Happily Ever After
Harriet Evans
'Funny, wistful and wise, I loved this book' Katie FfordeAbsorbing storytelling at its very best from the Sunday Times bestselling author.The past catches up with you no matter how far you try to run…This is a story of a girl who doesn’t believe in happy endings. Or happy families. It’s the story of Eleanor Bee, a shy, book-loving girl who vows to turn herself into someone bright, shiny and confident, someone sophisticated. Someone who knows how life works.But life has a funny way of catching us unawares. Turns out that Elle doesn’t know everything about love. Or life. Or how to keep the ones we love safe….Absorbing, poignant and unforgettable, Happily Ever After is a compelling story of a fractured family and a girl who doesn’t believe in love.
HARRIET EVANS
Happily
Ever
After
For Lynne with thanks for everything and love x x
She read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u0532a3a0-676b-5067-93dc-4279c2916631)
Dedication (#ue2d943e3-df7a-5f7a-9585-b0a6065e1465)
Epigraph (#ub27dc28b-2e90-5c73-be85-87c0e20038e6)
Prologue: August 1988
April 1997
September 1997
March 1998
November 2000
June 2001
May 2004
September 2008
Epilogue: Four Months Later
Acknowledgements
A note from the author – the books in Happily Ever After
Praise
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
August 1988 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
A Happy Ending for Me by Eleanor Bee
They laugh at me, the girls in the canteen,
But one day I will laugh at them.
Black boots jack boots they are everywhere
But I won’t wear them just because they are trendy.
Oh, you treacherous night,
Why won’t you take flight?
For I am like a little red spot that
That …
ELEANOR BEE PUT down her pen and sighed. She stretched her arms above her head, with the weary movement of one who is wrestling with her own Ulysses. Unfortunately, this action inadvertently caught her hand in the gleaming yellow headphones of her new Sony Walkman. The plastic case was yanked abruptly into the air, dangling in front of her face for a brief second before falling to the ground, with a loud crack.
‘Oh, no,’ Eleanor cried, talking to the floor in a tangle of long limbs, simultaneously pulling off her headphones and thus further entangling herself. ‘No!’
The sound of Voice of the Beehive’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ from Now That’s What I Call Music 12 in her ears was abruptly silenced. The Walkman lay on the floor, the lid of the cassette player snapped off and lying several feet from her amongst a nest of dust and hair in the corner of the room. Eleanor picked it up and stared at it in despair. The door of the bedroom was ajar, and through it she could hear the sound of glasses clinking, cutlery scraping on plates. And raised voices.
‘You said you’d take her tomorrow, John. You did.’
‘I did not. That’s utter rubbish.’
‘You did. You just weren’t bloody listening, as per usual. It’s fine. I’ll take her.’
‘Not if you’re still in that state you won’t. God, if you could see yourself, Mandana –’
‘You sanctimonious shit. Listen –’
Eleanor jammed the headphones on again. Pressing her hands against her ears, she crawled across to the dusty corner and snatched the plastic tinted cover, brushing herself off as she stood up. She stared out of the window at the pale lemon evening sun, sliding into the clear blue sea. On the beach, the last few swimmers were coming out of the water. An intrepid band was building a fire, getting a barbecue ready, for this far north in August, the sun didn’t set till well after ten.
But Eleanor did not see the view or the people. She stared blindly at the rickety wooden path down to the sea and wondered if she should burst into the kitchen, tell them she didn’t want to go to Karen’s in Glasgow any more. But she was also afraid of interrupting them; she didn’t want to hear what they were saying to each other.
Mum’s dad had died, two weeks before they’d come to Skye. At first it hadn’t seemed like that big a deal. Eleanor felt bad about it but it was true. He lived in Nottingham and they lived in Sussex, and they hardly ever saw him and Mum’s mum. Mum didn’t get on with him and Eleanor and Rhodes had been to the house in Nottingham only twice. The first time he’d smelt of whisky and roared at them when they played in the tiny back garden. The second time he’d had a go at Mum, shouted and told her she was a disgrace. He’d smelt of whisky that time, too. (Eleanor hadn’t known what it was, but Rhodes had told her. He loved knowing everything she didn’t.) Their granny visited them in Sussex instead or saw them for day trips to London, which Eleanor loved, even though nowadays it was annoying Granny didn’t understand she was fourteen and didn’t want to go to babyish things like Madame Tussauds; she wanted to hang out by herself at Hyper Hyper and Kensington Market.
But Mum had been much more upset about Grandpa dying than Eleanor would have expected. Everyone’s parents argue, she reminded herself. Karen had said that last week, when Eleanor had cried all over her and said she didn’t want to go on holiday with her parents and her brother. Not like this, they don’t, Eleanor had wanted to say. She was so used to worrying about things – whether she would break her arm falling off the horse at gym, just like Moira at school, whether her mum or dad would die of a terrible disease, whether she herself was dying of a secret disease because she was sure her periods were heavier than everyone else’s, and the letter in Mizz magazine had said if you were worried about it you should definitely go to the doctor – all these things kept her awake at night, till her heart pounded and then she worried that her heart rate was too fast and would explode and she had never noticed that all of a sudden her parents seemed to hate each other. Suddenly something was, she knew, wrong, terribly wrong, and it was only when she played her music really loud or curled up on her bed with a book that the tide of fear seemed to recede, for a little while.
