Runners

By Tommy Elkington

Everyone wants to be, already is, or has been famous. Debora Quake is famous. Clinging on to her youth, decaf latte and just about anyone she can get her hands on as she stumbles her way through presenting the nation’s ailing television breakfast show: Breaking Fast. The show’s ratings, like her career, are on the decline yet it is only her and her accomplice, Norwich Parker, the show’s production manager who won’t wake up and smell the coffee. Norwich doesn’t wake up at all, which for those that know her and her archaic views, isn’t always a bad thing. It is down to Duncan, his two best friends, and the rest of the studio show runners, to ensure Debora is TV-ready each morning no matter what she quite literally throws at them. Overworked, overtired and underpaid, the runners strive for satisfaction elsewhere whilst meeting the world’s elitists in entertainment along the way. Some even find love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781528992497

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Dedication

‘For my favourites’

Copyright Information ©

Tommy Elkington 2022

The right of Tommy Elkington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528992480 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528992497 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Wednesday # 1

With trepidation, she scored along, piercing the foil with her chipped opaque index fingernail. It was Wednesday, midweek and her standards had already begun to slip. As she leant over the sink, the droplets from her wet hair congealed with the wafer-like powder substance that gushed from the foil packet, congealing to the sink and clogging the drain at the same time. As she threw her hair back, she caught her reflection through the hazy artificial strip lighting above and the piercing bulbs that surrounded the mirror itself, questioning not her actions which had now become a daily ritual but instead her reasoning for having to carry out these actions. Miffed and slightly stunned by the mirror’s false illuminations, her thoughts were interrupted, like clockwork by another daily ritual, this time a more favourable one in the form of Janet, the hairstylist.

As Janet got to work laying out her brushes, mouses, sprays and various other grooming implements that were needed to maintain the soaked, now turgid like locks of hair, she ignored how she always did the contents of the sink, which had now turned hard and somewhat uneasy looking. Ignoring yet scrutinising as she got to work, Janet couldn’t help but notice there was a lot more sediment residue clinging to the edge of the sink than there had been in the past few weeks. Come to think of it, she thought to herself, there seemed to be more and more as the weeks had gone on.

Echoes of clambering footprints from the adjacent staircase and the sound of a teacup wobbling in its saucer broke Janet’s thoughts who like always had left the door to the room ajar upon demand of its resident. Timidly yet somewhat bashfully, the owner of the wobbling teacup knocked on the door and awaited her daily seek of approval before entering the room.

To her relief, Janet acknowledged the young girl who awkwardly balanced the overfilled tray as she walked into the room with a newspaper stuffed under her left arm and a wad of paper under her right. Though the girl had been delivering this tray every morning for the past four months, Hope always preferred it when Janet was in the room as if to break the silence and stand-off approach governed by the women sitting in the chair if nothing else. Hope wrestled with the tray a little more, dodging scattered pairs of high designer stilettos, suit jackets and the odd pair of jogging bottoms that graced the floor to finally plonk down the tray on the coffee table on the other side of the room, opposite to where the woman was sitting. Although nothing was said, Hope could feel the lady’s disapproving eyes staring at her through the reflection of the mirror and, in particular, honing in on her ink-stained left jean pocket from where she sat on a blue biro weeks before.

Tactfully positioning herself so that her back faced the mirror, Hope went about her daily business and begun decanting half the contents of a cafeteria into the wobbling teacup and laying out a platter of mini continental breakfast pastries, tropical fruit excluding kiwi and porridge lined with a dash of honey, none of which would ever get eaten. Hope always had the incentive to get in and get out but as she delicately placed the newspaper under the mirror, it brushed the elbow of its intended reader. Aghast, she lingered, staring at the contents of the sink. Smiling contently to herself, knowing full well the substance of the wafer-like powder, she picked up a disregarded foil chocolate wrapper that had been tossed to one side and practically dangling it in front of the women sitting in the chair beamed, Would you like me to fetch you another?

The response was a polite yet anguished firm, I will wait for tomorrow.

With that and stuffing the foil wrapper in her ink-stained jean pocket, Hope scarpered out the room and down the staircase where she came from, this time free from trays, newspapers and nervous dispositions.

Her somewhat candid giggle could be heard before her as she burst through another room, directly below the one she had just been in. As she slipped into the room, Duncan, six feet one inch, in a matching polo shirt to his colleague, jumped from a de-stained looking armchair and greeted her with as much excitement.

What did she say? Did she ask you for another? How did you keep a straight face? were all questions Duncan couldn’t retain whilst grabbing the foil wrapper from Hope’s pocket, chucking it to the floor and stamping up and down on it, crushing whatever remanence was left and not stuck to the sink in the room Hope had been in moments before. As she playfully pushed Duncan off the packet causing him to tumble back into the armchair where he was moments before, Stacey waltzed in, laden with a half-empty bottle of a diet energy drink, which was good going even for her as it wasn’t even daybreak yet.

