Jeremy leant all the way back in his tilting chair, and said, ‘I hate reporters. They’re going to find there’s nothing there and then whose ear are they going to come and chew off?’

‘Yours, it looks like,’ said Max, who wanted Jeremy to get on with the Tragic Schoolgirl already. ‘But even so, just in case someone is planning to set off a bomb in here, we wouldn’t want to spoil the biggest scoop either of us has ever seen just because someone couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Don’t forget the Impartial and the Trumpet are right underneath us.’

Jeremy understood, and nodded. He wouldn’t say a word.

6

A hollow, sick feeling had been settling in Jeremy’s gut since he’d talked to the Newsdesk. It wasn’t so much anything they’d said as their sudden focus, their sharpened intent. In his experience, every reporter in his most secret heart was as lazy as he could get away with. They’d always prefer to copy and paste some regional news article, rewriting the intro and introducing some errors, rather than do any actual reporting themselves. Except, that was, when they caught the scent of something big. And they’d caught a scent from him.

Jeremy had an unhappy presentiment, like reading the paper over breakfast and seeing an error printed and un-recallable, the responsibility his, and having to wait for the chief to ring. At least, he reassured himself, with Newsdesk in this mood it wouldn’t take them long to run the trail cold. Then they could come and have a go at him all they liked; by tomorrow it would be over.

He could tell that Max wanted him to get on with the Tragic Schoolgirl and the story of how she’d been killed. But there was no point hurrying to get things out of the way; the big scoop would not be coming. Nevertheless, to oblige his friend, and thinking that it might take his mind off the Newsdesk, Jeremy opened the copy and tried to concentrate. He sighed and read ‘terrible accident’… ‘schoolmates’ grief’… ‘little brother’s anguish’… ‘young life cut tragically short’. She’d died falling off a horse when a car passed too quickly. The horse was helpful; it meant the readers would know at once that she was the right sort of person. Other than that, she was just another Tragic Schoolgirl, fifteen years old, the latest of innumerable sisters who’d fallen off balconies or taken bad ecstasy pills or – as fondly remembered by the newsroom – gone on an Outward Bound expedition to Greenland and been mauled by a bona fide polar bear.