Going La La Read Online Free PDF Page A

instead he was wearing navy-blue pinstripes. And he hadn’t even pushed the sleeves up round his elbows. Something was wrong.
    ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’ He fiddled nervously with his gold identity bracelet.
    ‘Is it the computer system? The bloody thing’s just died on us,’ interrupted Audrey, tutting loudly and shoving her glasses up her nose with a podgy finger.
    ‘I’m afraid it’s more than just the computers . . .’ Simon cleared his throat and looked nervously at the floor. ‘I’ve just had a meeting with my bank manager and . . . Well, there’s no easy way to say this, but they’ve called in my loan.’
    ‘What does that mean?’ asked Frankie quietly, feeling a knot beginning to grow in her stomach.
    He paused for a moment and swallowed slowly. ‘It means that I’ve just lost my business. And you’ve just lost your jobs.’
     
    Silence. Deadly silence. It seemed to go on for ever, until the work experience girl dropped a pile of envelopes, sending them scattering on to the floor.
    It brought Audrey back to her senses. ‘What do you mean? We’re in the middle of an issue.’ She picked up one of the wire trays on her desk that was overflowing with unfinished feature pages and began waving it defiantly around in the air. ‘We can’t just stop.’
    A few members of staff murmured their agreement.
    Simon shrugged his shoulders. ‘We don’t have any choice. I’ve run out of money. Everything’s rented . . . I can’t pay the bills, so they want it all back.’
    As he stopped speaking, Frankie suddenly noticed a bald-headed bloke in an orange boilersuit emblazoned with the words jessops removals appear from Simon’s office. He was carrying the central computer.
     
    The scene that followed would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. Audrey ran around like a headless chicken, protesting frantically and playing tug-of-war with the removal men over bits of furniture, while Simon sat cross-legged on the floor – his leather chair having been taken from underneath him – puffing furiously on Menthol cigarettes and doing some kind of meditational chant.
    Frankie didn’t do anything. She just stood and stared, unable to take on board what was happening. She’d just lost her job. Gone. Disappeared. Taken away, along with the office furniture. She’d been made redundant! She flinched at the words. They sounded so alien to her. Being made redundant was something that happened to other people – coal miners and car manufacturers, middle-aged men who lived up north. Not twenty-something, university-educated women who worked in publishing and lived in west London. For years she’d paid no attention to newsreaders going on about unemployment figures. She should have done. She’d just become one of them.
    In a daze she started emptying the drawers of her desk, throwing away out-of-date Cuppa Soups, a pair of unflattering flesh-coloured tights, a mouldy old packet of Lockets. She’d been trying for a job like this for ages and now she’d got it it was being taken away from her. What now? Temping? The dole? She’d been used to mornings writing features, lunchtimes shopping on Oxford Street, afternoons sharing office gossip and using the phone to make long-distance calls to her family and friends. Now what did she have to look forward to? Mornings with terrible TV talkshows, lunchtimes holed up in the flat with only a plate of beans on toast for company, afternoons scouring the job ads, trying to convince herself that insurance telesales might be rather fun. Picking up a couple of A4 files, she put them with the rest of her stuff. There wasn’t much. It was depressing to realise she could fit her career into one cardboard box.
     
    She said a few lame goodbyes. Nobody knew what to say, not even Audrey, who for the first time in her life opened her mouth to find no words came out. Picking up her things, she went into the corridor to wait for the lift. It arrived carrying two