Funny Girl(36)

Diane crossed her eyes and made a face to indicate that Crush wasn’t her favourite magazine. Sophie laughed.

‘You don’t like your job?’

‘No, I do,’ said Diane. ‘It’s fun. I get to meet pop stars and people off the telly. Like you. And people are always sending us gear. But it isn’t what I want to do for ever.’

‘What do you want to do for ever?’

‘I want to write, but not this stuff. I’d love to do Tony and Bill’s job.’

Sophie was surprised she even knew their names. Not many people cared about who wrote telly and radio programmes.

‘Do you think you could?’ said Sophie.

‘Will anyone let me? That’s the question. There aren’t many funny girl writers.’

‘You should just write something,’ said Sophie.

‘Ah, well,’ said Diane. ‘When you put it like that … it sounds impossible. Anyway. Answer my wretched questions. Clothes, boyfriend, cooking.’

‘Oh,’ said Sophie. ‘Well, I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t cook. I wear things, though.’

‘Why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ said Diane.

‘I had one at home in Blackpool, but we broke up when I came here, and … well, I haven’t met anyone.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you needed to meet anyone.’

‘I don’t know how you get a boyfriend without meeting them first.’

‘I thought all the men would be phoning you up after they saw you on the telly,’ said Diane.

‘I haven’t got a telephone, so they’d have a job.’

‘You haven’t got a telephone?’

Sophie realized that she didn’t want to talk about Earl’s Court bedsits or Marjorie, not to Crush magazine.

‘I’ve just moved and they haven’t come round to put it in yet.’

‘Oh, that’s fabulous,’ said Diane. ‘It’s all happened so fast for you. Where have you moved to?’

‘Oh, that would be telling.’

‘Just the area. I won’t put in your address.’

‘Kensington. Near Derry and Toms,’ said Sophie.

‘That’s where you used to work, isn’t it?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘The BBC press officer told me. Cosmetics. I’ve got all that. Complete unknown walks in off the street, wows everyone at the audition, gets the job. It’s a great story. Where do you like to go out?’

She was interviewing somebody else, Sophie thought, someone who had done something. Sophie had come to London, worked in a department store, listened to Marjorie snoring and then been cast in a television series. She didn’t watch television, though, because she didn’t have one of those either.

‘I like the Talk of the Town,’ she said.

There was really nothing left now. All her London experiences had been used up.

‘Fabulous,’ said Diane. ‘Lovely. And are you excited about the series?’

‘Really excited.’

‘Great,’ said Diane, and she stood up.

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s plenty. No boyfriend, no phone, new flat, the Talk of the Town … Really, I just have to say that I met you. If you told me your favourite Beatle, my editor would explode with joy,’ said Diane joylessly.

Sophie laughed. She liked Diane.

‘George.’

‘He’ll read this and ask you out.’

Sophie blushed.

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’

‘He won’t,’ said Diane. ‘I was pulling your leg.’

‘Can we do another interview one day?’ said Sophie. ‘When … when something has happened to me?’

‘We’ll see how the show goes,’ said Diane.

She wasn’t being unkind. She was just refusing to make promises. It hadn’t occurred to Sophie that her first interview might also be her last. She wished she’d enjoyed it more, and she wished she’d found something to say.

Tony and Bill weren’t writing in the coffee bar any more. They had rented an office, a room above a shoe shop on Great Portland Street, around the corner from the Underground station. On the day they moved in, they had gone out shopping on Oxford Street together, and bought two desks, two armchairs, a lamp, a record player and some records, a kettle and some tea bags. In John Lewis, they had argued about buying an expensive sofa. Bill wanted to lie down during the day and stare at the ceiling. Tony thought that a sofa would lead to inactivity and sleep, and told Bill he wouldn’t pay half for something that would produce only a reduced income. Bill said he would buy it himself, in which case Tony wasn’t even allowed to sit on it. And Tony told Bill to be his guest, that his rear end would never touch the sofa. And then it turned out that there was a twelve-week delivery time, so Bill decided not to bother, but there was a residual irritation that took them a couple of days to shake off. They had never argued before, but everything had seemed more casual before. Now they had a sixteen-episode commission, an increase in fees, an office, a kettle … They were in deep.