One Hundred Names

‘What did you say?’

Constance seemed momentarily confused. She cleared her throat and gathered herself. ‘You look far away.’

‘I was thinking.’

‘I shall alert the authorities at once.’

‘I have a question I’ve always wanted to ask you.’ Kitty moved to the chair beside Constance’s bed.

‘Oh, yes? Why didn’t Bob and I have children?’ She sat up in the bed and reached for her water. She sucked the tiniest amount from a straw.

‘No, know-it-all. You’ve killed every plant you’ve ever owned, I can’t imagine what you’d have been like with a child. No, I wanted to ask you, is there any story you wish you’d written but for whatever reason never wrote?’

Constance lit up at the question. ‘Oh, that is a good question. A story in itself perhaps.’ She raised her eyebrows at Kitty. ‘A piece where you interview retired writers about the story that got away, ha? What do you think? I should talk to Pete about that. Or perhaps we should contact retired writers and ask them to write the story that they never wrote, especially for the magazine. People like Oisín O’Ceallaigh and Olivia Wallace. Give them their opportunity to tell it. It could be a special edition.’

Kitty laughed. ‘Do you ever stop?’

There was a light knock on the door and Constance’s husband, Bob, entered. He looked tired but as soon as he laid eyes on Constance, he softened.

‘Hello, darling. Ah, hello, Kitty. Nice of you to join us.’

‘Traffic,’ Kitty said, awkwardly.

‘I know the feeling,’ he smiled, coming around and kissing her on the head. ‘It often slows me down too, but better late than never, eh?’ He looked at Constance, her face all twisted up in concentration. ‘Are you trying to poo, my love?’

Kitty laughed.

‘Kitty asked me what story have I always wanted to write but never have.’

‘Ah. You’re not supposed to make her think, the doctors said so,’ he joked. ‘But that’s a good question. Let me guess. Is it that time during the oil spillage when you had the exclusive interview with the penguin who saw everything?’

‘I did not have an exclusive with the penguin,’ Constance laughed, then winced with pain.

Kitty became nervous but Bob, used to it, continued.

‘Oh, it was the whale then. The whale who saw everything. Told everyone who so much as inched near him about what he saw.’

‘It was the captain of the ship,’ she threw at Bob, but lovingly.

‘Why didn’t you interview him?’ Kitty asked, arrested by their love for one another.

‘My flight got delayed,’ she said, fixing her bedcovers.

‘She couldn’t find her passport,’ Bob outed her. ‘You know what the flat is like, the Dead Sea Scrolls could be in there, for all we know. The passports have since found their home in the toaster, lest we forget again. Anyway, so she missed her flight and instead of Constance’s great exclusive, the captain spoke to someone else who we shall not name.’ He turned to Kitty and whispered, ‘Dan Cummings.’

‘Oh, you’ve done it, you’ve killed me now,’ Constance said dramatically, pretending to die.

Kitty covered her face in her hands, feeling it wrong to laugh.

‘Ah, finally we are rid of her,’ Bob teased gently. ‘So what is the answer, my love? I’m intrigued.’

‘Do you really not know this?’ Kitty asked Bob. He shook his head and they watched Constance thinking, which really was an amusing sight.

‘Ah,’ she said suddenly, eyes lighting up, ‘I’ve got it. It’s rather a recent idea, actually, something I thought of last year before … well, it was somewhat of an experiment but it has occupied my mind since I’ve been here.’

Kitty moved in closer to listen.

Constance enjoyed making Bob and Kitty wait.

‘Possibly one of my greatest.’

Kitty groaned impatiently.

‘I’ll tell you what, the file is at home. In my office. Teresa will let you in if she’s not too busy watching Jeremy Kyle. It’s filed under N. Titled “Names”. You get it for me and bring it back and I’ll tell you about it.’

‘No!’ Kitty laughed. ‘You know how impatient I am. Please don’t make me wait.’

‘If I tell you now, you might never come back.’

‘I promise I will.’

Constance smiled. ‘Okay, you get the file, and I’ll tell you the story.’

‘It’s a deal.’

They shook on it.

Chapter Two

Choosing the quieter back roads, and feeling like a rat scuttling along in the gutter, Kitty cycled home feeling exhausted. Initially on a high after spending time with a friend, she was back to feeling hopeless again now the reality of what lay ahead for both of them had sunk in.

