Maximum Exposure: The Heartlands Series

by Harper, Jenny

  The rugby pictures were safely uploaded. She shoved her camera back in its case and picked up her bags. On the whole, she was glad Ben was back – but there was something in Jack’s eyes when he looked at her …

  He still cared, he definitely did.

  Ben Gillies slipped from her mind as she started plotting, yet again, about how she could win back Jack Hedderwick’s love.

  Chapter Seven

  Sir Cosmo Fleming abandoned his Volvo estate about two yards from the pavement outside the Herald offices, stuck his mother’s disabled sticker in the window, reached across to the passenger seat for the envelope containing his horoscopes, and opened the door. There was an angry shout and a cyclist, clad in skin-tight Lycra shorts and fluorescent jacket, swerved and shot past, missing the door by a fraction of an inch.

  ‘Oh. Sorry!’ Cosmo waved a tweed-clad arm at the youth apologetically and was rewarded with a torrent of abuse, which mercifully faded into the distance as the cyclist resumed his frenetic pace. Perhaps he’d thought about stopping for a confrontation, but he could not have failed to hear the chorus of barking from the back of the estate car. Three dogs can make a sensational amount of noise and Leo, Airey, and Gem, his cosmicly-named Labradors, were upset. They could see that their master was going to leave them in the car, and black Labs, bred for the countryside, don’t take kindly to confinement. They had not yet had the long riverside walk they were expecting.

  Across the road Kath Gillies and Janet Irvine were about to go into Nuggets, the local café-cum-gift shop. They stopped on the threshold, their attention attracted by the commotion, and stared at him.

  ‘He’s away in another world half the time, that man,’ Janet said, shaking her head in despair.

  ‘Can you blame him?’ said Kath, ‘with a mother like that to handle?’

  ‘He needs a wife,’ said Janet.

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ said Kath wrinkling her nose and trying not to look at Janet. She might have her ideas, but it was too early to talk about them.

  ‘Indeed,’ Janet mused thoughtfully. ‘Coffee?’

  Oblivious, Cosmo Fleming made his way into The Hailesbank Herald offices.

  ‘Hello Ma,’ he greeted Ruby cheerfully, ‘bearing up?’

  ‘Oh well, you know,’ Ma Spence winced, then looked brave. She was still the face of the Herald and now that Angus was gone, she believed it was up to her to defend the paper and its place at the heart of the community. ‘You?’

  Cosmo, leaning on the counter in the pokey front office, glanced at the display board where a selection of photographs from the week’s paper was always pinned up. Today, of course, the funeral of the Herald’s esteemed editor was predominant, with a portrait of Angus MacMorrow, taken by some chief photographer at least forty years ago, right at the centre.

  ‘That wasn’t taken yesterday,’ Cosmo observed.

  If he’d been looking at Ma he might have observed the tiniest stiffening, a slight intake of breath, a pursing of lips – all the signs of indignation. But even if he had been, Cosmo might not have noticed these signs. Stars he was good with. Dogs he adored. Women … well, it wasn’t that he didn’t like women; actually he admired many women enormously. One in particular, though he was too shy to admit it. It was just that he hadn’t had a lot of experience with women – which might have been the fault of the Dowager Lady Fleming, who gathered her son’s attention jealously to herself – or it might have been down to Cosmo’s deep shyness. At any rate, he didn’t notice Ma’s indignation and prattled on regardless.

  ‘Fine looking man in those days, wasn’t he?’

  Ma said, ‘He was always fine looking.’

  Even Cosmo noticed her tone and though he was not a man for gossip, some memory deep inside him stirred – Ma Spence and the Big Boss – the Big Boss and Ma Spence – and he hastily improvised, ‘Highly respected of course, Boss MacMorrow, highly respected.’

  Ma softened visibly. ‘You’ve got the usual weekly then, Sir Cosmo? Anything exciting in store for us?’

  Cosmo couldn’t remember what he’d written for Sagittarius, but as he always tried to get something tantalising for every star sign, in order to keep people reading, he wracked his brains and was about to declare ‘Venus rising, Ma,’ when he realised the timing would not be good. Instead he reached for the vague, ‘Conjunction of the planets at the cusp, good sign, good sign,’ and elicited a small smile.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to go through I suppose,’ she said, unlocking the small door that separated the public from the staff at the paper.

