Cover Story - 2

If it was statistically proven to be a myth that it always rained in Manchester, why was it always fucking raining? Connor thought, as he checked the coordinates on Google Maps again and that his blue dot was moving the right way.

It had absolutely hammered down when he and his dad had arrived. The low, forbidding grey sky threw down water in quantities that felt personal.

He’d not wanted his dad to do the long round trip from Barking up to his Salford Airbnb and back again, but he insisted. Connor didn’t have the heart to say no.

His father was seventy-six now and Connor had been emotionally unprepared for how precarious and mortal things suddenly turned in that decade. Every interaction with his parents came freighted with the fear of how long he might have left with them. The loving sturdiness of their support became almost unbearable, with the growing awareness it was finite. When they sat in a companionable near silence eating woolly Ploughman’s sandwiches in the front seats of his dad’s Ford Focus at Knutsford Services, Connor felt like an elephant was sitting on his heart.

‘You want to get a crack on with any wedding or Mum and Dad won’t be there,’ said his older brother Shaun, who could never be accused of peddling toxic positivity. Shaun’s own nuptials, five years ago, had been at The Ludlow in New York. One of his and Jen’s first dates, in fact. When it felt like Connor was showing her around his life, encouraging her to buy shares in it.

‘Jen not coming?’ his dad said, as they loaded the boot at the outset, bulging sports holdalls and a duvet, like Connor was a thirty-four-year-old fresher. Which was exactly as daft as he felt.

‘Ah, no … she’s got a friend’s birthday this weekend. A thirtieth,’ he said, the prepared white lie.

In fact, she was ‘at her parents’’, a ‘get myself out of the way’ she’d arranged on purpose. Jennifer said she’d visit him in Manchester: ‘. . . in a couple of weeks, when you’re settled in.’

‘It’ll be more fun for a guest when you’ve got more than milk in the fridge and you’ve found a nice neighbourhood place to eat. I’ll send you a cute little succulent and you can call it Jenny.’

Make it a spiky one then.

She’d also done him a Bag For Life with ‘useful bits’ in it, including an ironic champagne, and Connor deeply resented it in the way you did when you knew the offering was to soothe the feelings of the giver rather than gratify the recipient.

The whole point of coming up now, Connor thought, was that things would be bare bones, chilly and lonely. It was for him, not her. He knew she had no love for anywhere north of Leicester, or, indeed, Leicester itself. (‘The only way to leave London is on a plane.’)

But he didn’t say so, as he wasn’t sure he wanted her to come. He and Jennifer had quietly arrived at the hospice phase. You didn’t try to actively treat the sickness anymore, only make the end comfortable. They loved their flat in Stoke Newington and it was near paid off, with Connor’s money. She’d hate leaving the area she couldn’t afford to rebuy in and he’d hate having to do it to her. So here they were. Withdrawing affection bit by bit and waiting for the other person to be the bad guy.

A tiny voice niggled at him: She’ll line someone else up first. Probably why she’s not called time yet.

Connor wasn’t sure how much trouble they’d been in before he announced he was leaving his six-figure salary job in the City for the significantly lower one in journalism, but it certainly put the big light on in their room, lifeplans’ wise.

‘I’m thirty-three. If we start a family, how are we going to afford it? We can’t upgrade to more space unless we have the salaries for the next mortgage.’ Jen had said, hands on superhero blue Lycra hips, sleek as an eel in her running gear. She’d obviously hoped he simply needed to say he was going to give his notice, not actually do it. Also, interesting use of ‘we’.

‘What use would I be as a parent if I was that miserable?’ Connor asked.

‘You aren’t “miserable”! You just aren’t having fun! Which is most jobs. It’ll be this job too, sooner or later. You like to feel ground down. If you didn’t feel oppressed, what would you make sarcastic wisecracks about?’

Connor ignored this pretty horrific summary of his character, nature and behaviour. Jen alone knew he’d been on beta blockers with stress and bursting into sobbing fits in the shower, by the end. He read a thing on relationship guidance about how the unsurvivable feature was ‘contempt’.

He stuck to the hard facts: ‘Your job pays as much as mine at the newspaper will.’

‘I knew you’d hurl that at me. I was doing this when we met, sold as seen. And I’ll be promoted next year.’

Translation: Jen was allowed to work in publishing, which she loved, for whatever it paid. She’d assigned him different obligations.

‘I don’t remember whispered pledges to love, cherish and stick to the higher tax bracket.’

Connor thought she might feel more shame than this at saying: you’ve got no utility if you’re not on 100k+.