Thirty Minutes, the television show Kitty had started working on the previous year, the show with which she had received her big break and which had then ironically broken her, had viewing figures of half a million, which was impressive for a country with a population of five million, but not enough for Kitty to become the next Katie Couric. Now, thanks to her disastrous story, she found herself suspended from reporting on the network and in court to face a charge of libel. The story had aired four months previously, in January, but it was the impending court case, merely a day away now, that had made headlines. Her face, her mistake, and her name were now known to many more than half a million people.

She knew she would be quickly forgotten in the minds of the public, but that her professional name would suffer in the long run; it had already been destroyed. She knew she was lucky that Etcetera, the magazine Constance had founded and edited, was continuing to employ her, though the only reason she had a job was because Constance was her biggest supporter. She didn’t have many of those right now, and though Bob was deputy editor and a good friend she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d keep her job without Constance there to throw her weight around. Kitty dreaded the day that her mentor wouldn’t be in her life, never mind her professional life. Constance had been there for her since the beginning, had guided her, had advised her and had also given her the freedom to find her own voice and make her own decisions, which meant that Kitty owned her successes, but also meant her name was stamped all over every single one of her mistakes, a fact that was glaringly evident now.

Her phone vibrated again in her pocket and she ignored it as she had been doing all week. Journalists had been calling her since news of the case going to trial had broken, people she had considered friends were close to harassing her just to get a quote. They’d all chosen different tactics. Some came straight out with asking for a quote, others had gone for the sympathy vote: ‘You know how it is, Kitty, the stress we’re under here. The boss knows we’re friends, he expects me to have something.’ Others had randomly and spontaneously invited her out for dinner, for drinks, to their parents’ anniversary parties and their grandfathers’ eighty-fifth birthdays without mentioning the issue at all. She hadn’t met or spoken with any of them but she was learning a lot and slowly crossing them off her Christmas card list. There was only one person who hadn’t called her yet and that was her friend Steve. They had studied journalism together in college and had remained friends since then. His one desire had been to cover sport but the closest he’d got to that so far was covering footballers’ private lives in tabloid newspapers. It had been he who had suggested she go for the job at Etcetera. He’d picked up a copy of the magazine in a doctor’s waiting room while she’d gone for the morning-after pill after their one and only dalliance, which had resulted in the realisation they were destined only ever to be simply friends.

Thinking about Steve and her constantly ringing mobile gave her a sixth sense and she stopped cycling and reached for her phone. It was him. She actually debated not answering. She actually doubted him. The consequences of the Thirty Minutes story had played havoc with whom she could and could not trust. She answered the phone.

‘No comment,’ she snapped.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, no comment. You can tell your boss that you haven’t spoken to me, that we fell out, in fact we may be about to because I can’t believe you have the nerve to call me up and abuse our friendship in this way.’

‘Are you smoking crack?’

‘What? No. Hold on, is this part of the story? Because if they’re now saying I’m a drug addict then they can—’

‘Kitty, shut up. I’ll tell my boss that you, Kitty Logan, who he’s never heard of anyway, has no comment to make on Victoria Beckham’s new line because that is about the only thing that I am allowed to talk about to anybody today. Not the impending match between Carlow and Monaghan, which is critical because Carlow hasn’t been in an All-Ireland final since 1936 and Monaghan hasn’t been in a final since 1930, but nobody cares about that. Not in my office. No. All we care about is whether V.B.’s new range is a hit or miss, or hot or not, or two other words that mean the opposite but which rhyme, something I’m currently supposed to be inventing but I can’t.’ He finished his rant and Kitty couldn’t help it, she started laughing, the first proper laugh she’d had all week.

‘Well, I’m glad one of us thinks it’s funny.’

‘I thought you were allowed to write football stories now.’

‘She’s married to David Beckham, so apparently that qualifies it as a football story. Apart from needing help with the ridiculous piece I have to write, I was calling to make sure you weren’t decaying inside your flat.’

‘Well, you were right. I was rotting away in the flat but I had to leave to visit Constance. I’m going back there now to continue where I left off.’

‘Good, I’ll see you soon. I’m outside your door. Oh, and, Kitty,’ his tone turned serious, ‘I suggest you bring some bleach and a good scrubbing brush.’

Kitty’s stomach churned.

‘Journo Scumbag Bitch’ was what Kitty found spray-painted across her door when she eventually made it to the top of the stairs with her bicycle in her arms. The studio flat was in Fairview, Dublin and the proximity to the city meant that she could cycle, sometimes walk, into the city. The fact that it was above a dry-cleaners made it affordable.

