HAWTHORNE:
Anyway, thanks, Terry, most thoughtful. How’s business?
VOICE 5:
Tremendous. We’re having themed pub quizzes now, you’d like them. Sorry, just quickly, what did the girl who brought the flowers look like again?
WESTCOTT:
Dark brown hair in a ponytail. Pretty. Looked like Conor described.[Downstairs, Em claws at her scrunchie.]Why?
TERRY:
No reason. Although … Oh, look at that. She hasn’t put any water in them. I’ll go and deal with that now. Back in a minute.
WALLACE:
Cheers, Tel.
And then, through the microphone, we hear a lovely range of Foley sound effects: about thirty seconds of pacy footsteps across parquet floor, the swinging of a kitchen door, the squeak of a tap, and finally the brief distressed sound made as Jonny’s highly expensive, espionage-quality, omnidirectional stealth microphone bites the dust beneath the stream.
26
Jonny rips off his earphones. ‘Shit. Ungood. Triple-plus ungood.’ He pulls his bag out and starts scrabbling through it.
‘Do you have another one?’
‘Of course I have another one.’ He’s got a small black object in his hand and is tweaking bits of it, trying to hook it up to his computer, typing to unhook the computer from the software of the last microphone with his free hand. ‘But I don’t have a third one, so if you could all try your hardest not to destroy this one, I would be super-grateful.’
‘Who delivers it?’
‘Can’t be me, Wallace knows my face already,’ I say. ‘Can’t be Em, if the manager’s on the lookout for her. Can’t be you, Jonny. Elle?’
Elle twists her hands. ‘I’m really not a natural.’
