It’s taken me a long time, but I understand now where and why and when things went wrong for me. It all leads back to here, to this place, and to the people who did something they shouldn’t have. It is time for me to move on now, and finish what I started.
Her
Tuesday 22:30
I don’t think I’ve ever really moved on since Jack left.
For me, the benefits of being alone outweigh the pain of it. Plus, I think it’s what I deserve. The sting of loneliness is only ever temporary, like that of a nettle. If you don’t scratch at the solitude, it starts to feel normal again soon enough. But I still think about him, and us, and her. Some memories refuse to be forgotten.
I think about Jack all afternoon and all night, despite the steady stream of live interviews for various BBC outlets: the News Channel, Radio 4, Five Live, the Six, everything from BBC London to BBC World. By the time I wrap up my final two-way on the Ten O’Clock News, we are no longer the only ones broadcasting from the woods. Sky, ITN, and CNN are here too, each with their own team and satellite trucks. They might all have the story now, but I was the one who broke it. I knew the identity of the victim before anyone else, even if nobody knows how.
Given it’s so late, and the ridiculously early time they want us to start doing lives on BBC Breakfast tomorrow morning, the overnight news editor offers to pay for a hotel for Richard and me. The engineers will head back to London, to be replaced by the early team tomorrow, but I think it makes sense for us to stay down here, rather than drive back to the city only to have to return a few hours later. We’ll get more sleep this way, and be close by should there be any further developments. Richard agrees.
I didn’t need to ask what hotel we had been booked into; there is only one, and I know it well. The White Hart is more of a pub really, with some rooms upstairs. The only other accommodation in the village are a couple of cute B&Bs, or my old bedroom at my mother’s house. That isn’t somewhere I want to go.
We’re too late for food—the restaurant is long closed—but Richard suggests getting a drink in the bar before last orders. Against my better judgment, I say yes. A bottle of Malbec and two packets of salt-and-vinegar chips later, I can feel myself start to relax, and I’m glad. Sometimes colleagues are like old friends, the kind you can not see for a few months and then pick up right where you left off.
“Fancy another?” I ask, taking out my purse.
Richard smiles. His jokes and easy conversation have made me feel young again tonight, as though I might still be someone fun to hang out with. It’s a shame he dresses in retro clothes and refuses to cut his hair. I think there is a man hiding inside the boy he pretends to be.
“Tempting,” he says. “But we have a very early start, and the bar is closed now.”
I look behind me and see that he’s right. Most of the lights have been dimmed already, and it would appear that the staff have left us to it.
“Shame,” I say, sliding my hand across the table until it is almost touching his. “Could always check out the minibar in my room?”
He moves his hand away and holds it up, pointing at the ring on his finger.
“Married, remember?”
The rejection smarts a little, and I say something I already know I’m going to regret.
“It never bothered you before.”
His face stretches into a polite and apologetic smile, which only makes me feel worse.
“That was different. We have the kids now, it changes things. It changed us,” he says.
Being patronized stings far more than being rejected, and he’s telling me something I already know. Having a child changed things for me too, until I lost her. I never talk about what happened with people at work, or anyone else really.
I was on attachment to the Arts and Entertainment unit when I was pregnant—a department that lives on the top floor of the BBC—so most people in the newsroom rarely saw me. And if they did, I honestly think they just thought I had put on weight. There were complications that meant I was at home, confined to weeks of bedrest for the final few months. So a lot of people didn’t know I was pregnant in the first place. Or that my daughter died three months after she was born.
I wonder if Richard knows. I conclude that he doesn’t when he picks up his phone and starts scrolling through endless pictures of two pretty little blond girls. He seems eager to share what he thinks I’m missing out on.
“They’re beautiful,” I say, and mean it.
His smile widens. “They take after their mother in the looks department.”