V.L. McDERMID

Union Jack

Contents

Title Page Note To Readers Prologue: Mid-Atlantic, April 1993 Part One: Blackpool, April 1984 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Part Two: Sheffield, April 1993 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Epilogue About the Author By The Same Author Copyright About the Publisher

NOTE TO READERS

For the best part of a decade, I was an active member of the National Union of Journalists, holding a variety of posts at local and national level. During that time, I was elected as one of Manchester’s representatives for several Annual Delegate Meetings. My experiences in the union provided me with the knowledge that underpins this book. But I should emphasise that neither the events nor the characters in Union Jack are even remotely based in fact. The truth is that, just as thousands of delegates to union conferences have told their spouses, we spent our time in earnest debate, working tirelessly to improve the lot of our members. If we looked worn out by the time we returned home, it was simply because of the energy we had expended in passionate argument. Would I lie to you?

On a more serious note, I’d like to thank the many fellow trade unionists who became friends over those years for their help, conscious and unconscious, in the preparation of this book. These include Sue Jackson and Kerttu Kinsler, Diana Muir, Scarlett MccGwire, Gina Weissand, Malcolm Pain, Eugenie Verney, Nancy Jaeger, Pauline Norris, Sally Gilbert, Colin Bourne, Tim Gopsill and Dick Oliver. Most of all, I want to thank BB, who gave me inspiration when I needed it most.

Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely in the mind of the reader.

For BB: Good things come to she who waits

PROLOGUE

Mid-Atlantic, April 1993

‘I could murder some proper orange juice,’ Lindsay Gordon grumbled, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the plastic cup of juice on her airline breakfast tray. She sipped suspiciously. It managed to be both sharp and sickly at the same time. ‘You know, something that tastes like it once met an orange. This stuff hasn’t even been shown a photograph.’

‘You’d better get used to it,’ Sophie Hartley said, peeling the lid back from her own cup and knocking back the liquid. She winced. ‘Not that it’ll be easy. Think you can survive two weeks without freshly squeezed juice?’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘Who knows? If it was only the juice …’

Sophie snorted. ‘Hark at it. This is the woman whose idea of healthy eating used to be adding a tin of baked beans to bacon, sausage, egg and chips. Listen, Gordon, you can’t come the California health freak with me. I can remember when the nearest thing to fruit juice in your flat was elderberry wine.’

‘Huh,’ Lindsay grunted. ‘Don’t get superior with me just because you used to eat your vegetables raw even though you could afford the gas bill. Anyway, I’m not a California health freak. It would take more than a bunch of New Age born-again hippies to change Lindsay Gordon, let me tell you. First thing I’m going to do when I get off this plane is head for a chip shop and get tore in to a fish supper.’

Sophie shook her head, smiling. ‘You can’t fool me, Gordon. Three years in California and you’re working out, eating salad twice a day, swallowing vitamins like Smarties, even wearing jumpers made from reclaimed wool. You’re a California girl now, like it or not.’

Lindsay shuddered. ‘Rubbish. The odd jog up the beach, that’s all, and I was doing that long before America.’

Sophie grinned affectionately at her lover, and wisely held her peace.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now commencing our descent into Glasgow Airport. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat-belts. Please extinguish all smoking materials …’

‘Looking forward to it?’

Lindsay shrugged. ‘Yes and no. I’ve been out of the game a long time. I’m not sure I even know what the issues are for trade unionists in the UK any longer.’ Sophie squeezed her hand. ‘It’ll be just fine.’

Lindsay smiled. ‘Shouldn’t it be me saying that to you, Dr Hartley? You’re the one delivering a keynote paper at an international conference.’

‘Play your cards right at this media conference, and you’ll be a doctor soon too. Pick the right brains for your thesis, and they’ll be begging you to accept a Ph. D.’

Lindsay pulled a face. ‘I’m not so sure. I’m not even sure I’ve still got the old interview techniques. Teaching journalism’s a long way away from practising it.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Sophie assured her. ‘You’ll soon adapt to being back in the old routine. After all, you’ll be among friends.’

Lindsay gave a shout of laughter that turned heads three rows away. ‘Among friends? At a union conference? Soph, I’d feel safer in the lion’s cage half an hour before feeding time. One thing I’ll never be able to forget is the aggro level of Journalists’ Union conferences. You’d think we were arguing over life and death, not politics. I can’t imagine that amalgamating with the broadcasting and printing unions has made the atmosphere any friendlier. It’s not culture shock I’m afraid of – it’s being trapped in a time warp.’

PART ONE

Blackpool, April 1984

1

‘Delegates are discouraged from travelling to conference by private car, and mileage expenses will only be paid in extraordinary circumstances. This is because, firstly, the union has negotiated a bulk-rate discount with British Rail; secondly, there are limited car-parking facilities available at the hotels we are using; and thirdly, the chances are that when driving home on Friday afternoon at the end of conference you will still be over the limit from Thursday night’s excesses. It is not the union’s policy to encourage members to lose their licences due to drink-driving.’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

‘This traffic’s murder,’ Ian Ross complained, easing the car forward another couple of feet. ‘Look at it,’ he added, waving his arm at the sea of hot metal that surrounded them.

Lindsay Gordon did as she was told, for once. In the distance, Blackpool Tower’s iron tracery stood outlined against the skyline like an Eiffel Tower souvenir on a mantelpiece. ‘Only the Journalists’ Union could organise a conference that involves 400 delegates travelling to the biggest holiday resort in the North of England on Easter Monday,’ he remarked caustically. ‘Bloody Blackpool. It’s taken us an hour to travel six miles. By the time we get to the hotel, the conference will be over and it’ll be time to come home. I bet you wish you’d taken the train, don’t you? You could have been walking along the prom by now, eating candy-floss and wearing a kiss-me-quick hat.’ Ian glanced sideways and saw the bleak look on Lindsay’s face. He sighed. ‘Sorry, love. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It’s okay. I’ve told you. You don’t have to treat me like a piece of porcelain.’ An awkward silence filled the car. Lindsay patted Ian’s hand and repeated, ‘It’s okay.’

Ian nodded. ‘Time for The World At One. Shall I stick the radio on?’

‘Sure.’ Lindsay leaned back in her seat and tried to let the radio obliterate her thoughts.

‘A hundred arrests are made in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the worst violence of the miners’ strike so far. Police clash with miners outside several collieries, and NUM leader Arthur Scargill accuses officers of intimidation. Anti-apartheid protesters besiege the Home Office after last week’s decision to grant British citizenship to the South African runner Zola Budd. And Senator Gary Hart fights to continue his campaign against Walter Mondale for the Democratic nomination in the US Presidential race.’ The announcer’s voice droned on, fleshing out the day’s headlines. But Lindsay’s mind was already miles away.

It had been a mistake to come. She had been too easily persuaded by Ian. She wasn’t ready for this. It was hard enough coping with the day to day routine of life, a routine that was manageable precisely because it was familiar, because her mind could drift off into free-fall while she gave the appearance of being in touch with what was going on around her. But to plunge into something so strange and challenging as her first national union conference was madness. It had been bad enough just reading about conference. She’d had to give up on the ‘Advice for New Delegates’ booklet half-way through, her head spinning with such bizarre and diverse items as ‘taking a motion seriatim’ and ‘compositing sessions’. How on earth was she going to wrestle with the real thing with only half her brain functioning?

Ian had meant well, she knew that. He was a news sub-editor on the tabloid newspaper where Lindsay, at twenty-five, was the most junior staff reporter. When she had started to show an interest in the union, speaking up at the meetings of the Daily Nation’s office chapel, it was Ian who had taken the time to explain to her how their union functioned in national newspapers. He had spent the weary, slow hours of several night-shifts outlining the organisation and the internal politics that governed the union far more than the rule book.

Lindsay, who had learned about socialism and solidarity from her fisherman father as soon as she could grasp the concepts, was bemused by the schisms and hierarchies of what she had naïvely imagined would be an organisation unified by a common aim. It didn’t take her long to decide that the entrenched power of the national newspaper chapels generated its own inbuilt conservatism, and that the real arenas for potential change within the union lay elsewhere. The radical concepts of feminism and genuinely representative democracy that were dear to her were clearly never going to find fertile soil in this sector of the industry. Here traditions had provided the hacks with a comfort zone where they could all be good old boys together, and to hell with troublesome dykes, poofs, women, jungle bunnies and cripples.

That complacency placed the Daily Nation’s chapel high on Lindsay’s list of institutions in need of a short, sharp shock. But before she could do anything about it, she’d been overtaken by events that had rendered the Journalists’ Union as significant as a speck of dust in a rainstorm. In the weeks that had followed, Ian had tried to take her mind off her own problems by involving her in the JU, but she couldn’t have cared less. When he’d tried to jog her out of her misery by arranging for her to be elected as one of the Fleet Street Branch’s dozen delegates to the Annual Delegate Conference, she’d simply let herself be carried along with the tide.

Frances. It would all be all right if Frances was still with her. They could have laughed about these codes and rituals that made the Freemasons sound rational. Frances would have worked through the agenda with her, discussing the 246 motions. She and Frances would have snuggled up in bed together, giggling over the strange injunctions in the advice booklet. And Lindsay would have had the anticipation of nightly phone calls to keep her going through the difficulties of the days. She wouldn’t be going through this state of semi-panic that seemed to grip her all the time.

But Frances wasn’t ever going to be with her again. Lindsay knew that getting used to that idea was the hardest thing she’d ever have to face. No more Frances at the breakfast table, frowning over The Times’ law reports, or, if she was due in court, taking a last-minute look through her brief for the day. No more meeting for a snatched lunchtime drink in one of the dozens of pubs between the Daily Nation’s Fleet Street offices and the law courts. No more sitting on the press benches, watching Frances on her feet defending her client, face stern beneath the barrister’s absurd curly wig. No more coming home from a hard day’s news reporting to sit on the side of the bath sipping dry white wine while Frances luxuriated in the suds and they swapped stories. No more Frances.

