Chapter 3
AJ
“Will we publish a retraction?” No journalist wants to have to do that, and I’m no exception.
Marie Louise looks at me for long enough that I begin to suspect my suggestion has landed somewhere between insufficient and adorable.
Which is not ideal.
“A retraction won’t do it,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Because a retraction makes the story bigger in the wrong way. It tells people the fire service is being defensive, tells everyone there was something to defend, and gives half the county an excuse to go back to the original article and decide which side they’re on.”
I open my mouth, then close it again, because unfortunately that sounds exactly like something people would do. Especially people online. Give the internet a minor disagreement and it will build a gazebo, hang bunting and invite everyone’s worst uncle.
Marie Louise turns the printed article around and smooths one corner with her finger.
“Josh Walker doesn’t want a public argument.
Neither does Watch Manager Hart, from what I understand.
What they want is for the work to be seen properly.
Not as a correction. Not as damage control. As a fuller piece.”
I frown. “A fuller piece.”
“Yes.”
“On the fire?”
“On the station,” she says. “Their work. Their responsibilities. What incident command actually involves. How decisions get made when a building is already unsafe and everyone watching thinks they know better because they’re not the ones who might have to send people inside.”
There is a pointedness to this last part that I do not appreciate.
“I didn’t say they should’ve gone inside.”
“No,” she says. “But now you get to write something that explains why they didn’t.”
I stare at her for a moment, waiting for the bit where this becomes more reasonable.
It does not arrive.
“So you want me to do a human-interest feature.”
“I want you to do a proper feature.”
“I do breaking news.”
Marie Louise taps her pen once against the desk. “You do journalism.”
“Yes, but the kind with urgency.”
“You can survive without media drama for a few days.”
Her mouth twitches, and I’m not sure I can share her amusement.
“Look at Chloe,” Marie Louise says. “When she messed up with Tom’s restaurant, I made her write a feature, and that worked out well.”
I stare at her.
She stops.
“Although,” she says, “there was also the drama with her shag—I mean starting a relationship with the subject of the piece, so perhaps don’t use Chloe as a full template.”
I blink.
Marie Louise waves that away. “The point is, she made a mistake, she did the work properly afterwards, and the feature gave readers a fuller understanding of the person she’d misjudged.”
“And then she slept with him.”
“Not relevant.”
“You made it relevant.”
“I’m making it irrelevant again.”
I sit back in the chair and fold my arms. “For the record, I am forty-one years old. I think I can complete a work assignment without my hormones marching in, kicking over the furniture and declaring themselves project lead.”
Marie Louise looks at me for a long moment.
“That is exactly the sort of thing a man says before making a bad decision.”
“I’m offended.”
“You’re a journalist. You’ll recover.”
I point at the printed article on her desk. “Also, the woman in question currently thinks I’ve written an underlying sexist article about her professional competence. I can’t imagine she’ll be overwhelmed by the urge to tear my clothes off.”
“No,” Marie Louise says. “I imagine the urge will be more arson-adjacent.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I thought so.”
I glance back at the article, my fingers brushing along my jaw.
If I keep talking like this is funny, I do not have to look directly at the fact I’m being asked to walk into a fire station where my name is probably already being used as a swear word.
“What exactly is the proposal? I go there, interview them, write a thoughtful piece about the station and try not to be murdered with a hose?”
“That was my first thought,” Marie Louise says.
I look up.
She has gone still in a way I deeply mistrust. Her eyes shift to the window, then back to me, and I can almost see the idea forming. It is the editorial equivalent of watching storm clouds gather over a picnic.
“First thought?” I ask.
“I’ve got a better idea,” she says, with the sort of smile that has never once improved my life.
Marie Louise sets her pen down and straightens in her chair with the expression of a woman who has already rearranged my immediate future and is now simply waiting for me to notice.
“Instead of going in for one tidy interview and producing a polite feature everyone forgets by Friday, you’re going to spend proper time with them. ”
I stare at her. “Define proper.”
“Two weeks.”
For a moment, I assume I’ve misheard her, because that is the sort of number people use when they’re discussing holidays, jury service or recovering from minor surgery. Not an article.
“Two weeks,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“At the fire station.”
“Yes.”
“With the firefighters.”
“That is generally where one finds them.”
I sit back. “Marie Louise.”
“AJ.”
“You cannot send me to a fire station for two weeks.”
“I absolutely can.”
“I do breaking news.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
“Breaking news tends to happen away from fire station kitchens.”
“Not always,” she says. “And this is not a breaking news story. You’ll observe day shifts, night shifts, training, prevention work, rural call-outs if they happen while you’re there, and all the unglamorous parts of the job nobody sees because they’re too busy imagining they know what command should look like from the far side of a field. ”
I open my mouth to object, but there are too many objections trying to get out at once and they jam in the doorway.
Two weeks.
