“They deserved it. They played like crap.” He places the little pink bowl in front of me and lays a spoon next to it.
I dimple up at him. “Thank you. And I like two cereals mixed together. It’s more interesting that way.”
Something flickers on his face and I can tell he likes me like this. Sweet. Pliant. Bed rumpled.
“You know,” he observes, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear and stroking a finger down the bridge of my nose, “I think your brattiness takes time to kick in, like a morning coffee. Speaking of, would you like some?”
I nod. “Please. But I’m not going to be a brat anymore.”
He laughs, turning to the coffee maker. “Oh, yes? Turn to page six. I think there’s a report of a flying pig.”
But I just smile. I’m not going to be a brat. He’ll see.
Chapter Six
I drop my folio with a thwack onto the counter and sit down. My head sinks onto my folded arms, and I groan. “When is this going to end?”
It’s been my third day back at class since the hearing and my father’s re-arrest. Everywhere I went at the Slade people stopped talking to stare at me. When I began conversations with my classmates they either gave me bland smiles and one-word responses, or chattered too much, falsely bright.
Dieter doesn’t reply. When I look up he’s drinking a glass of water, his expression grim.
“You must have been involved with other clients who were in the middle of a PR nightmare. How did they get through things like this?”
He looks down at the glass in his hand. “It just has to run its course. It’s not pleasant, but you have to be patient.”
I scowl at him. “I don’t want to just wait. I want to do something.” I’ve been thinking a lot about the things my father has done as editor of the Herald. My strategy used to be to ignore the paper and the things he published, but I can’t ignore it now. “I want to help people like Connie Masters.” I don’t know where the impulse came from, but I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently.
Dieter nods slowly. “That’s understandable. In what way?”
I exhale slowly, my cheeks ballooning. “I don’t know.”
“You can’t make up for the role the paper played in her death,” he says, his tone blunt. “Assuming you fe
el that way about it?”
I grimace. “How could I not?” Connie Masters was a child actor in a soap. Her part was written out when she was fourteen and she didn’t find acting work again. Eight years passed, and then a few months ago the Herald published a piece “revealing” that Masters was a drug addict and working as a prostitute. She killed herself two days later.
“Did you see the follow-up piece after her death?” I ask.
“I did. I thought it was very cruel.”
The Herald, keen to deflect blame, published a piece reaffirming that she was a prostitute but that she wasn’t a drug addict, she was suffering from depression. The article left you with the impression that Masters’s suicide was inevitable, and it was mere coincidence that she’d died on the heels of the original exposé. My father worked personally with the journalist on the piece.
Masters’s family, and every other newspaper in London, disagreed. My daughter went through a hard time and a few years ago she did, briefly, engage in sex work, Mr. Masters told the Gazette. She was ashamed of it. Deeply ashamed. She struggled with it, and her depression. But she was getting better until that muckraking paper got a hold of the story. Her blood is on their hands.
Dieter frowns and looks down at his glass again.
“What?” I ask, sensing that he wants to say something.
“Your heart is in the right place, Adrienne, but no one will thank you for speaking out about Masters after everything that’s happened.”
He’s probably right. I chew my lip, thinking. “Do you...” I begin, but trail off.
“Go on.”
I sigh. “I didn’t think I was the sort of person who cared what other people thought of me. Do you think it’s selfish of me to want to show people I’m not the terrible person they think I am?”
“Of course not. It’s the truth, after all. You’re a very good person, Adrienne. It hurts because they’re wrong.”