It wasn’t self-pity. At least, she didn’t think it was. It was the difficulty of adjusting to absence. Someone who had been there was no longer around. And it had left a Frances-shaped hole in her life that sometimes felt as if it would engulf her and drain the very life from her. That was the worst feeling of all. The pain of loss, a physical stab in the chest that sometimes made her gasp, that was bad enough. But the hollowness, that was the worst.

With a start, Lindsay realised that Ian was speaking. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said.

‘That lot,’ Ian said, gesturing with his thumb at the radio. ‘Bloody coppers on their horses, acting like the Cossack army. The writing’s on the wall, Lindsay. This government isn’t going to stand for any sort of trade union activity, you mark my words.’ When he was angry, Ian’s Salford accent always reemerged from the southern patina it had acquired over ten years of working in London. The thickness of his accent was a rough guide to the level of his anger. Right now, he sounded like a refugee from Coronation Street.

‘Before Thatcher’s finished with us, she’ll have the Combination Acts back on the statute book. A few years from now, we’ll all be arrested for conspiracy if we try to hold a chapel meeting,’ he continued.

Lindsay sighed and reached for her cigarettes. ‘It’s so short-sighted,’ she said. ‘The government’s always telling us about the wonderful economic success of the Germans, about how they don’t have strikes. It never seems to occur to them that that’s because the German bosses consult the workforce before they embark on anything that affects them. But this government doesn’t want consultation, they want confrontation.’

‘Yeah, but only on their terms. As soon as journalists try to confront them with the hard questions about what’s happening in this country, they slam the shutters down. Look at the hassle they’ve been giving the BBC!’ Ian exploded. Then, suddenly, he fell silent, mouth clamped shut, the muscles standing out against the sharp line of his jaw.

‘I suppose it’s keeping Laura busy,’ Lindsay said uncertainly, assuming Ian’s silence was somehow connected to his lover, Laura Craig. Laura was employed by the JU to organise union activities in the broadcasting sector. The government’s recent ham-fisted efforts at censorship and control had given her several thorny problems to deal with. Lindsay had often heard Ian complain that he hardly saw her these days.

‘I suppose it is,’ he said coldly. A slight gap in the traffic opened up, and Ian accelerated jerkily to take advantage of it. As he drew close to the car in front, he braked sharply enough to throw them both against their seat-belts. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, running a hand through his thick, straight salt-and-pepper hair.

‘Problems?’ Lindsay asked with sinking heart. She had enough on her own plate without having to bother with someone else’s hard time, she thought bitterly. But Ian was a friend. She felt obliged to give him the opening.

‘You could say that.’ The news programme ended, and the jaunty signature tune of The Archers jangled in their ears. Ian’s hand shot out and twisted the volume knob as far down as it would go. ‘She’s moved out,’ he said softly in the sudden peace. His grey eyes stared straight ahead.

Lindsay tried out various responses in her head. ‘When?’ ‘Why?’ ‘I never liked her anyway.’ ‘Is there … someone else?’ She settled for, ‘Oh, Ian. Poor you. What happened?’ It seemed to combine solicitude with support. Please God, he wouldn’t feel like telling her.

At first, it seemed as if Lindsay’s prayer had been answered. Ian said nothing, simply concentrating on the road and the car in front. They started moving again, and, miraculously, whatever had been clogging the traffic vanished. Within minutes, the engine was in third gear, the tower was growing taller and Ian had become talkative. ‘You know how you think you know someone? You feel comfortable with them? You could see yourself spending the rest of your life with them? Well, that’s how it was with me and Laura,’ he said.

And me and Frances, Lindsay echoed mentally. ‘You seemed to get on so well together,’ she said.

Ian gave a hollow laugh. ‘Just shows how blind you can be, doesn’t it? What a mug.’ He took a deep breath, then broke into a fit of coughing. As he recovered, his hand went out automatically to the glove box. He opened it and took out a blue plastic tube with an angled end which he put in his mouth. Lindsay tried not to look as if she was paying attention as he used the inhaler and chucked it back in the glove box.

‘Is my cigarette bothering you?’ she asked.

Ian shook his head, holding his breath. He let the air out in a controlled gasp. ‘Cigarette smoke doesn’t set my asthma off. Now, if you were wearing Rive Gauche or you had a dog at home, I’d have to strap you to the roof-rack. Poor Laura could never treat herself to a new perfume without consulting me first. Oh well, that’s one thing she won’t have to worry about any more.’

The bitterness in his tone shocked Lindsay. It seemed so alien from Ian, that most gentle of men. It was hard to square with the devoted adoration he’d always displayed when he’d talked about Laura in the past. He was one of those men who carry photographs of their lovers and find the most tenuous excuses to pull them out of their wallets and display them. Long before she’d ever met Laura in the flesh, Lindsay had seen Laura in Greece, Laura in Scotland, Laura on horseback, Laura in a sailing dinghy, Laura in evening dress and Laura asleep.

‘When did all this happen? You haven’t mentioned it at work,’ Lindsay said.

‘I could do without the snide jokes. Worse than that, the pity,’ Ian said. He wasn’t misjudging their colleagues, Lindsay thought sadly. ‘I threw her out three weeks ago last Saturday,’ he added.

He threw her out. It took a moment for Lindsay to grasp what Ian had said. Given his devotion, it could only mean Laura had been seeing someone else and Ian had found out. With her looks, and the force of her personality, she couldn’t have been short of other offers. And although you’d go a long way before you found a kinder man than Ian, not even his own mother would have described his sharp features, beaky nose and long, skinny body as handsome. Lindsay had occasionally wondered what had attracted them to each other in the first place. Laura Craig was a woman who liked beautiful things, if her clothes and jewellery were anything to go by. But Ian wasn’t given to superficial judgements so Lindsay had always thought that must mean that there was more to Laura than the stylish, hard-edged exterior she presented to the world. She flicked a sidelong glance at Ian. His mouth was clamped shut, his lips a thin line. Clearly, he didn’t want to dissect what had happened. Lindsay breathed a silent sigh of relief. The sordid details of Laura’s infidelity she could do without.

The car had slowed again as they reached the centre of the town. The pavements were thronged with day-trippers, enjoying the brief moments of sunshine that escaped from the drift of cloud. Like any British Bank Holiday crowd, people were dressed for extremes. It was either cap-sleeved T-shirts or macs as far as the eye could see.

‘The street map’s in the glove box,’ Ian told her as they emerged on the Golden Mile in all its tacky glory. Ian turned north, the tram-lines and the sea wall to the left, the endless string of cheap hotels, amusement arcades, Gifte Shoppes, pubs and fast food outlets to their right.

Lindsay studied the photostat sheet that had been enclosed in their delegates’ fact pack. Efficient as ever, Ian had marked the Princess Alice hotel with a red cross. Lindsay checked the name of the next side street they passed.

‘About another mile to go, I’d say,’ she estimated. The Golden Mile’s attractions petered out, giving way to more hotels, boarding houses, and bed and breakfast establishments. ‘There it is,’ Lindsay said at last, pointing to a huge red brick edifice whose five storeys looked forbiddingly over the grey Irish Sea. ‘It looks more like a Victorian asylum than a hotel.’

‘Couldn’t be more appropriate for a JU conference, as you’ll discover soon enough,’ Ian replied. ‘And as you’ve probably noticed from the map, it’s conveniently situated only two miles from the conference centre itself. Bloody hell,’ he exclaimed as he pulled off the road on the forecourt. ‘They weren’t joking when they said there was limited car-parking, were they?’ The whole area in front of the hotel was asphalted over to provide spaces for cars, but it had clearly never been a majestic sweep of lawn to start with. Ian inched forward, looking for a space.

‘Over there. Right by the wall, look, someone’s pulling out,’ Lindsay said. Ian shot forward and squeezed his Ford Escort into the narrow gap.

‘Well spotted,’ he said, opening his door and getting out. He raised his arms in a long stretch and yawned. Then he opened his eyes and froze. ‘Jesus Christ. What the hell is she playing at?’ he whispered.

Lindsay turned to look at the woman who had caught his eye. Laura Craig strode up the short drive of the hotel, wavy brown hair lacquered solid against the whipping westerly wind. But Laura wasn’t alone.

2

‘Delegates are reminded that their duty is to follow debates and cast votes on behalf of their members. However appealing the bars, cafés, fringe meetings, gossip sessions and members of your gender of choice, the conference hall is where you should be. We know it can be boring; we even know of delegates who prefer hanging around at Standing Orders Sub-Committee rather than staying in the hall. In the interests of preserving your SOS members’ sanity, please do not attend our sessions unless you are entitled to a voice [see S05(b) (ii) and Footnote xiv]. Flattered though we are to be the centre of delegates’ attention, this does not help the smooth flow of conference order papers!’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

Lindsay sighed. In spite of sitting up past midnight ploughing through the final conference agenda, with all its proposed amendments, she still hadn’t a clue what this discussion was about. She was sitting on the margin of a group of a dozen delegates arguing with Brian Robinson, the Standing Orders Sub-Committee member responsible for preparing the industrial relations order-paper.

As Brian wiped his perspiring pink face with a flamboyant silk handkerchief, Ian leaned over and said quietly to Lindsay, ‘With it so far?’

‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘What exactly are they arguing about?’

‘Manchester Branch and Darlington Branch have both submitted motions on the same broad topic, and Brian wants to amalgamate them into one composite motion. Now they’re each arguing about what they think their motion really said. Brian has to make sure they end up with something that includes all of the key points in the two original motions, without incorporating anything that wasn’t there to start with.’

