chapter Eight
Even working freelance as she did, Chloe experienced the same feelings on a Monday morning as a nine-to-five officer worker: a sense of being slightly daunted by the week ahead, and an initial lethargy and reluctance to get going.
She’d conducted the interview with the deputy leader of the town council on Friday afternoon. It had been a cordial meeting, the councillor initially laying on the bonhomie with a shovel but retreating into defensiveness when Chloe pressed him on his organisation’s failure to address the estate residents’ concerns. Although she’d typed up the interview as close to word-for-word as she could recall it, Chloe had saved the writing of the actual article until today. It had been tempting to spend the weekend working on it, but she’d been determined to devote Saturday and Sunday to Jake, exclusively, with no room for work. And she’d stuck to it. On Saturday they’d driven to a new out-of-town zoo which turned out to be more out of town than she’d realised, and on Sunday they had travelled all the way to London to see a matinee children’s theatre production in the West End. Exhausted, but happy, Chloe had dropped into bed at ten on Sunday evening, slept for an unbroken nine hours, and awoke refreshed and ready for the day.
But with that Monday morning feeling, nonetheless.
She set up the dining room table methodically, her laptop in the centre, her printed notes to one side, her phone and coffee mug to the other. Jake was in her line of sight, playing happily on the rug. Sooner or later she’d need to set up a proper study, in the spare bedroom, but for now this arrangement suited her.
Her email inbox was full; she hadn’t checked it since Friday afternoon, quite deliberately. Chloe supposed catching up with emails was a forgivable indulgence before setting down to work, and didn’t represent Monday morning displacement activity designed to avoid work.
A few of the twenty or so emails were junk messages which had dodged her spam folder. These she deleted immediately. Three more were from friends and former colleagues in London, catching up. She saved these, to be replied to later on, at her leisure and when she could give them the attention they deserved. She’d been neglecting her old friends, she acknowledged guiltily.
The work emails she spent more time on. There were a couple from Mike Sellers, addressed to her personally and following up on a couple of queries she’d sent him on Friday after the interview, in which she’d asked about the ins and outs of the local council’s workings. Other emails were essentially memos, copied to all staff and freelancers attached to the Pemberham Gazette.
One of them was from a staff reporter at the paper to Mike Sellers. Chloe was one of several people copied in, and when she scanned the content she realised she’d probably been added inadvertently to the CC list, as a result of a copy-and-paste job. The email was about a story involving some fundraising event taking place in the town this summer.
Chloe was about to delete the message when an addendum at the end caught her eye:
PS. Thanks for the tip-off about the Dr Carlyle thing. Will look into ASAP and get back 2U.
Chloe read it and reread it. There was only one Dr Carlyle it could possibly be referring to. What was this all about?
She took a sip of her coffee and thought about it. She had to find out what it meant. But wouldn’t it seem intrusive of her if she simply rang up the reporter who’d sent the message and asked him about it? He’d copied the email to her by mistake, but was still responsible for having done so. Still, the correct thing to do in such cases was to delete the email as soon as you realised it wasn’t meant for you, and say no more about it.
Chloe decided that she was a journalist, after all, someone whose job it was to get to the truth even if it involved an indirect and sometimes cunning approach. She’d speak to Mike, her editor, on some pretext, and find a way to steer the conversation as subtly as possible to the subject of Tom Carlyle. It was easy enough to find reasons to speak to Mike given that she was busy writing a fairly major article for him.
She picked up the phone and rang the Gazette’s office. Mike’s secretary answered. The boss was in a meeting, and wouldn’t be out until lunchtime. Would Chloe like to leave a message? Chloe replied that she was calling about the story – Mike would know which one she meant – and wanted to speak to him non-urgently about it.
After she’d rung off, Chloe stared at the message on the screen. The Dr Carlyle thing... Might it be something to do with Tom’s custody problem? But why then would the Pemberham Gazette be interested? In the months Chloe had been associated with the Gazette she’d come to appreciate that it was a serious paper of record, committed to honest and professional reporting of news which might be of legitimate interest to the community. It wasn’t some muckraking rag, bent on stoking up scandal. It was hardly likely to pry into a citizen’s private business.
