Read an Excerpt
Copyright © Thom Collins 2017. All Rights Reserved, Totally Entwined Group Limited, T/A Pride Publishing.
“Why me?” I grumbled. “I know nothing about rugby.”
Anna Madley, editor of The Woodbridge Echo, didn’t take excuses, not from anyone. “You wrote that article on the Durham Cricket team, didn’t you? You claimed to know nothing about that when you started.”
“But rugby!”
“You’re a journalist, Josh. What you don’t know, you find out. Do your research. That’s your job.” Pushing her glasses onto the bridge of her nose, she turned her attention to the computer monitor. The conversation was over. Matter dismissed.
With gritted teeth, I left her office, returning to the icy room I shared with the paper’s other two reporters. The only window was an opaque rectangle set high on the wall, which allowed minimal daylight into the poky space. The room was poorly lit by two florescent strips and scant warmth came from a single-bar electric heater. It was mid-February and the room was freezing.
Dixie Ellis wore fingerless gloves as she tapped away at her keyboard with her bright red hair piled beneath a fur-trimmed hat.
“What did you get?” she asked, wrapping her fingers round a mug.
“Local rugby team. They’ve won a county championship and qualified for a national cup.” I sank heavily into my chair. “I hate sports stories. Why couldn’t she give it to Kenny? He always does sport. He loves that crap.”
“Kenny’s on court duty this week.”
“Has he left already?”
She nodded.
Bugger. That threw any chance of a swap to the wind.
I clicked off my screen saver and ran a Google search on the Woodbridge Warriors.
I’m a realist and knew that working on the local paper would never lead to a world-grabbing headline, but even in Woodbridge there were more compelling stories than the rugby team progressing through a competition. Dixie was following a spate of home burglaries at the upper end of town, and a pub fight on Saturday night which had turned into a near riot. I doubted our readers had much interest in the rugby win either. Woodbridge was a football town. Any other sport was redundant.