The Good Part(22)

My phone starts to ring as I’m holding it. Michael Green is calling, whoever Michael Green is. It might be the new suit or those two glasses of champagne, but I now feel equipped to take a call from anyone.

‘Michael, hi,’ I say, full of confidence.

‘Are you feeling better?’ he asks. If he thinks I’m ill, he must be Michael from work, the one Trey mentioned.

‘I am, thanks.’

‘I didn’t want to disturb you when you’re sick, but I thought you’d want to know that the pitch went well. Sky loved your idea. They’ve committed to giving us development money for a pilot.’

They loved my idea. I feel a swell of pride. Even though it wasn’t really my idea, it was still some version of me, and that counts for something. ‘That’s great!’ I say.

‘You focus on getting yourself well,’ Michael says. ‘Everything else can wait until Monday, I just knew you’d want to hear the good news.’

I quickly access my options. I could head to Waterloo, get a train back to that house in Farnham and hide under the luxuriously soft duvet until all of this goes away. Or, like Mr Finkley said – I could explore this new world while I have the chance. This might be my only opportunity to see what my future life looks like. I don’t know the rules; for all I know this could be a twenty-four-hour thing and I could wake up in my old reality tomorrow. If I am being offered a chance to see what my future holds, maybe I should embrace it. Besides, the dopamine hit from shopping is beginning to fade and this Michael guy sounds friendly enough. I already look the part, what have I got to lose?

‘Michael, I’m feeling better. I’m coming to the office.’





Chapter 10


The minute I’ve hung up, I realise I don’t know where it is I work. I can hardly call Michael back and ask him. Then I remember, Trey called me from a landline number. I call the number and a male voice answers, ‘Good afternoon, Badger TV.’ I hang up straight away. Ha, I am detective extraordinaire; Poirot would be proud of me.

Google informs me that Badger TV is based on Beak Street, just off Carnaby Street. How would anyone navigate a life leap before phones or the Internet? Jumping in a cab (two cabs in one day, what decadence), I spend the journey reading up about Badger TV.

‘Incorporated eight years ago by TV executives Michael Green and Lucy Rutherford’. Lucy Rutherford? Is that me? Is that my married name, Sam’s name? I try saying it out loud, ‘Lucy Rutherford,’ but it sounds alien and wrong. I am Lucy Young, I will always be Lucy Young. Shaking my head, I keep reading. ‘The independent production company has gone from strength to strength, carving out a speciality in innovative children’s television.’ Children’s television? I never imagined myself working on kids’ shows, though I suppose children need good TV as much as anyone. A news article tells me Badger TV was acquired a year ago by Dutch media giant Bamph and is slated for ‘significant structural changes’, whatever that means. Then my cab arrives at the address and that’s all the detective work I have time to do.

Walking through revolving doors into a brightly lit reception area, I know I must be in the right place because the walls are decorated in badger wallpaper. The reception area is sparsely furnished with low silver sofas, a long white desk, and a glass-walled meeting room along one side. At the far end of the room there are lift doors and a staircase, presumably leading to an office above. A blond receptionist wearing horn-rimmed glasses looks up from his paper-thin computer screen as I walk in.

‘Oh hi, Lucy. Wow, great suit. Where are you off to?’

‘Nowhere special,’ I say, slightly thrown that this person knows my name.

His eyebrows crease into a confused frown, but he continues to smile.

‘So, I work here . . .’ I say, hoping he might volunteer some information about what it is I do, but alas, he does not. ‘Is there a runner or someone you could call to come down here and talk to me?’

‘You want me to get Callum?’ the receptionist asks.

‘Great, yes. Get Callum.’

The receptionist makes a call, and I pace up and down in front of his desk. I don’t have a plan here. Well, my plan was, ‘Just go, see what happens!’ but that doesn’t seem like much of a plan now that I’m here and I’ve sobered up. I wasn’t going to tell my colleagues the truth. I’d just be pitied, sent home, or told to see a doctor. They’d look at me the way Emily did, as though I’ve lost my mind. If I’m going to see what my future life is like, I need to experience it as Lucy Rutherford, not as a lost Lucy Young.

A few minutes later, a slim man in his early twenties with spiky brown hair and a nose piercing bounds down the stairs. He’s cute in a ‘probably plays the ukulele and brews his own ale’ sort of way.

‘Hi Lucy’ – he says, eyes widening as he takes in the purple power suit – ‘I thought you were off sick today?’

‘I was, but I’m better. Can I have a word?’ I step into the glass-walled meeting room to our left and beckon him to follow. ‘Look, Callum, can I call you Callum?’

‘Yes,’ he says, eyeing me warily.

‘It’s always the runners who know everything in a production company. So how do you feel about being my eyes and ears this afternoon?’

‘Okay,’ he says, staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.