Lindsay shook her head. ‘I can’t believe grownups think this is a reasonable way to spend their time,’ she muttered. ‘It’s like an Oxford tutorial without the relevance to real life.’ She tried to concentrate on the obscure negotiation that continued like some quaint ritual dance whose meaning was lost in the sands of time. But it was no use. There wasn’t enough meat in the argument to occupy her mind, and her grief kept butting in like an anarchist at the trooping of the colour. After another half hour, she leaned towards Ian and muttered, ‘I’m going to get some air.’

She emerged into the foyer of the Winter Gardens with a sense of relief. The large committee room had begun to feel unreasonably oppressive. Oblivious to her surroundings, she wandered down towards the stands of the assorted pressure groups who had rented space for the conference. She didn’t notice the chipped tiling on the walls, the scruffy paintwork or the garish posters for the forthcoming summer attractions. She paused long enough to buy an enamelled metal badge proclaiming ‘Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners’ before walking back into the stuffy hall to rejoin her colleagues.

No one glanced at her as she slipped into her seat. Only five others of the twelve-strong delegation from her branch were at the table. One of them was fast asleep, head pillowed on his arms. Another two were reading the morning papers. That left two who actually seemed to be following the debate. Lindsay shook her head. For weeks, every chapel meeting had been dominated by the impending annual conference. They had discussed their attitudes to motions, the importance of driving through certain policies, the crucial impact of decisions taken here in Blackpool. She’d spent the first morning taking notes on the debates and the results of the votes, until she had realised that she couldn’t see another soul in the hall doing anything with a pen except the Telegraph crossword. She could only assume that the real politicking was going on elsewhere, perhaps in those tight huddles that seemed to spring up all over the place every quarter of an hour or so. As she looked around, Lindsay spotted one of her own delegation coming away from a group clustered around the platform.

Lindsay watched Siobhan Carter, a feature writer on the Sunday Trumpet, weave through the delegation tables and wondered how long it would be before she understood what the hell was going on around her. Siobhan seemed to fit in perfectly, yet it was only her second time at conference. She flopped into the seat next to Lindsay and fanned herself with an order-paper.

‘Whew! It might only be the second day of conference, but there’s already enough scandal going the rounds to keep a clutch of gossip columnists going for a month.’

‘Is that what you’ve been doing? Gossiping?’ Lindsay asked.

Ignoring the note of censure in her voice, Siobhan giggled. ‘What else? You surely don’t expect me to listen to this boring load of crap?’

‘I thought that’s what we were here for,’ Lindsay said.

‘What? To die of boredom listening to some obscure, incomprehensible motion that’s only relevant to television journalists in the Republic of Ireland? No way! Listen, Linds, you stick with me. I’ll keep you on track. I’ll tell you when you need to be listening, okay? Trust me. I once screwed a doctor!’

Lindsay looked dubious. ‘I don’t know, I feel guilty if I don’t get involved.’

‘Fine. Get involved. But stick to the stuff that’s got something to do with you. I mean, tell me the truth. Did you enjoy SOS?’

Lindsay pulled a face. ‘Enjoy. Now, there’s a word. You’d need to have a mind more twisted than a corkscrew to get off on Standing Orders. I had to get out before my brain blew a fuse.’

‘Exactly. You’re getting the idea. And you missed a wonderful bit of goss while you were gone,’ Siobhan said eagerly, completely ignoring the passionate debate on the platform about whether the union’s perennially troubled finances could stretch to a major publicity campaign in Eire. Siobhan wasn’t the only one, Lindsay realised, glancing round the hall. She reckoned that less than ten per cent of the delegates even knew which motion was under discussion. Why should she join yet another minority group?

‘Tell me,’ she asked, putting Siobhan out of her obvious misery. ‘What have I missed?’

‘You know Jess, don’t you? Jess Nimmo, from Magazine Branch?’

‘How could I not?’ Lindsay said with feeling, recalling the braying upper-class voice that had dominated every meeting of the JU Women’s Caucus that she’d ever attended. ‘She thinks consensus is a head count the government takes every ten years.’

‘And you know Rory Finlayson, the Glasgow Broadcasting Branch heart-throb?’ Lindsay nodded. Everyone knew ITN’s Scottish correspondent, who gazed lovingly out of their TV screens several times a week on News At Ten. It was obvious to anyone who had ever encountered Rory in the flesh that his biggest fan was himself.

‘Well, Jess has been trying to get into Rory’s knickers for a million years now, just like half the other women in the country. And in spite of throwing herself under his feet at every available opportunity, she’d never managed to get him to pay her the slightest bit of attention.’

‘I suppose she’s no competition if there’s a mirror around.’

Siobhan giggled. ‘Nice one. Anyway, last night, she finally cracked it. They left the bar together about one, and they were last seen canoodling in the lift. End of scene one. Scene two. About half an hour later, Paul wakes up to the sound of someone banging on his door.’ Siobhan gestured with her head in the direction of their delegation leader, branch chairman Paul Horne, the thirty-something social policy editor of The Watchman, who was one of the handful absorbed in the debate.

‘So he gets up and opens the door,’ Siobhan paused for effect.

‘Yeah?’ Lindsay urged her.

‘And there, wearing nothing but a parka, is Jess. ‘I went for a pee and now I can’t remember what room Rory’s in,’ she wails and marches past Paul into his room. He’s completely bewildered by this apparition and by the time he gets his head together and follows her into the room, she’s helped herself to his bed, the parka’s on the floor and she’s telling him he’s got the choice of climbing in beside her or finding Rory.’

Lindsay’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re kidding!’

‘It gets better, believe me. It turns out she’s not even had a legover with the man of her dreams so she’s in an absolutely filthy mood. Poor Paul ends up getting dressed, going down to reception, finding out what room Rory’s in, trekking back up there and knocking on Rory’s door. Rory, of course, is spark out in a drunken stupor by this time, so he doesn’t answer his door. And by the time Paul gets back to his room, Jess is comatose in his bed. He can’t even go and take over Jess’s room because, of course, her keys are in her handbag in Rory’s room. So poor old Paul ends up spending the night in his armchair while Jess snores in his bed.’

‘She doesn’t snore, does she?’ Lindsay asked, glancing over at the Magazine Branch table where Jess sat, immaculate in a sweater so baggy and shapeless it had to have a designer label, black leggings and ankle boots. ‘I bet she’s even more pissed off about people knowing that than she is about missing a legover with the fabulous Finlayson.’

Siobhan giggled again. Lindsay had a feeling she was going to become very fed up of that giggle by the end of the week. ‘You’re not kidding. By the way, how’s Ian? Has he recovered from discovering the new love of Laura’s life?’

While she enjoyed the sharp savour of gossip about people she either disliked or knew only by reputation, Lindsay was less keen to dissect the private life of a friend as close as Ian. ‘He seems fine,’ she said stiffly.

Either Siobhan didn’t notice, or else she was in investigative journalist mode. ‘He must have been pretty demoralised to find he’d been replaced by a golden retriever. I thought at first it must be a guide dog. I mean, there must have been something wrong with her eyesight, fancying Ian enough to have lived with him all these years.’

‘That’s the trouble with you feature writers,’ Lindsay said. ‘You’re all so superficial. Image, image, image, that’s all that excites you. It takes a news reporter to penetrate below the surface and discover the truth.’ It was an old argument, but none the less attractive. It had the advantage of shifting the conversation away from Ian, and it kept the two women occupied until the end of the order paper.

‘Coming for a drink?’ Siobhan asked as they shuffled their papers together.

‘Tom Jack’s speaking at a fringe meeting,’ Lindsay replied, thinking that answered the question.

Siobhan looked horrified, then her face relaxed into a grin. ‘I keep forgetting it’s your first time,’ she said patronisingly. ‘I bet you still think fringe meetings are a vital part of conference business.’

‘They aren’t?’

‘They’re a distraction from the serious business of drinking and socialising,’ Siobhan told her. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a hair of the dog. Whoops, remind me not to say that to Ian!’ She giggled.

‘Thanks, but no thanks. He’s talking about how workforces cope when they get bought up by media buccaneers. Since we’re still reeling from being taken over by Carnegie Wilson, I feel obliged to go and see what Union Jack’s got to say for himself. God knows, he’s said little enough at the meetings in the office.’

Siobhan winked. ‘Say no more. I can read between the lines. You want to find out what he’s not been telling you guys, then you can slip a banana skin under the sexist pig at your next meeting.’

Before Lindsay could deny it, Siobhan had slipped away. With a sigh, Lindsay headed for the committee room. She still felt she had a duty to the colleagues she was supposed to represent. Like the rest of them, Lindsay was worried about her future following their recent invasion by the New Zealand media tycoon. As well as being the senior JU official at Nation Newspapers, Union Jack headed the loose federation of the seven different unions represented there. If anyone could speak from experience about the implications of takeovers, it was him.

The meeting had attracted a large crowd, unlike the previous lunchtime’s meeting where six women had gathered to hear a talk on ‘Media Language and Gender Bias’. Not surprisingly, more journalists were concerned about potential damage to their pay packets than about the pursuit of equality. By the time Lindsay arrived, all the seats in the small committee room were taken. She slipped down the side of the room and leaned against the wall near the front. Union Jack leaned against the edge of a table facing the room. Shanti Gupta, one of the two candidates running for JU vice-president, was already introducing the meeting, her strong voice rising above the desultory chatter of the audience.

‘Brothers and sisters, I don’t need to remind you of the dangers we face at the hands of asset strippers and fast-buck merchants who pin their dreams of profit to the rise of new technology at the expense of the health and welfare of their workers,’ she said, scarcely pausing for breath.

