The Crunch Campaign by Kate Hunter Page B

coming over. Cool. See you in a minute. Great.’
    She went to the front of the house and unlocked the lattice door. Within minutes, Clementine arrived. ‘Thanks.’ She grinned. ‘You saved my life.’
    Then Dominic. ‘Hey, so we’re working on a Saturday night?’ He sounded rapt.
    â€˜Yep,’ said Katie, ‘work to do. What can we say about strawberries?’
    They headed out to the tree office. It always felt better to work there. Besides, Katie worried that her mum and Liam Parfitt might show up, holding hands or something.
    â€˜Did you tell Joel we were meeting?’ Katie said, as she unlocked the tree office door.
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Dominic. ‘He’s being really funny about this one. I think he’s worried about what his dad will say if we get involved in politics.’
    â€˜Well.’ Katie turned on the lights. ‘I’m not interested in politics; I’m interested in ads. And Lorraine and I think the way to sell our Lettuce Levy is to do an ad for strawberries.’
    â€˜Strawberries?’ Clementine laughed. ‘Why not lettuce, if that’s what the levy’s about?’
    â€˜People like strawberries more than they like lettuce,’ said Katie. ‘I do, anyway. Lettuce is nothing but green water. We don’t want to make things harder than they have to be. It’s just that the name’s symbolic and easy to remember.’
    â€˜Tuesday’s only three days away.’ Dominic was sitting on one of the long benches that lined the room. ‘That’s not a lot of time.’
    â€˜I know, and that’s why we need Joel on board. We can’t make an ad without him.’
    Joel was the one with the camera and he could edit and animate and turn scribbled ideas into real ads.
    â€˜Well, he’ll come around,’ said Clementine hopefully. ‘What can we do in the meantime?’
    â€˜What I want to know is, who’s the client?’ Lorraine waltzed across the floor. She was still feeling buzzy from her conversation with Katie. ‘You know, like I’m the client when it comes to LorRAINWEAR. I am the creator, owner, CEO, Design Director, Marketing Manager, everything! But who’s in charge of strawberries? We need to talk to that person.’
    â€˜Lorraine’s right,’ said Dominic. ‘We need to make this authentic. We can’t take the prime minister an idea just because we think it’s awesome. We need an actual client.’
    â€˜We have to go to the markets,’ said Clementine, ‘maybe to Rocklea. All the fruit and vegetable people are based there.’
    Katie stared at her. ‘How do you know this kind of stuff?’
    â€˜My Uncle Gary is an avocado grower. I used to spend weekends with his family when I was little and my own family couldn’t be bothered taking me wherever they were going.’ Clementine’s words were sad, but her voice wasn’t bitter.
    â€˜Okay,’ said Katie, ‘I see a fact-finding mission to the Rocklea markets in our near future.’
    â€˜But, Kato, it’s Sunday tomorrow.’ Dominic shook his head. ‘The place will be deserted.’
    â€˜Not at night, it won’t be,’ said Clementine. ‘Sunday night the place is crazy, getting ready for the week. It’s the best time to go.’
    â€˜And the worst time for me.’ Katie felt glum. Sneaking out would be almost impossible – her mum had started making a big deal of Sunday nights. It was their night to ‘spend time together’. Probably because she felt guilty about spending so much time with Liam Parfitt.
    â€˜I can go,’ said Lorraine ‘My mother watches “Midsomer Murders” on Sunday nights. She gets so into it she wouldn’t notice if I was murdered.’
    â€˜I can go too,’ said Clementine. ‘My parents are going to have their portrait painted. The university wants to hang a