Widows & Orphans by Michael Arditti

stifling her usual contempt for her views in a bid for female solidarity.
    ‘Oh, you know me,’ Sheila said, looking ruffled. ‘I’m just an old fuddy-duddy. In my day, blowjobs were something you got at the hairdresser.’ Brian sniggered; Ken and Stewart laughed; even Jake cracked a smile. After a moment of confusion, Sheila assumed a knowing expression as if to claim credit for the joke. ‘Minds like sewers! I’m surprised at you, Brian Gannon,’ she said, simpering at her favourite, oblivious to the biro he was holding on which a busty blonde lost her bikini every time that he tipped it up. ‘Don’t let these reprobates lead you astray.’
    ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Innocent as a lamb.’
    Sheila raised an eyebrow, the effect of which was to set her blinking uncontrollably. ‘Now I can’t stand here gossiping allday,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget the children will be here at two. Mary’s coming in at noon to give the place a good clean. It looks like a pigsty.’
    ‘Great,’ Stewart said, as she left the room. ‘So now it will smell like one too.’
    ‘That’s not kind,’ Duncan said.
    ‘Come on, Duncan. You may shut your eyes to what’s happening in the woods,’ Rowena said, refusing to let the matter drop, ‘but you can’t ignore what’s under your nose.’
    ‘Literally,’ said Jake, laconic as ever.
    ‘You’d have thought things would improve when her husband gave up his boat,’ Stewart said.
    ‘But it’s not a fishy smell,’ Brian said. ‘More like carpet glue.’
    ‘That’s enough!’ Duncan said. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. Mary has more to worry about than a spot of BO. For her last birthday I bought her an M&S cardigan. Sheila caught her taking it back and exchanging it for food.’
    Cheered by their chastened expressions, Duncan returned to his office, where he set out to read the FA report into racist chants on Francombe FC terraces, but his mind remained fixed on the Nature Reserve. Rowena might attack him for wilful blindness, but her wild speculation about Dragon’s attackers made him all the more determined to stick to his editorial code. Dwindling circulation notwithstanding, exposure in the
Mercury
had the power to destroy livelihoods, even lives. Unlike civic corruption or corporate fraud, sexual impropriety did not warrant the risk. Nothing in his sorely debased profession disgusted him more than the tabloid tactic of pandering to prurience under the guise of upholding morality. So when the duty manager of the Metropole Hotel had rung with the story of a TV weatherman who spent the night with a hostess from the Sugarbaby nightclub, he put down the phone, just as he did when a disaffected Liberal activist alerted him to the party chairman’s affair with the Labour leader’s wife. The dilemma had been more acute whena police contact brought him a list of local paedophiles during the furore over the Hawksey Road Children’s Home but, with the fate of Bert Ponsonby’s mother in mind, he had deemed the threat of vigilantism to be greater than that of the men’s reoffending and refused to publish their names. Linda was outraged, repeatedly asking what he would have done had Jamie been one of the victims. He replied that his gut reaction would have been different but his decision the same. The
Mercury
was Francombe’s conscience, not its judge and definitely not its executioner.
    The visit of a group of sixth-formers from Francis Preston High School gave him the opportunity to canvas the views of the next generation. With the exception of Brian, who enjoyed showing off to his near contemporaries, the staff regarded such visits, of which there were four or five a year, as both an intrusion and an embarrassment. To Duncan, however, they were a far more agreeable part of the
Mercury
’s outreach programme than the editor’s surgeries, where he was at the mercy of every crank who harangued him on the paper’s failure to highlight the menace of chewing gum