Had something happened to Tom? The possibility struck her with cold force. Chloe had been out of town for much of the weekend; might Tom have come to some harm in her absence? Surely not, she thought. For one thing, word would have spread already and Mrs McFarland would have been round like a shot to tell Chloe.
Untamed speculation was like weeds rapidly taking over the garden of the mind. Chloe knew this, and she remembered also how annoyed she’d been that the ladies of the town had been coming up with fanciful ideas about her and Tom. So she forced herself to put the cryptic email out of her thoughts and concentrate on the morning’s work.
By half past twelve in the afternoon, nearly four hours later, she had the first draft of her article finished. And a pretty decent draft it was, too, she thought proudly. It was a little rough around the edges, and she wasn’t convinced she’d quite got the balance right yet between straight reportage and editorialising; but on the whole it was a fine piece of work. She decided to take a break to prepare some lunch for herself and Jake, then have another read through her manuscript with a fresh eye. Perhaps she might even have the final draft ready for Mike by late afternoon, even though he needed it only on Wednesday.
At a little after three o’clock, when Chloe was deeply into a critical rereading of her article, her phone rang. It was Mike Sellers.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
Chloe had already thought up a few questions for him, some points of clarification about the article. He answered them readily, and sounded on the point of saying his goodbyes when Chloe said: ‘Have you got anything else lined up for me? Any story after this one?’
‘Yes, a couple, actually,’ said Mike. ‘Plus, there will probably be follow-ons from this one. Have things changed on the estate, three months on, et cetera.’
‘Anything or anyone for me to investigate?’ she said, in as casual a manner as she could manage.
There was a pause at the other end. Mike said: ‘What are you referring to, Chloe?’
‘Oh, nothing in particular. I just wondered if there were any juicy new stories brewing?’
Another silence. Then he sighed audibly. ‘So you’ve read the email, too.’
‘Email? Which one?’ But her pulse had quickened.
‘The one Simon sent to me, and copied to all and sundry by mistake. The one with the mysterious reference at the end.’
‘Dr Carlyle.’ She felt bold enough to come out and say it. She might be a journalist and therefore nosy by nature, but Mike was an even more seasoned pressman and had detected right away that she’d caught the scent of the story from the tone and nature of her questions.
‘Yes.’ He seemed to be deliberating at the other end, before he said, ‘Chloe, I know you’re a freelancer and not on my paper’s staff, so strictly speaking this isn’t any of your concern. But I’ve come to respect your discretion and your integrity enough to believe you need to be let in on a few details. Especially because you’ll hear about it sooner or later.’
‘Hear about what, Mike?’
‘I don’t want to say anything over the phone. And I certainly don’t want to put anything I writing, either. Look, I’m too busy to meet you today, but could you come in tomorrow morning, say around nine thirty? I’ll explain then.’
‘Is he in some sort of trouble?’
‘I can’t tell you any more, Chloe. Tomorrow at half past nine?’
‘Yes. I’ll be there.’
‘And Chloe?’
‘Yes?’
‘Keep this under your hat, will you?’
Her instinct, after Mike had rung off, was to phone Tom immediately. Even if not to pry into what was going on, she thought she could at least sound him out, gauge his state of mind, offer her support in some undefined way. But Mike was now a source of information, and one of the primary rules of a good journalist was that you protected your sources. So Chloe held off, and tried to turn her attention back to her work.
She knew as she did so that there’d be little more she’d accomplish that day; nor would her sleep be especially peaceful.
***
For Tom, it all began on Tuesday morning.
He was finishing the second of two cups of coffee while Kelly dawdled over her muesli at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. The doorbell rang and he glanced at the clock on the wall, a novelty timepiece based on Salvador Dali’s melting clock. Seven ten.
Nobody rang the doorbell at this hour.
Padding to the front door in his socks, he saw a human silhouette looming through the frosted glass in the small panel set at head height. Cautiously he opened the door and peered out.
A woman of about forty whom he didn’t recognise stood on the top step, dressed in a denim jacket and wielding a microphone the size of a small club. Slightly behind her a man hefted a camera which began clicking and whirring at soon as Tom put his head out.
