Chapter 4 #3
‘OK, whooping cough. Obviously, we’re going to be all over that like a rash.
I’m hearing that the children had been vaccinated.
But we need to be careful. We do not want to cause any kind of vaccination panic, so we need to find out the facts and report responsibly.
’ She had a large database to tap on the subject of vaccinations: scientists, doctors and ordinary parents.
‘Aidan, I want you to stick like glue to the government side of this,’ she instructed him, ‘I want to know everything they know about the outbreak, every line they’re giving us.
Dominique, you need to find out all you can about the infected children, where they are, how they were exposed, how they’re doing.
The other suggestions,’ she glanced through the scribbled list of ideas again: ‘there’s a few things here we’ll follow up.
But I’ll let you know what grabs them at conference. ’
‘D’you want me to chase the Savannah Tyler interview? I’ve got a bit of an in with the Green Party,’ said Aidan. No, she did not want him chasing the talk she’d been sweating to get herself!
‘We would love to do Savannah,’ she heard herself telling him in a calm and friendly way.
‘I’m pressing the official buttons very hard.
If you can tactfully explore other avenues to strengthen our case, without irritating or putting anyone off, then you’re welcome.
But you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to irritate Tony Jarvis, OK?
He’s very important to us. Right, I have to speak to Jeff—’ she glanced at her watch ‘— about five minutes ago.’
Her desk phone sprang to life again.
‘Someone get that, take a message.’
She turned and walked off to the sound of Dominique saying in a totally syrupy and ingratiating way: ‘Oh, hi, Tony, no, I’m afraid she’s just gone into conference.
Can I help at all?’ which is not the same as ‘can I take a message?’ is it?
No, it’s journo speak for ‘If you’ve got a story, tell me, so I can pinch it right off my department head’s desk. ’
Anyway, first brief Jeff… then conference.
Spikey, real name Paul Skinner, was not nicknamed Spikey because he was prickly, although he was, nor because he frequently ‘spiked’ ideas, ditching them at the last possible moment and causing reporters to flurry around in desperate search of replacement exclusives, although he did that too.
He’d earned the nickname because of his rumoured fondness for spiking his endless supply of coffees with all manner of mood-enhancers.
He had a little metal box of alleged sweeteners that he click-clicked into his drinks with alarming regularity.
He was constantly sniffing and numerous people were willing to testify in the pub to having walked in on him unexpectedly to find him dusting powder off his desk or putting little envelopes hurriedly back into drawers.
His drugs may well have been legal. He was probably taking Prozac, beta blockers, Valium even.
Jo knew she would have to if she had his job.
But the rumours continued to flourish. And to be honest, his random moods, tantrums and ideas were like those of a man in the grip of a drug addiction.
It made perfect sense. It also made perfect sense for one of the country’s best-selling Sunday newspapers to be run by a drug addict.
He was needy, unpredictable, obsessive, moody, paranoid, demanded impossibly high standards, had few loyalties, was out to get everybody equally. So, he made a great editor.
She understood editors and news editors so much better since she’d had children. They were like big toddlers; they wanted what someone else had now! They would scream and scream until they got it and once you gave it to them, they didn’t want it any more.
So, you had to stand firm. Maintain clear boundaries. Tell them what they could have, when, and not let them down. You never, ever made promises you couldn’t keep. And just occasionally, you could reward them with a lovely surprise.
So here they were, once again, the editor, his department heads and several senior reporters together on a Tuesday morning, to spend a little time reviewing last week’s cock-ups, but mainly to turn over a fresh new leaf and talk about how fabulous this week’s edition was going to be.
Of course, by Saturday’s conference, the list of explanations, compromises and lost opportunities would be long and frustrating and Spikey’s temper would be frayed.
But this was Tuesday. Nothing but clear skies ahead. Yeah, clear skies and a bitter Oxford by-election campaign.
When it was her turn to present her ideas for the week, Jo went through whooping cough in depth and then the wind farm idea. Aidan and Dominique would be good at that. The ‘How Green are the Royals’ idea was also floated.
Everyone listened, but she’d barely finished before Spikey wanted to know how it was ‘progressing’ on the Savannah front.
