Maximum Exposure: The Heartlands Series Read online

  MAXIMUM EXPOSURE

  Jenny Harper

  She’s a professional photographer – but is she ready to expose her heart?

  Adorable but scatterbrained newspaper photographer Daisy Irvine becomes the key to the survival of The Hailesbank Herald when her boss drops dead right in front of her. And while big egos and petty jealousies hinder the struggle to save the paper, Daisy starts another campaign – to win back her ex, Jack Hedderwick.

  Ben Gillies, returning after a long absence, sees childhood friend Daisy in a whole new light. He’d like to win her love, but discovers that she’s a whole lot better at taking photographs than making decisions, particularly when she’s blinded by the past.

  When tragedy strikes Daisy’s family, loyalty drives her home. But it’s time to grow up and Daisy must choose between independence and love.

  Acknowledgements

  Daisy Irvine works in a small regional newspaper, based in the fictitious town of Hailesbank. Her paper, The Hailesbank Herald, faces the kinds of challenges faced by many similar publications in today’s rapidly-changing world. For insights into this, and how a small newspaper works, I’m much indebted to staff at The Dumfries and Galloway Standard – though none of my characters is based on anyone I met there and The Hailesbank Herald and its news stories and general workings are entirely figments of my imagination.

  I enjoyed a long conversation with newspaper veteran Bill Rae, and I would have loved to have been able to include some of his colourful anecdotes in this story. However, the atmosphere he created for me definitely lingers still in the run-down Herald offices – no doubt fixed for ever in the nicotine-stained walls!

  I have to thank my friend and fellow novelists Sara Bain and Bill Daly for all their help, and Jane Knights for her patient reading of the manuscript. My husband, Robin, has put up with my hours at the computer with great tolerance, for which I thank him. Writing a novel requires a degree of self-belief that has occasionally faltered, and the support of my family and of many fellow authors has been absolutely necessary to drive me on. I am more grateful for it than I can say.

  Maximum Exposure is the first of my novels to be published by Accent Press and I’d like to thank Hazel Cushion for showing her faith in my work by signing me to her stable of authors, and her fantastic team for their terrific support.

  Note: Hailesbank and the Heartlands

  The small market town of Hailesbank is born of my imagination, as are the surrounding villages of Forgie and Stoneyford and the Council housing estate known as Summerfield, which together form The Heartlands. I have placed the area, in my mind, to the east of Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh.

  The first mention of The Heartlands was made by Agrippus Centorius in AD77, not long after the Romans began their surge north in the hopes of conquering this savage land. ‘This is a place of great beauty,’ wrote Agrippus, ‘and its wildness has clutched my heart.’ He makes several mentions thereafter of The Heartlands. There are still signs of Roman occupation in Hailesbank, which has great transport links to the south (and England) and the north, especially to Edinburgh, and its proximity to the sea and the (real) coastal town of Musselburgh made it a great place to settle. The Georgians and Victorians began to develop the small village, its clean air and glorious views, rich farming hinterland, and great transport proving highly attractive.

  The River Hailes flows through the town. There is a Hailes Castle in East Lothian (it has not yet featured in my novels!), but it sits on the Tyne.

  Hailesbank has a Town Hall, a High Street, from which a number of ancient small lanes, or vennels, run down to the river, which once was the lifeblood of the town.

  In my novels, characters populate the shops, cafes, and pubs in Hailesbank and the pretty adjoining village of Forgie, with Summerfield inhabitants providing another layer of social interaction.

  You can meet other inhabitants of the town and area in

  Face the Wind and Fly and

  Loving Susie – with more titles to follow!

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Part 2

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part 3

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  PART 1

  Chapter One

  Outside the offices of The Hailesbank Herald, a late frost edged the cobbles with a white rime that glinted and sparkled in the thin early morning light. Daisy Irvine retrieved her camera kit from the boot of her antiquated mud-splattered Suzuki and fumbled for her office key in the depths of her bulky fleece. Being the youngest ever chief photographer at the local newspaper was an achievement she was really proud of, but early-morning call-outs were a definite downside to the job.

  She shoved the door open with her shoulder and the heat in the office slapped into her with a force that felt almost physical. She peeled off her jacket, swung her bags onto her desk, and registered that the editor was already in and flouting the law as usual by smoking a cigarette. She was just working out how to frame her request for a pay rise when she heard a strange moan.

  She looked up and saw Angus MacMorrow fall, straight as a newly felled tree, onto the shabby threadbare carpet of his smoke-filled lair.

  Damn and blast.

  The pound signs in her mind popped and evaporated like soap bubbles in the pale February sun. She was sympathetic, but she wasn’t unduly alarmed. The old reprobate had collapsed before. Everyone knew his health was dodgy. Only a year ago he’d had a heart attack and spent a week in hospital recovering. Serve him right, the old bugger, for being overweight and seriously unfit.

  She marched across the main office to Big Angus’s door. Despite his recent health scare, he’d refused to stop smoking, cursed the government for banning the practice in the workplace, and ranted at length to anyone who would listen about the temerity of having his human rights curtailed by small-minded, meddling politicians.

