She was gripping Billy's shoulder very hard. She was not going to cry. "But he'll be all right?"

"I said he'll live, Mrs. Johnson. But we may not be able to save his eyesight."

"What?"

"He's going to be blind."

Doreen shut her eyes tight and screamed: "No!"

They were all around her, very quickly; they had been expecting hysterics. She fought them off. She saw Jacko's face in front of her, and she shouted: "Tony Cox done this, you bastard!" She hit Jacko. "You bastard!"

She heard Billy sob, and she calmed down immediately. She turned to the boy and pulled him to her, hugging him. He was several inches taller than she. "There, there, Billy," she murmured. "Your dad's alive, be glad of that."

The doctor said: "You should go home, now. We have a phone number where we can reach you…"

"I'll take her," Jacko said. "It's my phone, but I live close."

Doreen detached herself from Billy and went to the door. The sister opened it. Two policemen stood outside.

Jacko said: "What's this, then?" He sounded outraged.

The doctor said: "We are obliged to inform the police in cases like this."

Doreen saw that one of the police was a woman. She was seized with the urge to blurt out the fact that Willie had been shot on a Tony Cox job: that would screw Tony. But she had acquired the habit of deceiving the police during fifteen years of marriage to a thief. And she knew, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, that Willie would never forgive her for squealing.

She could not tell the police. But, suddenly, she knew who she could tell.

She said: "I want to make a phone call."

Kevin Hart ran up the stairs and entered the newsroom of the Evening Post. A Lad in a Brutus shirt and platform shoes walked past him, carrying a pile of newspapers: the one o'clock edition. Kevin snatched one off the top and sat down at a desk.

His story was on the front page.

The headline was: GOVT. OIL BOSS COLLAPSES. Kevin stared for a moment at the delightful words BY KEVIN HART. Then he read on.

Junior Minister Mr. Tim Fitzpeterson was found unconscious at his Westminister flat today.

An empty bottle of pills was found beside him.

Mr. Fitzpeterson, a Department of Energy Minister responsible for oil policy, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.

I called at his flat to interview him at the same time as PC Ron Bowler, who had been sent to check after the Minister failed to appear at a committee meeting.

We found Mr. Fitzpeterson slumped at his desk. An ambulance was called immediately.

A Department of Energy spokesman said: "It appears that Mr. Fitzpeterson took an accidental overdose. A full inquiry is to be made."

Tim Fitzpeterson is 41. He has a wife and three daughters.

A hospital spokesman said later: "He is off the critical list."

Kevin read the whole thing through again, hardly able to believe what he was reading. The story he had dictated over the phone had been rewritten beyond recognition. He felt empty and bitter. This was to have been his moment of glory, and some spineless subeditor had soured it.

What about the anonymous tip that Fitzpeterson had a girlfriend? What about the call from the man himself, claiming he was being blackmailed? Newspapers were supposed to tell the truth, weren't they?

His anger grew. He had not entered the business to become a mindless hack. Exaggeration was one thing-he was quite prepared to turn a drunken brawl into a gang war for the sake of a story on a slow day-but suppression of important facts, especially concerning politicians, was not part of the game.

If a reporter couldn't insist on the truth, who the hell could?

He stood up, folded the newspaper, and walked across to the news desk.

Arthur Cole was putting a phone down. He looked up at Kevin.

Kevin thrust the paper under his nose. "What's this, Arthur? We've got a blackmailed politician committing suicide, and the Evening Post says it's an accidental overdose."

Cole looked past him. "Barney," he called. "Here a minute."

Kevin said: "What's going on, Arthur?"

Cole looked at him. "Oh, fuck off, Kevin," he said.

Kevin stared at him.

Cole said to the reporter called Barney: "Ring Essex police and find out whether they've been alerted to look for the getaway van."

Kevin turned away, dumbfounded. He had been ready for discussion, argument, even a row, but not for such a casual dismissal. He sat down again, on the far side of the room, with his back to the news desk, staring blindly at the paper. Was this what provincial diehards had known when they warned him about Fleet Street? Was this what the nutcase lefties at college had meant when they said the Press was a whore?

It's not as if I'm a lousy idealist, he thought. I'll defend our prurience and our sensationalism, and I'll say with the best of them that the people get the papers they deserve. But I'm not a total cynic, not yet, for God's sake. I believe we're here to discover the truth, and then to print it.

He began to wonder whether he really wanted to be a journalist. It was dull most of the time. There was the occasional high, when something went right, a story turned good and you got a byline, or when a big story broke, and six or seven of you got on to the phones at once in a race with the opposition and with each other-something like that was going on now, a currency raid, but Kevin was out of it. But nine-tenths of your time was spent waiting: waiting for detectives to come out of police stations, waiting for juries to return verdicts, waiting for celebrities to arrive, waiting just for a story to break.

Kevin had thought that Fleet Street would be different from the Midlands evening paper he had joined when he left the university. He had been content, as a trainee reporter, to interview dim, self-important councilmen, to publish the exaggerated complaints of council house tenants, and to write stories about amateur dramatics, lost dogs, and waves of petty vandalism. He had occasionally done things he was quite proud of: a series about the problems of the town's immigrants; a controversial feature on how the Town Hall wasted money; coverage of a lengthy and complex planning inquiry. The move to Fleet Street, he had fondly imagined, would mean doing the important stories on a national level and dropping the trivia entirely. He had found instead that all the serious topics-politics, economics, industry, the arts-were handled by specialists, and that the line for those specialist jobs was a long line of bright, talented people just like Kevin Hart.

He needed a way to shine-something which would make the Post's executives notice him and say: "Young Hart is good-are we making the most of him?" One good break could do it: a hot tip, an exclusive interview, a spectacular piece of initiative.

He had thought he had found that something today, and he had been wrong. Now he wondered whether it would ever happen.

He stood up and went to the Gents'. What else can I do? he thought. I could always go into computers, or advertising, or public relations, or retail management. But I want to leave newspapers as a success, not a failure.

While he was washing his hands, Arthur Cole came in. The older man spoke to Kevin over his shoulder. To Kevin's astonishment, he said: "Sorry about that, Kevin. You know how it gets on that news desk sometimes."

Kevin pulled down a length of towel. He was not sure what to say.

Cole moved across to the washbasin. "No hard feelings?"

"I'm not offended," Kevin said. "I don't mind you swearing. I wouldn't care if you called me the biggest bastard on earth." He hesitated. This was not what he wanted to say. He stared in the mirror for a moment, then took the plunge. "But when my story appears in the paper without half of the facts, I start to wonder if I ought to become a computer programmer."