Cover Story - 1

‘Ya suffering, darling?’ Aaron said, at the sight of Bel.

‘Shocking,’ she agreed, not even bothering to be offended that her hangover was that obvious.

Bel was pale and in sunglasses: a flamboyant, ‘film star at Cannes’ oversized pair. She was juggling a tin of Appletiser, a large Americano, and a steaming brown paper bag. There was a cheese puff twist in her pocket. Her scavenger’s bounty told the whole story.

‘Nibbles?’ Aaron said, nodding at it all, referring to the nearby greasy spoon they’d anointed their favourite in Manchester city centre. We can’t Uber Eats our Lemon Drizzle Cruffins, we need to mingle with the community , Aaron said.

Aaron, North of England editor, was from Bury and Bel, Investigations Editor, had moved from York for this two-hander journalistic experiment. Aaron had the regular churn pressure of headlines, Bel the long-form, deep-dive stories of greater resonance. Both of them thought they had the harder task.

‘Yup, Nibbles. Workmen in brick-dust-covered Timberland boots, and then me. Buckfast at Tiffany’s. Sorry not to get you anything, I didn’t have any hands left.’

‘S’OK. I’m eating clean. Been in the gym already this morning, working on my revenge body, ’ Aaron said, ‘Not sure who it’s going to take revenge on yet cos my significant ex would call 998 if I was on fire.’

Bel snorted as she took her seat, scattering her purchases.

‘Try not to vomit with excitement in your condition, but it’s new intern Christmas Day,’ Aaron said. ‘What will Santa have stuffed into our stockings? Can Cicely be bettered? And when I say bettered I mean worsened , obviously.’

Bel pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, wincing at the light. She dragged her cardigan over her shoulders, the old knackered one she left on her chair as a sort of comfort blanket.

‘Hard to imagine a Cicely downgrade. They’d have to not turn up at all.’

‘Their not appearing would be an upgrade, sugar chicken.’

A resentful third wheel had made for a strained atmosphere, it was true. All fresh hires in the newsroom down in London were now required to do this stint up here.

Despite it being buried in the contract they could be deployed around the country, clearly none of them thought it would actually happen. Banishment to the windswept foreign territories came as an unpleasant shock. Bel’s first editor at her weekly newspaper had announced that anyone under thirty in any profession should ‘eat shit and pretend they like the taste’, but so far, there’d been no pretending.

‘Is it a man or woman this time?’ Bel asked.

She snapped open and gingerly sipped her drink, which would be the delivery system for two ibuprofen with caffeine once she could lay hands on them. Her desk wasn’t the tidiest.

Oh God, her head. On a Monday. At thirty-four years of age.

Never, ever trust Shilpa when she suggested something like coming over for a ‘cosy Sunday pub roast’, Bel thought. The mad bitch had them drinking coffee tequila shots from a teapot!

Now we’re both single and you live nearer, we’ve got to use these opportunities, Shilpa had hustled . Plus, you renting a two-bedroom flat is a clear enticement to me. An incitement.

The last thing Bel remembered was both of them lying across the furniture, blasting George Michael, agreeing they should go to Sri Lanka for Christmas. It was May.

Bel was trying to impress in a job she’d had for three months. Meanwhile Shilpa doubtless remained under a Chantilly cream-like cloud of 4.5 tog Hungarian goose down in Bel’s spare room in Ancoats. She was Stockport’s most ungovernable textiles designer, enjoying her WFH privileges. Bet she didn’t even have her eyes open, let alone her laptop.

‘Or a third terrible thing: another demonic child intern,’ Aaron said.

Cicely, twenty-three, had eaten Perello olives from the tin like sweets, done less work than a cat, and was a two-time victim of mysterious illnesses on a Friday afternoon. She wore baby blue noise-cancelling headphones at her desk, which felt like a low-key insult. Bel couldn’t conceive of that level of confidence at Cicely’s age and was rather glad she couldn’t.

Cicely disappeared back down south after eight weeks of the twelve total she was supposed to spend in the Manchester office, without a farewell.

Bel and Aaron found out from their section editor, Toby, on the Monday.

‘She said, and I quote, the “vibe was off”,’ Toby reported in one of their twice-weekly editorial Teams meetings.

Aaron, who’d come from being the crime reporter at the Manchester Evening News , was still trying to get his head round the ethos. ‘Since when did the workplace involve the vibe needing to be on? I’ve been seriously misled about my contractual right to vibing.’

