by Peter James
‘Give Mummy a kiss.’
Damp. It felt like a miniature version of Richard’s. ‘Why can’t you sleep, Tiger?’
‘I had a nightmare.’
‘What was it about?’
‘It was about a horrible man. A monster.’
She sat up and hugged him. ‘That’s because I told you a story about one, isn’t it?’
He nodded solemnly. He was a serious child sometimes. Always thinking things through.
‘He ate me.’
She stared at the forlorn expression on his face. ‘I bet you tasted good.’
He stamped his foot on the carpet. ‘Don’t. That’s not funny.’
‘Mummy’s got to get ready. Want to sleep in our bed?’
‘No.’ He wandered off, shuffling his slippers across the floor. As he went, she saw the aircraft sliding silently into the solid wall of the mountain. The tail section cartwheeling down. The luggage spewing out. The boom, and the ball of flame. She slipped unsteadily out of bed and walked to the bathroom, shivering, from the images, from the chill air, from the dark cloud of foreboding that hung over her.
A bad dream, that’s all. Forget it.
She heard the thump of the engines of a launch going by, up river; deep, steady, rhythmic.
Then realised it wasn’t a launch at all. It was her own heartbeat.
4
Sam sat in the reception of Urquhart Simeon Mcpherson, holding the Castaway story board on the sofa beside her, watching Ken pacing restlessly up and down, hands sunk into the pockets of his battered leather coat over his denim jacket and blue jeans, his black boots immaculately shiny: his uniform. Scruffy clothes, but always immaculate boots.
Two girls came in through the door chatting, nodded at the receptionist and went down a corridor. A helmeted despatch rider with ‘Rand Riders’ printed on his back waded in and thrust a package over the counter; he stood waiting for the signature, bandy-legged in his body-hugging leathers, like an insect from outer space.
Ken sat on the arm of the sofa, above her. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘You look a bit tense.’
‘I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘Waiting like this always feels like being back at school. Waiting to see teacher.’
He pulled a pack of Marlboro from his jacket pocket, and shook out a cigarette. He clicked his battered Zippo and inhaled deeply, then ran a hand through his hair.
‘Production meetings,’ he said grimly.
Sam smiled. ‘I know you don’t like them.’
‘That copywriter – Jake wozzizname – gives me the creeps.’
‘He’s all right,’ Sam said.
‘He gives you the creeps too?’
‘No.’
‘Something’s given you the creeps.’ He looked at her quizzically.
She felt her face redden, and turned away. ‘Maybe I’m a bit tired. Early start.’
‘What you doing this weekend?’
‘Nicky’s birthday party on Sunday.’
‘Six?’
She nodded.
‘Having a big one?’
‘Nineteen of them. We’re having Charlie Chaplin films and a Punch and Judy.’
‘All his smart little friends?’ He tilted back his head and peered down his nose, feigning an aristocratic accent. ‘Rupert . . . Julian . . . Henrietta. Dominic, Hamish, Inigo and Charlotte?’
‘And the Honourable Sarah Hamilton-Deeley.’
‘Ay say. The Honourable Sarah Hamilton-Deeley. Sounds ripping good fun.’ He dropped the accent and stroked his chin. ‘Hope you think of me, down at the chip shop roughing it with the hoi polloi.’
Sam grinned, then saw something sad in his face. She wondered sometimes whether he liked his independence, or whether he would like to be married again, have kids. She realised how little she knew about him, about the private Ken Shepperd. Here in this environment, where part of him belonged, part of him was comfortable, yet another part of him seemed to yearn to be somewhere else, doing something else, away from the bullshit and the glitz; a man snared by his mistakes and his success.
‘I’ll save you a jelly,’ she said.
‘With a jelly baby in it?’
‘Of course.’
He looked up at the ceiling, then the walls. ‘It’s a poxy room this. Do you know what their billings were last year?’
‘Eighty-two million.’
‘And they can’t even get themselves a decent reception area.’
