‘All right, let’s be clear,’ said Margaret. ‘You have got yourself into a little bit of a mess. I am perfectly innocent in this matter and my hands are clean.’
‘As are Bob’s,’ said George. ‘So there’s really no need for him to be here. He has nothing to do with any of this.’
‘Ben,’ said Margaret.
‘Sorry, yes, Ben.’
‘Shall I go, then?’ asked Ben, rising from his seat, but Margaret shook her head and pointed her index finger at the chair.
‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘You’re the producer. Ultimately, all of this falls under your purview.’
‘Does it, though?’ asked George, sceptically.
‘I’m extremely sorry,’ said Ben, sitting up straight now and clearing his throat. ‘It was never my intention to offend and I apologize unreservedly to anyone whose feelings have been hurt by my tweet. My words were intended as a show of support for all my transgender brothers and sisters, but I realize now how damaging and hurtful they were. Please understand that I am still learning and that I will work hard to do better from now on. I want to hashtag be kind. I beg your forgiveness. To make amends, I have made a donation to—’
‘What on earth are you blathering on about?’ asked George, turning to look at him. ‘You haven’t posted something too, have you?’
‘No, this is the kind of statement that I think you should put out,’ said Ben. ‘An apology.’
‘An apology for what?’
‘An apology for the offence you’ve caused,’ said Margaret.
George rolled his eyes and looked out the window in the direction of the Langham hotel, where he wished he was now, drinking a large glass of red wine and enjoying a lobster roll.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘This whole thing has been blown out of all proportion. I’ve known the chap in question for some years. Always got along fine with him. The fact is, I was wishing him well on his journey. How that has been interpreted as some form of hate speech is completely beyond me.’
‘But you’re doing it again right now,’ said Margaret.
‘Doing what?’
‘Causing offence.’
‘How?’
‘He’s not a chap. He’s a young woman.’
‘She’s a young woman,’ said Ben, correcting her.
‘Sorry, yes, that’s what I meant.’
‘Was that hate speech on your part?’ asked George. ‘Misgendering her?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Margaret. ‘It was simply a mistake.’
‘But so was mine. The thing is, I’ve always known him – her – as Aidan. And she didn’t have the courtesy to tell me that she was, you know, transitioning. From a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. Which, if memory serves, is what the serial killer thinks he’s doing in The Silence of the Lambs. Not that I’m drawing any connection between the two. Honestly, Margaret, you should have seen her. Really quite stunning. You’d be hard pushed to tell the difference. In some ways, you might say it was a compliment. If I’d, you know, screamed or something when I saw him—’
‘Her.’
‘If I’d screamed when I saw her, then that would have been tremendously impolite. But no, I naturally assumed that this was just a new receptionist, so I introduced myself and was making small talk, and honestly, it was like getting blood from a stone. You know, just because you’re going through some sort of personal rite of passage doesn’t give you the automatic right to be rude, does it?’
‘Be that as it may,’ said Margaret, ‘your words have caused offence.’
‘But that’s like complimenting someone on losing weight and then they complain that you’re suggesting they were fat before.’
Margaret frowned. ‘I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing,’ she said. ‘And I would steer clear of referring to women’s weight, if I was you. Especially in the workplace.’
‘I never mentioned women,’ he replied huffily. ‘It could have been a man I was talking about.’
‘Be that as it may,’ she repeated, ‘we live in strange times—’
‘You just assumed that it was a woman, which says more about your prejudices than it does about mine.’
‘When people are not only liable to take exception at any perceived slight but are actively looking for reasons to do so. You may have meant well, George, but intentions no longer matter. Social media has changed all that.’
‘Because, ironically, when it comes to social media, anything is acceptable and nothing is acceptable.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You agree with that?’
‘I agree with your interpretation of that. The patriarchy are—’
‘Oh, please,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Just … let’s not. Also, the patriarchy is a single collective noun so whatever you were going to say, it should have been is, not are.’
‘The patriarchy are being held to account,’ she continued, speaking over him.
‘It is, is it?’ he asked.
‘It are.’
‘You see?’
‘Let’s not play semantics. You hold a position of responsibility here. The BBC itself holds a unique place in the life of this nation. People like you and I are held to a higher standard.’
‘Me, yes. You, no. No one knows who you are.’
‘I assure you that if I tweeted something transphobic from this office, people would be very aware of my existence before I even had a chance to clear out my desk.’
George opened his mouth to protest further but found that he was lacking the energy to bother, so closed it again.
‘You see what I’m saying?’ she asked.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I think it’s idiotic and it feels like the obsession of narcissistic morons with far too much time on their hands, but I accept that the culture exists in the world. Just like National Socialism did in the thirties. And McCarthyism in the fifties.’
‘Please don’t say anything like that on social media, George. Those are both very powerful lobbies.’
‘Not the Nazis. They got defeated.’
‘Well, they’re back. And, this time, they’ve all got Twitter accounts.’
‘Fine. But I just want you to admit that it is not so appalling that I got it wrong in the first place. If you got married tomorrow, Margaret, say you married Tom Thatcher over in Accounting—’
‘There’s nothing going on between me and Tom,’ said Margaret, rearing up in her chair and looking appalled. ‘What on earth would make you suggest such a thing?’
‘I’m just using it as a for instance,’ said George. ‘Say you and Tom got married and I was invited to give a speech at the reception, and in that speech I said that of all the Heads of Entertainment under whom I have worked in my long and illustrious career at the BBC, Margaret Roberts is by far the most recent, would you be offended that I had called you by the name by which I have always known you, rather than by your married name?’
‘No,’ admitted Margaret. ‘But you have to appreciate that we’re not talking about normal people here. We’re talking about people on Twitter. There’s an enormous difference. It’s like comparing house cats to lions that have only ever lived in the wild, ripping the heads off young gazelles and feasting on their bodies.’