29. Nell
29
NELL
‘Whoaaahhh . . . ohhh . . . oh . . . aghhh!’
FLOOMF.
Frozen to the spot, I watch on in horror as Charlie wobbles, teeters and then topples, face-first, into the mountain of (thankfully) soft-looking clothing underneath him. I was talking about Buster Keaton only a few minutes ago – and this is a slapstick stunt that could have come straight out of one of his films. Only it isn’t a stunt – it actually just happened.
‘Shit! Charlie!’
I rush across to the pile. I didn’t even realise that I’d let go of the stilts. As soon as I heard the door open behind me, and Bishi’s startled voice following it, I just span round without thinking.
Bishi is clambering over the boxes towards us. ‘Charlie! Are you OK?’
My heart jumps into my throat. What if he’s broken his neck?! What if I’ve paralysed him?! But then he lifts his head out of the mound of costumes, looking straight at me with a smirk playing on his lips.
‘You called me “Charlie”,’ he says, the smirk stretching wider.
‘Oh Christ, he’s concussed!’ Bishi squawks. ‘He doesn’t even know his own name!’
Charlie laughs and shakes his head. ‘No, I’m OK. More than OK, actually.’ He looks back at me, and my stomach flutters. I didn’t mean to call him ‘Charlie’. It just slipped out.
‘What the hell were you doing up there?’ Bishi asks.
Charlie removes a pair of comically oversized bloomers from round his neck. ‘We were . . . doing a trust exercise.’
I burst out laughing. ‘I failed it pretty badly.’
‘You did.’ He gives me a mock-stern look. ‘I’m marking you down as “deeply untrustworthy”.’
Bishi looks from Charlie to me and then back again, her expression of angsty terror now softening into one of mild irritation. ‘You sure you’re OK?’ she asks him.
‘I’m fine!’ Charlie insists. ‘I was just trying to open the window.’
Bishi runs a hand over her braid, and gives a relieved sigh. ‘Well, thank God for that. HR would have crucified me.’ She looks up at the now-open window. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to just open the door?’
‘Well, we couldn’t, because –’ I cut off abruptly as I see that the door has swung shut again. ‘Oh crap.’
Charlie groans. ‘We could try and climb out the window. But I am not getting back up on those stilts again.’
At that moment though the door is pushed open again and a large man in a chequered shirt appears in the doorway. ‘Can you lot not shut the door to this cupboard, please?’ he says. ‘The lock’s broken. It needs to be propped open at all times.’
‘Yes, well, perhaps print out a sign, Pete?’ Bishi snaps.
The guy grunts and wedges the door open, before wandering off down the corridor.
‘Right, let’s get out of here before any more health-and-safety nightmares occur,’ Bishi says. ‘If I manage to get you both killed before this interns thing tomorrow night, there’ll be hell to pay.’
My ears instantly prick up.
‘What interns thing?’ Charlie asks, beating me to it.
Bishi sighs again and rubs her forehead. ‘God, have I not forwarded you both that email?’ We shake our heads. ‘You see, this is the problem with working on no sleep,’ she says. ‘There’s a drinks event after the recording of the show tomorrow night. It’s in a bar round the corner – a sort of meet-and-greet thing for all the various interns in all the departments in this building. And some of the ex-interns on the shows will be coming along too. It’s a chance for you all to network and get advice and exchange horror stories.’ She laughs – and quickly a look of panic passes across her face. ‘But please don’t tell anyone about the whole locked-in-a-cupboard, falling-off-stilts thing!’
‘We won’t,’ Charlie laughs.
‘Charlie boy!’
As we step out of the closet into the corridor, I see a man striding towards us. He’s got silvery hair and he’s wearing an expensive-looking suit. Is this . . .?
Charlie’s grin dissolves instantly as the man claps him on the shoulder. ‘There you are!’ he booms. ‘I’ve been calling you all morning. Just went to the writers’ office and they told me you were down here.’
