The True Story of Maddie Bright

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  It couldn’t be bad news, not today, Victoria thought, the sun having found its way through those awful clouds. But then someone she’d never seen before rushed past her, newspaper galleys in hand. There was never that much hurry for good news, only tragedy. She looked for someone she knew but they were all strangers, other than one or two she thought she recognised from downstairs and a sub from The Eye. There were extra phones, she noticed, cords running along the floor.

  Victoria hadn’t seen this many people in a newsroom since John Lennon’s death. She’d been at The Guardian in December 1980, just starting out. Everyone was on that story through the night. Journalists were calling friends who lived in New York, family, getting them to go down to the Dakota and call back. It was mad. They held printing then went to print then reprinted.

  He was dead. John Lennon was dead.

  They’d gone together to an all-night bar near the offices afterwards to numb the emotions that began to wash over them, a deep sadness that felt like a comfortable old cardigan to Victoria. They were all together, senior journalists, subs, cadets. The bar was the kind of place that seemed beyond hope, and with Lennon dead hopelessness might have set in. But someone had a guitar, and they all sang ‘Imagine’. Victoria watched the sun come up through the smoky windows. Imagine.

  She hadn’t turned twenty. Oh God, she was a journalist. She was bringing the news, the truth, to the world. She was at The Guardian—the guardian of truth, she believed then. She felt as if her real life had just begun, as if this was what she’d been called to do.

  She thought of that night now. It bathed her in a different kind of light.

  Victoria looked across to the middle of the space, to the conference room where the morning editorial meeting was already underway. She remembered the taxi driver, ‘all hands’. She stopped a copyboy whose face she knew but whose name she’d never learned. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘They don’t know yet.’

  ‘They don’t know what’s going on?’

  But the young copyboy was gone.

  She went to her desk, wound her bag around the chair, hung her mac on the hook on the side of the partition. No Daniella on reception. Victoria looked over towards the conference room again—glass walls, not soundproofed, not vision-proofed, in the middle of the floor. They called it the fishbowl, because you could see the fish. And if you stood close, you could hear everything the fish said to one another. From this distance, Victoria thought, they were not one fish, two fish, or red fish, blue fish. They were more like dumb fish, glum fish.

  Victoria grabbed her laptop and a yellow legal pad and pen and walked back across the bullpen. She saw English bobbies on the vision above her head. Somewhere grey, like Liverpool, she thought, from the background, lots of concrete, or maybe Sheffield. IRA? If it was so big the news division downstairs was spilling up here into the magazine floor, it must be IRA. Oh God, she thought. What now?

  ‘Well, here’s the lass herself,’ Ewan said when she walked in. He was wearing the only tie he owned, tied too tightly then loosened off so you had to wonder why he bothered, with a blue shirt that hadn’t been ironed. Black jeans, black gym boots on his feet. Ewan’s uniform, if he had one. He was sitting back from the table, legs crossed, a relaxed pose in anyone else but Ewan managed to look tense.

  Thin, if not the first word that came to mind, was among the first three you’d use to describe the editor of Britain’s most edgy and (on June sales figures) most popular magazine. High-strung would have to be one of the other two, and then maybe intelligent. He smiled at her, but even his smile came out high-strung, full of eyebrow, his dark auburn fringe pushed straight back.

  ‘Nice to see you, Victoria,’ he said, with what she took for irritation in his voice. Ewan was one of three people in her life who refused to call her Tori. The others were her father and her best friend Claire who’d always called her Victoria.

  Tori Winter, Ben had said on their second date. They were at the rugby final; Victoria had just written a long feature about English captain Will Carling. Tori Winter has a ring, Ben said. They weren’t engaged. He hadn’t asked her—of course he hadn’t; it was their second date—but he gave her his surname. You could go on stage with a name like that, he continued, without missing a beat. He’d called her Tori from then on. She’d liked it so she’d asked everyone else to call her Tori too. Her byline was still the same though. Tori Byrd was sure to prompt laughs in a way Victoria Byrd wouldn’t.