They’d had an OK day today. A walk along towards Talisker Bay where the whisky was made; Dad had told Rhodes he could try some at the distillery, since he was nearly eighteen. The air was fresh and clear, the sky was a perfect powder blue, the last of the midges really had gone, and Eleanor was almost glad to be out of her room for once, outside with her parents and her brother. Just like a normal family on a normal holiday.
The trouble had started today when they got back and there was frozen pizza for lunch. Dad had had a go at Mum because it wasn’t properly defrosted, soggy in the middle, and she’d shouted at him. Eleanor and Rhodes were used to this at home, but Dad was a GP who worked late and often didn’t notice the burnt pasta, the half-cooked chicken Kievs.
‘It’s disgusting,’ he’d said eventually, pushing the plate away. ‘I can’t eat it, Mandana. You should have defrosted it before we went for the walk.’
Mum was on her second glass of wine. ‘Right. Of course, it’s beyond the realm of possibility that you’d make lunch, John, isn’t it? It’s a holiday for me, too, I’ve had a bloody hard time and you don’t even—’
Dad had stood up, pushing the table away, and stalked off into the sitting room; he’d stayed there with the door shut, watching the cricket till Mandana had gone in to remind him about driving Eleanor the next day.
A knocking sound made Eleanor jump. Her mother opened the door, slowly. ‘Ellie, love?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Eleanor took her headphones off. ‘I just –’
Mandana came into the room. She wiped her face with one hand, tiredly. ‘I’m sorry for the yelling. Just a misunderstanding, your dad didn’t realise about driving you, you see… .’
Adolescent rage, made up of anger and fear, boiled inside Eleanor. ‘I know, you didn’t ask him. You drank too much and forgot. Again.’
‘Ellie!’ her mother said sharply. ‘Don’t be rude. Of course I didn’t. It’s not that. Your father and I just aren’t getting on very well at the moment, that’s all.’
‘Are you going to get a divorce?’ Eleanor heard herself asking the question, and held her breath.
‘Love, of course not! What makes you think that?’ Mandana patted her soft dark hair, rather helplessly, and said before Eleanor could answer, ‘Anyway, I just wanted to apologise for all that noise. Daddy’ll take you to the station tomorrow, it’s no problem.’
Mandana’s voice was trembling, and her cheeks were flushed. Eleanor rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. ‘Why are you being like this?’
‘Like what?’ Mandana said.
‘You’re different since Grandpa died. I don’t understand, you always said you hated him.’
‘I didn’t really hate him,’ Mandana said. ‘I just feel bad. I never saw him. He was a sad man, and it makes me sad, and it makes me think about things. It’s just a hard time at the moment, that’s all.’
‘Why was he a sad man?’
‘Look,’ Mandana said, in the brisk way she sometimes suddenly had. ‘Just be ready, get your things ready. It’s …’ She trailed off. Eleanor stared at her mother. ‘Oh. I lost my train of thought, Ellie. Just be ready, won’t you?’
‘Don’t call me Ellie.’
‘OK,’ Mandana said, one hand on the door. ‘Supper’s soon. On our knees, we thought we’d watch a video tonight. Won’t that be fun? I’m making lasagne.’
It was pointless trying to talk to her. It was just pointless. ‘Fine,’ Eleanor said. ‘Thanks, Mum. See you in a bit. I’ll pack.’
‘Good. And – please don’t worry, love. Everything’s going to be fine! You’re just a worrier, that’s your trouble. I think we should talk to Dr Hargreaves when we’re back. Maybe some cranial massage would help you.’
The door shut softly behind her, and Eleanor was left looking out of the window once more.
It’d be better at Karen’s – well, Karen’s granny’s – that was for sure. Only one more night and then she’d be there. She put the useless Walkman on the bed and hummed as she reached for her bag. She didn’t hear the door open again.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Rhodes, her seventeen-year-old brother, stood in front of the bed. ‘Why are you wearing your headphones with nothing plugged into them, you freak?’
Eleanor hugged herself. ‘Shut up, you spazmo. I’m packing, to go to Karen’s, not that it’s any of your business.’
‘You look like a freak.’
‘Wow, Rhodes, you’re so eloquent.’ Eleanor made a face.
Rhodes laughed. Eleanor didn’t say anything. She just shut her eyes and conjured up the image she liked best, that of her brother being slowly lowered into a pit of fire, screaming hoarsely, his eyes popping out, flesh starting to melt away, and her standing over him, nodding at the guard who asked, ‘Lower, madame?’
She liked that image. She had called on it more and more over the last year. There was also the one where Rhodes, chained up and begging for mercy, got sliced into bits by a gang. But this one was the best. She was in control.
‘What the fuck is this?’
‘Get off, Rhodes, it’s private.’ Eleanor lunged, but too late. Rhodes snatched up her open notebook. His eyes lit up, he scratched the back of his fuzzy brown hair in excitement.
‘Poetry!’ He laughed. ‘You’re writing … ha ha!’ He clutched his sides. ‘Ha! You’re writing poems! “They laugh at me, the girls in the canteen” – you bet they do, sis!’
‘I HATE YOU!!’ Eleanor shouted. ‘I hate you, you … you bastard bitch!’ She looked around for something to throw at him, and grabbed Forever Amber, which she was halfway through.
‘What’s it called?’ Rhodes peered at the top of the page. ‘“A Happy Ending for Me.” Ha! Ha ha ha!’ He bent over, and slapped his knees.
‘It’s a good title. What would you know, you div? You can hardly spell your own name, let alone write poetry.’ Eleanor was shaking with rage.
