and Leo, Airey, and Gem, his cosmicly-named Labradors, were upset. They could see that their master was going to leave them in the car, and black Labs, bred for the countryside, don’t take kindly to confinement. They had not yet had the long riverside walk they were expecting.

Across the road Kath Gillies and Janet Irvine were about to go into Nuggets, the local café-cum-gift shop. They stopped on the threshold, their attention attracted by the commotion, and stared at him.

‘He’s away in another world half the time, that man,’ Janet said, shaking her head in despair.

‘Can you blame him?’ said Kath, ‘with a mother like that to handle?’

‘He needs a wife,’ said Janet.

‘He’s not the only one,’ said Kath wrinkling her nose and trying not to look at Janet. She might have her ideas, but it was too early to talk about them.

‘Indeed,’ Janet mused thoughtfully. ‘Coffee?’

Oblivious, Cosmo Fleming made his way into
The
Hailesbank Herald
offices.

‘Hello Ma,’ he greeted Ruby cheerfully, ‘bearing up?’

‘Oh well, you know,’ Ma Spence winced, then looked brave. She was still the face of the
Herald
and now that Angus was gone, she believed it was up to her to defend the paper and its place at the heart of the community. ‘You?’

Cosmo, leaning on the counter in the pokey front office, glanced at the display board where a selection of photographs from the week’s paper was always pinned up. Today, of course, the funeral of the
Herald
’s esteemed editor was predominant, with a portrait of Angus MacMorrow, taken by some chief photographer at least forty years ago, right at the centre.

‘That wasn’t taken yesterday,’ Cosmo observed.

If he’d been looking at Ma he might have observed the tiniest stiffening, a slight intake of breath, a pursing of lips – all the signs of indignation. But even if he had been, Cosmo might not have noticed these signs. Stars he was good with. Dogs he adored. Women … well, it wasn’t that he didn’t like women; actually he admired many women enormously. One in particular, though he was too shy to admit it. It was just that he hadn’t had a lot of experience with women – which might have been the fault of the Dowager Lady Fleming, who gathered her son’s attention jealously to herself – or it might have been down to Cosmo’s deep shyness. At any rate, he didn’t notice Ma’s indignation and prattled on regardless.

‘Fine looking man in those days, wasn’t he?’

Ma said, ‘He was always fine looking.’

Even Cosmo noticed her tone and though he was not a man for gossip, some memory deep inside him stirred – Ma Spence and the Big Boss – the Big Boss and Ma Spence – and he hastily improvised, ‘Highly respected of course, Boss MacMorrow, highly respected.’

Ma softened visibly. ‘You’ve got the usual weekly then, Sir Cosmo? Anything exciting in store for us?’

Cosmo couldn’t remember what he’d written for Sagittarius, but as he always tried to get something tantalising for every star sign, in order to keep people reading, he wracked his brains and was about to declare ‘Venus rising, Ma,’ when he realised the timing would not be good. Instead he reached for the vague, ‘Conjunction of the planets at the cusp, good sign, good sign,’ and elicited a small smile.

‘You’ll be wanting to go through I suppose,’ she said, unlocking the small door that separated the public from the staff at the paper.

‘Thank you, Ma, that’s awfully decent of you,’ said Sir Cosmo, courteous as ever in his well-groomed public school way. He took off his tweed cap and revealed a thick mop of fairish brown hair.

‘Hi Cossers,’ Murdoch Darling, the feature writer cum columnist greeted him genially. ‘Got any Outlook Towers for me?’ ‘Outlook Tower’ was the title given to the news in brief column they usually dropped in on page five, after the main news stories, the page three attraction – usually a fresh-faced teenager model wannabe (no topless girls in
The Hailesbank Herald
of course), and the less prominent local news stories. Outlook Towers were small items worthy of passing mention.

‘Well d’you know,’ Cosmo knitted his brow and thought hard, ‘my mother did tell me … it sounds a bit strange though …’

‘Spill the beans, Cosmo, there’s a darling,’ Sharon Eddy emerged from behind her computer as Cosmo’s already ruddy face seemed to grow ever ruddier. She grinned disarmingly at him and he looked away, flustered. ‘We’re a trifle thin on toothsome gossip and weird miracles at the mo. Disaster’s more the thing, alas.’

‘Well, our cleaning lady, Mrs Parson, told Mater that her daughter has a friend who knows someone in Stoneyford who swears she sees the shadow of Jesus Christ on her bedroom wall when the light is right. Can you make anything of that?’

‘Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ
,’ said a voice behind them, ‘Is that the best this paper can come up with?’