In her hast, some of the drink missed Stacey’s mouth as she took a generous swig which left its contents running down her matching polo top. The tops weren’t so much unflattering themselves, a dark navy with a simple logo above the breast pocket, the word ‘runner’ embellished in all its glory. The polo shirts were designed in a bid to create a form of unity and subtly advertise the not so subtle service the runners would loathe to provide. One couldn’t help miss Stacey in her uniform for it was two sizes too small yet no one had the heart to tell her.

You’re going to get found out sooner or later, you know, Stacey whispered as much as she could whisper as she disregarded her now empty bottle. Picking up the foil wrapper from the floor whilst perching on the arm of the chair occupied by Duncan, shifting the balance of its weight downwards her side like a seesaw. Why do you even do it, it’s such a waste, such good chocolate? Stacey began to ponder such quandary as she poured the crushed remainder of the wrapper into the palm of her slightly sweaty left palm, throwing it towards her mouth and engulfing the leftover crumbs of the chocolate fingered treat.

Because, Hope regaled, it’s the only bit of power I have.

Hope walked over to an old rusted green filing cabinet that was behind the armchair causing the two to turn the heads. Pushing in the bottom draw in order to open the top one, she pulled out a worn and dog eared brown paper file titled Presenter Riders, flicked past its contents and in doing so made a beeline for the double-page spread on the women whom Hope had paid a visit to only moments before. It was Debora Quake of breakfast TV’s Breaking Fast fame. A show that like its presenter was on borrowed time no matter how many facelifts it had.

Speaking with a foe, public school accent and pushing her shoulders back, Hope began to recite. She did so with military procession, although the undertones of her Luton native could still be heard.

‘At 04:00 am , before Mrs Quake enters her dressing room, one two-fingered tiffin chocolate bar must be placed to the right of the sink below her mirror, ensuring the surrounding bulbs are switched on, illuminating her ever presence. Being her only treat of the morning, it is imperative that she gets her tiffin bar. If you know Debora like I do, you can really tell on air if she isn’t happy.’

Tailing off, Hope’s accent merged into the dulcet tones of Norwich, the author of the Presenter Rider bible and all-round dictator of the polo top. Disregarding the rider like so many before had done so, Hope pushed the top draw back into the filing cabinet to open the bottom one which was full of the sweet treats that Debora had grown to love so much. Hope then threw a handful of the Tiffin chocolate bars at Duncan and Stacey who begun to snap the fingers in half, smashing them against walls and treading on them creating the crumb deposit. The meticulous destruction was like a piece of art as all three runners were tentative enough not to damage the packet but create the dust like a wafer that Debora had begun to ensure since she pushed Hope to the limit three months prior. After a brief stint of debauchery, Hope collected all but one of the chocolate bars claiming as if it was for justice, I need to get my own back somehow. I know this is getting to her. She knows it’s me yet we both know no one else will ever know as she is too embarrassed to say something, so it’s win-win.

With that, Hope tossed the least mangled of the Tiffin chocolate bar towards Stacey who caught it one-handed. This flirt with physical agility, matched with the current time of day, filled the room with raucous laughter. Hope looked up at the large overbearing clinical clock that dominated and was evidently a new addition to the rest of the bohemian, shabby, student like a common room. It was coming up to 04:30 am. Having just started her shift, she asked why Duncan was still here, his show finished hours ago, to which he unsurprisingly yet jokingly gestured, Norwich wouldn’t get me a cab, so I am waiting for the first train.

Having heard this, Stacey willingly passed over the remainder of the Tiffin chocolate bar that she caught in mid-flight. Duncan smiled and spoke with his eyes, this small gesture, a reminder that runners stick together.

Wednesday # 2

A distant but frantically loud call for help stirred Duncan who had slept longer than intended, waking up alone but relaxed in the armchair where he laughed only hours before. With nothing but serve cramp and dry eyes for company, the headset and talkback unit in which Norwich insisted he wore hung loosely around his neck. A sign that the shift was over and in more often than not the case with Stacey, a sign of rebellion, these headsets were the epicentre of television production at its best. Anything from anyone from anywhere could be demanded over these headsets from oxygen tanks to chicken caesar salads without the caesar or the chicken. Nothing was too ridiculous, too expensive or too out of reach. A biased example of supply and demand where the demand was at its most outrageous high and the supply at its most costly low in every sense of the word.

Wearing these headsets for ten, twelve, sixteen hours a day forced Duncan and the others into a crafty, pokerfaced position whereby they could look completely calm, interested and focused with one conversation when all along they could listen in on something or more importantly someone else, which was always far juicier than the demand of having to collect a soy latte. This innate ability to identify relevance would soon be a honed skill used to its highest advantage but in its current state was being used for a cry for help from Hope.

Brushing the wrinkles out of his polo shirt as he stood, Duncan reassigned his headset to respond to Hope. Though relieved to hear someone answer her panic, she checked her watch almost in disbelief as she radioed over the headset, Duncan, it’s 07:30, what are you still doing here? Not knowing the time himself at