(1989) Dreamer Read Free

headache. I think it may be this VDU. I’m going to get one of those filters for it.’
    ‘I’ve got some aspirins.’
    ‘It’s OK, thanks.’
    He walked across the office towards her, a restless man in his mid-forties in the clothes of a college student, his steely hair tousled, permanently in need of a cut, his face comfortable and creased like his denim shirt, his sharp blue eyes smiling good-naturedly. He stopped by Claire’s desk.
    ‘Tidy, isn’t she?’
    Sam grinned. ‘Is that a hint?’
    ‘How are you finding her?’
    Claire had only been with them a few weeks. Lara, her predecessor, had left without any warning. One Monday she failed to appear and sent in a letter the next day saying she was suffering from nervous strain and her doctor had advised her to work in a less stressful environment.
    ‘She’s all right,’ Sam said. ‘She doesn’t talk much.’
    ‘You complained that Lara nattered too much. Maybe Claire’ll cope better with the pressure.’
    Sam shrugged.
    ‘What’s that look on your face mean?’
    She shrugged again. ‘I thought she was nice when she started – but – I don’t know.’
    ‘Give her time. She’s quite efficient.’
    ‘Yes, sir!’
    He walked over and stood behind Sam’s desk, staring down at the story board. ‘Joncie,’ he said. ‘I want Joncie to light it.’
    ‘Shall I book him?’
    ‘Pencil him in.’
    ‘Who do you want if he’s not available?’
    ‘I’ve mentioned it already to him.’ He squinted down at the board. ‘Castaway. Daft name for a chocolate bar.’
    ‘I think it’s all right.’
    He glanced down the sequence of coloured frames, and read out aloud. ‘Like a coconut, Castaway has the goodness on the inside.’ He stepped back, patted his stomach and repeated the line again, in a deep bass voice. Sam laughed.
    ‘Castaway,’ he boomed. ‘The chocolate bar that won’t melt in the sun . . . Castaway, the world’s first pre-digested food. You don’t even need to eat it – just buy it and throw it straight down the lavatory.’
    Sam grinned and shook her head. Ken lit a cigarette and the sweet smell tortured her. She watched him prowl around the office, staring at the schedules on the walls; eighteen commercials already booked for this year; they’d made forty-three last year. Ken charged a fee of ten thousand pounds a day for directing and the firm took a percentage of the total production cost. If he weren’t still paying off his debts and his wife, he’d be a rich man by now. And if he could keep his temper and his eye for the changing fashions, he would be eventually.
    ‘You’re going to behave at the meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?’
    ‘Behave?’ he said.
    ‘Yes.’ She grinned.
    He nodded like a reluctant schoolboy.
    ‘Big bucks, Ken.’
    ‘Done the budget?’
    ‘Just going to print it out.’
    He looked at his watch, a heavy macho brute of a watch festooned with important-looking knobs, waterproof to five hundred metres (handy for the bathtub, Sam once told him). ‘Fancy a quick jar?’
    ‘No thanks. I want to get back in time to bath Nicky. I was late last night.’
    ‘Only a quick one.’
    ‘Hot date?’
    He pointed a finger downwards. ‘Snooker. Got a couple of new lads from Lowe Howard-Spinks coming over. Business, Sam,’ he said, noticing her expression.
    ‘Business!’ she mocked.
    The wipers of the elderly E-Type Jaguar smeared the rain into a translucent film across the windscreen, making it hard to see. She drove fast, worried Nicky mightalready be in bed, straining forward to see the road ahead, past the Tower of London, its battlements illuminated in a bright fuzz of light and mist, into London’s docklands and slowed as she turned into Wapping High Street, trying not to shake the twenty-five-year-old car too much on the cobblestones. She passed a block of dark, unfinished apartments, and a large illuminated sign which said SHOW FLATS, and another which said RIVERSIDE HOMES – RIVERSIDE LIFESTYLES. Buy