Lovers and Liars Trilogy by Sally Beauman

truth from a war zone seemed to her a tremendous thing. If she could ever do that, she felt she would prove something to herself—and perhaps also prove something to her father, although this aspect of her plan made her uneasy, and she ignored it as much as she could.
    And she had come so close to her goal—so very close. All the hard work of her apprenticeship, her years first on a provincial paper, then on the Guardian, then on The Times, finally at the News in its previous more sober incarnation had finally paid off. Nicholas Jenkins’s predecessor, a man Genevieve had admired very much, had given her assignments with teeth. The last story she had covered for him, an investigation into police corruption in the northeast, had won the paper two awards. Her reward, so long sought, was to have been a posting to Bosnia for three months. The day before it was confirmed, that editor was fired and Nicholas Jenkins took his place.
    “Bosnia?” he had said in the six and a half minutes he finally spared her. “Sarajevo? My dear Genevieve, I think not.”
    “Why not?” Genevieve asked, although she knew the answer, which had nothing to do with her capabilities and everything to do with her sex.
    “Because I need you here,” Jenkins replied. “I’ve got some big stories lining up. I’m not ruling out foreign stories—don’t think that. We’ll review the situation in six months….”
    Six months later there had been another excuse; a third was preferred three months after that. Now a year had gone by and she was no nearer her goal. She no longer trusted Jenkins’s temporizings, and what was she now stuck with? Telephone sex: a Johnny Appleyard tip. Genevieve glared at the lurid advertisements in front of her. She punched the next number. She would give this charade, she told herself, just one more month. If the assignments did not improve by then, if she was still being fobbed off with this trivial stuff, then she would confront the slippery Jenkins. Some tougher assignments—or, Nicholas dear, you can shove this job.
    Meanwhile, she was through to the next sex line— Big Blondes —and another girl was launched on an all too familiar spiel.
    “Oooh,” moaned a bored and breathy voice. “I’m all alone tonight. I’m unhooking my bra now. I know I shouldn’t, but the weather’s sooo hot. By the way, did I mention? It’s a forty-two D….”
    Genevieve groaned and looked out the office window. The sky was gray. It was beginning to sleet.
    “Hot weather?” she muttered. “Lucky for you, sweetheart. Not here, it’s not.”
    The recording continued. There was a rustling sound as the girl turned the pages of her script. “I think I’m going to tell you what I’m doing. Oooh yes. I’m undoing my bra now. Oooh, that’s better. I’m just easing it off. It’s black lace, did I mention that?”
    “No, you didn’t, moron, get on with it,” Genevieve snapped.
    “It’s wired underneath,” breathed the girl. She giggled mirthlessly. “Well, it has to be, you see, because I’m a big girl, and it carries a lot of weight….”
    “Dammit,” said Genevieve. “What is this—an engineering manual? Get to the point.”
    She knew she was wasting her breath. Apart from the fact that the recording could not hear her, delay was the whole purpose of these tapes. The longer the poor sucker kept listening, the greater the profits. There seemed to be hours of this anodyne buildup. The scripts were risible, their delivery amateurish. Genevieve could imagine only too well the kind of businessmen behind them: small-time wise guys making a few bucks on the side from a back room someplace. The more she listened, the less she placed any credence on Appleyard’s tip.
    She yawned, hung up on Big Blondes, and tried Swedish Au Pair. Such a feast of stereotypes. Swedish Au Pair also had a South London accent. She sounded dyslexic. Two-syllable words were giving her problems. When desperate, she whirred a vibrator. She was