The expression on Gavin’s face remained one of unalloyed doubt. “Imagining.”
“If we were married, or she was, like, my cousin or something, then that would make it, you know, nepotism, whichI agree is bad, but not as bad as just pimping myself out for access.”
“I worry that’s a low bar, speaking in pure journalistic standards terms.”
It was. And invested as Audrey might have been in the story, and as convinced as she might have been that there were elements to it that were still worth telling, she wasn’t quite sure she wanted “technically not much worse than nepotism” to be her professionallegacy. So she quietly agreed that on the whole yes, that was a low bar, and yes, it probably was for the best she drop the whole thing.
She was just about to leave when Gavin looked up at her, readjusted his glasses, and said, “Audrey, I don’t mean to pry but…are you happy here?”
There were certain people in your life that you didn’t want to ask you if you were happy. Like your partner or your boss. Or your gynaecologist.
“Mostly,” said Audrey, realising with a nanosecond’s hindsight thatmostlywasn’t the answer a model employee would give.
Gavin motioned for her to sit, and she sat.
“When you started working with us,” Gavin began, “I had my concerns that even with your Shropshire roots, a city big shot like yourself might chafe a little at the limitations of local journalism.”
“I wasn’t really a big shot,” demurred Audrey. “Just a pretty run-of-the-mill hack.”
Gavin’s glasses seemed to be troubling him again. “This is theShropshire Echo—you don’t have to be very big around here to be a big shot. And this…this story you keep wanting to do. Well, it makes me worry you’re not satisfied.”
“I don’t think it’s that.” It was at least a little bit that. “I just—I think I wish I was writing more about people and less about parking.”
Gavin frowned. “Audrey, you know how I feel about gratuitous alliteration.”
“Sorry.”
Resting his chin on his hands, Gavin gave her a sympathetic look. “I do understand. It may shock you to realise this, but very few of us are passionate about covering tailbacks on the A5. And your ghost barge piece really had something.”
“Thank you,” replied Audrey, partly from instinct but partlyout of genuine pride. Gavin, for all his faults, was short and sincere with praise, and if he said an article was good, it was because it was good.
“I’ll try to give you your head a bit more,” Gavin offered. “And see if we can’t steer you towards stories with a bit more”—he waved a hand—“story. You’re a fine journalist, Audrey, and I’d like to keep you.”
Audrey hadn’t felt she’d been sending un-keepy signals. Then again, she hadn’t felt she was sending are-you-happy-here signals either, and apparently she had been. That was what happened when you went on TV. It brought things up that you didn’t want brought up and made you think about things you were supposed to have stopped thinking about. Which unfortunately didn’t leave her much clearer about what to say to Gavin. Because “Don’t worry, I intend to work here until I die” was patently disingenuous. Whereas “Actually, you’re right, I’m bored shitless” was just ungrateful.
Eventually she settled on “Thanks” and “Sorry I’ve been a bit off recently” before slinking back to her desk.
Where she sat, doggedly trying to focus on the Bagley Brook trolley story with limited success. Well, no success. And that made her feel even worse.
Good job, Aur, said Natalie.
Maybe if she just—
Quickly.
To get it out of her system.
Slyly, she alt-tabbed away the trolley copy—“We’re at a nexus,” says disgruntled local—and opened another window.
Her working theory-slash-excuse was that maybe,maybethe reason this whole Doris-Emily-War-Domestic-Service-Sapphic-Romance narrative had got so firmly stuck in her head was thatshe didn’t know how it ended. Her whole life Audrey had been a sucker for a serial and finding out how the story went bit by bit as Doris felt ready to talk about it was getting flatly torturous. And after all, what was the point of being an investigative journalist if you couldn’t journalistically investigate, even if it was just for your own interest?
So she investigated.
Twenty minutes later, Audrey had a notebook full of leads on the mysterious Emily Branningham. Or at least on possible Emily Branninghams. Two were far too young and one was dead but—and Audrey felt strangely relieved about this—also the wrong age and from the wrong part of the country.
One, though, was more promising. Not just more promising, but definitely the right woman. She showed up in two honest-to-god newspaper articles from the 1960s and 1970s, one of which had included pictures.
This Emily was older by some ten or twenty years than when Doris had last spoken of her, and the stories hadn’t focused on detailed physical description, but there was something somehow unmistakable about her. A no-fucks-given energy that had spoken to a secret part of Doris more than seventy years ago and spoke to a secret part of Audrey today.
