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Chapter One

“Are you all right, Doug? You’ve gone very pale.”

Douglas Drennan, my editor, lowered his mobile so slowly that for a moment I thought he might be filming a scene for The Matrix.

He forced a tight smile from across our bijou newsroom, with its stack of last week’s edition of the paper and three walnut desks. There was an assortment of potted plants dotted around, a couple of old black and white photographs of Silver Ness back in the day decorating the walls and a faint scent of percolated coffee. “That was head office. I’ve been summoned to a meeting in town.”

Frances White, a married mother of two in her mid-thirties and our senior news reporter, gave a dismissive flap of her gold manicure from her desk, which was stationed across from mine. “It’ll be nothing, Doug. Well, when I say nothing, it’ll either be a gold star or a bullet up the arse.”

I shot a wary look across at her, before swivelling my chair to face Doug. I was very fond of Frances, but she wasn’t known for her finesse. “It will be something about nothing,” I assured him. “Probably one of those dreaded budget meetings.”

He dragged a hand down his tense, craggy face. “Er. Yes. Sure. That’s what it will be. A budget meeting.”

I frowned. Something was troubling him. Doug was one of those unstoppable journalists of old, in his sixties, not fazed by anything and convinced that a pint and a packet of pickled-onion crisps could solve the ills of the world. He would always joke that he had newspaper print running through his veins and not blood. Doug glanced down at his watch for the tenth time in a minute, before leaping to his feet and throwing on his crumpled suit jacket.

“Or is it another liquid lunch?” asked Frances with a twinkle. She snapped shut her silver powder compact. “You seem to have been indulging in a few more of those recently.”

Doug barrelled round. “I wish it bloody was! I just told you. I’ve been summoned to some shit-show of a meeting, ok?!”

Frances’s hazel eyes grew large and she held up her hands in mock surrender. “Ok! Ok. Bloody hell! No need to get all irate! I was only joking!”

Doug flipped his black and silver tie. He cleared his throat, his attention all at once focused on our beige office carpet. “The meeting is at half twelve, so I’ll head off now.”

He stalked towards the newsroom door. Then he swung to face me. “And Leonie, can I have five hundred words on that elderly lady in Carbeth Road you went to see this morning?”

“You mean the one whose dog found the message in a bottle on Silver Ness beach?”

My boss gave a stiff nod. He was struggling to concentrate.

“I’m already on it. What a sweetheart she is. She was telling me that cute dog of hers—”

“I don’t have time for a cosy chat right now,” he snapped, making me blink in surprise. “Just have it sent over to me when I get back. Please.”

Good grief. What was the matter with him this morning? He had been a little prickly and distracted recently, but in the two years I had worked here at my local paper, The Silver Ness News, I had never known Doug to be like this.

There was an awkward silence as he banged out.

Frances pulled a face. “Oooh! Somebody didn’t have their Weetabix this morning,” she whispered, once he had gone.

I fiddled with my pen. “Something’s bothering him.” I shot her a look. “Actually, have you noticed Doug hasn’t been himself the last few weeks?”

“Maybe a bit,” she conceded. “But I just put it down to him and Cheryl having a few problems.”

“Are they?”

Over Frances’s shoulder and out of one of the bevelled office windows, Silver Ness beach looked like one giant, golden smile in the hazy October sunshine.

She hesitated.

“Spill, Sherlock. You look like you want to say something.”

Frances bit the inside of her lip. “Haven’t you noticed the long days he’s been putting in here recently? Staying behind well after we’ve headed home?”

I considered what she was saying. Sure enough, he had still been stationed at his desk well after clocking-off during the past few weeks, his head buried in his screen. “So, you think Doug is having issues at home?”

“It all points that way.”

I thought again about Doug barging out of the office. “Do you think we should have a word with him when he gets back? Let him know we’re around for him, if he needs to talk?”

Frances nodded her shiny black hair. “You know Doug isn’t into all that touchy-feely stuff, but it’s a nice gesture.”

I flipped open my reporter’s notebook and began to rattle off the introduction to my message-in-a-bottle story. At least we could let Doug know we were there to help.

It was my turn to go and get lunch from the seafront deli.

I studied the array of cold meats and cheeses through the panoramic window and let out a frustrated sigh. I didn’t know what I wanted. I experienced this dilemma every day of the week, mind you, such was the delicious array of fillings that were always available.

