Sheer Abandon Read Free

picture down the line to her. Jocasta, wrenching her mind off the desperately injured baby, wondered if any other job in the world imposed such extraordinarily diverse stress at such short notice. She filed that copy via her mobile and had just returned to the baby when her phone rang.
    “Is that you, Miss—”
    “Jocasta, yes,” she said, recognising the voice of the baby’s father. “Yes, Dave, it’s me. Any news?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Yes, he’s going to be all right, he’s going to pull through, we just saw him, he actually managed a smile!”
    “Dave, I’m so glad, so very glad,” said Jocasta, hugely relieved, not only that the baby was going to live but that she was so touched by it, looking at her screen through a blur of tears.
    Not a granite-hearted reporter yet, then.
    She filed the story, and checked her e-mails; there was an assortment of junk, one from her brother telling her their mother was missing her and to phone her, a couple from friends—and one that made her smile. “Hello, Heavenly Creature. Meet me at the House when you’re back. Nick.”
    She mailed Nick back, telling him she’d be there by nine, then, rather reluctantly, dialled her mother’s number. And flicking through her diary, knowing her mother would want to make some arrangement for the week, realised it was exactly fifteen years to the day since she had set off for Thailand, in search of adventure. She always remembered it. Well, of course she would. Always. She wondered if the other two did. And what they might be doing. They’d never had their promised reunion. She thought that every year as well, how they had promised one another—and never kept the promise. Probably just as well, though. Given everything that had happened…

    Nick Marshall was the political editor on the
Sketch
, Jocasta’s paper; he worked not in the glossy building on Canary Wharf but in one of the shabby offices above the press galleries at the House of Commons. “More like what newsrooms used to be,” one of the old-timers had told Jocasta. And indeed many journalists, who remembered Fleet Street when it had been a genuine, rather than a notional, location for newspapers, envied the political writers for working at the heart of things, rather than in shining towers a long cab ride away.
    It always seemed to Jocasta that political and newspaper life were extraordinarily similar; both being male orientated, run on gossip and booze (there was no time in the day or night when it was not possible to get a drink at the House of Commons), and with a culture of great and genuine camaraderie between rivals as well as colleagues. She loved them both.
    Nick met her in Central Lobby and took her down to Annie’s Bar in the bowels of the House, the preserve of MPs, lobby correspondents, and sketch writers. He ushered her towards a small group in the middle; Jocasta grinned round at them.
    “Hi, guys. So what’s new here? Any hot stories?”
    “Pretty lukewarm,” said Euan Gregory, sketch writer on the
Sunday News
. “Labour lead shrinking, Blair losing touch, shades of Maggie, too much spin—you name it, we’ve heard it before. Isn’t that right, Nick?”
    “’Fraid so.” He handed her a glass of wine. “Pleased to see me?”
    “Of course.” And she was, she was.
    “Good thing somebody loves him,” said Gregory. “He’s in trouble here.”
    “Really, Nick? Why?”
    “Over-frank on lunchtime radio. Spin doctors very cross!”
    “I wish I’d heard you.”
    “I’ve got it on tape,” said Nick with a grin. “Good. I’m going to take you out to dinner.”
    “My God. What have I done to deserve this?”
    “Nothing. I’m hungry and I can see nothing interesting’s going to happen here.”
    “You’re such a gentleman, you know that?” said Jocasta, draining her glass.

    In fact Nick
was
a gentleman; nobody was quite sure what he was doing in the world of the tabloid press. His father was a very rich farmer and Nick had got a