The Wish List Read Online Free PDF Page A

Perry hasn’t got round to advertising, deciding to hold the fort himself so he can indulge in some ‘hands-on’ creative work with Giles and me. You can imagine how well that
went down.
    ‘So. Are we both fired up to our creative bests this Monday morning?’ Perry’s face is round, waxy, permanently cheerful and resembles one of those potato Smiley Faces you get
in the freezer sections of supermarkets.
    ‘I’m not doing badly,’ I say brightly, to deflect attention from Giles, who’s staring at Perry as if he’s flown in on a spaceship direct from the Planet
Arsehole.
    ‘That’s what I like to hear. I want to talk to you when you’ve got a min, Emma. I’ll get Carolyn to bring us both a nice cuppa char and we’ll have a good old
brainstorm, eh?’ He winks, before bouncing out of the door.
    ‘If he tries to get me to work on one of his shit ideas, I’ll have something to say about it,’ mutters Giles as the door closes.
    ‘He hasn’t said anything yet.’
    ‘Yeah, but you know what he’s going to try to make you do, don’t you?’
    Sadly, the answer is: yes, I probably do.
    The big problem with having a history that boasts some of the UK’s most successful children’s programmes is finding ways to follow them. And, frankly, we
haven’t. Little Blue Bus Productions – to the disbelief of the industry – has failed abysmally to capitalise on the success of
Bingbah
and produce our Next Big Thing,
despite Perry’s perennial attempts at rooting it out since his father retired five years ago.
    The team – not least Giles and I – have come up with a million ideas. But Perry doesn’t want to produce a TV programme from one of
our
ideas. He wants to come up with
the idea all by himself.
    Which I can partly understand, given that his dad is considered to be one of the world’s most inspirational children’s writers, a man lauded globally for his ingenuity, talent and
ability to tap into young minds.
    The problem is, every one of Perry’s ideas is worthy of only one description – a word favoured by Giles but so perfectly suitable in this context I can’t bring myself to use
anything else: shite.
    ‘I’ve come up with a humdinger overnight,’ Perry tells me. ‘And I want
you
to work on it!’
    ‘Oh . . . great!’
    ‘You’re going to
love
this, Emma. This is going to make your career. Sit down. Go on – I’ll clear a space.’
    He pushes a compost heap of paperwork onto the floor and pats the chair enthusiastically.
    ‘Here’s the pitch.’ He claps his hands as I sit down. ‘We’ve got a mouse. A damn clever mouse. He’s the main character.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘He’s got friends too – I don’t know, a duck . . . and a dog, hell, maybe we’ll even throw in a mouse girlfriend. We’ll work on that bit. So this mouse, our
hero – he can talk and dance and has
crrraaazy
adventures with his pals.’
    I sigh. ‘Does he have red shorts and yellow shoes, perhaps?’
    ‘How did you guess?’
    ‘And a squeaky voice?’
    ‘Great minds!’
    I put down my pen and paper and look at Perry. Really look at him. As if to
plead
with him to recognise the problem with this idea before I have to spell it out. He gazes at me like an
eager puppy waiting for a pat on the head.
    ‘You’re not worried that people might think
our
mouse is a bit similar to . . .
Mickey
Mouse?’
    His face drops. ‘Hmm. There
are
some potential areas of crossover there, aren’t there?’

Chapter 6
    In the absence of an opportunity to purchase a cottage in Rutshire – with wisteria round the door, a millionaire neighbour and an adorable Labrador to lick my cheeks when
I come home – I rent a flat in south Liverpool instead.
    I was ludicrously house-proud too, until I was reminded by that list of what the alternative was. Still, it’s not bad. In fact, it’s not bad at all.
    I live in Grassendale Park, which sits in isolated splendour on the banks of the River Mersey and consists of a cluster of