Chapter 4
Pippa
Iam wearing my coat, holding my bag and experiencing the particular kind of happiness that only exists when four days off are close enough to taste.
Admittedly, I mostly taste the station coffee I should not have had at four in the afternoon, but spiritually, I taste freedom.
The shift has been quiet since Amanda left with Jamie and Samantha, which means everybody has spent the afternoon pretending not to enjoy the fact nobody has needed us.
There is a strange superstition in this job around saying the word quiet.
Nobody says it. Nobody risks it. The moment you do, a sheep gets wedged in a cattle grid, a tourist reverses into a ditch, or somebody decides a disposable barbecue belongs somewhere flammable.
So I don’t say it.
I collect my things, check my phone, check the rota for no reason other than habit, and head towards Josh’s office to say goodbye before I escape. Four days off. No alarms. No station kettle. No paperwork. No firefighters asking if the milk smells funny and then continuing to use it anyway.
Josh’s door is open.
He’s at his desk, phone beside his keyboard, glasses low on his nose as he works through something on his screen.
I knock on the doorframe.
“Right. I’m off.”
Josh looks up. “Already?”
I check my watch. “It’s seven.”
“Exactly.”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you suggesting I should stay longer for the joy of it?”
“No. I value your wellbeing too much.”
“Good answer.” I shift my bag higher on my shoulder. “If anything catches fire between now and Wednesday, I’m officially elsewhere.”
“That’s inconvenient.”
“That’s management’s problem.”
He smiles faintly and leans back in his chair. “Before you go, there is one thing.”
I pause with my hand already on the doorframe.
There is always one thing.
One thing is never one thing. One thing is a meeting, a staffing issue, a complaint from somebody who thinks we personally control all smoke visible from their garden, or Kev asking whether the word mandatory is open to interpretation.
I sigh. “How bad?”
Josh takes his glasses off.
Oh.
Not ideal.
“I spoke to the newspaper.”
That pulls me back into the room.
“You did?”
“I did.”
“And?”
He gestures to the chair opposite his desk. “You might want to sit down.”
“No.”
He waits.
“I’m not sitting down for newspaper-related information.”
“Suit yourself.”
I stay exactly where I am, because dignity matters.
Josh rests his forearms on the desk. “The editor agrees the article shouldn’t have run the way it did.”
For a second, I don’t know what to do with that. I expected resistance. Defensiveness. Some careful explanation about public interest and editorial balance and how everyone is very sorry I had feelings in the vicinity of a byline.
I didn’t expect agreement.
I grip the strap of my bag a little tighter. “Right.”
“She apologised.”
That gets me.
I try very hard not to show it, but Josh has known me long enough to spot the places where I go still. Not psychic. Just experienced, unfortunately.
“She apologised,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“For the article?”
“For letting the framing through.”
I look away, towards the little noticeboard on his wall. Training dates. Leave requests. A reminder about incident reporting. Completely normal things that suddenly feel easier to look at than his face.
It should feel satisfying.
It doesn’t.
Being proved right is overrated when the thing you’re right about has already happened. The article exists. People read it. People made whatever little comments they were going to make and then went on with their day, while I spent mine carrying the weight of being reduced to the first woman again.
I look back at him. “What are they doing about it?”
“They don’t think a retraction is the best route.”
I laugh once. “Of course they don’t.”
Josh holds up a hand. “Before you bite my head off, I agree with them.”
I stare at him. “Interesting choice of last words.”
He ignores that with the ease of a man who has managed firefighters for years and therefore developed a high tolerance for verbal threats.
“A retraction makes the whole thing bigger in the wrong way. It makes us look defensive, sends people back to the original piece, and gives everyone another excuse to argue about what they think you should have done from the safety of their sofas.”
I hate that this is reasonable.
I hate it immediately.
“So what?” I ask. “They leave it there and we all pretend the comments section hasn’t become a village hall meeting with worse grammar?”
“No. The editor had another suggestion.”
“What suggestion?”
Josh folds his hands on the desk. “They want to write a longer feature on the station.”
That is not terrible. Annoying, maybe. Inconvenient, definitely. But not terrible.
“About the work. The training. Incident command. The difference between public perception and operational decision-making,” he adds.
Not terrible at all.
“And,” he says, “about you as Watch Manager. In a neutral way. Your skills, your experience, your role here. Not your gender.”
I stare at him.
He watches me carefully now.
