A Novel by
Gerry Duffy

                                                          THE FABULATORS

Her phone rings. Reject, reject, reject! Those bastard credit card trolls with more ‘advice’ about her unpaid balance. Why now – her first important moment since God-knows-when? She puts the phone on silent, slips it into her bag and follows the guy with the grown-out blond tints through the door and into a cavernous work space.
    There’s a pool table, a basketball hoop, two women playing table tennis. As the ex-blond leads her through it, a big ball of scrunched-up paper curves through the air and lands at her feet.
    ‘Hey, give us our ball back!’ calls a skinny flop-haired guy. She boots it straight to his feet and he toes it into the air, spins and kicks it back towards the others waiting to continue the game. If that was part of the test, she thinks, I must have passed.

    Inside the meeting room, the single chair awaits her on one side of the table, with three occupied ones on the other. She sits and faces them.
    ‘Hi there, Gabby,’ drawls the tanned guy in the middle. ‘Welcome to Fabulate. I’m Matt. This is Ellie and Josh.’ He indicates a woman, perhaps her own age, in outsized blue-framed glasses, plaits curled and pinned above her ears making her look about six, and a shifty blond boy, a bit younger than her, twenty maybe, who regards her with blinking eyes.

    ‘Is it Gabby or Gabrielle?’
    ‘Gabrielle.’
    ‘OK then, Gabby, here we go.’ Matt turns and looks at Ellie.
    ‘Discord or harmony?’ says Ellie. Her voice is haughty, clipped, posh.
    She's primed for this but has to pretend she isn't. ‘What?’
    ‘It’s a test, Gabby. Discord or harmony?’
    'Er – discord.’
    ‘Fake news or alternative facts?’
    ‘Alternative facts.’
    ‘Forgiveness or retribution?
    ‘Retribution.’
    ‘Honest debate or hysterical lynch mob?’
    ‘Lynch mob.’
    ‘Great,’ says Matt. ‘Well done so far. Let’s step it up a level.’ He nods at Ellie, who flips over a page on her script.
    ‘Oppression or victimhood?’
    ‘Hmm – victimhood.’
    ‘Unconscious bias or life experience?’
    ‘Experience.’
    ‘Black lives matter or all lives matter?’
    ‘All.’
  They groan in unison and begin a gentle chant, fingers wagging languidly in Gabrielle’s direction; ‘Racist scum, racist scum.’
    She looks impassively at the three of them across the table. Matt, his dark curly hair and tan giving him an Italian look, waves a hand to silence them and says, ‘Try again.’
    Ellie glances back down at her script.
    ‘Gender or sex?’
    ‘Sex.’
    ‘Yes please.’ Josh’s first contribution.
    Taken aback, she gives him the dead eye. No-one says anything. They just sit there looking at her. Is this part of the test? ‘Pass,’ she says finally.
    ‘Legitimate criticism or cancel culture?’ continues Ellie.
    ‘Cancel culture.’
    ‘Statues or slogans?’
    ‘Er – both.’
    ‘Preferred pronoun or pointless label?’
    ‘Preferred pronoun.’
    Ellie slaps her script down on the table, rolls her eyes and looks at Gabrielle over her glasses. ‘Are you fucking kidding?’
    Gabrielle grins. ‘Yeah. That was a joke.’
    Ellie arches an eyebrow, looks at Matt and nods. Matt smiles benignly at Gabrielle. ‘You did ok, Gabby. So, tell us a bit more about yourself.’