‘If she’s going to do a talk, she’s going with us. But at the moment, she’s determined not to do a personal profile piece. Says it detracts from her message.’ Loud guffaws from the eight men in the room at this. Smiles from the two other women.
You could understand Savannah’s point. She was fighting for election in Oxford next week.
And according to the pollsters, she was on course to become Britain’s first Green Party MP.
Unfortunately for Savannah, she wasn’t just a committed environmentalist with a serious scientific research background, someone who’d made regular research trips to the Arctic, someone who’d re-energised a woolly political party and was on the brink of making history and getting herself into Westminster, she was also thirty-something, single, female, and, perhaps worst of all, unusually attractive.
To say that newspaper editors were falling over themselves to get ‘up close and personal’ with this new politician-to-be was an understatement.
But Savannah, unlike any other politician on the face of the earth, was shy of the press.
She was willing to do TV interviews about policy matters, she was willing to take part in television and radio debates and she’d written several guest articles about her areas of concern.
But at the slightest whiff of a personal question, she was off.
‘I was not invited here to talk about myself,’ she could say in a particularly chilly way, making it clear that one more question would cause her to unhook her microphone and vanish, as had already happened on one telly breakfast show.
There were numerous journalists digging about, trying to do ‘backgrounders’ on her. But as yet, nothing had come to light. The Green Party had closed ranks; her friends, the few that had been unearthed, did likewise.
Although Savannah was English, she’d been born and educated abroad, so there was no birth certificate, no childhood pals or college lovers to track down and no one had even found out where her family lived.
‘She’s very serious,’ Tony Jarvis, the Green Party press officer, had warned Jo. ‘This is not about her, not about some big ego trip. This is about the planet.’
‘But doesn’t she know how many extra votes she’ll pick up by revealing her true self to the voters?’ Jo had countered. ‘I think she’s wonderful. I wish every politician was like her, stuffed with integrity and excellent intentions. I need to tell the country about her.’
‘So do,’ Tony had replied. ‘We’ve got info on all the stuff she supports, all the policies she wants to see introduced—’
‘Tony, that’s not what I mean.’
Yet another conversation leading nowhere.
‘Is it about time to send you up there?’ Spikey asked Jo now, his short hair on end. ‘You know, go knock on her door, get whatever you can. Or do we still have any faith in negotiations? I don’t need to tell you that Jason would like Politics to be all over her and Vince wants News to take over.’
No, he did not need to tell her. It didn’t matter what story she was covering, both the political editor, Jason Caruth, and chief reporter, Vince Maguire, thought they could do it better.
‘Give me two days. Then yes, I agree’ – although she totally did not – ‘we’ll have to go and face her up.
’ She already knew what the outcome of that was going to be.
A slammed door in her face and many good stories from Tony Jarvis no longer coming her way.
‘We’ll have someone on standby in Oxford on Saturday, unless we hear otherwise,’ Vince said, making a big show of writing himself a note about it.
He looked even paler, puffier and sweatier than usual this morning, must have had a late night ‘meeting contacts’ yesterday.
He ran his fingers over his buzz cut and she wished he would take off his dark tweed jacket because the sheen on his podgy face was just creepy.
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Vincent,’ she heard herself hiss, which was petty and unprofessional, but so was he.
‘OK, the light relief,’ Spikey said and turned to his showbiz and fashion people.
‘What have you got for me?’ Martina Jarvis and Tilly London smiled and glanced over their notes.
Showbiz editor, Martina, went first and reeled off a host of starry names, which elicited much nodding and scribbling from Spikey, then she paused for effect, pushed her short blonde hair behind her ear and held up a photograph, which showed a very unexpected celebrity couple canoodling in microscopic swimwear on the beach, unexpected because both the actor and the singer were married… to other people.
‘Thought you might like to see this as well.’
‘Oh yes,’ was Spikey’s response. ‘We like that. But how much is it going to cost us?’
‘All of this week’s Showbiz budget,’ she warned him. ‘But I think it’s worth it.’
‘Totally exclusive – not even a rumour of it in the other papers before Sunday?’