FORTY-SIX

Kate

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012

Miss Walker’s flat was empty when they got there but a note on lined paper flapped on the front door, telling callers she was out shopping. Back by 3 p.m., she’d written.

“Good grief, she might as well have added ‘PS: Help yourselves,’” Kate said, pulling it off the door and stuffing it in her pocket.

It had begun to spit with rain and she led the way to the pub. “She’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Kate said.

Graham laughed when he saw them. “You can’t keep away, can you?”

He called through to the back: “Toni, the press is back.”

“Your wife?” Kate asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” she said, emerging from the back room. “Graham says you’re a reporter,” she added, as if it was some sort of guilty secret. A species apart. Kate waited, expecting the usual snide remark. Things had changed since the days when people thought being a reporter was glamorous. Now, journalists were down there with tax inspectors and traffic wardens.

It seemed everyone was jumping up and down about the press and their methods of getting information. But it was all about the technology nowadays. When Kate had been starting out, her ex–Fleet Street boss had told her how to disable a public phone box so no other reporter could use it—unscrew the receiver—and once ordered her to take a hidden camera into a hospital ward to photograph a famous patient.

She hadn’t done the sneaky hospital bed photographs. She’d been frightened enough of her boss—an alcoholic whose mood for the day could be gauged by the way the office door swung open in the morning—to do almost anything he ordered, but not that. She’d taken a photo of her coat and pretended the camera had gone wrong.

But her old boss sounded like a character out of an Ealing comedy in comparison with some of the new dark arts. Breaking into phone voicemails, bank accounts, and medical records had become the norm in some newsrooms, it was said, more and more loudly.

Some newsrooms. But it didn’t matter who’d done what anymore. They were all guilty as far as the public was concerned, and they all had to face the reckoning.

Kate’s paper had escaped a police investigation into hacking and paying officials for information—“It may happen yet,” Terry had said over a beer one evening, deep in a pit of despair.

“Don’t be daft,” she’d said. “I’ve never hacked anything—wouldn’t have known where to start.” But she knew it didn’t change the public opinion that all journalists were scum.

“Yes, but crème de la scum,” Mick the photographer had boasted.

•   •   •

The pub landlady kept quiet and looked at her expectantly.

“Er, yes, I’m Kate Waters from the Daily Post. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Toni. You don’t look like a reporter,” she said.

Kate wasn’t sure what to say. She wondered what Toni thought reporters looked like. Men, probably. Men in dirty macs rummaging through dustbins, quite possibly. She tried not to sigh.

“Well, we come in all shapes and sizes,” she said and laughed.

Toni laughed, too. “I hear you’re asking about the baby in the garden. Incredible it’s that little girl . . .”

Kate nodded. “Incredible . . .” she echoed.

“Your husband was saying that you grew up in the street, that you might remember some of the people who were around in the seventies and eighties,” Kate said, shuffling round to give Toni room to sit.

“Yes, my mum and dad had the pub, and before that, they lived at number 57 for years.”

“Was your maiden name Baker?” Kate asked.

“That’s right. How did you know?” Toni said.

“I’ve been looking at the electoral register from those days, that’s all,” Kate said. “Did they sell to Mr. Soames?”

Toni rolled her eyes. “The local sleazebag. He was revolting, all hands. Always after the girls. I stayed well away.”

Kate underlined the note “Find Soames” in her notebook. “What about the girls you knew in the eighties?”

“I thought the baby was taken in the seventies?” Toni said.

“Well, the police are looking at a wider spread of years to be thorough,” Kate said quickly. She’d almost given the game away. Sinclair would go mad if she said anything before he gave the go-ahead.

“Right. Well, let’s see, there was quite a gang. They all came to my sixteenth birthday party. That was 1985. It was a brilliant party. A disco, just down the road at the new Boys’ Brigade hall. God, I can’t believe that’s almost thirty years ago.”

Kate smiled winningly.

“We must be about the same age, then,” she said. Kate was a good six years older but never mind. “Best days of my life, too. Do you remember Jackie? I loved that magazine. Read it every week and put the posters on my bedroom walls. And the fashions. Can’t believe some of the outfits I used to wear. My boys think I’m making it up.”

Toni lapped it up. “I wore a miniskirt and fishnet gloves, like Madonna, to my sixteenth. Thought I was the bee’s knees. I think I’ve still got photos from it somewhere.”

“Oh, I’d love to see them,” Kate said quickly.

“I’ll get them,” Toni said happily, getting up and disappearing through a door marked “Private.”

