‘So with that in mind…’ says the interviewer. A tall guy, handsome, good teeth. Younger than Lloyd himself, which always stings. Makes it feel like they’re not just ahead of you in the race of life, but have actually lapped you. The counsellor he saw last year was on about not seeing everything like that, like a race. Getting out of that mental pattern, ‘rejecting the narrative’. But then the free sessions ran out, before she had told Lloyd how he was meant to do that.

  ‘Yes?’ says Lloyd. The interviewer is really enjoying this. He almost certainly devised it himself – this demeaning exercise, whatever it’s going to be. Or he stole it from some business book. Or more likely he read an extract from the business book on an Instagram story and stole it from that.

  ‘What I’m going to ask you to do,’ says the interviewer, ‘is stand up and pull your trousers down. What do you say to that?’

  * * *

  Stacey’s two-way radio buzzes, but she ignores it and cradles the coffee in its throwaway cup. She really just wanted it for the feeling of holding a hot drink; she doubts she’ll drink it. The machine wheezed and moaned as she pressed the buttons; the liquid dribbled out with what looked a painful effort. They don’t have a nice coffee machine here like in their home office, let alone an actual catering team, because this – of course – is not a real workspace. It isn’t a real anything. It’s just a crudely constructed backdrop for a mean trick, as usual. Stacey’s tired of tricks and stunts being her main job in life; of her reality being composed of things which aren’t real. That’s why it ends today. That’s why she has already sown the seeds of her own sacking.

  The radio goes again and, at the same time, the phone thrums gently with a text. There’s no point messing about with these little radios when phones exist. They’re leftovers from a different age, like the clipboards and notepads people also insist on carrying around. Stacey doesn’t even check the phone. She already knows what’s happening down the corridor, and she hasn’t got the heart to witness it in person, even though this is the final time she’ll have to do it.

  The infantile ‘trousers down’ thing is the final cue. As soon as the victim has responded with bafflement, horror, confusion – maybe even done the humiliating thing he’s been asked to, such is his exhaustion by this stage – ticker-tape will come from hidden vents in the walls, a banner will be unfurled, music will play. The ‘interviewer’ will remove his fake glasses, break into a broad, telegenic grin, extend his hand in consolation and utter the popular catchphrase: ‘You have just been schooled!’ He will reveal himself not to have been a recruitment officer for an IT startup at all, but Iain Trainor – ‘The Train’, as he wearyingly signs off on his social media, as his fans even more wearyingly insist on calling him when they send their weird little gifts to the set. He will explain that he, Iain Trainor, the king of televised practical jokes, has struck yet again. There never was a job. There never was a company looking to hire someone like Lloyd. All this – the week-long wait, the botched logistics and the catalogue of misfortunes that have befallen the interview day itself – all this has been for the entertainment of a few hundred thousand strangers, and for the continuation of The Train’s impressive career momentum.

  And Lloyd, who has unknowingly already signed paperwork to allow this footage to be used: well, Lloyd will have to be a good sport about it, clap himself on the forehead in self-mockery, record a piece to camera where he says he absolutely wants the ground to open up and swallow him, he can’t believe it, he did think something was weird here but he never imagined he was actually talking to The Train. His friends are going to take the piss so bad! He’s going to hide under the sofa when this goes on the TV! All these soundbites and whatever else the director reads off his stupid clipboard. Then they’ll take Lloyd to the green room and give him a beer; Iain Trainor will say, ‘Nice one, mate. No harm done!’ without looking up from his phone and then disappear off with his manager and PA. They’ll get Lloyd a car home and forget about him, begin working on the next episode. And in the morning, Lloyd, of course, will still not have a job, or the prospect of one.

