No More Lonely Nights

She hadn't known that her imagination was so powerful or so vivid; she wished she could forget the dreams, but they hung around her mind like smoke, the fumes sweet and suffocating.

The one positive side of it all was that she could go into the paper next morning and tell Leo that Cass had gone away and she would not be seeing him that week. Leo was suspicious at first. 'Oh, yeah? Where has he gone?'

'Glasgow,' she triumphantly informed him, and the grey reality of the destination convinced him.

'Glasgow?'

'Glasgow,' she repeated, watching his face fall.

Leo looked over the other papers, drumming his fingers on the desk. 'They all have columns on you and Cassidy! What did you two do last night?'

'I don't know what he did,' Sian said coldly. 'I went home, watched TV and went to bed.' She paused, meeting Leo's eyes. 'Alone,' she added in an icy voice.

'That's not what it says in the Echo.'

'They're lying rats.'

'That's a fact,' Leo said, laughing. 'Oh, well, you'll be seeing him this weekend, won't you?'

'Possibly.'

Leo glared. 'You told me…'

'Oh, yes, I will see him,' Sian said on a sigh of irritation.

'And you won't tell a soul?'

'Not a soul.'

'And you'll write the piece yourself?'

'Yes.'

He let her go, then, and Sian beat a retreat with a face like thunder, for the first time in her life wondering if she had picked the right career. This wasn't what she had gone into journalism to do— she hated gossip columns and trivia, she hated chitchat and back-biting and bedroom whispers. She wanted to write about the real world out there; she liked travelling, meeting new people all the time, uncovering corruption in local councils, hearing stories of courage and kindness, human grit and self-sacrifice. That was the ordinary world she had been dealing with—William Cassidy and his affairs were the tinsel of newspapers. Why else had he employed a whole team of publicists to get his company and himself into the media? Leo was right when he said that Cass deserved what was happening; he had invited the press into his life, he couldn't turn round now and kick them out.

She had only just sat down at her desk when she got a phone call. 'A person-to-person call for you,' the operator on the newspaper switchboard said in her flat, bored voice. 'Will you take it?'

Sian's heart beat fast and hard. Dry-mouthed, she asked, 'Who's calling?'

'A Mrs Jennifer Bush from a Poole exchange.'

Sian's traitorous heart slowed again. 'Oh,' she said, then, 'Yes, put her through, will you?'

Jenny sounded breathless. 'Hello, Sian.'

'Hi, Jen—how are you? Anything wrong?'

'My neighbour just showed me yesterday's paper,' Jenny said, and Sian pulled a face.

'Oh.'

'Sian, what's going on?'

'Nothing, Jen—don't get excited. Its all nonsense, honestly.'

'But you never even mentioned him!'

'Look, take no notice of anything you read in the papers. I barely know the man—they're making it all up.'