Ben Elton - Inconceivable

Fortunately for me it was a very positive meeting indeed. Everybody agreed that the current draft of the script is good. Superb, actually, was the word being bandied about. Ewan made it clear that he was very happy.

Taking her cue from Ewan, Petra produced sheaves of faxes and declared that LA and New York are also very happy, that everyone in fact is very happy.

It was an absolute love fest.

Then of course came the inevitable caveat. This is a thing that always happens to writers in script discussions, no matter how enthusiastic those discussions might be. Somebody says “except for”. I’ve done it to hundreds myself; “Everybody is absolutely delighted, except for…”

“The ending,” Nigel said, and they all nodded.

It was a fair call, I had to admit.

“Vis-a-vis the absence thereof,” said Petra putting the unspoken doubt into words.

I knew I would have to stick to my guns. With Lucy and me so close to a conclusion for better or for worse, I just don’t feel that I have it in me yet to decide how my story ends. It turns out that Lucy was right all along. You do need to write from the heart. It does have to come from within, and at the moment I don’t have the heart to decide on the fate of my characters. I don’t know how I’ll feel when the news comes through, so I don’t know how they’ll feel. That doesn’t mean I’m going to make Colin and Rachel’s result the same as Lucy’s and mine. I might but I just don’t know yet.

“It’s only the last page,” I said. “The last few lines, in fact. I’ll hand it in when I said, in a few days.”

“But Sam,” Nigel protested. “Ewan starts filming next week.”

“Well, he doesn’t need to start with the end, does he?” I said, looking at Ewan, who stared into his Aqua Libra in a suitable “I shall pronounce my conclusions in my own time” manner.

“With respect,” Petra said – in fact very nearly snapped – “it’s a bit difficult keeping the American distributors and their money in place when we don’t know how the story comes out.”

“Well, I don’t know how the story comes out,” I protested. “I’m sorry but I don’t.”

Ewan hauled himself from the depths of his futon and reached for an olive.

“Look, it’s my movie, you ken?” he said, which is directors all over for you. I’d written it. Various people were paying for it. Hundreds of people were going to be involved in making it. But it would, of course, be “his” movie, a “Ewan Proclaimer Film”. On another occasion I might have said something (although I doubt it), but it turned out that Ewan was on my side so I let it go.

“As I’ve made clear before,” he continued, “if Sam wants to hold back on the ending then that’s fine. It’s good motivation for the actors and it keeps us all on our toes. They’re playing two people over whom hangs a life or no-life situation. I’m very happy to help them to maintain that ambiguity. Improvisation is the life blood of creative endeavour.”

Well, that shut them up, let me tell you.

There’s a church in Hammersmith next to the flyover which I call “the lonely church”. I call it that because it’s been almost completely cut off by roads from the community it was built to serve. Millions of people see it every year but only at fifty miles an hour. Its spire pokes up beside the flyover as the M4 starts to turn back into the A4. It’s a beautiful church, although you wouldn’t know it until you were about ten feet away from it. I found myself there today. I’d just sort of wandered off after my appointment at the hospital and I must have walked two or three miles because suddenly there I was standing outside the lonely church of Saint Paul’s as I now know it to be called. I’d never seen the bottom two thirds of it before but I knew it by the vast elevated roads that roar and fume around it. I didn’t go in, but I sat in the grounds trying to find the faith to pray. I don’t know whether I managed it. I don’t know what it would feel like to really believe in a prayer, I don’t suppose many people do. I mean, you’d have to be pretty majorly religious. I do know that I concentrated very hard and tried to think why I deserved a child and came up with the answer that I deserved one because it was the thing that I wanted more than anything else on earth. I suppose in a way that was a prayer, whatever that means. A prayer to fate, at any rate. Not long now. A couple of weeks at most and then we’ll know.

George and Trevor took me out to lunch today. We begin shooting tomorrow and they absolutely insisted that I join them for a final conference. I was delighted to. Now that I’m no longer a BBC exec and on a budget to boot I don’t get to dine at Quark quite as regularly as I used to and I thought it would be almost like old times.

They were both already seated when I arrived and looking very serious. George didn’t even bother to stare at the waitress’s backside, which must have been a first for him, and Trevor refrained from commenting on the fact that though he did not require wine himself he had no hesitation whatsoever in encouraging us to imbibe.

All in all, it was not like old times one bit. They got straight to the point.

“Sam,” said George, but I could see that he spoke for both of them. “You’re going to have to tell Lucy about this.”

It took me completely aback. Silly, really. George and Trevor are both good friends of Lucy and it should have occurred to me that they would be worrying about the obvious autobiographical details that I was exploiting even if they were ignorant about the depths of my betrayal.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not now. We’re just about to complete a cycle of IVF.”

“Yes, do tell us how it turns out,” said Trevor, slightly acidly. “Or perhaps we should wait to read it in the script.”

They were both genuinely concerned. It was as obvious to them as it was to me that a pseudonym would not disguise me for ever.

“People are very excited about this project,” George insisted. “What are you going to do if it’s a hit? You won’t be able to hide from the media, you know. My God! Imagine if they found out before she did and she read it in the papers, or, worse, got doorstepped by a hack?”

“Even if it’s a flop you can’t possibly keep the fact that you’ve written a movie a secret,” Trevor insisted. “She’s your wife, for heaven’s sake.”

They’re right, of course, and I certainly didn’t need a fifty-quid lunch (courtesy of the licence payer) for anybody to tell me. They meant well, of course, but in the long run it’s my business, mine and Lucy’s.

I told them that I’d tell her when I know how the story ends.

Dear Penny

Sam gave me the last injection tonight before egg collection, which we go in for at seven a.m. the day after tomorrow. Rather dramatically, the injection had to be done at midnight. It’s now twelve fifteen but I know I shall have trouble sleeping. Sam’s been very good about the injections. Apart from that one time, they haven’t hurt at all. Talking to some of the women at the hospital, it seems that some husbands (partners, I should say) can’t bring themselves to do it at all, so the poor women have to go in at seven every morning for weeks. Imagine that. It’s boring enough just going in to keep them topped up with the endless amounts of blood they seem to require. Sam told me that he was scared at first but he’d got used to it. I know that I wouldn’t like to have had to inject him with huge needles. I think he’s been quite brave. In fact I think he’s been very good about the whole vile business which I know he would never have got into at all without my insistence. He’s given me a lot of strength. Taking such an interest and always being around when I need him. Some husbands hate it all so much that they try to pretend it isn’t happening. Sam hasn’t been like that at all. Quite the opposite. He’s been fascinated, which has made things much easier for me. I tried to thank him a bit tonight because I know he’s never really, really wanted children. I mean not really.