‘Yeah, sorry, I left my phone on the desk,’ Charlie mumbles. His cheeks are flushed suddenly, and he’s staring down at the floor. He looks almost . . . ashamed.
The man turns to me and sticks out his hand. ‘And you must be Nell?’
‘Yes, hi,’ I say, shaking it.
‘Nick Francombe,’ says Nick Francombe. ‘Charlie’s old man.’
‘Oh, right. Nice to meet you.’
It’s strange. He has a completely different energy to Charlie. Like, Charlie has confidence about him – but it’s this soft, goofy, self-aware kind of confidence. It’s hard to explain. Whereas Nick is . . . Well, put it this way: there’s a definite Jed Greening vibe to Nick.
‘Nice to meet you too, Nell.’ Nick thumps Charlie on the shoulder again. ‘I hope you’re not outshining young Charles here too much? Nate and the team all speak very highly of you.’
‘Oh. Ha. Do they? Right. Erm . . .’ I glance at Charlie. His eyes are still on the carpet. I don’t really know what else to say, so I go with, ‘We were just looking for some musical instruments for this sketch tomorrow.’
‘Did you find anything, by the way?’ Bishi asks.
‘Yeah, lots.’ I gesture back into the closet at the little pile of random instruments we’ve accrued.
‘Oh, perfect!’ Bishi claps her hands together in delight. ‘Well done, both of you.’
‘So, do you fancy a quick coffee outside, Charlie boy?’ Nick says, tapping his watch. ‘I’ve got a brief window right now, that’s all. Bishi, you don’t mind if I steal my son for half an hour, do you?’
‘Of course not!’ Bishi trills.
‘Righty-ho. Come on then, Charles.’ Nick beams at me and shakes my hand again. ‘See you around, Nell. Great to finally meet you.’
‘You too.’ I give Charlie a wave. ‘See you later.’
He mumbles, ‘See you’ – but he doesn’t meet my eye.
They walk off, and Bishi and I head back into the cupboard to collect up the instruments. As we take the lift back up to the second floor, she fills me in on the all-nighter everyone pulled last night, and the ‘unbelievably stressful’ Zoom she and Nate had this morning with Jed Greening. But I can’t focus. I keep thinking about how weirdly Charlie acted around his dad. I always assumed he’d be more stuck-up and haughty in his father’s presence – more ‘look who my dad is’. But he seemed almost embarrassed to be associated with him.
A moment from earlier pops into my head. For some reason, all that stuff about Dad spilled out of me in the cupboard – our shared love of comedy and Punching Up; how it was this big connection between us. I’d asked Charlie whether he had a connection like that with his dad. His reaction – that hollow laugh followed by ‘Not really, no’ – was pretty surprising. I was planning to ask him more about it, but then we heard that noise outside and the moment fizzled away.
I don’t know what made me open up to him like that. I haven’t even really told Chloe or Mica any of that stuff about Dad. But there was something about the softness of Charlie’s expression, the way he gave me the space to think and speak, which just made it feel . . . natural.
I follow Bishi into the writers’ nook, where everyone is tapping away furiously at their keyboards. ‘Look what Charlie and Nell found!’ she cries, holding up the banjo, harmonica and xylophone victoriously. I duly hoist the trumpet, flute, tambourine and toy saxophone into the air too.
Kerri and Noah break off to give us a half-hearted round of applause, but everyone else just carries on typing. Except Talia, who reaches up to high-five me. ‘Ah, Nell, you legend!’ she says. ‘Those are perfect. Thank you.’
‘No worries!’
Bishi turns back to me. ‘Right, Nell, I’ll send you over some social-media stuff that needs doing now, if that’s OK?’
‘Yeah, sure. I just want to quickly ask Nate something though, if that’s OK . . .’
Before I head all the way back to my desk, I want to take the chance to check in with him about that scooter sketch. I emailed him my draft of it as soon as I got back from lunch yesterday, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.
He’s got his headphones in and is bashing away at his keyboard. He looks vaguely annoyed as I walk over. ‘Hey, Nate? Sorry.’