  Victoria’s colleagues were all there around the table, even some she’d thought were on leave, along with an assistant editor from The Eye. There was no story list for October on the whiteboard. There was nothing on the whiteboard. Daniella was sitting at the end of the table next to Ewan. Daniella didn’t normally attend the briefing.

  ‘Sorry,’ Victoria said. ‘What’s all this?’ She gestured out to the bullpen. She sat down at the nearest corner of the table.

  ‘Got your go-bag?’ Ewan was rubbing his cheek, looking at her face.

  She dusted her own cheek. It was sore to her touch. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘What did you do?’ he said, frowning.

  ‘I fell,’ she said, remembering she’d caught her heel in the carpet on the stairs and had gone over last night. It was after she’d taken the rubbish out. She didn’t get her arm down in time and she’d hit her cheek on the architrave. ‘Is it red?’ she asked. It gave her a fright to think of it now.

  He nodded, still looking at her.

  Oh dear. She’d hardly looked in a mirror before she left home. God knew what her hair was like. She felt found out suddenly, as if she’d been doing something wrong. She hadn’t been doing anything wrong. She thought of making a joke about sleeping in but decided against it. The mood was anything but jokey today.

  ‘Why do I need a go-bag?’ she said, focusing on Ewan. Most senior reporters kept a bag in the office in case they had to travel at short notice. Victoria hadn’t used hers since joining the magazine and she’d let it slide. Her specialty nowadays was celebrity interviews; fat-cat journalism, as her father called it, a long privileged way from bringing any kind of truth to the world, although Victoria didn’t let herself think about that. She hardly ever faced a tight deadline. She was often at the mercy of her interviewees anyway, especially in the early days. She might have more choice about who she interviewed now, but there were still those whose lives were complicated by fame and success. She was the bottom of the pack as far as they and their publicists were concerned.

  Danny Brown, the photographer Victoria might have turned to for advice, was on the other side of the conference room. She’d hoped to sidle over to Danny and find out what was going on before she was put on the spot. She tried to look a question his way, hoping for a hint, but Danny was so stone-faced that he didn’t even notice Victoria. Danny took everything in his stride but this morning he looked as if he’d been in a bomb blast. Danny had photographed what to most people would be unthinkably hard even to witness, let alone record. She had no idea what had rattled him, but something had.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, looking back at Ewan. ‘And it sounds like I drew the short straw on something?’

  ‘What?’ Ewan said curtly. ‘Have you not heard?’

  She shook her head.

  He sat up and forward, pulling his chair into the table, donned his glasses.

  He looked at her, his green eyes framed now by the kind of big dark rims that give a face an odd vulnerability.

  ‘Princess Diana is dead. We’re holding the edition.’

  THREE

  Brisbane, 1981

  ‘YOUR NEIGHBOURS ARE WORRIED YOUR HOUSE IS GOING to fall on theirs.’ Andrew Shaw was leaning back now, as if to inspect the house in its entirety right then to form an opinion of its likelihood of toppling, a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Uphill,’ he said, pointing towards the neighbours. ‘I just can’t see it. Even if it collapses, it’s not going to go that way. Anyway, t
hey’ve asked me to inspect it.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me everything that’s wrong with my house.’

  ‘I imagine so,’ he said, with a raised eyebrow. ‘Can I come in?’ ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I said, seeing Ed barrelling unsteadily across the street. ‘I’m all right!’ I called out to slow Ed down, my voice failing me a little. ‘He’s the inspector!’

  ‘Is this your knight in shining armour?’ Andrew Shaw asked.

  ‘I sense a mocking tone,’ I said sternly. ‘His armour may be tarnished, but where were you when I fell off the roof onto those steps?’

  ‘A fair point,’ Andrew Shaw said. ‘Does he need help getting up them?’

  ‘I think he’ll manage, although it depends on how far we are into the day.’ I looked across and realised Ed would probably falter. ‘Yes, that would be good, thank you,’ I said.

