The Stepmother(65)
‘How are you anyway?’ I change the subject. ‘You look tired too.’
She still looks good though. My little sister – the newshound.
‘Still atoning for professional misconduct,’ she says tersely. ‘It’s taking a while. A lifetime maybe.’
‘Well…’ I try to summon a platitude.
‘I really f*cked it up. Big style.’
‘Yeah,’ I agree, ‘you did.’
‘Yeah, I did. Cheers for that.’ She toasts me with a rueful coffee cup. The pouty French waitress slops down my scrambled eggs and kale, more interested in making eyes at the cool cats on the table behind, and Marlena and I grin at each other. ‘Silly cow,’ Marlena mouths.
We are different, Marlena and I, poles apart – but we both get it. We came from the same place, one few others will ever understand. Only Frankie maybe – though I’ve tried to protect him. We are different to the circles we move in; we’ve done well – and then we’ve both fallen from great heights. Now we are attempting to climb up again.
‘I guess phone hacking was never gonna pay the rent, was it?’ I say, peering dubiously at the undercooked egg. Give me a greasy spoon any day of the week. I don’t belong in London any more. I am the wrong side of cool, the wrong side of forty. And I’m looking over my shoulder every second now.
I think of Samuel Johnson: ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’ I am tired actually. Very bloody tired.
‘It was paying the rent very nicely, thank you.’ Marlena is tart. ‘It was just my conscience I couldn’t live with any more. Look, why are you really here, Jeanie? Do you need help again?’
‘No.’ I push my egg around. ‘I just want your solidarity.’
‘Really?’
Ever the cynic, my little sister. I suppose she has plenty of reason to be. And who am I kidding? Not her apparently. We both know what Marlena did for me last year when all the crap hit the papers. ‘Well there might be one thing actually…’
‘I knew it!’ she crows. She hates being wrong. ‘So. Spill.’
‘It’s just… Someone sent Matt an email – and they sent one to the college that offered me a job too. With a link to – the thing.’
‘Fucking hell, Jeanie,’ she exhales loudly. ‘I warned you. I knew that would happen if you didn’t tell him yourself.’
‘Please, Marlena. No told-you-sos…’
She pulls a face. ‘Okay. So?’
‘Some idiot sent him a link to the first article about a week ago. The one from the Sun on Sunday.’
‘And the job? You hadn’t told them either? That you were cleared?’
‘What do you reckon?’ I look at her squarely. ‘And now I’m more concerned with who’s going around talking about me and saying they’re a “well-wisher”.’
‘Have you got the email?’
I pass her over the printed email. She reads it.
‘And I’m guessing Matthew didn’t recognise the sender either?’
‘He says not. But actually…’ I feel uncomfortable again.
‘Actually what?’
‘He didn’t want to say who’d sent it. I had to – look.’ I feel overwhelmed and really, really sad. I haven’t even begun on my other worries. ‘But he said he doesn’t know them.’
‘It’s going to be all right, Jean.’ Marlena pats my hand again – like when we were kids. ‘I know it is.’
‘Is it?’
‘Course. And have you got any idea at all who might’ve sent it?’
‘I suppose I thought it could be – you know, Otto’s mum.’
‘Hmmm.’ She stands suddenly, sending the chair skidding across the tiles. ‘Can we go outside? I’m dying for a fag.’
‘ “Dying” being the operative word…’
‘Our vices make life’s crap bearable.’
I can’t really argue with that.
Outside we huddle together under the awning. It is drizzling and grey – and generally depressing.
‘Have you contacted her?’ She lights up. ‘Old Ma Lundy?’
‘No way.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t ever want to see that woman again.’
That woman had been my biggest detractor for six months; she’d made it her own personal quest to take me down, even when both her own son and I had denied every charge; despite the fact there had been no evidence, nothing really to say we were guilty –nothing apart from that bloody, bloody photograph.