First Impressions
Is this it?
With a juddering halt, an ancient Volkswagen with one hubcap missing and a gaffer-taped bumper pulled up to the five-bar gate at the entrance of the field.
It was pouring down. The windscreen wipers creaked back and forth leaving behind a blurry spot right in the middle, causing the driver to hunch down in their seat in order to see out.
Inside the car, Flick checked the directions on her phone again, but the map wouldn’t load.
No signal. Leaning forward across the steering wheel, she used the sleeve of her jacket to rub the fogged-up windscreen.
The demisters had conked out too. Giving up, she rolled the window a crack to let in some air.
‘Bloody rain,’ she cursed, as a deluge of water followed, soaking her jacket. Hastily she rolled it back up again. It was the middle of July. What had happened to summer?
But Flick already knew the answer. Climate change.
She didn’t need to watch another award-winning David Attenborough wildlife documentary to know that everything bad that was happening in the world was the result of climate change.
The planet was in crisis. Global warming was wreaking havoc with extreme weather, food scarcity, habitat loss and rising sea levels.
It should be headline news, on the front of every newspaper every single day.
Except it wasn’t.
She glanced across at the passenger seat and the latest edition of the Local Echo. Today their leading story was about a headbutting flock of sheep causing mayhem on the moors.
WARNING TO HIKERS – EWE BE CAREFUL!
It was terrible. Even more terrible was she’d written it.
By Felicity Lomax. Community Reporter.
Seeing her name in print gave rise to the usual feelings of pride and frustration. It was also a timely reminder. This is why you’re here, remember?
Taking a swig of the cold dregs of her takeout coffee, she pressed her nose determinedly against the windscreen and peered out across the field ahead.
Big, fat drops streamed down the glass, blurring her view, but then she saw it.
In the corner. On the far right-hand side, between the trees and the stone wall.
A caravan.
And no, not a cute, vintage, candy-coloured-bunting-strung-across-Instagram-friendly caravan. But a knackered, mouldy-old-memories-of-wet-camping-trips-to-Wales-with-her-mum-and-Auntie-Pam caravan.
OK, so this definitely must be it.
Straightening up, Flick turned off the engine.
The car fell silent; just the sound of the rain drumming on the roof.
Brushing off the crumbs from her unfinished croissant, she checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror, making sure her liquid black eyeliner was perfect, complete with the signature flicks at the corner of her eyes.
In her only good suit, a new pair of smart white vegan trainers that she could ill afford, and a hardcore blow-dry to get her fringe just as she liked it, she was aiming for savvy, confident and professional.
An investigative journalist with a killer nose for a story and really good hair.
A twenty-something reporter from a crappy local paper stared back. Nerves jangled in the pit of her stomach. And she had really bad hair.
Shit.
Attempting – and failing – to flatten down the frizz that threatened to erupt from her head like one of those magic kitchen sponges that pinged the moment they encountered water, she grabbed her bag and umbrella, then reached for the door handle.
It really was coming down now. Flick paused.
She wasn’t known for looking on the bright side – as a journalist she was a confirmed realist – but in a brief, uncharacteristic moment of optimism, she glanced at the leaden skies, hoping to see a break in the clouds.
But nope. Nothing but endless grey. She braced herself. There was nothing else for it.
Flinging open the door, she climbed out of the car.
And stepped right into a quagmire.
What the . . .?
After several weeks of relentless rain, the farm track, previously a pretty wildflower lane, had been churned into thick, claggy mud and filthy puddles of water. Into which Flick’s lovely new white vegan trainer promptly submerged itself.
Fuck.
As she yanked it back out, dripping wet and filthy, there followed a series of increasingly desperate manoeuvres that involved trying to lever herself out of the car and onto a central island of grass without ruining both trainers, whilst trying to put up her umbrella in the driving rain.
At which point Flick felt herself having one of those out-of-body experiences where you suddenly look at your life and think, How did I get here?
Five years ago she’d graduated from university with high hopes and big dreams of being a journalist. Of adrenaline-charged newsrooms, breaking news stories and urgent deadlines.
It all seemed so glamorous and exciting and important.
Dashing around cities with a Dictaphone and a cigarette, doing exclusive interviews with famous people, investigating sources, digging deep to find answers.
Actually, no one uses a Dictaphone any more, and smoking gives you cancer, but you get the picture.
Nowhere in this vision of her exciting journalistic future did she see herself standing in a field in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain, with feet caked in mud, getting piss-wet through.
For a brief moment Flick considered getting straight back in the car.
Abandoning the whole thing. But there was so much riding on this interview.
It wasn’t just about her chance at proving herself, of getting a promotion and a pay rise, of making the leap from a local newspaper to a national one.
If she turned around now, there’d be no hope of ever—
She stopped herself. She wasn’t even going to go there.
Checking she had her phone and earbuds, she looped her bag over her shoulder, unhooked the gate and, making sure to close it behind her (memories of the headbutting sheep causing mayhem were still fresh in her mind), set off across the field.
She’d been over the moon when she finally got the job as a junior reporter at the Local Echo.
But after nearly three years of covering local news stories about missing cats, Boy Scout jumble sales and wayward sheep, she was ready, more than ready, for an opportunity to prove she could be a proper journalist. For a story that would give her the break she desperately wanted.
Other reporters had been at the paper for years.
Be patient, your time will come, they told her.
But when? She’d be sitting around waiting for her big break for ever at this rate.
