Hard Copy

by Emma Lee-Potter

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Anna Armitage is determined to reach the top as a news photo-journalist. She's got the talent. She's got the drive. All she needs is the luck... Sam Turner, former Daily-News high-flyer, is on the slide. Too expensive to fire, the new management are hoping late call-outs to cover lousy stories will force him to resign . So the Bella Fraser fiasco is the last thing either of them needs. The novice and the old hack screw up big time- and the supermodel splash goes to the Chronicle instead. But a great partnership has been born. Together, Anna and Sam just survive megalomaniac proprietors, ruthless news editors, a hawkish peer intent on introducing a privacy law- and Bella Fraser. Oh, and they might topple a Home Secretary or so along the way...

Release date: January 3, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

A huge grin crossed Anna Armitage’s face as she turned her key in the battered brass lock and pushed open the door of Darius’s
flat. She couldn’t wait to see his face when he saw the pictures she’d got today. They were the best she’d ever done. Beyond
any shadow of a doubt. And to cap it all, they were exclusive. Virtually every paper in Fleet Street would give their eye-teeth
for shots like these but no other photographer had got anywhere near. They were hers, all hers.


She walked into the tiny sitting room, eased the huge canvas bag off her aching shoulder and dropped it next to Darius’s leather
briefcase. Where was he? She’d called round at his office near Waterloo earlier on, only to be told by his exasperated deputy,
Will Price, that no one had seen him all day.


‘I just don’t know what’s come over him recently,’ Will had said wearily, running his fingers through his unruly dark hair.
He had huge black rings under his eyes and his clothes looked as if he had slept in them.


‘Our circulation figures have taken a nosedive and instead of getting his head down and trying to turn the magazine round
he keeps on going bloody walkabout. We’ll go bust if he doesn’t pull his finger out soon.’


Darius was the editor of Captivate, a London society magazine that had been launched in a blaze of publicity the year before. An eclectic mix of celebrity interviews
and hot gossip, the first couple of issues had sold a respectable eighty thousand copies each and the staff had all been convinced
they were on to a winner. But now sales had dwindled to a fraction of that figure and morale was at rock-bottom. The freelance
contributors were all grumbling about not getting paid on time and slowly, but surely, had begun to take their services elsewhere.


Anna had linked her arm through Will’s. This had been the second day running that she’d called at the office only to be told
that Darius wasn’t there.


‘If you hang on a sec, I’ll show you something that will put a smile back on your face,’ she had told Will.

‘Wow, that sounds like an offer I can’t possibly refuse,’ he’d laughed. ‘Go on, off you go. I think Stan’s still in his office.
He’ll help you out.’


He had watched Anna walk back down the dingy corridor. She was wearing her usual photographer’s garb of jeans and Barbour,
with an old baseball cap rammed down on her short blonde hair. When she had got to Stan Wiseman’s door she turned and smiled
at him, a megawatt smile that lit up her whole face. For the thousandth time he’d wondered what a bright shining star like
Anna was doing with an out and out shit like Darius Slater. What the hell did she see in him?


Anna loved watching Stan at work. As he concentrated on scanning her processed film into his computer, tapping the keyboard
with two fingers faster than anyone else she knew, he hummed happily to himself. With his tweed suits, nerdy glasses and severely
cropped hair, at first glance he looked a bit like an earnest young librarian. But when he opened his mouth and showed off
both the diamond stud in his front tooth and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the work of the controversial photographer Helmut
Newton, it was apparent that there was far more to Stan than met the eye. He was Captivate’s lowly picture researcher but Anna reckoned he knew more about what made a good photograph than the rest of the staff put
together.


‘So what do you reckon, Stan?’ asked Anna, as he pored over her pictures.

‘Best you’ve done yet, girl,’ replied Stan. ‘How the hell did you get them?’

‘Well,’ began Anna, ‘I’d love to be able to claim that it was down to sheer talent, to my amazing virtuosity with a camera.
But I can’t lie to you of all people, Stan. When it came to the crunch I’m afraid it was pure and utter luck.’


Stan giggled. He had always had a soft spot for Anna.

‘What happened, kid? I won’t tell the top brass.’

