by Ian Berry
At the top, Saskia called out, “Catch her, boys,” as Lauren just more or less rolled over the top and fell - into our waiting arms. Saskia rolled herself over and let herself jump down. She even remembered to bend her knees and say “oof” as she landed. Nobody was watching her, they were all watching Lauren and Rory in each other’s arms.
After a few moments, Lauren pulled herself away from Rory, “No, no. Why am I doing this!”
“But Lauren. I - I won’t be rotten to you again, I won’t.”
“You’ve said that before - so many times I’ve lost count.”
Saskia put her hand on Lauren’s arm. “This time he means it. Believe me I know. And so do you Lauren, you can do this.”
“Yes, yes. He means it. But ...”
“Hush, dear. Do you love him?”
“Oh yes!”
“And does he love you?”
“Yes, yes he does. I know he does.”
“Then go to him. Everything will be fine.”
There were only a few steps between Lauren and Rory but Lauren covered them running. She flung herself into his arms and they hugged and kissed each other.
Saskia and I were about to make a quiet escape but the small crowd had other ideas. There was actually scattered applause and cheers. And there was a cop. He wanted details.
“Sorry about this but we have to log all incidents involving the public and the bridge.”
We gave our names. Richie Chandler was fine but I had a bad moment until I heard Saskia make up a name on the spur of the moment. She called herself Kylie Taylor. There was no way our cop could check up anyway. The delay turned out to be crucial. It gave the press time to stick their noses in.
“I heard your statement to the cop. You’re not from around here are you?”
“No, I’m from England.” Another bad moment. ‘Kylie’ was supposed to be from Australia!
Somehow Saskia managed to touch the reporter as she said, “I’m from Melbourne originally.”
She must have been concentrating very hard because the guy grinned and said, “Ah, that explains the accent”
We gave him a quick rundown of the story but out of the corner of my eye I could see the cop giving Lauren a hard time. I nudged Saskia and said, “Excuse us a minute.”
Saskia grasped what was going on at once. “Hey, leave them alone. They’ve been through enough without you hassling them as well.” She must have been touching the cop because his whole attitude changed suddenly.
“Well, I suppose. No harm done. I’ll just report it as a disturbance - no need to add details.” And he pushed off to deal with crowd control.
“Come on you two, lets escape,” I said. “Have you spoken to the reporter chap? Don’t worry, he’s got the story.”
The four of us walked quickly away towards the nearest end of the bridge. The crowd didn’t seem to know we’d gone, probably more influence exerted by Saskia.
“We haven’t thanked you properly,” said Lauren.
“Not really required,” said Saskia. “Don’t you dare go all slushy on us. We shall take the thought for the deed.”
“You’re not Australian, are you?” asked Rory.
“Ah. You noticed,” I laughed. “What gave us away? Probably the way we blow our noses or something.”
“We’re from England,” said Saskia while Lauren and Rory were laughing. “Both of us, despite what we told the reporter. Keep the secret for us?”
“No problem,” said Rory.
Lauren and Rory walked with their arms round each other, Saskia and I contented ourselves with just holding hands. Eventually we came to another set of steps down. I took careful note of which way Lauren and Rory were going to turn so we could turn the other way.
“We’ll leave you two here,” I said. “Look after her Rory.”
Lauren gave us both a kiss, Rory shook hands with me and accepted a kiss on the cheek from Saskia. Then they waved and walked off into the gathering darkness.
That same gathering darkness gave us cover to call for Voice to make an unobtrusive exit.
“Was that what you wanted?” asked Saskia.
“We watched the timeline as you did it,” said Voice. “There is now a complete, unbroken line through this event and all the anomalies upstream have smoothed out. The job was very well done.”
“Can we go home now? We could hang around and have a look round Sydney but it’s dark now anyway.”
“I want to go home. I want to be Saskia again,” I said plaintively. “It’s ok for you, at least you’re still a girl.”
“Translation and collapse of the suspension will occur at your discretion as is normal.”
Voice was gone. Saskia turned to me.
“There’s just one more thing I want us to do before we go back.”
“What’s that?”
“Kiss me - properly. Don’t ask - just do it.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her. It wasn’t like kissing Saskia at all, but I found it didn’t matter what shape we were wearing, I still loved her. I resolved to say nothing until we were the Saskias again. Then I’d have many questions.
The sun was shining, we were walking in the woods again - as the Saskias. We’d left as them so that’s how we returned, just in case somebody had seen us I supposed. They’d not have seen us go and come back but if we’d come back as Richie and Kylie it might have done more than just raise an eyebrow.
“Ok, you. What was all that about.”
“I need you to think carefully before you answer the next question. When you kissed me as Richie, did you feel any differently towards me?”
“I think I know what you’re getting at. All I can tell you is what crossed my mind as we kissed. I thought that it didn’t matter what shape we were wearing, I still loved you. So, no. I didn’t feel any different. There weren’t any - physical - feelings if that’s what you mean.”