Sam stared down at the table sprinkled with magazines and newspapers. Campaign. Marketing. Media Week. The Times. The Independent. The Financial Times. The carpet had been specially woven with the agency’s logo of concentric squares receding forever inside each other, like a television picture of a television picture of a television picture. A huge version of the logo dominated the rear wall, surrounded by framed ads, wrappers and packaging. A Ferrari gleamed in the shine of a patent leather shoe on a girl’s foot. A man with a dazzling wholesome smile held up a toothbrush. A can of old-fashioned rice pudding was several feet high, Warhol-style.
‘I think it’s quite smart,’ she said.
‘Sorry to keep you.’ Charlie Edmunds came into the room, tall, almost gangly, with a floppy mop of fair hair. He stood in his cavalry twills, Hush Puppies and Jermyn Street shirt like an overgrown schoolboy. God, people were starting to look so young, and they concentrated so hard on not being young. The young were all earnest, serious, like Charlie, trying to act like forty-year-olds. And the forty-year-olds desperately wanted to be in their early twenties. ‘Sam, nice to see you. Ken. Looking well.’
They followed him up a flight of stairs, along a corridor and into a windowless room with blue fabric wallcovering, and a long blue table in Scandinavian wood with matching chairs. There was an open Filofax on the table, several coloured sketches and photographs. In the middle of the table were a cluster of Castaway bars in silver foil wrapping with lagoon-blue writing. The room had a fresh, woody smell, and there was a soft monotone hiss from a heating duct.
‘The others’ll be here in a moment,’ said Charlie. ‘Sorry to drag you over at such short notice, but this is an account we’ve pitched very hard for and they’ve decided to pull this particular product launch forwards, so we haven’t a lot of time.’ As if to underline this, he looked down at his slim Omega wristwatch.
Sam glanced at her own watch, then up at an abstract painting on the wall. It was no doubt deep and meaningful; everything inside the portals of Urquhart Simeon Mcpherson was deep and meaningful and done for a reason, but its immediate identity eluded her. The colours reminded her vaguely of a bedroom in a Holiday Inn. The door opened and two men came in. One, in his mid-twenties, was short, belligerent-looking and thin as a drainpipe. He wore a black unstructured jacket over a black collarless shirt and shiny black tapered trousers. His dark hair was cropped short at the front and hung in a long mane down the back, and his face was long and thin, as if it had been crushed between two elevator doors. His nose, also long and thin, appeared to be bolted to his face by his eyes which were much too close together. The other man, slightly older, was dressed in baggy white; the sides of his head were shorn to stubble and he had a thick clump of hair on top. He wore round granny glasses, and looked slightly better fed and better humoured.
Sam had met them several times. They always reminded her of a couple of beat poets who hadn’t yet been discovered.
‘Jake, Zurbrick – you know Sam and Ken,’ said Charlie.
They nodded at each other. Zurbrick, the art director, smiled genially, shook their hands, adjusted his glasses and dug his hands in his pockets, and Jake, the copywriter, nodded once, curtly, exuding seriousness and a faint air of superiority.
They sat down and Sam put the story board on the table, opened her briefcase and pulled out her Filofax and her budget folder.
‘Right,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ve – ah – you’ve both seen the story board—’ He leaned forward and picked up a Castaway
bar. ‘And the – ah – product.’ He seemed nervous in the company of the other two.
Sam picked up a pencil on the table in front of her and tapped it lightly on the Urquhart Simeon Mcpherson monogrammed memo pad which had also been provided.
‘How’s the budget looking, Sam?’
‘It’s a bit over.’ She pulled it out of the folder and passed it across to him. He glanced down and turned to the total. ‘Oh yah, that’s OK. They’ll live with that. There’s going to be one suit going as well – have to budget that in, first class – and for the recce too.’
‘Who’s the suit?’ said Ken.
‘The marketing director of Grand Spey Foods. He’s all right, Ken,’ he said quickly. ‘Won’t give you any trouble.’
‘All suits give trouble.’
‘I think he’s got a bit of crumpet out there.’ Charlie smiled. ‘You won’t see much of him.’
Ken grunted noncommittally.
Sam saw the diminutive Jake sitting with his hands on the table as if he was waiting to be fed, eyeing Ken disdainfully. She knew what he was thinking. You’re an old fart, he was thinking. We should be using a younger director.
