Sheer Abandon: A Novel - Hardcover

Chapter 1

August 2000

She always felt exactly the same. It surprised her. Relieved. Excited. And a bit ashamed. Walking away, knowing she’d done it, resisting the temptation to look back, carefully subdued—she could still remember old Bob at the news agency telling her one of the prime qualities for a good reporter was acting ability. Of course, the shame was pretty rare, but if it was a real tragedy, then it did lurk about, the feeling that she was a parasite, making capital out of someone else’s unhappiness.

This had been a horror to do; a baby in its pushchair, hit by a stolen car; the driver hadn’t stopped, had been caught by the police fifty miles away. The baby was in intensive care and it was touch and go whether he would live; the parents had been angry as well as grief–stricken, sitting, clutching each other’s hands on the bench just outside the hospital door.

“He’ll get what—three years?” the young father had said, lighting his ninth cigarette of the interview—Jocasta always counted things like that, it helped add colour. “And then get on with his life. Our little chap’s only had eight months and he could be gone forever. It makes me sick. I tell you, they should lock them up forever for this sort of thing, lock them up and throw away the key—”

She could see her headline then, and hated herself for seeing it.
***

While she was in the middle of writing her story, she got an e–mail from the office: could she do a quick piece on Pauline Prescott’s hair (a hot topic ever since her husband had made it his excuse for taking the car out to drive a hundred yards); they would send a picture down the line to her. Jocasta, wrenching her mind off the desperately injured baby, wondered if any other job in the world imposed such extraordinarily diverse stress at such short notice. She filed that copy via her mobile and had just returned to the baby when her phone rang.

“Is that you, Miss—”

“Jocasta, yes,” she said, recognising the voice of the baby’s father. “Yes, Dave, it’s me. Any news?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, he’s going to be all right, he’s going to pull through, we just saw him, he actually managed a smile!”

“Dave, I’m so glad, so very glad,” said Jocasta, hugely relieved, not only that the baby was going to live but that she was so touched by it, looking at her screen through a blur of tears.

Not a granite–hearted reporter yet, then.

She filed the story, and checked her e–mails; there was an assortment of junk, one from her brother telling her their mother was missing her and to phone her, a couple from friends—and one that made her smile. “Hello, Heavenly Creature. Meet me at the House when you’re back. Nick.”

She mailed Nick back, telling him she’d be there by nine, then, rather reluctantly, dialled her mother’s number. And flicking through her diary, knowing her mother would want to make some arrangement for the week, realised it was exactly fifteen years to the day since she had set off for Thailand, in search of adventure. She always remembered it. Well, of course she would. Always. She wondered if the other two did. And what they might be doing. They’d never had their promised reunion. She thought that every year as well, how they had promised one another—and never kept the promise. Probably just as well, though. Given everything that had happened...

Nick Marshall was the political editor on the Sketch, Jocasta's paper; he worked not in the glossy building on Canary Wharf but in one of the shabby offices above the press galleries at the House of Commons. “More like what newsrooms used to be,” one of the old–timers had told Jocasta. And indeed many journalists, who remembered Fleet Street when it had been a genuine, rather than a notional, location for newspapers, envied the political writers for working at the heart of things, rather than in shining towers a long cab ride away.

It always seemed to Jocasta that political and newspaper life were extraordinarily similar; both being male orientated, run on gossip and booze (there was no time in the day or night when it was not possible to get a drink at the House of Commons), and with a culture of great and genuine camaraderie between rivals as well as colleagues. She loved them both.

Nick met her in Central Lobby and took her down to Annie’s Bar in the bowels of the House, the preserve of MPs, lobby correspondents, and sketch writers. He ushered her towards a small group in the middle; Jocasta grinned round at them.

“Hi, guys. So what’s new here? Any hot stories?”

“Pretty lukewarm,” said Euan Gregory, sketch writer on the Sunday News. “Labour lead shrinking, Blair losing touch, shades of Maggie, too much spin—you name it, we’ve heard it before. Isn’t that right, Nick?”

“’Fraid so.” He handed her a glass of wine. “Pleased to see me?”

“Of course.” And she was, she was.

“Good thing somebody loves him,” said Gregory. “He’s in trouble here.”

“Really, Nick? Why?”

“Over–frank on lunchtime radio. Spin doctors very cross!”

“I wish I’d heard you.”

“I’ve got it on tape,” said Nick with a grin. “Good. I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

“My God. What have I done to deserve this?”

“Nothing. I’m hungry and I can see nothing interesting’s going to happen here.”

“You’re such a gentleman, you know that?” said Jocasta, draining her glass.
***

In fact Nick was a gentleman; nobody was quite sure what he was doing in the world of the tabloid press. His father was a very rich farmer and Nick had got a double first in classics at Oxford. He had rather old–fashioned manners—at any rate, with the older generation—and was much mocked for standing when a grown–up, as he put it, came into the room. But he had developed an early passion for politics and after an initial foray into the real thing had decided he could move into the corridors of power faster via the political pages of a newspaper. He was a brilliant investigative journalist, and came up with scoop after scoop, the most famous, if least important, of which was the revelation that a prominent Tory minister bought all his socks and underpants at charity shops.

It had been love at first sight, Jocasta always said, for her. Nick had walked into the newsroom of the Sketch on her first day there, fresh from a news agency in the west country, and she had gone literally weak at the knees. Told he was the political editor, she had assumed, joyfully, that she would see him every day; the discovery that he only came in for the occasional editors’ conference, or one–to–one meetings with Chris Pollock, the editor, was a serious blow. As was the news that he had a girlfriend on every paper. She wasn’t surprised; he was (as well as extremely tall: about six foot four) very good–looking in an untidy sort of way, with shaggy brown hair, large mournful brown eyes set deep beneath equally shaggy brows, a long and straight nose, and what she could only describe rather helplessly as a completely sexy mouth. He was very thin and slightly ungainly with large hands and feet, altogether a bit like an overgrown schoolboy; he was hopeless at all games, but he was a fine runner and had already done the New York as well as the London marathon, and could be seen early every morning, no matter how drunk he had been the night before, loping round Hampstead Heath where he lived.

It was not entirely true that he had a girlfriend on every paper, but women adored him. His secret was that he adored them back; he found them intriguing, entertaining, and treated them, certainly initially, with a rather old–world courtesy. When Jocasta Forbes arrived on the Sketch he rather miraculously had no one permanent in his life.

She had pursued him fervently and shamelessly for several months; she would feel she was really making progress, having flirted manically through evening after evening and been told how absolutely gorgeous he thought she was, only to hear nothing from him for weeks until some newspaper happening brought them together again. She had been in despair until one night, about a year previously, when they had both got extremely drunk at a Spectator party, and she had decided a proactive approach was the only one that was going to get her anywhere and started to kiss him with great determination. Unwilling, this time, to leave anything to chance, she then suggested they go back to her place. Nick declared himself hooked.

“I’ve admired you for so long, you have absolutely no idea.”

“No,” she said crossly, “I haven’t. I’ve made it very clear I admired you, though.”

“I know, but I thought you were just being kind. I thought a girl who looked like you was bound to have a dozen boyfriends.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Jocasta, and got into bed beside him and their relationship had been finally—and happily—sealed.

Although certainly not signed. And it troubled Jocasta. She stayed at his flat sometimes, and he at hers (in which case it was Clapham Common he loped across), but they were very much an item, recognising that the next step would be moving in together. Nick said repeatedly that there was absolutely no hurry for this: “We both work horrendous hours, and we’re perfectly happy, why change things?”

Jocasta could see severa...