  ‘Thank you, Ma, that’s awfully decent of you,’ said Sir Cosmo, courteous as ever in his well-groomed public school way. He took off his tweed cap and revealed a thick mop of fairish brown hair.

  ‘Hi Cossers,’ Murdoch Darling, the feature writer cum columnist greeted him genially. ‘Got any Outlook Towers for me?’ ‘Outlook Tower’ was the title given to the news in brief column they usually dropped in on page five, after the main news stories, the page three attraction – usually a fresh-faced teenager model wannabe (no topless girls in The Hailesbank Herald of course), and the less prominent local news stories. Outlook Towers were small items worthy of passing mention.

  ‘Well d’you know,’ Cosmo knitted his brow and thought hard, ‘my mother did tell me … it sounds a bit strange though …’

  ‘Spill the beans, Cosmo, there’s a darling,’ Sharon Eddy emerged from behind her computer as Cosmo’s already ruddy face seemed to grow ever ruddier. She grinned disarmingly at him and he looked away, flustered. ‘We’re a trifle thin on toothsome gossip and weird miracles at the mo. Disaster’s more the thing, alas.’

  ‘Well, our cleaning lady, Mrs Parson, told Mater that her daughter has a friend who knows someone in Stoneyford who swears she sees the shadow of Jesus Christ on her bedroom wall when the light is right. Can you make anything of that?’

  ‘Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ,’ said a voice behind them, ‘Is that the best this paper can come up with?’

  As one, they swivelled round and stared at the newcomer. Tall, thirty-something, he had jet black hair, male model looks with eyelashes that swept on for ever above piercing blue eyes, and a chin with a pronounced cleft, adding sharpness, symmetry, and focus to something that already approached perfection. Beautifully cut denim jeans, well-polished brown leather loafers, an open-necked crisp white cotton shirt and a navy jacket that was clearly expensive completed a look that might have marched straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine.

  There was silence, as the presence of this idol registered.

  ‘My name’s Jay Bond,’ said the man, his voice attractively throaty, ‘and I’m your new editor.’

  The silence was so profound for some moments that they could almost have been in a nuclear bunker, post holocaust.

  Jay, apparently oblivious to the impact he had made on his new team, scanned the office. What he saw clearly didn’t impress him. ‘Jeez, what a hole. When was the last time this place had a coat of paint?’

  They all looked around, taking in their daily working environment for the first time. They were in the main office. Once it had been the drawing room in what would have been a rather grand Victorian house. Above them, there remained an elaborate central ceiling rose, though there was a ragged black hole where once a chandelier might have hung. Instead, fluorescent lights had been suspended at intervals along the ceiling to illuminate the room more evenly. The light they emitted was harsh and unattractive. The cornice work matched the design of the rose. Leaves wound round each other and supported small flowers – lilies? – in what might have been a pleasing design had the paint not been so grimy. Years of cigarette smoking by generations of reporters and subs had left the once white paint a disagreeable yellow. Their desks looked as though they’d come from a salvage yard, the carpet was threadbare to the point of being dangerous. Only the computers on each desk indicated that the room had a place in the twenty-first century, and even the computers looked as if they migh
t be steam driven.

  Daisy saw it as if for the first time. It had always been, quite simply, the Herald office. It wasn’t the environment that mattered, it was what happened in here. What mattered was the way they worked as a team, how they reported the news, supported the community, told stories of suffering, of anger, of heroism, or good fortune, or despair. This was simply where, week after week, they produced the miracle of a newspaper.

  The room was undoubtedly scruffy, but Daisy couldn’t help herself. Not normally courageous, she felt compelled to defend it. ‘We’re always so busy,’ she started, ‘No one’s ever noticed.’

  Jay Bond turned his blue-eyed gaze in her direction. Why had she opened her mouth? Cursing her stupidity, she was prepared to quail. Instead, unexpectedly, Jay smiled, and she wished she had the nerve to reach for her camera. Who could not want to photograph Jay Bond, Editor? He was, quite simply, idol-icious. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps it’s not our first priority –’

  Most women would have melted under the full heat of that smile. He was accustomed to that, it was obvious, but for some reason, Daisy resisted his charm. Years behind a camera lens had taught her to read nuances of expression.