‘Tom Jack, the National Executive member for national newspapers, has recently had firsthand experience of negotiating with one of the new breed of newspaper proprietors, the profit pirates, the men who care more about the bottom line on their balance sheets than they do about their readers. We can all learn from the experiences of Nation Newspapers, and there’s no one better equipped to teach us than Tom.’ Shanti stepped back and gestured towards Union Jack. ‘Over to you, Tom,’ she said, sitting down behind the table.

Tom Jack pushed himself upright and fixed the audience with his burning brown eyes. His thick brown hair was brushed back from his high forehead, and his full beard almost obscured the collar of his Tattersall-check shirt and the knot of his tweed tie. He looked slowly round the room, as if committing every face to memory, slotting them into his mental filing cabinet till he was ready to take them out, scrutinise them, temper them in the fire and lead them to glory like some irresistible nineteenth-century zealot. He thrust one hand into the pocket of his moleskin trousers, and started to speak. His voice was deep, intense and unmistakably Yorkshire.

‘Colleagues,’ he intoned. ‘We’re facing the biggest threat to our journalistic livelihoods that I can remember. I know you’ve heard that before, and probably from me, but nevertheless, I’m not a man given to crying wolf. Shanti here has raised the spectre of new technology, and I’m here to tell you that the combination of Tory government policies, new technology and proprietors who understand nothing of the proud traditions of British newspapers could mean the end of our working world as we have known it. All the benefits we have struggled to bring our members could be lost like that’ – he snapped his fingers like the crack of ice hitting gin – ‘unless we pick our ground carefully and fight to win.’

The speech continued in predictable vein. The audience were exhorted to hold firm to their hard-won agreements on pay, conditions, and redundancy; to stand up to their new proprietors and show them who really ran the newspapers; and not to concede so much as a matchstick of dead wood to new technology. The rounds of spontaneous applause that greeted Union Jack’s cries to arms astonished Lindsay. It was a long way away from the stony silence that he’d had to face when he returned to office meetings with news of yet more concessions that Carnegie Wilson’s henchmen had wrung out of him. It was easy to see there weren’t many Daily Nation staff members at the meeting.

With an unobtrusive glance at his watch, Tom Jack wound up. ‘At the end of the day, we’re the ones with the ink in our veins. We know how newspapers work. Carnegie Wilson made his millions out of butchering sheep, and he’s found out the hard way that we’re no lambs to the slaughter. Carnegie Wilson and his like have to bow the knee to us, because without us, newspapers can’t exist. We have to remember, colleagues. They’ll never invent a machine that can knock on doors or comfort a grieving widow. They’ll never invent a machine that can persuade governments to change the law. Whatever the Carnegie Wilsons of this world would like to think their fancy computers can do, we have to remind them again and again, day in and day out, that without us, they have nothing to show for their millions of pounds of investments.’

It was a rousing finish, and some people even stood as they applauded Union Jack. Lindsay looked around and noticed with interest that Ian Ross and a handful of other Daily Nation journalists had not joined in the frenzy of applause. Tom held his hands up in the air, accepting the plaudits. As the applause continued, she remembered a rumour Ian had mentioned in the car. The JU’s long-serving National Newspaper Officer had suffered his second major heart attack the day before conference began. The word was he would be offered early retirement and the obvious man to step into his shoes was Tom Jack. He’d filled every significant post open to part-time lay officials. There was nowhere left for his ambition to go unless he moved into a full-time paid official’s job that could lead one day to the top job of them all – general secretary. Lindsay wondered if she’d just heard the first speech in an election campaign.

Tom sat down next to Shanti, who patted him on the shoulder as the applause finally died away. ‘I know some of you may have questions for Tom,’ she said. ‘We have ten minutes left …’

A couple of the audience had clearly been primed with questions that managed to make Tom look even more statesmanlike than his speech already had. Disgruntled, Lindsay pushed herself away from the wall and stuck her hand up. Shanti nodded to her, after a quick glance at Tom, whose eyebrows lifted in acquiescence. Clearly he expected no trouble from one of his own flock.

‘What advice can Tom offer to other chapel officials to help them avoid losing the ground we at Nation Newspapers have already lost? I refer specifically to the fifty per cent reduction in maternity leave, the cut in holidays from eight weeks to seven, the ending of time off in lieu for overnight stays away from base, and the freezing of expense allowances at 1982 levels.’ She could see Tom’s eyes narrow and his thick eyebrows descend, but she carried on. ‘As far as I’m concerned, that is a lot more than the thin end of the wedge.’

Tom was on his feet, all traces of his momentary anger gone. His voice was conciliatory, aimed at the expressions of uncertainty that had appeared on the faces of some of his audience. ‘Colleagues, Lindsay’s making a point here that none of you can afford to ignore. And that point is that even with a strong chapel and experienced negotiators, you have to give a little ground. But against that, we have to weigh the fact that I personally sat across the table from Carnegie Wilson and persuaded him to drop his plans for ten per cent redundancies across the board at Nation Newspapers. We also now have a deal that no element of new technology will be introduced without a fully negotiated agreement between management and workforce.’ He was blustering now, desperately trying to make it look as if he hadn’t rolled over like the lap-dog Lindsay suspected he was. She could imagine only too well the ‘good old boys’ atmosphere of the negotiations, and the amount of alcohol that had flowed to ensure good working relationships.

As he carried on trying to win his audience back, Lindsay pushed herself away from the wall and walked out in disgust. Her departure made her point more forcefully than her words, but she was past caring about the effect. She wandered back towards the main concourse, desperately wishing Frances was only a phone call away.

She had reached the door of the conference hall when she was stopped by a member of the JU Women’s Caucus, canvassing support for some motion or other. Absently, Lindsay listened to the familiar litany, nodding non-committally when some response seemed to be called for. She was shocked back to full attention by a heavy hand clamped on her shoulder and Tom Jack’s voice in her ear. ‘Just whose side are you on, Lindsay Gordon?’ he asked menacingly.

Lindsay looked over her shoulder. Tom was flanked by a handful of his sidekicks. Ian was hovering on the edges of the bunch, trying to work his way round to her. She spoke softly, so her words wouldn’t carry farther than their small group. ‘Keeping the truth from people doesn’t solve anything, Tom,’ she said wearily. ‘It tends to filter through in the end. Then what people will remember is that you bull-shitted them over your deal with Wilson.’ She would have said more, but Ian put a warning hand on her arm.

‘You’re too bloody smart by half. You should remember whose side you’re on. Leave playing devil’s advocate to that fancy lawyer you’re shacked up with. You’ve been spending too much time listening to Miss Frances Collier.’

Lindsay felt suddenly light-headed. Tom Jack’s mouth carried on moving, but she could hear nothing. It was as if a glass bubble had enclosed her, cutting her off from the world around her. Without a word, she pulled away from his restraining grip and pushed through the group of men behind him.

As she began to run down the hall, the wall of silence shattered and she heard Ian Ross shout at Tom Jack, ‘You stupid, insensitive bastard. You’re about as out of touch as you’re out of order. Don’t you know anything about your chapel members? Frances Collier died six weeks ago. How could you not know that?’

3

‘An inevitable consequence of the volume of work demanded of conference delegates is that they will suffer from a lack of sleep as conference week progresses. In order to avoid feeling like dead dogs, we recommend you bring a substantial supply of Vitamins C and B Complex as well as the painkiller of your choice.’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

The shingle crunched beneath Lindsay’s feet as she charged headlong down the beach. At the water’s edge she stopped, her chest heaving for breath, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. She stared out at the grey Irish Sea, glad of its bleakness. Recovering herself, she squatted down to make herself a smaller target for the sharp northerly wind. She pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, straightened one out, cupped a hand round her lighter and inhaled deeply. In spite of the cancer that had taken three months from its diagnosis to kill Frances, Lindsay still couldn’t bring herself to quit. Most days she felt only the nicotine and the caffeine were holding her together.

Three hellish months, trying to come to terms with the one adversary that wouldn’t accept anything other than total surrender. Three months watching death inch closer and closer to the woman she loved. Three months trying to accept the unacceptable. Then that last week, when Frances was beyond words, beyond the defiance that had insisted on Lindsay’s rights in the face of her intransigent family. They had done what neither life nor cancer could; they had separated Lindsay and Frances. When the news finally came, it had been from one of the workers at the hospice. At the funeral, Lindsay had stood apart, flanked by a couple of close friends, the ultimate spectre at the feast. That had been five weeks ago, and nothing was getting any easier.

She dragged the last lungful of smoke out of her cigarette and flicked the stub into the waves. Moments later, she jumped with shock as a warm wet tongue licked her ear. Lindsay straightened up, nearly toppling over in the process, and stared down at a golden retriever, tongue hanging out, shaggy coat dripping with salt water, tail wagging amiably.

A breathless voice behind her called, ‘Becky! Come here.’ Lindsay turned to see Laura bearing down on her. The dog didn’t move. ‘Oh, Lindsay, it’s you. I’m sorry, she thinks everybody was put on the planet to play with her.’

‘No problem. I was miles away, or I would have heard her.’ Lindsay reached down and fondled the dog’s damp, silky ears. ‘She’s a beauty,’ she added rather stiffly.

‘I couldn’t resist her,’ Laura admitted. ‘She belonged to a friend of mine who was transferred to Brussels. Of course she couldn’t take Becky with her. She was about to advertise for a good home for her when … well, when my circumstances changed and made it possible for me to have her. But then, I suppose you know all about that,’ she said in tones of resignation.

‘I just don’t understand how you could do that to him,’ Lindsay said in a much cooler tone than the dog had been granted. She studied Laura, speculating how much time it took in the morning to shape that flowing crest of chestnut hair, and how much of the problem with the ozone layer could be laid at the door of her hair spray. Even walking the dog on Blackpool beach, Laura had managed to achieve an air of elegance that Lindsay would have been hard pressed to match at a formal dinner.

Laura raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. Beneath them, her eyes were wary. ‘So he’s been discussing our private business with all and sundry,’ she said coldly.

