with flowers and champagne. Good news sure does travel quickly. I had expected to be doused in congratulations and good wishes. After all, nearly everyone at TV6 is scared of me and therefore they try hard to ingratiate themselves. But I never calculated a result as big as this. I’m delirious, but I know that it is essential that I appear unmoved.
‘Where should I put these flowers?’ asks Fi.
‘Anywhere.’ I casually read the cards. There’s one from Josh and Issie. It reads, ‘You are an unscrupulous, overly ambitious, single-minded exploiter. Well done. Love, your best friends.’
I grin. There is another from Bale. It reads, ‘Big things get bigger very quickly.’
‘You are so profound,’ I mutter.
‘I’ll crack open this bubbly, shall I?’ asks Fi. She’s holding a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot.
‘If you like. As long as you understand that this isn’t a celebration.’
Her smile vanishes. ‘Isn’t it?’ She is genuinely dumb-founded.
‘No, it isn’t. We need to see the overnight runs and also the log call book before we can really celebrate. In fact, I think I’ll go and sit in the log room now to talk to the duty manager.’
‘But I’ve booked Bibendum. The team’s looking forward to it. They’ve worked so hard over the last eight weeks.’
It’s true we’ve all worked regular fourteen-hour days.
‘On whose budget?’
She’s crushed. She’s silent. I relent. ‘OK, you guys go along and I’ll catch you up. If the news is good, I’ll pay. If it’s not, I’ll pay.’
Sometimes I’m nice like this but it’s just to confuse them.
I make my way through the rabbit warren of corridors, leaving the sound of popping champagne corks behind me. I stumble past piles of A4 paper and mountains of clip files (the paperless office is a figment of management consultants’ imaginations). I note dozens of plastic crates that haven’t been unpacked in the twenty-four months that we’ve been here. I wonder if someone knows something that I don’t. As I approach the normally silent log room, where all complaints and compliments are handled, I am struck by a general buzz of activity.
I wake up with an aching back and neck, a furry mouth and a fuzzy brain. Not enough sleep. It’s a huge effort, but I force concentration. I establish the following facts: I’m not in a bed, my own or a stranger’s; I’m not hung over, but there is a glob of saliva on my desk where my head has been. I consider that this is one of the reasons I’m careful about intimacy. Imagine if I had woken up with the man of my dreams, if such a thing existed, and there had been a string of saliva on the pillow. It would certainly put him off. Far too human. However, such speculation is irrelevant, as my pillow last night was a box file, my bed companion a portable computer. I try to think it through. I’m here because—
The phone rings. I reach for it and automatically chant, ‘Cas Perry, TV6. Good…’ – I hesitate and check my watch. It’s 7.15 a.m. – ‘morning,’ I confirm, confident that it is morning, but I’m less sure why anyone would be calling me at this hour.
‘Thank God,’ says Josh.
‘Oh, hi,’ I mutter, reaching for my fag packet. I light up and inhale. The nicotine hits me behind the eyeballs. That’s better.
‘We were so worried. Where the hell have you been?’
‘Hey, don’t come on all marital with me,’ I laugh. ‘I’ve been here all night. Did you see the programme?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wasn’t it brilliant?’ The tar and bad stuff have helped. I now know why I slept at my desk. ‘We were taking calls all night. I took the last one at 4.45 a.m. The lines were jammed. TV6 has never seen anything like it!’
‘Lots of complaints, then?’ asks Josh sympathetically.
‘Complaints, sure,’ I say dismissively, ‘but compliments too and applications to go on the show.’ I check the latest figures in the log book. ‘Two hundred and forty-seven calls!’ I do some quick mental arithmetic. ‘One hundred and thirty complaints! Can you believe it? I only have to get fifteen before I am obliged to take the programme to the ITC for reappraisal.’
‘So that’s good news?’ Josh asks hesitantly. He simply doesn’t get it. ‘All those complaints are good news?’
‘It’s caused a national outcry. It’s huge. It’s fantastic. It’s – look I can’t chat. I need to call PR – we’ll have to put out a press release. I wonder if any of the papers have picked anything up yet.’
‘It’s