I had worked for The Silver Ness News as a junior reporter for two years now and I loved it.

Silver Ness, where I was born and still lived, was a quaint little Scottish seaside town a good hour’s journey away from the centre of Glasgow. It was all pretty bed and breakfast cottages and family businesses along the seafront. The shops there sold everything from buckets and spades to dramatic artwork depicting the golden stretch of beach. We also had mysterious historical links to pirates and smuggling, which the day-trippers, tourists, and local children got rather excited about.

Before joining my local paper, I had worked in an uptight advertising agency on the south side of town for three years as a copy writer after graduating from my four-year journalism degree course. I struggled to find a job in journalism after university and remembering Mum’s advice of “It’s easier to go to a job from a job” (together with the fact that I needed to survive financially) I took the ad agency vacancy.

I hated every minute of it.

Cut-throat; synthetic; stressful; not to mention the grind of the daily commute, which had sapped well over two hours out of my life each day. Everyone at the agency looked every bit as downtrodden as I was.

The term “work–life balance” was treated with derision and even taking a proper lunch break away from your desk was frowned upon. I was twenty-five at the time, but felt like I was ninety-five. I don’t know how I managed to stick it for so long. I think the very competitive salary was a large part of why I stayed, until even that palled and I knew that for my mental wellbeing, I couldn’t carry on working there.

When my mum tipped me off that she’d bumped into Frances, senior reporter at our local paper, who told her their current junior was leaving to join his girlfriend in London, I knew I had to apply for the vacancy.

I was delighted to hear I had secured an interview and then spent the next few weeks preparing for it, swatting up on my home town. I’m embarrassed to say I had rather taken Silver Ness and its reputedly colourful past for granted.

I read up on everything about the birth of the local paper too, devouring information on its circulation, regular local correspondents, and previous reporters of note.

It was Doug and a stern-faced character from the Clarity Newspaper Group Human Resources team who interviewed me and I was thrilled to hear a couple of days later that I was being offered the job of junior reporter.

I threw myself into the role, bearing down on individuals with my Dictaphone, notebook, and a wide smile or sympathetic ear. I managed within a matter of months of dogged determination to establish a solid set of contacts in the local police force, the council, and the fire service.

It was a joy, working for a local newspaper that so many members of the community relied upon and which had been a part of their family for over a hundred years. I felt as if I were achieving something; giving something back to the sleepy seaside town where I was born and brought up.

I could smell the sea air from my desk, listen to the gulls bickering over the waves, and I could actually relax and take a breath when I got home.

I inspected the array of tasty breads again in the deli window. Even though it was only the first day of October, the deli owners had enthusiastically placed a couple of small pumpkins in the window, together with plastic bats and a witch’s broom.

The idea of Doug being called to a snap finance meeting like that in town niggled me. For the two years I had been working at the paper, Head Office always made sure they gave Doug a clear heads-up on when these meetings were due to take place and on the odd occasion when he couldn’t attend or was on holiday, Frances would take his place. I recalled her saying that they were an utter pain in the arse, but that they were well-organised and the minutes and papers were emailed through ahead of time.

Something about this didn’t seem right.

I inwardly rolled my eyes and tried to give myself a reassuring internal talking-to as I continued to hover outside the deli window. There was a stiff breeze working its way from up the beach and I huddled deeper into my coat. I caught sight of my pensive expression in the glass, with my smattering of cinnamon freckles across my nose, and pushed my array of spirally, conker-brown hair away from my face.

No. Stop, Leonie. Don’t catastrophise. Crikey, I would have myself out of a job in a minute!

I sucked in a sweep of air, clotted with seaweed and salt, and tried to be more rational. That meeting Doug had been summoned to could be about anything. Anything at all. Doug was always a bit on-edge before these sorts of “shit-shows”, as he called them, anyway. And remember what Frances said about Cheryl, reminded a voice. The long hours and late nights he had been pulling. That would explain his tetchy, barking moods of late.

Maybe it was all to do with him and Cheryl having marriage problems and had nothing to do with work after all.

Yes. That would be it. I was letting my imagination run ahead of me.

I glanced down at my watch. Shit! Frances would start chewing her keyboard if I didn’t return with her salmon and cucumber salad bagel in the next ten minutes.

I opted for a salt beef bagel and made my way back along the high street towards the office. Not many people could boast of a view like this from their workplace. The sea was brushing against the rocks in a mirror of turquoise and to the right, the harbour reached out like a gnarly hand towards a couple of creaking fishing boats.

