The invitation to meet with Madeline landed in my inbox late morning. It came with no subject line but I knew immediately what it was about. Madeline is nothing if not persistent.
I’ve spent the afternoon killing time. I gave up on the idea of doing any actual work pretty quickly, unable to settle to anything. Drinking three cups of coffee in the past forty-Ave minutes hasn’t helped. Mostly I’ve been reading the endless stream of celebrity stories on our
twenty-four-hour news site. ‘The royal family has a new ginger Labradoodle,’ I say to Min, who sits opposite me in our open-plan newsroom. ‘I’ll give you even money they call it Harry.’
Min raises an eyebrow. I’ve tried repeatedly to engage her in conversation for the last hour, despite knowing she has a deadline to hit.
‘Sorry,’ I mouth silently, and return to my screen. Another Hollywood couple has announced their engagement, and a Premier League footballer has smashed his team-mate’s head into a dressing-room locker. Nice.
A diary reminder that I don’t need appears in front of me. I glance across towards Madeline’s goldfish-bowl office and see her gesticulating furiously at two marketing executives. Both shrink in her presence. I realised long ago that the only way to successfully work with Madeline is by standing up to her. It’s a lesson many of my colleagues have yet to learn. ‘You are going to be honest with hen’ asks Min, as if she can read my thoughts.
‘I always try to be,’ I reply. But Madeline instilled in me her own determination to reach the heart of any good story. It’s something we now share. And it’s why I fear this conversation.
‘You’re the only person she will ever really listen to.’
‘be problem is, on this one I don’t think there’s any middle ground.’
Min shoots me a sympathetic grimace before putting on her headphones. I glance across again to see the two marketers skulk away, summarily dismissed. Resolved, I close my screen and get to my feet.
Through her open door, I can see Madeline sitting in her white leather chair, her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her. Without looking up, she calls my name. ‘Ben, don’t linger.’
‘here’s no reason for us to fall out over this,’ I say as I enter her corner office, floor-to-ceiling windows affording a direct view of Tower Bridge. Behind Madeline’s curved glass desk hang three striking sunlit photographs, each one taken by Madeline herself, as she has told me
countless times. be best is of the Houses of Parliament, the second of the
White House, and the third is of her own home overlooking Richmond Park. She calls them ‘the three houses of global power’ and I think she is only half-joking…
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