  Andrew Shaw brought Ed—or Ed brought Andrew, Ed objecting with some energy to being helped—and they followed me inside and along the dark hallway past the boys’ room and my parents’ room and my room through the lounge room to the little kitchen. Andrew Shaw—call me Andy, he said several times—tested his footing on the veranda floor and again in the kitchen. ‘Termites?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The only pests are the new neighbours and their like.’

  He laughed then. ‘Well, I’m their builder, so I can’t comment on that,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll need a hand, son,’ Ed said, a statement not a question, the room clearly moving for him as he swayed against it.

  ‘I think I’ll be right,’ Andrew Shaw said, looking at me and then back at Ed. ‘Actually, maybe you could hold the torch under the house, if you can get under there.’

  ‘Course I can,’ Ed said. It was a job Ed might actually be able to do. Andrew had picked his man and knew his state but treated him kindly.

  Poor Ed was thinner every time I saw him. It amazed me that something with so many calories as beer could eat a person’s body up the way it did. Wisps of once-red hair were combed back neatly at least; some days even a comb to his hair was beyond him.

  Andrew Shaw said he wasn’t sure how long it would take, as if I had all the time in the world for him, as if he’d made the appointment for today. And perhaps he had. I told him I’d be on the front veranda and not to bother me unless he absolutely had to.

  And then, regretting my inhospitableness, I offered tea. Three sugars, Andrew Shaw said, which I would have guessed, and Ed said I don’t mind if I do.

  ‘Did you see the news, Ed?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ed said. ‘That’s why I came over. Are you all right, Maddie?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, although perhaps I wasn’t. I stopped talking then, for tears had started coming out of my eyes.

  I see her there, a poor butterfly pinned to a board, a creature even more helpless than those possums in my roof. I watch her sparrow chest rising and falling with each short breath, as if her body is still deciding on flight or fight without her mind having any idea. She gives that lovely smile and talks like she thinks a grownup should talk, all the while deferring to him with her eyes. Good God! I kept saying to the television, but the television had nothing to say by way of response.

  ‘And after the letter, it’s hard to believe it’s not a sign.’

  I thought I might collapse into Andrew Shaw’s arms right then.

  ‘What letter?’ Ed asked.

  ‘She wrote to me.’

  ‘Diana Spencer?’ Andrew Shaw looked confused. I wondered, was he hard of hearing?

  ‘No,’ I said. Had I told Ed about the letter? Perhaps not. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  But it wasn’t nothing. It was everything.

  The truth is, Diana Spencer won’t have the choice of fight or flight once she knows, her real self in terror. That’s the point of pinning them. Run, you say, run as fast as your legs will carry you before he knows you’re gone. But she can’t hear you, and wouldn’t listen if she could.

  That’s the way of things, isn’t it?

  Not even knowing from whence the terror is coming. And there it is, sitting next to her on the settee, the chinless cat that got the cream.

  It was Mr Waters who said to me that the thing about good people and bad people is that they look exactly the same, and it is true.

  Take Ed, nodding at me now. You’d be forgiven for making assumptions. He’s a drunk. You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all he is. But the look on his face as he saw my pain was so kindly, I couldn’t hold his gaze. I found tears in my eyes again and only shook my head and formed my mouth into as tight a line as I could.

  I made the tea, transformative of even the most disturbed mental condition, and I carried the two cups to the dining room and put them on the table. Andy was in the ceiling by then, Ed swaying at the bottom of the ladder under the manhole.

  The day was heating up, I could hear the tin roof cracking as it stretched.

  ‘There’s possums up there!’ I yelled, just as Andy shouted, ‘Oh shit, rats!’ and came back down the ladder.

  ‘Possums,’ I said, ‘and that’s quite enough foul language. This is not a building site. Here’s your tea. I have no cake. And it will be toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch.’

  He looked sheepish for a moment. ‘Sorry. They gave me a fright. More like rats, I’m afraid,’ Andy said, looking at Ed, not me. He took a sip of his tea.