“Mm. That’s what I hoped you’d say. I think I’ve finally come to terms with you originally being Richie. I found I wasn’t bothered that you looked like him instead of you, You were still you. I tried the experiment a while ago when we took the picture of both of us to show Dad. You weren’t Richie long enough for it to be conclusive then, but it is now.”
“So that’s why you kissed me, back then, on the photograph?”
“Yes. I wanted to know how I’d feel. Anyway, top and bottom of it is, I love you, and you can look like Shrek for all I care.”
“I don’t think I’d like to look like Shrek thank you very much. I’m very, very happy looking like this, whatever my original reasons were.”
Saskia stuck her arm through mine and rested her head against me. We walked arm in arm like that with soppy grins on our faces for quite a while.
Eleven
Monday. The phone never stopped ringing. Saskia commandeered Melanie’s phone and pulled it over to her desk. Melanie we sent to work at Jeff’s desk. We told Petra we now had two lines.
One call was from Ben at the PM’s office.
“Saskia, I need to apologise again for Friday night.”
“No you don’t. These things happen. Watch out with the apologising or I’ll get Accounts to double the bill when we get it.”
“Thanks anyway. Er. You might get a few phone calls during the day, we sent out the last email shot a little while ago.”
“A few he says. I can’t touch my phone, it’s so hot.”
“Sorry. Any problems, use this number.”
Saskia put her phone down at the same time. “Mine was Archie. He’s had an email from the PM’s office with details for Thursday on it. He says thanks for fixing it.”
“Mine was Ben, grovelling again.”
While I was talking to Saskia the blasted phone rang again. “Hello, Sask
ia Chandler.”
“Oh, hi. BBC News 24 here. We’re going to descend on you on Thursday I think.”
“You and everybody else,” I laughed. “You going live?”
“Hope to. What facilities have you got?”
“You’ll need an uplink truck, we don’t have outgoing lines. We’ve got a parking area facing more or less south and a nice cable and people access for you. No power I’m afraid, you’ll need to use the truck genny. Want me to email you a plan?”
“Have you done this before? A plan would be great. Shame about power.”
“I’m expecting umpteen links and camera trucks, not practical to supply everybody with power and not fair to do one and not the others.”
“Point taken. Can we come and do a recce? Oh, and BT will be along to install temporary circuits. There’ll be a lot of those, not just for us.”
“Welcome any time, just turn up and announce who you are, probably not you but you know what I mean. Oh and one other thing, cafeteria will be on standby except during lunch, then it’ll be full of the PM and his hangers-on.”
“Brilliant. See you later, bye.”
As I put my phone down, Saskia picked hers up. With a certain amount of pride, I heard her say more or less the same things I had to her caller. When she ended her call I had observations for her.
“Well done, you, That was really good.”
“Had lessons from the expert.”
“And who is this paragon?”
“You, of course. I listened - and remembered. Mine was ITN.”
“Mine was the Beeb. Need to talk to Maintenance and find out where our telephone lines come in. Oh, and the electrician.”
“Ok. Get Petra to take messages for a while. I could do with a walk.”
“What you mean is a walk past the cafeteria.”
“Not so much past, more sort of into.”
Maintenance were happy to show us where the phone lines entered the building. They didn’t want anybody mucking about with them - and said so.
“All right then, do you know where the main junction is out on the road?”
“No idea. Nothing to do with us really.”
“Ok. We’ll go look ourselves.”
“How can we tell, Twin?” asked Saskia, as we walked to the main access road.
“Simple. BT write ‘BT’ on all their access covers. We just find the one that’s closest and see what the route’ll be like.”
“Think I know which one it is, Twin.”
“Ah. You’ve noticed the slight clue provided by several BT vans parked on the verge over there.”
We approached the vans. “Hello, boys. Expecting to provide a few ISDN circuits?”
“You’ve heard then,” laughed one of the men. “Don’t happen to know where this lot’s got to terminate, do you?”
“Funny you should say that,” I laughed. “We just happen to be your point of contact with the plant.”
“We’ve had the Beeb and ITN whingeing on already,” said Saskia. “So we thought we’d come and see if you lot had got your act together. Want to come on a recce?”
We were joined by a couple of the men as we walked back towards the main building. The cable route would go around the back so we showed our new friends the best way to go. “Try not to leave too many holes in the grass. Our gardener is very sensitive. He’s likely to cry if you damage his lawns.”
“Right,” said Saskia. “Uplink trucks go here, access to the boardroom where the PM’s giving his speech is up there. People access is this way. Can’t go through from this side but it’ll be open on Thursday.”
“Come through the front door. We’ll have to sign you in, I expect you’ll want to mess about inside later?”
Petra dealt with temporary badges and we continued on to the boardroom.
“There’s the window we showed you from outside and you’ve just passed the door leading down to the door to the outside. That’s got an alarm on it. Please don’t open it - unless you want to be surrounded by security men, most of whom look like Rambo - minus the guns of course.”