‘Promise?’ said Anna. ‘I don’t want Darius thinking it was a complete walkover.’

Stan nodded. He was mystified as to why Anna should give a toss what Darius thought but still…

‘I persuaded Will to let me do this fashion photocall in Richmond Park. God knows why Mimi Maguire chose to launch her spring
collection there. The models were up to their knees in mud, shivering to death in these floaty creations. Mimi kept losing
her temper with everybody because they all looked so bedraggled. You must have heard what she’s like – terribly highly-strung
and emotional. She and her husband have apparently just broken up because he couldn’t cope with her moods.’


‘So how did you get this sensational set of pictures?’ said Stan.

‘I was just coming to that,’ said Anna. ‘Not only did the models look dire but today’s been such a slow news day. There’s
nothing happening apart from the rain so all the national newspaper boys were there too. As soon as I saw photographers like
Caspar Shaw turn up I knew my pictures wouldn’t stand a chance of being used in the magazine, no matter how good they were.
If the morning papers are full of them tomorrow there’s no way Captivate will use them in a few weeks’ time. That’s the trouble with working for a monthly magazine. Everything has to be exclusive.’


Stan gave a theatrical yawn and stretched his arms lazily over his head.

‘You wouldn’t make a reporter, you know, Anna,’ he said. ‘You’ve been talking for ten minutes and we still haven’t got to
the point of the story.’


Anna laughed and landed a playful punch on Stan’s nose.

‘And you’re so impatient you wouldn’t make a photographer. Anyway, I was so pissed off with the pointlessness of the whole
exercise that I wandered off on my own. And that’s when I got these.’


She gazed proudly at her work. Sharply critical of anything that didn’t come up to scratch, even she had to admit these eight
shots were good. The first showed Mimi Maguire sitting on a log with her head in her hands. In the second she was crying and
in the third she had buried her face in her lap. In the fourth and fifth a stunning young woman had appeared beside her and
seemed to be smoothing Mimi’s hair back from her face. The sixth and seventh had captured them in each other’s arms and in the eighth and final shot of all the women’s lips were locked together
in a passionate embrace.


‘Who is she?’ whispered Stan, overawed by the sheer emotion in the pictures.

‘Briony Phillips,’ said Anna matter-of-factly. ‘One of the young up-and-coming models on the circuit. You don’t think they’re
too, too…’


‘Too what?’

‘Oh I don’t know. Too intrusive. Too private. They’re not taken on private property or anything like that – Will would have
a fit if they were – but I still don’t know whether I should have taken them or not. What do you think?’


‘I think they’re absolutely bloody marvellous, kid,’ said Stan, putting his arm round Anna’s shoulders. ‘They’ll do your career
the power of good, mark my words.’


Anna glanced up at the portrait of Darius that hung over the fireplace. A friend from art school had painted it a few years
back but Anna didn’t think it captured him at all. It somehow made him look supercilious and arrogant and full of himself.
If he’d only sit for her, she could do a far better job with her camera.


The murmur of a man’s voice suddenly interrupted her train of thought and Anna rushed into the hall. Darius must be back,
she thought, must have brought someone with him. She felt a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of being found in his flat on
her own. He’d given her a key ages ago but she hadn’t used it before. It seemed a bit of a cheek, somehow.


‘It’s only me, Darius,’ she called.

Puzzled by the empty hallway and the lack of response, she pushed open the bedroom door. Perhaps he was talking in his sleep.

For a split-second Anna thought she must be watching a movie. Darius was there all right. Darius was lying naked on his king-sized
bed, his arms outstretched, his eyes tightly closed. Astride him sat a delicately-built woman with a short blonde bob and
a golden back. They moved together in perfect unison.


‘How could you do this to…’ Anna moaned in pain.

Clearly startled by the sound of her voice, the woman swung round to face her.

Anna’s words stuck in her throat. With her photographer’s eye, she tried to make sense of the scene in front of her, but it
was impossible. She just couldn’t. The only thing she knew with complete certainty was that the look of shock on the woman’s
face would remain frozen in her mind forever, like a still from an old film.


The woman was at least fifteen years older than Darius yet with her slim figure and smooth skin she looked more like a vulnerable
slip of a girl.