‘Dr Thomas Carlyle?’ the woman said. ‘Leah Foster, Pember Valley News. I was wondering if you might be prepared to answer some questions.’
Tom glared at the cameraman who was snapping away as she spoke. The Pember Valley News was Pemberham’s other weekly paper. Tom hadn’t looked at it, but he knew it was a downmarket rag, built on appealing to the townspeople’s baser and more prurient appetites.
‘Questions about what?’
‘May we come in?’ asked the woman, taking a step forwards. Tom retreated and began to close the door. What was this – some sort of profile of local public figures? But why without appointment, and at seven in the morning?
‘I haven’t time for this now,’ he said curtly. ‘I’ve got to get to work and my daughter to nursery.’
He’d almost closed the door completely when the woman’s voice came through: ‘It’s concerning the allegations made against you.’
Tom stopped, pushed the door open once more.
‘Allegations?’
‘May we come in?’ she asked again.
‘No. Not until you tell me what this is about.’
Holding the microphone closer towards him, she said, ‘Dr Carlyle, do you deny the allegations?’
‘For heaven’s sake, what allegations?’ Tom regarded himself as an even-tempered man, but he was close to losing it. ‘And you can switch off that thing.’ He jabbed a finger in the direction of the camera.
The woman glanced round at the cameraman who lowered his equipment, nodding and smirking. ‘Got some good ones already, anyway,’ he muttered.
‘Allegations,’ Leah Foster recited, ‘that you behaved in an inappropriate manner with one of your female patients.’
‘What?’ Tom was appalled. What was the woman talking about?
‘Do you claim, then, that you haven’t even heard of these allegations?’ The reporter looked triumphant, as if she’d just landed a major scoop.’
‘No! I mean, yes, that’s exactly what I’m claiming.’ Tom was aware that he was starting to sound as if he were blustering, caught off guard. Which of course he was.
From behind him he heard a small voice: ‘Daddy, what’s going on?’
‘Kelly? Go back in the living room, darling. Daddy’s just having a word with these people.’
She lingered, looking suddenly smaller than usual, and scared. He forced a grin on to his face and gave an encouraging nod, and Kelly disappeared again. Tom turned back to the duo on the doorstep, glaring at the cameraman to make sure he hadn’t taken any pictures of Kelly.
He stepped outside again in his stockinged feet, let the door swing shut behind him. The reporter and the cameraman were forced to take a step back.
‘Look,’ Tom said. ‘I have nothing to deny, or confirm, or whatever, because I’ve never heard of any such allegations before now. I don’t know where you’ve got your information from, but it’s clearly an unreliable source, so I suggest you spend a little more time checking your facts beforehand and a little less time hounding innocent people on their doorsteps first thing in the morning. Now kindly remove yourselves from my property.’
‘Dr Carlyle –’ the woman began. Tom folded his arms.
‘Go. Now.’
‘Just a few questions –’
‘I have nothing to say, and I’ll be lodging a formal complaint about your conduct with your office. Now leave.’
They stayed put, staring at him, defiant. He shrugged.
‘Then I’ll have the police remove you.’
He went back inside and closed the door. By the time he’d reached the living room, ruffled Kelly’s hair reassuringly and picked up the phone, he saw the reporter and the cameraman through the front window, making their way back to a van parked up on the kerb outside. Only when they’d pulled away and the van was out of sight did he put down the phone and let out a long breath.
And it wasn’t until he’d glanced at the clock, shooed Kelly into the hallway to put on her shoes and grabbed his own loafers, jacket and briefcase that it hit him, the physical aftershock of an unexpected and distressing encounter that left his legs slightly weak and his hands shaking.
Had it been some sort of prank? But who’d do such a thing, involving the local press? And what sort of allegation had the Pember Valley News heard that was robust enough that they saw fit to pursue it, to the point of doorstepping people at seven in the morning?
In a way, Tom was thankful he was running late, because it gave him less time to muse on what had happened. But even as he wrestled with the rush-hour traffic on the way to the nursery, he found his thoughts returning again and again to the encounter.