As one, they swivelled round and stared at the newcomer. Tall, thirty-something, he had jet black hair, male model looks with eyelashes that swept on for ever above piercing blue eyes, and a chin with a pronounced cleft, adding sharpness, symmetry, and focus to something that already approached perfection. Beautifully cut denim jeans, well-polished brown leather loafers, an open-necked crisp white cotton shirt and a navy jacket that was clearly expensive completed a look that might have marched straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine.

There was silence, as the presence of this idol registered.

‘My name’s Jay Bond,’ said the man, his voice attractively throaty, ‘and I’m your new editor.’

The silence was so profound for some moments that they could almost have been in a nuclear bunker, post holocaust.

Jay, apparently oblivious to the impact he had made on his new team, scanned the office. What he saw clearly didn’t impress him. ‘Jeez, what a hole. When was the last time this place had a coat of paint?’

They all looked around, taking in their daily working environment for the first time. They were in the main office. Once it had been the drawing room in what would have been a rather grand Victorian house. Above them, there remained an elaborate central ceiling rose, though there was a ragged black hole where once a chandelier might have hung. Instead, fluorescent lights had been suspended at intervals along the ceiling to illuminate the room more evenly. The light they emitted was harsh and unattractive. The cornice work matched the design of the rose. Leaves wound round each other and supported small flowers – lilies? – in what might have been a pleasing design had the paint not been so grimy. Years of cigarette smoking by generations of reporters and subs had left the once white paint a disagreeable yellow. Their desks looked as though they’d come from a salvage yard, the carpet was threadbare to the point of being dangerous. Only the computers on each desk indicated that the room had a place in the twenty-first century, and even the computers looked as if they might be steam driven.

Daisy saw it as if for the first time. It had always been, quite simply, the
Herald
office. It wasn’t the environment that mattered, it was what happened in here. What mattered was the way they worked as a team, how they reported the news, supported the community, told stories of suffering, of anger, of heroism, or good fortune, or despair. This was simply where, week after week, they produced the miracle of a newspaper.

The room was undoubtedly scruffy, but Daisy couldn’t help herself. Not normally courageous, she felt compelled to defend it. ‘We’re always so busy,’ she started, ‘No one’s ever noticed.’

Jay Bond turned his blue-eyed gaze in her direction. Why had she opened her mouth? Cursing her stupidity, she was prepared to quail. Instead, unexpectedly, Jay smiled, and she wished she had the nerve to reach for her camera. Who could not want to photograph Jay Bond, Editor? He was, quite simply, idol-icious. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps it’s not our first priority –’

Most women would have melted under the full heat of that smile. He was accustomed to that, it was obvious, but for some reason, Daisy resisted his charm. Years behind a camera lens had taught her to read nuances of expression.

‘ – and you are…?’ His eyes lit up the room, but Daisy saw disdain there, mixed with something else. Arrogance? Condescension? Boredom? They were unattractive traits, and she’d seen them all before he’d switched his mood. Or was it merely defensiveness? At any rate, her guard went up. This man had power over her future – over all their futures.

‘Daisy Irvine,’ she said as confidently as she could. ‘Photographer.’

Sharon Eddy, bubbly and blonde, but by no means dumb, had been uncharacteristically quiet. Now she uncrossed her long legs and stood, tossing her hair back from her face to reveal her high cheekbones and wickedly curvaceous mouth. Daisy realised with a wild feeling of hilarity that the man-hungry reporter was making the first pitch for the newcomer. Ben Gillies, her prey just a few days ago, had already been supplanted by a bigger and better quarry. ‘Welcome to
The Herald
, Mr Bond. I’m Sharon Eddy, chief reporter. Perhaps I can introduce you to everyone?’

And then the phones began to ring, the tableau unfroze, and the deadlines that govern every small newspaper office became pressing. Cosmo Fleming, muttering something about ‘Mother, urgent, must dash, sorry,’ cast a faintly harrowed glance in Sharon’s direction and edged towards the door. Murdoch grunted, ‘… dog poo … devilish stuff … up in arms …’ and swung back to his screen. And Daisy realised that she was due at a photo shoot in the High Street, where the local butcher was finally being forced to close his shop, a victim of the credit crunch and the new supermarket on the outskirts of Hailesbank. Jay Bond, in all his glory, would have to take a back seat while she figured out how to frame a photograph that told the shop closure story without being too grisly. New editor or not, the day had to go on.

As she grabbed her camera gear and headed for the door with Dishy Dave, who was down to interview the butcher, it occurred to Daisy that redecoration was the last job on the list of priorities for the small staff at

. But their new editor would be aware of that, surely?