A tear slid silently down Anna’s cheek and on to the floor.

She knew that face almost as well as she knew her own.

It was her mother.

Sam Turner pushed his car seat as far back as it would go, plonked his hefty size tens up on the dashboard and closed his
eyes. How much longer was the damned woman going to keep him waiting? Days? Months? Years? He’d probably be dead by the time
she turned up here. If she ever turned up here.


It was three days since he’d parked his mud-spattered Vauxhall Cavalier outside this South London mansion block. If he’d been
at all inclined to look at the bright side – which he wasn’t – he might have described it as the perfect place for a doorstep.
Pub on the corner for a lunchtime pint. Greasy spoon opposite for early-morning fry-ups. Phone box to check in with the news
desk now they’d swiped his mobile. Newsagents for fags and papers. Not that he cared a toss about what the idiots on the other
tabloids were writing but he was addicted to the ‘quick’ crossword in the Telegraph.


Sam glanced at his watch. It was six-thirty on a cold, damp November morning and he’d been on his own all night. Just him
and some inane DJ chattering away to London’s insomniacs. Rory Smith, the last photographer to keep him company, had buggered
off hours ago, confident that his replacement had been briefed and was on her way. Silly bitch, she still hadn’t shown.


As he dozed fitfully, half-listening to the Today programme and half-wondering where he could get a wash and a shave close by, he became aware of a banging noise. At first
it was barely discernible above James Naughtie’s cheery tones, but there it came again. And again. The sound grew louder,
more persistent, and finally impossible to ignore.


Sam opened his eyes. A young woman with short fair hair and startlingly blue eyes was hammering on his window. Oh my God, he thought, it’s her, and there’s no snapper here to get a picture.
In an instant he was over the back seat, shaking off the empty crisp packets, old newspapers and discarded beer cans strewn
everywhere in a desperate attempt to find the tiny Polaroid he kept for emergencies like this.


Later, he wondered how on earth he could have been so stupid. So he’d sunk into a drunken stupor, born of misery and self-pity
and loneliness, but that was no reason to mistake the Daily News’s greenest smudger for the face he was waiting for. The face he was after quadrupled sales of glossy magazines every time
it was splashed, smiling, across their front covers. The one in front of him was pretty, but not a traffic stopper. Not at
this hour of the morning, anyway.


Anna smiled uncomfortably at Sam’s crumpled clothes, unshaven face and bleary eyes. She’d only been freelancing for the News for three weeks and though she knew Sam Turner by reputation, this was the first time she’d met him in person.


‘You look as if you’ve slept in your car all night,’ she said, trying to make conversation. ‘Are you…?’

‘That’s rather stating the obvious if I may say so, darling,’ snapped Sam, irritated that she’d caught him unawares. ‘Anyway,
where the hell were you last night? The picture desk told me they were sending someone down here to take over from Rory Smith
at eight p.m. What would have happened if she’d turned up here and there was no monkey to bloody well get a picture of her? Your fucking career with the News would have been over before it started, wouldn’t it?’


Startled by the viciousness of his tone, for a moment Anna couldn’t think what to say. She knew she’d messed up but that didn’t
give a man she barely knew the right to bawl her out like this. Shaun Bryan on the picture desk had bleeped her last night
and ordered her to take over from Rory Smith at ‘eight’. It had been a simple misunderstanding. She’d assumed he meant eight
a.m. – like any reasonable person would. Anna glanced at the greasy hamburger wrappings and overflowing ashtray next to Sam’s
seat and felt sick. She couldn’t see the point of sitting in his gruesome car all night simply to get a grainy, snatched shot
of some boring supermodel with a filthy temper and lousy skin. The picture library must have masses of pictures of her already.


‘Look, darling, let’s get one thing straight,’ continued Sam. ‘You’re not working for Vogue now. This one won’t simply swan down the street before our very eyes, flash that winning smile of hers and oblige us with
a fashion shoot right here in the sodding road. If she and lover boy do show up here, they’ll be scuttling in with their heads
down and heavies on each arm to keep the likes of us bloody miles away. So wise up, will you, or you’ll land both of us in
the shit.’


