All to Play For by Heather Peace Read Free Book Online Page A

exasperation.
    As the minutes passed Maggie felt irritation well up inside her once again, and she forced it back down. She sat in a patient attitude, crossing her chino-covered legs and fiddling with the zip on her ankle boots. She’d bought these GAP casuals thinking they were the kind of smart casual clothes people here would wear, but now she wondered whether she looked dowdy. She was glad she had grown her spiky hair out, and wondered whether she would have to start wearing make-up on a daily basis. She hoped to God that wouldn’t be necessary; she felt over-dressed with earrings on.
    Eventually Fenella put the phone down and sighed, as if she’d already put in ten hours’ work. “Hi. Welcome. How are you settling in?”
    Maggie was stumped for an answer. At the very least she had expected an apology for keeping her waiting. Anxious not to get off on the wrong foot, she hedged her bets with a cautious smile and replied, “So far so good.”
    “Good. Well I’m afraid I’m completely snowed under today, we’ve an offers meeting on Thursday, but take that little lot and come and see me when you’ve read them.”
    Maggie tried to sound relaxed and enthusiastic as she picked up the pile of scripts she had just put on the floor. “Where shall I do it?”
    “Haven’t you got an office yet?”
    “No.”
    “Go and see Morag in 5233.” Fenella picked up the phone again. “Enjoy!” she said with a gleam in her eye, and turned back to her desk with a frown of concentration.
    It was three o’clock by the time Maggie had been found a desk. Well, seven desks, plus three typewriters and a large grey steel cupboard all to herself, because this was an empty production office, and the only available space. Trying to put the frustrating day behind her, she sorted through her scripts and books and made a list of them. Then she organised her desk. She went round all the drawers in the office and acquired a fine selection of BBC pens and pencils, clips and rubbers. Soon her desk was the acme of office furniture, dripping with the tools of her craft, adorned with in-tray, out-tray, anglepoise lamp and phone.
    She wandered round the circular corridor and discovered Stewart Walker’s and Basil Richardson’s offices, but she didn’t manage to catch sight of either of them, so she went back to her office and picked up a script. She couldn’t concentrate at all. As the window looked onto a roof and a satellite dish she gazed at the walls, enjoying the mystique of the abandoned production charts and schedules which papered them: the last occupants had been making a major costume drama. There was a cast list of thirty names, most of them famous and some of them related. Crates full of box files, drawings and models littered the floor. Wherever she looked she could find no references to ‘offers meetings’ so she was still in the dark on that front; she would have to wait until she met with Fenella again to find out what she was talking about.
    In the last hour, Maggie read a six-page proposal and made copious notes on it. She was interrupted only twice, once by a phone call for someone called Tristram, and once by a hand which knocked gently on the door and opened it displaying a dark sleeve as it extended to put a piece of white paper on a post-tray next to the door. Then it felt blindly round the tray underneath, withdrew and vanished, closing the door quietly. Maggie resigned herself to solitary labour, and went home, taking one of the novels she had to report on.
    After two days of reading alone in her office, Maggie was delighted to receive a phone call that was for her.
    “Hi! I’m Sally, I’m a script editor here too. Are you free for lunch?”
    “Oh, that would be great.”
    “See you on the bridge at one?”
    “Sorry? Where’s that?”
    “Tell you what, come to my office and we’ll go together. It’s two doors on from yours on the way to the lift.”
    “Okay, great, see you then. Thanks for calling, it’s