I have a job to do. This is what I repeat to myself to stay awake, surrounded by suits in the grubby boardroom with a splatter of sunlight sweating on my hair. The sales guy’s voice rumbles on and on like a steamroller. You have to make a heroic effort to see past the reassuring tones to what he’s actually saying: he hasn’t sold an ad in the magazine I edit for a month. Boss isn’t even trying to pay attention – interrupting, she starts to talk about the BioMed Publications Family and how much it loves us all. Sales Guy’s voice is carried on by its own momentum for several more sentences before Wendy, my manager, jabs him in the ribs and he shuts up. I have to stay motivated. Psyched. I have a job to do. Yeah.

“...to tell us, I believe, Charlie?” I’m jolted out of the woodland scene I was strolling through. “Well?” Wendy prods. “Charlottaaaa?” “Oh. Yes. I had the honour of having a grand tour of the Vividex facility yesterday,” I announce. “It was very interesting.” It was, too. Kevin grins at me across the table. Stupid boy! I scowl furiously back and he flinches.

“Did you bring them all our best BioMedPubs goodwill?” Boss twitters.

“Buckets of it. I told them we were thinking of running a special promotional feature on their cosmetic products and processes, so they showed me the equipment, and the labs and everything.” My face is bland and smiling. Efficient and soulless and thrilled to bits about Vividex making a fuss of little me.

“You didn’t go in those nasty Docs, did you?” Sasha purrs. “You know what I said. If you ever want some image advice...” Several people hide smiles. “Oh, no,” I say. “Best shoes. And a suit.” Sasha’s eyes widen; she probably didn’t think I owned a suit. I’m more dedicated than she thinks. Boss drones for a bit about our special relationship with Vividex, and the great work they’re doing in the field of ‘cosmeceuticals’. She should know; without their anti-aging scary mutant cream her face would probably fall down around her knees. Did I reinforce it? she asks. What, her face? I have a flash of tiny flying buttresses propping up her jowls. Oh, right – she means the Special Relationship. “Yes, I followed up with all the new promotional material as soon as I got in today. I emailed it, so they should have all the files and graphics by now.”

Boss nods; she’s barely heard. She was putting together her next speech. Off she goes: “Our sponsorship agreement is crucial to the revenues of...” Babbling brooks and waving ferns tug at my mind. The air in here is thick and sticky with static and dust. Kevin is avoiding my eyes. I have a job to do, I think, holding my pad up in front of me to work on the drawing I was doing, filling in lines and corners.

Back at my desk there are teetering piles of paperwork to get through. I’m busy proofreading an article by the head of Futuria Pharma, another company we have a special relationship with. It’s about cancer drugs. “A New Approach to Terminal Illness.” Sasha and Wendy are talking about the difficulties of using hair-straightening irons. “But it’s worth it,” Wendy maintains, “not to have all those little frizzy bits around your face. They make you look like a hippy.” They both glance at me and smirk. I concentrate on the print in front of me and remember the cages, stacked in endless rows.

“The mistake lies in thinking of cancer as an acute illness. Traditionally, the customer base for cancer drugs has changed each year. However, if the possibility of cancer as chronic illness were explored, as we at Futuria are doing, a long-term customer base with potential to persist for decades could be cultivated...”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Really? Reading it again, I remember the eyes, stacked in endless rows, scared and rolling. I have a job to do; not long now. The phone rings.

“Chaz? For you, innit,” calls the secretary, phone jammed under her chin as she waves her false nails in the air. “It’s that guy from Furtula.”

It is, in fact, Brad from the Futuria PR office, who talks as if I was his best friend, though after six months of dealing with me he still thinks my name is Carla. And he uses it all the bloody time, the way he was taught to in sales git school. “What a coincidence,” I giggle. “The article’s right in front of me now. We’re into the final stages of editing.”

“Oh, that’s a pity, Carla,” Brad says. “I hope you and the team haven’t put in too many hours on it. Dr Swenson’s lawyers called this morning. Let’s just say it would be less than wise to talk about the revolutionary new approach till we’ve done quite a bit more paperwork with the legal sharks. You know the way it is. Ha ha.”

“You mean you don’t think it can run?”

