One Day

‘That’s right.’ Sonya is glancing furtively at the plastic bag of booze chinking at Emma’s side, the plume of smoke curling from behind her back.

‘University next year?’

‘Nottingham, I hope. If I get the grades.’

‘You will. You will.’

‘Thanks to you,’ says Sonya, but without much conviction.

There’s a silence. In desperation Emma holds up the bottles in one hand, the fags in the other and waggles them. ‘WEEKLY SHOP!’ she says.

Sonya seems confused. ‘Well. I’d better get going.’

‘Okay, Sonya, really great to see you. Sonya? Good luck, yeah? Really good luck,’ but Sonya is already striding off without looking back and Emma, one of those carpe diem-type teachers, watches her go.

Later that night, a strange thing happens. Half asleep, lying on the sofa with the TV on and the empty bottle at her feet, she is woken by Dexter Mayhew’s voice. She doesn’t understand quite what he’s saying — something about first-person-shooters and multiplayer options and non-stop shoot-em-up action. Confused and concerned she forces her eyes open, and he is standing right in front of her.

Emma hauls herself upright and smiles. She has seen this show before. Game On is a late-night TV programme, with all the hot news and views from the computer games scene. The set is a red-lit dungeon composed of polystyrene boulders, as if playing computer games were a sort of purgatory, and in this dungeon whey-faced gamers sit hunched in front of a giant screen as Dexter Mayhew urges them to press their buttons faster, faster, shoot, shoot.

The games, the tournaments, are inter-cut with earnest reviews in which Dexter and a token woman with orange hair discuss the week’s hot new releases. Maybe it’s just Emma’s tiny television, but he looks a little puffy these days, a little grey. Perhaps it’s just that small screen, but something has gone missing. The swagger she remembers has gone. He is talking about Duke Nukem 3D and he seems uncertain, a little embarrassed even. Nevertheless she feels a great wave of affection for Dexter Mayhew. In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right. I will call him, she thinks, as she falls asleep.

Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow, I will call him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN. Two Meetings

TUESDAY, 15 JULY 1997

Soho and the South Bank

‘So. The bad news is, they’re cancelling Game On.’

‘They are? Really?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Right. Okay. Right. Did they give a reason why?’

‘No, Dexy, they just don’t feel they’ve cracked a way of conveying the piquant romance of computer gaming to a late-night TV audience. The channel thinks that they haven’t got the ingredients quite right, so they’re cancelling the show.’

‘I see.’

‘. . starting again with a different presenter.’

‘And a different name?’

‘No, they’re still calling it Game On.’

‘Right. So — so it’s still the same show then.’

‘They’re making a lot of significant changes.’

‘But it’s still called Game On?’

‘Yes.’

‘Same set, same format and everything.’

‘Broadly speaking.’

‘But with a different presenter.’

‘Yes. A different presenter.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t know. Not you though.’

‘They didn’t say who?’

‘They said younger. Someone younger, they were going younger. That’s all I know.’

‘So. . in other words, I have been sacked.’

‘Well, I suppose another way of looking at it is that, yes, in this instance, they’ve decided to go in a different direction. A direction that’s away from you.’

‘Okay. Okay. So — what’s the good news?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, you said “the bad news is they’re cancelling the show”. What’s the good news?’

‘That’s it. That’s all. That’s all the news I have.’

At that precise same moment, barely two miles away across the Thames, Emma Morley stands in an ascending lift with her old friend Stephanie Shaw.

‘The main thing is, and I can’t say this enough — don’t be intimidated.’

‘Why would I be intimidated?’

‘She’s a legend, Em, in publishing. She’s notorious.’

‘Notorious? For what?’

‘For being a. . big personality,’ and even though they are the only people in the lift, Stephanie Shaw drops her voice into a whisper. ‘She’s a wonderful editor, she’s just a little. . eccentric that’s all.’

They ride the next twenty storeys in silence. Beside her Stephanie Shaw stands smart, petite in a crisp white shirt — no, not a shirt, a blouse — tight black pencil skirt, a neat little bob, years away from the sullen Goth who sat next to her in tutorials all that time ago, and Emma is surprised to find herself intimidated by her old acquaintance; her professional demeanour, her no-nonsense manner. Stephanie Shaw has probably sacked people. She probably says things like ‘photocopy this for me!’ If Emma did the same at school they’d laugh in her face. In the lift, hands clasped in front of her, Emma has a sudden urge to giggle. It’s like they’re playing at a game called ‘Offices’.

The lift door slides open onto the thirtieth floor, a vast open-plan area, its high smoked-glass windows looking out across the Thames and Lambeth. When Emma had first come to London she had written hopeful, ill- informed letters to publishers and imagined the envelopes being sliced open with ivory paper knives in cluttered, shabby Georgian houses by ageing secretaries in half-moon glasses. But this is sleek and light and youthful, the very model of the modern media workplace. The only thing that reassures her are the stacks of books that litter the floor and tables, teetering piles of the things dumped seemingly at random. Stephanie strides and Emma follows and around the office faces pop up from behind walls of books and peer at the new arrival as she struggles to remove her jacket and walk at the same time.

‘Now, I can’t guarantee that she’ll have read it all, or read it at all in fact, but she’s asked to see you, which is great, Em, really great.’

‘I appreciate this so much, Stephanie.’

‘Trust me, Em, the writing’s really good. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have given it to her. It’s not in my interest to give her rubbish to read.’

It was a school story, a romance really, for older kids, set in a comp in Leeds. A sort of real-life, gritty Mallory Towers, based around a school production of Oliver! and told from the point of view of Julie Criscoll, the mouthy, irresponsible girl playing the Artful Dodger. There were illustrations too, scratchy doodles and caricatures and sarcastic speech bubbles like you might find in a teenage girl’s diary, all jumbled in with the