Former.ly: Chapter Four (Second Draft) (Excerpt)

It was two weeks later, and London was covered by a blanket of fine mist that seemed to soak through your clothes and into your bones. It was horrible – on days like those, I found it hard to get out of bed until the pathetic plug-in heater kicked in and warmed the room up. I woke with a sense of deep, dark foreboding – my workload was growing exponentially, and I’d already stayed late three times this week, once until 11 PM.

My fears turned out to be grounded – John had rolled back two days’ worth of work, so I effectively had to finish three days of work in one. The guys went to the pub at lunchtime, but I stayed behind and powered through, though I did share a bottle of wine with Flick, who was also staying behind – the lead singer of an obscure k-pop band collapsed and died on stage the night before, launching his profile amidst a wave of publicity. It was just the sort of story that went down well with the media.

“In our case,” she told me, “there really is no such thing as bad publicity. Death always puts a negative spin on an article – we have to accept that and move on. Besides, journalists love death – nothing sells papers like a tragedy. The Sun has already agreed to run with it.”

“Yeah? Whose soul did you sell to place that?”

“No-one’s,” she laughed. “I just spent the morning on Twitter and waited for nature to take its course. Nowadays, anyone has a shot at greatness, as long as they have a Twitter account and a story to tell.”

“I’m guessing that you have both.”

“Of course,” she replied. “Most people do. They just don’t always realise it.” Her phone rang out from the table and she excused herself to answer it; by the time that she put the phone down, I was balls deep in John’s messy source code. We both worked on in silence until the rest of the team made their inebriated return.

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