loosely attached drawer crashed to the floor.
‘We can probably get you a new one of those,’ he muttered, kicking it away as I held my breath.
Run, commanded the voice in my head. Run far and run fast. But I refused to listen, that was just fear talking, according to Starting Over. The fear of failure and the even more powerful fear of success. I would not stand in my own way, I would embrace this opportunity and succeed. I would also bring in my own cleaning products from home.
‘Just so I’m absolutely, one hundred percent clear about everything,’ I said, running a finger along the mixing desk and balking at the filth. ‘The job I just signed a contract for is to produce a podcast about e-sports with a YouTube child star?’
Ted gave a single, eyes-askance nod.
‘Didn’t you say you lived in a shed?’ he asked.
‘So,’ I said, taking a deep breath in and giving my new boss a bright and glittering smile. ‘When do I meet Mr Snazzlechuff?’
After Ted left me alone to wallow in my pit, I sat at the desk and stared at my reflection in the glass partition between the studio and the mixing desk. The look of despair on my face was altogether too clear since I’d gone at the bloody thing with a full bottle of Windolene I’d found in a cupboard, oddly enough unopened.
Ten years of working every hour god sent and suddenly my career depended on a teenage gaming addict who liked to cosplay as a mid-2000s Jay-Z from the neck down and the saddest Good Boy from the neck up. Where had it all gone wrong?
‘It’s going to be fine,’ I told my own face, even though I didn’t look as though I believed me. ‘You’re lucky to have this job. It’s different and new, that’s all. Everything was different and new once, you’ll be fine.’
But a very large part of me was completely over different and new.
Three years ago, I’d jumped at different and new, lost Patrick, left my friends and whole life behind and for what? To end up right back where I’d left off, only now I was alone and I lived in a shed. Everything was confusing and exhausting, I couldn’t get to grips with any of it: how to decide what to watch in the evening, which politicians were the most evil, who had been cancelled and why. What was I allowed to like, what was I allowed to dislike and where was indifference permitted? No, different and new were on my shitlist. I wanted old and familiar. I wanted easy and understandable. I wanted tried and tested, simple and straightforward, comfortable and known and, without thinking, I picked up my phone, opened Patrick’s text and tapped out a reply, hitting send before I could stop myself.
Hello, stranger, his text said.
Hello yourself, I replied.
‘Well, that’s that,’ I whispered, taking a deep breath and watching a single grey tick appear next to the message, followed by a double grey tick. Message delivered.
Three years of stopping myself from contacting him, three years of having to sleep with my phone in the other room every time I came home drunk or went on a rubbish date or experienced even a flicker of yearning. All of it over in an instant. I looked up, expecting to see some flags fly out, a winged pig zooming past overhead, or to at least hear a distant fanfare, but there was nothing. Life-changing moments were supposed to come with a soul-stirring soundtrack, something to acknowledge their gravitas and importance, but all I had was a soundproofed studio-slash-cell, a half-eaten apple and a bag of Mini Cheddars.
‘The stuff dreams are made of,’ I muttered, yawning before I bit down on the apple. ‘Now let’s see if he bothers to reply.’
The clock on my wall announced the time as ten a.m.
A long night, followed by an even longer day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Having fun?’
‘Never had so much fun in my life.’
I clinked my glass of Pimm’s against the one in Adrian’s hand and nodded across his parents’ vast lawn.
‘Mr Carven told Dr Khan he didn’t want one of your dad’s sausages because they weren’t cooked all the way through,’ I said, discreetly pointing at the middle-aged gents, bickering around the barbecue like a bunch of schoolgirls.
‘And my dad heard him?’ Adrian asked, sipping his drink like so much tea. ‘He’ll have his guts for garters.’
‘They’re currently trying to decide which sausage to cut open to end the debate,’