She’d end up like Tupperware Tony, who’d been doing the Letters page for twenty-five years.
Every day he brought in a packed lunch and announced to the rest of office what sandwich his partner had made.
‘Ooh, what have we here? Tuna and sweetcorn, a true classic!’ ‘Cheese and pickle, hurrah, my favourite!’ ‘Roast beef and pesto, how about that for controversial?’ Twenty-five years, and the most exciting thing to happen to Tony was his sandwich fillings.
No, big breaks don’t just come. They don’t just happen. You had to make them happen.
Which is why, last week, when Flick overheard a couple of people in the pub gossiping about some local scandal, her ears pricked up.
From the snippets of conversation, it sounded terrible.
And completely fascinating. She knew immediately it would make a great story; this was a hot topic of national concern right now and she kept hearing about it on the news or reading articles on the subject online.
This was her chance to finally do some proper investigative reporting. To get her big break and make her name.
But it all hung on getting an exclusive interview with the inhabitant of the caravan.
Flick glanced at it now from underneath her umbrella as she tramped across the muddy field.
Nerves jangled in the pit of her stomach, but she refused to acknowledge them.
Off in the distance, she spotted a cow. She’d just covered a story about a rambler who was trampled by cows.
The poor woman suffered broken ribs and was lucky to be alive.
Not so much her poor spaniel. She quickened her pace.
Rory, her boyfriend, would probably say it was her fault if she got trampled.
He warned her about being too ambitious and going after her own stories.
‘That’s the problem with you, Flick, you’re always getting ideas above your station.’
Of course, he only said things like that because he cared about her.
He didn’t want her to get hurt or be disappointed, especially so soon after losing her mum.
He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t satisfied with being a reporter at the Local Echo.
OK, so the money wasn’t great but it was a steady job and they paid into a pension.
‘I just don’t want you getting your hopes up, that’s all, babe.
All these pipe dreams about having your own column in one of those fancy, big newspapers in London.
Those are proper journalists, people who went to private school; they’re not like us.
Your articles are great, but it’s not like you’re a real writer. You need to stick to what you know.’
Constructive criticism, that’s what he called it.
She kept trudging, head down, battling the rain, until eventually she reached the far corner of the field.
Up close, the caravan was worse than she’d first thought.
Chewing-gum white, net curtains, condensation on the windows: it had seen better days.
Flick knew the feeling. Taking a tissue from her bag, she attempted to scrape the clods of mud from her now-filthy trainers, then smooth down her fringe.
She hesitated. As a local reporter she’d stood on enough doorsteps in order to get an interview, but this was different.
Abruptly, a twist of anxiety threatened to derail her, but she quickly pulled it together. It was important to appear confident and assured. Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door. No one answered.
‘Hello?’
Actually, maybe this was a really bad idea.
She waited a moment, cleared her throat, then reached forward to knock again.
At which point the door was flung open to reveal a barefoot, middle-aged woman wearing a pair of old sweatpants and a crumpled T-shirt. She peered myopically at Flick from behind a messy curtain of hair.
Immediately Flick was struck by two things: the woman was extremely tall, even with bare feet; and she looked surprised to see her.
‘Hi. We spoke on the phone. I’m Felicity Lomax, from the Local Echo.’ Flick spoke quickly and held out her hand. ‘But everyone calls me Flick.’
‘Oh, you’re early!’
The woman looked like she’d just got out of bed. Pulling a scrunchie from her wrist, she scraped back her curls, which were the same colour as Flick’s unfinished croissant, revealing grey at her temples and a face full of freckles.
‘I am?’
And now it was Flick who was surprised. She prided herself on her timekeeping. She checked her watch, thus confirming to herself that she was bang on time.
‘Didn’t we say twelve on Friday?’
Remember: confident and assured.
‘Yes, but today’s Thursday. I was expecting you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
There was a pause as the cold realization trickled down the back of Flick’s neck like the rain dripping off the broken spoke of her umbrella.
And all at once she realized she’d made a mistake.
Mortified, she reached for her phone in her pocket to check the date, but she already knew before she glanced at the screen.
Somehow, with everything that had been going on since her mum died, she’d lost track of the days and got the dates muddled up.
The funeral was six months ago, but she’d still not got back on track.
Unexpectedly her eyes prickled. Forget looking confident and assured; she looked like a total moron. She sniffed sharply, quickly pulling herself together. ‘I’m so sorry, my mistake. I can come back another time if it’s more convenient . . .’
Standing at the doorway of the caravan, Margaret Fletcher looked at the sodden young reporter with her muddy trainers and broken umbrella, its spokes sticking out at right angles, and considered this.
It really wasn’t a good time. The place was a mess. Plus, she was so tired she couldn’t face talking to anyone right now. In fact, all she really wanted to do was climb back into bed and pull the covers over her head. But then she felt like that most days now.
She opened her mouth to make some excuse, hand already on the door to close it behind her, thoughts returning to getting back into bed, disappearing underneath the duvet, making it all go away . . .
Then she noticed the reddening of her eyes.
Later, when Margaret Fletcher looked back, she would realize that this was the moment something clicked.
The moment she recognized something in Flick.
A vulnerability? A familiarity? A strange feeling of being untethered?
She didn’t know what it was, but she saw it reflected back at her and changed her mind.
‘You’re getting soaked, come inside.’ Opening the door wide to let her enter, she forced a broad smile. ‘And, please, call me Maggie.’