‘I see the Rosie Harper case has been keeping you busy.’ Greg lifted his first piece of sashimi expertly up to his mouth, while Constance sipped her miso soup from a bamboo spoon. A rendez-vous in Itsu, close to her office, was all Constance would accept when Greg asked her to meet for lunch. This time he was wearing shorts and, although it was a hot day and she was the one who was clearly overdressed, Constance couldn’t decide if he looked good in them or not. It must be difficult when you got older, she thought, deciding how to dress. That conflict between desperately hanging onto your youth and ageing gracefully. Greg must be at least forty-five, she supposed. Would she still wear shorts at forty-five? And would he have worn shorts to meet Judith?
‘How do you know that?’ she said.
‘It was in the papers. There was a photo of you…going into Hackney police station.’
Greg offered her some fish, but she shook her head.
‘How’s the case going?’ he asked.
‘The case isn’t the problem. The media interest is a nightmare; newspapers and social media and maybe even TV now.’
‘It has all the ingredients.’
‘And the press seems to know stuff before we do. But we don’t want to complain that it’s prejudicial, because some of it might help Debbie in the long run, except we don’t know that yet and we don’t want to draw attention to the stuff which won’t. There’s a leak from somewhere though. Judith said she spoke to Charlie – Inspector Dawson – about it and he said he would make sure it hadn’t come from his team.’
‘I’m sure that’s what he said. I know Judith rated his father, not sure what she thinks of the son. You mentioned TV?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to interfere, but I know the man who’s funding the new TV channel, “Court TV”. He also backed my Trixter app.’
‘Oh!’
‘You know they’re not just doing a live screening, don’t you?’
‘What else are they planning?’
‘All sorts of things. He was full of it, when I saw him yesterday. The hearing will be live during the day and, in the evenings, there’ll be a two- or three-hour session, with experts coming in to talk about the case. And, in between, lots of advertisements; that’s mainly how they make their money, but he said it’s going to be “interactive” with the public. He didn’t elaborate, but I can guess what that means.’
This information was not music to Constance’s ears. It suggested lots of discussion of the case, with the obvious possibility of people having opinions on what they had seen, which was always dangerous to allow while the case was in progress.
‘Judith thinks we should ignore it and carry on,’ she said, which was not an entirely truthful precis of Judith’s position.
Greg finished his mouthful and laid his chopsticks down on his tray. ‘They’re predicting at least one million viewers for the opening,’ he said. ‘And a big campaign is starting tomorrow, posters on the underground, ads on local radio and in all the major newspapers. I’m telling you, the man is slick, he knows what he’s doing and he’s putting together a huge research team. He doesn’t do anything by halves. He wants a noisy, booming, record-breaking debut. You can’t ignore it. Judith is wrong on this one.’
Constance pushed her lunch away. Now she wished she hadn’t chosen Itsu. Greg had squeezed himself in, wedged between the window and the low, round table, their knees were almost touching and she would have to push past him to leave. ‘Eat beautiful’ it said on her napkin. She liked the strapline. Judith would hate it, would point out that it wasn’t grammatically correct, would think, and might even say, that it was a shame no one had advised the Japanese owners of their mistake, before they daubed it liberally through their marketing material and wrote it above every outlet. Constance would think, but not say, that the ‘beautiful’ was deliberately addressed to the customer. That it was sublime marketing. ‘Eat this and you become beautiful.’ That’s what it said to her. She dabbed at her mouth.
‘You need to plan for this; the impact on you, Judith, Debbie Mallard, the witnesses and maybe even the jury of having all these people watching – and not just watching: analysing, commenting, criticising, sharing.’
‘They won’t be allowed to do all that; there are still rules.’ Constance clung to her previously held positive views of the scheme, despite Greg’s revelations.
‘This guy will sail close to the wind and worry about the repercussions later, I’m telling you. You need to be prepared.’
Constance eased the plastic lid onto her pot of soup, even though it was still half-full. Then she reached past Greg and dropped it into the bin. ‘What should we do?’ she said. ‘We have a preliminary hearing next week, but we weren’t planning to say much about the TV angle.’
Greg shrugged. ‘That’s your territory,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of advising you. But my experience, for what it’s worth, is that people behave differently when they think the whole world is watching them…and judging them. And I don’t just mean the little people.’
Greg finished his food and he smiled at Constance.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping you from great piles of work.’
‘That’s OK. I probably haven’t been very good company. It was nice to get out though.’
‘Should I walk with you, back to the office? It’s the same direction as the Tube.’
‘No. I need a few things from the shops,’ Constance said. ‘Thanks for lunch. I’ll call you.’
Constance waited until Greg had left, before heading straight back to her office. She needed to think up how to drop into her next conversation with Judith, all the things Greg had just told her about the new TV channel. But without conceding that Judith might have been right after all and without giving away their source. She sensed this wasn’t a good time to reveal a lunch date with Greg, however informal.