  ‘They’re possums,’ I said. I wasn’t going to listen to nonsense talk. Rats! Didn’t he know the difference? Rats thither whereas possums thump. And he claimed to be a builder. For goodness’ sake. He wasn’t a builder’s bootstrap.

  ‘I have a book to finish,’ I said, pretending not to notice Ed rolling his eyes at Andrew Shaw. Ed thinks the book will never be finished. But Ed is not a writer, so he would not have any idea what is involved.

  And the fact is, she’s written to me.

  Helen.

  She’s written to me after all these years.

  I don’t have long left, Maddie, she writes. Rupert is gone.

  Mr Waters, I want to say, I’m so sorry I didn’t … I’m sorry.

  I have my desk out here on the enclosed veranda because the middle of the house, the second bedroom where I could keep it, started to feel suffocating, as if I were standing on the shoulders not of giants but of the long dead. Ed helps me to move the desk just inside the door when rain’s coming from the north, which is rare. I can drag it in myself, or I could before I broke the leg, but now Ed carries it for me.

  Out here, where the front wall is covered entirely with louvre windows, I can feel as if I am part of the air, inconsequential and vital at the same time. My words can flow out of my fingers and onto the page and scatter to the street.

  Today, I am looking over chapter one. I need to rethink the beginning.

  The woman was still sitting outside the church where she’d been since early afternoon, watching and waiting as day faded from her eyes.

  Oh, God! As if day fades from one’s eyes.

  The woman sat on the bench circling the fountain near the church where she would change history.

  Really? Change history?

  The woman stood up and felt in her knees she’d been sitting too long.

  Perhaps she could spy a rat.

  Rats, for goodness’ sake.

  The little blue envelope is in my top desk drawer, a red-breasted robin in one corner, so like her, that stationery, the loopy M in my name. She was a writer of loopy Ms. You would have guessed that on meeting her.

  I know more about rats than most people know about their own faces.

  FOUR

  London, 1997

  ‘I BEG YOUR PARDON?’ VICTORIA SAID.

  Princess; he’d said Princess Diana. Ewan never used Diana’s title.

  ‘Daniella has your tickets sorted,’ Ewan said. ‘Flights are full, so it’s the tunnel, I’m afraid. I think you’re on the eleven thirty. You’ll have to get a move on.’ He lo
oked at Daniella, who was listening on a call on one of the phones in the conference room, taking notes. She nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Victoria couldn’t concentrate on what Ewan was saying. Diana was dead?

  ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Harry says we’re redoing September.’ Harry Knight, editor-in-chief of The Eye and owner of Knight News.

  ‘Where?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘Paris, unless you have a better idea.’

  Victoria looked around the room, trying to take it in. All eyes were on her now. ‘She’s dead?’ Diana was thirty-six, Victoria’s age. Their birthdays were a month apart.

  ‘And we’re covering it?’ She looked at Ewan. ‘We’re pulling September to make Diana the lead?’ Ewan despised the monarchy.

  ‘Not the time, Tori,’ Meredith said. Meredith was crying. Meredith was from advertising. People from advertising didn’t cry.

  ‘How?’ Victoria said.

  ‘You really don’t know?’ Ewan said. ‘Car crash. Paris. With Dodi Fayed.’ He half choked as he said it. Ewan, her editor, was holding back tears, tears about Diana.

  Dodi Fayed was the new boyfriend. Victoria had seen Nathan Ashbury’s picture, the one Nathan said The Sunday Sun paid him quarter of a million pounds for. THE KISS! He took it after Diana telephoned and told him where she was, or so Nathan told Danny. You could never really trust Nathan, but perhaps it was true. Perhaps Diana had telephoned him and said, ‘Hi Nathan, I’m in the Mediterranean on the Harrods yacht. Come photograph me.’

  Danny had shot Diana, of course. He was one of the favourites. Sometimes, he said. He’d done that famous picture for The Sun in the early days of the royal romance, the one that made her skirt see-through. ‘She’s one of those women—loves a lens,’ he said, which reminded Victoria of something but she couldn’t think of what it was. ‘Until she’s in a bad mood, then she hates it. You can’t win with women like that.’