Inconceivable

“So, here’s how it is, mate,” Crowley continued. “I may be your controller, but he’s your boss, OK? The Breakfast Show is the station flagship. It’s his show and you work for him. He’s a radio genius and your job, your number-one occupation, is to stop him getting poached by Virgin or Capital.”

Later on, alone in my new office, I made a decision.

A big and terrible decision, a decision I never imagined myself making, a decision I hate myself for even thinking about. But I’ve done it now and deep down even though I know I’m wrong, I know I’m right.

Dear Penny

I’ve taken the week off work. After the way I’ve shamed myself with Carl Phipps I may never leave the house again. I mean, what must he think of me? How must he feel? He kisses a girl, she kisses him back and the next thing he knows he’s being foully abused on his answerphone and told that the girl will not give him one when he hasn’t even asked her to in the first place! My God! Every time I think about it I want to kill myself.

What am I to do? I’m bound to see him sooner or later. Perhaps I’ll give up my job. After all, now that Sam has been transferred to radio (Sam keeps saying “the shame of it” but I don’t see what’s so wrong with radio), the threat of our immediate financial ruin seems to have lifted somewhat. If I left the office I’d never have to see Carl again. I must say it’s tempting.

Cuthbert is out of danger and home, by the way. Melinda brought him round and he projectile vomited all over me and an antique cushion cover. Melinda said that the doctors had warned that this might happen and I wasn’t to worry because Cuthbert was fine. A slightly insensitive thing to say, I thought, as I mopped up the bile. I mean us non-mothers do have lives too and we do care about our cushion covers. Still, I mustn’t be mean. Any mum who’s been through what Melinda has recently been through with Cuthbert is entitled to place him at the centre of the universe and exclude the needs and feelings of all other beings.

Dear Traitor

Well, I’ve done it. If Lucy ever finds out, which in the end she must, I cannot bear to think what her reaction will be. But whatever the harvest, I’ve done it. I’ve pitched my idea about an infertility film to George and Trevor at the BBC. I know it’s terrible and madness and I’m putting at risk everything I hold dear but I am a writer. Writers write about themselves, all artists draw upon their own experiences and emotions. It’s part of the job.

Reading this back, it all looks a bit like special pleading, but I think it’s fair. Lucy has no right to ban me from the source of my inspiration. It may be her story but it’s my story too. Anyway, I’ll change the names, for God’s sake.

I spent all last night writing a synopsis. Lucy thought I was doing this book, which I felt pretty guilty about… except in a way I think I’m sort of doing what we originally intended, just in a different form. Anyway, I did it and I must say I thought it looked fantastic. If I was a commissioning editor I’d commission it. The maddening thing of course is that until a few days ago I was a commissioning editor.

I managed to get my treatment down to just under a thousand words which in my experience is about right. You don’t want to offer too much at first, just a few crisp ideas succinctly put. That’s what I used to long for when I was reading people’s treatments. God, the depression when something the size of a telephone directory lands on your desk and you’re supposed to respond to it overnight. Besides, Trevor and George had agreed to meet me right away, being such good mates, and I didn’t want them to have an excuse for not having read it. I biked it over to the BBC first thing this morning and we all met up at noon at Quark, meeting for the first time as suppliant and God-like commissioners, rather than as honoured partners in lunch. I can’t deny I was nervous.

When I arrived Trevor was alone. I didn’t bother with any of the smalltalk that’s normally the rule on these occasions. Dammit, I’ve known Trevor for years.

“What do you think?” I asked.

The news was good. He loved it. I cannot describe the relief.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea, Sam,” he said with real enthusiasm. “Dark, dramatic. Even the Controller’s excited.”

I was amazed. “You’ve shown it to Nigel?”

“We didn’t tell him it came from you, of course.”

This was extraordinary news. Bringing in a network Controller at such an early stage was scarcely common. In fact it was unheard of.

“It’s the Zeitgeist, Sam, the issue du jour,” Trevor explained to me, as if I didn’t know. “For Christ’s sake, everybody knows somebody who’s doing it. The whole country’s obsessed. That IVF documentary we ran got eight million viewers even on the repeats and there wasn’t a laugh in it.”

Just then George came up. He was late because he’d been up at the Royal Free taking Cuthbert for a check- up. Cuthbert appears to be getting back to his old self, insomuch as George was still trying to get sick out of his breast pocket.

The gorgeous waitress who had so humiliated me on my previous visit to Quark was hovering about waiting to take our order. I longed for George to say something loud and forceful about my treatment, which would let her know that I was not a sad git at all but a hot new screenwriter with a project hurtling towards a green light. He didn’t, though. George doesn’t let anything get in the way of his ordering food. He made up for it, though, once we’d ordered and even without a sexy young audience it was still pretty heady stuff.

“Now look here, Sam,” he said. “We’ve all had a gander at your idea and everyone thinks it’s marvellous…”

“Yes, I’ve been telling him,” said Trevor.

And suddenly they were both talking at once.

“The scene in the restaurant where she rings up and demands her Restricted Bonking Month bonk.”

“And then the bloke can’t get an erection.”

“Brilliant. Did that really happen?”

I admitted that it did.

“I love it when she spills the tea because she’s propped herself up on the pillows,” said George. “How’s Lucy taking it, by the way? I mean, it’s pretty intimate.”

This was, of course, a pretty tricky point. After all, Trevor and George are both friends of Lucy’s and here I was, hoping to convince them to enable me to betray her.

Just then the waitress arrived with our starters and of course everything had to stop while George went into his “Modern restaurants are crap” routine. He has a particular hatred of what in the 1980s was called nouvelle cuisine i.e. small portions pretentiously presented.

“Hate these poncy joints,” he said, loudly, so that the waitress would hear. “Plates the size of dustbin lids, portions so small you think you’ve got dirty crockery and it turns out to be your main course.”

If the gorgeous, icy young waitress cared what George thought about the food or its presentation she certainly did not let it show on her sullen, impossibly perfect countenance. She simply smiled her “You’re not so special, I meet two thousand wankers like you a day” smile, turned and left, leaving George and me to gape at her wonderful bottom as she returned to the kitchen. George observed that she could probably crack walnuts between those splendidly athletic-looking buttocks, which he knew would annoy Trevor, who asked him to keep his witless, sexist, juvenile heterosexual banter to himself.

After this we returned to the difficult subject of what Lucy would say about my treatment.

“I’m amazed she’s letting you do it,” said Trevor. “I really am. I mean, I know it’s a story and not about her but all the same, you’ve had to get your research from somewhere.”

It was time to come clean and admit that I hadn’t actually told her about my plans yet. After all, I reasoned, there was no sense in getting her all excited if it came to nothing. Movies are a notoriously dodgy business.

“Even if you do give me a commission, I’m going to keep my new job in radio and work incognito.”

I could see that George and Trevor were not entirely convinced that I was embarking on a sensible course of action, but it is not really their problem and one thing I’m sure about is that they love the treatment, as, it seems, does Nigel. Astonishingly, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I seem to be getting somewhere.

Dear Penny

I went back to work today and there was a note in an envelope on my desk. It was from Carl. I