  When it began a couple of years ago, Stacey wasn’t merely grateful for the job, the income and the status it provided; she actively enjoyed it. The show, in its infancy, was a gentler proposition, almost joyful in its silliness – even for the casualties of its pranks. Somebody would repeatedly receive takeaways they hadn’t ordered, or workmen would show up at their house claiming to have a commission to dig an outdoor swimming pool. A headmaster’s end-of-year address would be interrupted by an apparent lunatic walking a goat right into the school hall (this was in the pilot episode, in fact, and it was what gave rise to the eventual name of the series). The stunts were harmless, often imaginative; the crew would laugh a lot as they unfolded, would text photos to their friends. There was a sense of pride in the work, frivolous as it undoubtedly was. Iain Trainor hadn’t yet undergone the ego-inflation that a TV success and its accoutrements can pipe into the veins. At that point Stacey was happy to sign on for three more series. Everyone was.

  But the tone has changed, there’s no mistaking it. There are many competing shows in this genre now, and that climate of competition has forced everyone to ‘raise the stakes’, as the director put it recently. In this environment, what ‘raising the stakes’ means is, in human terms, being meaner, causing actual suffering rather than simply chagrin and embarrassment. People receiving letters that accuse them of involvement in crimes they couldn’t have committed; fake court summonses; people being tailed by mysterious cars or getting unexplained knocks on the door at night. And, increasingly, the victims being found not by nomination from friends and family – that got too risky, it was too easy for them to blab – but by a semi-legal trawl of databases. They’d entered a competition online, perhaps, or got free tickets to recordings in the past. Stacey knows this, because part of her job title is ‘researcher’. It was Stacey who was charged with digging Lloyd’s name up from some online scrapyard, establishing that he had been out of work for some months, would be delighted even to get to interview stage. When she saw him for the first time during the hidden-camera record day, saw his battle-weary face and ill-fitting suit and thought about what was going to happen to him, she knew she was done with this.

  She had mentally walked away from the show by the time she got off the underground that night. The plan that followed took a little longer to form.

  * * *

  ‘Nice one, mate,’ says The Train. ‘No harm done, eh!’

  His manager, in a new and conspicuously expensive fake fur coat, totters behind him with a black Armani carrier bag, containing a two-piece suit, over her arm. Iain Trainor is off to a student union this evening, where he is getting paid four thousand pounds for an ‘appearance’. This entails about ten minutes on stage answering pre-agreed questions from whichever nervy undergrad has landed the job of hosting, followed by a stint of selfie-posing and then the best bit: an exit, via the back of the building, to a Mercedes whose engine has not stopped running since he was dropped off.

  Stacey knows about the fee because on one of the rare occasions he got drunk with the crew members, he bragged about it at some length. She also knows his planned movements for tonight, but that information was gained with more difficulty and stealth. After the brief, lucrative trip to the student union, the Mercedes will take him back to the house he recently bought, in west London: an eighty-minute trip, all paid for by the people who hired him to appear. He will be home, Stacey has calculated, by about half past eleven. It doesn’t matter if he’s a little later than that. It will all be waiting for him.

  Iain Trainor will see it, in fact, before he even gets out of the vehicle. He’ll sense something is up as soon as he gets on to the normally quiet street. A crowd of people late at night. Curiosity turning to cold fear as it becomes obvious that number 62 is the focus of their attention. And then, as he snaps open the door, gets his own stuff out of the boot – not waiting, as he usually would, for it to be handed to him – the redoubling of that fear by everything he sees. Smoke cascading out of upstairs windows. Fire extinguishers being sprayed, firemen in uniform assembling, broken glass on the floor, neighbours emerging to watch. Sirens, raised voices, mobile phones raised and held as tiny TV cameras. The property being trampled, damaged, full of strangers, his stuff being manhandled, all hands on deck to spare him the worst of the disaster.

  It’s taken Stacey a week to organize; it wouldn’t have been possible if she didn’t have a friend who ran a drama troupe, and if she hadn’t been prepared to throw a bit of money at this petty project, and most of all – of course – if she hadn’t learned a lot about sourcing things like smoke machines and prop explosives over the past couple of years. Perhaps the job hasn’t been such a waste of time after all.

