Page 19 of You Can't Hurt Me

“Come on, give us a quick listen,” she says, removing my AirPods, but I grab them back off her.

“No way.”

“Come on, Anna, tell us how did you really feel about the charismatic, brooding Dr. Reid?” She drops her voice dramatically.

“Feel? That’s such an overused word.” I roll my eyes, find myself echoing Nate.

“Okay, did you like him, then?”

“Not articularly.” I affect a dispassionate expression, staring at my screen while my heart hammers. I couldn’t quite bear Amira to hear Nate and I chatting about art in his basement study.

“You don’t fancy a drink after work?” she says, catching my distracted expression. “Looks like you need one.”

I shake my head. “Wish I could but—” My phone vibrates. She gives me a suspicious glance, but thankfully Jess’s door opens and she calls Amira into the meeting.

I take longer than usual writing up the piece. It needs to be more sympathetic, but not so bland that Jess and Amira might question it. I leave out the tantrum, the insights too that I would normally read into something like that, how controlling he seemed, volatile and unpredictable. Looking back I wonder if the dismay he expressed about losing his temper was no more than an attempt to persuade me he was really a good guy. Reflections that Amira would have loved me to include but I’ve come this far, I can’t risk upsetting him.

Instead, I ramp up details about how eloquent he is, how charismatic and smart. It feels like I’m writing a puff piece but I also know this profile needs to be my calling card. By 8:00 p.m., I’m done. As I leave the office, I text Nate.

I’ve finished—I’ll email it through now. If I don’t hear from you by midday tomorrow, I’ll assume all is good with it. Thanks, Ax

I read it back. All good, except for thexat the end. I delete it and press Send.

When it goes to press a couple of nights later, I find myself unable to sleep. As I drift off, black italicized words and quotations swim in front of my eyes. I wake up to an ashen dawn light seeping around the edges of my blinds, quickly dress for work and head for the newsdealer at the end of my street.

There’s something about seeing my words in print that still exhilarates in an old-fashioned sort of way. The thrill of something that exists in a vacuum, blissfully free from the online trolls. I pick up a copy of my paper, piled up on the floor between theTelegraphand theTimes, and my pulse quickens at the sight of us in print on the cover, our names so close to one another:

King of Pain reveals personal agonies:

Anna Tate interviews Dr. Nate Reid

I peel away the different sections like layers of an onion. Sports. Travel. Arts and Culture. Until I reach the magazine, a slim glossy prize at the center. I turn the pages until I see his mournful gaze staring out at me, a quote emblazoned above his head.

“I came home to find my wife dead. It was like something out of a horror film seeing her surrounded by those sculptures...”

My heart plummets, knowing how he might react. What felt like genuine disclosure looks brutal blown up like that, slapped brazenly on the page. Maybe they beefed up the headlines because the copy was too kind to him. If only I could get a chance to explain.

On my way to the office, I scroll through my phone, check the reader page views. Three-hundred-and-forty-thousand reads and rising, median attention three minutes, best read on the website.

Who was it that said the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world? Some stuffy old Victorian author. It may not be poetic but the sentiment still stands—it is perfect click bait.

Over the coming days, there’s a small-scale swirl of attention, tweets and comments, hero emails from Amira and even Jess. A brief high followed by a rapid comedown. But nothing from Nate.

His silence makes me uneasy. I try not to think about his contempt for journalists, how I could be another one to add to his list of most hated, my chance of being a ghostwriter ruined. Untrustworthy, sensationalist.

I throw myself into researching my next interview with an infamously bad-tempered but innovative Scandi chef, and it’s his voice I plug into my ears; his TV shows, his memoir and his documentaries I immerse myself in. The strip of mauve on my arm has faded.

Within a week, I persuade myself that I’ve banished Dr. Reid from my thoughts entirely. It is a Friday afternoon and I’m about to leave the office to meet my chef in a converted courtroom in Shoreditch when the email lands.

Priya James

Request re: Dr. Nate Reid

A bolt of anxiety crackles through me. Fuck. A libel. I click straight onto it, convinced it’s from his lawyer until I see Priya James’s signature—Grayson Inc. Publisher of Nonfiction. His publisher.

Dear Anna,

I do hope you don’t mind me dropping cold into your inbox like this. Rhik, Dr. Reid’s book PR, passed on your contact details.

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