But he couldn’t say he was surprised. When love had flown, the comfortable lifestyle flying away too was going to concentrate your mind somewhat.

Last year, after he’d first told Jen he wanted to reinvent himself, she’d got drunk in the garden with her friend Libby. Connor heard her wine-laden voice carrying through the open window at 2.00 a.m.: Connor’s now going to be like a trophy wife. Great to have on your arm, lovely to show off, cos I know everyone wants to shag him. But fuck all USE, you know?

He was surprised to find it caused more clarity than offence. Why didn’t he finish it with her? Because leaving his high-flying career, reassessing his whole criteria for success in life and retraining as a journalist had been enough upheaval.

‘Examine where he and Jen stood when the dust cleared’ was on the to-do list, but right when Connor might have had enough energy to tackle it, his dog died, and he got sent up north for three months.

His father waited until he was showing him out of his dismal lodgings to put his hand on his shoulder and say: ‘Stop wearing your cares so heavily. She’s a total fool to disregard you, there’ll be women queuing up.’

He winked.

Connor stood blinking in surprise as the door closed.

He knew his dad only intended to be encouraging. That his father would drive home congratulating himself on having steeled himself to speak up, rallying Connor’s spirits.

Yet in fact, his dad had actually communicated: ‘Every last bit of resilient dignity you think you’re showing is laughably futile, anyone can see your girlfriend likes you as much as a rectal bleed. And by the way, she’s right about you languishing in self-pity.’

Connor turned on to Deansgate. He felt such a deep, dragging well of emptiness and sadness inside he wondered if he might be depressed again. Obviously he was down in general, but the proper, clinical sort that doctors signed you off with. Could he skive out of the Manchester internship on the sick, or would it be waiting for him on the other side of a return to work?

He knew the answer: whether he did or he didn’t dodge the draft up here, switching careers, getting his first job in his new profession and immediately disappearing on mental health grounds would give off every bad signal about whether Connor Adams and journalism were a good fit.

Shoulders back, deep breaths, positive attitude: first morning. Three months, it was nothing, it was a term at university. Do you even really remember a specific term that felt long at university? he asked himself, his own sports coach. No? There you go.

He located the anonymous doorway, pressed buzzer two. The contact he’d been given, Aaron Parry, answered: he was the absolute spit of the singer from the Arctic Monkeys, complete with a black quiff and lounge-lizard smirk.

Parry had come from the Manchester Evening News , apparently, but it was the Investigations woman he was meant to take notice of.

Toby had said to him, in his public-school drawl: absolute coup hiring Isabel Macauley. Really impressive girl. Have you heard her podcast? Oh you MUST. Fabulous communicator, going places. Has a real knack for getting people to open up. Learn all you can from her.

The office was grotty, like a storeroom. Bel was sitting with her back to the door.

She had very long, treacle-brown hair, pulled up and looped back on itself like a collapsing bun, anchored by a large pair of sunglasses. Stray strands at the nape of her neck were pinned with tiny black butterfly clips, which Connor recognised as identical to the ones his mum had on the stems of her moth orchids to hold them upright.

As she turned to say hello, Connor felt a spasm of irritation at the likely motive for Toby’s lavish admiration. Bel Macauley was undeniably pretty, in a way he could imagine had won her a legion of unimaginative admirers. Wide-set, bright eyes framed by clumpy mascara, a tiny, upturned nose and curved bow of an amused, expressive mouth. She bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Shirley MacLaine in that black-and-white classic romance that didn’t seem at all romantic to Connor, and Jen insisted was her favourite.

And it was lucky she was the only person here or Connor might’ve taken her for the boss’s rebellious daughter who’d just got back from Glastonbury. She was in a short blue cotton summer dress with a sailor bib neckline, black leggings that ended mid-calf, scuffed white canvas lace-up pumps on her feet. And a burgundy-glitter mohair cardigan thrown over the top of the ensemble. It was unravelling, one sleeve shorter than the other. It looked like Connor felt.

There was an absolute stench of hot egg emanating from the puck of soggy carb next to her keyboard.

‘You’re not my pupil, it’s not really possible to shadow investigative work. You’re with Aaron, as your Work Dad,’ she said, because of course the status humiliation had to begin straight away.

‘Yes, I know,’ he said. I’m not going to be begging you for advice. Unless it’s on how to dress for a Just Stop Oil protest.

Connor kept his eyes fixed on his screen in an atmosphere where he could actually feel the two of them exchanging pointed glances, and face pulling.

Bloody hell, these three months would last forever.