But as of a few moments ago, that was now the least of his worries. He’d been following the story like a hawk as it developed and now it seemed Eloise had been dragged into it as well. And now there it was, clear as you like, on the breaking news section of the Evening Echo online edition. A photo of the two of them, taken the night of the dinner and a full page article too, though with hardly a single fact in it.
‘Eloise Elliot, well-known editor at the Post, was today linked with the trial of Michael Courtney, due to be heard at the High Court next week. It seems Ms. Elliot’s long term partner, Jake Keane, works as a driver for Courtney and had recently been released from Wheatfield prison where he served a two year sentence …’
Jake could hardly bring himself to read another line. With more than a guilty conscience, he tried to call Eloise’s mobile, but it rang out. No answer. Tried her again, still no answer. Tried her work number, nothing. Left a message, but she didn’t get back.
Which meant this must be bad for her, far worse than he ever would have thought.
Shit, he thought frantically, his mind racing ahead. Why hadn’t he even tried to see her since that miserable weekend? Because he’d been bloody well wallowing, that was why; lying low, licking his wounds after the shock of what had happened. Selfishly, he realised now, he hadn’t wanted to see or hear from anyone till he got his head straightened out, unable to feel anything other than deep gratitude to Ben for taking him in when his back was up against a wall.
And now this. God alone knew what the girl had been going through since this first broke earlier … and still no bloody answer from her phone.
Answer, answer, for Christ’s sake answer …
Was she okay, he frantically wondered, as another even more sickening worry came fast on the heels of the last one.
Her daughter. His daughter. Jesus Christ, if the papers managed to drag that little girl into all this mess … Lily …
Two minutes later, Jake was in the kitchen having one of the most panicky conversations he ever could remember having in his life.
‘Ben?’ he said hoarsely, ‘Emergency. I need a favour.’
‘Stay calm,’ Ben wisely cautioned, ‘and just tell me what I can do to help.’
‘Emergency. I need to borrow your car.’
‘You’re not driving anywhere in the state you’re in,’ said Ben firmly. ‘Just tell me wherever it is you need to go. And don’t worry, I’ll drive you there myself.’
Chapter Sixteen
Eloise had spent the past thirty minutes sitting alone in her office, numb. Catatonic. Just sat there letting the phone ring, not even attempting to answer. Hearing the urgent ping of one email after another landing into her inbox and not even bothering to glance at one of them. Her mobile was on silent, and every now and then a missed call would flash up, which she’d steadfastly ignore. Instead, all she could do was stare mutely out the window behind her desk and down onto the street below, watching the world go by, busy people swarming up and down Tara St. with things to do and places to be. Just like she herself used to have.
How can they just go on with their lives as normal, she found herself idly wondering, when her whole existence had just gone into freefall? Didn’t they know the turmoil she was in? Seven long years of her life she’d given to this job, and now in a nanosecond it was all about to be snatched from her. Just like that. One slip-up, one ‘error of judgement’ as Sir Gavin put it, and all her years of blood, sweat and tears were just as though they’d never been.
A knock at the door and next thing Ursula, Rachel’s stand-in, was in front of her. Looking unusually pale and rattled for someone normally so brimming over with swaggering confidence.
‘Emm … really sorry to bother you, Eloise,’ she said sounding genuinely apologetic. ‘But I’ve been sent to tell you that they’ve been waiting for you up in the boardroom for about ten minutes now. It’s an emergency meeting they’ve convened. They’ve been phoning and phoning you, but you’re just not picking up.’
Eloise nodded back at her and even managed to give her a watery smile on her way back out. Wonder if Ursula already knows, she found herself thinking, then realised, of course she bloody does. You could be guaranteed the entire office knew by now. This would have been all over the building like wildfire in a matter of a few short minutes. And here she was, hiding out like a coward in the sanctuary of her office, terrified to her bone marrow at the thoughts of having to do the walk of shame out the door, towards the lifts and upstairs to face the music. All those eyes on her, everyone knowing just how royally she’d fucked up.
