Prologue
Sunny
Becoming one of the least trusted people in Britain doesn’t happen by accident. I worked hard to achieve it. Some days I wonder why I bothered.
I became a journalist to make a difference to the issues I’m passionate about, like fighting poverty, discrimination, and climate vandalism. In reality, since moving from Leicester to London to work on (the now strictly metaphorical) Fleet Street, I’d spent most of my time parked up outside the Beckhams’ house in a cold Vauxhall Astra, waiting for everyone to go to bed so I could sift through their bins looking for “exclusives.” Apparently, they’re what the people want to read. In eighteen months at theBulletin, I’d spent more time standing outside courthouses shouting “Are you a nonce?” at disgraced national treasures than I had shining a spotlight on the absolute scandal of inequality and the intergenerational hardship it causes in communities like the one where I grew up.
When pollsters ask the people of Britain which groups in society they trust the least and thirty per cent say journalists, I get it. And I can just about take that on the chin. But what they don’t tell you when you become one of Britain’s least trusted people, what really hurts, is that it makes you proper undatable.
When you tell a boy you’re a reporter for the country’s most hated tabloid newspaper, they disappear faster than you can say “But I’m a good person, really” or “I would never write that about a member of Girls Aloud, please don’t judge me by the actions of my employer.” The only people who get it, who understand what it’s like being a journalist looking for love, are other journalists. Which is a shame, because if there’s one cast-iron rule in this business, it’s that youneverdate another journalist. After all, how could you possibly trust them?
Chapter1
Sunny
The sun was barely up, and already my piss was boiling. I threw my strictly-work-purposes-only tablet onto the bed in disgust. It landed right side up, lighting my bedroom in a soft white glow. The picture of my own stupid face shone brightly up at me from my photo byline in the morning’s paper, mocking me. “Sunny Miller, Political Reporter.” I smacked a pillow over it so I didn’t have to stare at the comedy headline the subeditors had put on what had been, when I filed it the night before, a very serious article about the government funding programmes to “save the British countryside.” I mean, it was mostly about otters, and who doesn’t bloody love otters? “WOTTA LOTTA OTTER NONSENSE,” the headline screamed from the page.
This wasn’t the first time theBulletinsubs had done a job on my attempts at serious journalism. My investigation into the desperate underfunding of Britain’s road network was given the headline “Pothole celebrates second birthday.” They even published a photo of it with a celebratory cake. My story highlighting the scandalous treatment of peaceful protestors by the Metropolitan Police was published as “Let them eat meat: Police run out of vegan meals after arresting 145 Just Stop Oil libtards.” It didn’t matter how serious the story was, theBulletinturned it into a joke. It was infuriating and soul-destroying.
A screech of air brakes pierced the air. A bus had pulled into the stop beneath my bedroom window, and the idling engine rattled the cracked pane of single glazing. My phone pinged. I didn’t need to check the message. It was Dav telling me he was waiting downstairs. I opened the curtain. Golden early morning sunlight flooded into my room. A few passengers were climbing on board the 260 to White City, bundled up in their puffer jackets against the chilly April air. Dav was jogging up and down on the spot in his blue tracksuit, mist billowing from his mouth, like a turbaned Thomas the Tank Engine. He waved. I threw on my sweats and my trainers, shoved my house key in my pocket, and dashed down the stairs.
“You’ve got a face like Gordon Ramsay licking piss off a nettle,” Dav said.
We bumped fists, and as we set off along our usual route towards Gladstone Park, I told him about the latest comedy headline.
“The worst bit was the strapline: ‘They squat on public land and build illegal dams, and now they’re getting fat on the taxpayer’s purse.’”
Dav’s cautious side-eye suggested I’d lost him.
“Otters don’t build dams. Beavers build dams.”
“Gotcha.”
“So now, thanks to some bellend subeditor who’s somehow never been forced to sit through an episode ofSpringwatch, not only is Britain’s wildlife-loving public going to think I am an idiot, but Jemima Carstairs is never going to trust me with an exclusive again.”
Another cautious side-eye. I rolled my eyes.
“She’s the environment secretary.”
“Gotcha.”
Dav’s a music journalist for a slowly failing street magazine. He’s proper smart, but about things like the feud between Robert Smith and Morrissey and remembering which Gallagher is the douchebag, not politics. Dav and I grew up together. He’d been my best mate since year three, when Mrs Yates sat the (probably queer) new brown kid next to the (definitely queer) unpopular ginger kid, so the class bullies would have all their targets conveniently located in one place. We quickly became thick as thieves, bonding over our mutual love ofHigh School Musical.I spent the next decade swapping my free school meal for the delicious and exotic contents of Dav’s lovingly prepared lunchbox. We studied journalism together at Leeds; then Dav and his ludicrously perfect boyfriend, Nick, moved down to London while I went back to Leicester to spend two years at the local rag—writing about People’s Postcode Lottery winners and barn fires—before eventually landing a job on Fleet Street and joining him in London.
Dav patiently listened to me moan as we jogged along the quiet terraced streets of Willesden Green and through the Churchill Road underpass.
“I should quit,” I said, with sudden clarity.
Dav’s eyebrows arched like the Maccy D’s logo.
“It took you two years to get a job on Fleet Street, and you’re gonna pack it in because the subs like a joke? Get a grip, mate.”
“I’m embarrassed to work there.”
“You knew what theBulletinwas like. You knew what you were getting into.”
This was true. But I’d only taken the job to get my foot in the door at a national paper. The plan was to work hard, break real news, and hope someone at one of the more respectable broadsheets might notice and give me a shot. Or, if not a broadsheet, at least a paper that not only didn’t publish a pair of bare tits on page three but also didn’t respond to the criticism of its publishing bare tits on page three by publishing a pair of bare bollocks on page five. How was anyone going to notice my “real news” when it was always turned into puns and parody?
“I’m not sure how much longer I can put up with it,” I said.