‘Maybe you should move,’ Steve said as they got down on their knees and started scrubbing the door.

‘No way. I can’t afford anywhere else. Unless you know of any available apartments above dry-cleaners.’

‘That’s a requirement for you?’

‘When I open any of my windows day or night, I am showered in dry-cleaning chemicals called tetrachloroethene, also known as tetrachloroethylene, perchloroethylene, PCE or, most commonly, PERC. Ever heard of it?’

Steve shook his head and sprayed more bleach on the door.

‘It’s used to dry-clean clothes as well as degrease metal parts. It’s considered a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Tests showed that short-term exposure of eight hours or less to seven hundred thousand micrograms per cubic metre of air causes central nervous system symptoms such as dizziness, sleepiness, headaches, lightheadedness and poor balance. The red is difficult to get off, isn’t it?’

‘You do the green, I’ll do the red.’

They switched places.

‘Exposure to three hundred and fifty thousand micrograms for four hours affects the nerves of the visual system.’ Kitty dipped her sponge into her bucket of water and continued scrubbing the door. ‘Long-term exposure on dry-cleaner workers indicates biochemical changes in blood and urine. PERC can travel through floor, ceiling and wall materials, and there was a study on fourteen healthy adults living in apartments near dry-cleaners that showed their behaviour tests were lower than the average score of unexposed people.’

‘So that’s what’s wrong with you. I take it from that verbal diarrhoea that you did a story about PERC.’

‘Not quite. I researched it, then I told the landlord downstairs that I was doing a story on it and that I’d circulate it to all the neighbours and I’d tell their staff about the effects of working with PERC, so he reduced the rent by one hundred euro.’

Steve looked at her, shocked. ‘They could just have got another tenant.’

‘I told them I’d tell the next tenant and every other tenant they found. They panicked.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re …’

‘Smart?’ she smiled.

‘A journo scumbag bitch,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should stop cleaning this now, they’re right.’ He continued looking at her as if he suddenly didn’t recognise her.

‘Hey! They’re the ones using PERC!’

‘Then move somewhere else.’

‘It would be too expensive.’

‘Kitty, you can’t just threaten people like that. You can’t use your job to get what you want. That’s called bullying, you know.’

‘Oooh.’ She rolled her eyes, but dropped the sponge into the bucket in frustration and opened the door to the flat. She left the door open, sat at the kitchen table and waited for him to follow her. She bit into one of the cupcakes she’d brought back home. Steve closed the door behind him but he didn’t sit down.

‘Is there something you want to get off your chest, Steve?’

‘I came by to make sure that you were feeling okay about the trial tomorrow, but the more you talk, the more I can’t help but not feel sorry for you.’

The cupcake felt like a rock in her mouth. She swallowed it quickly. And then, finally, it came.

‘You accused a well-respected PE teacher, who is married, with a young family, of sexually abusing two students and fathering a child. On television. In front of the entire country. And you were wrong.’

She looked at him, her eyes stinging. Her heart hurt from the way he was speaking to her, and though she knew she had been wrong, she had made a mistake, she still didn’t feel that she deserved to be spoken to like that.

‘I know all of this, I know what I did,’ she said more confidently than she felt.

‘And are you sorry?’

‘Of course I’m bloody sorry,’ she exploded. ‘My career is destroyed. Absolutely nobody will ever hire me again. I’ve cost the network who knows what, if he wins his case, which he probably will, and God knows how much in legal fees, and their reputation. I’m over.’ Feeling unnerved, Kitty watched her usually calm friend struggle with his composure.

‘You see, this is what bugs me, Kitty.’

‘What?’

‘Your tone, you’re so … flippant about it all.’

‘Flippant? I’m panicking here, Steve!’

‘Panicking for yourself. For “Katherine Logan, TV journalist”,’ he said, using his fingers as inverted commas.

‘Not just that,’ she swallowed. ‘I’m really worried about my job on Etcetera too. There’s a lot at stake, Steve.’

He laughed to himself but it wasn’t a happy sound. ‘That’s exactly what I mean, you’ve just done it again. All I’ve heard from you is how your name, your reputation and your profession are ruined. It’s all about you. When I hear of you doing stupid things like threatening your landlord with a story, then it bothers me. You bother me.’ He stopped pacing back and forth and fixed his eyes on her. ‘You have for the past year.’

