One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

about PERC.’
    ‘Not quite. I researched it, then I told the landlord downstairs that I was doing a story on it and that I’d circulate it to all the neighbours and I’d tell their staff about the effects of working with PERC, so he reduced the rent by one hundred euro.’
    Steve looked at her, shocked. ‘They could just have got another tenant.’
    ‘I told them I’d tell the next tenant and every other tenant they found. They panicked.’
    He shook his head. ‘You’re …’
    ‘Smart?’ she smiled.
    ‘A journo scumbag bitch,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should stop cleaning this now, they’re right.’ He continued looking at her as if he suddenly didn’t recognise her.
    ‘Hey! They’re the ones using PERC!’
    ‘Then move somewhere else.’
    ‘It would be too expensive.’
    ‘Kitty, you can’t just threaten people like that. You can’t use your job to get what you want. That’s called bullying, you know.’
    ‘Oooh.’ She rolled her eyes, but dropped the sponge into the bucket in frustration and opened the door to the flat. She left the door open, sat at the kitchen table and waited for him to follow her. She bit into one of the cupcakes she’d brought back home. Steve closed the door behind him but he didn’t sit down.
    ‘Is there something you want to get off your chest, Steve?’
    ‘I came by to make sure that you were feeling okay about the trial tomorrow, but the more you talk, the more I can’t help but not feel sorry for you.’
    The cupcake felt like a rock in her mouth. She swallowed it quickly. And then, finally, it came.
    ‘You accused a well-respected PE teacher, who is married, with a young family, of sexually abusing two students and fathering a child. On television. In front of the entire country. And you were wrong.’
    She looked at him, her eyes stinging. Her heart hurt from the way he was speaking to her, and though she knew she had been wrong, she had made a mistake, she still didn’t feel that she deserved to be spoken to like that.
    ‘I know all of this, I know what I did,’ she said more confidently than she felt.
    ‘And are you sorry?’
    ‘Of course I’m bloody sorry,’ she exploded. ‘My career is destroyed. Absolutely nobody will ever hire me again. I’ve cost the network who knows what, if he wins his case, which he probably will, and God knows how much in legal fees, and
their
reputation. I’m over.’ Feeling unnerved, Kitty watched her usually calm friend struggle with his composure.
    ‘You see, this is what bugs me, Kitty.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your tone, you’re so … flippant about it all.’
    ‘Flippant? I’m
panicking
here, Steve!’
    ‘Panicking for yourself. For “Katherine Logan, TV journalist”,’ he said, using his fingers as inverted commas.
    ‘Not just that,’ she swallowed. ‘I’m really worried about my job on
Etcetera
too. There’s a lot at stake, Steve.’
    He laughed to himself but it wasn’t a happy sound. ‘That’s exactly what I mean, you’ve just done it again. All I’ve heard from you is how
your
name,
your
reputation and
your
profession are ruined. It’s all about you. When I hear of you doing stupid things like threatening your landlord with a story, then it bothers me. You bother me.’ He stopped pacing back and forth and fixed his eyes on her. ‘You have for the past year.’
    ‘The past
year
? Oh, okay, I think somebody has definitely been hanging on to a few issues,’ she replied, shocked. ‘I made a mistake in my story. The thing about the apartment? That was harmless! Hold on, I remember you pretending to find a
pubic hair
in your burger on the very last bite just so you could get another one for free. And you did too. That poor manager, you embarrassed him so much in front of the other customers, he had no choice.’
    ‘I was eighteen,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re thirty-two.’
    ‘Thirty-three. You missed my last birthday,’ she added childishly. ‘It’s the way I am; I find stories in everything.’
    ‘Stories to use people.’
    ‘Steve!’
    ‘They used to be good stories, Kitty. Positive. A story for the sake of telling a good story. Not about exposing people, or setting people up.’
    ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t aware that your story about Victoria Beckham’s new line was going to change the world,’ she said cattily.
    ‘What I’m saying is, I used to like reading them, hearing about them. Now you’re just …’
    ‘Now I’m what?’ Her eyes filled.
    ‘It doesn’t