Page 102 of Cover Story

‘Morning, Becky Something. You look like shit. Did you not get much sleep?’

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‘It’s Bel,’ Bel said. She couldn’t see what Amber needed to add to yesterday’s diatribe but perhaps there were a further raft of inventive punishments. She agreed with Connor, she couldn’t blame Amber. The only point of reference Bel had for how it must feel was when a mean girl infiltrator at school had pretended to warm up to Bel, purely to get an invite to her house and gather fresh material for the core gang.

Had this comparison occurred to Bel earlier, she might’ve never done it at all.

‘If you say so. Can I come in?’ Amber said.

Bel stood aside. She couldn’t judge her mood, not after having had a demonstration of Amber’s world-class poker face yesterday.

‘Oh hi, Connor. We meet again.’

‘Hi,’ he said, pushing his hands into his jean pockets.

‘I’m not here to make friends,’ Amber said, arms folded. ‘What you did was unforgivable. We can miss the part where you boot lick, I’m sure the only thing you’re sorry about is you didn’t find what you were looking for.’

She took a breath and Bel tried not to let her hopes go wild, because while Amber wasn’t here to make friends, she’d surely not be here at all if there wasn’t a deal to be made.

‘I want to know more about Glenn. The nudes and the blackmail and so on. Do you know that’s true?’

Bel described her meeting at the cemetery and all that followed. She took a gamble that only all cards on the table would do– vagueing out wasn’t going to work. Most likely one of Glenn’s female guests had seen that iPad, so Amber already had enough to trace this back to Erin, and subsequently Ian, anyway.

‘He did what? She wasasleep?’ Connor interjected.

Bel was pleased he’d given her an opportunity in front of Amber to demonstrate she was the lead. If Bel couldn’t extricate herself here, she might still secure a pardon for him.

‘I didn’t tell you about that, did I? I only found out when I met her in Sale. Yeah, it was worse than screenshotting one-time view photos. She felt totally violated. As you would.’

She turned back to Amber: ‘I don’t know that it’s happened that way more than once. I do believe Erin completely, and I also know men like Glenn will have many, many more skeletons. My contact works for him and said there were organisations that had stopped projects with the Mayor’s office for reasons unknown. But it’s buried deep. As I said, there will be a tipping point, it’s a case of when. And who.’

‘Hmmm …’ Amber said, newly cropped hair falling over her ear as she shuffled her feet. ‘You want your name up in lights, right?’

Bel shrugged.

‘To be honest with you, given the doorstep footage has been deleted, we’re a long way off catching him. The story is not going to be broken by us. It’ll probably take one of the women going public and risking being turned into a pinata.’

Amber paused.

‘Is this girl a redhead? Very young looking?’

‘Yes and yes,’ Bel said.

‘My bar has got nothing to do with this. Ci Vediamo is totally financially, legally separate from that house. The only connection is that I managed the bookings. I’ve taken the Airbnb listing down …’

Bel held her breath a second time.

‘If I help you, I need you to promise me that my name and my business would stay out of it?’ Amber said. Her face was stony and tone assured, but for the first time, Bel sensed her nerves.

‘We could promise that. Definitely,’ Bel said, looking to Connor. ‘Your bar isn’t relevant to what the Mayor’s doing and nor are you. Your mum’s name would come up, though.’

She held her breath.

‘Well, that’s on her. I’m gonna speak to my mum– she can know what I’ve done. I’m not being a property pimp with her sex-case friend, but that doesn’t mean I want my name in the papers.’

‘Understood and we could keep your name out as a condition of the story. You’d be a protected, anonymous source.’

Amber sighed and moved her weight from foot to foot.

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