One in a Million

  Miranda had come up with a solution to our workflow problem. Even though we had more clients than we knew what to do with, we were still owed so much money, we could barely afford to pay the staff we had – namely Brian – and so we had turned to the only option available to us. The most feared staffing solution this side of dragging people in off the streets. We were going to hire an intern.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked as we trotted down the staircase. ‘We can barely manage ourselves.’

  ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Miranda said, practically begging me to push her down the stairs. ‘I remember doing work experience, it was brilliant. It’s not like we’re asking them to run entire campaigns for us, we just need someone who will make the tea, open the post and tell us how great we are. It’s like a dream come true for these kids.’

  ‘A dream where we pay them next to nothing,’ I replied.

  Mir paused on the stairs for dramatic effect. Mir did a lot of things for dramatic effect.

  ‘We’re paying them in opportunities,’ she explained, sweeping her arm along the horizon. ‘They will be rich in experience.’

  I looked back, stony faced.

  ‘And travel and living expenses and all the beauty products and computer games their little hands can carry,’ she shrugged, opening the door to the ground-floor hallway. ‘Lots of people don’t pay anything, at least we’re making sure they’re not being taken advantage of. They’re just kids, Annie. Enthusiastic kids who are dying to help. Nothing for you to be afraid of.’

  Mir threw open the meeting room door and four cool, calm and confident human beings in much cooler outfits than I was able to put together at twenty (or now), turned to stare at us. Not a single one of them looked even so much as slightly nervous but they were young; true Monday Dread had yet to set in for any of them.

  ‘What’s the most important thing in the entire world?’ Miranda asked, pacing up and down at the front of the room. ‘If you had to pick one thing, what would it be?’

  Very little time for pleasantries, had Miranda. I sat down on a chair at the top of the table. All three girls and the one boy sat forward at the same time like pre-programmed meerkats.

  ‘Family,’ suggested a twenty-nothing girl in a pair of inordinately large glasses.

  ‘Nope,’ Miranda replied.

  ‘Friends,’ a girl in what looked like her dead grandad’s best suit asserted with undeserved confidence.

  ‘Yes but no,’ Miranda replied even more quickly.

  ‘My dog?’

  Silence.

  ‘Is it love?’ asked the bravest girl in the world. She looked to be about twelve and had such a hopeful expression on her face and all I wanted to do was give her a cuddle and then lock her in a cupboard so she would never know the dark truth about the cold harsh world outside these four walls.

  ‘I meant a thing,’ Miranda clarified before pointing at the only male in the room. ‘You. A physical thing, what’s the most important physical thing you own?’

  ‘Me?’ The floppy-haired boy dressed head to toe in black reared backwards as her gaze pinned him to his chair. ‘Um, my grandad left me his watch, so I suppose, probably, if I had to choose one thing, maybe …’

  ‘I’m talking about your phone!’ Miranda didn’t bother to let him finish.

  They all made agreeing noises, as though it had been obvious all along and they were only testing her.

  ‘Hi, I’m Annie,’ I said, taking over as Mir collapsed into a chair, muttering to herself. ‘I am the co-owner here at Content and we need an intern or even a couple of interns to work with us over the summer and possibly part-time after you go back to uni in September.’

  All four faces stared back at me.

  ‘The roles are starter level,’ I carried on, ignoring a waving Charlie passing-by outside the window. ‘We all appreciate ambition but we need someone who is happy to begin at the bottom and learn. It’s mostly admin, but you would definitely be involved in team activities, planning, brainstorming, all that kind of thing. Any questions?’

  ‘I’m already a YouTuber?’ the girl in the glasses said. It sounded like a question even though I suspected it wasn’t. ‘And I’ve got seven thousand followers already, so I think I would be really helpful in a more active role?’

  ‘Good for you,’ Miranda said, giving me The Look. ‘But right now we need someone who can help with admin.’

  ‘Right,’ the girl replied. ‘So, could someone else do that?’

  ‘I’ll do whatever you need,’ said poor, sweet girl who had yet to realize the world was in fact, Not Fair. ‘I’m really happy doing admin.’