‘God, you take yourself so seriously, don’t you?’ Rhodes said, his pleasure almost manifest in the room, like a dancing devil behind him. ‘You think you’re better than me, just because you read books all day and moon around writing stupid poems. You don’t know anything about real life. You’ve never even snogged anyone, no boy’d go near you, unless they were gay, you look like a boy!’
‘I’m not even listening, Rhodes. I feel sorry for you,’ Eleanor said haughtily. She aimed the book at him. ‘I just really do.’
‘What does “A Happy Ending” mean then?’ Rhodes said. His eyes were bright, his pupils dilated, his breath short. Like he’d just won a race. ‘Come on.’
‘It’s called “A Happy Ending for Me”, and actually it’s—’
‘No. I’m not asking that. Do you know what a Happy Ending is? Have you heard of it?’ He laughed again.
‘You’re so weird, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’ Eleanor put the book down and stuck one finger up at her brother, which was about the rudest thing she knew how to do. ‘You’re such an idiot. You’re only being like this ’cause you’re upset about Mum and Dad.’
His face clouded over and his eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know anything,’ he said. ‘No, I’m not, so fuck off.’
‘No. Go away. I hate you.’
‘What a weirdo.’ Rhodes smiled. ‘A Happy Ending is when you wank someone off. Give them a happy ending. Yeah? Wanking. Rubbing my dick till I spunk.’ He grabbed his crotch. ‘Like Lucy Haines did to me, last month. That’s a happy ending. Oh, yeah.’ He smiled, and rocked his hips back and forth. ‘Oh, oh, oh, yeah.’
Eleanor didn’t know what to say, or where to start. She was silent. ‘You are disgusting,’ she said after a pause. ‘You are vile. Go away.’
Rhodes was still smiling. ‘I’m going. Happy endings. Mmmmm.’
‘Piss off.’
Eleanor slammed the door after him, then opened it and slammed it again, as hard as she could, and then she pushed the chair from the desk up against the handle and put her hand up to her mouth, clamping her lips together. She sorted her books into a pile: the Sylvia Plath poems, the Sylvia Plath biography, Forever Amber and a couple of spare books just in case so she didn’t have to resort to those stupid magazines like Just 17, 19 and Mizz. They riveted her as well as terrifying her, full of silly girls going on about boys and rubbing almond oil into your cuticles – she didn’t even know where cuticles were. It was so stupid, trying to pretend that silly stuff was part of real life, when real life was ugly and horrible, like Rhodes, like this house, like … everything.
She looked down at the poem. ‘A Happy Ending for Me’. She ripped the page out of her notebook and tore it into tiny pieces, her bottom lip sticking out as the tears she had pushed down inside her came up; and as she sank to the floor, Eleanor Bee hugged her knees and told herself that one day, it’d be OK. She’d be a grown-up, and she would have a happy ending. The nice sort. Happily ever after, with a house full of books, a video recorder to tape Neighbours and all the clothes she wanted from Dash and Next.
But even as she sat there, rocking herself, tears dropping freely onto her scabby knees, her dark fringe falling into her eyes, she knew that sounded stupid.
‘London eats up pretty girls, you know.’
‘Not me!’ she assured him triumphantly. ‘I’m not afraid!’
Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber
April 1997 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
‘SO, ELLE, WHAT are you reading at the moment?’
Her palms were stuck to the leather chair and Elle knew if she moved them they would make a loud, squeaking sound.
‘Me? Oh …’ Elle paused, and tried to gently manoeuvre one hand out of the way, but found she couldn’t. ‘I don’t know. Um …’ She racked her brains for the ‘buzz phrases’ she and Karen had gone over that morning in Karen’s tiny kitchen. Karen had written them on Post-it notes.
Buzz phrase. Buzz phrase. Oh, God.
‘Well, I love reading,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m passionate about it.’
Jenna Taylor tapped her biro on the grey plastic desk. She cast her eyes over to the blue fabric wall dividers, then looked back, forcing a smile to her face. ‘Yes, that’s great, so you’ve said. What are you actually reading at the moment, though?’
Elle already knew this interview could not be going more badly. It was like when she’d begun her second driving test by pulling out and nearly crashing into a grey Mercedes which meant an automatic fail, and she’d still had to take the rest of the twenty-minute test. But her mind was a total blank. She could feel the angry red blush she always got when she was flustered starting to mottle the skin below her collarbone, creeping up her neck. Soon her face would be luminous red. She moved one hand. A high-pitched, farting shriek emanated from the chair. ‘Um – what kind of thing do you mean?’
Jenna’s voice was icy. ‘I mean, can you demonstrate that you’re up to speed with what’s going on in the world of publishing at the moment? If you love books as much as you keep saying you do, it’d be great if you could give some examples of what you’ve read lately.’ She smiled a cold smile.
Elle looked around the tiny open-plan office. It was almost totally silent. She could hear someone typing away at the next office space to Jenna’s, and the whirr of the air conditioner, but apart from that, nothing. No one talking at all. They were all reading, probably. Being intellectual. Making decisions about novels and biographies and poetry and other things. How amazing. How amazing that she was even here, having an interview at Lion Books.
‘Lately …’ Elle knew what the truthful answer was, but she knew there was no way she could actually admit it. She was halfway through Bridget Jones’s Diary and it was the funniest book she thought she’d ever read, plus at least once every other page it made her shout, ‘Oh, my God, me too!’
