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Gerry stubbed his cigarette out on his cheap rubber soled shoe, particles of fiery ash rained down on Mark’s carpet. “You just blew the big story and sold us a legally questionable replacement for it.”
Deep inside Darcy’s chest, a scream built, conceived from outrage, nurtured by unfairness, and bred on a wave of indignity, but it jammed up behind her teeth, stillborn. Screaming wouldn’t change anything. Having a tantrum would prove her femaleness, her weakness, her inability to take this like a man.
She understood what they’d done. Set her up as the fall guy. Called her judgement into question and trashed her reputation. They’d offer her ignominious dismissal up to Parker as a sacrifice, and hope it acted as a bargaining chip to soften the blow for the rest of them.
The scream changed form. It bubbled up inside her and burst forth as laughter. Darcy laughed so hard she had to bend forward to try to contain her inexplicable mirth.
Will Parker had struck again. It wasn’t enough he had to detain her, ambush, compromise, and betray her personally and professionally, now he’d gotten her sacked.
Will Parker, her once big break, her headline story, was now her career demise. She hated him with a pain that might never be soothed away. Now she regretted every single moment she’d spent feeling sorry for the destruction she’d wrought on his reputation and his takeover deal. Now she was chilled that she’d been touched he’d reached out to her through the dress. She hoped he choked on crystal beads, was poisoned by pearls and his every ambition turned to threads.
She stood. It was over. The evening’s deadline could go hang itself. Gerry hauled himself up too, gripping the edge of Mark’s desk to ease upright. He went for the door, leaving a cloud of smoke tang in his wake. He held it open for her, stepping back, an old-fashioned courtesy he’d never shown before. It occurred to her to wait him out, to deny him this last gentlemanly act, this oddly sexist upper hand. But she wanted out of the room too much, so she’d have to sweep though with the hauteur of a wronged heroine instead.
“Darce, wait. Gerry, we’ll talk later.”
Gerry eased out the door and pulled it closed behind him. She turned back to Mark. He was sitting now and gestured to the chair she’d vacated. “There was always more to this, wasn’t there?”
She sat, but on the edge of the seat, a bird on a perch, ready to hop away, prepared to fly. “I’m not sure why I’d tell you if there was, Mark.”
He grunted. “I’m sorry it had to go down like this. You didn’t leave us much choice.”
Mark’s height had surprised her; his decision not to support her was a cutting blow. He’d always championed her, always treated her with rough respect. Darcy didn’t like what he’d done to her, but he’d done it to help the paper, and as much as it hurt, it wasn’t personal, but now it felt like he was going to make it that way.
“You had plenty of choices.”
He inclined his head. “Perhaps, but you haven’t been honest with us.” He pinned her with a stare that had once made her knees turn watery on a semi-regular basis, and had the same effect again now. “I’ve never understood why Parker would cancel an interview they’d requested. It wasn’t because you weren’t Gerry. They had that option when I told their PR woman about you. And it wasn’t because Parker was suddenly unavailable, because there he was in living colour on your camera the same night. Yes, you’ve been fed to the dogs, but you’re not innocent in this. I don’t know what you did, but there is a lot more to this than you’re saying.”
Darcy ducked her chin. She knew her face was red. She felt like a cadet all over again, back when Mark was business pages editor, and as close to God as she was ever likely to worship. This was a man who made and broke careers. With Will Parker’s help he’d just broken hers. But she trusted he’d give her a fair reference, trusted he’d pick up the phone and let her know about jobs on the go, even employ her again at some point when all the heat died down.
Losing Mark’s good opinion was a worse blow than losing her job. But what could she possibly say to him that wouldn’t slam the lid on his regard for her forever?
“I always respected you as a journalist, Darce, and as a decent person. To see you go after Will bloody Parker like you did, well, it didn’t sit so good with me. To set him up was one thing, a legitimate tactic. But to set him up so he looked so bad, that was ethically reprehensible, and you were the only one of us in a position to know it. I always thought more of you than that. I gave you plenty of opportunity to back down. We could’ve used the photos to renegotiate an interview, we could’ve done this another way. So yeah, we screwed you over. I made the decision to fuck you over. But Darce, you handed me the gun and you loaded it with bullets.”
“Mark, I...” There was a start to that sentence, but no middle or ending. She had no idea what to say, and an irrational need to let the tightness behind her eyes relax into tears. But Mark hadn’t made her cry since she once mistakenly attributed a criminal record to a retired businessman and forced the paper to issue a retraction, and she was never going to give Will Parker the satisfaction of breaking her.
“It’s done, Darce. I’m fucking disappointed with you.”
“Mark, I...”
“You need to give me a coupla months before you contact me, all right. I’m no good to you this mad.”
She had no words. She gave him a nod, the weight of her own head almost too much to lift. She stood. Mark was around his desk and opened the door for her. As she moved past him she felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. A pat, a quick squeeze, and that silent expression of care almost undid her.
The newsroom was thankfully quiet when she made it back to her desk. Mark was going to trust her to exit without a fuss; to do so without an escort off the premises. She packed her coffee mug and mini plunger, her contact book and her latest notepad in her bag, along with the happy snaps of a girlfriend’s wedding, a day at the beach with friends and her old staffie, Gonzo, pulled from the pin-wall of the workstation. She trashed the draft copy open on her screen and logged off.
There were people she wanted to say goodbye to but not now, not a sideways look away from bursting into tears. She’d call later. There’d be drinks and war stories at the pub to commiserate. There’d be more sharp pins stuck in a fictional Gerry voodoo doll and real musing about why Mark put up with him.
She looked over at Col’s desk. He’d not been in all day and his screen was dark. He was traditionally the first to shout drinks, the first to pass on job tips. But Col knew more about her complicity than even Mark suspected, and she was glad she could avoid him for the moment.
She hefted her shoulder bag. Looked around the room for the last time and went for the lifts. At the downstairs reception she slid her building access pass across to the security guard. Not one of the men she usually exchanged coming and going smiles with. He didn’t acknowledge her. She was officially a non-person.
At the bus stop, on the bus, and walking the short distance to her tiny terrace, Darcy tried not to rehash the day’s fallout, to see the smugness in Gerry’s fat face, the anger and disillusionment in Mark’s watchful eyes.
She tried to be a normal person coming home from work, thinking about what to have for dinner and rationalising herself out of any need for exercise. Not a woman worried about paying the rent when her two months worth of redundancy money ran out. Or a job candidate having to explain to potential employers that yes, she was responsible for outing the elusive Will Parker, yes, that was her by-line, and yes, it was unfortunate the paper had to let her go. It was virtually code for ‘thanks for coming in but we’ve already filled the position’.
Rounding the corner to her front door she walked through a spider’s web. The sticky, transparent filaments stuck to her eyelashes, clung to her cheek and tickled across her nose. Juggling her door keys, she tried to swipe the itchy trail away, hoping the spider wasn’t in her hair. The stuff clung and wouldn’t come away. Her eyelashes felt clumpy.
The day was just getting better and she still had the evening to get through. Andy was back from the Middle East and Brian was barbequing. She could wimp out, claim a headache, but odds on Brian already knew; his industry radar was so finely tuned. Avoiding him would make things worse in the end.
