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  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to work tonight.’

  Her frustrated sigh slaps my ear where I hold my phone to it. ‘Why don’t you just shag Russell Styles and get it over with?’

  ‘It’s my job, Vic.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You know what, Joe? Forget it. You’re not the only person I’m seeing.’

  Wow.

  I blink at the empty room. There’s direct and then there’s Victoria. I mean, I never imagined I was the only bloke in her life but I kind of thought she’d keep that to herself. ‘Right, well. Have fun.’

  I end the call.

  ‘You off out, Joe?’ Matt, my housemate, bobs his head around the door from the hall.

  ‘Apparently not.’ When Matt’s expression clouds, I hold up my phone. ‘I think I just got dumped.’

  ‘You think? Who by?’

  ‘Victoria.’

  He chuckles and scratches his hair, which always looks like he’s just rolled out of bed. Which he probably has. ‘I thought you’d given up on her months ago.’

  I grimace back. I should have, but I’ve been busy. And she has a habit of reappearing when I need distraction from work. ‘Turns out she beat me to it.’

  ‘Bummer, mate.’ I expect him to mosey off to whatever it is he does most evenings, but he remains by the doorway. ‘So – you’re not out tonight?’

  ‘Nope. Doesn’t matter anyway. I have these sample episodes to get done and the agency sent over a script clean-up they want for the end of the week.’

  ‘Man in demand, Joe.’

  ‘Lucky me. You off out?’

  A flicker of something passes across his face. ‘Yeah. No. Not sure yet.’

  He’s working on a feature film script at the moment and is lost in his head most of the time. At least, that’s what he says it is. Judging by the contents of the ashtray he regularly leaves in the kitchen – never quite making the bin – something else might be calling him to dreamland. ‘Hey, but you should totally go out anyway.’

  ‘Too busy. Like I said.’

  ‘Joe. Stop wallowing.’

  ‘I – er – I’m not?’

  ‘That’s what Victoria expects you to do, right? Hole yourself away, crying into your beer.’

  Since when has Matt Evans ever worried about me? ‘Actually, she expected me to be going out tonight. She dumped me because I wasn’t.’

  ‘Right.’ He nods but his brow is still knotted. ‘Even still, you should go out. At least get food or – something. I mean, when was the last time you ate?’

  I’m about to dismiss this when I realise he’s made a good point. I haven’t eaten since a hastily grabbed bacon roll before my meeting with Russell this morning. On cue, my stomach protests its emptiness. I could go to that all-you-can-eat multi-ethnic buffet place in town where my friend works. I could eat enough so I don’t have to worry about food again tonight and then work through till three or four-ish. Rumour is we have eight new writers arriving tomorrow and I need to be head and shoulders above them when Russell walks in.

  ‘I might just dash out for food, actually,’ I say, snapping my laptop shut and grabbing my keys from the kitchen counter. ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘Nah, I’m good,’ Matt says, noticeably brighter than a minute ago. ‘Go. A break might be just what your brain needs.’

  When he nods at my laptop I have a horrible feeling he saw the tellingly blank page on it before I closed the lid. I’m not stuck. I’m just… in a bit of an inspiration lull. Food will help.

  Food does help. I don’t want to admit Matt’s right, but being away from the house does wonders for the script. It helps that my old schoolmate Nish works at the buffet place and doesn’t care if I work while I eat. An hour turns into two and before I know it, it’s almost one in the morning. Nish grins at me as I apologise on my way out.

  By the time I get back to the house, sleep and a full belly are conspiring against me. Heading to bed with every intention of working there till the birds start singing, I crash out as soon as I get in.

  Which is why, when I jump awake in brave sunlight and grab my phone, I’m sick to discover it’s 6 a.m. I’d planned to get into Ensign Media early this morning to be there before the new intake arrives. Cursing, I throw on fresh clothes and drag my fingers through my hair in a lame attempt to tame it before I dash downstairs.

  It’s only when I’m waiting for my grumpy old filter coffee machine to do its stuff that I notice the note.

  A bright pink sticky note, its edges curling, weighed down with a butter knife in the sea of crumbs on the breadboard.