Dead Girl Walking.
But it couldn’t be put off any longer. If there was one thing she’d never been in her life it was a coward, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now. If it killed her, she’d be as brave as she could about it, hold her head high and somehow, someway, get the hell out of there and home to lick her wounds as soon as humanly possible. Home to Lily, home to Helen. Home to where she belonged.
Another knocking on the door, except more insistent this time.
‘Jesus Christ, I already told you, I’m coming!’ she found herself snapping, then immediately bit her tongue and turned around to apologise to Ursula. But when she looked up, it wasn’t her at all. For a split second, her vision dimmed and she wasn’t certain that she could completely trust what she was seeing.
Because there standing in front of her was Jake, all six feet two of him, looking exactly as ghostly and washed out as she felt.
Next thing, her instincts just took over, and before she’d time to think, even to react, she flung herself headlong into his arms, sobbing now, heaving arid, dry tears; the kind she never allowed herself, ever.
‘You’re here,’ was all she kept saying over and over again. ‘You’re really here. You came back … Oh Jake, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am …’
‘Shhh, shhh honey,’ he said soothingly, clinging tightly to her and wrapping his arms protectively around her. ‘I’ve been so worried about you, I had to come …’
‘But Jake, I’ve been over and over the whole thing in my mind and what I did to do, what I put you through, deceiving you the way I did, it was so wrong …’ She broke off, wiping away tears that now they’d finally started, wouldn’t stop.
‘Come on, none of this now, not when it’s all my fault,’ he said softly, ‘if you’d never met me, you’d be safe. Your good name would never have been dragged into all this.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she half whispered, clinging onto him, feeling comforted beyond belief just at the warm, familiar smell of him, just at being able to snuggle deep into the small of his chest. Feeling small, fragile, broken, utterly vulnerable.
‘Shhh love, later,’ he told her and she swore it was the first calm, friendly voice she’d heard all day. ‘We’ll talk later. Right now, I just want to take you out of here, get you away from here till this whole bloody story dies a death.’
‘I … I can’t,’ she told him in a tiny voice she hardly recognised as her own. ‘It’s not that simple. They’re waiting for me, upstairs, now. The whole board of directors, the lot of them. Like some kind of public crucifixion.’
‘Come on Eloise, whatever about the press attention, surely they can’t fire you because of your association with me? And even if they did, wouldn’t you have grounds for unfair dismissal?’
‘Course they couldn’t. But that’s not what they’re firing me for.’
‘What then?’
‘Because … You see, I … A few days ago, oh shit.’ Her voice broke here and suddenly she felt weak, had to sit down or else she was certain her knees would buckle under her own weight.
Gently, like he was handling a baby, Jake led her to her a chair and sat her down, crouching beside her and massaging her hand.
‘Tell me,’ he said simply, looking directly at her.
She took a deep breath.
‘I knew the story about Courtney would break days ago. We all did. And the Post wanted
to run a feature about him, which would have named you, so I buried it. Stone dead. Then of course, our rivals picked up on it, made the link between you and me and now …’
She broke off here. Couldn’t bring herself to go on. The rest was all too obvious anyway. And there was only one way this story was going to end, she now knew. Like the Greek tragedy it had already become.
‘You did all that – for me?’
She looked up at him, watery-eyed, and nodded mutely.
Next thing, Jake was cradling her and the heavy, musky smell of him was the only time all day she’d felt calm. Safe. Comforted.
Then the office phone rang insistently, for about the two hundredth time.
‘That’ll be them,’ she said, instinctively pulling away. ‘I’ll have to do this Jake. Go up there and face them and take it on the chin. I don’t exactly have much of a choice, do I?’
‘As a matter of fact, you do.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘Come on Eloise, look at you. You’re a walking wreck. You’re in absolutely no state to face anyone.’