‘You’ve shot in the Seychelles before, Ken, haven’t you?’ said Charlie.
He nodded.
Charlie had warned her that Jake had been against Ken, that he wanted Tom Land, a twenty-four-year-old whizz-kid director.
‘What’s it like?’
Ken stared at Jake. ‘Poisonous spiders. Snakes. Massive land crabs. Hostile natives.’
Jake blanched, and his face twitched. Charlie grinned.
‘And gorgeous women,’ said Zurbrick in his Brummy accent.
‘We have to make a presentation at the client’s headquarters in a fortnight. They’ve asked for the director and producer to be present.’ Charlie looked at Ken, and he nodded.
‘Where are they?’
‘Just outside Leeds.’
The weather in Sofia is cold – one degree Celsius and it’s snowing. We hope you have enjoyed your flight with us and that you have a pleasant stay in Bulgaria.
‘All right with you, Sam?’
Charlie’s voice was distant. She looked up with a start.
‘All right with you, Sam?’
‘I’m sorry?’
They were all looking at her oddly.
‘Leeds? Presentation?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Yes, no problem.’ She pulled herself up in her chair, smiled at Charlie, Zurbrick and then at Jake, who stared back like a bird interrupted from picking flesh off a carcass.
‘The script and story board you have is still rough, of course,’ said Zurbrick, ‘but it’s the pivot for the whole campaign. We’re looking for great subtlety combined with high impact.’
Sam scanned the scenes on the story board.
‘The big difference with this product – the unique selling point – is the health angle. It’s not going to be perceived just as a sweet, it’s going to be pitched as a Personal Nourishment System.’
‘A what?’ said Ken.
‘A Personal Nourishment System.’
‘I seem to remember when I was young, we used to call them chocolate bars,’ Ken said.
Jake stared at Ken as if he was a relic in a museum. ‘Chocolate bars,’ he said, ‘went out with the ark. We’re talking concepts here. We’re talking a breakthrough.’ He was jigging up and down in his chair, then he jammed his elbow down on the table and leaned forward intently. ‘This campaign is going to be in the text books in ten years’ time.’
‘This is different, Ken, very different, Ken,’ said Zurbrick. ‘It’s got everything you need. The client believes it’s the first confection to contain a totally self-sufficient diet. It’s got a full daily vitamin programme. Protein. Glucose. Organic coconut. Coconut’s high in nutrients. Roughage. It helps avoid wrinkles, senility, sunburn. Gives you energy. All you need with this is water.’
‘Just water?’
He nodded.
‘You could live on these?’ said Ken.
‘Absolutely.’
Ken shook his head. Sam shot him a warning glance.
‘The big trick with this bar,’ said Zurbrick, ‘is that the biscuit part is on the outside. It’s brilliant. You take it in the heat, and the chocolate can’t melt, can’t go sticky. It’s eater-friendly. The wrapping’s airtight, watertight. It’s a real serious survival food. It isn’t just a chocolate bar – it’s a Nineteen Nineties High-Tech food. It’s state-of-the-art nutrition.’
Ken looked at him as if he was mad.
‘Two angles, Ken. One, the contents – they’re amazing. Two, the image. Castaways are eaten by successful people.’
‘We’re talking energy,’ said Jake. ‘Energy and youth. Street cred,’ he said, staring pointedly at Ken. ‘We don’t want this looking like some bloody Bounty ad from the Sixties, we don’t want Robinson Crusoe’s desert island. We’re talking twenty-first century, y’know? This is a twenty-first century desert island. We don’t want it looking like a bloody desert island at all, we want it to look like it’s something from space. This is young high-aspirant food. Street cred food. We’re pitching this at the people who don’t have time for lunch. We’re going to change society with this food. Remember Gordon Gekko? Michael Douglas? When he said ‘lunch is for wimps’? Castaway is lunch. It’s the new lunch.’ He jabbed his finger forward, his eyes twitching as if they had come loose. ‘This is what we’re pitching. This is what the script is all about. This is the way I’ve written it.’
Sam glanced down at her memo pad. She had drawn a picture of an aeroplane.