  Sorry, mate.

  Moved out.

  Matt

  What?

  I snatch the note from its crumby resting place and blink hard to clear sleep from my eyes. Moved out? When?

  And then I let my gaze travel through the open kitchen door to the hallway. No shoes. No horrible shoe rack. Matt’s wretched shoe rack he insisted on having there, stinking out the space. I walk through to the empty hall, turn left into the living room and see more evidence: the four empty shelves in the large bookcase where Matt’s games and terrible sports biographies always lived. By the TV, no jumble of games console wires and controllers, no Xbox and Wii. I don’t have to check his room to work out that the books and his desk will be missing from there, too.

  He bloody moved out. A week before the rent is due.

  Slowly, it hits me.

  He owes me three weeks’ rent. Money I don’t have.

  I can feel panic rising and make myself breathe against the assault. I still have a week. I need to regroup, work out a plan. Matt is an utter dick for doing this to me but I have more important things to do than waste any brain-time on it today – like making sure my boss sees me before everyone else.

  Everything else can wait.

  Chapter Three

  OTTY

  Sixteen boxes of books.

  Sixteen.

  And no furniture – unless you count the threadbare folding chair covered in flamingos I’ve had since university.

  Clothes, yes. Shoes, not as many as people think a woman of my age should own. But the two suitcases in which they are currently hiding are barely visible beneath Mount Book Box.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with them?’ I ask my suddenly ex-landlord.

  He shrugs and does that half-screwed-up expression of his that could mean anything from amusement to bemusement to agitation, but always looks like trapped wind. At least my eviction means I won’t have to see his gurning anymore. Right now I’ll take any silver lining I can get.

  ‘I don’t care what you do. Get them off my premises by 5 p.m. or I’m burning them.’

  Never one for moderation, Barry Theopolis.

  I won’t argue with him. And I won’t let him win. Today is the day my life changes and this nasty little man is not going to spoil it.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, my chin high.

  He was halfway down the stairs anyway, but I see it register in a shake of his shoulders as he disappears back to his stupid big American car parked on the double-yellows outside. Why is there never a traffic warden around when you want one? He has parked illegally every time he’s visited in the past eighteen months and not even a whisper of a parking ticket. How is that fair?

  The slam of the front door reverberates through my shoes.

  At least I have my deposit back. Grubby notes stuffed angrily into an envelope, shoved into my hands like I’d just demanded Barry’s kidney. It will help me move on, even if right now all I want to do is curl up on the doormat that’s no longer mine and sleep this all away.

  I rub my eyes, the effects of my frantic, tearful all-night packing session setting in. Thank goodness the guys in Diamond Balti had a stack of empty boxes to give me when I hurried over there sobbing. If they hadn’t, I don’t know how I would have packed everything. I take one last longing look at the locked door of my f
lat, only now seeing the scuffs and scratches in its tired paintwork, the dark smudges around the Yale lock. Have those always been there? I don’t know. But then how often do you closely inspect the outside of your front door when you have a key?

  I really can’t go back to Dad’s. I won that argument – to go back would be to admit Dad was right. And if he’s right about that, he’ll think it makes him right about everything else, including my new job.

  Because it isn’t just working for Russell Styles that Dad disagreed with. There’s another, bigger decision he still doesn’t accept, over a year since I made it. I can’t let him think for a moment that I was mistaken, then or now. I have to move on.

  The thought twists my guts and my grumbling stomach reminds me it hasn’t yet been fed. I check my watch. Just over an hour to spare. Is it enough? The book box mountain stares at me and I consider the three flights of stairs between here and the tiny car park. Sixteen journeys there and back are going to take a while. I consider knocking on my neighbour Stan’s door at Flat 7, across the box-strewn landing. If he’s up he might help me, but when I saw him yesterday he told me he was on nights again. It’s barely 7.30 a.m.: I can’t wake him.

  Stuff it. I’ll just have to shift them myself and pray that Monty’s aged suspension is up to the task of carrying all my worldly goods. I grab the first box, whelp a little at its weight, and stagger down the stairs.