By this time Anna had had enough.

‘Give me a break, will you?’ she said. ‘And just to put the record straight – people like you are always going on about being
absolute sticklers for accuracy – I did not, repeat, did not, ever work for Vogue. Right? Got it into your thick skull?’


Anna rubbed her eyes wearily with the back of her hand and for a moment Sam thought she was going to cry. He shrugged his
shoulders. Why the hell did the news desk keep sending him on jobs with amateurs? College kids who thought that with a Hasselblad
slung round their neck and an arty-looking portfolio shot in black and white they could hack it. If only one of the old timers
was here. Alfie Swan, perhaps. He might have as much imagination as a tub of lard but at least he knew what he was doing.
He could charm anyone, from Arthur Scargill to the royals. ‘Heard the one about the four-eyed chicken, Ma’am?’ he used to
say to Princess Di at photocalls back in the good old days and even though all the frosty Palace types would frown and try
to hurry Diana along, she’d always stop and listen and smile. ‘What’s that, Alfie? Oh great – another joke I can pass on to
my boys.’


But Anna was much tougher than Sam gave her credit for. There was no way she was going to collapse in a heap just because
he needed to lash out at the nearest available person. She hadn’t wept over anyone for four years now, not since Darius, and
she certainly wasn’t going to be intimidated by a bully like Sam Turner.


‘I’ll sit in my own car, if you don’t mind,’ she said, gesturing towards a bright yellow Citroen Dyane parked behind his Cavalier.
‘I’m quite fussy about the company I keep.’


Sam cursed his bad temper. He could have done with someone, even an airhead, to talk to after twelve hours of solitary confinement.
He turned up the radio and leaned his seat back again so that it was almost horizontal. It was funny how things turned out, he thought. Up until last spring, he’d have sworn that
his days of doorstepping were over for good. But at forty-six, a seasoned royal watcher with a string of contacts as long
as his arm and a clutch of exclusives under his belt, he’d made the classic mistake of assuming he was indispensable. After
all, he had the expense account, he had the office with his name on the door, and, most importantly, he had the ear of the
editor, Bert Sacker.


He and Bert went way back. Back to the days when they were both young and keen and so desperate to make a name for themselves
that they’d chase ambulances, fire engines, you name it, in the hope of cracking the big one. They’d slogged their guts out
in those days, worked Christmas Day virtually every year, cancelled holidays at a moment’s notice if the editor demanded it
and never ever complained. Sam had lost count of the number of times he’d been woken in the middle of the night and told to
get to the other end of the country ‘right now’ to cover a breaking story. The sacrifices had been worth it on the whole.
Bert rose to the giddy heights of editor and he, well, he hadn’t done so badly for himself either.


But now all that had gone. So too, had Bert Sacker, trampled underfoot in a boardroom coup by a gang of know-it-all upstarts
from Presscorps Incorporated. They’d wrested Bert from his editor’s chair and sent him packing, back to Orpington and his
nagging wife Agnes.


Newspapers were cruel places, reflected Sam. You were the bee’s knees one day, wining and dining with the men in suits and
being begged to review the tabloids on breakfast telly. Out on your ear the next. He’d seen it happen so many times during
the course of his career.


But at least when the axe fell on Bert it had been a clean break, he thought. Look at me – a middle-aged has-been, still standing
on people’s doorsteps asking ridiculous questions. Who cares about the starving millions when you can spend your time investigating
the real issues of the day? Like Fergie’s latest jolly jape and who the cast of EastEnders are screwing.


Up until six months before, Sam had been happy – ish – with his life. The role of royal correspondent on the News suited him down to the ground and he reckoned he suited it. So he didn’t have the posh upbringing some of the other royal
watchers claimed – and he was downright dubious about some of the stories they told – but somehow he’d learned enough over the years
to be able to slip into society circles with confidence and ease. He knew how to dress like a gentleman, even if he wasn’t
one. He knew how to choose a good wine and, when it was absolutely necessary, he knew how to sweet-talk the snootiest aristocrats
in the land. He’d even married one of their daughters, for heaven’s sake. His face softened, as it always did when he thought
of Susanna. Then he snapped out of his reverie. She was another story altogether.


