Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [281]
Zed had tossed the paper to one side. What a load of tosh it all was, he thought. He knew what would be going on at The Source as a result of this piece and the one that had preceded it, though. It would be celebration of Mitchell Corsico’s unerring ability to sniff out a story, shape the public debate, and manipulate a member of the Royal Family— no matter how obscure— to take an action predetermined by the tabloid. He— Zedekiah Benjamin, struggling poet— was better off shot of the place.
He shoved his way out of his car. He could no longer avoid the inevitable, he thought, but he could damn well paint it as a positive alteration in his life if the proper words would come to him.
He had nearly reached the door when Yaffa came out of the building. She was wrestling with her rucksack, so he reckoned she was on her way to the university. She didn’t see him, and he considered ducking into the shrubbery in an attempt to hide from her, but she looked up and clocked him. She halted.
She stammered, “Zed. What a… well, what a… a lovely surprise. You didn’t say you were returning to London today.”
“It won’t be so lovely when I give you the news why I’m here.”
“What’s wrong?” She sounded so concerned. She took a step towards him and put her hand on his arm. “What’s happened, Zed?”
“The sack.”
Her lips parted. How soft they looked, he thought. She said, “Zed, you’ve lost your job? But you were doing so well! What about your story? The people in Cumbria? All of the mystery surrounding them and what they were hiding? What were they hiding?”
“The how and why and who-knows-what-and-when about having babies,” he told her. “There’s nothing else.”
She frowned. “And Scotland Yard? Zed, they cannot have been investigating having babies.”
“Well, that’s just the worst of it, Yaff,” he admitted. “If there was anyone from Scotland Yard up there, I never saw him.”
“But who was the woman, then? The Scotland Yard woman?”
“She wasn’t Scotland Yard. Haven’t the foggiest who she was and it doesn’t much matter now I’m through, eh?” He was carrying his laptop, and he shifted it from one hand to the other before going on. “Fact is,” he said, “I was rather enjoying our little charade, Yaff. The phone calls and all that.”
She smiled. “Me, too.”
He shifted the laptop again. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands and his feet all of a sudden. He said, “Right. Well. So when d’you want to schedule our breakup? Better be sooner rather than later, you ask me. If we don’t engineer it in the next couple of days, Mum’ll be talking to the rabbi and baking the challah.”
Yaffa laughed. She said in a way that sounded like teasing, “And is that such a very bad thing, Zedekiah Benjamin?”
“Which part?” he asked. “The rabbi or the challah?”
“Either. Both. Is that so bad?”
The front door opened. An elderly woman toddled out, a miniature poodle in the lead. Zed stepped aside to let her pass. She looked from him to Yaffa to him. She leered. He shook his head. Jewish mums. They didn’t even have to be one’s mum to be one’s mum, he thought with resignation. He said to Yaffa, “I don’t think Micah would much like it, do you?”
“Ah, Micah.” Yaffa watched the old lady and her poodle. The poodle lifted its tufted leg and did some business against a shrub. “Zed. I fear there is no Micah.”
He peered at her earnestly. “What? Damn. You broke up with the bloke?”
“He never was the bloke,” she said. “He was… Actually, Zed, he never was at all.”
It took Zed a moment. Then the moment felt like the