that I could reassure him on that front. ‘We used it a lot.’ Oh shit. ‘Weeelll, that was until it got full up and let’s say it doesn’t work for us.’
‘Full up?’ Marcus’s voice sounded suspiciously choked.
‘Yes, you know. It says there’s no more space.’ I lifted both shoulders. ‘When we tried to free up some space, we managed to delete everything, so we decided not to use it anymore. We have a little card index file system, where we write descriptions down.’ When we remembered, or got around to it.
Marcus closed his eyes and his lips moved. I think he said, ‘Give me strength.’ Or it might have been ‘For fuck’s sake.’
After giving his rather appropriate pound sign cufflinks a thorough visual inspection, he swallowed hard and quickly scribbled down a couple of notes.
‘And do you make all of them in house?’
‘What?’ I was still focusing on the pen and notebook, wondering what he’d written down. I couldn’t imagine it was anything very approving.
‘The wigs, do you make all of them?’
‘No, not all. It depends how many are needed. We have piece workers who will do some.’
‘So how do you work all that out? Who’s doing what? When it needs to be done by? What’s ready?’
‘It can be a bit stressful, I guess.’ Damn, I’d walked straight into that one. I was not going to elaborate and admit we’d had some major panics in the past. Because it didn’t matter. We’d always got things sorted in time.
‘Really?’ He studied me so quizzically I felt as if he could look straight through and could tell I was avoiding the complete truth.
‘Yes, OK,’ I hedged, ‘it is very stressful but it works.’
‘But it could work better. Be less stressful.’
‘What, you’re going to wave a magic wand?’
‘No but I could come up with a system to help you. A project management package.’
It sounded a bit too good to be true. ‘What’s in it for you?’
He laid down his pen and gave me a grave look. ‘It’s like trying to herd a box of angry kittens with you. Believe it or not, I’m trying to help both of us. What’s in it for me, is that, for one thing, you might treat a computer with a bit more damn respect instead of just yanking the plug out when it doesn’t do what you want.’
‘That was a one off,’ I said. ‘It was just unfortunate that you walked in when you did. I’ve never done that before.’
‘Unfortunate? Careless I think.’
I narrowed my eyes at him for a second. ‘Oscar Wilde?’
‘I have been to the theatre occasionally. Despite what you may think, I’m not a complete corporate philistine.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’ Although come to think of it, I might have done. The phrase nagged at me.
‘We’re straying. Whether it was the first time or not, it demonstrated your complete lack of respect or understanding for a computer.’
Maybe now wasn’t the time to volunteer the fact that I often used the CD drawer to put my coffee on when I was working on a complicated hair piece. If I spilt coffee on any of the expensive human hair we used Jeanie would kill me.
Suddenly he stood up and moved from behind the desk. ‘Tell me about your typical day.’ Marcus’s sudden change of tack threw me for a second until I realised he wasn’t asking me about my shower routine in the morning but about my working day.
‘We have shifts. We don’t need to be at the theatre until a few hours before curtain up. But then there are rehearsals, matinees and evening performances, so our times vary. No one’s a clock-watcher.’
We all lived and breathed the job. Most of us probably would have done it for free.
‘Tell me, what did you do yesterday?’
‘I spent the first half hour cleaning hairbrushes, rinsing out sponges and sharpening pencils.’ Nothing that a computer could help with and the look I levelled at him reiterated my thought. A slight smile curved on his lips.
I pulled a face as I remembered that yesterday had been a bit of a fiasco. ‘I had to nip out to grab some light pancake because we’d completely run out. Then—’
‘Does that happen often?’ His face was grave as he asked the question.
I lifted my shoulders. ‘Very, very occasionally,’ I lied. ‘Only because we don’t tend to use that one very often. After that we had a big delivery from the wholesalers, which I had to unpack with Vince.’ Which we’d forgotten was arriving and had chucked a spanner in the works as the boxes took up most of our working space until we’d got everything put away.
‘What sort of delivery?’
‘Hair stuff. You know Kirby grips, hair nets, hairspray, mousse. We get through buckets of the stuff.’
‘And how do you order all that?’
‘The wholesale people are quite good at giving us a call every so often and we just place an order. What?’
He didn’t exactly pull a face but I could see precisely what was going on in his head.
‘You can never have too many hair pins,’ I retorted.
‘It just doesn’t sound very,’ he clicked his pen off and on again, ‘organised.’
If I’d been a cat, my back would have been arched and I’d have hissed at him.
‘Are you trying to say we’re not very professional?’ I could feel my mouth creasing into mulish lines. What was it about this man that made me revert to being so juvenile?
‘No, not at all.’ Exasperation was written across his face. ‘But I can already see ways in which I could help you. The computer is not your enemy but it’s only your friend if it does what you need it to do. Using it could help enormously. Help you create orders of things you need and stop you running out of them. For example, remind you when you’re low on pancake … what is that by the way?’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, which made the green eyes twinkle. ‘I’m assuming you’re not talking the maple syrup variety.’
I bristled for a second and then realised he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Maybe it was time I cut the guy a little slack.
‘Base. Make-up base. Not pancake anymore but we still call it that. I think some of our prima donnas would get very irate if you tried to smear their faces with anything that went with maple syrup.’
‘I thought as much.’
OK. Brownie points to him. I could see he was trying to help but really, we were fine as we were.
‘We’re actually quite good at