Everything had changed back in March, when Beau Firman acquired the Daily News. Firman was a bold, brash American, with a substantial girth and a rumbustious manner that made Christopher Biggins seem
like a wallflower. A joke in other words, until he’d stormed across the Atlantic, caught the shareholders of the News and its sister paper, the Sunday Sentinel, at a vulnerable moment, bulldozed them into selling and declared that he intended to make London his base for a while. He’d
promptly settled into the chairman’s suite on the top floor of the newspapers’ Vauxhall headquarters, commissioned a full-length
portrait of himself to be hung in the impressive marble foyer and, despite his avowal that he wouldn’t be involved in the
day-to-day running of his publications, set about hiring and firing with gusto.


He didn’t fire Sam though. To Sam’s eternal disappointment and, even worse, chagrin, he wasn’t one of the fortunate few to
be handed a year’s money, given their marching orders and instructed to leave the building immediately.


A far worse ignominy was in store for him. He was stripped of his title and his smart office and despatched back to the newsroom.
In future, he was told, he would be back on the general news rota. He’d be starting at nine o’clock sharp, not wandering in
at around eleven-thirty after breakfast with a few so-called contacts at the Savoy, and taking his turn on the deadly seven
p.m. to three a.m. ‘dog watch’ every three weeks without fail.


If Sam could have told Firman where to stick his bloody job, he would have. He’d actually written his letter of resignation
and stuffed it in his top drawer to run through the following morning. But when he re-read it in the cold light of day, thoughts
of the children’s school fees, the hefty mortgage and his payments to Susanna had dulled his enthusiasm for quitting. Despising
himself, he feebly acquiesced to Firman’s wishes. He hurled his resignation letter into the bin and, with head down and shoulders
hunched, headed back to the newsroom. It was the most humiliating moment of his life.


Now he was stuck on this ridiculous job with some idiot of a girl who called herself a photographer. At least if she was supposed
to have done the night shift another photographer might be along soon and she’d be out of his hair. He, however, had at least
another night to go before he was shot of this tedious Supermodel Love Shock story.


He glanced in his mirror to see what Anna was up to and couldn’t help smiling. She was jiggling her head around in an idiotic
fashion, no doubt to some absurd Spice Girls hit.


After a few seconds she plonked a large navy and white spotted make-up bag on the dashboard and carefully applied a frightening
shade of vermilion lipstick to her pale lips. It would serve her right if she missed the Bella Fraser picture altogether,
he thought, then checked himself crossly. He was definitely becoming bitter and twisted. Why had he taken such an instant
dislike to a young kid like her? In the past he’d prided himself on keeping his feelings to himself. For God’s sake, when
Jane O’Connor had broken down in tears on his shoulder during the New Age Travellers’ story a couple of years back he’d treated
her to a slap-up dinner and scrawled a twenty-paragraph story for her across the starched white tablecloth. The head waiter
had been rather upset so he’d simply asked for the cost of the tablecloth to be added to his bill. Jane had bundled the whole
thing into her bag and duly filed his story to her paper at the crack of dawn the next morning. Sam grinned. It was the first and only time he’d ever got the splash in the
Evening Standard.


At that moment Anna stopped what she was doing and looked up. Immediately her eyes met Sam’s and she glared frostily. A little
embarrassed that she’d caught him watching her, he opened his door and carefully eased his aching six-foot frame out of the
car. He was beginning to feel a bit guilty for losing his temper earlier on.


In a bid to make amends, he bought two cartons of steaming hot coffee at the greasy spoon over the road and rather sheepishly
carried them across to Anna’s car.


‘To apologise for being such a fucking bastard,’ he said, passing one of the cartons through Anna’s open window. ‘Will you forgive me?’


Anna scowled at him.

‘I don’t really see why I should,’ she said, ‘but then again, I could really do with an injection of caffeine.’

‘Can I sit in then?’ asked Sam. He opened the passenger door and got in without waiting for a reply.

‘Are you always like this on jobs?’ asked Anna, taking a long slurp of her coffee.

‘Like what?’

