Surprise Me(75)

OK, Toby is definitely a distraction. When I arrive at work, he’s already there, wandering round the hall, peering up the staircase, looking totally incongruous in his shabby black T-shirt.

Thank God he’s here. He’s already cancelled on me twice. Always with a good excuse, but still.

‘Hi, Toby!’ I say, greeting him with a handshake – and just for a moment there’s a weird little frisson between us. The last time I saw Toby, I was half-naked, and I can tell he’s remembering that too, from the way his eyeballs are darting up and down. Then I see him gather himself, and the next instant he’s making a valiant effort at saying, ‘Hello, Sylvie.’

‘Thank you so much for coming by. I usually take the stairs, is that OK?’

‘No problem,’ he says, following me up the staircase two steps at a time. ‘This place is mad! All those suits of armour!’

I nod. ‘They’re great, aren’t they? You should see the basement.’

‘You know, I never knew about this place,’ Toby continues blithely. ‘Never even heard of it. I’ve probably walked past a million times, but I’ve never noticed it, my friends have never noticed it … Like, literally, I didn’t know it existed. If you said “Willoughby House” to me, I’d be, like, “What’s that?”’

Does he have to sound quite so emphatic? Thank God neither Robert nor Mrs Kendrick is in earshot. And also thank God we’ve already commissioned a big ‘Willoughby House Museum’ sign for the exterior of the house. It’s going to be grey painted wood and very tasteful, and it only took us a week of solid discussion to nail Mrs Kendrick on the style and font.

How are we ever going to agree on a whole website redesign?

No. Don’t think like that. Be positive.

‘I’m sure your mum must have mentioned this place to you a few times?’ I suggest. Tilda’s been to loads of events here; she’s very loyal.

‘Yeah, maybe she has,’ he says agreeably. ‘But it never stuck in my mind. It’s not famous, is it? It’s not like the V & A.’

‘Right.’ I try to find a smile. ‘Well, that’s the trouble. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.’

Clarissa’s out this morning and Robert hasn’t shown up either, so we have the office to ourselves. I show Toby our home page saying Apply in writing and he bursts into laughter.

‘I love that,’ he says, about fifty times. ‘I love that. That is so cool.’ He takes a photo of the home page and shares it with all his techie friends and reads me out all the comments which instantly stream in. And I’m torn between feeling pride that we have something so distinctive and embarrassment that a whole group of tech whizzes are laughing at us.

‘Anyway,’ I say at last. ‘As you see, we’re behind the times. We can’t carry on like this. So … what can we do? What are the possibilities?’

‘Well,’ says Toby vaguely, still laughing at some comment on his phone. ‘There are loads. Depends what you want to achieve. Like, manage a database, an interactive experience, an e-shop, what?’

‘I don’t know!’ I say, my appetite whetted. ‘Show me!’

‘I looked at a few museum websites,’ he says, getting out his laptop. ‘Like, globally. It was pretty interesting.’

He starts loading up websites, one after another. I thought I’d done my research pretty well, but some of these I missed. And they’re amazing. There are photos that spring to life, 360-degree videos, interactive apps, spectacular graphics, celebrity audio tours …

‘Like I say,’ Toby concludes, ‘the sky’s the limit. You can have anything you want. Depends on what you want. What your priorities are. Oh, and budget,’ he adds as an afterthought.

Budget. I should have started with budget.

‘Right.’ I wrench my gaze away from the website of an American museum which has extraordinary 3-D photos of exhibits spinning slowly round on the screen. They’re so vivid that you really feel you’re there in the room with them. Imagine if we could do that! ‘So, like … how much would that one have cost?’

‘Actually, I read about that one in a tech magazine,’ Toby says, nodding. ‘It was half a million. Oh, don’t worry,’ he adds at my expression. ‘Not pounds, dollars.’

‘Half a million?’ I feel like he’s punched me in the chest.

‘But that was, like, with a whole big rebrand and everything,’ he adds hastily. ‘Like I say, it depends what you want.’

I feel betrayed. All I’ve seen online is adverts saying how cheap and easy it is to make websites. ‘I thought these days you could make websites in your bedroom for half nothing,’ I say, almost accusingly. ‘I thought that was the whole point.’

‘You can!’ Toby nods earnestly. ‘Totally. But they won’t work like that one does. You don’t need to spend half a million, though.’ He’s obviously trying to sound reassuring. ‘You could spend a hundred grand, fifty grand, ten grand, one grand …’ His eyes drift back to our home page again. ‘I mean, this is cool,’ he says. ‘Just a drawing. It’s subversive.’

Mrs Kendrick, subversive? I’d laugh if I weren’t still poleaxed by half a million.