Chapter Four
Four
Buttons
Which is… weird. Max almost never bites the bullet and live streams to his audience because he likes the control he gets from editing his videos, and he’s never confident of his tech holding up in the weather conditions. Once the Thames wind starts to really blow, it’s hard for the clip-on microphone to pick up his commentary. And of course, he feels it’s essential that viewers can hear his every word, otherwise there’s nothing but complaints about the sound quality in the comments section.
But the truly weird thing is that he didn’t even mention that he was doing this today. Live streams are a special event, and he usually talks about them for weeks in advance, trying to get me to feel as giddy with apprehension and excitement as he does. He drones on to me, his channel subscribers, the world at large, people in the pub, clients. Whoever will listen to him, really. It’s a big deal and he always lets me know about his big deals. So why hasn’t he mentioned this one?
I join the live stream and see that it’s a collaboration with another channel, a YouTuber called Gothic Girl Greta. According to her bio, she’s a mudlark who specialises in the ornate and baroque, with ‘an intense interest in buttons’.
I imagine her walking around my bedroom, peering down in fascination as she presses all the buttons on my TV remote control. But, of course, she means the sort of buttons attached to ancient garments hundreds of years ago that somehow fell into the Thames. Max is always bringing home historical buttons. Clearly the historical tailors didn’t sew very well, because Max has dishes overflowing with ones that have pinged off into the mud.
Therefore ‘an intense interest in buttons’ seems like a weird thing to write on her profile, since buttons are not even remotely rare. Why not write an ‘intense interest in pebbles’?
Oh god, I have to stop being so snidey about other mudlarks. Just because I don’t get the appeal, that doesn’t mean I have to look down my nose at those who do. They found their passion, which is a good thing!
My eyes slip down her page and land on her personal motto.
The greatest finds are the people you meet in the mud.
Right.
My brain cuts to hordes of zombie-mudlarks, waist-deep in claggy Thames dirt: a horror version of the children’s game Stuck in the Mud. What a truly bizarre thing to write. She’s obviously one of those hippie-dippy mudlarks who believe in the healing power of the ‘found in the ground’ movement. Fair enough. Everyone has to believe in something, I suppose.
Greta.
Somehow, I feel as if I’ve heard of her. Maybe in one of Max’s long rambles on the joys of his hobby and its monetisation via YouTube, he’s mentioned her name? Greta. What he didn’t mention, however, is that she is just breathtakingly lovely. I can’t stop staring at her avatar. She has long, dark braids and eyes like a baby cheetah. Sort of deep amber with a dark outline of kohl and a curious expression. Eyes that say, ‘I might be cute now, but when I reach my ultimate power at the age of twenty-seven, I’ll be unstoppable.’ Or, I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Suddenly, I’m at the front of the coffee stand queue, being asked for my order.
I leave the app and try to focus.
What did Scotty want again? I can’t even remember, so I hazard a guess and go for his usual order, which will probably suffice.
I carry the coffee back to the office, my thoughts full of Max, and don’t drop it, which I consider a win. When I put my hand out to give Scotty his change, he immediately counts it, and then mutes his headset.
‘Where’s my cannoli?’ he asks, brusquely.
Shit, I knew I was forgetting something.
‘They were all out,’ I lie, and he looks at me with extreme scepticism.
‘They never sell out at this time of day.’
‘Big run on cannoli before I got there. Students,’ I say, padding out the lie, because I know how much Scotty loathes students, having never gone to university himself. Not that he needed to, because his father was the VP of a publishing house and got him his first job straight out of private school.
‘Back to work then, Lindy. Chop chop!’ Scotty says, as I stare at his tube of Pringles.
He’s right. I really need to get on with some work. My email backlog is out of control. But I can feel my fingers twitching to load up YouTube again. It’s just so weird that Max didn’t mention the channel collaboration. This Greta supermodel has even more subscribers than him. Ten times more. She’s almost at a million subscribers. No wonder. Who wouldn’t want to tune into her channel? I’d watch her and her buttons.
I load up YouTube. I’m not going to watch them – I’d just like to know if the live stream is over yet.