‘The past year? Oh, okay, I think somebody has definitely been hanging on to a few issues,’ she replied, shocked. ‘I made a mistake in my story. The thing about the apartment? That was harmless! Hold on, I remember you pretending to find a pubic hair in your burger on the very last bite just so you could get another one for free. And you did too. That poor manager, you embarrassed him so much in front of the other customers, he had no choice.’

‘I was eighteen,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re thirty-two.’

‘Thirty-three. You missed my last birthday,’ she added childishly. ‘It’s the way I am; I find stories in everything.’

‘Stories to use people.’

‘Steve!’

‘They used to be good stories, Kitty. Positive. A story for the sake of telling a good story. Not about exposing people, or setting people up.’

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t aware that your story about Victoria Beckham’s new line was going to change the world,’ she said cattily.

‘What I’m saying is, I used to like reading them, hearing about them. Now you’re just …’

‘Now I’m what?’ Her eyes filled.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘No, please, please tell me what I am because I’ve only been hearing it on every single news station, reading it on internet sites and graffitied on my own front door for the last week, and I’d really like to know what my best friend thinks of me because that would just be the icing on the cake,’ she yelled.

He sighed and looked away.

There was a long silence.

‘How am I supposed to fix this, Steve?’ she finally asked. ‘What do I do to make you and the rest of the world not hate me?’

‘Have you spoken to the guy?’

‘Colin Maguire? No way. We’re about to begin a court case. If I go anywhere near him I’ll get into even more trouble. We made an apology to him at the start of Thirty Minutes, when it was discovered he wasn’t the father. We gave it priority to the show.’

‘Do you think that will make him feel better?’

She shrugged.

‘Kitty, if you did to me what you did to him, I would do a lot worse than they’ve done to your door. I would want to kill you,’ he said sternly.

Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Steve, don’t scare me like that.’

‘This is what you’re not understanding, Kitty. This is not about your career. Or your good name. This is not about you. This is about him.’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, struggling. ‘Maybe if I can explain what happened … The two women were so credible, Steve. Their stories matched up, the dates, the times, everything was so … real. Believe me, I followed it up over and over. I didn’t just run with it straight off. It took me six months. The producer was behind me, the editor, I wasn’t the only person who did this. And it wasn’t just about him. Did you even see it? It was about the number of paedophiles and sex offenders in Ireland who occupy roles in schools and other jobs with direct contact to children who have been reported and who have been charged with the crime of abusing students in their care.’

‘Apart from him. He was completely innocent.’

‘Okay! Apart from him,’ she said, frustrated. ‘All the other stuff I covered was perfectly accurate! Nobody ever says anything about that!’

‘Because that’s your job, to be accurate. You shouldn’t be congratulated for it.’

‘Any other journalist in that room would have done the same thing, but the letter came to me.’

‘It went to you for a reason. Those women set you up and they used you to set him up. You were covering bullshit stories so they knew you’d want to jump on this straight away, have your moment of glory.’

‘It wasn’t about me having my moment of glory.’

‘Wasn’t it? All I know is I’ve never seen you as excited as the day you got the job on the show. And you were doing a story about tea, Kitty. If Constance asked you to do a story about tea, you’d tell her to go and jump. Television made you excited.’

She tried to pretend it wasn’t true but she couldn’t. He was right. Thirty Minutes was made up of one large investigative story – the big one, the story everybody wanted to work on – and the remainder of the show was padded with smaller, local, not so ground-breaking pieces. Her first story had been to look into why consumers chose the brand of tea they bought. Numerous trips to tea factories, sweeping shots of supermarket tea aisles, and visits to morning community tea events led her to find that people simply followed the same brand their parents drank. It was a generational thing. It had been four minutes and fifty seconds long and Kitty believed she had a cutting-edge piece of art on her hands. Four months along in the job, when she received the letter, addressed to her, from the two women making claims against Colin Maguire, she had instantly, vehemently believed them, and she had worked with them and helped build a case against him. She had got lost in the drama, the excitement, the atmosphere of the TV studio offices, her opportunity to move from sweet harmless stories to the big time, and in her search for the truth had told a lie, a dangerous lie, and had ruined a man’s life.

Steve was looking around the flat.

‘What now?’ she asked, completely drained.

‘Where’s Glen?’

‘At work.’

‘Does he usually take his coffee machine to work?’

She turned round to look at the counter, confused, but her phone interrupted them.

‘My mum. Shit.’