‘I know, I know …’ she stammered numbly, like someone who’d taken so many body blows that they didn’t know if another one could be fatal. ‘And I’m so worried about Helen and Lily … There was a photographer outside my house just now, hassling them both. I just … Oh Jake, you have to help me – I can’t think straight.’
‘Then that settles it,’ he said decisively. ‘Call the board and tell them you’re taking sick leave, or time out to reassess your options or whatever the hell you want to call it. But I’m getting you out of here right now and I’m not taking no for an answer.’
She looked up at him, utterly bewildered, not having the first clue what he was on about. Leave? Just walk out the door and to hell with the lot of them?
And then an astonishing thought struck her. When it boiled down to it … why did she even care so much? Jake was right, she could barely stand up right now, never mind face into the dragon’s den and somehow try to defend herself.
‘Do you have any holiday time due to you or time off that you haven’t taken?’ he asked her, gripping her shoulders urgently.
For the first time in all that nightmarish day, she surprised herself by actually smiling.
‘Only about seven years’ worth.’
‘That settles it then. Grab your coat. I’m taking you home.’
He’s right, she thought, suddenly feeling like a load had been lifted. Let the board give her a stay of execution. They cared nothing at all about her, why should she bother returning the courtesy? All they were doing was hauling her upstairs to fire her arse anyway, that much was for certain. Let them wait. Besides, what was the difference if they fired her today or tomorrow?
By whatever miracle, she was with Jake now and finally, for the first time since that miserable weekend, she felt secure. Protected.
‘Take me home,’ was all she could bring herself to say.
PART FIVE
ELOISE
Chapter Seventeen
Now, I’ve had my fair share of bizarre experiences in my time; I’ve covered stories from war zones, followed breaking political stories until my eyes were ready to bleed, was even, at a far earlier stage in my career, forced to stake out various B-list celebs having rendezvous at various girlfriends’ flats that their wives knew absolutely nothing about. (And by the way, give me Afghanistan any day.)
But never, in all my years, have I ever experienced anything like this.
Having spent my whole entire life either chasing stories or else editing them, it is by far the single weirdest experience of my life to now find myself the actual story.
Everyone around me keeps telling me it’ll die down, that this is a flash in the pan, that all this newsprint is bound to be wrapping up fish and chips by tomorrow night, repeating it over and over as though repetition could somehow make it true.
But there’s no sign of it dying. If anything, it’s escalated.
So far, I’ve been the page two story on no fewer than four evening papers, the third lead item on three drive time radio talk shows and the second-last item on the six o’clock news bulletin, thank you to the shower of bastards that run Channel Six. Made me wonder what could possibly have been the last item: Ants Cross Street in Straight line, perhaps? The bad luck for me though, is that it’s a particularly slow news day and this is exactly the kind of salacious juicy story that fills in a good three minutes of airtime.
And by the way, just for added humiliation, I’m the joke item; the nugget of ‘news’ that people take a moment to snigger at, then gossip about the next day. ‘Did you hear about your woman who edits the Post covering up for her jailbird boyfriend?’ That kind of thing. Need I say any more? Plus another photo of us at the weekend away has ‘mysteriously’ surfaced and been emblazoned across every tacky website going; Jake with his arm round me, both of us roaring laughing at some private joke right before that awful dinner … back when all was well between us and when I was so hopeful for what lay ahead.
So now there’s no doubt about it, my name – my good name – and my reputation that I worked so long and hard to build from the ground up, have now become the punch line to a bad joke. Once I was held up as a poster girl for glass ceiling-smashing single women everywhere, and now all I’m waiting for is some smart-arsed comedian to do a ‘Did you hear the one about Eloise Elliot?’ skit on some late night news review show.
One thing’s for certain though; the story has an inside leak. I swear I can almost smell Seth Coleman behind it all; the way titbits are being drip fed, usually originating via Twitter and getting picked up from there. He’s way too clever to release this any other way; like this, he has full anonymity and all the licence to libel that only a made-up username can give you.
