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‘No, organize a shoot. I won’t attend.’ There’s a surprise.
‘You want me to organize a shoot – for an old woman in mist?’
‘Zat’s what I said.’ I’m going to get told off after this meeting. I’m being ‘negative’.
‘But it’ll cost twenty times as much as just working it up on the Mac.’
‘Yes, but it ’as to be realistic.’ He gives me a patronizing smile.
I sigh, as José sucks on a biscuit with a smile.
‘Set it up for tomorrow. I’m in Spain on Friday,’ José says through a mouth full of Digestive.
‘Tomorrow? But it’s five-thirty now!’
‘Nicola, ’ow ’ard can it be? It’s just mist, and an old woman.’ He smiles at Phil, and raises his eyes to heaven at me. Phil doesn’t respond.
‘We’ll have to get a smoke machine.’ I nudge Phil, whose pen darts towards his pad, and just draws a line.
José thumps the table with his hand, and looks straight at me.
‘No, for fuck’s sake – it ’as to be realistic for fuck’s sake!’
‘But we’re in the middle of a heatwave; where am I supposed to find mist by tomorrow?’ I ask coldly, trying not to lose my temper.
For emphasis, I wipe the beads of sweat off the back of my neck, and blow a hair off my cheek that has stuck.
‘I’m sure you’ll find a way.’ José regains his composure and smiles at me again, through gritted teeth. He hasn’t broken a sweat for the last two weeks, in the middle of this freakishly hot May. The man is ice. You could pour vodka down his ear and watch it come straight out of the other end, with your mouth open beneath what I am sure is a below-average length penis, while everybody cheers and claps. I am left with a horrible mental image. If it wasn’t eighty-five degrees outside, I’d shudder.
‘Are we done zen?’ José asks cheerily, and pushes back his chair.
‘I suppose. So for now, the scriptwriter can stay?’ I say, as confirmation.
‘Yes, but tell ’im to cut ’iz ’air.’ José pulls a face, and saunters out without a care in the world.
I nudge Phil again – his pen darts towards his pad and underlines the line he made earlier.
‘Phil,’ I say, losing my temper.
‘Wha?’ he says, as his eyes desperately try to focus.
‘I’m going for a cigarette. Go downstairs and conference in Naomi and Jules.’
‘Your mates?’ he asks, confused, even though he has done it a thousand times before.
‘Yes, you have their numbers. I’ll be back in five minutes.’
‘Get me a Twix,’ I hear him shout after me as I head for the lifts.
I sigh and hit the button for ‘ground’, and try desperately to ignore the mirrors on all sides of me in the lift, reflecting my shiny face back at me. It is too hot for May. I love it and hate it. If it holds until the weekend, I’ll love it. If it breaks on Friday, it’ll just be a pain in the arse. There is nothing worse than working in the summer. Actually, there are a lot of things which are much worse – torture with acid and sandpaper isn’t great, I’ve heard – but this is … frustrating.
I lean against the side of our building, with the sun pouring onto my eyelids, and inhale.
I was fourteen, dressed in my school uniform, and hiding behind a petrol pump. My exasperated parents drove up and down the road in front of me. I could see the car crawling back past the church, past the petrol station opposite. I didn’t want to go to my first confirmation meeting. My friends were all at the cinema, but I was ducking behind the four star. After too many arguments to go into, I had succumbed to being driven to St Jude’s, our church, because my parents didn’t trust me to get there on my own. I waved at them as they pulled away in our old Orange Datsun that my mum swore had ‘character’, and walked up the few steps to the door, but didn’t ring the bell, waiting for the car to recede into the distance so I could make a run for it. But the door suddenly flew open, and Sister Margarita sprung out of nowhere, grinning like the village idiot: she’d been at the holy wine … again.
‘Jesus Christ!’ was my unfortunate cry of shock.
