The Finale Pitch

Kemi’s message arrived at half nine, before Hattie had finished her first coffee: Can you come to the production office at eleven. Not urgent-bad. Urgent-need-your-actual-job. Hattie read it twice, the way she read everything that mattered, and found no version of “not urgent-bad” that survived a second reading, which she supposed was the point of the warning underneath it.

The production office was two floors above a coffee chain off Charlotte Street, the same road as the screening, and Dana Kessler was already at the glass table when Hattie arrived, a laptop open, a jug of water nobody had touched, and the particular unhurried confidence of a woman who had never once had to fight for a room’s attention.

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” Dana said, as though Hattie had had any notice at all. “I wanted you in this conversation rather than hearing about it after the…