‘Have we got a deal or have we got a deal!’ he beamed at Emily. ‘Congratulations, kiddo.’

‘Thank you for buying it,’ Emily beamed back. ‘And thank you for the flowers.’

Larry waved away her thanks. ‘Don’t mention it. Studio always does it. Standard procedure.

‘OΚ.’ With an arm around each of us, Larry guided Emily and me out into the sunshine. ‘This morning we’re meeting with two studio executives. We gotta get these guys on side if we want this movie to be made. Got it?’

We nodded energetically. Oh, we got it all right.

At the boardroom chalet, the two executives – a stick-thin blonde called Maxine and a clean-cut, square-jawed man called Chandler – both gushed at Emily about how much they loved Plastic Money and how it was going to make a great movie. For a trillionth of a second I was excited, then I copped on to myself.

As we gathered around the table, Larry produced a copy of the script, and when some of the pages fell open there were thick, red lines scored through paragraph after paragraph and in some cases dragged across entire pages. I can’t describe the feeling. I hadn’t written the script, so I wasn’t attached in the same way that Emily was, but I still felt sick. For some reason, it made me think of visiting someone in prison and seeing them bearing obvious signs of beatings.

Michelle distributed photocopies of Plastic Money to the rest of us and Larry called the meeting to order. ‘OΚ. Let’s try and knock this into shape! First off, that whole plastic surgery stuff has to go. Too weird, too edgy.’

‘But that’s the whole point,’ Emily explained calmly. ‘It’s an exploration of society’s fixation with the body beautiful, it makes important points about our value system –’

‘Well, I don’t like it. Get rid of it. All of it!’

Shock had my jaw swinging like a sign in the wind. I’d heard about studios buying scripts then proceeding to eviscerate them. But I’d always thought such accounts were wildly exaggerated to generate sympathy or laughs: clearly they weren’t.

Emily swallowed hard, then she asked, ‘So what’s their motivation for holding up the bank, then?’

Larry leaned across the table and sing-songed at her, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m not the writer!’

Emily went white.

‘How about a blind girl needs an operation to restore her sight,’ Chandler suggested.

Larry clicked his fingers. ‘I like it!’

‘Or a bunch of underprivileged kids have a ball park,’ Maxine said, ‘but a big corporation wants to turn it into duplexes, so they need the money to buy it?’

‘Yeah,’ Larry said thoughtfully. ‘Could work.’

‘If there’s no plastic surgery, the name will have to be changed,’ Emily said, slightly shrilly. ‘Plastic Money makes no sense now.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. We’ll change the name to Chip’.

Emily looked even more upset and I was dismayed; I’d hoped that he’d intended Chip only to have a bit-part, not the starring role.

‘If the name is Chip, you don’t think people might think it’s a movie about a chip?’ Maxine wondered.

‘Would they?’

‘Maybe – after Chocolat’

‘So we call it Chip the Dog’ Larry said.

‘That’s great!’ Chandler said. ‘That’s so great. But what about those animal-rights guys? They see a movie called Chip the Dog, they’re going to tell us that people might see it as an order. Like, you gotta chip the dog!’

‘Unless we change the dog’s name,’ said Michelle.

‘I like Chip.’

‘Yeah, I like it too.’

‘How about Chuck?’

‘Chuck the Dog?. Bad as Chip the Dog’.

‘How about calling him Charlie?’

‘So now it’s a drug movie!’

As the discussion raged, Emily maintained a flinty silence. I was forbidden to speak, but even if I’d been allowed I wouldn’t have wanted to, muzzled by a potent mixture of depression and boredom.

Larry announced that we were ‘working through’ lunch, so at twelve-thirty enough food to feed a multitude was delivered to the chalet and laid out prettily – and very quickly – on a table in the corner.

I was starving, but everyone else put tiny amounts of food on to their plates: one strand of noodle; half a baby tomato; four pasta shells; one rocket leaf. So we were taking a little and often approach – OK, I could do that too…

We all sat back down with our food and Larry continued to demand suggestions from us, so it took me a while to notice that I was the only one who’d cleared my plate and that there were no signs of anyone paying a return visit to the buffet. I forced myself to be patient, perhaps they were just slow eaters… but then the plates were being absently pushed aside as ideas were scribbled in the margins of our scripts. Lunch was over. Over before it had begun, and I was still so hungry.

I wondered if I could just get up and help myself. But we were all sitting down and fully immersed in work. Could I just get up and walk over and put more food on my plate, then put that food in my mouth? What would they think of me?

Wistfully, I looked at the table. Its legs were almost buckling from the weight of uneaten food on it. An entire quiche –untouched. A deep-pan pizza, its perfectly circularity unbroken. It was the pizza that did it. All at once, I was pushing back my chair and straightening my knees.

Larry Savage looked at me in surprise. ‘Where ya going?’

My resolve departed abruptly. ‘Nowhere,’ I said, sitting right back down again and studying my script.

My regret was immense. If only I’d known I only got one chance, I’d have made the most of it.

Suddenly that sounded very profound.

We worked through until two-thirty, then Larry wrapped things up. ‘Time out, guys. My acupuncturist just got here.’

Her head bowed, Emily straightened the papers in front of her. ‘I’ll get writing.’

‘You do that. We need these rewrites fast.’

‘By when?’

‘Say, Friday.’

‘Next Friday? Or the Friday six weeks from now?’

‘Haha. Next Friday.’

‘No, Friday’s not so good for me.’

‘Thursday, then. Or Wednesday?’