A Silver Lining Read online

  ‘I’d better be getting back too,’ she admitted. ‘I have lots of important stuff to do.’ Lots of important stuff to do? She cringed inwardly. She sounded like a child playing dress up at being a competent business woman. Come to think of it, that’s how she pretty much thought of herself all the time.

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said James giving her an easy smile. She got the impression that he was laughing at her. She swivelled on her heel and stalked down the corridor, trying to project as much attitude as she could. I’m working it, she said to herself, feeling James’ eyes on her as she walked. She got a couple of admiring glances as she stalked down the hall. That would have been great if she hadn’t caught her heel in the edge of the carpet. She stumbled, struggling to right herself in her ridiculously high heels, and barrelled straight into a man coming the other way with a cardboard tray of Starbucks Coffee. The coffee slopped all over his front, causing him to howl in anguish and pain. Every Empressario employee on the open plan fourth floor swivelled and peered over the office dividers to find out what was happening.

  ‘Are you crazy?!’ screeched the man, at her. ‘I’m scalded!’ He dumped the empty containers into her open arms, and strode off into the bathroom, leaving her open mouthed, crimson faced, and with coffee dripping onto her beautiful cream Karen Millen shoes. Not that it made much difference; she was never going to wear them again after their treachery. She turned around in slow motion, hoping that James might have gone back to his desk, but the gods were not smiling on her today. He was standing there with his arms crossed across his chest, a smirk playing around those lips that she’d used to love to kiss.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is certainly one way to make an impression.’

  Later that day she was in the lobby with her team, getting preliminary shots of the Empressario logo behind the reception desk. It was part of setting the scene for the piece, and it was amazing how time consuming these kinds of shots were. She tried to keep her shoes out of view, but there was no point really. Some hotshot had managed to get the aftermath on his camera phone, and it had gone around the building like wildfire. Huh. It was one of the most prestigious companies in the land, yet their staff still acted like a bunch of overgrown school kids.

  Calvin walked into the lobby, flanked by Victoria, his personal assistant who had the patience of a saint in Mollie’s opinion. Victoria looked at the mess she was in, but managed not to smirk. Victoria didn’t have much of a sense of humour, which made it doubly miraculous that she managed to work with someone like him. He walked across the hall, his expensive Italian shoes clicking elegantly off the marble floor. He walked straight across the shot, causing Kim to mutter an expletive under her breath.

  ‘Where do you want me?’ Calvin asked Mollie.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ she asked. She had handed him a treatment for the video around an hour ago. Her team had agreed that a professional voice over would suffice, as well as a couple of interviews with last year’s intake and some of the more senior members of staff, just for sound bites. They were scheduled to interview Calvin the next day, so she had no idea why he was here.

  ‘Where do you want me?’ he repeated. ‘For the introduction.’

  ‘If you look at our treatment you’ll see that we don’t actually need you until tomorrow,’ said Mollie politely.

  Calvin waved her words away as if they were wind. ‘I’ve looked at it and I still think it needs something. Some punch. Some pizzazz. So I thought I’d come down and help you all out.’

  This was a nightmare, said Mollie. She’d love to wake up in her bed and discover that it had all been a horrible dream and she wasn’t in fact working with a madman.

  ‘Look, I know you’re a busy man. While we’d love to make use of your expertise, we know we can’t monopolise you,’ she said as genuinely as she could manage. ‘You have much more important stuff to do. Why don’t you just give us a few pointers and leave us to it?’

  ‘Mollie, you’re a sweetheart to think of it,’ said Calvin. ‘But there’s no need to be shy about asking for a little help when it’s needed. In fact, being able to ask for help is one of the things we look for from new employees!’

  ‘But,’ said Mollie desperately, ‘Surely you’re too busy.’

  ‘Here’s the thing, kid,’ he began. Again Mollie got the feeling that he had been overdosing on Turner’s Classic Movies. ‘There’s this fallacy that when you’ve climbed to the top of the greasy pole you’re somehow above the little people. I like my little people to know that they’re just as important to me as the clever guys. Once you start neglecting the little people in your corporation, the little jobs, then everything falls apart. Do you get me?’

  She sighed. There was no way that she was going to be able to cut him off now he was in full flow.

