‘How funny is she, Dennis?’ said Sophie.
‘On a scale of one to ten?’ he said, and laughed.
‘Yes,’ said Sophie.
‘If you like,’ said Sloan.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘on a good day …’
‘What was her best day?’
Dennis stood up.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Thanks so much for finding the time to say hello.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t mind,’ said Sophie. ‘He knows I’m right.’
Dennis looked at Tom Sloan. It wasn’t entirely clear that either of these assertions was correct. Dennis sat down again.
‘The other thing is,’ said Sophie, ‘do you really want to lose us all to the other side?’
‘Who am I losing?’
‘Not Dennis,’ said Sophie. ‘He’ll stay here, won’t you, Dennis? He’s a BBC man from his head to the holes in his socks.’
Dennis smiled weakly. He presumed she wasn’t being complimentary.
‘But Bill, Tony and I … The trouble is, the money is so much better over there.’
‘They don’t even have a Comedy Playhouse,’ said Sloan. ‘You can’t take a thirty-minute programme to them and expect them to know what to do with it.’
The commercial channel was Sloan’s nemesis – he’d lost a lot of his star writers and performers over the last few years. Sophie had altered the power balance in the room simply by mentioning the other lot.
‘We wouldn’t be taking one programme to them,’ said Sophie. ‘We’d be taking a whole series.’
‘Have they got enough material for a series?’ Sloan said to Dennis.
‘Easily,’ said Sophie. ‘This morning we were talking about the second series.’
‘The second series?’
Sloan had the look of a man who had arrived on the railway platform just as the train was leaving the station. To Dennis’s amazement, he started chasing after it.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Before you do anything too hasty, why don’t we just see how the Playhouse goes?’
Sophie made a face suggesting that although this suggestion was not without its merits, it didn’t meet all her expectations. She was extraordinary, thought Dennis. They had come up here hoping to persuade Tom Sloan to give an entirely unknown and inexperienced actress a starring role in the BBC’s showcase comedy series. They had achieved this, against considerable odds, and now she was acting as though she’d been vaguely insulted.
She brightened, eventually. She was prepared, apparently, to give him a chance.
‘Oh, all right then,’ she said.
Dennis was too angry to speak to her on the way down. She didn’t care.
‘You’ll thank me one day,’ she said.
‘Why on earth will I ever thank you for the most excruciating fifteen minutes of my life?’
‘Because the rewards will be greater than the pain.’
‘There isn’t enough money in the world,’ said Dennis.
‘It’s not about money, is it?’ said Sophie.
‘Isn’t it? So what is it about?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘And neither do you. Oh, and I haven’t forgiven you yet either.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. You and bloody Marcia Bell.’
‘Are you always going to ask for this much?’
‘You’d better hope so,’ she said.
5
Dennis lived in a rented flat in Hammersmith with his wife, Edith, and a cat. That evening, neither Edith nor the cat showed the slightest interest in his return – the cat because she was asleep for most of it, and Edith because she was in the middle of an affair with a married man. Perhaps it wasn’t the middle; perhaps it was the very beginning, but it wasn’t anywhere near its end, Dennis could tell. Edith was elsewhere even when they were at home, visiting him only to convey disappointment and dissatisfaction.
The most excruciating time of his life had not been spent in Tom Sloan’s office, despite what he’d told Sophie. The most excruciating time of his life had been spent reading and then rereading a letter he’d found between the pages of a manuscript she’d brought home from work. He’d put it back where he’d found it and hadn’t said anything, and now he was just waiting, although he had no idea what he was waiting for. His anguish meant that he made a poor husband, silent and watchful and raw.