‘No, that’s not it at all,’ he was protesting. ‘I only wanted to put together some pictures and some information to help this poor Jonathan guy out, help fill in some gaps for him. I’ve been working flat out, I guess I got absorbed in it, but I found loads of good stuff. It’s all saved on a memory stick. If you meet me for a drink I can give it to you…’
‘“Poor Jonathan”? Do you expect me to believe you feel sorry for him, after what you did to him in the summer?’ The salacious front page gossip about Peony and Jonathan danced before her eyes again, with Adrian’s name printed above all the lies.
‘In the summer? Mirren, please, I—’
‘I might be weak-willed, but I’m not stupid. You’re just another sleazy journalist out for themselves. I’m only sorry it took me so long to figure you out. Just make sure you destroy that memory stick because if this gets into the paper then so help me—’
‘It won’t, I promise. Look, I’ve left the memory stick at work. I’ll go get it tomorrow and drop it off at your boat, OK? Then you can do what you like with it, but honestly, I think Jonathan should see it. There are pictures of his mum, and interviews; there’s even coverage of a summer gala when Olivia and Wagstaff both dressed as masquers and were photographed together. He should have those…’
‘You can bring it by first thing tomorrow, but just post it through the hatch. I don’t want to see you.’
Mirren hung up the phone and stalked off to brush her teeth, wondering why she didn’t feel triumphantly self-righteous and relieved, only sad and sorry and disappointed with herself once more.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘I am to wait, though waiting so be hell’
(Sonnet 58)
The next day there was no memory stick delivered to the barge, nor the next, or the next. With each day that passed Mirren’s anxiety grew and she had to ring Kelsey from the laundry room at the Yorick and tell her all about it – that in Adrian’s possession there were carefully collated stories and images featuring Jonathan’s mum and his biological father. He’d broken his promise to return them and Mirren wasn’t even surprised. He’d probably already sent the story to Mr Ferdinand by now. She warned Kelsey to prepare for the worst when the paper went to print on Friday.
Kelsey had listened and inhaled through gritted teeth, clasping her hair between the raked fingers of her free hand. ‘OK. OK. Right then.’ She calmed herself. ‘It’s good to be forearmed. I’ll let Jonathan know.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’ Mirren’s voice was full of hope.
‘Not yet, no. But I’ll keep on leaving messages.’
Kelsey had to believe Jonathan would come round eventually, otherwise how could theirs be true, fixed love? He’d wanted to propose only a few short days ago, hadn’t he?
After hanging up the call, she rang Jonathan again, not even considering the time difference with LA where he was taking up his drama teaching residency for the rest of the winter; if he was working or sleeping his phone would be switched off anyway, or maybe he was just filtering calls and ignoring hers. Either way, the news about the memory stick full of evidence was a new, worrying development and he had a right to know about it. So she spoke down the crackling line, telling the man who’d once loved her enough to buy her a sapphire ring that, come New Year, the whole world would know about his mum’s long-held secret, and it was all Kelsey’s fault.
Both women spent Hogmanay alone chatting on their phones with their mums back in Scotland. Neither of them felt like raising a toast to ring out the old year, but both steadfastly made resolutions to try to be wiser in the months to come and to be more considerate of others, and Mirren renewed her vows of living a single life from now on.
Early on New Year’s Day as Kelsey hung the last of the pictures at the barge, Mirren ran out to buy the newspaper whose publication they’d been dreading.
They’d agreed in advance that no matter how bad it was, how salacious and invasive, they’d stay calm and not let Adrian’s bad behaviour make them behave badly in turn. They’d brought all this on themselves and they’d have to do the best damage limitation they could and that would include phoning Jonathan’s mum at home and apologising to her and asking Mirren’s friend in the legal department back at theBroadsheetif she could do anything about suppressing the story online.
Mirren almost leapt down the hatch into the barge just as Kelsey was hanging the portrait of Jonathan in the only space left on the walls and trying hard not to give in to the tears welling.
‘It’s not there!’ Mirren called out. ‘Look!’ She turned the pages roughly. ‘Nothing, see? There’s only this.’ She turned to the theatre pages and showed Kelsey.
The Oklahoma Renaissance Players are set to make a triumphant return to Stratford with Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost following their sell-out run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in town last summer and a reportedly triumphant Hamlet in Ontario over the autumn. Jonathan Hathaway, the company’s male lead will take the role of Berowne starring alongside Peony Brown as Rosaline. This run will be Hathaway’s last with the company as he steps down to pursue roles in English theatre. He’ll be replaced in June by his current understudy, local boy William Greville. The Examiner will be at the play’s opening performance in April which coincides with The Players’ Pageant: a one-hundred actor-strong procession through town from the train station to the main theatres on riverside in a spectacle of costume and song not seen in town since the heyday of acting companies arriving by steam train for the spring season to great fanfare and crowds. The Players’ Pageant is the vision of main theatre artistic director…
Kelsey let the paper fold, her eyes wide with astonishment. ‘And so it goes on. No mention of Wagstaff and Olivia at all.’
The pair thought this called for a modest celebration and Kelsey had just made the tea and was talking about how maybe it was actually all over and Adrian had done the right thing, saving Olivia Hathaway from a news scandal, when the pinging notification sounded on Mirren’s phone.
‘It’s Adrian,’ Mirren shrugged. She read the message aloud:
I’ve been trying to call but you won’t answer your phone. I hardly know how to say this. The memory stick wasn’t there when I returned to the office after we spoke the other day. I’ve been searching everywhere for it. I’ve turned the Examiner building over and trawled the streets in case I somehow dropped it. I even asked Ferdinand if he’s seen it, but no luck. I’ll keep looking. I’m sorry. I wish you’d talk to me. A.
Kelsey sighed loudly and slumped with her mug on the gallery room floor, looking up at Jonathan’s picture in its frame. ‘I’ll have to let Jonathan know about this too. I thought if I kept being honest with him about what was happening here and gave him time to think, he’d eventually call, but this… this’ll be the end as far as he’s concerned. That information’s still out there, anyone could have it and we’re at their mercy. We just have to wait and see where it turns up. How is Jonathan supposed to endure that?’
‘Or,’ Mirren chipped in, ‘Adrian’s refusing to give the story up just yet and he’s come up with this cock and bull tale while he gathers more information – or maybe he’s trying to pitch it to the tabloids, get himself a nice deal? He did say theExaminerwas likely to fold this year and he’d be reassigned to some other provincial paper. He won’t want that. This is his chance to make it big with a gossip rag.’
Kelsey reached for her phone and dialled Jonathan’s number ready to break the news. On the other side of the world his phone rang, sending Kelsey straight to voicemail, just as she’d predicted.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