  ‘Great,’ Mir gave her a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Also, I really want to meet Zoella,’ she carried on. ‘Do you know her?’

  Behind my back, I heard Mir sigh.

  ‘We work with a lot of people,’ I replied. ‘But it’s hard to say who will and won’t be around the office at any given time.’

  ‘Because I saw her on your Instastory once. You were, like, on holiday on a desert island together or something.’

  ‘That was a brand trip we organized for a cosmetics company,’ I nodded. ‘But good memory.’

  ‘I totally love her,’ she said, addressing the entire room this time. ‘I’m more of a Louise than a Zoe, so I think we’d get on so well.’

  ‘I’m definitely more of a Tanya,’ said the boy. ‘Or maybe a Manny.’

  ‘Does anyone here want to work in digital marketing or do you all just want to be YouTubers?’ I asked.

  No one responded.

  ‘Are these the best people who applied?’ I asked in a whisper. As soon as we stopped speaking directly to them, two of the four immediately pulled out their phones and started checking their email.

  Mir nodded sadly. ‘By a country mile.’

  ‘The world is doomed.’ I clapped my hands to get their attention. ‘Moving on, I’m assuming you’ve all read the job description or you wouldn’t be here, but does anyone have any questions about the actual internship?’

  All four raised their hands.

  ‘Questions that have nothing to do with Zoella?’ Miranda clarified.

  The boy and the Zoella stan lowered their hands.

  ‘Questions that have nothing to do with specific YouTubers and directly relate to the position you’re applying for?’ I added.

  The boy raised his hand again and I nodded for him to speak.

  ‘Will we get a phone as part of the job?’ he asked. ‘Because I dropped mine in the toilet and I left it in a bag of rice overnight but it won’t dry out and—’

  ‘You and you,’ Miranda cut him off and pointed at the girl in the big glasses and the girl in the suit, who by virtue of saying as little as possible, had won us over as the best candidates. ‘Congratulations! You’re our new interns.’

  ‘And thank you for coming,’ I said to the other two. ‘It was great to meet you, let me show you out.’

  ‘I don’t understand, do we start Monday?’ the girl asked as I hurried the failed applicants out of the meeting room, into the lobby and out of The Ginnel, never to return.

  ‘No,’ I said, as kindly as possible. ‘No, you don’t.’

  It was hard to break the hearts of the young. Sometimes.

  ‘Maybe you can apply again next year,’ I suggested. ‘When you’ve had a bit more experience.’

  The pair of them stared at me like the creepy twins from The Shining, as I backed slowly into the building.

  ‘Good luck!’ I called as I closed the door on their confused faces. ‘Great to meet you.’

  And then I turned and bolted up the stairs.

  ‘Were we too harsh on the others?’ I asked from the queue in the coffee shop, after sending our official new interns, Zadie and Nat, home with goodie bags so big they could barely lift them. ‘They’re still so young and naïve.’

  ‘Better they get crushed now,’ Miranda said with confidence. ‘If we toughen them up before they
get to twenty-one, they stand a chance.’

  ‘As if you’re not the world’s biggest secret softy,’ I muttered, trying to convince myself I didn’t really want a pastry when I was on such a tight budget. ‘They’re probably already better at this than we are.’

  ‘Probably, but from now on, everyone who comes to work here has to sign billion-year contracts never to mention the word Zoella ever again, even if she’s in the room,’ she said without looking up from her phone. ‘Actually, especially if she’s in the room.’

  I nodded in agreement before giving a big, greedy yawn.

  ‘Today is going to be a good day,’ I told her. ‘I can feel it in my waters.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ she said, eyes stuck to the screen of her phone. ‘Annie, we’ve been asked to pitch to SetPics.’

  I pressed my hands against my chest. It had happened. I was dead. I had died and gone to heaven. SetPics was one of the biggest entertainment streaming companies in Europe and they only worked with the best agencies, there was no way they’d asked tiny, little Content to pitch them.

  ‘If you’re making this up, I’m going to murder you,’ I said, suddenly aware I was sweating. ‘Kill you in your sleep and hide the body where people will never find it. Murder you.’