  ‘ – and you are…?’ His eyes lit up the room, but Daisy saw disdain there, mixed with something else. Arrogance? Condescension? Boredom? They were unattractive traits, and she’d seen them all before he’d switched his mood. Or was it merely defensiveness? At any rate, her guard went up. This man had power over her future – over all their futures.

  ‘Daisy Irvine,’ she said as confidently as she could. ‘Photographer.’

  Sharon Eddy, bubbly and blonde, but by no means dumb, had been uncharacteristically quiet. Now she uncrossed her long legs and stood, tossing her hair back from her face to reveal her high cheekbones and wickedly curvaceous mouth. Daisy realised with a wild feeling of hilarity that the man-hungry reporter was making the first pitch for the newcomer. Ben Gillies, her prey just a few days ago, had already been supplanted by a bigger and better quarry. ‘Welcome to The Herald, Mr Bond. I’m Sharon Eddy, chief reporter. Perhaps I can introduce you to everyone?’

  And then the phones began to ring, the tableau unfroze, and the deadlines that govern every small newspaper office became pressing. Cosmo Fleming, muttering something about ‘Mother, urgent, must dash, sorry,’ cast a faintly harrowed glance in Sharon’s direction and edged towards the door. Murdoch grunted, ‘… dog poo … devilish stuff … up in arms …’ and swung back to his screen. And Daisy realised that she was due at a photo shoot in the High Street, where the local butcher was finally being forced to close his shop, a victim of the credit crunch and the new supermarket on the outskirts of Hailesbank. Jay Bond, in all his glory, would have to take a back seat while she figured out how to frame a photograph that told the shop closure story without being too grisly. New editor or not, the day had to go on.

  As she grabbed her camera gear and headed for the door with Dishy Dave, who was down to interview the butcher, it occurred to Daisy that redecoration was the last job on the list of priorities for the small staff at

  The Herald . But their new editor would be aware of that, surely?

  Chapter Eight

  It was not an easy day. Jay Bond spent most of it closeted in the glass enclosure laughingly called the Editor’s Office – the space where Angus had toppled majestically to his death. Daisy wondered whether he was aware of that. Did he have any sense at all of the Big Man’s feisty spirit still lingering in the air? There was still a faint odour of cigarette smoke, that was for sure.

  For most of the morning, so far as they could see, he had his feet up on the desk and the phone clamped to his ear, though it was impossible to tell who he was talking to or what about. He emerged at lunchtime, asked where he could get a sandwich, and when Sharon immediately offered to show him the local offerings, smilingly accepted.

  Everyone was unsettled. They were still reeling from Big Angus’s death and no one had yet got the measure of Mr Jay Bond. What would he do to start turning the fortunes of the paper round? Were their jobs safe? At least no one got fired and Ben, coming in for the appointment Ma had put in the book last week, was duly hired on a short-term freelance contract. By six they were all ready to escape and by common assent they migrated, as one, to their favourite watering hole, The Duke of Atholl.

  Young Dave was still high on the butcher closure largely because, thanks to Daisy’s ingenuity, the photo was probably good enough to get his story onto the front page. ‘We’ll headline it “The Last Link in the Chain”,’ he said, carrying four pints and trying not to spill them.

  ‘Good one, Davy,’ Murdoch grunted. ‘Except, of course, he was a sole trader, not part of a chain.’

  ‘Sausages, mate,’ Dave explained. Murdoch just grinned.

  Competition for the front page was always strong. Sharon liked to reserve the honour for herself but it would be Ben, in his new role as chief sub who would make the final decision – unless Jay overruled him.

  ‘Last Link?’ Sharon scoffed.

  Davy’s confidence was undiminished by these criticisms. ‘Honest Shar, you should see Daisy’s pic, it’s brilliant.’