Behind me, the multi-coloured fishermen’s cottages and eclectic array of shops were slung like a string of rainbow beads.

This sure beat being stuck on a train an hour each way every day, inhaling other people’s armpits.

“Ms Baxter?”

I turned around.

It was Mrs Cooke, an elderly lady I had interviewed recently. She had been swindled out of six hundred pounds by a dodgy landscape gardening company and had come to The Silver Ness News for help.

I followed up her story and thanks to the negative publicity and the attention my article attracted, Mrs Cooke was refunded the money these crooks had extracted from her, after claiming they had “recalculated the costs of pruning Mrs Cooke’s hedges and realised they had made an administrative error.”

“I just wanted to thank you so much for your help.”

“Oh, not at all Mrs Cooke,” I beamed, putting on a jokey voice. “Just doing my job.”

“No, you didn’t. You did far more than that. You were so very kind to me.” She leant in, clutching her wicker shopping basket. “I have written a letter of thanks to your editor, telling him how wonderful you are, but I’m sure he knows that already.”

I felt my cheeks zing with happiness and satisfaction. “Well, I hope he does but it won’t do any harm to remind him. Thank you.”

Mrs Cooke laughed and wandered off to inspect some new postcards outside the gift shop.

As I strolled back towards the office, an idea came to me. Maybe we could introduce a consumer complaints page for the local readers? Doug would often ask Frances and me to put forward any ideas we might have for the paper so that he could feed them back to Head Office.

The offices of The Silver Ness News were a whitewashed bevelled-window affair that used to be a pub that entertained the weary fishermen after their gruelling shifts out at sea during the early 1900s. It looked out from the high street and onto the moody vista of the beach.

As I drew closer, I noted that Doug’s black Hyundai was back and parked round the corner. Wow. If that had been a budget meeting, it had been a much quicker one than usual. They usually dragged on for a good couple of hours.

Doug would return, tie askew, complaining about people loving the sound of their own voices and refusing to stick to the timings on the agenda. Then he would always say he could murder a pint.

If I’d known he was going to return over lunch, I could have treated him to one of his favourites from the deli – a cream horn.

I closed the office door behind me, waggling the brown paper bag embossed with the deli logo. Inside, I was glowing from the kind praise from Mrs Cooke. I bounced across the newsroom. “The hunter-gatherer has returned.”

I turned to Frances and my smile withered. She was sitting behind her desk, dabbing at her wet eyes with a tissue.

The usually relaxed atmosphere in our little newsroom was edgy; unidentifiable.

I looked at Doug and then back to Frances. An uneasy feeling gripped my stomach. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Doug shuffled from foot to foot, avoiding eye contact with me. “Switch on the office voicemail, would you please Leonie? We need to talk.”

Chapter Two

My stomach plummeted to the floor.

I felt as though I had been punched in the chest. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

Frances dragged her swivel chair round to sit beside me, her suit rumpled and her eyes stinging with more tears.

“I wish I were,” managed Doug.

“But closing the paper…”

Doug’s words carried more than a hint of sarcasm. “Not closing. Amalgamating.”

I couldn’t process this. The Clarity Newspaper Group had decided to amalgamate The Silver Ness News with one of our sister titles, The Drummond Post. Drummond was the neighbouring town to Silver Ness and a friendly rivalry had existed between the two ever since I could remember.

I rocked backwards and forwards in my chair, a rising panic clawing at me. I had been right to be concerned when Doug was summoned to Head Office like that. It wasn’t an urgent finance meeting. It was management lobbing a filthy great bomb into our lives.

Frances sniffed into her hankie.

I could guess what Doug was about to say, but I asked anyway. Part of me didn’t want to know. “But there must be something we can do,” I persisted, my voice dripping with desperation. “How about we try and modernise the paper a bit? Nothing radical, but just give it a bit of an update?”

“Leonie…” started Doug, looking defeated.

“I had been thinking about it before,” I carried on, fighting to sound positive. “We could have a few more competitions and get some of the local businesses on board. That could boost the paper’s revenue.”

Frances sniffed louder and didn’t say anything.

“Or we could have a feature such as the Silver Ness Reader of The Week. Highlight a local who’s done a lot for the community…” My voice tailed off at Doug’s distinct lack of enthusiasm for my ideas.

