Page 63 of Cover Story

Bel folded grease-coated tinfoil into the bin, stamping the pedal to open its lid.

‘You were doing me one– and, in general, I think colleagues should boost each other. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say.’

‘Right. Thank you,’ Connor said. ‘What would you have done if he’d said no?’

Bel gave a small smile. ‘I know you’re conscientious and methodical, and I can learn from that. In turn can I introduce you to the “calculated risk”? Also, I thought it was probably better not to confess to a fuck-up, straight out of the traps.’

Connor smiled back and sipped his coffee, thinking that the risk of Toby saying no to Bel Macauley was lower than that of a mere mortal.

It in no way diminished the impressive gracefulness of what he’d just learned. It wasn’t only that Bel had been so helpful to him. She’d done it without letting him know, so not making him feel indebted or collecting the brownie points.

He finally accepted that he had underestimated Bel Macauley.

‘Wait. You knew you’d done me this good turn when I was insulting you about how you were going to make me look stupid for the phone screen mistake at Amber’s party?’

‘Oh? Yes.’

‘I was a huffy manchild,’ Connor said. ‘While you were too dignified to put me in my place. Sobering.’

‘Now you know how I feel when Amber’s gushing about how you’re …’ Bel did air quotes, though her hands were now in oven mitts: ‘the most good-looking man she’s ever seen.’

‘Did she say that?!’

Bel paused the exact amount of time to elicit the biggest possible laugh: ‘No.’

36

Bel had hung two pictures on the wall of the office on Monday morning, clambering on a chair to reach the cobwebbed hooks and canvassing a nonplussed Aaron and Connor’s opinions on whether they were straight.

With these homely touches she was, as Aaron readily told her, lipsticking a pig. On the other hand, given they had to spend many hours of their lives in here, Bel insisted that refusing to improve it was self-defeating.

‘I’ll ask Toby if there’s budget for a jungley floor plant, too,’ Bel said.

‘Aye, you do that, petal,’ Aaron said. ‘But when I said I needed a woman’s touch, I didn’t mean this.’

‘Ta dah!’ Bel said, standing back, once the decoration was deemed spirit level.

One was a modern print with MANCHESTER lettered along the top, in the style of 1920s travel posters. It depicted an imposing Art Deco limestone building on King Street which used to be an HSBC. Its windows were lit and walls shadowed to look like New York at dusk.

‘Only Murders In The Building,’ Aaron said. ‘In Manchester, murders outside the building too.’

‘It does look very “Manc-Hattan”,’ Bel agreed.

‘That’s that ponce hotel now, isn’t it?’ Aaron said. ‘Hotel Gotham. Prices to give you the meat sweats.’

Bel and Connor exchanged a momentary sidelong look: he and his brother were there this weekend. They wordlessly agreed it served no purpose to tell Aaron this.

The second artwork was a moody, misty wash of rainy grey-blue, dappled with yellow-white lights, a view of barges on Manchester ship canal in 1912. Romanticised toil and pollution.

‘It’s by a French Impressionist called Pierre Adolphe Valette, he painted a lot of urban, post-industrial Manchester,’ Bel said, to an aghast Aaron.

‘It’s a bit fookin’ gloomy isn’t it?’ Aaron said. ‘We could’ve had a Stanley Chow of Oasis, instead we’ve got miserable girl paintings.’

‘A miserable girl chose ’em, what’s gonna happen?’ said a completely unoffended Bel.

Bel was gradually learning that Aaron, like many reporters of keen instinct who thrived on big breaking news, was a crisis addict. Quiet days saw him pacing his cage, metaphorically.Starting some shitwith the other bodies present was Aaron trying to give his brain the dopamine of danger.

‘You “didn’t do much”, at the weekend and nor did Connor, The Refrigerated Intern,’ Aaron said, when he and Bel were alone for an hour, that afternoon.

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