  She looks at Ian, ‘The Train’, making his oblivious way towards his car – a handshake for the more senior production staff, a brief flirty word for his favourite make-up girl – and forces back a smile. She sees herself – a few hours from now – taking a video of the carnage at 62 Grosvenor Gardens, ghosting away before he can comprehend what’s been done to him, and how. A video archived for her own satisfaction, but not exclusively hers. Lloyd will be surprised by a WhatsApp message late at night. I thought you might like to see that someone else got ‘schooled’ today, she might write. No harm done!

  Mark Watson is the acclaimed author of nine books, most recently Contacts, The Place that Didn’t Exist, Hotel Alpha and The Knot, which have been published in twelve languages. He is also a stand-up comedian and has won numerous awards in Britain and Australia. He regularly appears on TV, has had his own cult Radio 4 series and been named the Edinburgh Festival’s highest achiever of the decade by The Times. He lives in north London.

  The First Birthday Party

  by Veronica Henry

  There were half a dozen of them: six little tyrants in their highchairs round the table. None of them had any idea why they’d been rudely awoken from their afternoon nap to be brought here. Of course they didn’t: apart from the birthday boy they were all just under twelve months old, the offspring of the new best friends I’d met at Mother and Toddlers or, as we secretly liked to call it, the Post-Natal Depression Club.

  We were all still slightly shell-shocked by our new lives and our new roles. We were still tentative and uncertain with each other, just as we were tentative and uncertain of ourselves. Each week we gathered in a circle on the floor of the medical centre, crusted in chewed rusk, holding our bandy-legged offspring aloft, none of them quite on the move yet but all champing at the bit to make a break for freedom.

  We discussed sleep – or lack of it. Sore boobs, saggy tummies, sex – or lack of it. The horror and the joy of it all bonded us quickly, with sympathetic smiles, nods of agreement and a touch on the shoulder if one of us became tearful. Suki was the mum I was most drawn to, but she was also the mum I was most worried about. She was always exhausted and was obviously struggling with a child who hardly slept. But when she laughed, I caught a glimpse of her spirit and warmth. Somehow, though, there was never time to bond. We always had to race home, conscious of teatime and bath-time and bedtime, our new regime.

  Dylan was the eldest of the group so I drew the short straw and was the first to hold a birthday party. As a single mum, I had a lot to prove. I was up at six, cutting bread for sandwiches into star shapes, eager to impress. The house looked as if a bomb had hit it. I rushed around, picking up clothes and toys and hoping there wasn’t a stray dirty nappy lurking anywhere, the ultimate crime. By lunchtime, order was restored. My tiny little home was shabby and worn but clean and welcoming. You can do this, I told myself, dressing Dylan in a fresh pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt, kissing him over and over again. One year old!

  At two, the guests arrived and shiny parcels were placed in a pile on the kitchen table. My heart sank slightly, knowing Dylan didn’t really need any more stuff. I was already sweating at the thought of finding time to write them thank-you notes. The smallest tasks seemed impossible these days.

  The mothers all hovered behind the highchairs like dutiful footmen, curating their children’s plates. A cube of cheese and a carrot stick for the health-conscious; crisps and ham sandwiches for those who didn’t give a fig for the state of their child’s kidneys. Anything that met with disapproval got dropped on the floor: soon it was awash with halves of green grape and chunks of cucumber. I’d spent hours slicing them up!

  As the troughs of their pelican bibs filled with crumbs, I brought in plates of Pink Panther wafers, Jammie Dodgers and chocolate fingers. There was a real party atmosphere now: in the background, the cassette player wheezed jolly tunes over and over: ‘Miss Polly Had a Dolly’, ‘I Went to the Animal Fair’, ‘The Wheels on the Bloody Bus’.

  I looked around at my new friends. The dark circles under their eyes. The unbrushed hair. The baggy sweatshirts over the jeans. The air of slight desperation, but also the love in their eyes as they wiped tiny fingers with a damp flannel or brushed a lock of hair across a sweaty forehead. As the children grew tired of eating, we all clawed at the remains of the food casually, unable to resist the synthetic lure.

