Chapter 10 #2
‘What about me?’ Jo had broken in. ‘Why do I never deserve any of your sympathy? I’m working all bloody hours, I do the majority of the housework, the cooking, the girls come to me first for everything, not you, I need your sympathy too.
I need your support or— I just don’t think I’m going to be able to carry on like this.
I’m completely exhausted and I’m spending my precious, frigging holiday time driving up and down the country to sleep badly in a crap bed and be insulted. ’
‘Your life is your choice,’ were the only words that Simon gave in reply.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he’d hissed. ‘Maybe you’re trying to fit a single person’s job into a married mother’s life. Maybe it just won’t work.’
‘And what about you? You work even more hours than I do,’ she’d snapped.
‘So, maybe you should rethink what you’re doing.’
‘Maybe you bloody should.’
‘Jo…’ and out it had come, the justification that he so steadfastly believed gave him the upper hand: ‘I’m a doctor.’
‘Simon,’ she’d spat back. ‘You’re a wanker.’
That had been the end of the conversation and they’d both carried on lying there, fuming in silence, back to back, wide awake in the uncomfortably small bed.
Another day ended with another unresolved row.
Jo had found herself unable to block thoughts of how once, so long ago now, they’d made love so enthusiastically they’d managed to snap the leg off this very bed.
It was only on the long drive back to London that it had occurred to her with clarity that her life was too busy, too stressed, too unhappy and that it didn’t have to be like this.
She could decide what she wanted to keep and to focus on, and she could get rid of the rest. It wasn’t her job she needed to ditch – the job that gave her purpose, fulfilment, a very important reason to get up every morning – it was her husband: the man who brought her down, upset her, depressed her, didn’t support her…
quite obviously didn’t love her any more. Or didn’t love her as much, or enough.
A winking petrol gauge light on the dashboard interrupted Jo’s thoughts now. She’d risked driving around like this for two days, but now she would have to stop and refuel and be undeniably late for Mel’s birthday party.
She pulled out of the parking space unable to stem the flow of thoughts about her ex-husband. Hard to imagine they’d once worked side by side in a hospital ward, known true team spirit and been united by a cause.
Simon and Jo had met at work, when as a junior doctor he joined Bolton Royal Infirmary, where she was working as a theatre nurse.
Oh yes.
Secret nursing past of newspaper reporter, Randall
She’d spent several years studying intensively, followed by four years in the hospital, working the grinding NHS treadmill, watching Simon whizz from promotion to promotion while she did the same stuff day in, day out for the same low pay.
His salary went up as his hours went down, yet nothing changed for her.
She was still working shifts, days, nights and weekends, for an hourly rate not much better than when she’d started.
The injustice of it began to jar. She and her nursing colleagues were well trained, experienced, available round the clock for operations, patient care, drug monitoring.
But where was there to progress to? Meanwhile Simon was at training courses, conferences, lecture rounds, getting better and better at his job while she felt as if she was stagnating.
When she had Mel at the age of twenty-eight, she’d felt better about herself.
But it was the brush with the press that happened when she went back to work after maternity leave that caused her career change.
She’d known that the hospital was badly run, but when it was obvious that large chunks of funding were disappearing into a services company run by the hospital Chief Executive’s wife, well, then it was time for an investigation.
A friend of hers worked in admin, so Jo had ‘borrowed’ a key and sneaked into the offices one evening for a rifle through the filing cabinets.
Whenever she thought about this, she still couldn’t believe she’d done it.
If anyone had found her, she’d have been sacked on the spot with attempted theft on her record.
But she had burned with the injustice of it.
Probably something to do with her new, post-natal state of mind.
Now that she had a baby at home, life had finally come into focus.
Everything mattered. If she was to be away from her baby, she wanted those hours to matter; she wanted to be doing something that inspired her.
And working tirelessly in a run-down hospital while the Chief Executive and his wife took the piss with public money had begun to really annoy her.
She’d used the office photocopier to make duplicates of the relevant documents, carefully replacing everything in the files.
