015

The plans were spread out on the meeting room desk. Sheafs of paper that were covered in various sketches and designs, with tiny notes scrawled alongside each hand drawn mechanism. Conrad picked up a corner of one gingerly with his thumb and forefinger and held it front of his face. He tilted his head slightly to the left so that he could get the right angle on the sketches, but that didn't help any. To him they still looked like the incoherent ramblings of a madwoman. The designs were incomprehensible and seemed totally unrelated – here what appeared to be an idea for an engine for a fan, there an intricate (and admittedly somewhat beautiful) ink drawing of a starling. And the notes that accompanied these drawings looked mostly like gibberish to him – the words that he did understand looked like they'd been written backwards, the rest were simply made up symbols. He sighed and casually flicked the A3 piece of paper back on to the pile with the rest. He noticed some black ink on his thumb and finger and carefully reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, taking care to keep the dirtied hand well away from his suit, shirt and tie. As he wiped the stain from his fingers he grimaced and looked at the faces of the three other similarly suited individuals sitting at the table. He caught the eyes of Carol, who was sat at the opposite end, and raised his eyebrows. She nodded and turned to look at the thin, raggedy, squirrel-like woman standing with her arms tight by her side, looking down, the giant round glasses perched on her nose only a few millimetres away from smashing on to the floor.

'The thing is, Leo,' said Carol, 'we just can't see any practical application for this product.'

The small woman, Leo, looked up at Carol with disbelief in her eyes.

'Practical application?' she asked, her voice quivering slightly (which really annoyed Conrad). 'The practical application is that they're wings that will let people fly!'

'Yes, but so what?' Conrad shot at her. 'Who cares? What an annoying way to get about! We have perfectly good cars, planes, helicopters, the idea that people would use these for anything other than novelty entertainment, and, I might add, extremely dangerous novelty entertainment, is utterly preposterous! What you've got here are some vague designs, which, quite frankly, I'm extremely sceptical about whether they'd even work, and you're asking us for how much?!'

'£10 million...' It was practically a whisper but Conrad still snorted at her. 'And they would work...' she said, staring down at her feet. 'The designs are perfect. No one else could have created these. The engineering and ideas are totally unique. They'll work, beautifully, and... I just need some investment to get started.'

'Yes, but we won't sell any of the bloody things!' Conrad shouted at her. The other three heads around the table nodded sagely in agreement.

Now Leo looked really confused. She squinted her eyes and tilted her head to one side, so that her frizzy brown ponytail rested against the shoulder of her brown polo neck. 'Who cares?' she asked them, looking at each of them individually like they were illogical problems that she was trying to straighten out. 'They will be beautiful. With them humans will be able to fly like the birds!'

Conrad saw Carol put on her best sympathetic look. She looked like she actually cared. God she was good at this. He wanted to fuck her right there and then. 'I'm sure they're lovely, Leo. Really, I am. I bet you worked extremely hard on them, but this is a competitive industry. If we're not finding guaranteed ways to make money then we're failing ourselves. And we have the best engineers in the country begging for jobs here, and I can't help noticing that you don't have any official qualifications, nor any real portfolio to speak of, so we just can't offer you anything.'

That's right, thought Conrad. God knows how you impressed whoever it was downstairs who had set up this meeting. He was going to have to have words.

But Leo wasn't listening. She had turned her back to them and was facing out of the window of the meeting room on the 43rd floor of the Shard building that looked across the Thames over the city of London. She appeared to be doing something with her hands. The four board members sighed with exasperation after two minutes. After five minutes Conrad said, 'This is ridiculous...' just as Leo turned back to them. In her hands was a paper origami bird. She lifted it to her lips and blew on its wings. It flew, just like a real bird, round and round the room, right past their faces, diving to the table and rising to the ceiling, eventually coming to rest by nesting in Carol's hair. The board members stared at it in childlike wonder, then turned to Leo. But she was already gone.