‘Exclusive! Read here about Eloise Elliot sneaking off during work hours to meet her jailbird lover’ went one story, which Jake gamely tried to make me laugh at, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to. What am I supposed to do anyway, sue them because technically Jake and I aren’t, never were and never will be lovers? Pointless; I know it and so do they. The fact is, I still covered up for a friend. I did the crime, as they say, so now I’m doing the time. And let’s face it, photos of Jake and me practically hanging off each other at the directors’ weekend away are hardly helping matters, are they?
Then there’s all the dozens and dozens of vague, unreferenced, indirect quotes, not one of which I’d ever allow to be printed; but it seems my rival papers have fewer scruples than me. ‘An undisclosed source at the Post tells us’ that kind of shite. Jake tries his best to poke fun at some of the nuttier stuff, like ‘Colleagues at the Post tell us that ever since meeting her ex-con lover, Eloise Elliot underwent what could only be described as a total personality change, mutating from a cold, work-obsessed slave driver to a far warmer, more considerate employer …’
I wasn’t laughing though. Mainly because that much at least was actually true.
‘How She Kept her Illicit Love Life Secret from Top Brass at the Post’ almost made me choke, until Jake physically switched off my computer and dragged me kicking and screaming away from it.
And every few minutes, to the accompaniment of a wave of nausea sweeping over me, the same old panic attack will hit me. Jake and Lily. How long before they find out? Is it a just matter of time before that hits the newsstands too? Because in spite of the living hell this whole thing has become, the one single thing I’m only too pathetically grateful for is that they still haven’t managed to unearth Jake’s connection to Lily yet.
Just this thought alone sends me off into another spiral of worry. Jesus Christ, is it possible? Can this nightmare really be happening to me? Where there was one single photographer outside my house earlier, now it seems there’s a posse of the bastards at the gate outside, all weighed down with telescopic lenses the approximate width of my thigh. This, in spite of the fact that we’ve closed every curtain in the entire house, so none o
f the bastards can get a long shot of me lying prostrate on the kitchen sofa downstairs. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, minus the T.B.
For God’s sake, I think, suddenly furious, I live in a nice, safe house with an alarm system and a front door with deadbolts on it and matching bay trees beside it, on a road with Neighbourhood Watch; surely this is somebody else’s life and not mine? I’m not a drug baron, or a bankrupt property developer who owes billions. Just a newspaper editor who messed up, that’s all.
But as I sit mutely on the sofa in the family room at home, with a warm blanket wrapped around me like a car crash survivor, a hot mug of tea in front of me that the very sight of is making me sick, the tiny part of my brain that can still function through the haze is telling me loud and clear that yes, this is real. This is actually happening. To you. Right now. And by the looks of things, it’s not going to go away anytime soon.
Jake is by my side, hadn’t left my side, never leaves, and his warm, protective arm around my shoulders is probably the one single thing I’m capable of feeling now, given the state I’m in. Helen’s here too, of course, as well as a lovely, concerned guy called Ben Casey. He seems as sick with worry as I am myself and in the useless, inert state I’m in, I’m genuinely grateful to have him here. He’d introduced himself earlier as Jake’s parole officer and has been hugely helpful all day; even drove Jake and me back here from the office, as God knows, I’d have been a danger to anyone behind a wheel.
And Lily is safe and happy in her little friend Rose’s house, playing in her Wendy house and having great fun and games putting make-up on each other. I called her earlier to wish her goodnight and to tell her I’d be picking her up first thing tomorrow, forcing my voice into its highest and happiest register, so she wouldn’t suspect that Mama was on the brink of tears. One good thing to report though, as ever, her little voice acted like a soothing tonic on me and I knew she was having a ball for herself when she said, ‘Not too early in the morning Mama, me and Wose want to have pancakes for bweakfast!’
A Very Accidental Love Story Page 30