‘Nicola Ellis!’ she managed to slur back in mock outrage – she’d heard worse, hell, she’d said worse herself, but she was obliged to at least seem offended.
‘Sorry, Sister,’ I mumbled and made a break for it. I dashed off down the steps, and stood, half excited, looking both ways deciding which new path to follow. Which is when I noticed the mobile baked bean tin handbrake turn at the end of the road, and suddenly my mum and dad were on my tail like the Dukes of Hazzard hit Kent. I managed to make it to the petrol station before they drove past – my dad may have been angry, he may even have done an illegal turn, but he wasn’t going to do more than thirty in a built-up area. So I ducked and dived as they went along and their sixth parental sense stopped them driving off in the other direction. They were going to track me down. It was a matter of principle, and it would make my nanny happy.
As they cruised past the church again, looking like a pair of terribly respectable kerb crawlers, I found my feet and dashed off in the other direction. The Datsun caught me as I sprinted towards the park, and I heard my mother’s voice say wearily from behind a wound down window,
‘Nicola, get in the car, please.’
There was no point fighting it. For me the compulsion to run has always been there, but when I am caught, as I am always caught, a tidal wave of guilt at doing what I want to do manifests itself in a desperate need to make amends. My dad walked me up the steps and rang the doorbell to the nuns’ house, as I hung my head in shame.
‘Don’t run off again – it’s getting dark, it’s not safe,’ was all he said. And I obeyed. Sister Margarita swung open the door again, still smiling like she had a Wagon Wheel stuck in her mouth. At the sight of me she managed to say,
‘Blasphemer!’ covering my father in a shower of holy saliva.
‘Sorry, Sister,’ I said again, as my dad eyed her nervously, and wiped himself off. Her cheeks were purple and riddled with veins, and her nose was bright red, her wimple lopsided, with an ear popping out of one side.
‘I’ll pick you up in an hour and a half. Be here,’ my dad said, and kissed me goodbye. I waved to my mum, who waved back, smiling that it would be okay. So I end up doing the thing I’m running from anyway, just with the added bonus of feeling like a bad person for daring not to please somebody else. I was the only latecomer, but I was already feeling guilty, so I was instantly top of the class.
I go back upstairs, and throw the Twix at Phil on my way past his desk, and he catches it with cricket hands and cries ‘Howzat!’
Phil follows me into my office mumbling ‘not out!’ as I slump at my desk.
‘We should throw more things in the office, it brightens my day,’ he says, and lingers near the door.
‘Are they on?’ I ask, ignoring him, looking at flashing buttons on my phone.
‘Yep, they’re holding. Is Naomi the fit one?’ he asks seriously.
‘They’re both fit, they’re my friends,’ I reply, wearily.
‘Yes, but not girl “they are both lovely and funny” fit, bloke fit?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say, and hit the red button and mouth ‘shut the door,’ at Phil, who slumps out of the room. He really would prefer just to sit and listen to my conversation for twenty minutes.
When nothing happens – I can’t work this damn phone, it’s like something out of Star Trek – I press the button again, and instantly hear the girls talking at the other end.
‘Oi, I’m here,’ I say, and press some buttons on my keyboard, checking new emails for anything important.
‘“Oi”? How rude is that? She keeps us waiting, and then says “Oi”!’ Naomi is indignant.
‘Sorry, hello, I apologize for my lateness, I was in some stupid bloody meeting for hours, at the end of which we established we are going to put an old lady in fog to scare people.’
‘Like Last Of the Summer Wine?’ Nim asks.
‘Yes, just like that. Are we still on for tonight?’
‘I am, but I’m going to be late. I have to meet the Countess of Wessex.’ Jules is a fundraiser, she keeps meeting royalty; we don’t ask why.
‘What time are you going to be finished?’ Nim asks.
‘About seven.’
‘Cool, that’s good for me,’ I say, turning my attention to the photos on my desk that have been sent through by our agency of young wannabes to play our leading man. They are all useless. I wanted gritty and urban, I’ve got sons of Lionel Blair.