  Mir was shaking and not because of my death threat.

  ‘They want a social media campaign for a new show about four teenagers who discover a magic egg and develop the ability to travel through time and space with their unicorn guide,’ she read from her phone. ‘One of the boys from Teen Wolf is in it.’

  ‘You’re making it up,’ I said. ‘You know I love those poor, out-of-work werewolf actors.’

  She looked up with bright, burning eyes.

  ‘It’s called Uniteam 3000 and the pitch is due in three weeks from today.’

  Even Miranda couldn’t make that up on the spot.

  ‘Mir, this is huge,’ I said, blinking up at my best friend’s gurning face. ‘This is even bigger than the TechBubble awards.’

  ‘I’m forwarding you the email,’ she replied. ‘Timing’s tight. Maybe someone else dropped out?’

  ‘Gift horse, mouth, don’t look into it,’ I said, my brain already racing into action. We’d have to come up with something shareable and fun, maybe a mobile game, maybe something with augmented reality. And while my heart beat only for the creative, my head swooned at the idea of a proper budget, real money coming in for once. ‘Does it say who else is pitching?’

  ‘Even better,’ she said with a grin. ‘It’s us, PGC and Oz – that’s it. We’re going to get this.’

  Oz. As in Gordon Ossington. As in my last boss before I quit to start up the company he told me would fold within six months.

  ‘We have to get this,’ I declared, squeezing her hands in mine. ‘Suck it, Gordon Ossington.’

  That decided it. I was definitely going to need a pain au chocolat.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  A tap on my shoulder made me jump out of my skin. I turned, hand on heart, to see Sam stood in front of me. Today he was sporting a delightful argyle jumper he seemed to have borrowed from my dad in 1986.

  ‘I’ve thought about your proposal,’ he said, completely ignoring Miranda. ‘And I will accept the terms of your arrangement.’

  ‘Today just gets better and better,’ I said, hurling my arms around his neck in a hug. ‘You won’t regret this, Sam.’

  ‘Samuel,’ he said, disentangling himself from my arms. ‘And I very much hope you’re right.’

  Working in a super-cool, super-creative co-working space was great until every meeting room in the building was occupied and you and your incredibly reluctant wannabe-Romeo ended up trapped in the ‘Peace Room’. A tiny little space chock-full of beanbags and prayer mats with all manner of pseudo-spiritual accoutrements. Yoga blocks, stretching straps, prayer beads, incense, candles and a number of plastic buddhas I knew for a fact Martin had bought in a job lot from the garden centre down the road that closed at Christmas.

  An incongruous Sam sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged on a purple silk cushion, as the wind chimes hanging in the open window filled the room with an unwelcome melody. It was like plopping a Teletubby down in the middle of the Gaza Strip; he couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he’d been trying.

  ‘Being a better boyfriend isn’t difficult,’ I said, wiping a giant NAMASTE off the blackboard at the front of the room with my sleeve. ‘Whatever it is your girlfriend needs, if you’re prepared to try to give it to her, I can’t see why we wouldn’t be able to work things out. So, tell me exactly what she said.’

  ‘Must we do this in here?’ he asked, switching the direction of his legs. ‘I’m not excessively comfortable.’

  ‘We’re not doing it in your Gollum hole, so yes, we do,’ I said, tapping a stick of incense against the blackboard. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That she was bored,’ he admitted. ‘She said she was bored, that I’d changed and that we want different things out of life – which is ridiculous. I haven’t changed at all and I still want exactly the same things.’

  For a moment, I wondered if Elaine might be referring specifically to his outfits when she talked about the need for change.

  ‘Perhaps it’s more the case that she’s been changing,’ I suggested as kindly as possible. ‘And maybe she’s thinking you’re stuck in a bit of a rut? And you don’t realize it?’

  ‘No, that can’t be it.’ Sam dismissed the theory out of hand and recrossed his legs once again.

  ‘We’ll come back to that,’ I said, picking up a piece of pink chalk. ‘Let’s get down to business. The five steps of boyfriend bootcamp, your cannot-fail path to winning Elaine’s heart back and becoming the perfect partner.’