  Daisy blushed. Mindful of Lizzie’s three points, she was doing her best to do her bit. The shoot had worked out well, even though it had all seemed a bit desperate at first. Knives were too graphic, Bert had been determined to look jolly in the face of adversity, which was not the image she wanted, and she’d been almost at screaming point when one of the other butchers had emerged onto the High Street with a large hamper of best pork sausages and started giving small bundles of them away.

  ‘Got any more of those?’ Daisy had asked, ‘Unpackaged?’ She captured her shot at last, a great image of Albert Harvie clasping a string of sausages. She’d got as low as she could and shot straight up, picturing him against the blue sky.

  ‘You should’ve seen Daisy,’ Dave was still in full flow, ‘Lying on the pavement.’

  ‘Just like every Friday night,’ said Sharon, grinning.

  ‘Thanks.’ Trust Sharon to prick her bubble.

  ‘What did you make of our Mr Bond?’ Murdoch, returning from the doorway, where he’d retreated for a quick ciggie, still reeked of smoke. Daisy fanned herself and made a face at Ben.

  ‘I got the impression he feels he’s arrived at the arse end of the world,’ said Ben, drawing a shamrock with his finger on the top of his pint of Guinness, ‘but for my money, he’s lucky to be in a job.’

  ‘Really?’ Everyone looked at him. ‘How come?’

  ‘I thought his name rang a bell, so I Googled him.’

  How sensible, thought Daisy, remembering Hammy MacBride’s comments and praying there was no truth in them. ‘And?’ she prompted.

  Ben leant forward over the chipped wooden table. The Duke of Atholl, though the Herald’s local pub, was not the most salubrious in Hailesbank. It might have been smart enough in the 1960s, which was when it probably got its last makeover, but since then it had endured years of heavy local use and long neglect by its owners. The customers rarely noticed this, though, thanks to the fact that the lighting in the pub was, at best, dim. This dimness enfolded them all, providing a conspiratorial cloak of a kind as Ben’s voice dropped half an octave. ‘Jay Bond was a presenter on Channel 69,’ he said, ‘You know, that one that was launched last year.’

  Daisy, who seldom watched television and didn’t possess a digital set anyway, had never seen it.

  ‘Full of arty farty stuff, avant garde music, reports from exhibitions, South Bank style shows without the top drawer contributors, chat shows with wannabe literati and glitterati.’

  ‘Poncey southern tosh,’ Murdoch, who had never been south of the Border in his life, grunted disparagingly.

  ‘Jay Bond was one of their “star” presenters,’ Ben went on, ‘tipped for better things once he’d served his apprenticeship there.’

  Daisy pictured Jay Bond. Cool, cleanly-carved good looks, clear, penetrating ey
es, a good voice. The sort of man, her professional eye told her, that the camera lens would love. She could see him as a television presenter. Ben’s story was making her feel depressed. She remembered Hammy McBride’s jibe and had a horrible feeling she knew what was coming next.

  ‘If he was that hot, what’s he doing in Hailesbank?’ Dave asked.

  ‘I followed the links to some of the redtop archives for last month,’ said Ben. ‘Seems he was caught sniffing a line of coke in the Gents’ bog just before going on air. A young college student, in on work experience, got lucky and snapped him. It caused a hell of a stink.’

  Daisy sat back in her chair with a thump. In the dim wattage of the wall light behind her a small cloud of dust was clearly visible, rising from the padding and settling again, with fascinating slowness, onto the dark fabric of her sweater. Her worst fears had been confirmed. ‘So he had to leave?’ she asked, subdued.

  ‘Quit before he was sacked, according to the reports I read.’

  ‘So what?’ Sharon sprung to his defence. ‘Everyone does it. In London, I mean.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Ben drained his pint. ‘What they don’t do is get caught doing it. Not at your place of work, not when you’re about to go on air.’

  ‘So how come he’s ended up in Hailesbank?’ asked Murdoch, pulling out his cigarettes and shuffling restlessly. He’ll be off outside again in a second, Daisy realised, he just wanted to hear the end of the story.

  ‘That’s the odd bit. I can’t figure it out. So far as I could find out, he started his career with a short stint at a local paper in Surrey, then moved on to half a dozen other jobs before landing the contract with Channel 69. He had an import business for a while, then dabbled in finance, without progressing far, married some society beauty called Amelia –’