Lilly Miles - The Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox

Fleet Street Fox has been a tabloid reporter for more than a decade, and started a blog three years ago revealing the inside story of her divorce and chronicling a trade in decline.

More recently she has started a news comment blog at www.fleetstreetfox.com , which gets 100,000 hits a month (and growing) and has seen her invited on to Radio 4s Womans Hour and Charlie Brookers Screenwipe.

This book is the first instalment in her diaries, a blend of her own true story and internal scandals of Fleet Street, with much more to come...

CONSTABLE LONDON

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2013

Copyright Fleet Street Fox 2013

The right of Fleet Street Fox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78033-656-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-178033-813-2 (ebook)

Printed and bound in the UK

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Cover design: Leo Nickolls

THIS story is as close to the truth as I can get without being sued, served with an injunction, or never spoken to again by some of my friends.

In places identities and chronology have been fudged to deny the bad guys an opportunity for revenge, and to prevent the good guys from getting big heads.

Other parts are raw and unvarnished, and I reckon youll be able to spot when Im writing from the heart.

As a consequence this book is a blend of fact and fiction, and youll have to work out for yourself which bits are which.

I owe thanks to too many people to list here, but mainly to my inspiring and brilliant Mum and Dad, the two best friends anyone could ever have.

Finally, this book is dedicated to the feral beasts of Fleet Street Im proud to be one of you.

To my friends enjoy. And to my enemies read it and weep.

PS I am not a real fox.

TODAY is the worst day of the rest of my life. I mean, it cant get much worse.

So far I have attempted double murder, been in police custody, had several of the all-time Worst Conversations of my Life, and suffered a nervous breakdown at the Baskets Only checkout in Sainsburys.

All that and its only just gone noon. I suppose something more awful could happen in the next twelve hours, but unless Im the sole victim of a tiny but well-aimed nuclear strike its simply not going to register.

When today began, at 12.01 a.m, I was in a prison cell contemplating the ruin of everything I know and uncomfortably aware that I had broken the first rule of journalism. As a trainee reporter you are always told to practise your shorthand, stay away from the TV cameras, and above all things never become the story. But now not only was I the story, it was one my Fleet Street colleagues would cheerfully kill each other to find out about, and one which I have written so many times about other people that I knew all too well where it would lead. I could almost hear the knives being sharpened for me.

I was also experiencing the worlds worst cup of tea, which the nice custody sergeant had got me out of a machine, the first ominous twinges of stress-induced diarrhoea, and the realization that my cell possessed just one tiny square of toilet paper.

On top of that my shoes, laces and belt had been taken away just to be sure and the only foot-coverings available in the high-security nick, more often used to house suspected terrorists, were size fourteen plimsolls. Pacing up and down the urine-scented ten-foot cell under the unblinking eye of a CCTV camera, I resembled not so much a desperate criminal as a woman trying to walk in flippers.

Slap, slap, slap. Turn. Slap, slap, slap.

And all the time sipping the undrinkable tea, grimacing, and thinking to myself: I do hope Im not in front of that camera when the squits arrive.

It would have been bearable had I been drunk. Then I could have found the whole thing wildly funny, burbled to myself for a bit and lapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep, thinking I would have a great yarn for my mates when I sobered up. Unfortunately I was stone-cold sober and chillingly aware of my surroundings, the failings which had led me there, and all of the possible, uniformly grim and painful outcomes. As I stared at the tiled wall all I could think was: I am twenty-nine years old, my heart is broken, and my life is over.

That was twelve hours ago, and then I was numb, if a little weepy. Now the sun is high in the sky and Im feeling a pain so great its a physical agony. Its as though my heart is being torn to pieces, like theres a knife behind my ribcage, and my lungs are filled with burning rocks. Even my blood hurts, as if theres ground glass in every vein and capillary, each corpuscle sharpened to a series of lethal points bowling crazily around my insides, cutting, slashing, tearing. Ive cried so much my throat is raw, but the tears still pour out of my eyes. Hell could not hold the pain I feel.

But journalists are never off-duty, and even today Im a news reporter, which means I cannot help but question things that seem unusual. The amount of snot I am producing, for one. Wheres it all coming from? Why wont it stop? Why havent my eyes fallen out? And now that I have failed at both murder and marriage, whats left?

Another nagging worry is that Im trying to hide, but the car park at Sainsburys may not be the best place to do it. Everyone who walks past the car can see me sitting in it sobbing like a mad woman. But all hacks know its easy to hide in a crowd, comforting even, and anything is better than being at home. My husbands there with my parents, and they want A Word with him. God knows how much of him will be left when I go back. If I go back.

I did not expect to be here on a sunny day in June. I should be at work, gazing out of the newsroom window wishing something interesting would happen, emailing my mates, and spending the lunch hour gazing in the windows of Baby Gap while telling myself its far too early to be buying bootees.

Instead my chest seems to have been ripped open by a rocket, and my best friend is a parking space. Why is the sun shining? Where are the glowering storm clouds youre supposed to get at times like this? The torrential, end-of-the-world rain? Why does everything look the same, when everythings changed? How can people still be walking around and smiling?

I can never smile again. I feel powerless, adrift, buffeted about like a twig in a torrent, swept towards a sewers gaping mouth, where the best I can hope for is a different kind of shit. Or maybe it is more like being a clown who tripped over his stupid giant shoes in the hall of mirrors and is now sat, uncomprehending, amid the dying tinkly noises, thinking: Whathafu... ?

But its spilt milk now. Everything I knew and loved has been torn up, thrown out, ripped away, and all thats left is me. Somehow I have to work out what to do and press on, surrounded by 10,000 shards of glass, about a billion years of bad luck and frankly astonishing amounts of mucus.

This is not a task to undertake lightly or without some kind of specialist equipment. After an hour or so wandering the supermarket aisles, crying quietly, picking things up and putting them down again, I am back in the car post-breakdown with the most useful items I could find.