‘Have you spoken to them lately?’

Kitty swallowed and shook her head.

‘Answer it,’ he said, refusing to leave until she had answered.

‘Hello?’ She exaggerated the word for effect and then Steve was gone.

‘Katherine, is that you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Katherine …’ Her mother broke down in tears. ‘Katherine, you’ve no idea …’ She could barely get the words out.

‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ Kitty sat up, panicked. ‘Is it Dad? Is everyone okay?’

‘Oh, Katherine,’ Mrs Logan sobbed. ‘I can’t take it any more. We are just so embarrassed down here. How could you do it? How could you do that to that poor man?’

Kitty sat back and prepared for the onslaught. It was then she noticed Glen’s plasma TV had disappeared too and, on further inspection, so had the clothes in his wardrobe.

Chapter Three

A week later, after what felt like the longest seven days of her life, Kitty awoke in a sweat from a nightmare. She lay with the bedcovers in a tangled mess around her, and her heart beating wildly. She was afraid to look around the room, but as the nightmare faded from her memory she gained courage and sat up. She couldn’t breathe. She pushed open her bedroom window and drank in deep breaths of air, but the steam pouring from the vents of the twenty-four-hour dry-cleaners was inhaled directly into her lungs. She coughed, slammed the window shut and made her way to the fridge where she stood naked before the open door in an effort to cool down. She was not ready for tomorrow. She was nowhere near equipped for tomorrow at all.

‘Colin Maguire suffered irreparable damage to his reputation, his life was utterly altered and he was removed from his home and community as a result of the January tenth episode of Thirty Minutes. Katherine Logan confronted Mr Maguire outside his place of work and accused him of sexually abusing two teenage girls and fathering one child. Despite his repeated denials and an offer to take a paternity test, the programme was broadcast. Katherine Logan, Donal Smith and Paul Montgomery’s careless actions and unprofessional behaviour had a devastating impact on Mr Maguire’s life.’

Kitty sat in court alongside Thirty Minutes producer, Paul, and editor, Donal, as they listened to the lengthy terms of the four hundred thousand euro settlement for compensatory damage and aggravated damage. It took exactly seventeen minutes to read. With each word, each accusation, Kitty hated herself a little more. Near her, Colin Maguire and his family – his wife, his parents, his brothers and sisters – and everyone in his community who had come out to support him were staring at her, their eyes searing into her back. She felt their hatred, she felt their anger, but more than anything she felt Colin’s hurt. He would barely lift his head, his eyes cast downward, his chin firmly lodged on his chest. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a year.

The Thirty Minutes team and their legal advisors left the courthouse, swiftly pushing through the mill of photographers and cameras, some from their own network, which were shoved in Kitty’s face as though she were one of the criminals she regularly saw leaving this very building on the news. The men walked so quickly she could barely keep up but she didn’t want to run. Her sanity depended on surviving that moment. She did not want to put a foot wrong now after making so many mistakes to get them there. She kept her head down and then, thinking it made her look guilty, she lifted it again. Chin up, take your punishment, and walk, she repeated to herself, trying to keep her tears at bay. The flash bulbs dizzied her and she was forced to look down at the pavement again. The act of walking suddenly felt unnatural, like a mechanical movement that took great effort. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, trying to swing her left arm with her right foot and not the other way around. She focused on not smiling, but didn’t want to look upset. She knew these photos would be around for ever, she knew this footage would be played over and over, then would sit in the archives for reporters to root through. She knew because she did it every day. She didn’t want to look cold, but she didn’t want people to think immediately that she was guilty. People didn’t always listen to the narrative, they just looked at the pictures. She wanted to look innocent but sorry. That was it, contrite. She tried to maintain her pride and dignity when inside she felt she had neither left, and all the while people were shouting at her. Mr Maguire’s supporters had quickly exited the courtroom and spilled onto the street to give interviews to the press, and to heckle the Thirty Minutes team. She could hear them behind her hurling abuse and insults, and the journalists who were looking for a comment were trying to raise their voices above the tirades. The cars going by on Inns Quay slowed to watch the commotion, to see who was being surrounded by the media, literally being pressed by the press. Squashed and squeezed, drained and demoralised, everything being taken out of her, Kitty reflected that this was what she had done to Colin Maguire, as the reporters bumped against her, trying to keep up with her pace. Kitty kept on walking, one foot in front of the other; it was all she could do. Chin up, don’t smile, don’t cry, don’t fall, walk.