The Radio Hour by Victoria Purman

Author:Victoria Purman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Pty Ltd
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

In which As the Sun Sets becomes a bona fide hit and Quentin Quinn takes all the credit.

Martha and the Calendar Girls sat at a cafe just around the corner from work, the young women poring over a stack of newspapers and magazines. April, May and June had dragged Martha out on the pretext of it being April’s birthday but it wasn’t long before she discovered the truth.

‘It’s been so long since we’ve had lunch, Miss Berry. We thought we should celebrate by showing you these!’ April waved her hands over the spread of newsprint on the table.

‘We’ve been reading about As the Sun Sets absolutely everywhere,’ May announced. ‘And it’s only been one month!’

April found a centrespread and turned it around so Martha could read it the right way up. ‘Look at this one!’ she exclaimed. ‘“New radio drama sets hearts racing”.’ She jabbed a finger at the page and looked up at Martha. ‘There’s a lovely write-up. It mentions how Mr Quentin Quinn came up with the concept of a city version of Blue Hills and he describes how he writes all the scripts himself.’

June narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you sure? That sounds like a lot of work for just one person.’

‘Gwen Meredith writes Blue Hills all on her own,’ May replied. ‘Has done since the very first episode.’

‘Is that true, Miss Berry?’ June asked. ‘Does Quentin Quinn really write all the episodes?’

Martha barely had teeth big enough to bite her own tongue. ‘Of course.’ Oh, how she might have elaborated so much more for the sake of the ruse. She could have said he was a genius; that he came up with the scripts so quickly she could barely type fast enough to get all the words down; that he had a finger on the pulse of what radio listeners were really after in a drama; that his characters were real and true. But she couldn’t find it in her to utter a lie that big. None of that was down to him. It was all down to her. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she had wondered more than once what it would be like if Kent Stone were to announce at the beginning of every episode: ‘The ABC presents As the Sun Sets by Martha Berry. Episode Four Hundred and Twenty-Three …’

That day would never come, of course. In trying to save the show, and her own fledging career as a script girl, from near disaster, she had in four short weeks turned Quentin Quinn into a radio prodigy.

‘Here they are. There’s Mr Quinn in the photograph with the actors.’ June cleared her throat and narrowed her eyes at the page. That young woman really did need stronger glasses, Martha thought. ‘“The ABC’s head of drama, Mr Rutherford Hayes, said that Quentin Quinn had revitalised the concept of the Australian radio serial by putting his characters in an urban setting, centred around a butcher shop, its proprietors and its customers.” And here’s a quote from Mr Quinn himself.

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