  Forty minutes later, I’m squeezed into the minuscule amount of box-free space inside Monty, wishing I’d fallen for a bigger car eight years ago. A Fiat 500 seemed lovely back then, when I was still in my room at Dad’s house and the dream of my own place seemed about as likely as me being headhunted by Disney. There must be some world record for the greatest number of boxes packed into a tiny yellow car. If so, I am the clear winner.

  Monty creaks and groans around the roads on the way to West One, a brand-new skyscraper of offices and studios in the heart of the city. A dozen media and production companies have recently moved here, with more set to follow, boosting the city’s bid to become the creative hub of the country outside London.

  Russell Styles’ production company is Ensign Media, on the eleventh floor of West One, as stated in the letter I have read and reread, which is currently lying open and slightly crumpled on the passenger seat, one corner crushed by my suitcase. The entry details to the building made my head spin. There’s a barrier and a code and first-come-first-served parking – and that’s before the coded entry and ID-swipe at reception, the airport-style metal detectors and the pass-operated lifts. What if I fail at the first hurdle and never reach the eleventh floor?

  That’s if I make it into the building at all. Car park security might take one look at me and think I’m a squatter trying to move in. Who arrives for the first day of their dream job with the entire contents of their home in their car?

  And even if I do make the writers’ room of Ensign Media, will they decide I’m too old to be there? Or too uncool? I imagine the writers’ table populated entirely by twenty-three-year-olds – guys in cropped drainpipe chinos and striped tees with identical hipster beards, wafer-thin women in vintage print tunics over skinny jeans with huge scarves and expertly messy up-dos.

  I have to stop this.

  Positive panda, my nan used to say. ‘If you’re thinking it will be bad you’ll be right. If you think it’s going to be good, it just might be.’

  I smile. Nan would be all over this if she were here. Striding into that room like a woman half her age, charming the socks right off Russell Styles. I wonder if she can see me today from wherever she is now. Is she cheering me on from the edge of her armchair, fists in the air and verbal Fs flying, like she used to while watching her beloved American wrestlers?

  I score a parking space between two huge 4x4s, which even though it means a squeeze out of my door a contortionist would be proud of, is still one box ticked on today’s list. I glance at my poor overloaded Monty as I walk towards the building that houses my dreams, praying security don’t think he’s a potential bomb threat. Would a terrorist cover their boxes in pink felt-tip-pen-drawn hearts, with bubble-letter labels like Hunky Hardbacks and Lifesavers and Weepie Treats? I don’t think so.

  At West One’s imposing entrance I stop, letting my gaze rise with the steel and green-tinted glass twenty-two floors up to the leaden Birmingham sky. A single, brave shaft of sunlight is pushing through the stubborn clouds up there.

  That’s me, I think. Ottilie Perry, terrified new apprentice screenwriter, doing her best to shine.

  I take a breath, shoulder my rucksack and walk in.

  Chapter Four

  JOE

  ‘We don’t need any more writers.’

  Script co-ordinator Daphne gives me a look like I’ve just suggested oxygen should be optional, her eyebrows rising above the retro tortoiseshell rims of her glasses. A year ago that would have reduced me to a gibbering puddle of compliance, but not today. Today, I am beyond that.

  ‘Scared they’ll all be better than you?’ she purrs.

  ‘Of course not,’ I snap back. ‘Nobody’s better than me.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that, Joseph.’

  She reaches past me a little too close for comfort and smiles as she empties the last of the filter coffee into her eco-mug. I watch her sashay back to her desk. Thanks for nothing, Daphne Davies. I yank open a cupboard door in the ‘office kitchen’ – which is the biggest use of hyperbole in this place – and scrabble around for filters and ground coffee.

  I’m not scared. I’m not.

  But what if one of them is brilliant? Like, Phoebe Waller-Bridge brilliant?

