Zoe Cook - One Day in Cornwall

They came to her again in her dream. All of them, this time. There was always Richie, and this time he ran towards her, beaming. This time her parents stood quietly behind him, waving. She was so happy to see them, reaching out for Richie’s warm little body, his spindly arms and crazy hair. She kept looking up to check that her parents were still there too, so pleased that they looked happy. She began to realise that it was taking too long for Richie to reach her. She looked again and could see now that he was running almost as if in slow motion. His arms and legs were moving strangely, as if he was being pulled down, wading through something thick. She tried to call out to him, to move towards him, but she was suddenly sinking into the ground too, it had turned to marsh beneath her feet. She felt panic rising as she looked around for her parents now. They were further away than before and their faces were wretched with despair. They weren’t waving any more, they were desperately pleading for her help. But she couldn’t move. Richie was crying now and drifting further away from her. Lucy tried to scream for help but her voice wouldn’t come; instead the screams seemed to stab sharp pains through her chest. Her eyesight began to fail her, as if a thick fog had fallen on them all. She couldn’t breathe now, and she couldn’t see her parents.

She woke, sweating, out of breath. She reached to her side to feel Scott, still fast asleep, as if touching another human being would confirm that she was real and this was real and the dream was over. She felt sick and her heart ached. She pressed her fingers into her eyes to stop the tears that began to form. She’d been having this dream, or versions of it, for years. It never got any easier to cope with. It always knocked her more heavily than she felt was reasonable after all this time. Looking at her phone she saw it was 5am and decided that wasn’t too early to get up for the day. She’d only had around four hours’ sleep, but that was better than the prospect of closing her eyes and returning to her nightmares.

She stepped out of Scott’s bed quietly, still shaking slightly and cold now. It was the day of the awards and she felt like utter shit. It was going to be a long, long day.

Park Lane was as busy as ever, six lanes of traffic coughing out hot fumes into the hazy blue sky. Hyde Park was filled with the usual mixture of tourists meandering and office workers rushing on their way to work. As Lucy stepped out of her Addison Lee car in front of the Metropolis Hotel she had an unwelcome flashback of last year’s awards ceremony and the A-list – well, lower A-list, maybe B-list, really – celebrity getting papped, up-skirt, by the scummy photographer who lay on the floor as she got out of the car. The fallout from those pictures breaking in the red tops the next day had led to some seriously awkward calls from the agent about Spectrum’s ‘failure to safeguard’. Lucy entered the hotel, smiling at the doorman, and was greeted by the familiar smell of marble, dark old wood, and something she couldn’t pinpoint but which, judging by the surroundings, might well have been the smell of money. The atmosphere of the Metropolis still excited her, even after all these years of working on Spectrum’s televised events at the hotel. The bar was littered with small groups of ladies drinking tea, with fine china plates of pastel-coloured cakes decorating the tables, their feet obscured by an assortment of sturdy, ribbon-handled shopping bags from New Bond Street’s boutiques. It felt like a place full of possibilities, of secret meetings, and of a life she’d probably never be able to afford.

In the production suite people had dumped piles of coats and bags in the corner, and a rail of evening dresses was already nearly full. Lucy hung her black-lace dress, grabbed a copy of the running order, a polystyrene cup of grainy coffee from the machine and headed to the script meeting in the ballroom. It was Lucy’s third awards ceremony as Emma’s PA, and it became more and more difficult to concentrate during the longwinded script read-through. It was a point of pride for Emma that she ran this meeting in such a unique way. She insisted on a full run-through in which she took the role of both the main presenters, all of the individual awards’ presenters and every winner, often delivering Oscar-worthy acceptance speeches, which, it struck Lucy, seemed to roll off her tongue as if practised in advance. By the time the final award was played out, culminating in Emma’s impression of a middle-aged Swedish male winner (not one of her finest), Lucy’s mind had wandered and she was taken by surprise at the sound of her name.

‘I asked if there was anything I’d forgotten’, Emma looked at her with the familiar look of disdain and disappointment. ‘What was I meant to remember?’ she asked Lucy.

‘I think that was everything,’ Lucy smiled hopefully, trawling through her brain for anything she was supposed to be prompting her boss with. At that moment a commotion of suit carriers and blonde hair tumbled through the door, met with sniggers and a collective chorus of ‘Oh, Warren!’ from the Spectrum team sitting around the large table.

‘Oh my GOD, I’m so sorry I’m late!’ Warren did, in fact, look sorry enough that he might actually cry. A flamboyant, yet sensitive, character, Warren had been at Spectrum media for a couple of years before Lucy had joined, and had worked his way up to the coveted role of Entertainment Producer, meaning his job was to book celebrities to appear on the company’s shows. Being outlandishly emotional was apparently a necessary characteristic for anyone working on the Entertainment team, who dedicatedly lived up to their job titles and entertained the office with their many dramas, fallouts, reconciliations and public breakdowns. One of Warren’s particular character traits was to seek Emma’s approval at all times and at almost any cost. Arriving late to the production meeting of the biggest awards show of the year was probably up there with Warren’s worst nightmares, met only, perhaps, by an international Dermalogica shortage, or his cleaner accidentally machine-washing one of his ‘statement’ cashmere jumpers.

Emma cast her eyes up and down Warren’s body, from the toes of his gleaming patent loafers, to the highest point of his highlighted quiff, and Lucy recognised the flash in her eyes of something noted and worthy of comment.

‘Warren,’ she started, ‘I can overlook the late arrival, given the fact it is entirely out of character and, I’m sure, due to circumstances beyond your control.’

Lucy watched Warren half relax before sensing that the exchange was not over. ‘What I can’t overlook is the fact that you are the colour of an imitation mahogany table. What the HELL have you done to yourself?’

Now that she looked properly it was true that Warren had been a little heavy handed with the fake tan, but Lucy still cringed internally at the public remonstration, recalling their conversation a few nights ago in the pub, when he’d listed the many beauty treatments he was going to undergo in preparation for today. He had only wanted, Lucy remembered clearly, to look his very best for the occasion. She wanted to say something in his defence, but there really was no denying he looked totally, ludicrously brown the more she looked at him.

‘It’s developing,’ Warren explained, ‘I can’t stop it. I don’t know what to do. I’ve showered, I’ve exfoliated, but I’m sure it’s still developing. I wasn’t this brown an hour ago.’ His voice wobbled at the end of this statement, threatening tears. Emma had already lost interest in this conversation, however, and was piling papers and pens into her oversized Prada bag.

Warren took the seat next to Lucy as Emma left the room, his big eyes searching for comfort.