Page 79 of Not That Impossible

“He grabbed a copy of theInquirer.” I gave a nervous giggle, then went rigid and stared fixedly at the batteries as Ray wandered past on his way out of the shop. I sagged. “Okay, he’s gone.”

“Jasper?” Adam said. “Is Ray going to be upset by the article?”

“Um. Hard to say? He’s a highly strung kind of guy?”

And I called his house a murder house.

I went and stood in the small queue with a packet of triple-A batteries—didn’t hurt to have some in my junk drawer—and a copy of my very own of theInquirer.

“Jasper,” Adam prompted.

“It was an interview with Craig Henderson and Kevin Wallis, the handymen. Their take on things. That’s all.”

And I called his house a murder house.

“Cool. Okay. See you at the gym later?”

“Yep.”

“I’m so proud of you.”

I beamed. “Thank you!”

Adam disconnected and I was still smiling widely when I tapped my card to the reader. Miss Lawson didn’t smile back. I didn’t care. It was going to take more than that to ruin my day.

I nearly bumped into Ray again outside the shop. He was standing to one side of the door, reading the newspaper, with a smudge of chocolate at the corner of his lips. The Creme Egg hadn’t lasted long. As I watched, he snorted and crumpled the paper up into a ball. He dropped it into the litter bin and walked off.

Okay,thatdidn’t feel great.

* * *

All in all,my experience as a finally published journalist left a lot to be desired.

Ralph paid me fifty pounds for it. I hadn’t expected a lot, but I had expected a tiny bit more.

That would teach me to get something agreed on beforehand next time.

It wasn’t all bad; the fifty pounds came in the form of a gift card to the coffee shop. Even though Craig and Kevin between them had blown through a month’s budget, I still came out with a profit.

Because I knew my parents didn’t read theInquirer—they were theFinancial TimesandThe Telegraphpeople—I took a copy around for them on Friday afternoon. They both said they’d have a look, but they never mentioned it again. Either they read it, shared Ray’s opinion and put it in the bin, or they forgot.

They probably forgot. It was fine.

My parents had made their feelings on my life choices more than clear when I failed to pick a career that pulled in a hundred thousand pounds a year. I could hardly expect them to suddenly change their minds because I’d got something printed in a local newspaper.

Saturdays were always busy at the gym. As well as classes, I had back-to-back clients until five. By then, I was more than ready to chill for the rest of the weekend.

I staggered home, showered, and got into my comfies. I took a big bottle of water over to my writing corner and poked the spacebar on my MacBook to wake it up.

I hadn’t touched it since I’d sent Ralph the final (who was I kidding, first and only) draft of the article on Thursday, and my email client was still on screen. I grimaced and closed it.

This left the article on screen instead, with all its red squiggles shouting,You’ve made a mistake, right here!

As it turned out, Ralph didn’t do a spellcheck or a proofread either. It was fair to say that one or two cockups had made it through, and those mistakes were now immortalised in print.

I was sure I’d hear all about it from Ralph when his number one reader and Chipping Fairford’s self-appointed grammar police, Terry Stoddard, sent in his usual annotated copy of the paper with all the mistakes circled in red pen.

I’d suggested that Ralph hire Terry to go through it allbeforeprinting, but they had some sort of long-running feud, and Ralph swore he’d rather strip naked and do a one-man tango down the high street.

---