Lindsay felt the colour rise in her cheeks. ‘You screw around with someone else behind his back and you expect him to keep his mouth shut for the sake of your reputation?’

Laura took a startled step back. ‘He told you that?’

‘He had to talk to someone, Laura. And in spite of what you think, I’m not all and sundry. Ian’s my friend, and as far as I’m concerned, what you did to him is a shit’s trick. And on top of it all, to turn up with Becky in tow, when you of all people know how allergic he is to dogs. What a slap in the face! You couldn’t have made it clearer that you’ve no intention of trying to sort things out with him.’

Laura ground the heel of a brown boot into the shingle. When she spoke, her voice was harsh. Not for the first time, Lindsay wondered at the capacity betrayers have for anger against the betrayed. ‘There wasn’t any going back from the moment he threw me out. He left me in no doubt about that. He wasn’t interested in my explanations, so why the hell should I kid myself?’

Lindsay looked up at the beautiful face, clenched tight in an expression of bitterness. Then, suddenly, it was gone, and the Laura Craig cool mask was back in place.

‘Well, I hope he’s worth it,’ Lindsay said harshly.

She turned away, giving the dog a final pat and strode up the beach as fast as the shingle would allow. She didn’t grant Laura a single backward glance.

By the time she returned to the Winter Gardens, Lindsay’s run-in with Union Jack was already history. At least half a dozen things had happened which had grabbed the attention of delegates desperate to be riveted by anything other than conference business. But although the rest of the world seemed oblivious to Lindsay’s highly charged encounter with the father of her chapel, it was still vivid in her mind. It didn’t need Ian’s solicitous enquiries as she sat down to remind her of the wound that Union Jack had so callously opened.

‘Are you okay? Bloody Union Jack. I can’t believe he could be so bloody insensitive,’ he said, but not quietly enough to avoid arousing the interest of other members of the delegation. ‘Even though he didn’t know about Frances, he still had no right to drag her in like that.’

Lindsay rubbed a hand over her face. Any good the fresh air had done her vanished like mist in sunshine. ‘He was just trying to discredit me, that’s all. Making sure that anyone who didn’t know I’m a dyke knows now. That and telling everyone that I’m somebody else’s puppet. Why should I expect him to have known about Frances?’

By now, the entire table had given up any pretence of listening to the debate. Lindsay and Ian were the centre of everyone’s attention, even Paul leaning forward to hear better.

‘Because he bloody should have. Because you’re a member of his chapel, and for three months your partner was fighting a losing battle against cancer. He should have made it his business to see you had any support you needed.’

Lindsay sighed, and patted the fist Ian was banging on the table. ‘I got the support I needed from you and the rest of my friends. You know I didn’t want a big song and dance about it. Frankly, if Union Jack had been forced to swallow his prejudices and offer me sympathy, the sight of so much hypocrisy would have made me vomit.’

‘Maybe so, but you shouldn’t let it rest here. Union Jack treated you abominably, bringing up Frances like that, and I want to take it to the chapel committee. You deserve an apology,’ Ian said defiantly. He had not noticed that Laura had come up behind him while he spoke.

‘And that’ll really make Lindsay feel better,’ she said sarcastically. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ian, let the woman bury her dead in peace.’

Ian whirled round in his seat, the chair legs screeching on the floor. He faced Laura, his face flushed scarlet. By now, the surrounding delegation tables were agog. Lindsay felt a slow anger burn in her. How dare Laura use her pain as a stick to beat Ian with?

‘What the hell has this got to do with you?’ he demanded belligerently.

‘Exactly as much as it has to do with you. Christ, Ian, you’re just as bad as Union Jack. You’re as willing to use Lindsay’s grief for your own political ends as he is,’ Laura snapped.

‘Stay out of this, Laura,’ Lindsay butted in. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

‘You don’t even know what we’re talking about,’ Ian said in exasperation, getting to his feet.

Laura made a deliberate point of stepping back and tilting her head upwards to look at his skinny frame towering above her. ‘You think not? Let me tell you, Ian, if there’s anyone in this hall who’s caused a lot of heartache by jumping to conclusions, it sure as hell isn’t me.’ Her voice was low and dangerous.

The pair of them held each other’s gaze. Ian’s ears were scarlet, Laura’s mouth set in a sneer. The stalemate might have continued indefinitely had it not been for the call for a vote. The muttering and rustling as delegates quickly checked which way they were voting and raised their hands shattered the moment. Ian turned away and picked up his voting card. Laura smiled ironically at the rest of their delegation and walked off towards the platform.

‘What a prize bitch!’ Siobhan muttered in Lindsay’s ear. ‘He’s well shot of her.’

‘Almost makes you feel sorry for the new man in her life.’

* * *

Lindsay didn’t want to think about how much whisky she’d drunk. She knew she’d only had three and a half hours sleep after the Scots/Irish ceilidh, but lack of sleep was only a tiny component of the pounding, gut-churning hangover that had invaded her body. She felt like the ball in a rugby match somewhere towards the end of the first half: it was bad already, but she knew it was going to get worse. At least it was the final morning of the conference. She could probably lay her head on her arms and sneak a couple of hours’ kip at the delegation table. Someone would happily hang on to her card and vote in her stead. The hangover would pass. Her guilt at not being in a fit state to carry out her duties as a delegate would probably hang around for longer.

As she slowly crossed the hotel dining-room, she managed to grasp that she was far from the only one who looked like they used to be members of the human race. As she passed the buffet table laden with fruit juices and cereals, she gave a shudder and slunk into her seat at the table she shared with Ian, Siobhan and a subeditor from the Evening Standard who hadn’t yet managed to make it to breakfast. ‘Coffee?’ she croaked. Siobhan passed her the pot. Lindsay’s shaking hand knocked over the salt-cellar as she reached for the milk. Ian moved his pot of hot water out of Lindsay’s line of fire.

‘You’re not fit to be let out,’ he commented, looking up from his copy of The Watchman. ‘And that poison won’t help.’ Self-righteously, he dunked his herbal teabag in his cup, then dropped it in the ashtray.

Ignoring him, Lindsay drained her first cup of coffee and shuddered as the shock hit her system. ‘Come on then, Siobhan, don’t keep me in suspense. Did you crack it?’

Siobhan giggled. ‘Sure did. Four men in four nights.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Monday, Toby Tranter from Brighton; Tuesday, Peter Little, the Manchester branch chairman; Wednesday, Danny Stott, that radio reporter from Newcastle with the cutest bum at conference. And then last night. I’ll be glad to get home. I need the rest.’

‘So who was the lucky guy last night?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Search me. I went for a meal with the Racial Equality Caucus, and I got pissed as a newt. We ended up back in my room, and when I awoke, he’d gone,’ she reported.

Ian tutted. ‘I don’t know, you spent the seventies slagging us men off for treating you like sex objects, and the minute you get liberated, all you do is do exactly what you gave us a bad time for,’ he said in mock reproach.

‘Shut up, Ian,’ they chorused.

Lindsay added, ‘You’re failing to understand that by definition, the oppressed cannot themselves be oppressors. Go back and read your Germaine Greer again.’

Ian pulled a face. Then he said, ‘You sure you did it? I mean, if you can’t even remember the guy’s name, I’m not sure we can award you the Legover of the Conference award.’

Siobhan giggled. The sound was like a hot wire splitting Lindsay’s head in two. She’d been right about that giggle. ‘Oh, we did it all right. Take my word for it, Ian, I know we did it. Let me tell you, it’s only his name I can’t remember. I can recall everything else about him.’ She ticked items off on her fingers. ‘He was Irish, he had freckles, he had brown hair and ginger pubes …’

‘Enough, enough,’ Lindsay groaned. ‘I already feel nauseous.’ She eyed a piece of toast, wondering if she could stand the noise crunching it would make inside her skull. Before she could decide, Ian helped himself to the last piece. Lindsay looked around for a waitress, and spotted Laura standing a couple of tables away, talking to one of the delegates.

Their conversation ended, and she walked towards the exit. As she approached their table, she turned back to call something to the man she’d been talking to. She carried on walking and cannoned into their table, sending Ian’s plate of toast, his cup of rosehip tea and his pot of hot water flying.

The confused hubbub that followed made Lindsay feel like her ears were bleeding. Ian was on his feet, shouting more from shock than anger. ‘You stupid, clumsy, bitch,’ he yelled. ‘You could have really hurt someone. Why don’t you look where you’re going, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Laura said in exasperated tones. ‘It’s only a bit of water. It hasn’t even splashed your trousers. Do you have to make such a fuss?’ She crouched down and picked up the empty pot. ‘If it’s such a big deal, I’ll fetch you some more.’ She marched past a waitress who had scurried up, and straight through the door into the kitchen.

The waitress brought Ian clean crockery, but before she could bring fresh supplies, Laura had returned with a rack of wholemeal toast and a fresh pot of hot water. She dumped them unceremoniously on the table, saying, ‘I didn’t do it deliberately, you know. There was absolutely no need to make such an exhibition of yourself. Why don’t you grow up, Ian? Most women prefer men to small boys, you know.’

Laura marched off, head held high. Grimly, Ian stared at the table as he poured himself a cup of water and dropped his herbal teabag in.

‘At least you know she didn’t do it deliberately,’ Siobhan said.

‘How d’you figure that out?’ Lindsay said, right on cue.

‘If she’d done it on purpose, his balls would be in the burns unit by now!’ Siobhan said raucously as Ian winced.

Lindsay cautiously worked her way through a slice of toast, discovering that if she sucked it before chewing, the noise was just about bearable. Ian sipped his tea in silence, absorbed once more in his newspaper. Siobhan shovelled a cooked English breakfast down her neck, eyes swivelling constantly round the room in search of potential prey.

