It’s Not Me, It’s You. Mhairi McFarlane

Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Mhairi McFarlane

       About the Publisher

       One

      Ann clomped over in her King Kong slippers, with a yoghurt, a spoon and a really annoyed expression.

      ‘Is that stuff in the Tupperware with the blue lid, yours?’

      Delia blinked.

      ‘In the fridge?’ Ann clarified.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It’s stinking it out. What is it?’

      ‘Chilli prawns. It’s a Moroccan recipe. Leftovers from what I made for dinner last night.’

      ‘Well its smell has got right into my Müller Greek Corner. Can you not bring such aggressive foods into work?’

      ‘I thought it was just confident.’

      ‘It’s like egg sandwiches on trains. You’re not allowed them on trains. Or burgers on buses.’

      ‘Aren’t you?’

      It was a bit surreal, being snack-shamed by a woman who was 1/7th mythical monkey. Ann wore the slippers because of extreme bunions. Her feet looked like they didn’t like each other.

      ‘No. And Roger wants a word,’ Ann concluded.

      She went back to her seat, set the contaminated yoghurt down and resumed typing, hammering blows on the keyboard with stabbing forefingers. It made her shock of dyed purple-black hair tremble. Delia thought of the shade as Aubergine Fritter.

      Ann’s policing of the office fridge was frightening. Despite being post-menopausal, she decanted her semi-skimmed into a plain container and labelled it ‘BREAST MILK’ to ward off thieves.

      She was one of those women who somehow combined excess sentiment with extreme savagery. Ann had a framed needlepoint on her desk with the Corinthians passage about love, next to her list of exactly who owed what to the office tea kitty. For last year’s not-so-Secret Santa, she bought Delia a rape alarm.

      Delia pushed out of her seat and made her way to Roger’s desk. Life as a Newcastle City Council press officer did not provide an especially inspiring environment. The pleasant view was screened by vertical nubbly slatted blinds in that porridge hue designed to make them look dirty before they were dirty, to save on cleaning costs. There were brown-tipped spider plants that looked as if they were trying to crawl off the shelving and had died, mid-attempt. The glaring yellow lights, built into the ceiling tiles’ foamy squares, made everything look like it was taking place in 1972.

      Delia got on well enough with the rest of the quiet, predominantly forty-something staff, but geographically she was trapped behind Ann’s wall of misery. Conversations conducted across her inevitably got hijacked.

      Delia crossed the office and arrived at Roger’s desk at the end of the room.

      ‘Ah, Delia! As our social media expert and resident sleuth, I have a game of cat and mouse for you,’ he said, pushing a few A4 printouts towards her.

      She wasn’t sure about being christened the office’s ‘resident sleuth,’ just because she’d discovered the persistent odour in the ladies lavatory had come from an ‘upper decker’ left in one of the cisterns by a discontented male work experience placement who might have deep-rooted issues with women. It was a eureka! moment Delia could’ve done without.

      Roger steepled his hands and drew breath, theatrically. ‘It seems we have a goblin.’

      Delia paused.

      ‘You mean a mole?’

      ‘What do you call a person who goes on to the internet intentionally trying to annoy people?’

      ‘A wanker?’ Delia said.

      Roger winced. He didn’t do swears.

      ‘No, I mean a concerted irritant of a cyborg nature.’

      ‘A robot?’ Delia said, uncertainly.

      ‘No! Did I mean cyborg? Cyberspace.’

      ‘Being rude to people online … A troll?’

      ‘Troll! That’s it!’

      Delia inspected the printouts. They were local-interest-only stories based on council reports in the local paper. Nothing particularly startling, but then they usually weren’t.

      ‘So this individual, rejoicing in the anonymous moniker “Peshwari Naan”, starts trouble in the conversations underneath the Chronicle’s online stories,’ Roger said.

      Delia scanned the paper again. ‘We can’t ignore it? I mean, there are a lot of trolls online.’

      ‘Ordinarily, we would,’ Roger said, holding a pen horizontally, as if he was Mycroft Holmes briefing MI6.

      He took his job deathly seriously. Or rather, Roger took nothing lightly. ‘But it’s particularly vexatious in its nature. He invents quotes, fictitious quotes, from members of the council. It makes a mockery of these councillors, damages their reputations and derails the entire debate, based on a falsehood. The unwitting are sucked into his vortex of untruths. Take a look at this one, for example.’

      He tapped a piece of paper on his desk – a recent story from the Newcastle Chronicle.

      ‘Council Set to Green-light Lapdancing Club,’ Delia read the headline aloud.

      Roger picked the printout up: ‘Now, if you look at the comments below the story, our friend the sentient Indian side order claims—’ he put his glasses on, ‘I am not surprised at this development, given that Councillor John Grocock announced at the planning meeting on November 4th last year: “I will be first in the queue to get my hairy mitts on those jiggling whammers.”’

      Delia’s jaw dropped. ‘Councillor Grocock said that?’

      ‘No!’ said Roger, irritably, taking his glasses off. ‘But that false premise sparks much idle chatter about his proclivities, as you will see. Councillor Grocock was not at all happy when he saw this. His wife’s a member of the Rotary club.’

      Delia tried not to laugh, and failed when Roger added: ‘And of course, the choice of Councillor Grocock was designed to prompt further juvenile sniggering with regards to his name.’

      Her helpless shaking was met with disappointed glaring from Roger.

      ‘Your mission is to find this little Cuthbert, and tell him in the most persuasive terms to cease and desist.’

      Delia tried to regain her self-composure. ‘All we have to go on are his comments on the Chronicle’s website? Do we even know he’s a “he”?’

      ‘I know schoolboy humour when I see it.’

      Delia wasn’t sure Roger could tell humour from a shoe, or a cucumber, or a plug-in air freshener for that matter.

      ‘Use any contacts you have, pull some strings,’ Roger added. ‘Use any means, foul or fair. We need to put a stop to it.’

      ‘Do we have any rights to tell him to stop?’

      ‘Threaten libel. I mean, try reason first. The main thing is to open a dialogue.’

      Taking that as a no, they had no rights to tell him to stop, Delia made polite noises and returned to her seat.

      Hunt The Troll was a more interesting task than writing a press release about the new dribbling water feature next to the Haymarket metro station. She flipped