‘Eater-friendly. Shit. What a load of crap. What does eater-hostile food do? Bite you back?’ Ken shook his head. ‘They believe it, Sam, don’t they? They really believe it!’ He switched on the windscreen wipers.
Sam watched them, stubby, jerky, slightly clumsy; they more than anything betrayed the Bentley’s age, she thought.
‘Personal Nourishment Systems,’ he said. ‘The psychology’s all wrong, that’s what worries me. People need to eat together, need to sit around a table. What are we going to end up with? A world full of isolated morons wandering around with their Walkmans eating their Personal Nourishment Systems?’
She smiled. ‘I thought it tasted quite nice.’
‘Tasted like a Bounty with biscuit.’
The wiper in front of her smeared the water without wiping it away. Watching the road ahead was like staring through frosted glass. She saw ripples of movement, streaks of brake lights, traffic lights, distorted pedestrians like huge upright fish.
SALE. SALE. SALE. The signs flashed out at her from the windows of Kensington High Street. Ken leaned over and pulled a packet of chewing gum from the glove locker. ‘Want some?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Traffic’s bad. We should have gone down the Cromwell Road.’ He unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and put it in his mouth.
She smelt the sweet smell for an instant, and then it was gone. She stared down the long, midnight blue bonnet. Brake lights, shop lights, traffic lights. Dark grey sky. Dismal. The last few bargains in the shops, then in a week or so they would be dressing the models with their summer clothes, stiff mannequins with silly gazes in bright bikinis and summer frocks. In February. Daft.
It was strange sitting so high up, in the deep wide seat, like an armchair. Her feet were buried in the soft lambswool carpet and she smelled the rich smell of the reupholstered leather. Her uncle had a car that was high off the ground and smelled of leather. A Rover. She always sat in the back, while her uncle and aunt sat without talking in the front. Sunday afternoons. The ritual drive in the country from their dull house in Croydon. Staring at fields like those in which once she had run free and played. Where once . . . but that had been a long time ago and the memory was forgotten.
Leather. The smell of the leather glove in the dream. So clear. The black hood with the slits. A shiver rippled through her. The nerve was still there, raw, exposed. Y
ou could never really forget; only paper over the cracks.
When her parents had died, her aunt and uncle had inherited her without much grace, without much enthusiasm. They hadn’t wanted her. She was an intrusion into their lives, into their flat childless tranquillity.
Her uncle was a morose man with a droopy moustache, irritated by everything: a noise, by lights left on, by the morning news. He shuffled interminably around the gloomy house tapping the barometer and muttering about the weather, although he never did anything that would have been affected by it. Sat in his armchair picking at his stamp collection with his tweezers, occasionally looking up. ‘A Vancouver Island ten cents blue. Interesting.’ Then he’d return to his silence.
Her aunt was a cold, humourless woman, who forever blamed God for her lot in life and went to church every Sunday to thank him for it. She was going through life amassing credits for the next life. She had one for marrying her husband. One for taking on Sam. One for having the vicar and his wife round for tea. One for joining the Samaritans – God knows what advice she dispensed – one for taking a purse she found in the street to the police. She had over three hundred credits written in a notebook Sam had once discovered. That had been twenty years ago. Sam wondered how many more she had added since.
The past was a strange place. Images changed with time. It tried to deceive you with its jerky black and white movies, with its faded photographs, its rust, wrinkles, its stubby wipers. Tried to pretend it had always been that way. Made it difficult to remember that everything was modern once; that everything around her now, in the street, in the shop windows, would be old one day, too.
The rain rattled hard for a second, then faded, as if a child had thrown a handful of pebbles. She turned and glanced out of the side window. The black print on the news vendor’s billboard flashed at her like a single frame of a film and was gone.
‘Stop, Ken!’
‘Stop what?’
‘Stop the car, for Christ’s sake! Stop the car!’ she yelled, groping for the door handle, pulling it, pushing open the door as he found a gap in front of a taxi and pulled into the kerb. There was the ring of a bicycle bell, and a cyclist swerved, scraping his wheel along the kerb, shouting angrily.