‘Such a shit. One moment you’re mouthing off at me, telling me I’m absolutely useless and my career’s in shreds. The next,
I don’t know, you want to be my new best friend.’


‘I’m always like this,’ said Sam. ‘What about you? Are you always twelve hours late for jobs?’

‘Don’t push your luck, pal,’ said Anna. ‘We’d better keep off controversial subjects or we’ll be at each other’s throats all
over again.’


Sam laughed. Anna Armitage could clearly give as good as she got. He was starting to enjoy himself.

‘What did the office say when you last spoke to them?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Oh, fucking hell,’ said Sam, banging his forehead with his fist. ‘I haven’t bloody spoken to them this morning. I can’t stand
ringing in too often because they whinge so much. I’ll go ballistic if they don’t call me off today. What time is it now?
Eleven-thirty-five. I’ll just finish my coffee, then I’d better ring. How about you?’


‘You go first,’ said Anna. ‘Then I’ll tell my lot what your lot have said. Decision-making isn’t exactly the picture desk’s
forte.’


Sam swigged the last of his coffee then leapt out of the car and made for the telephone box opposite.

‘You can use my mobile if you want,’ Anna shouted after him, but it was too late. He’d gone.

The stench inside the phone box was overpowering. Sam fumbled for his notebook, trying to ignore the odour of tramps’ piss,
and asked the operator for a reverse-charge call to the office. As he juggled the receiver in one hand and his pen in the
other, his notebook dropped to the ground with a splat. He knelt to retrieve it and swore out loud. The hem of his stone-coloured
Burberry raincoat was soaked in a puddle of urine.


‘Hello. News desk.’

Sam groaned inwardly at the voice on the other end of the line. John Radley, the news editor’s ineffectual number two, wouldn’t
know a decent story if it jumped up and punched him in the mouth. This was the man, after all, who just a few months before
had skimmed through the Reuters snap breaking the first news of the American invasion of Panama, pronounced it boring and
wiped it off his computer screen. The little jerk had survived that cock-up by blaming the news-desk secretary for fiddling
about with his keyboard and no doubt he would survive many others in the future.


‘Look, mate, this doorstep is a total waste of everybody’s time. I’ve been parked outside the boyfriend’s flat for three days
now and Bella Fraser hasn’t shown her gorgeous body anywhere near. Call me off, will you, there’s a good chap. She’s obviously
giving this place a wide berth.’


John Radley paused for a moment. His terror of making a decision was all too apparent.

‘Sorry, Turner, but the news editor’s really keen on this one. You’ll have to stick with it, I’m afraid. Have you tried asking
Bella’s agent where she is? That might give you a good lead. If you hang on for a moment, I’ll try and find the number. I’m
pretty sure I’ve got it in my contacts books somewhere.’


Sam snorted with disgust and slammed the phone down. He’d spoken to Bella’s agent so many times he almost knew what colour
underpants he was wearing. He wrenched open the door of the phone box and stalked back over the road. He was so angry he didn’t
look where he was going and narrowly missed being hit by a Pickfords removal van.


Cursing, he threw himself back into his own car, and without so much as a backward glance at Anna, switched on the ignition,
accelerated aggressively and drove off down the road. Fuck the news desk, he thought.


From a tiny window on the fourth floor of Victoria Mansions, Bella Fraser watched Sam Turner’s car disappear out of sight.
His tyres squealed as he took the corner at forty mph and despite her unhappiness, she couldn’t help smiling. She had no idea
whether the bloody reporter who’d been camped on the doorstep for three long days and three interminable nights had gone for
good but at least he’d given her the chance to escape.


Incarcerated inside the flat all this time, Bella had begun to wonder if she was destined to live in her miserable twilight
zone for the rest of her days. She’d kept the blinds drawn and the lights down low, switched the answerphone on and ignored
the reporter’s persistent ringing of the doorbell at all hours of the day and night. She’d eaten virtually nothing. Not that
there was much to eat in the flat anyway, just a few Weight Watchers’ soups and some mouldy crispbread – testimony to her
constant battle with the scales. It was just her luck to stand a statuesque five-foot-eleven tall when the waif look was in.
She’d always looked so damn healthy on the catwalk next to girls like Sophia B