“You’ve started something now.” Graham laughed. “Hope you’ve got nothing else planned for the day. Toni loves a trip down memory lane.”

“Oh, so do I,” Kate said. “I’ve got all the time in the world.” She looked meaningfully at Joe and hoped he wouldn’t get restless.

Ten minutes later Toni emerged, her arms filled with a stack of fat photo albums and several framed pictures.

“I’m not sure which ones are the party so I brought everything,” she said. “And these in the frames were in the same box so I brought them, too.”

She heaved them onto the table, sending up a cloud of dust. “Haven’t looked at them for ages,” she said, apologetically waving away the evidence of neglect.

The two women sat side by side on the velour banquette and began trawling through the pages, Toni pointing and giggling while Joe looked at his phone and Graham polished the glasses behind the bar.

“You ladies want a cup of tea?” he called across when he’d finished. Joe looked up. “Sorry, mate,” Graham said. “Tea for everyone?”

“Yes, please, love,” Toni called over her shoulder. “He’s a treasure. Oh, I think these must be the party ones.”

Spilling out of the album were loose snapshots and birthday cards. Kate scooped up a handful of photos that had fallen onto the floor and laid them out on the table like playing cards.

“That’s the gang,” Toni said, delighted. “Look at us all dolled up. We all got together in my bedroom before the disco to do our makeup and hair. You could hardly breathe for hairspray and perfume. Takes me straight back.”

Kate was scrutinizing the faces. “Which one’s you?”

Toni tapped a smiling face near the center of the group. “There I am. I had a feather cut then. Everyone did. We all thought we were Sheena Easton. Hideous now but it was big then. Literally.”

She smoothed her shiny bob nostalgically.

“And look at the makeup. We used to put blusher on with a trowel.”

Kate laughed loudly. “Looks like you should all have been down at the burns unit. Didn’t we used to put the same stuff on our lips and cheeks? I remember it was sticky and smelled of bubble gum.”

“Yes. And I had that lip gloss that tasted of strawberries. Revolting!”

“So who are the others?” Kate asked, anxious to get them back on track.

“Now then, that’s Jill, Gemma, Sarah B., and Sarah S., not sure about her—think she was only at our school for a term. I think that’s Harry Harrison and her weird friend. They were a year below us at school, but Harry knew my brother, Malcolm. Well, she fancied him rotten—all the girls I knew did. Poor Malcolm. Too gorgeous for his own good. Anyway, Harry begged me to invite her. I think they went out for a while—oh, and then he dumped her for Sarah S. I can’t believe I’ve remembered that, it’s a million years ago. I do remember that Harry was always in trouble at school, but she was a great laugh.”

Kate was writing down names, occasionally staunching the torrent of gossip and memories to check surnames and spellings.

“Don’t suppose you knew an Anne Robinson?”

“Only the one from The Weakest Link on the telly.”

“No, that isn’t her,” Kate said. “Who still lives round here?” she asked during a pause for a second cup of tea. “Who can I go and see?”

“Both the Sarahs live just near the industrial estate, but I haven’t seen them since I had my tubes tied.”

Kate nodded with a sympathetic wince. The level of instant intimacy always astonished her. She’d met this woman half an hour ago and she now knew her reproductive history.

“Took ages to get over,” Toni said. “They said I’d be out of bed in two days, but was I, buggery?”

“Poor you,” Kate said—the catchall phrase for halting an interviewee in his or her unwanted reminiscences.

“What about Jill and Gemma?” she prodded Toni back on track.

“Oh, they married and moved to Kent or Essex, I think. God, I haven’t thought about them for years. We were all so close then, but we just lost touch. I moved to west London for a few years when I got my first office job, and that’s all it takes, isn’t it? The ground closes over you. When I came back, they’d gone and I was married.”

“I know.” Kate stirred her cup sympathetically. “What about the others in the photo? The girl who fancied your brother?”

“Harry? Oh yes. Don’t know where she went either. Nothing would surprise me. I’m not being much of a help, am I?”

“Nonsense. You’ve been brilliant. Thanks so much, Toni. You’ve been a godsend.”

Toni grinned back at her. “Loved it. It’s got my juices flowing and I think I’ll try to set up a reunion. A return to 1985. I’ll go on Facebook and find them all.”

“Let me know who you hear from, then,” Kate said. She would look on Facebook herself, but she knew Toni would have a better chance of finding and hearing back from the disco girls. “And make sure you invite me. I love a boogie.”

Toni squeaked and started doing a hand jive.