  Daisy studied the slumped body. In the heat of the office, she felt as though her cheeks were on fire, yet all the colour had drained from Angus’s face. The folds of flesh that sagged from his chin in flabby jowls looked flaccid and waxy. Dammit, he didn’t look good. She stooped over him, prised his still burning cigarette from one hand, and stubbed it out in the ashtray he insisted on keeping on his desk. There were already three stubs there and it was still only six thirty. In his other hand he was clutching a sheet of paper. She wiggled it free and stuffed it in her pocket, then set about loosening his tie and collar and rolling his bulk – with great difficulty – round a teetering pile of back copies of the newspaper into the re
covery position. His timing was bad. It had been ages since she’d had more than a cost of living increase and she was feeling the pinch.

  Still thinking about the negative balance in her bank account, Daisy sighed. Her plea would probably have to wait a week or two now. Absently, she pushed up the rough tweed of Angus’s jacket and felt for his pulse. Nothing.

  She shifted her fingers and tried again.

  No movement, not even a tiny flutter.

  She must be missing something. Focusing her attention more sharply, she tried for a third time. She redoubled her efforts. A sense of alarm stirred somewhere near her stomach, which only a few minutes ago had been craving a bacon sandwich.

  Still nothing. Rocking back on her heels, she studied the inert form closely, her misty grey eyes widening. She’d seen dead bodies before in the line of duty, but this was the first time she’d been the person to find one. And the fact that the body was her boss, the much satirised, belligerent, annoying, lazy, old-school, cynical, hard-bitten, highly experienced – bizarrely lovable – editor of The Hailesbank Herald, made the whole thing much, much worse.

  Time to call an ambulance.

  Thirty miles away, Ben Gillies woke up in a small guest house on Lindisfarne to a fog so impenetrable that if he hadn’t known there was a castle not half a mile away, he could never have guessed at the fact.

  He pushed aside one chintzy floral curtain and peered out of the window. Pale grey light filtered through the wet glass but failed to catch the red highlights in his rich brown hair. The mist hung in heavy droplets on the bare branches of the tree outside his room. The garden looked dank and dreary, with patches of sad, limp detritus from last year’s growth begging to be cleared and a lawn that was clearly waterlogged. He could just about see the wall at the bottom of the sad expanse of green. He flicked the curtain back into place. Time to get moving.

  ‘So that’s it then?’ His mind went back again to the last scene he’d played out with Martina. No rows, just a kind of inexorable inevitability about the end of their four-year relationship.

  ‘I guess.’ She’d looked pinched and miserable, but there was no attempt at compromise, really nothing left between them. Her jumper hung off her in baggy folds, and her legs looked stick thin and delicate. For a second he felt protective, then he remembered that she didn’t want his protection.

  He’d picked up the last of his bags and stuffed it into the battered old car he’d bought for this journey.

  ‘Bye then. I’ll be in touch.’ He bent and kissed her forehead, a melting pot of a dozen conflicting emotions – sad, relieved, angry, empty, exasperated, and liberated.

  The idea of the walk – four days from Melrose to Lindisfarne – only came to him when he was already half way up the A1 on the way north to Hailesbank.

  ‘… the reverse of the route of the pilgrims when they fled with the body of St Cuthbert from Lindisfarne at the start of a two-hundred year journey,’ said the voice on the car radio. ‘This walk has everything. Hills, woods, rivers, moorland, and finally, a walk across the stretch of sand to the Holy Isle itself.’

  The programme had held his attention from the beginning. He used to love walking. He had all the time in the world, with no job, no commitments. What better way of marching into a new life than a long walk? Plenty of time to think – or not, as he pleased.

  On impulse, he swung off the main road and into Morpeth. There he added to his life’s clutter by purchasing stout walking boots, socks, a backpack, waterproofs, a vacuum flask, and a pair of walking poles. He made a few phone calls to arrange accommodation and baggage pick up and headed for Melrose.

  Nefertiti, ensconced in the front seat beside him, turned heads at every stop along the way. Ben grinned to himself and thoughts of Martina were edged out of his mind by memories of the day he’d bought the life-size clothes mannequin. He’d walked past a dress shop in Camden Town when it was closing down and the dummy had been mere pennies. He couldn’t resist the joke, even though he’d had to carry her along four streets and across a park to the flat he shared at the time with three other blokes. She’d been stark naked, her body a dull biscuit colour, a small bash disfiguring her right hip. She was remarkable for her lack of nipples and – mercifully – of pubic hair, though she sported a fetching black bob above a face that was oddly sweet.

  Nefertiti had caused a storm with his flat mates, who battled him endlessly for custody. They dressed her, undressed her, decorated her with police hats or underwear they’d begged, borrowed, or stolen from girlfriends, dates, or sisters. Finally she’d become more or less inseparable from a scarlet negligée and she’d stood in his window, gazing unquestioningly out on the world and causing, from time to time, great amusement to passers by.

