Page 73 of Not That Impossible

Books.

Tens of thousands of words upon words.

With their thumbs.

I couldn’t do it. Call me a size queen, but when it came to a screen, I needed more than two inches. And as for typing? I’m a physical man. I yearned for the rattle and clack of a keyboard. I needed the feedback, I wanted tofeelthe words exiting my body.

iPhone keyboards were not made for the likes of me.

No matter how careful I was or how slowly I typed, autocorrect got right up in my business every third word. The first draft of my article was an underwhelming one hundred and fifty words long, and I’d been pecking it out laboriously for the last twenty minutes. I’d fogged up the windows. It looked like I was having way more fun in here than I actually was.

I wasn’t having any fun at all.

Being a journalist was turning out to be way harder than I’d imagined—and this was with a killer story.

Okay, fuck the phone.

I tossed it onto the passenger seat and switched on the ignition, blasting warm air through the vents to clear the windows. The phone bounced, landed in the footwell, and skittered out of sight under the seat.

“And fucking stay there,” I muttered at it. I leaned forward and swiped a clear patch on the windscreen. It was probably enough to see out of, but I was a nervous driver on the best of days. “Come on, come on.” The moment it was properly de-misted, I was off.

I had two options here.

I could go home, bang out a first draft, shoot it over to Ralph, and hope he opened his email when he saw it was from me, or…

I flipped on my indicator.

OrI could swing by his office before I wrote the article, and talk him into it first.

Ralph’s office was in the centre of town. His wife ran one of those shabby-chic shops that folk from London love so much, full of charming old wooden buckets, dainty ornamental stone benches, dove cotes and the like. TheChipping Fairford Inquirer’s newsroom was above it.

The closer to the centre of town you got, the harder it was to park, especially during lunchtime and the early afternoon. I made an executive decision. Would Ralph be angry if I noodled my car down into the tiny carpark at the back of his wife’s shop? He had been in the past, so, yes.

But he’d have to look out the window and see me to be angry. I was willing to take the risk.

I waited for a florist’s van to stop blocking the turn, and nipped down the narrow road. I parked the car, scooped my phone out from under the passenger seat, slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, and darted out.

I could have gone in through the back, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

I ran around to the front of the building. The entrance was a tiny little foyer with a right into the shop, a left into the bookshop next door, and the stairs dead ahead.

I jogged up the stairs and rapped on the door.Chipping Fairford Inquirerwas stencilled in gold on the frosted glass in a fancy script complete with curlicues. I tried the handle and the door opened. I popped my head through.

“Ralph?” I called.

The squeak of wheels preceded Ralph’s appearance as he scooted his office chair backward across the wooden boards and peered cautiously around the corner. “Jasper.”

“Hi!” I strode in. “Am I interrupting anything?”

He scooted back out of sight and I followed.

“Just lunch,” he said, waving a hand at the food laid out on the desk. He’d got it from the deli two doors down. I recognised it.

And I wanted it.

My stomach groaned passionately.

Ralph looked horrified and blocked my view of his food, as if he thought I’d lose my self-control and fall on it.

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