At five to nine, Ian glanced at his watch, folded his paper and got to his feet. ‘I’ll see you two at the Winter Gardens in a bit,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to pop to the shops. I promised my sister’s kids I’d bring them back a present from the seaside. Somebody told me there’s a really good toy shop up the back of the town, so I’m going to take a drive up there.’

‘I wish he’d said a bit sooner,’ Siobhan grumped as Ian strode off. ‘I was relying on him to give us a lift. Now we’re going to be late.’

Lindsay and Siobhan slipped into their chairs at twenty past nine. The hall was less than half-full, which was more than could be said for the platform. A man with a hoarse voice was proposing a motion which appeared to have something to do with child care. Lindsay shoved her voting card at Siobhan, made a pillow of her forearms on the table and carefully lowered her head. She was drifting in the comfortable half-world between sleep and wakefulness when Siobhan dug her in the ribs and announced in a voice loud enough to turn heads three tables away, ‘That’s him, Lindsay! That’s the man I was with last night!’

Siobhan’s urgent revelation caused enough stir to ripple forward to the platform. The young man at the podium was thrown off his stride mid-sentence as he struggled to see what was going on. He clearly couldn’t believe it was the power of his oratory that had caused the commotion. It took only moments for him to realise who was at the centre of it. Even at that distance, Lindsay could see him flush. A slow ripple of mirth began in the corner of the hall.

Overcome with confusion, he gabbled, ‘Support the amendment,’ turned tail and fled. By then, the ripple had become a wave of laughter. The noise around their table was so loud that Lindsay could scarcely make out the words of Paul Horne, who arrived at the delegation table pale and sweating.

‘Say again?’ she said.

Paul’s lips trembled as he struggled for his rapidly disintegrating self-control. ‘It’s Ian. He’s dead.’

4

‘In view of the increasing tendency of delegates to sneak off before conference ends at Friday lunchtime, SOS is considering methods of enforcing delegates’ attendance. We await with eagerness reports of experiments in the probation service with electronic tagging; not that we imagine for one minute that we would want to know exactly where people are at crucial moments. Meanwhile, as a trial deterrent, this year delegates will not be paid their conference lunch expense allowance until noon on Friday. So be there or be poor.’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

It was hard to imagine the crumpled concertina of red metal had ever been a Ford Escort. It didn’t look as if it could ever have been longer than a Mini. The signpost it had hit first had sliced the car almost in two, before the brick wall of the shopping centre had compressed it to half its length. As she watched a salvage crew struggle to get the wreckage away from the shattered wall, the churning in Lindsay’s stomach had nothing to do with the amount of alcohol she’d consumed. She turned away and threw up unceremoniously in the gutter.

When she recovered herself, she saw Paul had turned away and was staring unseeingly at the traffic.

‘I was passing when it happened,’ he said emptily. ‘I’d popped out for five minutes to buy some rock for the kids. He came round the corner at the end of the street there like a bat out of hell. The car was fishtailing all over the road. I didn’t even realise it was Ian. If I thought anything at all, I thought it was some teenage joyrider.’

Lindsay tentatively put out a hand and touched Paul’s arm. He gripped her fingers tightly.

‘He just kept going faster and faster. Then he tried to take the bend, but he must have been doing seventy, and it’s a really tight turn. He was completely out of control. He just kept going faster and faster.’ Paul shook his head. ‘Then I saw his face, in a kind of blur, and I realised it was Ian. I knew he didn’t have a chance.’

‘Let’s go somewhere and have a cup of tea,’ Lindsay suggested gently, steering Paul towards a nearby café. Luckily, it was the lull between morning coffees and lunches, and they had no trouble finding a quiet table. Because Paul’s dramatic announcement hadn’t penetrated the general laughter, Lindsay had been able to get the shocked branch chairman out of the hall before he could cause general consternation. Outside the conference, he had simply said, ‘Come and see,’ and led her in silence to the scene of the accident.

As they waited for the waitress to bring them a pot of tea, Paul started to shiver, like a dog in a thunderstorm. ‘He looked … he looked really weird,’ he said in a puzzled voice. ‘His eyes were really staring, and it was like he was pushing himself up on the steering-wheel. And he’d gone a funny colour. Sort of purply.’

‘He had bad asthma,’ Lindsay said. It didn’t seem very helpful, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘I know,’ Paul said. ‘Ian’s been my friend for years. But I’ve never seen him in a real state with it. Not like that.’ The waitress deposited a tray on the table. Lindsay poured the tea and Paul instantly clutched a cup, warming his hands like a man dying of cold. ‘He looked completely out of control, and I’ve never seen him like that. He always had his drugs with him, always.’

Lindsay sighed and lit up a cigarette. ‘Maybe he didn’t take them soon enough. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about asthma.’

Paul shook his head. ‘I do. My eldest son is mildly asthmatic. But I’ve never seen him like that either, not even when he was a baby and he couldn’t use inhalers. But Ian was always really careful, really methodical. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? Look what an organised branch secretary he was.’ Paul gave a hysterical laugh. ‘Listen to me. The poor bastard’s in the past tense already.’

‘You’re sure he was dead?’ Lindsay asked, clutching at straws.

Paul gulped his tea. ‘I’m sure. No one could get the door open. We tried. The fire brigade had to cut it open. When they finally got him out, they …’ His voice cracked. He cleared his throat noisily and said, ‘He didn’t come out in one piece, Lindsay. His face was covered when they took him away. They didn’t have their siren going or their light flashing.’ He stared into his cup.

Lindsay felt numb. It was too much, after Frances. Her grief had overloaded in an emotional short circuit that left her incapable of feeling anything more. In self-preservation, her mind was moving only in practical channels. ‘I think you should go to the hospital, Paul. You’re in shock.’

Paul gave a short sharp bark that was a long way from laughter. ‘I can’t go to hospital. You think I’m in a state? You just wait. Who’s going to tell Laura? I should do that, I saw him die, I was their friend.’ The shivering started again.

Lindsay gently took the cup from him and placed it on its saucer. She took his hands in hers. ‘You’re not the person to tell her, Paul. Not right now.’

She saw a sudden flash of relief as his eyes met hers. It disappeared as suddenly as it had come. ‘But I should,’ he said guiltily.

Lindsay shook her head. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I’ll tell her,’ she said softly. She released Paul’s hands and lit another cigarette. ‘I know what it feels like,’ she added distantly.

Though she’d never have admitted it to Paul, it was a secret relief to Lindsay when they returned to the Winter Gardens and discovered that the bad news had travelled with its usual swiftness. The hall was virtually empty. Standing Orders Sub-Committee were in a huddle by the door, discussing whether to move suspension of standing orders; to bring conference to an end; or simply to make a brief announcement from the stage, followed by a minute’s silence.

The delegates stood around in subdued groups, talking softly about what they’d heard had happened. Lindsay couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t a national newspaper reporter in sight. She knew exactly what most of her delegation would be doing now – they’d either be at the hospital or the police station. And she knew that any minute now, her newsdesk would start looking for her to write the definitive piece on the life and death of Ian Ross. Part of her wanted to go on the missing list, but the other, professional part of her wanted to be the one who would give shape to the way Ian would be remembered.

Leaving Paul in the capable hands of the JU’s assistant general secretary, a former colleague from The Watchman, Lindsay systematically worked the fragmented groups to discover where Laura was. It soon became apparent that the police had been led to the conference as a result of the organ donor card Ian carried. The card still gave Laura as his next of kin. Since her business card and a selection of photographs were also in his wallet, it hadn’t taken them long to work out she was likely to be at the JU conference. Once they’d got that far, it had been straightforward. Instead of the tragic news being broken by someone she knew, Laura had heard about Ian’s death from a strange police officer. Lindsay could only imagine what that had felt like. Even in imagination, it made her shudder.

There was no reason to hang about at the Winter Gardens, so Lindsay slowly walked back to the Princess Alice to collect her bag. She wandered through to the bar and checked out their selection of whiskies. She ordered a large Glenfiddich, the only malt on offer, added a dribble of water to the pale liquid and took a small sip. As she took a cigarette from her packet, a hand snapped a flame into life in front of her. She looked up into the dark blue eyes of Shaz Morton, who was noted for managing the seemingly impossible, blending her job as a high profile television company press officer with her role as a campaigning lesbian. Wherever Shaz went, controversy followed. So, usually, did her girlfriend, a polytechnic lecturer in women’s studies. But this week in Blackpool, Shaz was unaccompanied. Probably, Lindsay had decided, because her girlfriend knew how few opportunities Shaz would have to stray at a JU conference.

‘I heard about Ian,’ Shaz said, lighting Lindsay’s cigarette. ‘Not what you needed just now, right?’

‘Right,’ Lindsay agreed.

‘Especially not after Frances.’ Shaz took a deep drag of her own cigarette and ordered a large gin and tonic, and another malt for Lindsay.

‘No thanks,’ Lindsay started to say.

‘You need it. I meant to speak to you earlier before about Frances, but you know how it is. I was really upset to hear about her death. She was very special,’ Shaz said.

Lindsay looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know you knew her.’

Shaz smiled and topped her gin up with tonic. ‘We did some work together on a briefing pack for lesbian mothers involved in custody fights. It was a few years ago, long before she met you. We bumped into each other now and again, at meetings. I don’t know if anybody’s thought to mention this to you, but she was really happy with you.’

Lindsay’s throat closed in the familiar emotional uprising. One step away from tears, she forced a mouthful of whisky down, then sucked in the comfort of nicotine. ‘Thanks,’ she finally managed to say. ‘I was really happy with her.’

Shaz nodded towards Lindsay’s bag. ‘What train are you catching? Fancy some company?’