  Martina had seen the joke, at first. But in time poor Nef became one of the causes for friction and was relegated to a cupboard. On the road, she wasn’t too much of a problem, but in towns he’d found that he had to cover her completely with a sheet to avoid unwelcome attention. In Melrose, leaving the car in the care of the guest house where he spent the first night, he took the usual precautions then, leaving even this responsibility behind, set off on his own personal pilgrimage.

  The four days since then had been the most uplifting, most liberating, most carefree of his life. He’d been blessed with great weather – cold and frosty but clear as a bell. Underfoot, the trail had been springy but passable. Day after day he plodded forward, feeling his lack of fitness at first, then through the tiredness finding new motivation and a sense of achievement. He’d seen buzzards and rooks, peewits and pheasants and even, one day, sitting perfectly still on a rock as day drew to a close, had watched a badger lumbering out of its set in search of food. The sharp edges of Martina’s face had begun to blur and fade and the tightness round his heart had loosened. In front of him, like the miles to Lindisfarne, his future lay uncertain but exciting, a path that promised adventure, twists and turns, with long vistas and not a few challenges.

  But now the mist had drifted in. Ben dropped the curtain and turned back into the room. His pilgrimage was over, Nefertiti was waiting for him, loyal and uncomplaining under her protective sheet in his rust-heap back in Melrose, and his parents were expecting him in Hailesbank.

  Who knew what the future held? Who cared? Ben turned towards the shower, rubbed his hand over the gingery stubble on his chin, and grinned. He felt very relaxed. And there was something exciting about uncertainty.

  Chapter Two

  Daisy Irvine, dreaming of thumps and bumps, falling timber and toppling editors, woke with tears wet on her cheeks and an empty space in her heart. She wished, more fervently than she had wished over a long year of wishing, that Jack Hedderwick was still by her side.

  Angus MacMorrow’s death had shaken her more than she cared to admit. So he’d shouted at her and cursed her (he yelled and swore at everybody) but he’d also been her mentor and guide since the day she’d joined The Hailesbank Herald, young and green and very unsure of herself. She ventured a pyjama-clad arm out into the cold of her cottage bedroom, pulled a tissue from the box by her bed, and blew her nose noisily. She thought she’d held it together well when Jack left, but maybe she’d just shoved the pain deep down inside her as she’d sleepwalked through the last year. Anyway, it seemed that Big Angus’s demise had brought all her insecurities to the fore because in the three days since he’d had that final fatal heart attack, she’d thought of little else but Jack.

  Pain sliced through her and came to a juddering halt in her heart. She took a deep breath, but still felt the unavoidable constriction, like a tourniquet tightening. It had been a year now and she still hadn’t got over the shock and anguish the break-up had caused.

  An image of Jack’s familiar features rose in her mind, as real as if he was standing in front of her. He had a sweet, baby face, with clear blue eyes and soft fair hair that curled in wisps round his ears. Jack the lad, with his lean frame and hips so sexy she still felt weak thinking about them – />
  Beside Daisy’s head, her alarm trilled loudly.

  ‘No-o-o-o.’

  She jumped, unprepared, and fumbled for the off button. It was too early. She wasn’t ready to face another day without Jack. The duvet, ice blue and feather-light, billowed above her as she pulled it over her head, then settled around her, snug and warm. Just ten minutes, she allowed herself. Then she’d shower and dress. Just ten minutes to remember all the wonderful things Jack had done for her.

  Precisely five seconds later the tumbling electronic notes of her mobile phone repeated insistently from her bag across the room.

  ‘Bother,’ said Daisy crossly as she threw back the cover and padded across the room in bare feet, reluctantly obedient to the phone’s command. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Daisy? We’ve just had a call from a punter. A lorry’s overturned south of Eyemouth and its load’s escaped.’ Sharon Eddy, the Herald’s chief reporter, sounded hideously cheerful for the time of day.

  ‘Escaped?’ It seemed an odd word to use.

  ‘Pigs. Big fat porkers. Bacon sarnies to you and me. They’re having a hell of a time catching them apparently. See you there soon as? Could make a great picture.’

  ‘OK,’ Daisy said resignedly, although she was already turning over the pictorial possibilities in her mind. Escaped pigs sounded like fun and anyway, life went on, with or without Jack, just as the paper had to go on without Angus MacMorrow.

  Shivering, she flicked on her one-bar electric heater and started to clamber blearily into her jeans. The shower would have to wait.

  Four days later, Daisy pulled on her black trouser suit, the one she kept for posh jobs and funerals. It came to her that today really was the end of an era. Angus MacMorrow was dead and this morning he would be buried.

  She flopped down on the edge of her bed to wriggle into her tights. They felt just that – tight. She had to get a grip on her weight or she’d never win Jack back, that much she knew. Since he’d left she’d overeaten constantly by way of compensation, though it only made her more miserable. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace opposite the end of the bed, assorted cuddly toys were ranged. They surveyed her reproachfully.