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Authors: Christine Murray

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BOOK: A Silver Lining
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‘You never know,’ she ventured, trying to inject some confidence into her voice. ‘It could happen.’

‘Unlikely,’ said James dismissively.

His tone irritated her. ‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Seeing him give a keynote speech at a conference in Frankfurt last year.’

‘And?’ asked Mollie, almost afraid to ask. ‘How did it go?’

‘There are no words.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Try to find some,’ she said snippily. She was in no mood for verbal tennis.

‘Ok,’ he said, ignoring her irritation. ‘If I had to distil the entire performance into one short snappy phrase, it would be ‘camp eighties game show host’.’

Mollie’s heart sank. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting.’

‘You were hoping,’ said James in a warm and tender voice. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’

The sympathetic note in his voice was more than Mollie could take. She gathered her pages together in a way that signified that this was the end of the discussion.

‘Haven’t you got something you should be doing?’ she asked tartly. ‘You know, like work?’

‘Calvin has asked some of us to come down for the afternoon for background shots. You know, a crowd of Empressario delegates.’

Mollie knew for a fact that she hadn’t included that in her treatment, but that was hardly a surprise.

‘Mollie, we need to talk,’ he began. Again the warm notes of his voice brought back messages and moments from other times.

‘We’ve just talked,’ she said. ‘And some of us have
real work
to do, rather than standing around as extras.’

‘The term I prefer is background artist,’ said James smoothly. Typical. This was all just a joke to him. How could he joke around when she still felt so torn up inside?

She swivelled around on her coffee stained stilettoes and prepared to give the client what he wanted.

 

A week later, they were gathered in Empressario to see the final product.

‘Right,’ said Mollie sitting down at the boardroom table. ‘How bad is it?’

Her team looked around at each other, as if nominating the person to tell bad news. Usually at meetings, the problem was getting people to stop giving creative input. If nobody was volunteering information, then that could only mean one thing.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Just play it.’

It was Calvin’s vision as he’d described it. He was the star of the piece, booming boasts about Empressario Corp’s performance over a low urban groove – the most conservative track they could convince him to go for. Graphic design overload in eye wateringly bright colours. It looked like a comedy sketch, or a bad eighties game show. All Calvin was missing was a blue spangled jacket.

‘It’s awful,’ she said. ‘Just awful.’

She wandered into the plush Empressario corridors feeling bereft. How had everything gone so badly wrong? She wanted to cry. She had no idea how she was going to get the money to pay back her brother or pay her staff, and in the next few weeks she was going to have to wind down her company and let them go. Again. How could she have failed on such a massive scale?

Her heart started thumping harder as she recognised the man in front of her.

‘How is the working master piece going?’ James asked with his trademark easy smile. She didn’t have the energy to pretend that everything was ok anymore.

‘Awful. We’ve realised Calvin’s vision, so we’re pretty much doomed. After making Empressario look like such a ridiculous low rent outfit, other companies aren’t exactly going to be lining up for us to manage their corporate image, are they?’

James looked taken aback. ‘But if you give it time, then it will all die down,’ he protested.

‘Perhaps, but I don’t have time for that,’ said Mollie. ‘I have loans for equipment coming out my ears, and I might not even have enough money to pay my staff next month. I don’t have a huge team: if I lose more than one member of staff it will be literally impossible for me to provide my service. So what do I do then?’

‘Maybe it’s not that bad,’ said James hopefully.

‘Oh, it is most certainly that bad,’ said Mollie. ‘But don’t take my word for it. Here you go.’ She handed him her USB stick with a copy of the video on it. ‘Check it out for yourself.’

With that she swivelled on her heel and headed straight for the lift, walking away from him and the colossal mess she’d made of her life.

 

When she got out onto the street it had started to rain. Mollie was glad of it. Rain brought people indoors, huddled them down and made them private people. Dry weather meant people sitting outdoors chatting animatedly over cups of overpriced coffee. What she really needed was a dark bar and straight vodka but that was a bit of a problem at eleven in the morning. When she felt bad, Mollie usually went and spent ludicrous sums of money on clothes she couldn’t afford. If she was going to make her rent after this debacle, though, that wasn’t an option. Instead she went home, turned off her phone and browsed her DVD collection for something suitably escapist to watch.