‘I’d like that. I don’t have a reservation, though. I expected to be going back in the car with Ian.’ An involuntary shudder set her whisky swirling in her glass. She put the glass down with a bang. ‘I keep thinking how bloody awful it must be for Laura. I know they’d split up, and she treated him like shit, but they were together for years. You don’t just switch off your feelings for someone after all that time. No matter what’s happened between you.’

Shaz nodded. ‘She’d have to have a heart of stone not to be upset. She’ll feel guilty too, probably. You know, all that, “if we hadn’t split up, it would never have happened”, business.’

‘Yeah.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘She’s not one of my favourite people, but if she’s feeling a fraction of what I felt about Frances, then my heart goes out to her.’

Before they could say more, there was a disturbance behind them. A familiar voice floated through the door, focusing every drinker’s attention on the speaker. ‘Will you for God’s sake leave me alone, Tom? I’m not a piece of bloody china,’ Laura Craig was shaking off Tom Jack’s protective arm and stalking into the bar.

‘But Laura, you shouldn’t be left alone, you’re in shock.’ For once, thought Lindsay, he actually sounded sincerely concerned.

‘Tom, piss off,’ Laura said slowly and clearly. ‘Watch my lips. I want to be alone.’ She sounded more like Margaret Thatcher than Greta Garbo.

Tom Jack stepped back. There was no mistaking the determination and anger in Laura’s voice. He put his hands up at chest level, palms towards Laura. ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll be through in the lounge if you want me.’

She watched him leave before turning back towards the bar, face set in a hard, expressionless mask. Shaz leaned forward to say softly, ‘Sounds like your sympathy might be a bit misplaced.’

Lindsay shook her head. ‘She’s in shock, like Tom said. Grief does funny things to you.’

When she realised who her companions at the bar were, Laura sighed in exasperation. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Is there no peace in this bloody town?’ Lindsay opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, Laura said sharply, ‘Don’t say it. Don’t for God’s sake say you’re sorry. Is anyone serving here?’ she demanded, turning to the barman. ‘Good. Give me a very large vodka and ginger beer. When I say very large, I mean four.’ The barman took one look at her face, decided not to comment and scuttled off towards his optics.

Lindsay moved towards Laura and said, ‘Laura, I know what it’s like. After Frances died, I sometimes felt it was only the anger holding me together.’

Laura shook her head, as if to clear the vision. ‘That’s what comes next, is it? People giving me permission for my emotions?’ Lindsay felt as if she’d been smacked in the face, but tried to subdue her reaction. When Laura’s drink came, she swallowed half of it in one. As the alcohol hit, her shoulders straightened.

A BBC radio producer chose that moment to come over and put his arm round her. ‘Laura, love, we’re all so very, very sorry,’ he said.

Laura pulled herself clear. ‘You’re dripping beer on my suit. I doubt you earn enough to have it cleaned, never mind replaced. Now piss off,’ she hissed.

The man dropped his arm as if he’d been stung. He backed away, his face a mask of shock.

Laura finished her drink slammed the glass down on the bar. ‘What a waste,’ she said bitterly. ‘What a bloody, bloody waste.’

‘I know,’ Lindsay persisted. ‘I can’t believe it either. I can only imagine how much worse it is for you.’

‘Can you?’ Laura asked dangerously. ‘Can you? Sure you’re not just fishing for an angle for your story, Lindsay?’

Lindsay clocked the look of shock on Shaz’s face, and suspected it was mirrored on her own. ‘For Christ’s sake, Laura,’ she protested.

‘How come you didn’t make it to the hospital like the rest of the pack, Lindsay? Oh, of course! You came in Ian’s car, didn’t you? You didn’t have any wheels to get there. Well, you missed a great show. Your cronies were in fine form. “How do you feel, Laura? What was the last thing he said to you, Laura? What was he really like, Laura?”’ she mimicked. ‘My God, to think my job puts me on the same side as you vultures!’ Laura turned away and signalled to the barman. ‘Just a double this time, please.’

Lindsay moved forward, shaking off Shaz’s restraining arm. ‘Whatever you might think, Laura, I’m not interested in sneaking a couple of juicy quotes out of you. Ian was my friend, and in case you hadn’t noticed, you don’t have a monopoly on grief.’ She spoke softly, but there was no mistaking her sincerity.

Laura turned to face Lindsay and looked her up and down. ‘My god,’ she said, her drawling voice heavy with contempt. ‘I thought you were as bad as the rest of the vultures. I was wrong. You’re a hundred times worse. You stand there, trading on the fact that Ian was too soft-hearted to treat you with the contempt you deserved. Have you any idea how much it pissed him off to have you hanging round, always badgering him with questions, thrusting your bloody grief down his throat? And now you stand there with your crocodile tears like he was something to you. Christ! You should get a T-shirt printed. Lindsay Gordon, queen of the jackal pack. Just for the record, Gordon, let me tell you that your pathetic posturings of grief made Ian sick. And not just Ian. Let’s face it, no normal person’s going to shed a tear because there’s one less dyke on the planet.’

Lindsay could feel the scarlet tide of anger and embarrassment that swept through her body. She was dimly aware of Shaz’s hand on her arm again. This time she let herself be drawn away from the bitter, bereaved woman at the bar. ‘Come on,’ Shaz said. ‘She doesn’t deserve your support.’

At the door, Lindsay looked back, Laura was still leaning against the bar, the centre of all the other drinkers’ wary attention.

‘I’ll never forgive her that,’ Lindsay said, her voice cold, her face set. ‘I don’t care how shocked she is, she’s gone too far. One day she’s going to regret this.’

PART TWO

Sheffield, April 1993

1

‘Tempting though it is for fringe groups to regard conference as a captive audience, only authorised conference material may be distributed inside the hall itself. Any other leaflets, flyers, etc. will be removed and shredded, thus resulting in needless death to trees. Non-authorised material may be distributed outside the hall, though those distributing it should be warned that hung-over delegates who have unwanted bumf thrust upon them can often react violently. SOS and the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union can accept no responsibility for any injuries thus caused.’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

The custody sergeant picked up his pen and gave Lindsay a shrewd look of appraisal. ‘Been drinking?’ he asked. It was the first indication he’d given that she wasn’t invisible. The two detectives who had brought her into the police station also turned towards her. She’d listened patiently while they’d informed the sergeant she was required for questioning relating to a suspicious death. The stocky detective sergeant had grumbled at her refusal to say anything, either at the scene of the death or in the car on the way to the station.

In answer to the custody sergeant, Lindsay nodded. ‘I had a few whiskies earlier.’

The custody sergeant nodded grimly. ‘Okay lads, no questions for a couple of hours. Give the lady time to sober up.’

‘No problem. We’ve got plenty to keep us busy back at the scene of the crime,’ the detective constable said.

‘Alleged crime,’ the custody sergeant corrected him absently.

The two detectives shouldered their way past Lindsay. She heard the DS mutter, ‘Bollocks to that,’ as he opened the door.

‘A few details, if you please, miss,’ the custody sergeant said.

‘I’d like a lawyer,’ Lindsay said.

‘Do you know one locally? Or would you prefer me to call the duty solicitor?’

‘The duty solicitor will do fine,’ Lindsay sighed. ‘Thanks.’

The custody sergeant picked up the phone on his desk and dialled a number. Almost immediately, he spoke. ‘Pager number 659511. Please call Sergeant Meadows, Central Police Station. End message.’ He paused. ‘That’s right. Thanks.’ He put the phone down and smiled at Lindsay. ‘Now, while we’re waiting, a few details.’

‘Name, rank and serial number, that sort of thing?’

‘Name, address and fingerprints, more like. And you don’t get Red Cross parcels here, neither.’

The cell they took her to was cold and smelled stale. The solicitor had agreed to come soon, so she could interview Lindsay before the police decided she was sober enough for interrogation. She sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and stretched in a huge yawn. Then, elbows on her knees, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles. She had sobered up the moment she had realised what the jagged hole in her window meant. But that couldn’t stop the drink taking its physiological toll. Besides, it was nearly six in the morning. She was entitled to feel tired. She should be tucked up in bed, fast asleep, not locked up in some scruffy, dismal cell.

Lindsay began to wonder if leaving her to kick her heels was a deliberate ploy; perhaps they intended her to become more nervous and panicky the longer they left her. Then the voice of realism shouted down the paranoia. She knew how chronically understaffed the police always claimed to be. These guys were investigating what was either a highly dramatic suicide, a mystifying accident or a horrific murder. Maybe they simply had more pressing things to do before they were overtaken by events. After all, they knew she wasn’t going anywhere now.

A dull ache had started behind her eyes. The classic whisky hangover was starting to bite. Lindsay had learned at an early age the technique of drinking large quantities of whisky without becoming either aggressively drunk, maudlin or catatonic. She’d also learned that there was only one way of dealing with the after-effects. Two pints of cold tap-water. Then ten hours sleep followed by a substantial meal – preferably the traditional Scottish New Year’s Day dinner of steak pie, mashed potatoes and peas, followed by sherry trifle.

They did things very differently in California. Now, on the rare occasions when Lindsay had more than a couple of drinks, it was more likely to be white wine spritzers. And the morning after cure consisted of a handful of vitamins washed down with a litre of fizzy mineral water. Lindsay shuddered. She should be kicking down the door of this cell, demanding a lawyer right this minute. Somehow, she just couldn’t summon up the energy. Instead, she swung her feet up on to the bed and lay back. She closed her eyes, placed her hands palm down on the rough blanket and breathed deeply. Area by area, she deliberately relaxed her muscles, mentally repeating, ‘I love and approve of myself, right where I am.’ Within five minutes, the pain had eased.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes. The light in its mesh cage seemed painfully bright, so she closed them again. One of the reasons she’d left Britain was because she’d had one too many close encounters with police interviewing techniques. Because her investigative journalism had once poked the authorities in the eye with a sharp stick, it had become clear to her that she was always going to be top of the list when the command came to ‘round up the usual suspects’. It wasn’t a role she relished. Moving to California might have been a leap into the dark, but at least the cops wouldn’t be breathing down her neck every time something criminal happened within a mile of her.