But she couldn’t say that. She was at an interview for one of the most respected publishers in London. She had to prove she was an intellectual person of merit. Intellectual person, yes. She coughed.
‘Well, the classics, really. I love Henry James. And Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights is like one of my favourite books ever… . I love reading. I’m passionate about …’ Oh, no.
Jenna crossed her legs and wheeled the chair a little closer. ‘Eleanor, look around my office. If you’d done your research you’d know I publish commercial women’s fiction.’ She slapped some spines on a shelf, dragged out a handful of thick paperbacks. ‘Gold foil. Legs in lacy tights. I need a secretary who wants to work with commercial authors.’ Her face was hard. ‘If you like Henry James so much perhaps you should be applying for a job at Penguin Classics.’
Elle could feel hot tears burning at the backs of her eyes. The red blush was crawling across her cheeks, she knew it. I don’t understand Henry James. I only liked The Buccaneers on TV. I’ve applied for jobs everywhere and no one’s interested. I’ve been sleeping on a friend’s floor for three months and eating Coco Pops twice a day. I’m drinking in the last-chance saloon, Jenna. Please, please give me a break.
‘… If you’d told me you liked Bridget Jones, for example, or you were reading Nick Hornby, or Jilly or even bloody Lace I’d have some indication that, despite your total lack of office experience, you were interested in working in publishing. Hmm?’ Jenna fingered a lock of long Titian hair with her slim fingers.
‘I do like Bridget Jones,’ Elle said softly. ‘I love it.’
‘Really.’ Jenna obviously didn’t believe her. She looked at her watch. ‘OK, is there anything else you’d like to say?’
‘Oh.’ Elle looked down at her sweating thighs, clad in bobbling black tights and a grey and black kilt that, she realised now, was far too short when she was sitting down. ‘Just that … Oh.’
I know I screwed this up, can you give me another chance?
I really need this job otherwise I have to go back to Sussex and I can’t live with Mum any more, I just can’t.
I have read Lace, some bits several times, in fact, it’s just I can’t talk about it without blushing.
My skirt is too short and I will address this issue should you employ me.
No, no, no. ‘I – no. Thank you very much. It was lovely to meet you. I … fingers crossed!’ And Elle finished by holding her hands up, making a thumbs-up sign with one, and crossing her fingers with the other.
‘Right …’ Jenna said. There was a pause as both of them stared at Elle’s hands, shaking in mid-air. ‘Thanks for coming in, Ellen. Great to meet you.’
‘Eleanor …’ Elle whispered. ‘Yes,’ she said more loudly. ‘Thanks – thank you! For this opportunity.’ That was one of the phrases, she remembered now. ‘I’m a keen enthusiastic self-starter and I’ll work my guts out for you,’ she added, randomly. But Jenna was ushering her out down the narrow maze of passageways, and Elle realised she wasn’t listening, and furthermore she, Eleanor Bee, still had one hand cocked in a thumbs-up sign. ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, as they reached the lifts.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Jenna smoothed down her lilac crêpe dress and fanned her fingers through her glossy hair.
‘Ah. Nothing,’ Elle added. She got into the lift. ‘Thanks again. Sorry. Thanks then – bye.’
The lift doors closed, shutting out Jenna’s bemused face.
I MADE A thumbs-up sign.
Elle weaved her way down the Strand, swinging her handbag and trying to look jaunty. ‘Let’s all go down the Strand,’ she sang under her breath. ‘Have a banana. Oh, what …’ Her voice cracked, and she trailed off. She glanced at her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. She looked awful, that stupid short skirt, why had she bought it? And that silly blue top, it was supposed to look like silky wool, but what that actually meant was that she had to hand wash it. Her light brown hair was too long and thick, tucked behind her ears and sticking out in tufts. She stared at the window again, and winced. She was looking into the window of a Dillons bookshop with a banner bearing the legend ‘Our Spring Bestsellers’.
‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin … I read that last summer, why on earth didn’t I say that?’ Elle smacked her forehead gently with her palm. ‘The Celestine Prophecy – oh, God, that’s the crazy book Mum’s reading, did she really want me to talk about that? That’s not literature!’ She stared at the array of books. ‘The Beach … Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus … what does that mean?’
Elle slumped her shoulders and stared at the Pret A Manger next to the bookshop, where busy office workers were coming out clutching baguettes and soup. She wanted to eat in Pret A Manger. She’d never seen them before she came to London and to her it seemed the height of glamour, to go into a shop with other office workers and buy a proper coffee and a croissant.
But she didn’t have the money for a coffee from Pret A Manger, nor a desk nor a job. Elle caught her bottom lip with her top teeth to stop herself from crying. Come on, she told herself, standing in the middle of the Strand as people pushed past her. Buy an Evening Standard, go back to Karen’s, have a cup of tea while you go through the Jobs section and you’ll feel much better. There’s something out there for you. There is.
The truth is, Eleanor Bee was starting to get desperate. It was April. She’d left Edinburgh University the previous summer, and was still trying to find a job. It seemed all her other friends had something to do: Karen had a job as a runner at a TV production company, her old university flatmate Hester was doing an MA in Bologna, and the other, Matty, was in teacher training college. Her ex-boyfriend Max was a trainee accountant, she’d bumped into him off Fleet Street the other day. It was just before an awful interview at an educational publisher where Elle had not really understood what they were talking about and when they’d said, So do you think that sounds like something you could do?, she’d replied, Sure, can I let you know? No, the grumpy, large, middle-aged man in cords had said. I wasn’t offering you the job. I was asking if you thought you’d be able to cope with the job. Thank you, we’ll let you know. She was sure bumping into Max was the reason she’d been so flustered. Not that she even cared about Max that much – he was using hair gel, for God’s sake, and kept getting out his stupid new CD Walkman to show off to her. But it was the principle of the thing.