“The lawyers say absolutely not. I’m very sorry, Carly. You know we at Futuria recognise the importance of fulfilling our commitments. But there’s just no way. Sorry. It’s just too controversial. Not in this issue. Maybe not for years yet.”

“That’s a pity, Bram,” I say. He can’t see me grinning. “I’ll make sure it gets taken care of, never fear.”

There’s a ping as I put down the phone. Someone’s mailed me some jokes. I put the Futuria article back in the in-tray and click on the attachment.

“Charlie, I need you to take a file up to Kevin,” Sasha says, looking up from her Take A Break. “There’s a love.”

“Oh, not Kevin,” I groan. “I hate Kevin. Did you see him staring at my tits in the meeting? That’s why I was scowling at him, in case you were wondering.”

Sasha shrugs. She can’t comprehend the idea of someone wanting to look at my unfashionably tie-dye-encased chest. “Oh, just a quick one, darling. He’s all right really.” Sighing loudly, I stand up. “This file, yeah?”

Kevin is on the phone, soft-soaping some advertising budgeteer with crap about our readership figures. His eyebrows shoot up as he sees me approaching, then his expression carefully glazes over. I stand by his desk, looking down at the top of his head. My fingers, curled under the file, can feel the note I’m holding there. It says ‘Upstairs. Three o’clock.’ That’s all. “Our circulation currently stands at over ten thousand of the biggest decision-makers in today’s pharmaceutical industry,” Kevin says into the phone as I lean over him and place the file on his desk, pulling the note out slightly from under it so he can see it’s there. “Yes, Mr Chapman, you can see that your advertising will reach some of the top minds in the business,” he says, and winks at me. What he isn’t telling Mr Chapman is that we send those ten thousand people our magazine free and unasked-for, and his advertising will probably only reach the top minds’ office wastebaskets. I sneer back at him with palpable disdain and head back downstairs quivering with excitement. Finally, this is really going to happen.

Of course, the afternoon slows down to the speed of a glacier. It’s half past two and Wendy is listening avidly to a phone-in on Kiss 100 where you can win a week living a ‘celebrity lifestyle’. “Wicked,” she murmurs reverently as they describe the shopping spree. There is still a world of proofreading to do, but I’m busy drawing on my pad. It’s quite detailed now; I hope my memory doesn’t fail me. THIS WAY, I annotate it. NOT THIS WAY. PRESS HERE. Time crawls by. “Charlie love? Have you got the Futuria article ready? You know, the cancer thing? The design department want to start laying it out,” Sasha wheedles. Casually, I pass her the manuscript from my in-tray and go on drawing. It’s that easy. Off it goes. I am on a roll now. This has been the best fucking day of my career and it’s not over yet.

I think of Kevin sitting above my head, lying to executives. I think of my moment of glory, walking the Vividex corridors yesterday. I was groomed, glossy, with a thousand-watt smile. My shoes shone. My suit was pressed. It took me three hours to get ready that morning, but there was no room for slackness or mistakes. I was the perfect employee, smiling, always smiling, even flirting a little with the two senior scientists who walked alongside me. Yes, I said, I’d love to have the grand tour. I love my job at BioMedPubs, who knows, it may have advancement potential, titter titter. I love the pharmaceutical industry and what Vividex is doing for ageing skin. I’m just passionate about scientific journalism. Yes, by all means, show me the product testing centre, too; no, I’m not in the least squeamish, don’t worry.

“Chaz! Phone,” squawks the secretary, twisting round from her game of FreeCell.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Ellen from Bavidex,” secretary says, putting a black six on a red seven. “She sounds angry.”

“Good, good. Put her on.”

Helen from Vividex is indeed angry. She is furious. She is ringing to say that they won’t be able to send us any article-related material today because some idiot has sent them a series of massive graphics files. None of them are smaller than thirty megs and their server has choked on them. Their whole PR department is disabled. They don’t know what the files are or how to take them off the server, because none of them know shit about computers. They’re waiting for the maintenance man to come around. They’re very sorry, they know we were expecting them to mail us an article on new restraint methods for dogs in caustic substance tests, they know we’re really put out, like everyone else they were supposed to contact today, and when they find out where these files came from there’ll be hell to pay. Helen feels free to say this because she knows our promotional material is friendly to the smaller server.

