Page 15 of Wife After Wife

He may be heir to a media empire, but he’d had little to say about current affairs. He’d talked a lot about trends, brands, target markets, rather than about anything that was actually important, like the profound changes taking place in the Soviet Union, or the fact that Margaret bloody Thatcher had been in power for ten long years now, and look at the state of the north after so many pit closures.

Harry had probably never been to the north.

Terri, from a working-class Sheffield family, had clawed her way to the top, and she wasn’t going along with this upper-class bollocks, one media company rubbing another’s back. When she got back to the office, she’d do a little digging, whether they liked it or not.

Harry

Harry, Katie, and Maria were en route to London Zoo. The interview a few days ago had gone well. It always helped when the journalist was female.

Katie was staring stonily out of the window of the car sent to fetch them, while Maria sat buckled between them, gabbling nonsense to her favorite fluffy rabbit toy, Tog. It was unlike Katie not to be joining in.

Harry had to admit, he hadn’t handled telling Katie about the photo shoot at all well. Thanks to his burgeoning commitments, he’d spent next to no “quality time,” as people were now calling it, with his little family these past few months. Katie had initially been enthusiastic about the trip to the zoo, assuming Harry was trying to make up for recent neglect. But when he’d mentioned that theSunday Timeswanted to follow them around, she’d accused him of needing his family “only when it was useful for PR purposes.” That had hurt.

The taxi dropped them at the zoo offices, and a girl from the press office came to meet them. The photographer and his assistant were already there. They introduced themselves as Alex and Ken.

“Hi, I’m Sue,” said the press officer. She wore stripy trousers and a ruffled white blouse, and her dark hair was clipped up with two pearly combs. “I thought we might go to the Children’s Zoo?”

“Oh, I rather fancied being photographed with a tiger!” said Harry.

“Sorry, Mr. Rose, we don’t have many animals that are handleable, I’m afraid.”

“What about an elephant?” said Harry.

“Lelefant!” said Maria.

Sue crouched down. “Hello there. Who’s this?” she said, pointing to Tog.

Maria hid behind Katie’s legs.

“Would you like to meet a real rabbit?” said Sue, and Maria peeped around. She nodded shyly.

“Is that OK?” Sue asked the photographer.

“Could’ve just gone to a pet shop,” he said grumpily.

“I can see if the keepers might let Harry hold a baby chimp that’s being hand-reared?”

“That’s more like it,” said Ken.

After a quick phone call, Sue reported the chimp would be available in half an hour and suggested a visit to the Children’s Zoo in the meantime.

Harry fell into step beside her as they walked. “I suppose you get a lot of twits like me asking to meet a tiger?”

“People forget they’re still wild animals,” Sue replied diplomatically. “Some people are adopting animals now. We sometimes have to explain they can’t actually borrow them.”

“Adopting?”

“You pay toward their upkeep and get your name on a plaque. Paul Young’s got a fruit bat. And Simon Le Bon might be adopting a tiger—a bit of one, anyway. A whole one’s expensive.”

“Pop star one-upmanship! Love it. We could do a feature inHooray!Can I get someone to ring you?”

“Sure, that’d be great.”

“Who else have you had in?”

“We name our giraffes after British sports personalities.” They were passing the giraffe enclosure. “That baby one’s named after Eddie the Eagle.”

“Iconic sportsman,” said Harry.