In February, Elle’s best friend from school, Karen, had said she could come and sleep on her sofa. ‘You’re never going to find a job in publishing in a tiny village in Sussex, Elle,’ she’d said briskly. ‘Bite the bullet and come to London.’ And Elle had accepted, nervous but also overwhelmed with excitement. London. She’d dreamed of moving to London, of living in the big city, since she was a little girl. She’d conquer it. She’d own grey wellington boots with heels. And have a matching grey briefcase, like the Athena poster of the city girl hanging off the back of a Routemaster bus blowing a kiss to her handsome boyfriend that Elle still had in her bedroom.
But London was very far from the welcoming and bustling literary salon Elle had expected it to be. Notting Hill was grimy, full of cracked pavements and crack addicts, and sleeping on the floor in Karen’s was no fun. She’d been here two months now. She’d applied for every job going, written to every publisher she could find in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to ask them for work experience. But no one was interested. She was discovering she’d been totally naive to think they would be. She’d had four interviews, and this one today, at a major publishing house, was like the big one that had to work out, and she’d clearly totally one hundred per cent blown it. She’d thought she was so prepared: she had read everything, everything, in fact Karen said the trouble with her was she couldn’t get her nose out of a book.
She hated the way she spent her days now. She’d sit in the silent flat, feeling crappy about herself and knowing she should buck up, watching Richard and Judy and dreading the moment when Karen would get back from work and say, in an increasingly unsympathetic tone, ‘So, what did you get up to today then?’ Her social life consisted of going to the pub or sitting around in the dark flat off Ladbroke Grove waiting for the electricity meter to run out. Plus Karen’s other flatmates, Cara the chef and Alex the ad man, clearly found Elle a hindrance rather than a delightful addition to communal living.
On the Tube back to Notting Hill, Elle wondered for the first time if she should have come to London at all. It wasn’t how she’d expected it, and even though she was used to not fitting in, she’d never felt less welcome anywhere, in her whole life. It struck her that if she packed up her meagre possessions this evening and got a train first thing tomorrow, she’d be back at her mother’s by lunchtime. But then – what? She and her mother, in the converted barn Mandana had bought after the divorce, doing what? Would it be worse than being here? Probably not.
Elle had a stroke of luck as she got off at Notting Hill Gate. Someone had left an Evening Standard behind on a seat and she scooped it up. It was a cold April day and she shivered in her thin coat, the paper clamped under one arm, as she walked through the empty streets, trying not to let her mood sink any lower.
It was just really hard, though, trying to find your place in the world. At university it had been so easy. You knew where you were going each day, what you were doing, and with whom. After university, the rules had suddenly changed, and Elle felt she’d been left behind. But the irony was, she knew exactly what she wanted! She’d always known! She just wanted to work with books, to read fine literature, to meet authors and to learn to edit, to have conversations like those she used to have with her Victorian Literature tutor Dr Wilson, about the Brontës and Austen and whether Middlemarch was the great Victorian novel or not and … that sort of thing. Of course, she knew she’d have to start at the bottom – she didn’t mind that at all, in fact she rather thought she’d like it. But that didn’t seem to make a difference.
What am I going to do? she thought to herself, walking briskly, head down. Will I just be someone who falls through the cracks in society and never gets a job? And turns into one of those weirdos who keeps every newspaper from 1976 and carries a brown satchel and goes through the bins? Oh, my God, is that going to be me?
The cold sharp breeze stung Elle’s eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and the Evening Standard dislodged and fell on the pavement, where a rolling gust of wind carried it off, into the middle of the road. She ran after it, and as she picked it up, noticed it was a week out of date. One whole week. She heaved her shoulders, and looked round for somewhere to dump the offending newspaper. There wasn’t even a bin and she wasn’t so far sunk into depression that she would just chuck it on the pavement. She stomped back towards the flat, muttering under her breath, not caring if she was taking one further step down the line towards being a newspaper-hoarding, bin-rifling weirdo, and thinking that the world was a cruel, cruel place.
ELLE SAT AT the kitchen table, reading the week-old newspaper and sipping a cup of tea, glad to be out of the cold, but still shaking at the injustice of the day she’d had. Absolutely no jobs yet again in the Evening Standard. She’d missed it last week; it had been sold out, and even if she’d had it a week ago it’d have been useless, unless she wanted to go into local government or work for a magazine called Red Knave, and she was sure she didn’t.
Washing-up was piled high in the sink. They’d had people round the night before; Alex had made pasta and a bong, and Karen had made everyone sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ into wooden spoons. Elle had wanted to go to bed early to prepare for her interview, but she couldn’t really get out her duvet and lie on the sofa while five other people were glugging Bulgarian white wine out of a screwtop bottle and yelling about the upcoming election.
