Read Online What became of us by Imogen Parker - Free Book Online Page A

from behind the door as if the gift of sanitary protection had made them instant friends.
    ‘Do you think comedy is the new rock ’n’ roll?’ the woman had called.
    ‘Err...’
    ‘Not on tonight’s showing,’ the woman continued.
    ‘Umm...’
    ‘I thought most of it was so bad,’ the woman said, making it sound as if so had at least three syllables. Jesus, it’s depressing out there...’
    Annie didn’t know whether she ought to leave. The woman seemed to be taking a long time. But she decided it might be rude just to slump off. There was something curiously intimate about talking to sorneone on the other side of a toilet door.
    ‘…the only one I liked was the one with the observational monologue. That I could relate to. I’m just so sick of women telling jokes about periods and how men don’t understand, aren’t you?’
    ‘Hmm...’
    ‘Angie McSomething...’
    ‘Annie McClintock?’
    Annie’s stage name, which was very close to her real name, had been an instant decision before she went on, chosen because the publican had a photo of the winning Arsenal double team from 1971 behind the bar.
    ‘That’s it.’
    ‘That was me.’
    ‘Oh bugger,’ said the woman in the toilet, ‘well, I blew that, didn’t I? Buy you a drink?’
    With the door separating them, Annie had not known whether the offer was made in earnest. Then the woman flushed and reappeared.
    ‘I’m blind without my glasses,’ she explained. ‘I forget to bring them unless it’s work, although this is work too, bloody hard work sometimes.’
    For a comedy producer, Annie thought later, Tessa was an incredibly disconsolate person.
    She had never known whether it was her act or the tampon which had given her her lucky break, but after a couple of pints Tessa had informed her that she was looking to commission comedy from women. They got talking about their favourite sitcoms of all time, and Annie had sensed that she was on to something when her passionate championing of The Lucy Show brought the first smile of the evening to Tessa’s face. By the end of the night, she had improvised an idea for exactly the sort of American-style observational sitcom that Tessa said she was looking for, which was based on a would-be actress who earned her living as a serving wench in a theme restaurant.
    ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Tessa said, getting out her Psion organizer to fix a date for Annie to come into the office, ‘it’s sort of twenty-something Cybil but set in London. When can you do a treatment?’
    The friend who usually did the stand-up routine never spoke to her again, although Annie still sometimes saw his name in the listings for the Edinburgh Fringe.
    The only minor hitch in Annie’s meteoric rise had been what to call the show. In the end they had settled on I Love Annie.
    After spending years dreaming of being Rosalind, Lady Macbeth or anything whatsoever to do with Theatre de Complicite, fame and fortune had come to Annie when she was herself. She was sure that there was a lesson in there somewhere.

    Annie wrote non-stop until she ran out of ideas. By the time she looked up from her screen, she had mapped out the shape of the I Love Annie Christmas special, which involved Annie going to a party where the invitation said ‘Dress: Something you’ve always dreamed of wearing’. Annie McClintock was wearing a dress with a hooped petticoat and the only other person who had noted the dress code was a skinny prat in a Tarzan outfit. She had three storylines going but she could only think of jokes to make two of them pay off, and she couldn’t think a satisfactory ending. She saved the file and switched off the computer, so pleased with her Morning’s work that for a moment she was tempted to flop into bed and sleep for an hour or two, but when she looked at her watch she remembered that she was supposed to be meeting Ursula in Brown’s in Oxford at noon.
    Panic.
    Ursula was bound to have some sarcastic comment about how she had come