  Leaving the coffee machine complaining loudly as it brews a fresh pot, I wander back to the windowless writers’ room where the newly appointed scriptwriters will join the rest of us in an hour’s time. Each place at the large, oval, beech-effect laminate table is marked by a blank pad of paper, a freshly printed series bible and a tented strip of whiteboard plastic, upon which each person will write their name. I think about how easily the dry-wipe-marker names can be removed and remember the scene last week when Russell fired half the team. Their names erased in one stroke, their seats ominously empty as the script meeting continued without them. In the pit of my stomach, a ball of nerves begins to roll.

  Russell rates me, I remind myself. I was first on this team. But some of the writers he fired were really good. And now there’s a whole new bunch to contend with.

  I sneaked a look at the new intake’s names on the sign-in sheet earlier. If I were casting them as characters in this unfolding drama, what personality traits would I assign them? Their names suggest mostly middle-class upbringings, the Charlottes and Jakes, the Jens and Joshes. But one sounds like she’s coming straight from Swiss Finishing School – Ottilie, for crying out loud. Her last name reins it in a bit – Perry, a pretty common surname around here – but still. What kind of monster lumbers their kid with a name like that?

  Are the new writers ambitious? Genius wordsmiths? Or are they the kind you find in any writers’ room, the ones that keep their heads down and do the donkey-work? Sometimes it pays to be anonymous but consistent in this business.

  I have no intention of hiding. This is my gig, my domain. And no got-in-through-a-training-scheme hustler is going to dethrone me.

  ‘Mr Joe Carver, as I live and breathe!’

  My professional smile snaps into place as I turn to see to my employer. ‘Russ, hey.’

  ‘Good to have you still on board, man.’

  ‘Good to be here.’

  Showrunner Russell Styles is a little flushed from his journey up. A heart scare at Christmas has him yomping up eleven floors-worth of stairs to get to work every day and he’s very proud of it, even if he can’t breathe well for a while afterwards. Not that it does much to counter the constant diet of high-fat, high-sugar crapness found in the writers’ room, or the indulgent industry dinners he’s a first-call guest for these days. But every little helps, I guess.


  He slaps a comradely arm against my back and I’m drawn into a half-hug I wouldn’t volunteer for. ‘Now, don’t worry about the new writers. That bright-eyed eight will likely be a stoic two by the end of the week.’

  I remember the sudden sackings last week and swallow hard. ‘Not worried, RS. I know you need me.’

  His eyes twinkle. ‘Always, Joe. Always. So, shall we prepare the bear pit?’

  An hour later, the writers’ room is a quivering mass of bravado and fear. My colleagues who survived the cut sit a little taller in their seats, but I know they’re weighing up the newbies as much as I am. Lots of beards this time. All identical in shape, which is impressive if a little disconcerting. Beyond that, the standard cropped-chino-slash-brogues-without-socks ratio is strong here. Four women: two of the hair-flicking, oversized scarf-sporting variety; one rocking a buzz cut and impressive painted Doc Martens, who looks like she means business; and one – well – surprisingly normal-looking one. She has bright pink tips to her hair and rather lovely eyes, but beyond that she could be any person in any street. She looks scared to death. She should be.

  The door opens and Russell strides in. As one, the writers rise and applaud. He feigns embarrassment but not convincingly. It’s all part of the theatre of the writers’ room: the scene of more drama than ever makes it to the screen.

  ‘People,’ he says, eventually signalling for the applause to end. There’s an unholy concerto of scrapes as seats are resumed. ‘Welcome. Before we begin, let me say this: every writer sitting here has earned their place in this room. There are no hangers-on. You are here because I believe in you.’ The new intake blushes, gazing at Russell with even wider eyes. Those of us who survived Friday’s cull aren’t so comforted. ‘Now, we have work to do. We’re running this as a script-to-screen outfit. Three months to beat out at least a pilot and four episodes, preferably six, with a view to a full commission and a fast move to production.’

  I see frowns being battled around the table by the newbies. It’s new – the way a lot of emerging drama is happening in the US – and those of us with more experience are wary of it. More work, less time to do it in and significantly less money for doing it. But it’s Russell Styles. And Ensign Media is one of the hottest properties in the business right now. I glance over at the girl with the pink-tipped hair. She looks like she might burst into tears.