‘Shit, I’m finished at six, what am I supposed to do for an hour?’ Nim works in the City, meaning she works normal hours, unlike myself and Jules, who chose ‘interesting’ careers, instead of being well paid and working sociable hours. Nim has both, and even though she has to put up with banking arseholes all day, she has pots of cash, and wants to go out every night. I have to talk to her about that. I don’t want her to end up like Charlie.
‘Shop, write personal emails, go to the gym, whatever,’ Jules is saying at the other end of the phone.
‘I should go to the gym.’
‘Well, there you go, do that,’ I say, as an email entitled ‘Play this now!’ flashes up from Phil. I open it, distracted, and try and smack a monkey with a hand as fast as I can by pulling back my mouse and then whizzing it across my desk.
‘So seven? Dinner or drinks?’ I say, as I swing my mouse into my in-tray, sending papers flying everywhere, and swing it back.
‘Shit, hold on.’ I find and press hold, and shout out for Phil, who opens the door seconds later,
‘Phil, what’s your fastest smack?’
‘Four hundred and thirty-six miles an hour,’ he replies, and wanders over to stand behind my PC.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say and pull my mouse back, determined to beat his score. I whack the mouse and a tune plays and the computer declares I have smacked the monkey at five hundred and two miles per hour.
‘Shit,’ Phil says, and grabs my mouse from me, and has a go himself, as I press hold again.
‘Sorry, did we decide?’ I ask.
‘Yep, drinks and dinner, Café Bohème,’ Jules says.
‘Cool, I’ll see you later.’
‘Can I bring some guys from my office?’ Nim asks.
‘Who?’ Jules asks suspiciously, knowing full well that she doesn’t want to run into at least two of them.
‘Neither of them,’ Nim pre-empts her.
‘They’re nice,’ as some sort of explanation.
‘And they work at your office?’ I ask, incredulous. I know some of the guys who work with Nim; they know Charlie.
‘Yes, some of them are nice.’
‘None that I’ve met,’ I say.
‘They’ve just started.’
‘Oh, okay, cool.’
‘See you later then, I’ve got to go,’ I say, as I see Phil smack the monkey at six hundred miles an hour.
‘Cool, byeeeee,’ we all squeal off the phone, trying to go higher than each other.
‘Give me that.’ I grab the mouse off Phil, who is looking smug. I smack it a couple more times, but can’t beat his score. He strolls around to the front of my desk, wipes the sweat off his forehead, and throws himself into a chair.
‘Are you going out with them tonight?’ he asks, the picture of innocence.
‘Yep.’
‘What time?’
‘Seven.’ I start going over the photos again, trying to see past the crowned teeth and sunbed tans.
‘Can I come for a couple? I’m meeting the boys at eight.’
‘Yep,’ I say, and then, ‘these are shit.’ I throw the photos across my desk, lean back in my chair, and sigh. ‘What time is it?’
Phil checks his watch.
‘Ten to six.’
‘Have you got any more games?’ I ask wearily.
‘Of course, but aren’t we supposed to set up that shoot or something?’
‘Shit, SHIT, yes! Well done! Call Tony, get him on the case. I’ll make some calls.’
I grab my numbers.
‘What exactly am I supposed to ask him?’ Phil hasn’t moved from the chair.
I look at him and feel bad at the prospect of making him work hard for the next hour. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call him.’ I plug the number into my phone, as Phil closes his eyes in front of me, deciding it’s time for a well-earned nap.
‘Out,’ I shout at him and point at the door.
‘Alright, darlin’.’ I hear Tony’s Scouse greeting on the hands free and pick up the receiver. ‘I was just about to leave – whattdaya need?’
‘Tone, I need a massive favour, hon. A shoot tomorrow. I need mist. For Evil Ghost 2.’
‘Not a problem, you tell me how much.’
‘And an old lady.’
