Polls Apart by Clare Stephen-Johnston

noticed he was even scruffier than usual today, with his creased shirt, ruffled greying hair and loose tie. All the female reporters in the office agreed that Damian had a strange kind of bad-boy appeal, but the lines on his face – the product of years of chain-smoking – made him look older than his actual age of forty-one.
    “Marie,” he said, in a falsely cheerful voice. “How’s the Lloyd story coming along? You tracked down any of her ex—clients yet?”
    “I’ve tried to contact everyone Sylvia named, but they’re either ex-directory or they won’t talk. Most of them are highly-paid professionals who don’t need the money.”
    “Right, time for plan B then.”
    “What’s that?” Marie asked, already afraid of the answer.
    “We run an interview with Lloyd. The heartbreaking story of how she was betrayed in her hour of need by the man she loves.”
    “Have you spoken to her then? Has she agreed to do it?”
    “This needs a woman’s touch, Marie,” Damian winked in what Marie found to be a patronising way. “You give her a call and – in the nicest possible fashion – let her know that unless she does an interview we’ll let her old clients do the talking.”
    “But we don’t have any of her clients.”
    “Use your loaf, Marie,” Damian snapped before giving an agitated grunt. “She doesn’t know that does she? Now I want this sorted by the end of today so I need you to get on to it as soon as you’ve finished your bird seed.” With that Damian took off and left Marie to watch him saunter back to his office with all the affectation of a man trying to appear comfortable in his own skin.
    Marie swallowed back a wave of nausea as she considered the prospect of trying to talk Anna Lloyd – who must surely hate her more than anyone else in the whole world right now – into divulging her innermost secrets to the Sunday Echo . She knew the outcome would rest on how well she managed to veil her threats, keeping her tone friendly whilst leaving Lloyd in no doubt she had little choice.
    This was the type of task Marie hated – particularly when her heart was just not in this story. The “scurrilous end” of tabloid journalism as her father called it. She would much rather have been chasing stories on major social issues, rather than harassing politician’s wives, but Marie also knew the only way out of this kind of work was to resign and she simply couldn’t afford to do that right now. While this job was hardly feeding her soul it paid the mortgage and that was what mattered most.
    And, at twenty-nine, this could mark a much-needed turning point in her career. Until last week she’d never worked on a really massive exclusive – those jobs were always handed to the chief reporter or other favoured hack. So this was her chance to get up the ladder and start regularly working on the kind of stories that would move her from the middle to front pages. And she supposed that was where she should be. If she could get to the top of her game, perhaps then her father would drop the snobbery against what he called her “type of work” and finally be proud of her. As the only man in her life, her father’s approval meant everything – perhaps it would even help her conquer the desperate insecurity and lack of self worth that had shadowed her since childhood.
    She sighed then opened up the contacts file on her desktop and leafed through it until she got to L. She found the number buried at the bottom of the screen. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and dialled.
    Bob Guthrie was the first person to raise a smile out of Richard in forty-eight hours with his unintentionally humorous attempts to flag down a passing waiter or waitress. Bob was Shadow Chancellor, with a deceptively bumbling exterior that masked the agility of his knowledge-packed mind. With Ray Molsley sitting to his left, sharing the moment, Richard let all the tension of the past few days go and laughed raucously at Bob’s