He glances over his shoulder. ‘Not in here. Walk with me.’
Instead of heading to his office, we pass through the entrance doors and commence a slow circuit of the eleventh floor. It’s still early days for this building and a third of the offices are awaiting tenants. The opposite side of West One is an eerie, echoing vastness, the kind of place someone tours shortly before the strip lights splutter out and apocalyptic zombies lay siege to the building. I squirrel the idea away. Who knows when the undead might come in handy?
‘How do you reckon the newbies are doing?’
I glance at Russell as he strides beside me. ‘Good. I mean, probably too early to tell. But they seem to be getting on.’
‘Hm.’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I want to give them a few days to settle. Not like last time.’ He gives me the kind of self-conscious grin more akin to apologising for nicking a parking space than cancelling eight writers’ contracts in one fell swoop. We really are that expendable to him.
‘I think it will serve the room best,’ I say, careful to keep my tone steady.
‘Mm. It helps that they have more about them than the last lot. More variety. I like the Brummie one.’
‘Aren’t they all…?’
‘The working-class girl. Bit older. Very Brummie. Her script was gritty and urban and just what we need.’
‘Ottilie Perry?’
‘That’s the one. Got to admit, she ticks a box the commissioners will like. Working-class, own-voice bollocks and all. I mean, look around the room, Joe: middle-class as far as the eye can see. But she has real potential. I like that. Keep an eye on her, will you? Report back regularly.’
This is awkward. ‘The thing is, Russ…’
I’m silenced by the slap of his hand on my shoulder. ‘My wünderkind and the workhouse apprentice. Practically a script in itself.’ He chuckles at his own quip. ‘All good, Joe? Excellent.’
As I watch him powering away my feet become lead weights on the newly laid office carpet. The last thing I want to do is babysit someone, especially my brand-new housemate. I gaze out across the carpeted emptiness to the wideness of the city beyond its windows. All I wanted was to focus on this job on my own. Fat chance of that.
Maybe if I can make it look like I’m mentoring Otty, Russell will be satisfied and leave me to get on with my own stuff. A point in my favour wouldn’t hurt in that room. And as the least-experienced writer on the team, Otty’s position is already perilous. The last cull took writers with five, ten years’ more experience. She needs protecting – for both our sakes. I need her in that room and in our house, paying half the rent. Once Russ recognises her talent, I can back off.
I hope.
Whatever else, I need to read Otty’s script. See what I’m really up against.
I’ll do it tonight.
Chapter Nine
OTTY
Oh, this house. It’s perfect!
While Joe and I are still sailing cautiously around each other, I feel like I’ve found my perfect space. What I overheard him say to Daphne Davies about this place being his muse makes sense now I’m here. The light is not what you’d expect to find inside when you view the house from the street. From outside it looks like a dark, imposing Edwardian villa, its ebony-painted window frames, white and black harlequin-tiled path and shiny black front door are imposing like many of the houses around here. But inside it’s light and warm and welcoming.
There’s still one person I know won’t be won over yet, no matter how lyrical I wax about the light and the ambience here. I can’t put it off any longer. Time to call home.
‘Old houses,’ Dad says, as if those two words carry a world of worry.
‘You should see the cornicing and the original fireplaces, Dad. And the tiles in the hall are Minton…’
‘Expensive, then, if anything gets broken.’
‘Joe tells me the landlord is very understanding.’
I hear an indecipherable mutter, which I don’t want to ask him to define. ‘And that’s another thing. Living with a fella…’
‘His name is Joe, Dad. He’s my colleague and my housemate.’
‘He’s a bloke, our Otts. There’s only one thing his trousers will be interested in.’
I bite my cheek to stifle a laugh. ‘Well, his trousers aren’t interested in me.’
‘You can’t know that! He could be planning on jumping you as we speak.’
‘Dad…’
‘What do you know about him, eh? And how come his last housemate moved out? These are questions you should have asked before you moved in.’
‘Joe is a decent guy, Dad. And you should trust me a bit more.’
‘Don’t start that with me, bab. We all know what decisions you make when it’s left to you.’
I am not having this argument again. ‘This is the right house for me. And when you see it, you’ll agree.’
He has no answer for that. And I know it will irritate him. I imagine him pacing the car park outside RoadTrail, the hum of passing traffic and scuff of boots on concrete confirming my suspicion. And then he comes back with the only thing he can throw at me. ‘It’s times like these I wish you still talked to your mother.’
‘If she’d left a forwarding address I could have.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He has to concede that. Fact is, when Mum left Dad she left everything – our home, the country, her interest in me. We don’t talk now and I’m not sure we ever really did when she was at home. I don’t feel I’m missing out, which is the saddest part. ‘You could’ve found a place with a girl, is all I’m saying. Or another one on your own.’
‘Not at such short notice. And not such a gorgeous place as this.’
‘Right. And what am I supposed to tell Sheila?’
I screw my eyes tight shut and wait until the urge to give the answer I really want to subsides. Even though I knew this was coming, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear when it does. I might have lived most of my life surrounded by opinions on it from everyone around me, but that stops now. I’m not working for Dad, I’m not living at home, I’ve made my decisions. And everyone else is just going to have to get used to it.
I take a breath: remind myself that they think they’re doing what’s best for me, even though they aren’t. ‘Tell Sheila I’ve found a lovely place to live. She doesn’t need to know anything else.’
He’ll come around, eventually. I hope, anyway. And even if he doesn’t, this is my place. I don’t need Dad or Sheila or half of the West Midlands to like it for me to be happy here.
‘What’s that?’
Rona puts the strange glass contraption on the scuffed scaffold-board desk beside me.
‘That is an air-press for a coffee.’
‘It looks like something from the Starship Enterprise.’
I sense the shadow of a smile. ‘And that’s what makes it cool.’ I arranged to meet my writing partner in the Custard Factory, in a hot-desking loft space her brother owns. It’s industrial and achingly cool – the kind of place I couldn’t have dreamed of working even six months ago. Everything is exposed brick and reclaimed steel and wood, the floorboards of the once busy factory space now polished and stained a deep cherry-brown. All around us people from across the creative industries are working together, air-pressed coffee steaming beside shiny laptops.