Unlikely.
‘Didn’t we try this before?’ Sandra sounded on the verge of dozing off.
We? There’s no we in this, Sandra. You go off with your monthly pay packet, and I sit in my lounge bedroom trying to work out how I’m going to afford to eat this month. ‘Yes.’
‘What did they say?’
‘The student focus was too young for the main paper.’ Snotty baby-boomers.
‘The online readers enjoy your stories of debauched students, Freddie. They really go for it.’
They really go for hating on it. Last week she’d written about getting wasted the night before an exam. Total fabrication. Her and her mates had sat in night after night working in fear, as they watched the collapsing economy swallow everything around it like a dead star: paid internships, graduate schemes, jobs, benefits. She might as well have spent her time downing pints of vodka. ‘I graduated two summers ago, I’m not even at university anymore.’
‘It’s up to you, it’s all good experience.’
Experience. Everything was good experience: writing articles for free for a national newspaper, landing a job in Espress-oh’s coffee chain to pay her bills, pitching, publishing, pumping out all her words for no reward. When was this experience supposed to pay off? When would she have enough experience? ‘I’ll send the copy over now.’
‘Let’s do drinks soon.’
They wouldn’t. That was what people with paid jobs said to get rid of you. They didn’t need contacts. They didn’t need any more drags on their time. When they were done, they wanted to go home and wank off in front of their latest box set. Drinks were for those who needed a way in. Drinks were fucking fictional.
Freddie left the phone on the windowsill. She should sleep. What had she managed? Her shift finished at 6.00am. She’d brainstormed ideas on the way home on the Ginger Line. 9.30am first commission came in. There were three in total today, all wanted them filed within a couple of hours, all under a thousand words, only one of them was paid. Thirty pounds from a privately funded online satire site. Gotta love the rich kids. Awash with their parents’ money, they didn’t have enough business sense to demand that their contributors work for experience.
She clicked refresh on her Mac mail. No new emails. Then she clicked refresh again. Then she did the same on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat. Round and round. Waiting. For what? Something. Something big.
She placed her glasses on the coffee table, closed her eyes, and pulled her duvet up. She’d been awake for nineteen, nearly twenty hours. Her flatmate, Pete, whatever, moved quietly through the room, only ruining it when he spilt hot tea on his thumb and swore. She liked him. Good egg. The tug of sleep came easily.
Her head was shaking. No, vibrating. Her hand had the phone and she was answering before her brain caught up.
‘Freddie, it’s Neil here. Neil Sanderson.’
Neil Sanderson. The Post. Broadsheet. She’d met him at the industry awards she’d blagged a ticket to. Built the relationship on Twitter.
‘Neil, hi,’ she gulped from a cold coffee as she climbed up onto the windowsill. Work brain, work.
‘I’ve taken a look at the stuff you’ve sent me and it’s great.’
Fuck!
‘The writing is sound, the points salient and well argued,’ he continued.
Fuck, fuck!
‘But I can’t use it.’
Fuck. ‘Why?’
‘The thing is, Freddie, you’re a great writer, but that’s not enough these days. The world’s full of great writers and the Internet’s only made it easier to find them. You need that extra something to stand out.’
‘Like what?’ She wasn’t sure she had much left to give.
‘Did you see Olivia Williams’ piece on being kidnapped by Somali pirates? Laura McBethan’s blog on surviving the Air Asiana plane crash? Or Gaz Wagon’s real-time microblogging from the London riots? All excellent reporting. All game changers. All propelled to stardom now.’
‘So I need to get kidnapped, or embroil myself in a riot? I’ll get right onto it.’
Neil laughed. ‘Are you working class?’
She thought of her parents, her mum a dedicated junior school teacher, and her dad a local council worker (retired early, following one too many dazed and confused moments at work), in their leafy suburban home. ‘Er, no.’
‘Shame, that’s quite in at the moment. Not landed gentry?’
What was this, an UsVsTh3m online game – What Social Class Are You?
Neil continued, ‘Because of Made in Chelsea, people are obsessed with the posh.’
‘I’m middle class.’
‘Middle class like Kate Middleton?’
‘Nobody is middle class like Kate Middleton.’ My career’s over at the age of twenty-three, condemned by my parents’ traditional jobs and the good fortune not to have been caught in a natural disaster, thought Freddie.
‘And you’re not black…’
Did he even remember meeting her? ‘I don’t see how that’s relevant.’
‘Just looking for a unique angle.’
‘Being black is a unique angle?’
‘Pieces written about the ethnic experience are very popular with readers.’
‘I’ll tell my Asian mates who lived in the same street as me, went to the same school, studied at the same university, and get paid the same as me, to give you a call to share their ethnic experience.’
Neil laughed. ‘Okay, then you’ll have to try the old-fashioned way. Keep getting your name in print, and with a bit of luck you’ll land a contract.’
She felt all the air go out of her. ‘How’d you do it?’
‘Wrote small pieces for a local newspaper and worked my way up till I was on the nationals. I was an apprenticeship lad.’
An apprenticeship: so scarce it’d be easier to book onto a plane that was going to crash. There was silence for a moment.
‘You could always consider another career, I pay my accountant a fortune?’ Neil sounded like he was only half joking.
‘Thanks. I mean, for the advice and that.’
‘Anytime, good luck.’ He sounded sad. Or guilty. ‘You’ve just got to seize the story, Freddie. Push yourself into uncomfortable situations. Keep your eyes and ears open.’ He was trying to be encouraging.