Their relationship had only just begun to find its rhythm and shape when Sophie had been offered the sort of opportunity that comes along only a couple of times in a consultant gynaecologist’s career. A leading hospital in San Francisco was head-hunting an experienced team to staff a new unit, and Sophie’s work in Glasgow with HIV positive mothers-to-be made her the ideal choice. She had leaped at the chance and Lindsay, only too glad to escape the bitter memories Glasgow now held for her, had chosen to trust enough to go too.

They’d moved into a wood-framed house above the beach, an hour’s drive from the city, with a view of the Pacific that made Lindsay feel instantly at home. The best times in her life had been lived by the sea. First, growing up in a small Scottish village on the Atlantic coast. Later, learning to be a journalist in the cosy picture-postcard world of Cornwall. And later still, escaping from the security services’ awkward questions and restoring herself to sanity in a humble and repetitive daily routine on the Adriatic coast. For the first few weeks in America, she’d been happy to put her mind on hold again while she sanded and sealed floors, stripped and painted woodwork and walls, and learned the basics of surfing. She’d hardly even begun to get to know San Francisco in all its glorious charm. Then suddenly, she’d woken one morning, alert and restless, needing to find something that would give her the same fulfilment that Sophie found in her harrowing role at the hospital.

Strangely, she found it in passing on the very skills she’d declared redundant in herself. Although she knew she could never again be a working journalist, Lindsay had never doubted her abilities. Her background in mainstream newspaper journalism coupled with her single foray into enemy territory, treading on the toes of the security services, made her the ideal choice for the job she landed as a university lecturer in journalism and media studies. Although she’d been apprehensive about moving into the world of higher education, it had been less of a shock to the system than she had anticipated. University life in California couldn’t have been more different from the memories of her own student days at Oxford. Somehow, Lindsay couldn’t imagine her former tutors in Bermuda shorts, playing volleyball at a Sunday afternoon beach barbecue.

The one fly in the ointment was the pressure to pile up qualifications and publications. Publish or be damned was an expression that could have been coined for her new world instead of her old one, Lindsay often thought. But when she’d chosen to write a doctoral thesis researching women’s roles in the trade union movement, she hadn’t expected it to be a straight road back to a police interrogation.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Lindsay’s eyes snapped open and focused on the woman who had just walked in. She was tall to start with, but the three-inch stilettos she had chosen put her near six feet. Her hair was short and neat, emphasising the kind of bone structure that has generated the fashion industry’s demand for striking black models. Her skin was the colour of copper beech leaves in summer. Lindsay took in a pair of sharply tailored trousers in hounds-tooth check, a black matador jacket and a spotless white blouse open at the neck. Lindsay jumped to her feet. ‘You must be my solicitor,’ she said as the woman moved towards her.

The solicitor shook her hand and perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Right. I’m Jennifer Okido,’ she said.

Lindsay shuddered at the thought of how she must appear to this woman who couldn’t have looked less like she’d been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. ‘Lindsay Gordon,’ she said. ‘Sorry you had to be called out so early.’

‘It’s no problem, Ms Gordon. I’m used to it. There aren’t many firms in the city who do criminal work any longer, thanks to the Legal Aid changes. We’re the largest, and I’m the senior criminal partner. By the way, I’m sorry about this, but we’ll have to talk in here. Since the Strangeways riots, our police stations are so overcrowded with remand prisoners that there are no more secure interview rooms. They’ve all become holding cells. Now, if I can just sort out some details?’ She took a pad from her briefcase and moved swiftly through the formalities. ‘So what brings you back to Britain?’ the solicitor asked.

Lindsay ran a hand through her hair and pulled a wry face. ‘I’m beginning to wonder myself,’ she said. ‘My doctoral thesis is a study of how women have worked within the trade union movement to achieve changes in media attitudes towards them. That’s why I came back for the Amalgamated Media Workers’ Union’s first annual conference. Years ago I used to be active in the Journalists’ Union, which has been swallowed up by the new union, and I needed to talk to people who were involved in the equality struggles of the seventies and eighties. I thought that coming to the conference would be a good way of catching several of them in the same place.’

Jennifer nodded as she jotted notes with a shiny silver fountain pen. ‘And you arrived here when?’

Lindsay closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘Monday afternoon,’ she said.

The foyer of Wilberforce Hall was buzzing. But the focus of attention wasn’t the long trestle table where arriving delegates were registered and supplied with their conference packs. It was the photocopied A4 sheets that the earlier arrivals were waving under the noses of their friends and acquaintances as soon as they put their noses across the threshold. As Lindsay joined the queue, the pony-tailed young man behind her was accosted by a woman in her mid-forties.

‘Have you seen this, Liam?’ the woman demanded in a harsh Ulster accent. ‘It’s outrageous! Look what they’re saying about Fearghal O’Donovan!’

Lindsay sneaked a look over the young man’s shoulder as he took the brandished sheet of paper. She read:

Conference Chronicle The Paper Off The Record

When Irish Ayes Are Lying?

Some of us were more than slightly gobsmacked at the turn-out in the election for an assistant general secretary (Ireland) last month. For those of us more familiar with the depressingly low numbers of members who normally vote in elections for fulltime officials, seeing returns of sixty-two per cent was pretty astonishing. And a staggering eighty-nine per cent of them voted for former despatch worker Fearghal O’Donovan.

The reason for O’Donovan’s phenomenal success, however, has more to do with chicanery than popularity. O’Donovan has always performed better in secret ballots than in workplace shows of hands.

The reason for this is that in Irish secret ballots, the ballot papers never actually reach the voters, particularly in the offices of more remote local papers where there is traditionally a low or nonexistent turn-out in union elections.

And in the major newspaper offices where the forms are actually handed out, Fearghal’s cohorts simply make sure they collect up any unused forms, then put the crosses in Fearghal’s box.

What’s in it for them? Well, guess who controls all the highly-paid casual Saturday night-shifts at the Sunday Sentinel? None other than Dermot O’Donovan, brother of the more famous Fearghal.

Of course, Fearghal will deny Conference Chronicle’s claim. Maybe it’s time someone went through the ballot papers and compared how many were filled in with the identical pen and the identical cross.

Lindsay reached the end of the piece ahead of the young man. She couldn’t keep a smile from her lips. There were a lot of journalists who’d be walking round with sanctimonious smirks on their faces when they saw that. All their wild claims about the corruption and nepotism of the traditional print unions would be vindicated by that one anonymous article. The air would be thick with the sound of ‘I told you so’.

‘Sure, they can’t prove a thing, so,’ the young man protested in the softer Dublin accent. ‘They shouldn’t be let away with the likes of this, though. Fearghal’ll be biting the carpet. Where did you get it?’

The woman, red-faced in her anger, said, ‘It was shoved under my bedroom door. Everybody’s got one. It’s a scandal, so it is.’

‘Who’s behind it?’ the young man asked, handing the sheet back as the queue moved forward.

‘It’ll be them bloody journalists, trying to run everything their way. As if it’s not enough that their man got the general secretary job, they have to stoop to telling lies about a decent man who’ll stand up to them.’ She was building up a fine head of steam. Lindsay hoped the woman wouldn’t round on her and demand to know which sector of the union she belonged to.

‘What’s Fearghal saying to it?’ the young man asked.

The woman snorted. ‘Let me tell you, that man’s a saint. He’s gone to see Standing Orders Sub-Committee about an emergency motion to clear his name. And in the face of this,’ she added, waving the offending article, ‘I don’t doubt they’ll see things his way. I’ve never seen the like, not in all my years as a union official. What we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to organise a proper investigation into who’s doing this.’

The young man shrugged. ‘It’d be a waste of time, Brid. Anybody could have done it.’

‘Only someone with access to a photocopier,’ she said triumphantly.

‘Brid, think about it. There must be half a hundred places in a city the size of Sheffield where you can get photocopying done. If it is a journalist, they could have pals on the local paper who are only too happy to run them off copies in the office. Plus, don’t forget, you can get these wee portable ones now, just the size of a briefcase. I bet half the journalists here, if they haven’t got one, they’d know where to hire one from. It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘I don’t know what this union’s coming to,’ the woman said. She continued grumbling, but Lindsay tuned her out, scanning the room for anyone she knew. She was dying to find someone who could fill her in on all the latest gossip. She had enough experience of the internecine warfare of union politics to know that Conference Chronicle would be the one topic of conversation in the bars that night. There would be plenty of candidates for the position of scapegoat, she felt sure.

It was a long time since Lindsay had watched a witch-hunt. This time, she wanted a front row seat.

2

‘Remember conference lasts for a week. Pace yourselves. And remember that fights you pick on Monday night will surely return to haunt you by Friday morning.’

from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

Jennifer crossed her legs and propped her notepad on her thigh. Lindsay had fallen silent. ‘It would be helpful if you could run through what’s happened since you got here,’ she said, gently.

Lindsay rubbed a hand over her face and muttered, ‘Sorry. I’m shattered. Monday. Well, I hadn’t even signed in before I saw the first issue of Conference Chronicle. The place was jumping. I kept having conversations with people I hadn’t seen for five years that all began, ‘Lindsay! It’s been ages. Have you seen Conference Chronicle?’

* * *

She’d been deep in thought when a loud shriek closely followed by a bear-hug brought her sharply back to the here and now. Kathy Dean, a civil service press officer was bouncing up and down in front of her. ‘Lindsay!’ she yelped. ‘Lindsay Gordon! Is it really you? Hey, no one said you were coming! Are you back for good?’

Lindsay shook her head. ‘Just for conference. I’m only here as an observer.’

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