…You behaved in an inappropriate manner with one of your female patients…
The idea hit him as he was turning into the street where the nursery was located, and it caused him almost to run into the back of a car that was stopped round the corner.
Was it Chloe? Did she make a complaint, after what… happened that evening between us?
It was an absurd notion. They’d been outside the work situation and she wasn’t his patient, she was Ben Okoro’s. Plus, he couldn’t imagine Chloe doing such a thing. It was true that they hadn’t spoken since the encounter nearly a week earlier, but he hadn’t sensed that was because of a brooding animosity towards him on her part. Rather, he assumed she felt as awkward about it as Tom himself did, and was leaving a period of time for them both to cool off before they sought contact again and broached the subject.
But still… Tom couldn’t, for the life of him and in all honesty, imagine who could have brought such an allegation otherwise. As a doctor he was well aware of the dangers of inappropriate conduct towards patients, given the imbalance of power between a suffering individual and the professional he or she had placed their trust in to help and heal them. As a single man in his early thirties, he was even more acutely aware of the potential pitfalls that could arise in his dealings with women patients. It was why he never, ever consulted a female patient without a chaperone present, whether the practice nurse or one of the receptionists or even one of the patient’s own family members. Tom could, with his hand on his heart, assert that his behaviour had been professional at all times.
Misperceptions could, and did, occur, of course. A handshake that was thought to linger too long, a friendly remark that was interpreted out of context... the potential for misinterpretation in human communication was inexhaustible. So it was possible that somebody had misconstrued his behaviour and found it offensive. Fair enough; he was quite prepared to discuss this, and to apologise unreservedly if necessary for any offence cause. But surely this wasn’t the way to go about addressing the grievance - to approach the press, first, before raising the matter with Tom himself, or even with the practice manager?
His mind swarming with possibilities, speculations, all tumbling about in a swamp of confusion, Tom dropped Kelly off at the nursery and headed for work, wondering what the next chapter in this bizarre new story was going to reveal.
***
After her meeting with Mike Sellers, Chloe went for a walk through the historic town centre, wandering among its medieval churches and authentic Tudor houses and yet seeing nothing.
She felt dazed, listless. What she’d heard in Mike’s office had left her almost concussed, as if she’d had a physical blow to the head that had shaken her mind loose from one or two of its moorings.
She’d arrived at the Pemberham Gazette’s offices on time, Jake deposited with a fellow mum this time instead of Mrs McFarland, and Mike had ushered into his pivate room and, coffee poured, had got straight to the point.
‘You know Tom Carlyle, I assume.’
‘Yes, he’s my son’s GP. Saved his life once, as a matter of fact.’
Mike nodded, as if it was the kind of story he’d heard many a time about Dr Carlyle. ‘There’s been an allegation against him. One of sexual harrassment.’
Chloe didn’t believe it. ‘By whom?’
‘A woman phoned the Gazette on Friday afternoon. I sat on the story for the rest of the day before mentioning it to Simon that evening in an email, and I suggested he pick it up on Monday. I didn’t count on him inadvertently copying his reply to everybody on the paper’s email list.’
‘What did this woman say? The caller? And who was she?’
‘Some lady in her thirties. She claims she was a patient of Dr Carlyle’s, and that he made advances to her during a house call he made a couple of weeks ago. She’d phoned asking for a doctor because she was too ill to attend the surgery, he went round, allegedly made sexually suggestive remarks to her, then groped her. She says she was too shocked and embarrassed to do anything about it immediately, but as time’s gone on she’s realised other women might be vulnerable too and she feels she has a duty to blow the whistle.’
Chloe sat back in her chair, her cooling coffee cup forgotten in front of her. This was so unlike the Tom Carlyle she recognised, she hardly knew where to begin.
She said, ‘But why did she contact the Gazette? Why not go to the GMC?’ Chloe knew the General Medical Council was Britain’s regulatory body for the country’s medical practitioners, legally authorised to discipline transgressors and in extreme cases revoke permanently their licence to practise.
Mike turned his palms upwards. ‘Who knows? She may yet do that. But she hasn’t gone just to our paper. She’s approached the other side, too. Yesterday evening.’
