‘Don’t freak out, I’m sure it’s fine.’ Art’s frustratingly unhurried as he puts down his coffee and gets out his laptop.
‘Well?’ I say.
‘Give me a minute,’ he says. ‘Here we go …’ He opens the script and scrolls down. His brow furrows. ‘Oh.’
‘Oh, what?’
‘The notes on my script are gone too.’ He looks up at me. ‘Shit.’
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘Shit!’
‘Look,’ says Art, ‘if it’s a system issue I’m sure they can fix it. Let’s check with Simon and Nora.’
‘All right?’ Nora smiles when we enter their room. ‘To what do we owe this pleasure?’
She does not look like someone freaking out because her very necessary script notes have just vanished.
‘We’ve got a bit of a technical problem,’ says Art. He explains what’s happened.
‘That’s weird,’ says Nora. She points at the screen of her laptop. ‘My notes from Susan are fine.’
Simon nods. ‘Mine too. Are you sure you didn’t change the settings or something?’
‘Is there a setting that permanently removes notes?’ says Art.
‘Well, you can reject and delete them, of course,’ says Simon. ‘But it would be hard to do that by accident.’
Art and I look at each other.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We’d better go and see Susan.’
Susan looks utterly exhausted when we enter her office. It’s clearly not a great time to tell her what’s happened, but what else can we do?
‘I know you’re both new, but I thought the software was pretty straightforward,’ she says, after we’ve explained it all and she’s confirmed that her annotated notes can’t be restored. ‘How could you have deleted them?’
‘We didn’t!’ I say.
‘How else could they have disappeared?’ Susan is clearly annoyed. ‘I certainly didn’t touch them.’
And this is the moment when the door opens and Bernard walks in. Without knocking, of course.
‘Not interrupting, am I?’ he says.
Susan sighs. ‘Annie and Art are having some technical difficulties with the script software.’
‘Well,’ says Bernard, ‘this was inevitable when we started bringing in outsiders at a crucial time forNorthside. What’s the problem?’
Susan fills him in. ‘And I’m already behind schedule. Well, we all are, obviously.’
Bernard shakes his head. ‘Dear, oh dear.’
‘Look,’ says Susan, turning to me and Art, ‘I’ll have to rewrite the notes – they won’t be as detailed as the originals, of course,but that can’t be helped. Seriously, lads, this is not good. You’ve bollocksed up my entire day. I know it’s a tough week but you’ve really got to be on top of the software. This can’t happen again.’
‘But we—’ begins Art.
I see Bernard’s eyes narrow and I lay a warning hand on Art’s forearm. It’s the first time we’ve touched since Friday – it’s only the third time I’ve touched him, ever – and I am very conscious of the brief weight of my hand on his bare skin.
‘It won’t happen again,’ says Art.