Feeling slightly low, she went for lunch and when she got back, she found him—him is Fraser—sitting in the staff cloakroom.
‘I know I shouldn’t be in here,’ he said.
‘That’s okay.’
‘It’s just,’ he went on, ‘if I’m in here, I’ll get a different shot from the others.’
‘Okay,’ she said. She was staring at him. Her heart was walloping again.
‘They’re all going to have the same shot,’ Fraser said.
‘Yes.’
‘If I’m in here, I’ll get something different.’
Yes, you just said that, she thought.
She hoped all this stuff about shots was just a silly excuse to come and see her. However, he was now saying that if his unique shot was somehow superior to their set of very similar shots, his would be the one all the papers would take.
‘I understand,’ she said shortly. She wished he would stop talking about it.
He smiled.
Then she said, ‘What if she gets smuggled out through the kitchens or something?’
‘Oh, she probably will be smuggled out through the kitchens,’ he said.
‘She will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why are you all here, in the lobby?’
‘We’re not,’ he said. ‘There are—what? — five of us here? We’re the awkward squad. We’re taking a punt. We’re hoping she’ll try to wrong-foot the pack by just walking straight out through the lobby.’
‘The pack?’
‘Most of the others are outside.’ He smiled. ‘You think I’m making this up, don’t you? Have a look then. Do you want to have a look? Let’s have a look.’
It felt strange to be walking somewhere with him, to be out in the wind and traffic of Park Lane. Turning into the street at the side of the hotel, they passed the sombre entrance of the ‘State Rooms’, and further on some of her fellow employees smoking in a sticky doorway. They traversed the moaning out-vents of the heating system, and a vast expanse of steel shutter. Then they turned into Park Street, and saw several dozen photographers— a hedgehog of telephoto lenses on the pavement opposite the service entrance, marshalled by a lone, tired-looking policeman.
She laughed with surprise.
He made her laugh with stories of the exploits of sweatily desperate paps. He told her the story of a friend of his, Ed O’Keefe, who used to work for a national tabloid and was sent by his editor to doorstep Ian Hislop in the village where he lived. He was told to get a shot of Hislop laughing to illustrate a piece on a natural disaster. He arrived in the village on Friday afternoon. There was no sign of Hislop. Nor was there any sign of him on Saturday. Finally, on Sunday morning, he emerged. He was on his way to church and he said, ‘Who the fuck are you? What do you want?’ Ed O’Keefe explained that he just needed a shot of him smiling. Hislop told him to fuck off, and went on his way. For the next week, Hislop wouldn’t stop scowling, and finally poor Ed—unwashed, unshaved, and sore from sleeping in his car—headed back to London to face the wrath of his editor. Then, just as he was leaving, his engine started spewing smoke and exploded, and Hislop, who was watching him leave, exploded wth laughter, and, ignoring the flames, the quick-thinking pap whipped out his Nikon and got the shot.
‘Sangfroid,’ Fraser said. ‘Should’ve been a war photographer.’
She smiled. She looked at the time. It was twenty past eight. She had finished work well over an hour ago, and she was still there, in the institutional light, listening to him.
‘I suppose I should go,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
She didn’t move, though. ‘How long do you stay here? Do you ever go home?’
‘Never,’ he said, smiling.
She looked at him sceptically. ‘Well, I’m going home,’ she said. She stood up and started to put on her coat. He watched her. ‘You can stay here if you want.’
‘If that’s okay.’
‘M-hm.’ She opened the door, letting in noise from the lobby. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’
‘You too. If you do sleep.’
It was hard to say whether the pills were having any effect on her heart. It was still thumping with unwarranted force as she walked to the tube station. She wondered why he still wore his wedding ring if his marriage was over.
The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, someone phoned him on his mobile. Something short and to the point. ‘Yes, okay,’ Fraser said, and hung up. ‘She’s on her way down,’ he said, starting to prepare his equipment.
‘Through the lobby?’
‘Possibly.’
There was nothing unusual happening in the lobby. The other paps—standing in their notional pen near the entrance—did not seem to know that their long days of waiting were almost at an end. When one of the lifts pinged and the doors parted, Fraser moved urgently forward. It was not ‘Jane Green’. The other paps had noticed him, however, and were themselves now starting to prepare. Though life in the lobby went on as normal, the sudden tension of the paps seemed to be spreading to other people. The security guards sensed that something was afoot—they seemed to be moving into position, in fact—while some of the doormen and porters had stopped what they were doing and were trying to see what it was that had unsettled the paps. This in turn had some of the more perceptive members of the public doing the same thing. She stood at the front desk and watched the numbers over the lift doors slowly descend.
When it happened, it happened quickly. Two lifts pinged simultaneously and some people poured out of each. At first this tightly knit dozen merely walked, quickly and with purpose, towards the doors, where two long silver Mercedes had pulled up outside. When the paps fell on them, however, they started to move faster. There was suddenly a lot of shouting. There was pushing and shoving. The paps had scattered from their pen and were everywhere. As soon as the lifts opened, Fraser had sprung forward and was now where the fighting was fiercest. Other paps were walking backwards towards the doors, firing off flashes as they went. And they walked straight into still more paps, arriving at a sprint from their futile vigil in Park Street. These ones too were snapping as soon as they arrived. Voices were shouting Jane Green’s real name. Shouting, ‘Over here! Here!’ Katherine heard one man shout, ‘Oi! You fucking whore!’ (Fraser would later explain, when she mentioned it, that this man had not meant anything nasty—he had simply been trying to get her attention and perhaps provoke some sort of interesting facial expression.) It had turned into a scrum in the vicinity of the doors. As they poured into the lobby, the influx of sweating, panting paps from Park Street was pushing against the security guards and Jane Green’s now furious entourage. There was even a policeman involved. Some hapless members of the public were knocked over as the scrum wheeled to one side. More security guards arrived at speed, sprinting through the lobby in their blue blazers. A pap was knocked over too—his camera, which may have taken a kick, went skittering over the marble. Immediately he was on his feet shouting threats to sue, but by then the entourage had forced its way out, and moments later the two Mercedes were pulling away, even then being pestered by paps on foot, stumbling through the flower beds in front of the hotel, holding their cameras over their heads to fire off a last flickering fusillade as the mopeds appeared from nowhere and tore off into the traffic in loudly nasal pursuit.
Fraser was triumphant. His face was shining with joy. She loved that. She loved the way his face was shining with joy. It made her feel joy herself. Needless to say, her heart was pumping frenziedly. Flushed with victory, having spontaneously picked her up and spun her around—she shrieked, then laughed—he was showing her the shots he had taken. Throughout the whole mad half-minute—or maybe it was even less—she herself had not seen ‘Jane Green’.