Elle knew she should do the washing-up in a minute; perhaps then Alex would stop glaring at her when he came in and saying, ‘Oh. Hi.’ Which meant, ‘Oh. You’re still here, blighting my life.’ She didn’t like Alex much, all he seemed to do was show off his new mobile phone and take calls on it, then play Tomb Raider all weekend in the sitting room with his friend Fred. Elle had snogged Fred only the week before, more because she’d been trying to get to sleep and it seemed easier to snog him and then let them get on with playing Tomb Raider than tell them to leave. Plus Fred was actually an OK snog, even if she didn’t have much to say to him. He’d been there yesterday too – but he’d been in a funny mood, and she wasn’t sure he was interested any more, which wouldn’t be a surprise, to be honest. He had a job and a flatshare, he wasn’t sleeping in someone’s sitting room and reading week-old newspapers.
Elle took another sip of tea, and turned from the out-of-date Jobs section to the news pages, cravenly aware this was a waste of time. There was a picture of Tony Blair, meeting some old ladies, and smiling. He looked young and tanned, and his hair was pretty good. Elle couldn’t help thinking that was a plus point, not that it should matter but somehow it added to the overall romantic-lead sheen of him. Tony Blair always made her think of that line in Pride and Prejudice when Jane asks Lizzy how long she has loved Mr Darcy for, and Lizzy replies, ‘It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.’
Thinking of this now made her smile weakly. She closed her eyes and thought about Lizzy Bennet and Mr Darcy, wondering how they’d talk to each other after they were married and living at Pemberley. Because that always bothered her, what happened after the couple got over their misunderstandings to live happily ever after. She couldn’t help thinking Mr Darcy wouldn’t be sympathetic if Elizabeth ordered the wrong dinner service when a duke came to stay. She had seen what had happened with her parents, how vicious it had been, and Elle couldn’t ever imagine that they’d once been in love.
John and Mandana had been divorced for seven years. Sometimes it seemed ages ago, sometimes she could still remember, as if it were yesterday, their old, cosy, normal life at Willow Cottage. The final papers had come through as Elle was preparing for her GCSEs. There was a lot of lip service paid to not letting it affect her exams, and people treated her very carefully, as if someone had died: the headmistress even called her into her office for ‘a little chat’, to see if she was all right. Elle hadn’t known how to answer when Mrs Barber had asked her how she was coping. How did you explain that you were a horrible person, because you were glad they were splitting up, glad they wouldn’t be together any more, glad her dad was going away because these days he just seemed to upset her mum so much? Even when they had to sell the house and move to a barn outside Shawcross, and even when John remarried with what Elle overheard a friend say to Mandana was ‘insensitive haste’ she knew she didn’t care in the way she should. She’d wondered whether she was a homicidal maniac – she’d read a book about them and one of the first signs was a lack of empathy. But Elle was just glad it was over, because it was horrible living like that.
To her secret relief, however, Rhodes obviously felt the same way. He’d gone to college in the States and was now an analyst, working for Bloomberg in New York. The last time she’d seen him was at Christmas at Mum’s, and it had been awful – Mum had been drunk, Rhodes had told her she drank too much and was pathetic and anyone could see why Dad had left her, and then stormed out. Elle hadn’t spoken to him since. Mum always drank too much, but it had got worse, that summer in Skye, as their marriage got worse. Elle never knew what came first, like the chicken and the egg. She only knew their old life, where her parents had seemed OK, was over.
So Elle didn’t wonder what might have happened if her parents had stayed together. She knew the real ending after the ending. She wondered about people like Lizzy and Darcy, or Beatrice and Benedick instead. Often she felt she was the only person who didn’t believe they’d stay together, after the book or the play ended. She couldn’t help it; she just didn’t believe it.
She was pondering this, her knees under her chin, legs wedged against the table, when the door slammed and Alex came in.
‘Oh, hi, Elle,’ he said, not looking at her, and slamming his man-bag down on the table. ‘How’s it going? Any luck today then?’
‘OK, thanks,’ Elle said. ‘Yeah, I—’
‘I’m not staying,’ Alex said. ‘Meeting some guys from work at the pub. Just stopped off to change my shirt.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Elle, who found Alex’s obsession with sharp Ben Sherman shirts half tragic, half touching.
‘Hey.’ He stopped and grabbed the paper from her. ‘Can I just check something? Were you looking at it?’
‘At the jobs, but it’s fine, there’s nothing in it,’ Elle said, desperate to talk, even if Alex obviously wasn’t interested. ‘It’s a week old, anyway –’
Alex ignored her and started turning the pages. ‘Our new print campaign for Cape Town should be in here somewhere, we rolled it out last week and the fucking muppets haven’t sent us any copies yet.’
‘But this is last week’s –’
He ignored her, and struggled to turn the pages. ‘That’s fine. Where is it? Hey! There! How cool is that? Yeah, looks good.’
Elle followed his jabbing finger. ‘“Visit Cape Town, for a World of Possibilities”,’ she read. ‘That’s great.’
She nodded politely as Alex talked, and looked down again, her eye caught by something, she didn’t know why. And there, right in the middle of the Travel section, amongst ads for holiday lets in Cornwall and cheap flights to Thailand, she suddenly saw the following:
Editorial Secretary Required for Established Independent Publishing House
Enthusiastic Self-Starter / Graduate. Must have office experience
Competitive Salary: £11,000
Please send curricula vitae by post to:
Miss Elspeth MacReady
c/o Bluebird Books Ltd, Bedford Square
‘What’s that doing there?’ Elle asked. She snatched the paper out of Alex’s hand. ‘It’s – what’s it doing there?’
‘Don’t know.’ Alex stared at her, annoyed. ‘Actually, Elle, I was looking at that.’