  As the hands of the clock dragged themselves round, I made an executive decision. We deserved a treat too – our grown-up equivalent of party food.

  ‘Does anyone fancy a glass of wine?’

  Everyone looked startled. They all looked at each other, unsure. One or two darted me a look of faux disapproval, and suddenly I felt flooded with shame. Obviously, as a single mum, my morals and standards were low. Then Suki said, ‘Why the hell not? We deserve it, don’t we?’ I flashed her a grateful glance, my gut feeling about her confirmed.

  I pulled a bottle of Lambrusco out of the fridge and filled up the paper cups. Everyone started to relax. I changed the cassette to the latest dance anthems and the tunes blared out to smiles of recognition as we all remembered our pre-baby nights out in discos and nightclubs. We plucked our darlings out of their chairs and danced around the room together. For a while we were the women we’d once been, carefree on the dancefloor. The babies loved it as their mothers twirled, holding them aloft, and by some miracle there was no projectile vomiting. This was our moment to feel free, and the groove was definitely in all of our hearts.

  And then ‘Ride on Time’ by Black Box came on and Suki took the centre of the room. We all melted away as she began to dance, and by the fluidity of her moves we began to realize she must be a professional. We rarely talked about our former lives, or who we had been, or what we had done, but here she was, spinning faster and faster, her braids flying, supple and sinuous and mesmerizing. She wasn’t showing off, she was losing herself in what she loved. We all applauded as the song came to an end, and she bowed, laughing, breathless, but more alive than we’d ever seen her.

  The guests left. Each of my friends gave me a hug, their breath sweet with Lambrusco and Pink Panthers. Somehow the afternoon had broken the ice between us.

  Suki was the last to leave. She threw her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear: ‘Is it very hard? Being a single mum?’

  I looked at her, startled. ‘I’m not sure it’s any harder than being a married one. Why?’

  ‘I want to go back to work. I’ve been offered an amazing part in a show. But my husband…’ She gulped, obviously struggling to hold back the tears. ‘My husband says a good mother should always put her child first.’

  I put my arm around her. ‘Not at the expense of yourself,’ I told her firmly. ‘Being a good mum means being the best version of you.’

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were glassy, but there was determination in them. ‘I think I’m going to leave him,’ she said. ‘You’ve shown me it can be done. This was the best party ever.’

  I hesitated. ‘That’s a big decision.’ I didn’t want to be responsible for breaking up a relationship, but I’d seen the strain she was under. ‘But I’m always here. I’ve got a spare room if you need it…’

  * * *

  Twenty-nine years later I’m rushing around like a dervish again, the same pre-party sense of panic driving me as I wonder what I’ve forgotten. It’s a different kitchen, a different house, a different menu, but my motive is the same: to make this a wonderful party. A landmark celebration for the son I love so much: Dylan is thirty years old today. His brother and sisters will be here, and his legion of friends. And it won’t start until late. No one cool, apparently, turns up to a party before ten o’clock. I hope that I can stay the course; that I won’t droop before midnight.

  The invitations have gone out, photocopies of a photo of him from that first birthday, waving a chocolate finger around in his highchair, his face smothered. I’ve downloaded a playlist of the same dance tunes, remembering how he used to sing along to them in the car, his own toddler interpretation of the words making me laugh. The 1990s are back in again, so it’s a cool theme for the party, and the guests start to arrive in their neon rave gear and Nirvana plaid brandishing glow sticks.

  I’ve made it a modern-day replica of his very first party. There are sausages, of course, because a birthday party is nothing without sausages, but they are free-range and organic and cooked on the barbecue by Ben, the single dad I met on a Cornish beach the summer Dylan was four. Ben had two kids, a boy and a girl, and we went on to have two more girls between us. It’s been glorious chaos.

 

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