Away from the newsroom.
Away from the calls, the updates, the live feeds, the sudden twitch in the room when something happens and everyone knows before anyone says it that this one might matter.
Two weeks is a perfectly normal amount of time if you are a person with a balanced relationship to work.
If you are a reporter who has spent years trying to turn quick instincts into something bigger, two weeks feels like leaving your seat at the exact moment the winning raffle ticket is about to be called.
Something could happen.
Something always could.
A council scandal. A major police statement. A storm taking out half the county. A minister saying something stupid within thirty miles of a microphone. The kind of story that starts local and suddenly isn’t. The kind of story that gets picked up, shared, noticed.
The kind of story that makes someone like Helen Archer do more than click like.
I hate that I think her name again.
I hate even more that it makes my chest tighten.
Marie Louise watches me, which means my face is being less subtle than I’d hoped.
“This is punishment,” I say.
“It’s development.”
“That is what editors call punishment when they’ve had HR training.”
“It’s also a story.”
“It’s me being removed from breaking news for two weeks because I wrote one article badly.”
She doesn’t flinch. “It’s you being given time to understand the thing you wrote about before you write the follow-up.”
I run a hand over my beard and glance back at the article. “And what exactly am I supposed to do there? Follow them around with a notebook and try not to get in the way?”
“Essentially.”
“Wonderful. Dignified.”
“You’ll be briefed when you get there. You wouldn’t be allowed anywhere unsafe, before you develop delusions of heroism, and you’d follow whatever rules Watch Manager Hart gives you.”
“Has anyone at the fire station agreed to this?”
“Not yet.”
I stare at her. “Not yet?”
“I’ve only just thought of it.”
“That is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is.”
“Good ideas often arrive before permission.”
“So do lawsuits.”
Marie Louise ignores that. She picks up the printed article and looks at it, not like she’s angry now, but like she’s measuring the distance between what we meant and what we made.
“The piece you write at the end needs to be neutral. Not fawning. Not defensive. It isn’t an apology dressed up as journalism.
It’s about the station, the work, the training, the choices they make under pressure, and Watch Manager Hart as a professional doing her job. ”
“Show her skills, not her gender,” I say.
“Yes.”
I nod slowly, because that part does make sense.
“And there may be a diary element.”
I stare. “A what?”
“A light one.”
“No.”
“Not confessional.”
“No.”
“Something human. A reporter learning what he didn’t know.”
“I can learn things privately.”
“Historically, that doesn’t appear to have been the case.”
She turns to her notebook and writes something down, and the sight of that worries me because ideas become significantly harder to kill once Marie Louise has put them in ink.
“There are visuals, too. Not ridiculous ones. We are not putting you in a helmet and asking you to look humbled beside a fire engine.”
“Good.”
“Unless it happens naturally.”
“Marie Louise.”
I try not to imagine myself standing in a fire station surrounded by people who can carry things the size of doors while I make notes and pretend my lungs are having a normal day. Unfortunately, once the image appears, it stays. It develops. It gains sound.
Firefighters laughing.
Me dropping something.
Watch Manager Philippa Hart looking at me like she’s deciding whether I count as a learning opportunity or a workplace hazard.
Marie Louise’s eyes brighten as if she can see the same picture and finds it much more entertaining.
“You’re enjoying this,” I say.
“A little.”
“Unprofessional.”
“Possibly.”
“I could complain.”
“To whom?”
I consider this.
No one useful.
Marie Louise folds her hands on the desk. “AJ, this is not me sending you away because I don’t trust you with breaking news. It’s me giving you a chance to do the bit that comes after speed. You got the first story quickly. Now you get the deeper one right.”
That is inconveniently elegant.
I hate when she does that.
I look at the article again and try to summon a better argument, something clean and professional that does not sound like I’m worried the world will move on without me if I spend two weeks watching firefighters check equipment. Nothing comes.
Because underneath all the objections, there is a small and irritating part of me that knows she’s right.
This could be good.
It could be more than good.
It could be the sort of piece that shows I can do more than arrive first and write fast. It could show judgement. Range. Depth. All the words people like Helen Archer probably write in recommendation emails while standing near expensive windows.
And still, all I can think is that the next big breaking story will happen the second I’m learning when Fellside Fire Station puts their bins out.
I sigh. “This is insane.”
“No,” Marie Louise says. “It’s uncomfortable. Those are different things.”
She picks up her phone, and says, “I’ll speak to him now. If they agree, you clear what you can, hand anything live to Morgan, and prepare for the assignment.”
I stand, because apparently the meeting is over and my life has been rearranged by a woman who has not yet technically secured permission from the people most likely to hate the idea.
At the door, I pause. “For the record, Ben puts plates in sinks.”
Marie Louise looks up. “What?”
“Nothing. Just evidence for later.”
Her eyebrows lift.
I leave before she can ask.