What a week.
Max had the potential scoop of the year on her hands: Shagger Sheri pregnant with Kirk Kelner’s baby.
She’d wasted no time in racing back to the office to tell her boss.
‘That’s a belter, Max,’ Claire announced, leaping to her feet in anticipation of telling the big boss, the paper’s editor.
Max felt the stares of her fellow reporters, who were envious it wasn’t their story yet relieved the pressure to come up with a big exclusive was off them for a day or two.
It was said that Claire, four years older than Max and with thirsty brown eyes, would sell her grandmother if it meant getting a front-page. Having gleaned an insight into how she worked, Max was sure she’d throw in her grandfather too. But the result was she was known as one of the best showbiz journalists in the country, with a string of exclusives under her Gucci belt.
She cut an impressive figure, favouring classic suits – always in black and accentuating her waist. Her hair never changed: bleached almost white, a poker-straight bob in a severe centre parting with not even a millimetre of roots showing. This was some feat, given that a decade ago her hair had matched her dark eyes. Claire was attractive in a stern, perfected way, her look finished with bright red lipstick at all times.
As well as her own stories, Claire relied on her staff – Max and three other showbiz reporters – to come up with exclusives every day so she had a full list of four or five tales for the morning conference in which the executives planned what would appear in the following day’s paper.
That morning’s list had been on the light side.
‘It’s just what we need – someone pregnant with Kelner’s baby. Fucking amazing.’
That was the thing about working in a newsroom where scandal sold – even the women spoke like men who were trying to get their mates’ attention after a few pints.
Claire, dressed in a trouser suit and Gucci heels, sat down and pointed a finger in the air.
‘Hold on a minute. This is Shagger Sheri. Yes, she’s brilliant for stories. But she’d also do anything to feed her coke habit. My mate at Elysium says it’s worse than ever.’
‘Agreed.’ Max nodded. ‘It needs to be stood up before we can print it.’
Standing a story up was journalist speak for proving it. Often, you could have the best story in the world but could never run it without verifying it through a reliable source: standing it up.
Otherwise the star involved would sue. Sheri had no reputation to protect or anything to lose with a story like this. Kirk Kelner might have been delighted with Sheri’s sex-stud kiss-and-tell, but her allegation that he was the father of her unborn child would have to be verified. He would waste no time in suing or at least asking for a paternity test.
‘Exactly. Max, there’s only one thing for it.’
Max had a horrible feeling she knew what was coming.