For a second, I don’t know what to do with that. I expected resistance. Defensiveness. Some careful explanation about public interest and editorial balance and how everyone is very sorry I had feelings in the vicinity of a byline.
I didn’t expect agreement.
I grip the strap of my bag a little tighter. “Right.”
“She apologised.”
That gets me.
I try very hard not to show it, but Josh has known me long enough to spot the places where I go still. Not psychic. Just experienced, unfortunately.
“She apologised,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“For the article?”
“For letting the framing through.”
I look away, towards the little noticeboard on his wall. Training dates. Leave requests. A reminder about incidentreporting. Completely normal things that suddenly feel easier to look at than his face.
It should feel satisfying.
It doesn’t.
Being proved right is overrated when the thing you’re right about has already happened. The article exists. People read it. People made whatever little comments they were going to make and then went on with their day, while I spent mine carrying the weight of being reduced to the first woman again.
I look back at him. “What are they doing about it?”
“They don’t think a retraction is the best route.”
I laugh once. “Of course they don’t.”
Josh holds up a hand. “Before you bite my head off, I agree with them.”
I stare at him. “Interesting choice of last words.”
He ignores that with the ease of a man who has managed firefighters for years and therefore developed a high tolerance for verbal threats. “A retraction makes the whole thing bigger in the wrong way. It makes us look defensive, sends people back to the original piece, and gives everyone another excuse to argue about what they think you should have done from the safety of their sofas.”
I hate that this is reasonable.
I hate it immediately.
“So what?” I ask. “They leave it there and we all pretend the comments section hasn’t become a village hall meeting with worse grammar?”
“No. The editor had another suggestion.”
“What suggestion?”
Josh folds his hands on the desk. “They want to write a longer feature on the station.”
That is not terrible. Annoying, maybe. Inconvenient, definitely. But not terrible.
“About the work. The training. Incident command. The difference between public perception and operational decision-making,” he adds.
Not terrible at all.
“And,” he says, “about you as Watch Manager. In a neutral way. Your skills, your experience, your role here. Not your gender.”
