one knows,’ he replied, waving his fingers around and making spooky noises. ‘He’s an enigma.’
‘You said you signed his cheque?’ I said as I swiped through the photos. ‘Surely that had his name on it?’
‘Cheque went to his agent.’
‘I thought you said he was an athlete?’ I said, deflating by the second. Bye-bye David Beckham, farewell Roger Federer, see you in my dreams. Both at the same time, hopefully.
‘He’s an e-sports athlete,’ he explained. ‘He’s a god on YouTube.’
‘Then that explains it,’ I replied, folding up my dreams of a workplace romance and storing them neatly next to my Ted-might-be-a-serial-killer anxieties. ‘I’m not really a YouTube woman.’
He sat forward and peered at my forehead.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-two but very dehydrated,’ I said, tossing my hair to cover as much of my face as possible. ‘So, when am I meeting this superstar? Is he here?’
‘Course not,’ he answered. ‘It’s Wednesday, he’s at school.’
It just got better and better.
‘How old is he, Ted?’ I asked.
My new boss scratched his stubble thoughtfully. ‘I want to say fifteen but he could be a tall twelve. It’s very hard to tell with kids these days, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ I agreed readily, wondering whether or not I could drive the heel of my shoe through my own temple if I was truly dedicated to the act.
‘He’s not like a normal kid though,’ Ted assured me. ‘He’s clever. And funny! So it doesn’t matter that you’re not.’
I looked around the studio, such as it was. Cheaply painted dark grey walls covered in black soundproofing, like foam egg boxes that had been dipped in tar, flickering fluorescent overhead lights and a filthy sheet of glass that separated the producer’s bay from the recording booth. It was covered with so many handprints it looked as though it had recently been used to reenact that scene in the back of the car in Titanic. God forbid I ever turn a black light on the room, I thought to myself. The whole place was crying out for an anti-bac wipe. Or a nuclear blast. One or the other.
‘If I’m being totally honest with you, I haven’t really done anything like this before,’ I said, tugging at the sleeve of my smart white shirt. ‘Not that I’m not up for the challenge but it isn’t something I have a lot of experience in. You’re all right with me learning on the job?’
Ted waved away my concerns with an unmoved ‘pfft’.
‘Mate,’ he replied, even though we were not mates. ‘If you can make books sound interesting enough for people to tune into your show, think what you’ll be able to do with a genuinely fascinating subject like e-sports!’
‘You really mean that, don’t you?’ I asked, glancing around the studio-slash-dungeon one more time.
‘I most certainly do,’ he said with a grave nod. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘And this is only the studio? I don’t have to stay down here all the time?’ I asked, afraid I already knew the answer. ‘My desk’s upstairs, right?’
‘Thing is,’ Ted sucked the air in through his teeth like he was about to tell me my carburettor needed replacing. ‘We’re short on desks at the moment. But you can do a bit of decorating if you like? With your own money.’
He rapped his knuckles on the desk and its loosely attached drawer crashed to the floor.
‘We can probably get you a new one of those,’ he muttered, kicking it away as I held my breath.
Run, commanded the voice in my head. Run far and run fast. But I refused to listen, that was just fear talking, according to Starting Over. The fear of failure and the even more powerful fear of success. I would not stand in my own way, I would embrace this opportunity and succeed. I would also bring in my own cleaning products from home.
‘Just so I’m absolutely, one hundred percent clear about everything,’ I said, running a finger along the mixing desk and balking at the filth. ‘The job I just signed a contract for is to produce a podcast about e-sports with a YouTube child star?’
Ted gave a single, eyes-askance nod.
‘Didn’t you say you lived in a shed?’ he asked.
‘So,’ I said, taking a deep breath in and giving my new boss a bright and glittering smile. ‘When do I meet Mr Snazzlechuff?’
After Ted left me alone to wallow in my pit, I sat at the desk and stared at my reflection in the glass partition between the studio and the mixing desk. The look of despair on my face was altogether too clear since I’d gone at the bloody thing with a full bottle of Windolene I’d found in a cupboard, oddly enough unopened.
Ten years of working every hour god sent and suddenly my career depended on a teenage gaming addict who liked to cosplay as a mid-2000s Jay-Z from the neck down and the saddest Good Boy from the neck up. Where had it all gone wrong?
‘It’s going to be fine,’ I told my own face, even though I didn’t look as though I believed me. ‘You’re lucky to have this job. It’s different and new, that’s all. Everything was different and new once, you’ll be fine.’
But a very large part of me was completely over different and new.
Three years ago, I’d jumped at different and new, lost Patrick, left my friends and whole life behind and for what? To end up right back where I’d left off, only now I was alone and I lived in a shed. Everything was confusing and exhausting, I couldn’t get to grips with any of it: how to decide what to watch in the evening, which politicians were the most evil, who had been cancelled and why. What was I allowed to like, what was I allowed to dislike and where was indifference permitted? No, different and new were on my shitlist. I wanted old and familiar. I wanted easy and understandable. I wanted tried and tested, simple and straightforward, comfortable and known and, without thinking, I picked up my phone, opened Patrick’s text and tapped out a reply, hitting send before I could stop myself.
Hello, stranger, his text said.
Hello yourself, I replied.
‘Well, that’s that,’ I whispered, taking a deep breath and watching a single grey tick appear next to the message, followed by a double grey tick. Message delivered.
Three years of stopping myself from contacting him, three years of having to sleep with my phone in the other room every time I came home drunk or went on a rubbish date or experienced even a flicker of yearning. All of it over in an instant. I looked up, expecting to see some flags fly out, a winged pig zooming past overhead, or to at least hear a distant fanfare, but there was nothing. Life-changing moments were supposed to come with a soul-stirring soundtrack, something to acknowledge their gravitas and importance, but all I had was a soundproofed studio-slash-cell, a half-eaten apple and a bag of Mini Cheddars.
‘The stuff dreams are made of,’ I muttered, yawning before I bit down on the apple.
