28. Charlie
28
CHARLIE
Nell shoots up from where she’s sitting and sprints for the door. But there’s so much crap in the way that it takes her about ten seconds to actually wade through it all. When she finally does, she bangs her fists on the door and shouts, ‘Hello? Hello!’
I blink and stand up to follow her. I’m still kind of reeling from the past few minutes – trying to process how exactly our conversation managed to get so deep so quickly.
‘They must have gone . . .’ she says as I arrive beside her and start thumping too.
I press my ear to the door. ‘Can’t hear anything.’
Nell sighs. ‘Be honest, Francombe – are we going to die in here?’ Her expression is so hilariously deadpan that I burst out laughing.
‘There’s a pretty good chance of it, yeah.’
She nods. We both stand in silence for a moment, gazing around the cupboard.
It’s like a bubble has burst.
I glance at her as she starts idly rifling through yet another box on the shelf. I try to imagine how I’d have felt if Mum had died in my teens. Mum has been through her fair share of health problems over the years – chronic fatigue, chronic pain, not to mention scary bouts of anxiety and depression. But she’s never been close to not being here any more. The sheer idea of her not being here any more . . .
‘Flute!’
I’m brought swiftly back to earth by Nell’s shout from the next shelf over. She’s beaming at me, brandishing a dust-coated silver flute.
‘Good find,’ I say. ‘That’s three now. I reckon we can just get three more and then we’re good to go.’
She places the flute next to where we laid the trumpet and banjo, near the door. ‘Well, we’re not really good to go, since we’re technically locked in,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘True.’
‘Shall we just keep on digging and see how many more we can find?’ she suggests. ‘I’ll go and check out that potential xylophone over there . . .’
I nod as she heads off to the far shelf.
I start working my way down the shelves, keeping my eyes peeled for anything that could feature in this keytar sketch. But I can’t stop thinking about what Nell told me. What she must have gone through with her dad passing away. How much she clearly loves this show – how ridiculously knowledgeable she seems to be about comedy in general. I’ve never really stopped to think why she’s even interning here. I guess because I just stumbled into it, I kind of assumed she had too. But her dad isn’t the CEO of the company. She’s here because she loves this programme. Because this is her thing – this is what she wants to do.
A shiver of shame runs through me. This placement is clearly everything to Nell. For the first time, I wonder what she’s had to do to even get here – how many forms she’s had to fill in, how many hoops she’s had to jump through. How many years she’s waited to be in this building. I don’t know the answers to any of these questions because I’ve just barged my way in, like a spoiled brat.
I think about that moment in the writers’ meeting a couple of days back, when she suggested that San Pellegrino tinfoil hat thing. That was so funny – it totally broke the room apart. And it probably would have actually made it into the show if Jed Greening hadn’t turned out to be such a humourless dickwad. What was it Nick said last week, when I stormed up to his office after seeing the Ed Sheeran video? She knows the show inside out, and she’s ambitious as all hell. Nate says she’s got tons of potential as a sketch writer too.
‘It is a xylophone!’ I hear Nell call from the other end of the closet.
‘Nice one!’ I call back. ‘Stick it on the pile!’
I move further down the shelf and open another box. Thinking about that moment with Nick makes me think about how my conversation with Nell ended just a few minutes ago. After telling me about this amazing connection she had with her dad, she’d asked me about mine. Up until that exact moment I’d been doing everything humanly possible to steer clear of talking to her about Nick. I’m not even 100 per cent sure she knows he’s my dad. But when she asked that question – Do you not have anything like that with your dad? – I was suddenly so ready to open up to her, just as she’d opened up to me. To tell her about Nick leaving when I was a kid. About him starting a new family, as if Mum and I had never even existed. To tell her about the . . . nothingness between us ever since. It’s strange. I don’t even talk about him to my closest friends. But something about Nell just makes me want to let her in.
Instinctively, I pat my pocket, remembering that text he sent me this morning. But my phone is still on my desk upstairs. Shit. What if he comes down to the office again to see where I am? I wouldn’t put it past him, and the idea of it is not appealing.
‘Hey, how long have we been in here?’ I call over to Nell.
Through the gaps in the shelves, I see her check her phone. ‘Nearly an hour now. Still got no signal.’
‘They’ve got to come down and get us soon, right?’
‘Who knows? I think they’re all busy getting the final sketches written.’ She’s walking towards me now, holding something. ‘Found a harmonica. It’s a bit rusty. And dusty.’
‘Does it still work?’ I ask.
She holds it out to me. I blow into it and a cloud of dust bursts out, along with a horribly tuneless wail. Nell puts her hand over her mouth and laughs. I grin back. It feels so good, making her laugh.
‘I’ll put it with the others,’ I say, walking over to our instrument pile by the door.
She exhales and tugs at the neck of her sweater.
I nod. ‘You don’t want to take your jumper off?’