‘Sorry, Alex,’ Elle said, clutching the paper to her bosom and looking at him imploringly, almost in a panic: what if he took the paper away, flung it out of the window, how would she get it back? ‘It’s a job, it sounds perfect… . I don’t know why it’s there, it’s in the wrong place… . Please, let me …’ She stared again at the text. ‘“Send curricula vitae … care of Bluebird Books”.’ She bit her lip. ‘Bluebird Books – I’ve heard of them! They’re proper, they – they’re old!’ She ran into Karen’s bedroom and scanned the precariously built IKEA Billy bookcase, crammed full of well-worn blockbusters, their cracked spines stamped with gold. ‘Yes, I knew it! They publish Victoria Bishop! And … Old Tom! They publish Old Tom. Well, Granny Bee would have been pleased.’ She glanced at her watch. It was nearly five thirty p.m. Too late to catch the post. There was no telephone number, either. No, a voice inside her head said. You’re going to go for this. You’re going to do something about this, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.
Elle bit her lip and marched back to the hall, pulled out a telephone directory, and thumbed through it, kneeling on the ground. Alex came into the hall and watched her.
‘Can I have the paper back now, please?’ he said, reaching forward.
‘No! Just give me ONE SECOND, Alex, PLEASE!’ Elle heard herself bellowing. Alex stepped back, annoyed.
‘You’re really starting to outstay your fucking welcome, you know,’ he murmured.
Elle jabbed her finger on the page, and started dialling. It was a week old, that ad – even if it was in the wrong place, what were the chances? ‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ she said. ‘It’s probably hopeless, but I’ve got to give it a go— Hello?’
‘Good evening,’ said a low voice, a girl’s. ‘Bluebird Books, how may I help you?’
‘Hello – yes. I – er – I just saw an advert in last week’s Evening Standard for the job of editorial secretary – I wanted to ask if I could still apply? There wasn’t a closing date.’
There was a silence, and then the voice spoke again, this time even lower, much closer to the speaker. ‘The job ad? You saw it? You want to apply? Oh, thank fuck.’ She coughed. ‘I’m so sorry. I mean, thank goodness.’
‘Thank goodness?’ Elle was astonished. This wasn’t the reception she was used to. The last job she’d rung up about, an editorial assistant’s job at an independent publisher in Bristol, the man on the line had said, ‘Sorry, position’s been filled,’ and put the phone down, like a scene from a film about the Great Depression.
‘You don’t understand.’ The girl on the other end sighed, and Elle realised she was around her age, despite the huskiness of her Lancashire-tinged voice. ‘No one’s applied,’ she said quietly. ‘Not a soul. I don’t understand it. And Miss Sassoon keeps checking, and we have to have someone in soon, otherwise she’ll go totally mad – it’s been a week, a week, and nothing! Nothing!’
‘Look,’ Elle said. ‘I think I know why.’
‘Why? Why what?’ The voice rose sharply again.
‘Well. The ad’s in the holiday homes section,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a total fluke I saw it.’
‘The what?’
‘Holiday homes. Between an ad for a nice cottage in Norfolk and a bungalow in the Lizard.’
There was a terrible silence, pregnant with meaning.
‘Oh … FUCK,’ the voice whispered. ‘FUCK. She is going to kill me. K.I.L.L.L.L. me. How did I—’
‘I don’t think it’s your fault, is it?’ Elle said. ‘It’s the people who do the ads, they put it in wrongly.’
‘She won’t see it like that. Oh, God, oh, Jesus,’ the voice said. ‘What am I going to do? That’s why. Oh, Jesus. She’s going to ask me tomorrow. Oh, Christ.’
‘Listen here –’ Elle said, authoritatively. She nodded to herself. Go for it! ‘Why don’t you get me in for an interview. Eh?’
There was another silence. ‘Yes,’ the girl said eventually, breathing out with a long whistle. ‘OK, can you come in tomorrow, first thing? She’s not got anything on then, neither’s he. And if you’re rubbish, I’ll just confess and we can do it again so we’ve got someone by the time Posy comes back from holiday. ’Cause she said she’d leave if she came back and they hadn’t replaced Hannah … Man alive.’ There was a loud thudding sound.
‘What was that?’ Elle asked, alarmed.
‘I was banging my head on the desk. Look, if you come in, please don’t tell Miss Sassoon. Please.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Elle. ‘Who is she, anyway?’
‘You’ve never heard of Felicity Sassoon?’
‘No, never.’
‘And you want to work in publishing?’
‘Yes,’ Elle said. ‘Oh, I really do.’
‘Well, you’ve got to get this job. So I’m going to help you. Hold on.’ There was some rustling on the line. ‘Just checking everyone’s gone, it’s Rory’s birthday, they’ve gone to the pub. Well, Miss Sassoon’s father set up Bluebird, ages ago. It’s er, something like the last of the old publishers in Bedford Square and she’s really into that, so go on about that, I did and it worked a treat. You’ll be working for her son, Rory. And Posy, who’s another editor. Rory does crime and young trendy fiction, Posy does women’s fiction, sagas, some of Felicity’s authors.’ She stopped. ‘I mean, I presume you actually want to work with books like that, don’t you? You want to get into publishing? They’ll ask you what you’ve read lately, all that stuff, if you know any Bluebird authors. Have you got something to say?’
Elle took a deep breath. ‘Well, I loved Captain Corelli and I’m halfway through Bridget Jones, plus I’m a huge fan of Victoria Bishop and my granny had all of Old Tom’s Devon stories, but I also studied English at university and my favourite author is probably Charlotte Brontë.’
