One Hundred Names Read Online Free PDF Page A

stories to the big time, and in her search for the truth had told a lie, a dangerous lie, and had ruined a man’s life.
    Steve was looking around the flat.
    ‘What now?’ she asked, completely drained.
    ‘Where’s Glen?’
    ‘At work.’
    ‘Does he usually take his coffee machine to work?’
    She turned round to look at the counter, confused, but her phone interrupted them.
    ‘My mum. Shit.’
    ‘Have you spoken to them lately?’
    Kitty swallowed and shook her head.
    ‘Answer it,’ he said, refusing to leave until she had answered.
    ‘
Hello?
’ She exaggerated the word for effect and then Steve was gone.
    ‘Katherine, is that you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh, Katherine …’ Her mother broke down in tears. ‘Katherine, you’ve no idea …’ She could barely get the words out.
    ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ Kitty sat up, panicked. ‘Is it Dad? Is everyone okay?’
    ‘Oh, Katherine,’ Mrs Logan sobbed. ‘I can’t take it any more. We are just so
embarrassed
down here. How could you do it? How could you do that to that poor man?’
    Kitty sat back and prepared for the onslaught. It was then she noticed Glen’s plasma TV had disappeared too and, on further inspection, so had the clothes in his wardrobe.

CHAPTER THREE
    A week later, after what felt like the longest seven days of her life, Kitty awoke in a sweat from a nightmare. She lay with the bedcovers in a tangled mess around her, and her heart beating wildly. She was afraid to look around the room, but as the nightmare faded from her memory she gained courage and sat up. She couldn’t breathe. She pushed open her bedroom window and drank in deep breaths of air, but the steam pouring from the vents of the twenty-four-hour dry-cleaners was inhaled directly into her lungs. She coughed, slammed the window shut and made her way to the fridge where she stood naked before the open door in an effort to cool down. She was not ready for tomorrow. She was nowhere near equipped for tomorrow at all.
    ‘Colin Maguire suffered irreparable damage to his reputation, his life was utterly altered and he was removed from his home and community as a result of the January tenth episode of
Thirty Minutes
. Katherine Logan confronted Mr Maguire outside his place of work and accused him of sexually abusing two teenage girls and fathering one child. Despite his repeated denials and an offer to take a paternity test, the programme was broadcast. Katherine Logan, Donal Smith and Paul Montgomery’s careless actions and unprofessional behaviour had a devastating impact on Mr Maguire’s life.’
    Kitty sat in court alongside
Thirty Minutes
producer, Paul, and editor, Donal, as they listened to the lengthy terms of the four hundred thousand euro settlement for compensatory damage and aggravated damage. It took exactly seventeen minutes to read. With each word, each accusation, Kitty hated herself a little more. Near her, Colin Maguire and his family – his wife, his parents, his brothers and sisters – and everyone in his community who had come out to support him were staring at her, their eyes searing into her back. She felt their hatred, she felt their anger, but more than anything she felt Colin’s hurt. He would barely lift his head, his eyes cast downward, his chin firmly lodged on his chest. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a year.
    The
Thirty Minutes
team and their legal advisors left the courthouse, swiftly pushing through the mill of photographers and cameras, some from their own network, which were shoved in Kitty’s face as though she were one of the criminals she regularly saw leaving this very building on the news. The men walked so quickly she could barely keep up but she didn’t want to run. Her sanity depended on surviving that moment. She did not want to put a foot wrong now after making so many mistakes to get them there. She kept her head down and then, thinking it made her look guilty, she lifted it again.
Chin up, take your punishment, and walk
,
she