Page 6 of One Summer

‘They were all out,’ I lie, and he looks at me with extreme scepticism.

‘They never sell out at this time of day.’

‘Big run on cannoli before I got there. Students,’ I say, padding out the lie, because I know how much Scotty loathes students, having never gone to university himself. Not that he needed to, because his father was the VP of a publishing house and got him his first job straight out of private school.

‘Back to work then, Lindy. Chop chop!’ Scotty says, as I stare at his tube of Pringles.

He’s right. I really need to get on with some work. My email backlog is out of control. But I can feel my fingers twitching to load up YouTube again. It’s just so weird that Max didn’t mention the channel collaboration. This Greta supermodel has even more subscribers than him. Ten times more. She’s almost at a million subscribers. No wonder. Who wouldn’t want to tune into her channel? I’d watch her and her buttons.

I load up YouTube. I’m not going to watch them – I’d just like to know if the live stream is over yet.

They’re still going. And – bloody hell – she’s found a Roman intaglio with some god or other exquisitely engraved into a dark-red gemstone, used by some ancient person to leave a fancy design on a wax seal. This is the jackpot. She’s doing a cha-cha-slide in celebration. Max is filming it all and giving breathless commentary on the find, trying to identify the god portrayed, which must be hard when he’s filming live on his phone and therefore can’t google for hints. When she’s finished her ‘treasure dance’, she comes forward to embrace him, and there is something in the expression of those gorgeous cheetah eyes as she looks up at him that makes me flinch.

She likes Max. Really likes him.

‘Lindy!’ Scotty says, in his exasperated tone of voice. ‘Why have you not responded to the email I marked urgent and sent five minutes ago? I can see you’re at your desk. Please tell me you are not messing about on the internet again, because that would severely test my patience.’

I haven’t responded to his email because I haven’t seen it.

‘Sorry, I was just dealing with another issue. I’ll get to it now.’

I hate him, I think, and wonder for a moment which ‘him’ I’m thinking of. Scotty, of course… but do I also hate Max right now? Just a bit? When I met him three years ago, he had a boring job in finance. Now he is a self-styled YouTube star. His channel, Max in the Mud, has attracted sponsorship and adoring subscribers. I never guessed he’d be the type to want an audience. To want fans. To want to be famous. But he does: he wants all of those things, as well as a bunch of muddy tat that he’s pulled out of the river and left in his bathtub to be cleaned when he gets around to it.

Suddenly, I hear footsteps hastening towards me and I look up to see Henny, looking at me breathlessly.

‘You didn’t tell me Max knew Gothic Girl Greta. I’ve just seen the stream. All of her fans are checking out Max’s YouTube channel. He’s very popular with the 3Gs.’

‘The 3Gs?’

I get it the moment I say it out loud. Gothic Girl Greta’s fan club. Taylor Swift has Swifties; Gothic Girl Greta has the 3Gs.

‘There’s lots of compliments on his rugged good looks and manly wellies. You know, I think Max Mogg is going to be the new mudlarking pin-up.’

If only they could see him in his perfectly pressed, three-piece, Savile Row suit and shining leather brogues as he goes off to work each morning. Not a crease in sight, a hair out of place nor a speck of mud to be seen.

Henny’s smiling at me but I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know Max knew this fantastically cool woman. Just as I didn’t know Henny was a fan of Gothic Girl whatever – I’d certainly never even heard of her before this morning so how could I possibly give Henny the heads up?

I go with the non-committal. ‘Yeah, his channel is really taking off.’

‘It’s going to explode now. You wait. Greta’s got a lot of clout. I wouldn’t be surprised if this results in some serious sponsorship money. Look, he’s gained a hundred new subscribers in the past ten minutes alone!’

She’s keeping track of Max’s subscriber count. She’s really invested in this, excited for him. So why aren’t I?

‘It’s not as if Max is short of money,’ I say, smiling tightly. ‘He has a great job in finance.’

‘Oh, I know, but the sponsorship gives YouTubers that extra level of authenticity, you know? If big companies are taking them seriously then you know they’re worth watching.’

I let that hang in the air. Surely that is the opposite of how Max has always felt? He’s always said that sponsorship calls into question the impartiality of the sponsored. But perhaps that was just because nobody wanted to sponsor him then. He might feel differently once he has big money offers clogging up his inbox.

‘Do you think Max could get me Greta’s autograph? Maybe a signed bookmark too?’ Henny asks. ‘My niece is a fan. I am too, to be perfectly honest. I can’t wait for her new book to come out next month. Her last one was on the Sunday Times Bestseller List.’

Information that I’d have thought Greta would have added to her profile information rather than that thing about people stuck in the muck. Oh god, she’s modest. Not a boaster. But everyone boasts in publishing. It’s expected. It’s right there in the author contract under promotional responsibilities.

‘I’ll ask Max tonight,’ I say, feeling depressed at the very thought. I suppose it would be a good intro into the subject of why he hadn’t mentioned he was doing this massive live stream collaboration. All he’d said was that he was going down to the foreshore for a lark and that he was crossing his fingers for a nice clay pipe or an interesting old brick. He definitely didn’t mention meeting a YouTube megastar who has the personal beauty of a sixties Hollywood starlet.

My email pings with another email from Scotty. All it says is:

LINDY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO SOME WORK!!! I MEAN IT… FINAL WARNING.

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