The Yacht Party (Lara Stone)

‘Officially,’ she smiled. ‘But you know I can’t stay away from you, Darius. What’s a girl to do?’

There was laughter and Rob from the news desk gave her a wink. Alex could tell everyone felt the same way: The Chronicle was a better place with Lara Stone.

‘Lara put everything together on the Meyer story,’ said Alex, meeting Lara’s eye. ‘She chased every lead down, despite no one believing her, including me.’

He saw a tell-tale flush of her cheeks. Despite her talent, Lara was genuinely a team player.

‘I was just following Sandrine’s tracks. This is her story. Stella helped too.’

Darius waved an impatient hand. ‘Christ, put whatever by-line you like on it. Are you going to write this bloody story or not? Because by my calculations you have less than eight hours and we obviously need half of that to run it past legal.’

This part was key: men like Michael Sachs didn’t roll over easily and his lawyers would be bullish, murder charge or no murder charge and Alex felt a jab of anxiety. Until the papers were physically in newsagents, no story was a given. He’d seen it happen plenty of times: stories quashed at the final moment by injunctions on a whole host of legal grounds. But this one had to happen. This one was personal: Sachs had murdered Sandrine and threatened Lara, there was no way he would let him get away with that.

As he walked back to his office he saw Charlie hovering by his door.

‘Can we have a word?’

Alex blew out his cheeks.

‘Sure.’

It had to happen at some time, he couldn’t avoid Charlie forever. Alex had spent days debating how to play it; he knew full well that the situation made Alex’s position vulnerable, but he wasn’t prepared to make any concessions. If they were going to fire him, he was going down swinging.

Alex gestured to a chair, but Charlie didn’t sit, as if he was nervous, ready to make a quick getaway. Shrugging, Alex perched on the edge of his desk.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ said Charlie without preamble. ‘About Alicia. I never meant it to happen this way. I’ll be honest with you Alex, it was a flirtation that got out of hand. And then…’

He winced. Clearly talking about this stuff – feelings, relationships – was difficult for Charlie.

‘And then?’ prompted Alex.

‘…And then it turned out we liked one another.’

Alex was taken aback by his honesty. He hadn’t suspected that Charlie Avery, confirmed playboy, was capable of such things. Alex let out a long breath.

‘The heart wants what it wants, Charlie, I get that. I just wish there hadn’t been the overlap.’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry. It took me by surprise. We were wrong, both of us, Alicia and I.’

Charlie sounded genuinely contrite and Alex was even more surprised to find that he wasn’t terribly upset. When Alex thought of Alicia, there was annoyance and irritation of course, but beyond that there was a blank. No feelings of sadness or loss. And certainly no sense that he had lost the love of his life. He felt… free.

Impulsively, Alex put out his hand. Charlie looked at it, unsure how to react.

‘No hard feelings,’ prompted Alex and Charlie shook it gratefully.

‘That’s good – great in fact,’ he nodded. ‘Because I meant what I said in Monaco. You are the editorial future of this company.’

Alex shrugged. He wasn’t into games or office power-plays, but he realised that Charlie had just handed him a bargaining chip. In fact, that was the reason he had invited Charlie along to the presentation.

‘It’s not just me that’s the future, Charlie,’ he said folding his arms across his chest. ‘I think it’s time to reinstate the investigations team with Lara back as head of department.’

He felt Charlie’s resistance the moment he had said it.

‘Alex, I don’t know. My father feels qu

ite strongly about this. He’s not convinced that investigations represent value for money.’

‘And you know what? I agree with you,’ said Alex. ‘But here’s the thing – so does every other media company. Everyone’s closing their investigations departments across the board. Which gives us a huge opportunity.’