Car 1

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Mrs Valerie Tuck

Outward appearance

Neat page-boy hair cut, green wool poncho over layers of olive and brown. An old-fashioned reporter's notebook on her lap. She chews her pencil.

Inside information

Edits the in-house journal of Otto Beetlehide Ltd, an international shipping company. Valerie's job usually involves buying in freelance journalists to work for branch offices in Cyprus, Denmark, Ipswich.

What she is doing or thinking

Writing an article herself. After a second theft of computer chips, employees in the London office were issued with photo passes. They were sat in front of a camera operated by postroom staff. The results were unflattering blue photographs on badges held by choice of clip or chain.

The article is called What the Well Dressed Beetlehide Employee is Wearing. Val advises how to wear the badge stylishly. "Try hanging it down your back from its chain. This is simple, elegant, and less nerdish than clipping it to your front pocket."

She captions the article's only photograph. "Bruce Clipping, staff designer, models the mixed approach." Her raffish assistant wears it clipped to his belt while still held by its chain from a waistcoat pocket. Val recommends spraying the badges lightly with gold nail polish, "to neutralise the ice-blue, just-arrested look. Younger staff members into punk may wish to clip badges to ears or run the chains through nasal piercings."

Val sketches elongated people holding the badges like handbags or fans. Like the drawings she did in school, back when she thought she was going to work in fashion.

She smiles as if at her younger self. The article will be fun.

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