Paddy felt a pang of anger at Vhari Burnett for retreating back into the living room, slipping out of the mirror, instead of pushing past the man at the door and walking away to freedom. It was the same anger she felt toward Caroline for staying, a bewildered furious jag, as if by passing up the chance to leave they were letting other women down, making men think it was all right to beat them.
Paddy took another sip of coffee and battered out the paragraph, rereading it to see if the facts were as jarring as she expected. A woman covered in blood and everyone had left. Actually, depressingly, it read perfectly well.
II
Shug Grant was watching Paddy across the table, pulling on his leather jacket. He was flanked by Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, a couple of sideliners who always hung around newsroom bullies, sniggering at their jokes. All three were ready, jacketed, and going for a drink, she could tell by the excitement in their eyes and the fingers jingling loose change in their pockets.
“You, Meehan, what fucking use are you?” Shug drawled at her. “One para of copy for four nights in calls car? What, are ye driving round and round George Square with your eyes shut?”
Paddy shrugged, feigning a good nature and letting it go. “If it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen.”
“You want to start making yourself useful, woman.” He licked his lips, pausing before the delivery of a cherished killer line: “At least bend over and give us somewhere to put our pens.”
They sniggered at her, three malevolent sets of bared teeth, breath choked out of their throats in little forced puffs.
Paddy rose to her feet as the skin on her neck prickled, her lips curled into her teeth. “The phrase is overworked, Shug. Been up all night practicing that line, have ye?”
– Dum and -Dee shifted away when they saw the muscles on Shug’s face tighten. He could see that Paddy was livid, mad with tiredness, and had lost her sense of proportion.
“Did ye lie awake last night, Shug, staring down at your fat, ugly wife in the dark, wondering why your kids grew up to hate ye?” She was going at it too hard, hitting too low, but the fury warmed her. “And ye don’t have the guts to leave her or kill her so ye think, What I’ll do is, I’ll go into work and pick on someone to make myself feel big.” She needed to calm down. The three men across the table were beyond uncomfortable, Tweedle-Dee stepped sideways out of the group and Tweedle-Dum was trying to shift behind Grant’s shoulder. But she couldn’t stop herself. “Lying awake in the dark, hoping to glean a last shred of self-respect from the good regard of your peer group. Look at your peer group, Shug, -Dum and – Dee. That’s your audience.”
As if from nowhere, George McVie appeared at her side. “Enough now,” he muttered.
But she kept talking. “You’re a menopausal cliché. Margaret Mary said you’re impotent.”
She heard a gasp from the sports desk behind her. Margaret Mary was a time-faded redhead who hung about the Press Bar and over the years had woken up next to almost every man in the office. She was famously indiscreet but most morsels of information weren’t passed on because every faction in the office had one member of the Margaret Mary club to protect.
McVie took Paddy’s arm and guided her out from behind the chair to a corner. “Shut it, you stupid cow.”
– Dum and -Dee shuffled out of the door to the newsroom. Shug Grant had more balls about him and lingered, complaining about his treatment to one of the photographers.
“Don’t act as petty and vicious as them.”
Despite it being the end of his shift McVie was wearing ironed clothes and a smart pair of shiny trousers. His clothes were always clean nowadays, in sharp contrast to his crumpled hangdog face. Some of the outfits he wore veered close to fashionable: he had a gray leather bomber jacket that he sometimes wore with matching gray loafers with toggles. A few weeks ago he had been seen in the town carrying flowers.
He was going through something of a personal renaissance. Having languished on Paddy’s calls car shift for years he had finally found a story that got him moved. The death of a nineteen-year-old boy from heroin shocked the city and McVie had interviewed his mother before anyone else. He was so sympathetic that she allowed the Daily News to photograph her dying boy in the hospital, as a lesson to other young people. McVie was now the drugs correspondent, a position that was becoming big news as cheap and plentiful class-A drugs, once the preserve of glamorous pop stars and Americans, flooded into Glasgow. “You went too far there.”
“Sorry. I’m tired. I just asked Farquarson for a move and he touched my elbow. It kind of threw me. “
McVie looked surprised. “Did he say anything?”
“‘Keep going, kiddo,’ something like that.”
“See,” he said, nodding seriously, “sales took another drop, the board are looking for people to lay off, and you’re not handing in. There’s only so much he can do.”
Everyone was nervous. Print workers no longer took constant tea breaks or called for strikes at the first sign of a dispute. The board and their new chairman were trying to make cuts and increase the slow decline in sales with promotional giveaways and competitions and constant demands to Farquarson to drop the highbrow nature of the paper and give them a sex scandal every so often. The chairman, nicknamed King Egg, had made his money in chickens before moving into publishing. He bought a couple of magazines first and discovered a flair for interfering. Having bought the Scottish Daily News he was holding her close, peering over her shoulder to the south of England, cutting his teeth on a Scottish paper before he moved on to a national.
Paddy tried to think of something positive to say. “Billy’s boy got a tryout for the Jags junior team next week.”
McVie and Billy had worked together for three years. They stopped talking after the first few months but over the years their genuine loathing had mellowed into a pantomime. Paddy knew they missed each other and passed on information each way without making them ask for it.
McVie’s face said he was impressed by Billy’s boy. “The Jags are shite.”
“Aye.” Paddy didn’t want to get trapped in a football conversation. “I heard you were seen with flowers in the town.”
“So?” McVie looked suspicious, tilting his head back and looking down his nose at her. “Who told you that?”
She did it back. “Have you got a girlfriend?”
They had a momentary standoff: she tried to read his face and he kept it blank, flaring his nostrils at the deception. She burst into a wonky smile and McVie got to “ha” in her face. His breath smelled of an expensive, slightly flowery breath freshener.
Suddenly, gracelessly, JT slithered between them, staring at Paddy though his face was inches from hers, his eyes bright and shiny. “All right, Paddy? How are you?”
JT hadn’t managed a career as chief news reporter by being gracious or having manners. He was drawn to good stories, had an astute nose on him. Only last week he’d won the news journalist of the year award at an annual industry celebration that Paddy wasn’t invited to. He never did anyone a favor if he could possibly get out of it. She had once seen him sit at a crowded table and eat an entire packet of Polo mints without offering one of them.