“You’re not just shooting this down because it comes from me?”
“Oh, I’m completely shooting this down because it comesfrom you. You. Are. Not. Using. My. Show. To. Boost. Your. Career. Not how it works.”
Audrey was less good at withering expressions than Jennifer Hallet, but she tried one anyway. “You really think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Another moment of Jennifer Hallet not blinking. “Sorry, was that meant to make me have a harsh moment of self-reflection? I’m good at what I do and I know it. And you aren’t, which is why you work at theShropshirefuckingEcho.”
The sad thing is, said Natalie,that’s not even true—you weregood, Really good.“Ilikeworking at theShropshirefuckingEcho,” Audrey replied.And that,Natalie added,is even sadder.
Jennifer gave the kind of incredulous laugh Audrey had once been too used to hearing. “You like writing about carpark fees, closed swimming pools, and rail delays.”
“Yes,” said Audrey, only belatedly realising that those weren’t random topics, they were the specific topics of her last three published articles. “Hang on, are you stalking me?”
“I’m monitoring you. I monitor every one of you fuckers.” Something almost tired had crept into Jennifer’s voice. “I know what you write in your little hack rag, I know what Joshua says to his followers when he Instagrams his breakfast, I know if Meera’s got in a barney at the PTA. That’s myjob.”
“And my job”—Audrey decided a new strategy was in order—“is to look for things that the diminutive, rural people of Shropshire—”
“Don’t be an idiot, you can’t all be diminutive.You’refucking diminutive—don’t go passing it off on the whole county.”
Audrey refused to be distracted. “Is to look for things that people in Shropshire will find interesting. And yes, often thosethings are small. But small things matter. And stories matter. And I think Doris’s story matters, and she should have the chance to tell it, and the fact that you don’t want her to because you think I’m trying to get one over on you is honestly…honestly, it’s petty.”
“Petty?” It wasn’t designed to get a rise, but a rise it got. “I am not fucking petty. I just have an eye for detail and a zero-tolerance policy for time-wasting bullshit.”
Daring, inasmuch as she ever could where Jennifer Hallet was concerned, to hope she was getting somewhere, Audrey decided to press her objectively minimal advantage. “Nobody would be wasting your time. All I want is your permission to talk to another contestant, make some notes, and not publish a single word until I’ve run everything past you and got your go ahead.”
“And if you change your mind and decide to go behind my back?”
Audrey threw her hands up in a gesture of frustrated submission. “Then I guess you—I don’t know, sue my tits off or litigate me until I have an anal prolapse or whatever inappropriate threat you want to make this week.”
There was a slight pause, in which Audrey sincerely hoped Jennifer was thinking about the proposal and not just of mean things to say.
Finally, she sighed. “You are being an unbelievable pain in my urethra.”
“I’d get that looked at. Might be an infection.”
For a moment, Audrey was worried she’d pushed it too far. But Jennifer seemed almost to relax. “You’re going to keep on at this until I say yes, aren’t you?”
It would have been convenient to pretend she was. But Audrey had given up pretending a long time ago. “Honestly? No. If I wasgoing to keep bugging you about anything, it’d be putting Doris in the main hotel.”
Jennifer’s eyes narrowed. “What if I let you do the story and in return youdon’tbug me about that?”
That was…that was an unexpected win. Unless it was a trap. “Are you just trying to prove that I’ll choose my career over an old woman’s health? Because if you are, then I’ll choose the old woman’s health.”
“No, I’m just trying whatever I can to get you off my fucking back.”
“You’re the one that showed up on my doorstep.”
There was a moment’s silence in which Audrey and Jennifer just looked at each other. Audrey tried to pretend it was a moment of mutual respect, but it might just have been a moment of mutual exhaustion.
“How about,” Audrey tried, “you let me do the story, and we’ll accept that moving Doris is a different conversation.”
To Audrey’s surprise, Jennifer Hallet actually laughed. It wasn’t a transformative laugh that lit her face with joy and made Audrey see her in a whole new light. It was one missed invitation to a Christening from being a full-on cackle. “Audrey Lane, you canny little fucker. That is some heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bullshit.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Audrey, who knew exactly what she meant, and normally got away with it.
“You realise”—Jennifer gave a provocative smile—“I could also solve both these problems by kicking you off the show.”
“Ah yes. Because journalists famously stop being annoying when you give up all your leverage.”
