Forfeit

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The letter from Tally came on the day Bert Checkov died. It didn’t look like trouble; just an invitation from a glossy to write an article on the Lamplighter Gold Cup. I flicked it across the desk to the Sports Editor and went on opening the mail which always accumulated for me by Fridays. Luke-John Morton grunted and stretched out a languid hand, blinking vacantly while he listened to someone with a lot to say on the telephone.

‘Yeah... yeah. Blow the roof off,’ he said.

Blowing the roof off was the number one policy of the Sunday Blaze, bless its cold heart. Why didn’t I write for the Sunday Times, my wife’s mother said, instead of a rag like the Sunday Blaze? They hadn’t needed me, that was why. She considered this irrelevant, and when she couldn’t actively keep it quiet, continued to apologise to every acquaintance for my employment. That the Blaze paid twenty-eight per cent more than the Times, and that her daughter was expensive, she ignored.

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