At least, it was until I converted all the files to ultra-high-resolution TIFFs this morning. Oops. Just another Stupid Charlie Mistake. That phrase has become part of the office jargon; they don’t even bother to keep it out of my earshot any more. I really have made some fantastic blunders. The best ones took a lot of planning; I take pride in my work. But they don’t know it was me yet, so I very graciously tell Helen it’s all right, not to stress herself about it, we’re not that close to deadline.

“What was that?” Wendy snaps. “Not that close to deadline? We’re right up against the bloody deadline! For God’s sake, Charlie, get a grip.”

“Whoops. Sorry about that.” I grab my bag. I have to get out of here before I burst out laughing. Making for the stairs, I can feel my heart pounding. This is the moment I’ve been looking forward to for so long. I pass the sales floor and catch Kevin’s eye; he nods. Then I keep going, up past the first empty floor with its spray of yellowed papers and shafts of dusty light, and right up to the top of the building. We must not be overheard. Oh, at last, I think, coming out of the stairwell into a deserted room half-filled with dead monitors and broken desks. I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs behind me, Kevin’s footsteps.

He stands there, breathless, eyes fixed on me. “Well? How did it go?” he pants. I smile.

“I got you this.” I draw out the first thing from my bag, playing it for maximum drama. It’s my finished drawing. “I made a map.” Kevin snatches it from me and stuffs it in his back pocket, his eyes shining. “And,” as I sink my hand into the bag again, “I filled this up. I hope they all come out.” I pass him a tiny digital camera, on a keyring, the sort you can buy for five pounds in a junk shop. “Some lovely scenic views on there.” It was easier than I’d expected, taking pictures from under the lapel of my jacket without any of the dotty old scientists noticing. Pictures of locks, pictures of security doors. Pictures of the dogs, the rabbits and the monkeys and the locks of their cages. “Charlie, you’re a genius,” Kevin breathes.

“And I swiped a swipe card.” I hand it over, its little metal clip still attached. High Security Clearance, it says. Kevin examines it ravenously. “So it’s tonight, then?” I ask him.

“Yes,” says Kevin, his face slightly white. “We’re driving out there around midnight.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.” He wipes his forehead. “We’ll need it.”

We stand looking at each other and grinning like fools. Kevin, brave Kevin. All this time we’ve spent pretending to hate each other, not to know each other, both on our own in an industry full of evil, shallow wastes of skin. But we both had a job to do. Suddenly I rush forward, shove him back against the wall and kiss him. He lets out a high-pitched squeak, but doesn’t fight back in the slightest. We break apart, laughing. “I always thought you were cute,” I say in explanation.

Suddenly his face grows grave. “You’ve done three operations now, haven’t you? You can’t stay here. You’ll be leaving. Right?” I nod. “Yeah, I’m giving my notice today. Especially since I think I got a fourth one earlier, just by accident. If it all goes to plan, they’ll be in serious legal trouble very soon.” I can’t help laughing.

“Damn, you’re good. I’ll miss your scowls, though,” he says.

“Hey. I just thought of something. Everyone downstairs in my office has nasty nicknames for everyone upstairs. Does it work the other way round, too? What do they call me?”

Kevin looks dubious. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah. Hit me.”

He counts on his fingers. “Crusty Chaz. Scruffbag. The Tie-Dye Queen. Bunnyhugger.”

“Bunnyhugger?” That’s worrying. Do they suspect?

“It’s OK. They only said that once, after you said the lab rabbit in that Vividex ad was cute. So. What do they call me?”

A mischievous thought occurs to me. “They don’t have anything nasty to say about you. They think you fit in really well. You’re just a nice, normal, average advertising salesman. Well done.” Kevin’s look of sheer horror is priceless. “I’m only joking.” Laughter bubbles up out of me again.

And an hour later I’m walking out of that place, a breeze tugging my hair, and as far as Wendy’s concerned I’ve been headhunted by the editorial team at New Internationalist, she won’t check up at their offices because she’s never even heard of them, that’s not surprising, and I’m taking time off in lieu of notice because I’ve never had a day off, I couldn’t go off on holidays when I had such an important job to do. I don’t yet know which part of the job I’ll be doing next but I feel like my chest is full of helium, I’m flying down the street with my coat flapping behind me and I think of the animals, their cages burst open, breaking free and running into the night.