George laughed. ‘Bless their hearts,’ he said.
‘I honestly don’t know if I’ll even be able to get through the day,’ he continued. ‘I was so worked up last night that I ended up having an argument with Pancake in a chatroom and it lasted till, like, 3 a.m.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said George, pausing at the door to his office. ‘You did what with who now?’
‘Pancake. He’s one of the Flat Earthers in my group chat. He was talking about how there are dragons on the outer edges of the world that eat anyone who falls off – and people do fall off, you know, but the government keeps it quiet – and I told him he was crazy, that there’s no such thing as dragons.’
‘Yes, he’s the crazy one,’ muttered George. ‘Good job you set him straight.’
‘So, in the end, I didn’t get my seven hours and I started the day with three doughnuts and a Red Bull so my blood sugar’s spiking. I’ll crash in about an hour, I imagine, and fall asleep on the floor.’
George hung his coat up, left his bag in its usual place and was about to sit down behind his desk when he noticed, to his immense dissatisfaction, that Ben was still standing there.
‘You’re hovering,’ he said.
‘She wants us now,’ said Ben.
‘Who does?’
‘Margaret.’
‘What, right now? I don’t even have time for a coffee and an extended period of inactivity?’
‘The moment you arrived, that’s what I was told. And I daresay Security was told to alert her when you came through the door. She’s probably waiting for us as we speak.’
George sighed and stood up with the air of a man who’s been told to negotiate a settlement to the Middle East conflict in the next five minutes, before leading the way back towards the lifts.
‘You know the funny thing about Margaret, don’t you?’ he asked as the doors opened. ‘No one ever remarks on it, but Mrs Thatcher’s maiden name was Roberts. Just like our Margaret.’
‘Our Margaret is married,’ said Ben.
‘Yes, but was she originally a Roberts or did she marry a Roberts? Beverley changed her name when we got spliced, of course, but it might have been illegal not to back then. Simpler times. She was actually a Quint by birth. Beverley, I mean. One of the Cornish Quints. Not the Penzance Quints, but the Port Isaac Quints. The Penzance Quints were a bit …’ Here he allowed his left hand to tremble, which signified nothing to Ben. ‘Although the Port Isaac Quints were also a bit …’ And here he held both hands out before him and moved them up and down in alternate motions, rather like feet on an elliptical machine. ‘So, who’s to say, in the end, am I right? Who’s to say?’
Ben nodded and looked completely bewildered.
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
‘My point is that they share a name. And there is something a little Thatcherite about our Margaret, don’t you think? The hair, the eyes, the way she looks at you as if you haven’t laid off enough miners today and need to be spanked on the bottom until you make up the quota.’
‘She frightens me,’ said Ben quietly.
‘Does she? I can see where you’re coming from, but I rather like that aspect of her character. But then I’ve always enjoyed an intimidating woman. I felt the same way towards Mrs Thatcher herself.’ The lift doors opened again and they made their way down the corridor.
‘Dead men walking,’ whispered Ben.
‘I had her on the show several times, of course,’ continued George. ‘Mrs T, I mean. You’d have been just a boy back then, discovering your nascent sexuality and holding tea parties in your back garden.’
‘I never—’
‘Anyway, we knew each other a little socially, Margaret and me. Beverley and I had her over to dinner a few times. She was always terribly good with the children, which surprised me, and insisted on helping with the washing-up afterwards too, which was really unnecessary. She didn’t want to leave, particularly on that final occasion. She just wanted to drink whisky and growl about how all these terribly wet men had stabbed her in the back. I told her that she could probably have her own political show if she wanted, and she shook her head, placed a hand on my arm, and said, “But George, one shall never leave office. One must go on and on and on.” Of course, this was ten years into her retirement, when she was starting to go a bit doolally. She didn’t even remember that she’d been put out to pasture a long time before.’
‘Well, here we are,’ said Ben as they approached the receptionist’s desk, glad that this particular trot down memory lane would be forced to come to an end.
‘I always felt a little sorry for her afterwards, to be honest,’ continued George with a sigh. ‘After all, without work, without an audience, what is there?’
‘George Cleverley and Ben Bimbaum for Margaret Roberts,’ said Ben, addressing the receptionist, who barely looked up before reaching for the phone.
‘Good morning, young man,’ said George in an unnecessarily loud voice.
‘Good morning,’ he replied, looking a little shaken by the exuberance of the greeting.
‘And just to be clear, you are a young man, aren’t you?’
‘My name is Dennis,’ he said uncertainly, turning to Ben, who smiled reassuringly.
‘Dennis, Denise, you tell me what you want me to say,’ said George, ‘and I will most cheerfully say it.’
He offered a half-bow from the waist and went over to sit on a sofa while Dennis, bewildered, made the call.
‘There’s no one in there with her, of course,’ said George when Ben joined him after checking that the boy wasn’t going to call Human Resources to issue a complaint. ‘But she’ll keep us waiting for a few minutes, just to prove a point.’
‘What point is that?’
‘That she’s more important than us.’
‘She is more important than us,’ said Ben.
‘Than you, yes,’ admitted George. ‘But not me. She is senior in the organization, certainly. She outranks me. But Heads of Entertainment come and go. The talent, on the other hand, stays. We go on and on and on.’
‘You certainly do,’ agreed Ben.
A ping went off on Dennis’s desk and he looked up and told them that they could go in now. George led the way, opening the door without knocking and offering a hearty ‘Good morning, Margaret!’ to the fifty-something woman seated behind the desk by the window, who looked up and smiled wearily before ushering them into seats.
‘George,’ she said, nodding at them both. ‘Bob.’
‘Ben,’ said Ben.
‘I thought your name was Bob?’
‘No,’ said Ben. ‘It’s Ben.’
Margaret frowned, her eyes narrowing a little.
‘I’m not trying to be difficult,’ he said, his voice growing quieter by the syllable. ‘It really is.’
‘If you say so,’ she replied. ‘So, we seem to have got ourselves into a little bit of a mess, don’t we?’
‘We?’ asked George, raising an eyebrow. ‘Why, what have you done? Or are you using the royal “we”?’