She knows she doesn't have to be there, but she wants to be.
Their relative positions in his office seem wrong, different, but that - she supposes – is only fitting. Because everything is wrong now, everything has changed for both of them.
Sitting in his chair, Malcolm has his back to her, watching the TV screen as he so often does. Did. The only striking difference is the lack of animation. Normally while he's watching rolling news he's on his phone, pacing, throwing things at the screen or cursing enthusiastically whoever's face is filling it. Today he's both silent and still. It's like someone took a single photograph of Malcolm Tucker and then threw away the contact strips.
"I've finished the shredding. Can I get you anything?"
As soon as she says it sounds ridiculous. After a moment or two, he moves his head anyway, turns his profile to her. She doesn't think she's ever seen him look so old.
"No. Thanks darlin'."
She doesn't move though. Strictly speaking there's nowhere to go.
In front of him, his own face fills the screen for maybe the fifteenth time that morning. The same shot every time: the police station in the background, microphones craning in from every angle. His eyes look hugely grey and luminous, beaten. It's that that he can't stop watching. She knows it because she can't look away either.
Stepping the last few feet to his chair she stands behind him. She can hear him breathing now, slow but shallow. Can almost hear the internal gears of his brain clicking round, gears that normally move so fast and with such intensity they amaze her. A deep sadness comes over her again and she leans her weight against the back of his chair. The slight contact seems to stir him.
"Are you off?"
"No, I still have…"
"Get off. You should go home." His voice is flat, playing at normal. "Don't worry. I'll give you a call in the morning and we'll figure something out."
"Figure what out?"
She can't help the note of incredulity. He sighs, a twitch of irritation.
"You'll be ok. Phil Glanville needs someone. He'll do you right."
"Phil Glanville!?"
She leans back, and she sees him incline his head, shift his jaw, every sign that would normally tell her to back the fuck off, but she can't help herself.
"Phil fucking Glanville?! The same Phil Glanville you said "couldn't find his own fucking cock if he'd ripped it out himself and nailed it to his fucking corkboard for safe keeping"? The Phil Glanville you last week called "an insufferable little incest-begotten paedophile?" THAT Phil Glanville?"
His brows are lowered now. She of all people should know what that meant.
"Jesus, he's not that fucking bad." He shoots a look sideways at her, "You're out of school uniform long enough now, you'll be safe. Just avoid the grey suit. It makes you look like a saucy prefect."
She feels her face heating up. Not through embarrassment, she's sure as fuck had enough comments about her arse, legs, tits and everything else between thrown at her in this building before now, there's precious little in this frigging boy's club that can fluster her. No, what's getting her blood pressure up is the casual fucking way he's willing to hand her over – packaged up in her own little pet carrier – to the first pompous twat he can think of who's looking for a Girl Friday.
"Oh fuck you!"
The corner of his mouth twists upwards.
"Too late for that now darlin'. Unless you want to get behind the other cunts waiting their turn. Fucking me is the new fucking black. They're advertising fucking me on fucking Facebook down the righthand side. With a little picture of my fucking arse next to it."
The words are pure Malcolm, but the unfamiliar hollow sound of his voice, the pain she knows only she hears just takes all the fight out of her and her spine loses its stiffness. She rests her hands on the back of his chair and then slowly, almost reflectively, she lowers her chin to the top of his head. Beneath her, she feels his emotions uncoiling like a huge rope. Everything he's feeling sliding out and up and into her.
His hand reaches behind him and closes around the curve of her ass, pulls her in. And they stand there together like that, as the whole newsreel begins again.