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'Frankly, I liked the piece and wanted to make it work, but I thought we needed more corroboration before we tore the country's Prime Minister apart on the day of an important by-election. A single anonymous piece of paper wasn't enough.'
'I didn't tear the Prime Minister apart, you did!' Mattie wanted to interject, but Preston rode through her objections.
'So I had a chat with some of my senior contacts in the Party, and late last night we got the corroboration we wanted just before our deadline. The copy needed to be adapted to take account of the new material and I tried to reach you but couldn't, so I rewrote it myself. I refused to let anyone else touch it, your material is too good. So "Our Political Staff" in this instance is me.'
'But that's not the story I sent in. I wrote a piece about a terrible opinion poll and the difficult days the Party was facing. You've turned it into the outright crucifixion of Collingridge. These quotes from "leading party sources", these criticisms and condemnations. Who else do you have working in Bournemouth apart from me?'
'My sources are my own business,' snapped Preston.
'Bullshit, Grev. I'm supposed to be your political correspondent at this bloody conference, you can't keep me in the dark like this. The paper's done a complete somersault over my story and another complete somersault over Collingridge. A few weeks ago he was the saviour of the nation as far as you were concerned, now he's - what does it say? - "a catastrophe threatening to engulf the Government at any moment". I shall be about as popular as a witch's armpit around the conference hall this morning. You've got to tell me what's going on!'
Preston, his carefully prepared explanation already in tatters, retreated into aggression and pomposity.
'As editor I am not in the dubious position of having to justify myself to every cub reporter stuck out in the provinces. You do as you're told, I do as I'm told, and we both get on with the job. All right?'
Mattie was just about to ask him who the hell it was who could tell the editor what to do when she heard the line go dead. She shook her head in amazement and fury. She couldn't and wouldn't take much more of this. Far from having new doors open up to her, she was finding her fingers getting caught as her editor kept slamming the doors shut. And who else had he got ferreting away at the conference?
It was a good thirty minutes later as she was trying to clear her thoughts and calm her temper with yet another cup of coffee in the breakfast room when she saw the vast bulk of Benjamin Landless lumbering across to a Window table for a chat with Lord Peterson, the party treasurer. As the proprietor settled his girth into a completely inadequate chair, Mattie wrinkled her nose. She didn't care for what she smelt.
The Prime Minister's political secretary winced. For the third time the press secretary had thrust the morning newspaper across the table at him, for the third time he tried to thrust it away. He knew how St Peter must have felt.
'For God's sake, Grahame.' The press secretary was raising his voice now; the game of ping-pong with the newspaper was irritating him. 'We can't hide every damned copy of the Telegraph in Bournemouth. He's got to know, and you've got to show it to him. Now!'
'Why did it have to be today?' he groaned. 'A by-election just down the road, and we've been up all night finishing his speech for tomorrow. Now hell want to rewrite the whole thing and where are we going to find the time? He'll blow a bloody gasket, and that won't help the by-election or the speech either.'
He slammed his briefcase shut in uncharacteristic frustration. 'All the pressure of the last few weeks, and now this. There just, doesn't seem to be any break, does there?'
His companion chose not to answer, preferring to study the view out of the hotel window across the bay. It was raining again.
The political secretary picked up the newspaper, rolled it up tight, and threw it across the room. It landed with a crash in the waste bin, overturning it and strewing the contents across the carpet. The discarded pages of speech draft mixed with cigarette ash and several empty cans of beer and tomato juice.
I'll tell him after breakfast.'
It was not to be his best decision.
Henry Collingridge was in a good mood and enjoying his eggs. He had finished his conference speech in the early hours of the morning, and had left his staff to tidy it up and have it typed while he went to bed. He had slept soundly if briefly for the first time during conference week.
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