  ‘My father was the most famed bullock farmer in west Monaghan,’ he began, his eyes misted up as he focused on a fixed point in the middle distance. ‘A lot of people thought that it was down to luck, or that he’d used his family connections to get good animals. And yeah, that was part of it. But he also made a point of getting to know everyone. From the people who shovelled the manure to the veterinarians to the men who made up the feed.

  There was certainly a smell of shit anyway.

  Mollie wasn’t exactly sure which of these Calvin saw her as.

  ‘When Bart the bull won the rosette for best stud animal, it was because my father never underestimated the fact that he wasn’t just a bullock farmer, he was a team leader.’

  What precisely this had to do with shooting a publicity video Mollie had no idea. She was trying to work out a way out of this situation when she saw a familiar face at the back of the melee. Fuck.

  Not only was she having the worst day possible, and being lectured on bovine behaviour as applied to business practice from a lunatic, but James was witnessing the entire thing.

  James had been her junior momentarily when they’d started off at a small media business years ago. He’d been promoted quickly, and had it hadn’t taken long before their relationship had developed from a purely business one to something more. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one to see the potential in him. Glenda was the boss’ daughter, and her main responsibility seemed to be sitting in on meetings in her immaculately cut Italian suits and planning company parties. She flirted with all men, but soon started to single him out as her target. At first Mollie hadn’t minded. Her over the top attempts to flirt with him had seemed more laughable than anything else. But over time it got embarrassing. James had been afraid to rebuff Glenda too much – he was an ambitious young man and angering the boss’s only daughter was not the way to advance his career. Mollie understood this, but Glenda’s attempts at flirting got more blatant. Mollie became the laughing stock of the office, the whole thing made her look foolish. After a particularly fraught summer barbecue Mollie had gotten drunk on a few too many dirty martinis and handed in her notice, talking up the new company she was setting up with confidence born of strong liquor and a dinner of cocktail sausages on sticks. She’d gone home, eaten a family size bag of Doritos, changed her number and never looked back. Well, not much.

  And now she was here. She wasn’t sure what part hurt the most, seeing his face and remembering what they’d had or the fact that he was witnessing this omnishambles. She’d left her previous job on a high, blithely convincing anyone who wanted to listen (and many who didn’t) that a bright new future lay before her. And here he was now, witnessing the shambolic mess that was her professional life. She was just glad that he didn’t know about the financial mess she was also in. That would be truly humiliating.

  Still, she was sure she could see something of a smirk around his lips that she didn’t like. She was in charge of this show – such as it was – it was time she started to look like it.

  ‘Calvin, we’ve actually decided that as Tim’s away, the best thing is to mesh your two visions together,’ said Mollie. ‘We think having a ‘presenter’, as such, isn’t the best
way to go. We’d like to interview you tomorrow, for some talking head pieces.’

  There was silence in the foyer. Even the receptionist had stopped to look at what was happening. Mollie suddenly felt a dart of trepidation. Maybe arguing with a man who could bully bulls into submission wasn’t the greatest idea in the world.

  Calvin’s eyes were hard as ice. He might be a buffoon of the highest order but he was also a senior person in this company. He wasn’t to be messed with. She could see Greg shaking his head slowly behind Calvin’s back. She knew what he was thinking. If they didn’t complete this job, it didn’t matter about their reputation – they were sunk. The cash this would bring in would pay the rest of the crew and, if they couldn’t pay their crew, then they couldn’t provide a service. It would be game over, simple as that.

  ‘Maybe your way is best,’ she conceded reluctantly, pulling out her clipboard and biro. ‘What other ideas do you have?’

  The beaming smile sprung back onto his face so quickly that it took Mollie by surprise. ‘You are going to love this!’

  Greg set up the camera to get the intro to the scene. Mollie looked over the pages and pages of notes that she’d taken as the questionable genius that was Calvin had dictated his vision.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ asked James behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She hadn’t heard him creeping up behind her.

  ‘You never know,’ she said, keeping her voice carefully measured. ‘He might be a natural in front of the camera, some people are.’

  ‘What, you’re hoping he’ll magically morph into a charismatic businessman straight from central casting?’ he scoffed.

  ‘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 wa
s 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.