Free After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell Page B

Did you know that? Were you at all aware of that before you phoned me up?'
'Yes, I was.'
'I don't believe you, ' Alice retorts. 'You're an arts corres pondent, aren't you?'
'Ye-es,' he says.
'Then name me one project that we've done in the last year. Go on. Just one.'
There is a silence from the other end of the phone. 'Look,' he says eventually, 'this is hardly the point, is it? I just want to know-'
'I know what you want to know and I'm not going to tell you. '
'Why?'
'Because we're a national arts organisation and you're a national arts correspondent and you can't tell me one thing we've done. When we do important and effective things like creating workshops in prisons and schools, or bringing Commonwealth writers to tour Britain, or creating a national competition for new writing you lot don't give a damn. You're only interested when something goes wrong.'
     

7 3
     
'Listen, I understand that you feel passionately about-'
'I don't think you do understand. I don't think you understand at all. If you really do want to do a profile on our aims and objectives - like you said at first - then, fine, I'll help you. But if you're just calling me to dig dirt then I won't. I hate to say it, but you journalists are all the same.'
'Is that right? In what way?'
'You just rehash scandal - all of you, tabloid, broadsheet, it's all the same. It would be so good if someone came up with a new approach. Or if someone actually thought about what the Literature Trust does or even what literature does before calling me with predictable questions about things that don't really matter in the long run.' She stops. She's out of breath.
'I see,' he says. 'A new approach. Like what?'
'If I ':"anted to be a journalist I'd have got a job on a newspaper. I'm not writing your article for you. The approach is up to you. I'm just here to respond to your questions - predictable or otherwise.'
There is an appalled silence, both from the other end of the phone and from the office. She realises that everyone is staring at her, horrified, and she turns away from them to face the wall.
'Right. Right. I see. That's how it is, is it?'
'Yes,' says Alice recklessly. 'If you can't be bothered to do your research, then you don't get your interview.'
There is another pause. She hears him exhale. 'I see, I see
. . .' He tails off. She waits. 'Um . . . in that case, I'll . . . I'll call you back. OK?'
'OK.' She hangs up.
'Well,' says Susannah, rifling through her in-tray on her desk on the other side of the room, 'he'll think twice about calling us again. What was he like?'
'A complete wanker. '
     
Today Alice had that familiar, tight, bulging knot of crossness in her stomach. If she tried to unravel it, it would crack and splinter her fingernails. She didn't like herself.
What she couldn't fathom - and wouldn't ever be able to, as she would find out - was the fickleness of people: how people can like you one day, but the next, because of something as random as telling the teacher how you were growing cress on a wet tissue on your window-sill, you were no longer in favour.
There was a thick haar rolling in from the sea. It hung heavy over the town and had even reached up the hill to the school. The yard was cold, hung with mizzling rain. The Law, right next to the school, looked huge and dark, its top hidden. Alice tried hard not to look over at where her friend - her former friend - Emma was playing skipping with four or five other girls. The rope was getting wetter all the time; it slapped the damp concrete and at each apex of its turn sent off a spray that soaked the skippers' hair. Emma was jumping up and down in perfect rhythm with the turning rope, her knee socks edging lower. 'You can't play with us,' she'd said, her voice made nasal with scorn that Alice had even asked. She was now singing along with the others: 'Greeeeeen gravel, greeeeeen gravel, growing up so high, why did the sweetheart that I loved, why did he have to die?'
Alice looked around for Kirsty