They’re still going. And – bloody hell – she’s found a Roman intaglio with some god or other exquisitely engraved into a dark-red gemstone, used by some ancient person to leave a fancy design on a wax seal. This is the jackpot. She’s doing a cha-cha-slide in celebration. Max is filming it all and giving breathless commentary on the find, trying to identify the god portrayed, which must be hard when he’s filming live on his phone and therefore can’t google for hints. When she’s finished her ‘treasure dance’, she comes forward to embrace him, and there is something in the expression of those gorgeous cheetah eyes as she looks up at him that makes me flinch.
She likes Max. Really likes him.
‘Lindy!’ Scotty says, in his exasperated tone of voice. ‘Why have you not responded to the email I marked urgent and sent five minutes ago? I can see you’re at your desk. Please tell me you are not messing about on the internet again, because that would severely test my patience.’
I haven’t responded to his email because I haven’t seen it.
‘Sorry, I was just dealing with another issue. I’ll get to it now.’
I hate him, I think, and wonder for a moment which ‘him’ I’m thinking of. Scotty, of course… but do I also hate Max right now? Just a bit? When I met him three years ago, he had a boring job in finance. Now he is a self-styled YouTube star. His channel, Max in the Mud, has attracted sponsorship and adoring subscribers. I never guessed he’d be the type to want an audience. To want fans. To want to be famous. But he does: he wants all of those things, as well as a bunch of muddy tat that he’s pulled out of the river and left in his bathtub to be cleaned when he gets around to it.
Suddenly, I hear footsteps hastening towards me and I look up to see Henny, looking at me breathlessly.
‘You didn’t tell me Max knew Gothic Girl Greta. I’ve just seen the stream. All of her fans are checking out Max’s YouTube channel. He’s very popular with the 3Gs.’
‘The 3Gs?’
I get it the moment I say it out loud. Gothic Girl Greta’s fan club. Taylor Swift has Swifties; Gothic Girl Greta has the 3Gs.
‘There’s lots of compliments on his rugged good looks and manly wellies. You know, I think Max Mogg is going to be the new mudlarking pin-up.’
If only they could see him in his perfectly pressed, three-piece, Savile Row suit and shining leather brogues as he goes off to work each morning. Not a crease in sight, a hair out of place nor a speck of mud to be seen.
Henny’s smiling at me but I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know Max knew this fantastically cool woman. Just as I didn’t know Henny was a fan of Gothic Girl whatever – I’d certainly never even heard of her before this morning so how could I possibly give Henny the heads up?
I go with the non-committal. ‘Yeah, his channel is really taking off.’
‘It’s going to explode now. You wait. Greta’s got a lot of clout. I wouldn’t be surprised if this results in some serious sponsorship money. Look, he’s gained a hundred new subscribers in the past ten minutes alone!’
She’s keeping track of Max’s subscriber count. She’s really invested in this, excited for him. So why aren’t I?
‘It’s not as if Max is short of money,’ I say, smiling tightly. ‘He has a great job in finance.’
‘Oh, I know, but the sponsorship gives YouTubers that extra level of authenticity, you know? If big companies are taking them seriously then you know they’re worth watching.’
I let that hang in the air. Surely that is the opposite of how Max has always felt? He’s always said that sponsorship calls into question the impartiality of the sponsored. But perhaps that was just because nobody wanted to sponsor him then. He might feel differently once he has big money offers clogging up his inbox.
‘Do you think Max could get me Greta’s autograph? Maybe a signed bookmark too?’ Henny asks. ‘My niece is a fan. I am too, to be perfectly honest. I can’t wait for her new book to come out next month. Her last one was on the Sunday Times Bestseller List.’
Information that I’d have thought Greta would have added to her profile information rather than that thing about people stuck in the muck. Oh god, she’s modest. Not a boaster. But everyone boasts in publishing. It’s expected. It’s right there in the author contract under promotional responsibilities.
‘I’ll ask Max tonight,’ I say, feeling depressed at the very thought. I suppose it would be a good intro into the subject of why he hadn’t mentioned he was doing this massive live stream collaboration. All he’d said was that he was going down to the foreshore for a lark and that he was crossing his fingers for a nice clay pipe or an interesting old brick. He definitely didn’t mention meeting a YouTube megastar who has the personal beauty of a sixties Hollywood starlet.
My email pings with another email from Scotty. All it says is:
LINDY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO SOME WORK!!! I MEAN IT… FINAL WARNING.
Shit.