One Hundred Names

‘I don’t know, Pete. That all seems a bit … old?’ Not a popular thing to say when people were discussing their work. Some tutted and shifted in their chairs. ‘What I mean is, the Constance tribute. Constance hated republishing old articles.’

‘We’re not just doing that, Kitty. If you’d been listening properly you’d have heard that. And we have to look back, that’s what a tribute piece does.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Kitty said, trying not to annoy anybody. ‘But Constance said it was like using used toilet paper, remember?’ She laughed. Nobody else did. ‘She wouldn’t want to just keep looking back. She’d want something new, something that looked forward, something celebratory.’

‘Like what?’ Pete asked, and Kitty froze.

‘I don’t know.’

Someone sighed heavily.

‘Kitty, this twelve-page spread is to celebrate Constance. We have the rest of the magazine to create new stories,’ Pete said, trying to sound patient but instead sounding like a patronising father at the edge of his tether. ‘If you don’t have any ideas to offer then I’m going to move on.’

She thought long and hard, while all eyes were bearing down on her. Instead of coming up with ideas, all she could think was that she couldn’t think of anything. She hadn’t been able to think of anything for six months, so she surely wouldn’t start now. Eventually people began to look away, feeling embarrassed for her, but Pete kept the spotlight on her, as if to prove a point. She wanted him to move on; why wasn’t he moving on? Her cheeks burned and she looked down to avoid meeting anyone’s eye, feeling that she couldn’t possibly sink any lower.

‘I don’t know,’ she eventually said, quietly.

Pete moved on but Kitty couldn’t concentrate on a word he said thereafter. She felt as though she had let Constance down – she was sure she had let herself down, and though it still hurt, she was used to that now. She kept wondering what exactly Constance would want. If she was in this room, what story would she want to tell …? That’s when Kitty thought of it.

‘I’ve got it,’ she blurted out, interrupting Sarah’s feedback on how her story on contrasting nail varnish sales increases in a recession with lipstick sales during the Second World War was shaping up.

‘Kitty, Sarah is talking.’ Others looked at her annoyed.

She shrunk lower in her chair and waited for Sarah to finish. When she had, Pete moved on to Trevor. She sat through two more ideas pitches, neither of which Pete would probably use, and then finally he looked back at her.

‘The last time I spoke to Constance she had an idea that she wanted to run by you. I don’t know if she did or not. It was just over a week ago.’ When she had been living and breathing.

‘No. I haven’t spoken to her for a month.’

‘Okay. Well, she wanted to tell you an idea she had and that was a piece about asking retired writers, if they had the opportunity to write the story they always wanted to write, what would it be?’

Pete looked around the table and he could see that people looked interested.

‘Writers like Oisín O’Ceallaigh and Olivia Wallace,’ Kitty continued.

‘Oisín is eighty years old and lives on the Aran Islands. He hasn’t written a word for anyone for ten years and hasn’t written anything in the English language for twenty.’

‘They’re the people she mentioned.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ Kitty replied, cheeks burning again at being repeatedly questioned.

‘And are these interview pieces about their stories or are we asking them to write their actual stories?’

‘First she said I should interview them—’

‘She said you should interview them,’ Pete interrupted.

‘Yes …’ She paused, unsure what the problem was. ‘But then she said you could ask the writers to write the stories they always wanted to write.’

‘Commission them?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Writers of that standard, that’s a costly piece.’

‘Well, it’s a tribute to Constance, so maybe they’d offer their time for free. If it’s a story they’ve always wanted to write, perhaps that’s payment enough. It will be cathartic.’

Pete looked doubtful. ‘How did this conversation come about?’

Everyone looked from Pete to Kitty.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I’m trying to find a link between this idea you have and it being a tribute to Constance.’

‘It was one of her final feature ideas.’

‘But was it? Or was it yours?’

Everyone looked uncomfortable and shifted in their chairs.

‘Are you accusing me of using this tribute piece so that I can use one of my own ideas?’ Kitty had wanted it to sound bigger than him, superior, to make him seem small, but instead her voice came out battered and meek, and she sounded as if she was doing exactly what she was accused of.

‘Why don’t we call this meeting off for now and everyone can get back to their desks?’ Cheryl added in the awkward silence.

Everyone quickly exited the room, glad to be away from the awkwardness. Pete remained standing at the head of the table, two hands spread on the surface, leaning over. Cheryl remained, too, at the table, which annoyed Kitty.

‘Kitty, I’m not trying to be smart here but I want this to be authentically Constance. I know you knew her more personally than the rest of us but you’re talking about a conversation you both had alone. I want to make sure it was something Constance really wanted to do.’

Kitty swallowed and suddenly doubted herself. What had once been a crystal-clear memory of the conversation now seemed fuzzy. ‘I can’t tell you if it was something she really wanted to do, Pete.’

‘Come on, Kitty,’ he laughed with frustration. ‘Make up your mind, will you?’

‘All I know is that I asked her what story she had always wanted to write but never did. She liked the question and said that it would be a good idea for a feature, that I should do a piece where I asked retired writers about the story they’d always wanted to write or, better yet, asked them to write the piece. She said she would talk to you about it.’

‘She didn’t.’

Silence.

‘It’s a good idea, Pete,’ Cheryl said quietly, and Kitty was momentarily glad she’d stayed.

Pete tapped his pen on the table while he thought. ‘Did she tell you her idea?’

‘No.’

He didn’t believe her. She swallowed.