I look away first because that part gets too close to something I don’t want to name.
Being seen properly.
Dangerous concept.
“Fine,” I say. “That sounds sensible.”
Josh nods. “Good.”
“So they send a reporter, I answer questions without throwing anything, they take a photo where I look terrifying but approachable, and everyone moves on.”
Josh clears his throat.
I give him my sternest stare. “Joshua.”
His eyebrows lift. “You used my full name.”
“You look like you’re about to deserve it.”
He exhales through his nose. “The editor thought a single interview would be too thin.”
Dread settles in my stomach.
“She thinks the reporter needs to understand the station fully.”
I say nothing.
Josh continues, which is brave of him. “She suggested he spend time here.”
I still say nothing.
Josh scratches the side of his jaw. “Two weeks.”
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
Which is unusual enough that Josh has the sense to look concerned.
I try again. “Two weeks.”
“Yes.”
“The journalist?”
“Yes.”
“The one who wrote the article?”
“Yes.”
I stare at him.
For a moment, all I can hear is the distant murmur of the station beyond his office and the faint buzz of the light overhead.
Two weeks. The man who turned one quote and one sentence into a neat little invitation for the county to discuss my suitability is apparently going to be walking around my station, breathing my air, watching my crew and writing things down.
My four days off are no longer merely dead.
They are buried in a shallow grave behind the appliance bay.
“You agreed to this?” I ask.
“I agreed to consider it.”
“That is a very slippery sentence.”
Josh’s mouth twitches. “I said I would discuss it with you.”
“On my way out.”
“I appreciate the timing could be better.”
I step fully into the office and close the door behind me. Josh looks at the door, then at me, and for once he has the good sense not to make a joke about whether he should be worried.
I put my bag on the floor. “Let me understand this. A journalist writes an article that makes me sound like I stood at a farm fire thoughtfully contemplating procedure while things burned around me.”
Josh’s lips tighten. “That is not exactly what it said.”
“That is exactly what it invited people to think.”
“Okay.”
“And now, to fix the problem, the same journalist is going to follow me around my station for two weeks.”
Josh leans back. “When you say it like that…”
“Accurately?”
“…it sounds less charming.”
“It was meant to sound murderous.”
“I picked that up.”
He has the nerve to look calm.
This is one of Josh’s most annoying qualities. He can sit in the middle of complete chaos looking as if he has simply been asked to choose between two biscuit tins. It is useful on incidents. It is infuriating now.
“No,” I say.
Josh nods once. “Okay.”
That stops me more effectively than an argument would have done.
I narrow my eyes. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to try to talk me round?”
“I am,” he says. “But not by pretending you don’t have a point.”
That is irritatingly difficult to object to.
I fold my arms. “Excellent. Consent before manipulation. Very modern management.”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t take the bait. “Pip, I know why you don’t want him here.”
“I’m delighted it’s not mysterious.”
“You’re angry.”
“Correct.”
“And you’re tired.”
I look away.
Josh’s voice softens slightly. “And underneath all that, you’re thinking that if he spends two weeks watching you, you’ll have to be flawless.”
I look back at him.
He holds my gaze. Not smug. Not triumphant. Just steady in that deeply annoying way he has, the one that makes it very difficult to pretend he hasn’t just found the bruise.
I want to argue. I just can’t find a version that isn’t fear dressed up as principle.
Josh leans forward, forearms on the desk. “You’re thinking every decision becomes a test. Every pause looks like doubt. Every time you check something twice, he writes it down and calls it hesitation.”
The office feels smaller than it did a minute ago.
I hate that he knows.
I hate more that I do not have a clean denial ready.
Because yes.
That is exactly it.
Anger is easier. Anger lets me stand in this office and talk about bad journalism, careless framing and the fact Hodgson can learn from a poster if he’s that desperate.
Fear is different.
Fear is standing in front of my own crew, doing the job I know I can do, while a man with a notebook watches me through the lens of the article he already wrote.
Fear is wondering whether one wrong word, one bad call, one moment where I’m human instead of perfect, becomes proof for everyone who already wanted to doubt me.
Josh waits.
Which is unfair.
He knows silence makes people honest.
“I can’t spend two weeks performing competence for him,” I say eventually.
His expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes softens. “Then don’t.”
I laugh once. “Helpful.”
“I mean it.” He sits back. “Don’t perform. Do the job.”
“That sounds lovely on a mug.”