  He sucked in his cheeks and pulled roughly at a loose thread in his prayer mat.

  ‘Step one,’ I scribbled as I wrote. My handwriting was appalling, I’d never make it as a teacher. ‘Listen. Which means—’

  ‘Listening?’ Sam suggested. I closed my eyes and took a calm, quiet breath in, the chalk hovering millimetres away from the board.

  ‘Listening and not interrupting,’ I replied as I continued to write, turning my back to my reluctant pupil. ‘Listening isn’t the same thing as waiting for your turn to speak. When she’s talking to you, I want you to really pay attention, even if you don’t especially care about what she’s saying.’

  Sam looked at me as though I’d gone completely mad.

  ‘If she says she’s had a bad day, ask her why it was so bad, don’t just tell her how bad your day was,’ I said. ‘It’s not about one-upmanship. Sometimes a woman just wants to be heard. If she says she’s knackered, give her a hug, don’t ask why she didn’t take the rubbish out. If she says Maria from accounts has been a right old cow, agree with her. Never, ever defend Maria. You want to show her you’re on her side. It’s not just listening, it’s empathizing.’

  ‘I don’t see how that is constructive if your theoretical Maria has done nothing wrong,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Elaine does have a tendency to overreact—’

  ‘No,’ I said, cutting him off this time. ‘Doesn’t matter. If she says someone’s an arsehole, it doesn’t matter. For now, you agree with her.’

  Sam cast his eyes to the side of the room and motioned for me to move on.

  ‘Step two, show her how much you care.’ I added ‘show her’ to the blackboard. ‘Start small. Buy her flowers, make the bed, fluff the cushions, get in some of her favourite treats. This needs to be everyday stuff, not once in a blue moon. It’ll help her know you’re thinking about her when she’s not there.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Because you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Unless I’m working,’ he replied. ‘Or thinking about something else.’

  With an inward groan, I moved on; I didn’t have all day. Thank god.

  ‘Step three is a fun one.’ In my best scrawl, I wrote down ‘shared interests’ on the board. ‘I’ve been lo
oking at Elaine’s Instagram and it seems like she’s got lots of different hobbies. Now, how many of these do you do together?’

  Sam took off his glasses and gave them an aggressive clean on the corner of his shirt. ‘Hobbies?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, kneeling beside him as well as my skinny jeans would allow and handing him my phone, pushing aside the slight separation anxiety that came whenever it left my person. ‘Obviously she’s a gym bunny.’

  ‘She is?’ he asked, peering down his nose at the screen. From this distance away, he didn’t smell as musty as his beard suggested he might. In fact, he smelled quite nice. Especially for someone who had been sleeping on the floor for several nights.

  ‘Every other picture is a gym selfie,’ I pointed out, trying to stop myself from giving him a second sniff. Maybe he was using a beard oil or something? Seemed unlikely. Sam poked at the phone screen with one unsteady finger, swiping up through photo after photo of his girlfriend’s abs and truly impressive biceps. ‘You don’t wake up looking like that,’ I said. ‘She must practically live there.’

  He was nodding, but I had no idea what the look on his face meant. Oiled or not, that bloody beard had to go.

  ‘And it looks like she went to a documentary festival the other weekend.’ I selected one of the pictures to enlarge it. ‘Did you go to that with her?’

  ‘I was working,’ he said quietly. ‘I wondered where she’d got to.’

  I bit my bottom lip and kept quiet. Hmm.

  ‘What’s she doing in that one?’ Sam asked, tapping away at one of the older pictures.

  ‘Good god, man, never double tap!’ I pulled my phone away quickly. ‘Instagram cardinal sin. That picture is several months old and we do not go around liking ancient pictures unless we want to give ourselves away as a weirdo, all right? That’s lesson number one.’

  ‘Anything else I should know?’ he asked, sitting on his hands.

  ‘We don’t slide into DMs and we don’t send pictures of our genitals,’ I replied. ‘Ever. Even if they ask for it. You can delete that sucker all day long but once a picture has been taken on your phone, it is forever. Trust me.’

  He blanched, eyes enormous behind his glasses.