I wince as the words come out, realising how creepy that probably sounded. And just a few minutes after I told her, You look hot too. Bloody hell. ‘Sorry,’ I add as Nell bites her lip to stop herself laughing.
‘No, it’s a good suggestion, Francombe,’ she says. ‘It’s just that I can’t exactly take it off.’
‘Oh-kay?’ I say dumbly.
‘Kind of only have a bra on under here,’ she mumbles, tugging at the jumper again.
Oh God.
‘Right! Erm. Oh. Right. Yep. I see. Gotcha,’ I gabble.
Jesus, I sound like a malfunctioning robot. The image of Nell in just a bra has now beamed itself in high definition into my head, and it’s like several fuses have blown inside me. I glance around for anything to take my mind off it, and spot the cupboard’s only window, up near the high ceiling. ‘If we could just open the window, that would help,’ I say, trying very hard not to look at her chest as I turn back to her.
‘Well, there is one option . . .’ Nell smiles at me and nods towards a pair of huge, bright-red circus stilts that are leaning against a shelf a few yards away. I hadn’t even noticed them.
‘You’re not serious?’ I ask her.
She holds up her hands. ‘Hey, listen – if you’re not up to the challenge, Francombe, then . . .’
I feel my spine tingle. Am I imagining it or . . . is she flirting with me? The mental picture of her in her bra is proving very hard to shake, so I can’t really judge my instincts. It definitely feels like she’s flirting with me.
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ I shoot back.
She meets my gaze, her eyes twinkling. ‘It is like that, yes.’
I cross my arms and nod at the stilts. ‘And why can’t you do it? What happened to feminism?’
She laughs. ‘Remind me, which wave of feminism was it where women were encouraged to walk on stilts?’ She looks up at the window. ‘Plus, you’re taller than me – I don’t think I could reach that window even if I was on those stilts.’
‘Fair point.’ God. Am I actually going to do this? Am I really so desperate to impress her that I will try something this stupid?
Yes. Yes, I definitely am.
It’s not quite knight-in-shining-armour territory – more clumsy-bloke-on-circus-stilts territory – but surely, it’ll elevate her opinion of me if I at least give it a go. Best-case scenario, I manage to open the window and she thinks I’m brave and heroic. Worst case, I fall on my arse and make her laugh again. So, basically, it’s win-win. Even if I do end up in hospital at the end of it.
I grab the stilts. ‘OK, let’s get the lay of the land here . . .’
I start dragging them towards the far wall. They’re much heavier than they look. We position them right underneath the window, and I clamp my left foot into one of the stirrups and haul myself upwards – but as soon as my other foot is off the ground I wobble crazily and crash against one of the metal shelving units.
‘Watch out!’ Nell rushes to steady me as the boxes on the shelf teeter precariously. Not a great start. ‘Are you OK?’ she asks, half laughing.
‘Yeah, all good!’ I push myself gently away from the shelf. I’m now freestanding, my legs jiggling wildly, and I make the mistake of looking down. I am a lot higher up than I imagined I’d be. This only makes my leg-jiggling worse.
‘Are you trying to do an Elvis Presley impression?’ Nell asks. ‘Maybe get the basics down first before you move on to dance moves?’
‘Do not make me laugh!’ I yell, still struggling to stay upright.
‘Sorry. You’re doing great!’
I look up. I’m right underneath the tiny window. I’m pretty sure I can reach it from here. But reaching it will involve taking one of my hands off the stilts: something I have – crucially – not taken into account until this moment.
‘How the hell am I going to do this?!’ I call, trying to keep my eyes on the window so as to remain upright. ‘As soon as I take my hand off I’m going to fall!’
‘I’ll hold you steady,’ Nell says.
I feel her grip the stilts below me. ‘This is like a very weird trust exercise,’ I say.
‘Yeah. This is probably what they do in team-building sessions at the circus.’
I snort. ‘What did I say about not making me laugh?!’
‘Sorry. Don’t worry, I’ve got you.’
‘OK. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck . . .’ Very slowly, I take my right hand off the stilt and reach out for the window. As I do, I notice two more musical instruments right on the top of the shelf beside me – a tambourine and a little toy saxophone. My legs are wobbling more wildly than ever, but Nell is just about managing to keep the stilts in place. I grip the window frame and curl my fingers around the lock. I close my eyes, praying for the best, and then yank it upwards. The window swings open. In the same movement, I make a grab for the tambourine and the sax, miraculously managing to seize both in my right hand.
‘Yes!’ I cry.
‘You did it!’ Nell shouts. Instinctively, I can’t help but look down at her, and when I catch her eye, her smile sends a jolt of electricity through my body.
‘What on earth are you both doing?!’
I spin round – momentarily forgetting that I’m standing on a pair of extremely tall stilts. And that’s when I come crashing down to the ground.