‘Interns,’ Toby shrugged.

After they got off the call, Aaron said: ‘I Googled Cicely on a hunch. Her dad’s on the rich list and her grandad’s an Earl. I wish the whole lot of them a Saltburning.’

That was where you got that level of confidence at her age.

‘Today we have one Connor Adams ,’ said Aaron, as if the name was in some way ludicrous. ‘Toby’s notes say …’

The tinny mechanical ziiiip of the intercom interrupted him.

‘… And there he is. Brace, brace.’

Aaron darted off to get the door, thundering down a steep, narrow flight of aluminium-ridged stairs that concentrated the mind when carrying scalding hot coffees.

It was a fairly insalubrious hole, this, an unkempt first-floor space with grimy windows looking down onto the busy thoroughfare of Deansgate. The walls were stacked with banker’s boxes, the electric lighting buzzed, there was a tiny kitchen area of teabag-stained Formica. You could set-dress it as the 1970s without making any changes beyond the computers.

When Bel had been recruited by Toby and his boss Silas, clad in coloured cord trousers with logo-ed lanyards round their necks, they’d swung on their chairs in the glass-walled office in London and outlined their vision. It’s about giving you a physical space to share, a nerve centre of operations; the fragmentation of remote working is not the idea. We’re building a hub, a new world. You’re its Adam and Eve.

‘Eh, what a dump. Our Slough House,’ Aaron said, in his Lancashire accent, surveying the premises on their first morning.

Bel had feared a hyper-competitive or difficult character as her sole co-worker. She was relieved instead to dumb-lol with the terminally irreverent Aaron Parry all day. He still might be hyper-competitive – she was undecided on that – but, crucially, he wasn’t doing it in a way that made the working environment inhospitable.

He took the gentle mickey out of Bel’s professional pedigree.

‘Were you … a successful podcaster?’ he said, pressing a ballpoint pen into his cheek and pulling a satirical face.

‘You say that like it’s an oxymoron. I won a People’s Choice award, I’ll have you know!’

This provoked a waggish grin.

‘I’ll give it a listen. Wassit called again?’

‘I Might Have A Story For You.’

‘Far be it from me to criticise, but …’

‘Far be it from you, Aaron, so very far.’

‘‘‘ Might ?” Why the qualifier? Why not I Have A Story For You ?’

‘Because it’s not the phrase. People always say I might have a story for you. I don’t know why, but they do.’

Aaron gave her a look that said he preferred confidence to being arty.

‘Here it is, the throbbing HQ!’ Aaron said, leading a man a fair bit taller than him into the room – Aaron was about five foot four. ‘And this right here, the spider in the centre of the web, is the one, the only, the legendary podcaster and all-round mega honey, Miss Bel Macauley.’

‘Hi. Connor,’ he said, in a self-confident staccato, extending his hand to shake.

Bel hadn’t expected to be this formal and had unfortunately started on her fried egg and hash brown roll, putting it back down and hastily and discreetly wiping her hand on her leg.

‘Nice to meet you.’

Connor withdrew his hand swiftly.

He didn’t look like a journalist. Or not an interning one, anyway: older (her age? Early thirties, not the twenty-three-year-old she was expecting) and too well dressed: immaculate Oxford blue shirt, black wool tie, police officer colours.

It sunk in that he was strikingly good-looking too, in a way that was certain to make him a self-regarding dick. Thick brown hair, dampened by mizzle, cut short but still long enough to rake your hands through. Puppyish eyes offset by strong cheekbones. Regency romance suitor via a partner at Deloitte.

His sceptical gaze flickered over her. Bel could not imagine a more explicit sense of assessment outside of airport security and swimsuit pageants.

His forehead creased, he was almost outright scowling. Bel gathered he was doing that thing when someone doesn’t realise their face is conveying their feelings. Or maybe, even worse, he did know.

‘You’re not my pupil, it’s not really possible to shadow investigative work. You’re with Aaron, as your Work Dad,’ she said, reflexively having to assert herself, goad him a little, in the face of his evident disgust.

‘Yes, I know,’ Connor said, his tone not concealing his offence in return.

He opened a smart messenger bag and started organizing the spare desk. The casual mood of only moments earlier had completely evaporated, creaking tension in its place. Aaron widened his eyes at Bel and made a covert gun barrel to temple gesture.

Bloody hell, these three months would last forever.