“We’ll be outside for a while yet. When we want come in we’ll ask for you, ok?”
“That’s fine. Just ask Petra to find the Saskias, that’ll do it.”
On the way back to the office, via the cafeteria of course, Saskia said, “What’s with the Rambos then? Most of our security men look like a gust of wind would blow them over.”
“All a matter of image, my dear Saskia. All a matter of image.”
“Mm. You should work in PR. Oh - you do. How convenient. Let’s pass Petra and collect the six-foot high pile of messages she’s undoubtedly take for us.”
“Damn! Didn’t go see the electrician.”
“Let’s get him to come to us. Petra’ll track him down for us.”
“Good thinking Supergirl. Make it so.”
Back at our desks, Saskia had a question. “Just remembered. What’s that expression you used with the BT guys? String of letters?”
“ISDN?”
“Yeah. That. What’s it mean?”
“Stands for Integrated Services Digital Network. Digital data down ordinary telephone lines. Like broadband internet. Carries audio information, used for communications mostly these days. The studio will use it to talk to the truck at this end and the truck will extend it to whoever needs it at this end. If it’s live, it’ll go all the way to the presenter’s ear.”
I saw Saskia repeat this to herself a couple of times under her breath, obviously making sure she’d remember it.
We spent the rest of the morning returning calls on our message sheets and fielding new ones put through by Petra. The electrician came and spoke to us. I told him what we wanted. He said the immortal words ‘no problem’ and rushed off to see to it.
The highlight of the morning was a visit from James. He didn’t usually stir to go see people, he commanded people to come to him.
“Amanda tells me you’re wearing Petra out. How are you getting on?”
“Quite well thank you, Boss,” said Saskia. “I’m getting to speak to all kinds of people. I spoke to Andrew Marr a few minutes ago.”
“Are the BT trucks out on the road anything to do with this?”
Saskia jumped in first. “Yep. They’re installing temporary ISDN lines for the broadcasters.”
James looked slightly sideways at Saskia, then he turned to me. “I hold you totally responsible for your partner in crime. Will she ever be the same again?”
“Guilty as charged, James,” I laughed. “She’ll be ok after a hot chocolate and possibly a lie down in a darkened room.”
James laughed with me. “Anyway, Amanda’s going to give Petra a rest and a chance to get some lunch.”
“Oh good,” I said. “When?”
“As soon as I get back to my office.”
“Good. We’ll come with you, we could do with a bit of fun. This morning’s been far too serious.”
James gave me a look that said ‘what now?’ but he didn’t actually say anything.
Saskia and I followed Amanda down to Reception. Before she got chance to say anything, we rushed over to Petra, one each side, and helped her to stand up.
“We’re so sorry, Petra.”
“We’ve worked you far too hard.”
“Taking messages and phone calls for us.”
“And finding people for us.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
“We’ll help you to the cafeteria.”
“We can fetch your lunch as a penance.”
The few workers passing looked on in amusement as we ‘helped’ Petra out from behind her desk. We each held an arm and ‘helped’ her down the corridor towards the cafeteria. There we sat he
r at a table.
“What would you like for lunch?” asked Saskia. “We’ll fetch it.”
“Whatever you want to drink, we’ll fetch that as well.”
So far Petra had looked totally bemused by all this. Now she shook herself and began to laugh. “Ok, ok. Knock it off you two. Enough already.”
Saskia pretended to look offended. “Sir James said Amanda said we’d worn you out. Here we are trying to help and you tell us to knock it off.”
She couldn’t keep it up. She began to laugh, I joined her.
“Sorry Petra. Couldn’t resist. Come and join us for lunch?”
“Lunch with the Saskias? Oh wow. Wait ‘till I tell my friends!”
“Now who’s got to knock it off,” I laughed. “Come on Petra, are you going to have a proper lunch or just a lettuce leaf?”
“Proper lunch of course. Burger and chips.”
“That’s better. Be an honorary Saskia for a while. Hang on there, Saskia will provide.”
Saskia went to secure supplies, I sat with Petra. “Do we annoy you, this constant mickey-taking?”
“Good Lord, no. It’s a island of madness in an otherwise flat calm of boredom. The highlight of my day is usually signing for the latest delivery of paperclips. Hey, was that really Andrew Marr on the phone for Saskia?”
“As far as I know. How do you decide which Saskia to put the call through to?”
“I don’t. If only one phone’s free then that gets it, if both are free then it’s random - unless they give your Sunday names. You always say it doesn’t matter which one of you people talk to. Why? Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, no. It’s working fine. Just wondered, that’s all. Ah. Here’s Saskia with plates.”
We had a nice but quick lunch then walked with Petra back to reception to collect any messages Amanda might have taken.”
“Help, Saskias, Petra. I’m disappearing under message sheets!”
“Don’t exaggerate Amanda,” said Saskia. There can’t be more than ten or fifteen,” She looked closer, “fifteen or twenty.”
“Ok Amanda. I’m fully recovered and ready for action,” said Petra.