Business As Usual.
Set two weeks after "Shouldn't I be Taller." Lynda has been dwelling on Matt Kerr's words: "Be careful what you say to people".
………
Kenny surveyed the scene before him. On the surface it all seemed fine: business as usual. Over to his right he could hear Julie asking Sarah how many ks in picnic. Further into the newsroom, Frazz was dozing at his desk, Tiddler was begrudgingly handing the mail to Spike, while he spun around on his chair and Colin was trying to talk Billy into some dodgy scam involving the school computer system. People were bustling back and forth, tapping away on their typewriters. Yes, everything seemed normal, but somehow it just wasn't right. There just wasn't the usual energy or sense of urgency.
Of course, Lynda wasn't there just then and it was normal for people to relax a little, when she was out of the building. The problem was, for the last week or so, they'd been acting that way even when she was around. And she'd been letting them.
Kenny was so deep in thought that he didn't notice Lynda's arrival, until she was standing right in front of him, scowling. "Oh, sorry Lynda." Kenny said, leaping out of her chair. "Just keeping it warm for you."
"Shame you couldn't have managed that a few weeks ago." came Lynda's acid reply. Then she got that look again. The one Kenny was only just getting to know and which he did not like at all. "Sorry." She mumbled.
It wasn't the dig about 'The Gaz' which bothered Kenny, although God knows he did feel awful about that. It was the apology. In the past two weeks, he'd heard the word 'sorry' from Lynda Day more often than in the previous ten years put together. When he was younger, he'd actually dreamt of Lynda apologising to him. He'd had no idea how disturbing it would be when it eventually happened.
"So, what did Kerr say?"
"Boring, banal, tedious and tiresome."
"He liked it, then?"
Lynda smiled wryly at her friend. "He says if the next edition isn't an improvement on the last two, we're going to be in serious trouble. We need to shape up, Kenny. Any ideas?"
"I've been racking my brains all morning, Boss. There's nothing wrong that I can put my finger on: they just lack spark."
"The stories or the writers?" asked Lynda.
"Both."
"So come on then, what do I do?"
"Light a spark under them?" Suggested Kenny, hopefully.
Throughout this conversation, Spike's voice had been getting louder and louder, as he read snippets of his love letters to an unimpressed Tiddler. It had now risen so much that Lynda could hardly hear Kenny over it. She stopped to listen for a second and Kenny, reading her face, could tell that she was nettled by what she was hearing. She whirled around to face Spike and the whole news team prepared to be entertained.
"Spike!" Lynda snapped.
Spike broke off mid-sentence and smiled innocently up at his editor. "Yes, Lynda?"
Lynda's eyes flashed with irritation and she inhaled deeply. "This should be good." murmured Kenny to Sarah, who had come to tell him that somebody had used her sellotape and now she couldn't find the end. Lynda exhaled just as deeply.
"I appreciate that you have a lot of important mail to read." Lynda was obviously trying hard to remain calm.
"Well, to these girls, I'm an important male." Spike was obviously trying hard to get a rise out of her.
"Nevertheless, I'd be grateful if you could possibly organise your personal life, during your personal time and help produce a newspaper, while you're at work?"
"I do try, Lynda. But the women folk of Norbridge know that I work here and that as yet I don't have a date for tonight, so they write to ask me out. I don't know which mail is personal and which is business until I open it. So you see I'm in quite a dilemma." Spike smiled sweetly. "I figured that the best way to stop all of these distractions and get on with my work is to filter through the mail and pick a date."
Lynda shifted her weight from one foot to another and stared coolly at the American in front of her.
"Of course," Spike drawled "reading all of these letters is going to be time consuming, so why don't we just say that you'll come to the party with me tonight and then I'll get straight back to work?" He stared intently at her, while a grin spread slowly across his face. His eyes were impertinent and, as ever, hopeful.
"I'd love to spend the night with you, Spike."
"Yeah?!" Spike's eyes lit up with excitement.
"Absolutely. I just think I'd rather it was somewhere more private." Lynda's voice purred softly.
"Okay. That can be arranged. No problem."
"How about the newsroom? Maybe, 5.30?" The purr was still there and it took Spike a couple of seconds to work out the implication of her words. By the time he'd done so, Lynda was already back at her desk and talking to Kenny.
"He falls for it every time." Lynda told Kenny, rolling her eyes, as they shared a smile. Kenny was pleased: it was the first proper smile he'd seen from her in a while. It was gone, in the next instant, and Lynda slumped into her chair. "So what do I do about the next edition?"
"You're going to have to talk to the writing team. I don't think they're doing it deliberately but they're getting lazy. I've spoken to them, but I think they'll take more notice of you."
"OK." Lynda sighed. "Send the worst one over."
………
"She's doing it again." Frazz told Spike.
"Huh?"
"Vampira. She's being all nice again and it's freaking me out. It's not natural. She's been having little pep talks with everyone who needs to pull their socks up and she hasn't sworn, threatened or intimidated even once. She really loves my work on the crossword but just thinks it'd be helpful if I checked some of the spellings in a dictionary."
At that moment, Lynda walked past and asked Frazz how it was going.
"Yeah, alright." came the uneasy reply.
