Enough.
He looked awful; Gina had been right about that. Flighty and subdued. His eyes were blank as I just stood there and stared at him.
I’d done this. Me. Me and my stupid self, thinking I was some grand master of television. I’d been given one job. One simple job. My first day in this company. A folder of paperwork, told to match everyone up. Then do the same again with the worst possible combination.
I’d done it. But I had put Peter and Oliver together. Because…
Because I had felt like God. And I was an absolute fool. I’d thought I was helping. I’d thought I was doing the right thing. I’d thought so many stupid, idiotic things when all I had done?
He looked broken.
“Come,” I said. “Grab your bag, and come.”
“George, we’re in the middle of…”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said.
It wasn’t me. None of this was me. But someone told me to do something? I tended to do it. Like this. Like…
Gina was not my boss. I was…
Jesus Christ.
“Come,” I said again, as Oliver followed me, too many steps behind for my liking. I grabbed his bag. Grabbed his arm. Pushed him down the corridor with determination in my step.
It was cold in here, the AC doing overtime. Then my glasses steamed up as I pushed through the door to the outside, where the balmy summer sun was in full glow.
“Taxi?” I asked. One was waiting in front of me, with the door wide open.
“Oliver? Go home. Go see someone. Please. Don’t worry about anything, but please trust me when I say this?”
He just looked at me. At my shaking hands. My steamed-up glasses. My total inability to be a grown-up and do the one job that had been assigned to me.
Don’t be the arsehole.
He’d said that. That first day when I’d gone to work. Him. No, no, not Oliver, who stood there looking like he was about to burst into tears. No. Him. He’d hugged me and whispered it in my ear.You’ll be grand. You’re the best. Just don’t be the arsehole.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Then grabbed Oliver’s arm and shoved him head first into the back seat. I slammed the door shut. Slapped my hand on the roof of the car like I was the main character in some stupid production.
My phone rang. I didn’t answer it. I could hear voices in my headset. Shouting. I didn’t put them back on. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. So I switched them off and just stood there and wondered what the hell I’d just done.
.
Chapter 15
Peter
Iagreed, perhaps that hadn’t been the wisest of moves, but at the time? I hadn’t really thought of it like that, still stuck in panic mode with thoughts swirling erratically around in my head.
Some weird illusion of trying to protect Oliver from the lunatic I clearly was. Trying to protect my boys from the embarrassment of seeing their father lose his senses on national television.
Or web TV or whatever they were calling that…spectacle they were producing.
I’d spent time on big film sets. I’d sat in trailers for hours on end, waiting for my wife to get back from a shoot. I’d seen the back end of every theatre in the West End, and some on Broadway too. This hadn’t been my first rodeo in the world of entertainment, but…
I shook my head in unease, standing at my kitchen table in my threadbare pyjamas.
I’d only been back home for less than twenty-four hours, and I was still stuck in that constant surge of panic. I had no idea what time it was or who I was or what on earth I was supposed to be doing.