“Don’t you think I’ve been driving myself round the bend recently, trying to come up with counter arguments against this? I’ve looked at our advertising revenue, possible feature ideas…” Doug ruffled up his greying hair and left it sitting on top of his head like a wild, petrified animal. “I’ve been pushing poor Cheryl to the limit at home, doing nothing else.”

I slumped in my desk chair. “So, it’s definite then?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

I glanced at my PC screen, not seeing the text flickering on there. The words were misting over through a haze of gathering tears.

“And what does this mean for the three of us?”

My boss’s sullen expression avoided mine for a moment. “HR have said I can take retirement now.”

I swallowed. “And what does all this mean for Frances and me?”

Frances squirmed in her chair. She couldn’t bring herself to look across at me. “Doug said they’ve offered me a part-time reporter post on the new title.”

“Right. Ok. That’s great.”

“It’s not perfect,” she admitted, “but it’s something.”

There followed a heavy silence.

“And me?” I croaked, my apprehension rising like the tide outside. “What about me?”

Doug looked as if someone were standing on his toes. The words tumbled out of his mouth in one long, apologetic rush. “I’m so sorry, Leonie. I really am. I pushed to have you taken on at the revamped title or at another of our sister publications. I even asked if you could be taken on at another of our papers on a part-time basis, but they kept chucking falling circulation figures and cutbacks at me…”

You’re out of a job, hissed a voice in my head. That’s what that means.

Icy fingers gripped me.

Doug continued to talk. He was saying something about a decision to retain the existing quota of staff on the Drummond title but I was fighting to process any of it. It was just a jumble of sentences he was talking, which all led to the same awful conclusion. I was about to be made redundant.

My stunned eyes scanned our modest newsroom, of which I was so fond, despite it needing a fresh lick of paint. He may as well have been reciting his weekly shopping list for all the attention I was able to pay.

“But nobody knows their own area like a local reporter,” I croaked. “I was born in Silver Ness. I grew up here…”

“I’ve been pointing all that out,” insisted Doug. “I’ve stressed what a great journalist you are. How embedded you are here in the community and what solid contacts you have—”

Frances jerked up her head. Her flapper-style bob swung onto her cheeks. She cut him off mid-flow. “Wait a minute. How long have you known about all this, Doug?”

Doug blanched.

Frances shifted forward in her chair. “Well?”

He looked like he wanted to slither away under the door. “I’ve done my best to make them reconsider…”

So, he’d known this might be a possibility? He’d known that the future of The Silver Ness News was at risk?

Frances and I swapped electrified looks. “Why didn’t you talk about all this before?” I managed, unable to conceal my accusatory tone.

Doug looked wretched as it was, without me piling on the guilt. Nonetheless, why, if he had known about what was to happen, hadn’t he told Frances and me? Why hadn’t he warned us? He was often calling us The Three Musketeers, for pity’s sake!

Could we form a united front together to fight this? To make management reconsider?

Doug swallowed, hurt and shame etched into his anguished features. “I hoped I could do something. I thought I might be able to make them change their minds. But Sir John was adamant that with the general decline in circulation of local papers and so many people accessing news online, they had to make some tough decisions.”

Now it was Frances’s turn to go on the defensive. “So why the hell didn’t you tell us, Doug? Maybe we could have helped.”

Doug let out an impatient sigh. “You two had more than enough to contend with at the time.” He gestured to me. “You and Miles had just split up.”

I flinched at the memory.

“And Frances, your mother-in-law had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

“I appreciate that,” responded Frances. Then realisation kicked in. Her mouth dropped open. “But wait… all that stuff with Sarah’s diagnosis and Leonie and Miles splitting up… that all happened at the beginning of the year.”

Doug paced like an anguished zoo animal behind bars backwards and forwards in front of his desk, which bore his Scottish rugby team coffee mug and a couple of photos of Cheryl – a smiling twinkly brunette.

“You’ve known for all this time that this could happen?” I gasped. “You’ve known for ten months and yet you didn’t think to warn us?”

He struggled to speak. “Ok. Ok. I’m sorry. I’ve cocked everything up.” We watched him reach into one of his desk drawers and produce a brown cardboard folder. He slapped it down on the desk. “But I haven’t been sitting here with my thumb up my arse. I’ve been trying to salvage this bloody newspaper. I haven’t been pulling all these extra hours in the office to do bloody sudoku!”

Frances gave the folder a contemptuous look. “What’s that?”

“See for yourselves.”

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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