"Great! You'll get the hang of it in no time." Lynda smiled and was on her way.
Frazz exaggerated a shudder. "Seriously, if this carries on much longer, I'm out of here!"
Spike just chewed his pencil, thoughtfully.
………
"Um, Lynda?"
"Yes, Spike?"
"About tonight,"
"Mmm?"
"See the thing is, I just don't think it's a good idea." Lynda stared at him blankly. Any other day, Spike might have been wise enough to drop this line of conversation, but today he was on a mission. "I've been giving the matter a lot of thought and have decided it just wouldn't be fair for me to spend a night alone with you in the newsroom. You'd never be able to resist me."
"We won't be alone, Spike."
"But if we were, you'd find me hard to resist!" Spike was victorious.
"I said no such thing."
"Face it Lynda. You'd be all over me like a rash."
"I'd more likely catch a rash!"
"Look, Boss. I don't want to put you in an awkward position. I just think that if we go somewhere public, we'll both be a lot safer."
"Spike!" Lynda's voice had risen to the familiar screech, which indicated that he was getting to her. Spike's eyes sparkled with mirth. "I am not going to that party with you. There are a myriad of reasons for this but one of the most obvious is that you won't be there either. You're going to be here, working!"
Spike lowered his voice to a confidential whisper and took a step closer to Lynda. "Look, Lynda, I know you've engineered this late duty thing as a means of spending time with me and believe me, there's nothing I'd like more than an intimate evening with you. I'm just trying to do the gentlemanly thing." Spike gently brushed a tendril of hair away from Lynda's face. She flushed.
"Will you stop being so ridiculous?! I am not going anywhere with you. We have a newspaper to put out, incase you've forgotten, and we'll both be working on it all night!"
"You know as well as I do that we wouldn't get much work done." He gave her a knowing smile.
"Yes, we bloody would! Don't you understand how much pressure we're under? Kerr says the paper's in danger of closing and this time, it's nobody's fault but our own. It's just not good enough. Why do I seem to be the only person around here who realises this? I've got to somehow manipulate the mind-numbing drivel that is currently passing as news into something people will actually want to read. Honestly, the twaddle that's being handed in, I'm not sure that you lot can even spell your own names. The infants at the local primary school could produce a better newspaper. In fact, I think they might have helped out with the graphics on the last two editions. We did use crayons didn't we Julie?" Lynda shouted across the newsroom. "They wouldn't want to actually read the paper though: the best the Junior page has had to offer is "6 year old sticks plasticine up nose." And don't get me started on the photographs. It might be your first week, Kevin, but you'd think after the third time you'd have learnt to take the damned lens cap off. I've had to make the crossword cryptic, in order for Frazz's clues not to be completely ridiculous. The writing team don't seem to know any words longer than two syllables and they're blaming the reporters who, despite spending no more than ten minutes in the newsroom at any given time, seem to be completely incapable of finding a single piece of news. At this rate our next headline will need to be "Evolution is a myth: Junior Gazette staff prove Darwin wrong" Hey, Kevin we could use that picture of the monkeys you took, when you were supposed to be covering the opening of the snake pit at the zoo. We could put it next to a picture of the news team and ask our readers to spot the difference!" Lynda was really warming to her subject. So much so that she didn't notice the discreet smiles spreading across the faces of the team she was so vehemently insulting.
"I'm supposed to edit this heap of garbage into a somewhat respectable newspaper. Pardon me for being so pessimistic but Mission Impossible had nothing on this. And you," she turned her attention to Spike, who tried to look suitably chastised "you talk to me about not getting any work done! We've got so much bloody work to do, you'll be lucky if you get out of here before Monday. But don't worry; we won't be alone, because this week late duty applies to everybody. You can all cancel whatever plans you've made for tonight. Nobody leaves here before eleven and I want every one of you back in at seven tomorrow. Pack sandwiches: you'll have to eat while you work. You'll each be allocated a 2 minute toilet slot every hour, but apart from that it's work, work, work. And we'll keep this up until we can produce a paper that isn't a total embarrassment!"
Lynda surveyed the scene before her. 23 shocked faces stared numbly back at her, as the significance of her words sank in. "Well what are you all standing there for?!" She bellowed. "Get back to work!"
The spell was broken and the team was reanimated. They all went back to the jobs they had been doing, with a renewed sense of urgency. Spike, a twinkle in his eye, dared to ask: "So, shall I take that as a maybe?"
He hadn't expected a reply and Lynda did not disappoint him. Rather, she turned on her heel, flounced back to her desk and began rummaging through her in tray. As she did so, she missed the wink that Spike shot at Kenny.
"Kenny, where the hell is the Jamieson file?" She asked in exasperation.
Kenny patiently withdrew the file from the top of the pile and handed it to her.
"Thanks." Lynda smiled, begrudgingly.
"Welcome back, Boss." Kenny beamed. Lynda looked at him for a while and then shrugged.
"Well at least I've proved you wrong." She said.
"I'm sure you have, Lynda, but I'd be interested to know how." Kenny could not keep the amusement out of his voice.
"You said one day I'd get to like being nice."
The two of them shared a smile and then returned to work: business as usual.