Here was contract after contract for jobs that had never been done: waste recycling, window cleaning, building repairs.
None of it had ever happened. One quick tour of the hospital and anyone could see this was a money-making scam.
Just one quick tour. That’s when it had occurred to her how to get this situation resolved.
She hadn’t had much of an idea what to do before – a tribunal?
An internal complaints committee? – but now she knew.
She would phone the Evening Echo, meet one of their reporters, give them the documents, then take them on the tour.
That’s how Jo met Gayle Adams, the woman who changed her life.
Well, that’s how it might have looked, but probably her life had changed the moment she had pushed Mel out into the world and noticed, through the haze of exhaustion and ecstasy, that Simon was giving career advice to the junior house doctor at her pushing end far more enthusiastically than he’d been helping her through this.
One of those moments in a marriage that you notice and file away under ‘T’ for Troubling.
To be brought out and re-examined when another one crops up.
She never said anything to Simon about it.
What was there to say? He would just have denied it, would have laughed off the suggestion and soothed her in his slightly smug ‘I’m a doctor’ way.
Journalist Gayle Adams arrived in a pocket-sized convertible red sports car, wore a headscarf to keep her unruly copper hair out of her face, and was surely the closest thing to Susan Sarandon that Lancashire was ever going to produce.
She was fiftyish with a smoker’s husky voice, a firm handshake, ready smile and enormous handbag.
‘So where do we start, my love?’ she’d asked and Jo had felt the grip of dread – holding her ever since she’d called the Echo – loosen.
Gayle was all right. Instinctively, Jo felt that Gayle would do this the right way.
‘I’ve just come off shift, so I’ll tour you round,’ Jo had explained. ‘If anyone stops us at any point, asks what we’re up to, you are lost and I’m showing you to… depends where we are, wherever makes sense.’
‘What about the people who know you’re off shift?’
‘Oh, I’ve told them you’re a friend applying for a job here.’
‘At my age!’ Gayle had fired back. ‘Well, don’t worry, I’ll be quick, I won’t ask any awkward questions until we’re back outside again.’
‘Does anyone here know you?’ Jo had asked.
‘We’ll have to wait and see. I’ve met some of the management staff but I could still be lost while visiting someone. Let’s not worry about it too much. If it happens, it happens. It’s after six, the chances of office staff being around are quite slim.’
Backhanders scandal at the Royal.
Chief Exec Pays Wife’s Firm to do Nothing!
Exclusive!
That was how they ran it exactly four days later. Gayle had needed extra time to check the story out fully, to have a photographer wait outside the chief’s home to surprise him and his wife with an early morning photo call.
She’d also had to put the accusations to the couple to see what they had to say.
‘Outrageous suggestions… I’ll be conducting a thorough investigation…
no truth in these allegations whatsoever…
’ had been the chief’s line. ‘Some operational difficulties… technical problems… may be behind schedule in some areas,’ the wife had said.
It was fudged enough for there to be no criminal investigation, no criminal charges.
There was some sort of botched NHS-style internal inquiry, as a result of which ‘procedures were tightened’.
The wife’s company didn’t get any more work but did at least carry out the work it had been paid to do and the Chief Executive was promoted to a non-executive post. Promoted!
He was earning more money for doing less.
Jo had almost been sick at the news. She couldn’t carry on, doing the same old thing for even smaller wages because she was part-time now.
Not when totally corrupt men were being promoted into even more expensive posts to run the hospital into the ground.
She thought of Gayle often. Gayle who had phoned her with courtesy on the day before the story was to be printed to warn her what was in it and how to play it cool at work.
Gayle who had joked about her two ex-husbands, unruly teenage boys and unsuccessful dates, but took her work with an impressive, deadly seriousness. Gayle who obviously loved what she did and believed in it.
‘You did a great job,’ she had told Jo. ‘Finding the documents, photocopying them. Ever thought about being a reporter?’ It was probably banter, intended to make her smile.
But Jo had found herself saying: ‘Yes. I have thought about it. How do you become a reporter? Do you have to go on a course?’