Free Alys, Always by Harriet Lane

mother’s ludicrously conventional little fantasy. But I don’t. And driving back to London that afternoon, passing first the sign to Biddenbrooke and then shortly afterwards the white rectory with the stile at Imberly, I think:
Maybe it’s not really lying if you barely know you’re doing it
.
It should be true
.
It’s the way it should be, in an ideal world
.
    I submit my review to Mary.
    A few days pass before she gets around to reading it. Storm clouds are gathering over the
Questioner
again. Sitting at my desk, I hear people assembling in indignant knots by the printer, talking about pay freezes and voluntary redundancy schemes and the ridiculous amount Robin McAllfree, the tiny little bullet-headed editor, is splurging on Gemma Coke, his new star columnist. (There’s a general assumption that he must be screwing her. Her copy is certainly not worth the figures being bandied about.)
    Emergency meetings are convened in the Albatross. Our inboxes fill up with emails from the managing editor and the Director of Human Resources and the company CEO and the mother and father of the NUJ chapel, and none of them are saying anything remotely reassuring.
    Even Oliver is getting twitchy. Over the last few weeks, as well as making more of an effort to get in on time, he has been doing his best to stick around until the moment whenMary departs for the day. And he’s diligently covering his arse, as people tend to when they feel vulnerable.
    On the Monday morning, just after Mary has arrived on the fifth floor, he walks over to my desk holding Sunday’s paper, which he has folded back to one of the books pages. He drops it down on my keyboard, his finger stabbing at his review of the latest Jane Coffey, specifically at a typo which has somehow sneaked past me. ‘This looks pretty shabby, doesn’t it, Frances?’ he says, in a voice loud enough to reach the desks on the other side of Books, which are occupied by TV and Travel. ‘It rather spoiled my Sunday. I mean, fuck’s sake.’
    TV and Travel, I can tell, are sitting up straight and nudging each other, enjoying the prospect of someone else getting a bollocking for a change.
    I feel faintly nauseous, as I always do when I’ve made a mistake. In these situations, it’s best to hold up one’s hand and accept responsibility, even though it wouldn’t have happened if Oliver had filed on time, rather than at the last possible moment, and if he’d bothered to read his copy through before sticking it in the queue. But really, there is no excuse. So I pick up the paper and look at it and say, ‘God, I am sorry. That really shouldn’t have happened.’
    Oliver isn’t placated. He’s drawing breath, about to come in for round two, when Mary looks up from the letter she is reading and says, in a just-between-ourselves murmur which is nevertheless precisely calibrated to reach the eavesdroppers, ‘Frances isn’t here to nanny you, Oliver. We have plenty of contributors who already make that kind of demand on her time, and they tend not to be on staff. So perhaps you could save us all some trouble by making sure you check your copy once you’ve finished writing it, and by filing when you are supposed to.’ Then she gives him a little smile and returns to her paperwork.
    Oliver stands by my desk for a moment, unsteady and disoriented. A dark rash of humiliation is spreading over his neck and up into his soft baby cheeks. ‘No, I take your point,’ he says, gathering up the paper and moving away, back to his desk. ‘My mistake, Frances. Won’t happen again.’ I glance over at TV and Travel and see Tom, one of the subs, giving me a thumbs-up and mouthing, ‘Dickhead.’
    ‘Oh, and Frances,’ says Mary. ‘Nice copy. Thanks.’
    Oliver is terribly helpful after that, at least while Mary is around. He makes eye contact and comments approvingly on my piece and asks for my opinion on standfirsts and headlines.
    Once or twice I look up from my screen and catch him