Speak No Evil by Martyn Waites

a way that he suspected could tip over into unwanted pounds if she wasn’t careful. Not that something like that would ever bother him. She was also filled with an energy, joy and life that was positively stimulating. She had an appetite, he had discovered in conversation during the course of the meal, not just for food and wine, but for life itself. It was, he thought, hard not to be swept along by her.
    They spent the ordering time and the first course talking about his old literary agent. Donovan had forgotten she existed. When Wendy talked of the agency and the world he had once been a part of, it seemed like she was talking of events in a foreign country that he had once enjoyed visiting and meant to return to, but because other things had got in the way had never got round to it.
    â€˜Morgan and Rubenstein,’ he said, watching the way the light caught the red wine as he swirled his glass. ‘Names I never thought I’d hear again.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Wendy, leaning forward, ‘it’s not exactly M and R any more. Susanna Rubenstein’s gone.’ She smiled, savouring her next words. ‘It’s Morgan and Bennett now.’
    â€˜Right. Well done, you.’
    She raised her glass. ‘Thank you.’
    The waiter cleared away the start plates and they looked at each other. There was that smile again. It was hard not to return it. So he did.
    â€˜So,’ he said, reaching for his wine glass, ‘tell me about Mae Blacklock. And why I’m so crucial to the job.’
    Wendy Bennett bent down, pulled out a folder from her bag. ‘It’s all here. Mae Blacklock obviously isn’t her name now. When she was eleven she killed a little boy. Trevor Cunliffe. Huge scandal at the time, big media circus.’
    â€˜I remember.’
    She looked at him and he was suddenly conscious of the gap in years between them. It wasn’t huge but it suddenly seemed that way. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anyway, she was released about twenty years ago. Given a new identity, sent somewhere far away. She met a man, got pregnant, had a baby. A boy. Then she moved. And she moved again. And again. And now she’s back in Newcastle. And she wants to tell her story.’
    Donovan frowned. ‘Why? Why now?’
    Wendy shrugged. ‘Who knows? But she came to us. And we didn’t have anyone we thought could do that. And then someone thought of you.’
    â€˜Someone?’
    â€˜Well, me, actually’
    Donovan smiled. ‘Thank you. And I have to say, I’m interested. But I’m not a journalist any more. I don’t do that kind of thing now.’
    â€˜Oh I know’, said Wendy. ‘I know exactly what you do. I’ve been keeping tabs on you.’
    â€˜You?’
    She blushed slightly. ‘I meant we. The agency. We never forgot you. You did some good stuff. Back in the day.’
    Donovan smiled again, loving the way young, middle-class professionals had appropriated aspects of urban culture to give them what they thought was a hip edge. ‘It was a blast,’ he said.
    â€˜Good. Well, let’s hope this will be too. Are you interested? Will you do it? We’ve got a publisher lined up ready to pay the advance. I know that’s unusual without actually seeing anything, but this is an unusual case.’
    â€˜What’s the money like?’
    She told him. And he thought of the new Albion offices and the wage bill. And something else – how this might be just the thing to take his mind off Brighton.
    He said he was in and asked for more details.
    â€˜Right. Well, she now lives in Newcastle on the Hancock Estate in Byker.’ She was going to continue. He stopped her.
    â€˜Please don’t do the Byker Grove thing.’
    She looked slightly put out. ‘Why not?’
    â€˜Because it’s not funny any more. And because you’ll mark yourself out as a southerner and you might get a smack in the face