Chloe closed her eyes briefly. “The other side” was the Pember Valley News, the Gazette’s main rival in town, though their markets were quite different. The tabloid would have a field day with this story.
‘Mike, this is crazy,’ she said. ‘I don’t know Tom Carlyle all that well, but I know him well enough. He’s not the sort to do something like this. He’s too professional. He’s not exploitative.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you. But we can’t ignore the story. We have to follow up on it. It’s a genuine public-interest matter.’
Chloe watched him for a few seconds, then said: ‘Let me have it. This story. Let me do the digging.’
‘No.’
‘Mike, please.’
‘No. I’m not willing to debate it.’
‘Why?’
‘A couple of reasons.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘First, I’ve given it to Simon. He’s a staff reporter. I can’t very well take it away from him all of a sudden and give to a freelancer, even one as respected and admired as you, Chloe. Second,’ he went on as she opened her mouth to protest, ‘you’ve demonstrated by what you’ve just said that you’d be too biased. There’s no such thing as completely objective journalism, as I think we all recognise. But you sound too convinced that there’s nothing in this story. An attitude like that, however justified it might turn out to be, would jeopardise the investigation. So I’m sorry, Chloe, and no disrespect intended... but no.’
‘Can I help Simon then? For free? I could do the ferreting around, the legwork. He could write the copy.’
Mike looked at her curiously. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Because I know these allegations are baseless, Chloe wanted to say. Because I want to clear Tom Carlyle’s name. Because I… because I feel he deserves better. Instead she shrugged. ‘Just seems like the sort of story I could get my teeth into,’ she said. ‘But I realise you’re not here to provide work experience for me.’
There didn’t seem to be much more to talk about, so Chloe got up to go. Mike held the door for her.
‘Needless to say –’
Chloe said, ‘I know.’ She made a zipping motion at her mouth. He grinned and let her out.
Now, as she trudged the streets, the initial shock dissipating slowly and leaving her with a clearer head, Chloe ran through the possibilities. She wasn’t sure if Tom had learned of the allegations himself yet. She supposed he probably had, although if the woman in question had approached the papers alone then perhaps word hadn’t got out yet. If so, he was bound to find out today at the latest. The Pember Valley News in particular would be all over the story by now. The paper had something of a reputation for being proud of its precarious financial position. It was popular, and sold in high volumes, but its profits were forever being offset by the damages it was forced to pay out in successful lawsuits against it by people it had printed blatant lies about. Its policy seemed to be to rush to print first and take the consequences later. So this week’s edition, due out tomorrow, would probably already contain the allegations.
If Tom had heard the allegations already, Chloe felt a responsibility to talk to him about them. In a way, Mike’s refusal to allow her to pick up the story left her in an easier position; she could weigh in quite openly on Tom’s side and give him the support he needed without any conflict of interest coming in, without laying herself open to accusations of bias as a journalist. On the other hand, not having the backing of the Pemberham Gazette meant that her access to information was restricted. She couldn’t seek out and interview the woman who’d made the allegations, not in any official capacity as a reporter.
There was another option, Chloe knew. She could investigate the matter on her own, off her own bat, using the limited resources available to her. One such resource was her reputation. She was becoming known and respected in the local community for her journalism. This might open doors for her which would otherwise remain closed.
First things first, though. She needed to lay the groundwork by gathering as much information as she could about the allegations, and about who had made them. That inevitably meant sounding Tom out, first of all to find out if he’d heard about the charges against him yet.
He’d be at work, so she’d have to contrive a way to get to see him. She couldn’t bring Jake along on the pretence he was ill and needed to see the doctor. That was exactly the type of underhand journalistic trick the Pember Valley News would employ, and which she detested. Wasting professionals’ time in the course of their duties wasn’t her style.
No. She’d be up front, ring him and ask for a meeting, and gauge from his reaction whether or not he knew what it was about. Her journalistic ear was fine-tuned to detect subtle nuances of speech and breathing, and she felt confident she’d be able to tell quickly if he guessed that she’d heard about the allegations.
Chloe strode up a cobbled slope to a higher point in the town centre, where the phone reception was better. She dialled Tom’s number and waited.