Morning Glory? Nope. That was Rachel McAdams struggling with work and love. Transformers? There was distracting lights and action, but also a romantic subplot. No romance, even on the subplot level. Her finger came to Predator. Perfect.

Hours later she woke to a large hammering sound. It sounded as if it was coming from her front door. She stood up, smoothed down her close and wiped under her eyes for signs of any rogue eye make-up that might have wept during her snooze. She walked over to the front door and opened it.

‘Greg,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to check that you’re alright,’ said Greg. ‘I tried ringing you on your phone but I couldn’t get through.’

‘I turned it off,’ said Mollie as they walked into her living room. ‘All the better to wallow.’

‘Why would you be wallowing?’ he asked picking up the DVD case. ‘Predator? Really? I wouldn’t have put you down as a Predator kind of girl.’

‘My brother left it here when he stayed over,’ she said, flopping down on the couch.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Greg. ‘Thinnest plot in the history of film.’

Mollie rolled her eyes. Once Greg started talking about movies he was hard to divert.

‘Anyway, why were you wallowing?’ asked Greg.

‘What? Have you banged your head, or did I imagine that awful parody video that we shot for Empressario?’

Greg gave her a strange look. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know.’

‘Don’t know what?’

‘Oh man! You don’t do you?’

‘Much as love not having a clue what’s going on, I think you should tell me,’ Mollie said crossly, sitting back down on the couch. That was the problem with hiring your friends as employees; they never managed to get that whole ‘awe of the boss’ thing.

‘Have you got your laptop here?’ asked Greg. Mollie nodded and took it out of its case, booting it up. She knew Greg of old. There was no point asking any more questions, he wouldn’t tell her. He was all about the showmanship.

When she’d tapped in her password and opened her browser she looked at Greg.

‘What do you want me to type in?’

‘Give it to me, I’ll do it,’ he said.

‘You’re being a little bit too cloak and daggers about this,’ she complained. ‘I’m going to brew some coffee, you want some?’

‘Sure, why not?’

When she came back into the room with two hot cups of coffee he’d found what they were looking for.

He pressed play, and Calvin’s cheesy face filled the screen.

‘Oh my God, Greg. I don’t want to watch this thing again,’ she said. ‘It was bad enough
filming
the fecking thing.’

Greg rolled his eyes. ‘Mollie, pay close attention. What’s different?’

She squinted at the screen for a couple of seconds. She was still half asleep and wasn’t in the mood for his CSI crap. Then it clicked.

‘This is on YouTube…’ she breathed.

‘Yep, that’s not all!’ said Greg, scrolling down so she could see the amount of views the video had gotten. A million and counting.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘How did this happen?’

‘It was leaked last night,’ said Greg. ‘We don’t know how or why, nobody in the team will admit responsibility and Calvin wasn’t actually given the hard copy yet. He was all set on having a big reveal when Tim got back. So it was unlikely to be him. What we do know is it got picked up by a high profile blog in the States at some time in the early morning our time and the whole thing kind of snowballed from there!’

Mollie had no idea why Greg found the whole thing so amusing. When Calvin found out he would go ballistic. A quick scan of the comments showed that the whole thing was being regarded as a comedic joke by those who watched it.

She opened another tab and typed ‘Empressario video’ into the address bar. A number of hits from blogs came up and a national newspaper was calling it an internet sensation.

‘Calvin is not going to be impressed with this,’ said Mollie. It might have been his vision and it might have been his idea but Mollie knew that this type of coverage was not what he wanted. A lot of the You Tube comments were comparing him with Michael Scott from The Office. Calvin had quite the ego: he’d clearly believed that the video would portray him as a savvy businessman at the top of his game and in touch with the needs of his younger customers. Unfortunately, while he might be an investment genius, his powers of delusion seemed to be just as strong. This video made him look ridiculous, and there was no way on earth he was going to be happy with it.

