A Room Swept White Read Online Free Page B

lay a carpet anywhere would threaten their upper-middle-class identity, and who seem to spend most evenings jumping around their living room on pogo-sticks, if the noise they make is anything to go by. I have no outside space whatsoever, though I have an excellent view of the pogo-jumpers’ immaculate lawn and assortment of rose-bushes, and I can’t afford the damp-proofing my flat has urgently needed since I bought it four years ago. Funnily enough, wealth isn’t something I dwell on.
    ‘I suppose I’d like to be rich-
ish
,’ I say. ‘As long as I wasn’t getting my money from anything dodgy, like people-smuggling.’I play back my answer in my head, hoping it made me sound ambitious but principled.
    ‘What if you could do my job and earn what I earn?’ Laurie asks.
    ‘I couldn’t do what you—’
    ‘You can. You will. I’m leaving the company. From Monday, you’re me: Creative Director and Executive Producer. I’m on a hundred and forty a year here. From Monday, that’s what you’ll be on.’
    ‘What
? Laurie, I—’
    ‘Maybe not officially from Monday, so you might have to wait for the pay-rise, but effectively from Monday . . .’
    ‘Laurie, slow down!’ I’ve never shouted an order at him before. ‘Sorry,’ I mumble. In my shock, I forgot for a second who he is and who I am. Laurie Nattrass doesn’t get yelled at by the likes of me.
From Monday, you’re me
. It must be a joke. Or he’s confused. Someone as confusing as he is could easily be confused. ‘This makes no sense,’ I say. Me, Creative Director of Binary Star? I’m the lowest paid producer in the company. Tamsin, as Laurie’s research assistant, earns significantly more than I do. I make programmes that no one but me has any respect for, about warring neighbours and malfunctioning gastric bands – subjects that interest not only me but also millions of viewers, which is why I don’t care that I’m regarded by my colleagues as the light relief amid all the purveyors of earnest political documentaries. Raffi refers to my work as ‘fluff stuff’.
    This has got to be a joke. A trap. Am I supposed to say, ‘Ooh, yes, please,’ then look like an idiot when Laurie falls about laughing? ‘What’s going on?’ I snap.
    He sighs heavily. ‘I’m going to Hammerhead. They’ve mademe an offer I can’t refuse, a bit like the offer I’m making you. Not that it’s about the money. It’s time I moved on.’
    ‘But . . . you can’t leave,’ I say, feeling hollow at the thought. ‘What about the film?’ He wouldn’t go without finishing it; there’s no way on earth. Even someone as hard to fathom as Laurie leaves the odd clue here and there as to what makes him tick. Unless the clues I’ve picked up have been planted by someone determined to mislead me – and it’s hard to see how that could happen, since most of them came from Laurie’s own mouth – then what makes him tick at a rate of a hundred and twenty seconds to the minute rather than the usual sixty is the film he’s making about three cot-death murder cases: Helen Yardley, Sarah Jaggard and Rachel Hines.
    Everyone at Binary Star calls it ‘the film’, as if it’s the only one the company need concern itself with, the only one we’re making or are ever likely to make. Laurie’s been working on it since the dawn of time. He insists that it has to be perfect, and keeps changing his mind about the best way to structure it. It’s going to be two hours long, and the BBC has told Laurie he can take his pick of the slots, which is unheard of. Or rather, it’s unheard of for everyone but Laurie Nattrass, who is a deity in the world of television. If he wanted to make a five-hour film that knocked out both the
News at Six
and the
News at Ten
, the BBC higher-ups would probably lick his boots and say, ‘Yes, Master.’
    ‘You’re going to make the film,’ he tells me with the confidence of someone who has visited the future and knows what happens in it.