He takes his earbuds out and gives me a tight smile. ‘Nell. Hey. Super-busy right now. Can we walk and talk?’
He shoots up to his feet and heads out of the nook, towards the coffee machine. I follow him. ‘Yeah, sorry to bother you – I just wondered if you got my email yesterday? With that sketch I mentioned in the pub, about Jed’s scooters?’
‘Er, yeah, I did . . .’ He lets the sentence drift off as he pulls out some coins and starts feeding them into the machine. Embarrassment flashes through me.
‘No worries at all if it wasn’t any use!’ I blurt.
He selects his coffee and turns back to me. ‘No, it was good. Honestly. The idea was really funny. I just think, on reflection, it was more, sort of . . . “funny in the room”, as we say. You know?’
He gives me an encouraging smile, and I fight hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice. ‘Oh. Yeah. Of course.’
The coffee machine gurgles and sputters and Nate grabs his cup from the tray. ‘It’s a great start though, Nell. Really. You know the show’s sensibility so well – just keep pitching stuff, yeah? The writers’ room is just one big melting pot, with everyone throwing in ideas, all of us bouncing off each other’s suggestions. So you just have to keep throwing stuff in the pot.’
‘I will. Definitely. Thanks, Nate.’
‘No worries. I’d best get back – tons to do. See you later.’
He touches my lower back gently as he leaves, which is a bit weird, but I just smile and tell him goodbye. I head back to my desk, feeling slightly deflated. Like a wide-eyed idiot, I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours fantasising about how Nate would love my draft, and how he’s going to make it the opening sketch in tomorrow’s show. But I tell myself to get a grip. Realistically, it’s beyond naive to imagine that the first sketch I’ve pitched will actually end up on the show. Even Talia didn’t get a sketch on the show until she’d been here six months – I’ve memorised that fact from an old interview with her. ‘Funny in the room’ is a good start. I just have to keep pitching.
As I turn the corner to the IT department, my phone rings. Mum. I feel a pang of guilt – she’s tried to call me a couple of times over the last few days, but I’ve always been too busy to pick up.
‘Mum, hey!’ I say, pressing the phone to my ear. ‘How are you?’
‘Hello, love!’ The sound of her voice is like an instant shot of homesickness. ‘How’s it all going down there?’
‘Really good! Mum – I’m so sorry I haven’t called back. It’s been hectic here, with work and stuff. How is everything?’
She hesitates. ‘Good. Yes. Good. All fine. I’m OK.’
The fact that she’s so obviously lying makes the homesickness ten times worse. My stomach clenches with worry. ‘Mum? What’s up? Tell me.’
‘Oh, nothing, love. I don’t want to worry you when you’ve got so much on.’
‘Mum,’ I say firmly.
‘It’s just your brother . . .’
‘What’s wrong with Will?’
‘He’s . . . not having the best time at school at the moment,’ she whispers. The fact that she’s lowered her voice makes me realise that Will must be at home with her right now. Not at school. ‘It’s those same kids,’ Mum says. ‘Getting on his case again.’
My face gets hot. Fuck. I thought the bullying had calmed down recently. It’s almost the end of summer term. But apparently the dickheads are back in pouncing mode again.
‘Oh God, Mum,’ I say. ‘Shall I call him?’
She pauses. ‘What I was actually thinking was, what do you think about him coming down to see you this weekend?’
I blink. ‘Here in London?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘I just think it would be good for him to get away. Even if just for a couple of days. To clear his head a bit, do something fun, and see that there’s more to the world than our little village.’
My heart leaps at the idea. I’ve been missing Will anyway, and the thought of cheering him up by showing him around London – maybe even doing all the touristy stuff I haven’t got round to doing yet – is massively appealing. ‘Definitely,’ I tell Mum. ‘Why don’t you book him a train ticket for Saturday morning? We’ve got a massive couch in the flat he can sleep on.’
Mum gives a relieved sigh. ‘Thank you so much, love. That’s brilliant. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’