‘I guess I am,’ I say, feeling a swell of pride.
As I get back into the car, an alert goes off on my phone. Ninety minutes until the pitch off. I need to hurry – if I miss the next train, I’ll be late.
The Bamph studio is packed. Everyone in the company wants to witness this showdown between me and my Badgers and Coleson and his Ferrets. I didn’t register there would be such a big audience and now I’m relieved Michael’s doing the pitch rather than me. Coleson looks different from how I remember him. He’s dressed in a sleek black suit, with a turtleneck, and his hair is slicked back with gel. He looks, in my opinion, ridiculous, like he’s turned up for the final exam at Villain School.
‘Don’t feel bad, Rutherford,’ he says to me. ‘I’ll give you an internship at Ferret TV, so you can see what it feels like to be on a winning team.’
‘Coleson, I forgot to tell you, Magneto called, he wants his suit back.’
‘Magneto? Bit of a dated reference there, Grandma.’
Damn. It’s hard to make cultural reference jokes when you’ve missed so much culture. As I’m trying to think of a comeback, Michael arrives and I do a double take. He looks terrible, like he’s been up all night drinking vodka and then slept in a skip. Instead of his trademark three-piece suit, he’s wearing baggy jeans and a scruffy grey T-shirt. Something is wrong, something is very wrong.
Grabbing his arm, I pull him out of the busy studio and into the hallway.
‘What’s happened? You look terrible,’ I say as soon as we’re alone.
‘It’s Jane. I think she’s been sleeping with her aqua aerobics instructor.’
‘Oh no. I’m sorry. What makes you think that?’
‘I found them in bed together.’
‘Did she, um, forget she was married again?’ I ask hopefully.
‘I don’t think so. When I walked in on them, Marcus said, “Oh shit, it’s your husband.” Then Jane said, “Oh shit,” too.’
‘That must have been a shock.’
He hangs his head. ‘That’s not the worst part.’ Michael swallows, as though he can hardly get the words out. ‘This guy, Marcus, he was wearing nothing apart from a baseball glove on his right hand. My baseball glove.’ Michael’s face is racked with anguish. ‘My vintage glove, signed by Ozzie Smith himself. It’s a collector’s item. Heaven knows what they were doing with it.’ Michael shakes his head. ‘How can I ever look at that glove the same way now?’ I pull him into a hug as he starts to sob. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy, I’m a mess, I don’t think I’ll be able to present today.’
‘It’s okay, I’ll handle it,’ I hear myself saying. Michael nods limply, like a child grateful to be told what to do. Trey catches my eye as we come back into the room, but there’s no time to explain because Coleson is now taking the stage. His team all look smug and confident so I suspect their idea must be something fiendishly brilliant. A heavy sense of dread settles in my stomach as I realise that without Michael, our pitch might not be good enough to win this.
Gary Snyder, Bamph’s CEO, stands up to address the room. His face looks pained, as though he’s googled ‘how to look serious and reverential’ but is struggling to make his eyebrows do what he wants them to.
‘No one enjoys letting people go.’ He sighs. ‘I could have reinterviewed you all – let you reapply for your jobs, toed the HR line, but I’ve witnessed what strong units both the Badger and Ferret teams are. I see the logic in keeping one team together.’ Gary looks sombre. Amid the strangely gladiatorial atmosphere, maybe we do need reminding that many of the people in this room are losing their jobs today. ‘And to ensure complete fairness, the decision is not going to be down to me. Kydz Network’s newest commissioner, Melanie Durham, is going to be the person you’re pitching to this morning.’
Melanie? Melanie is the new commissioner? We all turn to see her come in. She looks incredible, like a younger, hotter, Judi Dench with twice the attitude. Wow, I hope I look that good when I’m in my sixties.
‘Lucy, Coleson.’ Melanie nods towards both of us, her voice smooth as polished marble. ‘My former runners battling it out for the top development job, how poetic.’
‘There are no traffic jams on the extra mile,’ Coleson says, furnishing Melanie with a grin full of veneers that he certainly didn’t have when he was a runner.
‘Exactly, Coleson,’ says Melanie. Tell me she’s not impressed by that? It doesn’t even make sense.
Coleson is up first, so I sit back down, trying to reassure myself that our whole presentation is loaded onto slides, all I need to do is read it. Trey’s meticulously prepared graphics will speak for themselves.
‘What do children want?’ Coleson asks as he opens his presentation with a flick of his wrist. An artful montage of children running in a playground appears on the screen in front of us. ‘They want to be treated like adults. They don’t want to be patronised.’ More footage of children’s faces. ‘There have been shows where we’ve put children into adult situations before; we let them survive in the wild, build their own eco home, run a government.’ They let kids run a government? Where? ‘But what about the area where it really matters – the part of life that means the most to children, that they usually don’t get a say in?’ Coleson pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Family.’ A graphic on the presentation changes to a picture of two children being hugged by a man and a woman.
‘Parents separate, and usually the kids don’t get to hear about it until someone’s moved out.’
I scan the room, no idea where this pitch is going. Michael has a fist in his mouth. Coleson has everyone’s rapt attention, including Melanie’s.
‘But that won’t be the case on this show. Welcome to – Kids on the Couch.’ Coleson stands back and a clip plays on the screen: a girl of about eight or nine is sitting in an armchair interviewing a couple who sit side by side on a couch. It looks like they built a set for their taster tape, the lighting and editing is slick and professional.
‘And why do you think Mummy doesn’t like it when you go out with your friends?’ the child asks the man on the couch.
‘Because she’s controlling and doesn’t like me having any fun,’ says the man, and Coleson’s team all laugh.
‘Because you come back drunk, gunning for a fight,’ says the woman.
The child consults her notepad. ‘And how does that make you feel, Mummy?’
‘Scared, lonely.’
Coleson waves his hand and the screen freezes. ‘Kids on the Couch features kids whose parents are on the brink of separation. Who could be more invested in trying to keep them together than their own children? Now, we’re not just throwing them to the wolves here, our kiddie counsellors will undergo intensive training from a qualified psychotherapist. We are empowering them to save their own families.’
He can’t be serious. I shake my head in incomprehension. This is wrong on so many levels. For a child to hear all their parents’ problems and then be given the weight of responsibility in trying to fix them – it’s a recipe for a lifetime of psychological damage. I look to Melanie but, I can’t believe it, she’s nodding, writing notes, she looks . . . impressed.