She took a deep swig of her coffee and reluctantly powered on her mobile. That was one of the biggest problems about being the boss – ultimately it was you who was responsible for liaising with the pissed-off customers.

After a terse conversation with Calvin, Mollie hung up the phone. She flopped down on the couch with Greg, who was still going through the comments snickering loudly.

‘I don’t know why you’re laughing,’ she complained. ‘The video is ridiculous. The only thing this leak has established is bringing the end of my company around more quickly. Do you really expect me to be happy about that?’

‘If you’re going to fail, best to fail humorously,’ said Greg.

‘Yes but that also involves failing very, very, publicly.’

‘Well, your aim for the company was that it would make a name for itself,’ he pointed out. ‘From that point of view, the Empressario contract was a rousing success.’

‘Oh come on,’ she said. ‘You know how this kind of stuff goes around workplaces like wildfire,’ she said. ‘I knew this video wouldn’t exactly show me in a good light, but I thought that it would fly under the radar a certain amount. Now every single person I know is going to hear about this.’

Greg shrugged. ‘Well, it’s done now.’

Greg seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. Mollie sat up straight. ‘Wait…
you
didn’t leak it, did you?’

‘Hey!’ Greg said, looking hurt. ‘I may think it’s amusing, but I’m making the best of a bad situation. I wouldn’t just torpedo the company for my own amusement. I’m going to be out of a job too, you know.’

Mollie felt a dart of shame. She wasn’t the only one in a bad situation as a result of this. ‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s ok,’ said Greg amicably. ‘Now do you want to see the dance remix or not?’

‘I…’ Mollie trailed off. Greg looked at her.

‘What?’

‘I know who leaked it,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’m going to kill him.’

 

Giving a copy of the product to her ex-boyfriend probably wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had, but she hadn’t seriously thought that he would do anything with it. Yeah, they’d broken up in an odd way, but their split was hardly the stuff of revenge films. Maybe he’d been more cut up than she’d realised.

Anyway, he wasn’t going to get away with it. He’d humiliated her publicly once before: she was damned if he was going to get away with it again.

She took the bus to Empressario Corp. Parking spots in the city centre were like gold dust, and she couldn’t rule out needing some vodka after she saw him. A quick glance at her watch disabused her of that notion. It wasn’t even twelve o clock: unless she wanted to be known as a drunk as well as incompetent, then she’d have to hold off. She’d have loved to get a taxi, but looming unemployment meant she couldn’t face hiring one of the city’s extortionately priced taxis.

She strode into the foyer of Empressario only to run straight into Calvin. Fuck.

He strode over to her, and she braced herself for the diatribe that was coming.

‘Mollie,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look like your little video is doing us a lot of good.’

‘I…’

‘No. You should have stuck with the brief that Tim told you to follow. I told you that we were looking for something much more conservative. I don’t think you really have a feeling for the demographic of the average Empressario customer.’

‘But it was your – ‘she protested.

He placed a hand up to silence her. ‘Not to worry, we all have to start somewhere. Obviously we won’t be using your services again, but we will be paying your fee in full. Good day.’

He walked away from her, and Mollie wanted to scream insults at his retreating back. How dare he blame these things on her! She’d drawn up a treatment for a crisp professional product and he had decided that he wanted to go for something ludicrous. How was that her fault? But Empressario had a formidable looking doorman, if she started shouting at one of the top guys she’d be unceremoniously ejected in ten seconds flat. Plus, she needed that payment. No, there was someone else she wanted to shout at.

She walked over to the receptionist who was giving her a sympathetic smile. ‘He’s always like that,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Thanks,’ said Mollie. ‘I left some equipment in the boardroom upstairs, I’m just going to head up and get it, ok?’

There was a moment of hesitation. Strictly speaking, guests had to be accompanied by a member of staff at all times.

‘Please?’ she asked. ‘I’m just so humiliated by this whole thing; I want to collect my things quietly.’

Luckily, the receptionist was the sympathetic type. ‘Go on up. But don’t be long.’

BOOK: A Silver Lining
13.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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