‘Oh, they’ll beat that out of you soon enough, but it’s a start. OK, so next—’
‘Hold on,’ said Elle. ‘What’s your name?’
‘It’s Libby,’ said the voice. ‘Libby Yates. What’s yours?’
‘Eleanor Bee,’ said Elle. ‘But call me Elle, everyone does.’
‘Do they now.’ The laconic tone was back, and you’d never have known she’d been so flustered. ‘Hello, Eleanor Bee. On with the tutorial. So …’
JUST UNDER TWO weeks later, on Tuesday 6 May, Eleanor Bee stood at the bottom of the steps of a big house and stared at the blue enamel sign hanging above her.
‘I have confidence,’ she muttered to herself. She looked down at her smart charcoal grey trousers – new from Warehouse, on Saturday – and the raspberry pink short-sleeved jumper, at her beautiful soft black Mary Janes with the small heel from Pied a Terre which were only twenty pounds in the Christmas sale and which she was still unable to quite believe were hers. It was a beautiful spring day, and the newly green trees in Bedford Square swayed behind her. In the distance she could hear the clanging of a Routemaster bus bell, but otherwise it was completely quiet. Eleanor climbed the stairs and rang on the front door.
She was so nervous, she felt her knees might give way underneath her. She’d been here before, for her interview the week before last, but it seemed ages ago. Perhaps the whole thing was a huge mistake. Elle couldn’t shake the feeling that she was an imposter – she was only standing here because no one else had applied, and because the terrifying Miss Sassoon, who’d briefly interviewed her, had been impressed that she’d heard of Forever Amber, because the only other person she’d seen had been some daughter of a friend of a friend, and she’d never heard of it. Well, Elle had thought, why were you interviewing the daughter of a friend of a friend? That’s no way to find the best people, surely?
‘So you’ve read it?’ Miss Sassoon had asked.
‘Oh, yes.’ Elle was very fond of Forever Amber. She’d been reading it during the awful holiday in Skye all those years ago. ‘I couldn’t put it down. I – I enjoyed it even more than Gone with the Wind.’
‘That,’ Miss Sassoon had said firmly, ‘is a subject for another day.’ Elle thought she’d annoyed her, but Miss Sassoon had smiled and called for Libby to show her out, and then she’d been interviewed by Rory, who was very nice, in his early thirties, friendly and far less scary than his mother, so she’d relaxed and just chatted, and he’d teased her about liking the Spice Girls and then she’d left, and Libby had rung her at home that evening to say thanks. ‘I think they liked you. I know Rory’s bored of temps and the old lady just wants it sorted out, ASAP. You’re definitely in with a chance.’
And for once that chance was hers. They’d given her the job, and she was here and now – she had no idea what came next. Elle rang the doorbell again, more firmly.
‘Helloooo?’ an elderly voice said into the intercom.
‘Hello? It’s Eleanor … Eleanor Bee. It’s my first day, I’m Rory and Posy’s new secretary, they told me to get here for ten …?’
‘First floor. Please commmee innnn… .’ the intercom said in querulous tones.
Elle climbed the wide stairs to the first floor and at the top she pushed open a swinging door to be greeted by Elspeth MacReady, office manager, wiping her hands on her skirt, and bending double, her rheumy eyes darting unhappily about her.
‘Good morning, Eleanor,’ she said formally. ‘Good to see you again. Welcome to Bluebird Books. Mr Rory is in a meeting. He asked me to get you settled in. Here we are.’
Elle looked around her, taking it all in once more. A real-life publishing house. Where people made books, all day. And she was here, she was one of them! What a magical place! Strung out across the oatmeal carpet on the huge first floor were a collection of yellowing wooden desks surrounded by wall dividers, greying filing cabinets, and books. There were books everywhere, on shelves, in piles on floors, spilling out of cardboard boxes. It was strangely at odds with the beautiful old wood panelling on the walls, the four or five old portraits in gilt frames. She could see Bedford Square in the sunshine from the huge windows.
‘Do you know where you will be sitting?’ Elspeth asked. ‘Has anyone explained to you the rules for the kitty, or about the keys?’
‘No,’ said Elle. ‘I only really – I met Rory briefly and then—’
‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear.’ Elspeth shook her head. ‘Someone should have told you –’ She sighed, and her long thin frame shuddered.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elle said.
‘It’s fine. Now. Where to start. Firstly, each employee is issued with a key. This key is extremely important. The last person to leave the building at night turns the lights off and locks the front door with the key.’
‘Yes …?’ Elle said weakly. ‘Then what?’
‘Well, that’s it,’ Elspeth said. ‘But it’s very important.’
‘Of course.’
‘And we ask that people, if they wish to join, contribute two pounds a month to the kitty for tea and coffee, and Miss Sassoon very kindly provides biscuits.’
‘Right,’ said Elle. ‘And …?’
‘Well, that’s also it,’ said Elspeth. ‘For the moment,’ she added, firmly. ‘Ah. Here is your desk. And this is Libby. Have you met already?’
‘Yes,’ said Elle, smiling gratefully at Libby, who was typing furiously, a Dictaphone machine next to her keyboard. Libby stopped and took her headphones off, raising a hand in greeting and pushing her dark blonde bob out of her eyes. She was wearing Anaïs Anaïs; Elle remembered it from their first meeting.
‘Hi, Elle. Nice to have you here.’
Elle looked away from her, blushing as if they had been caught red-handed, like secret lovers. She stared at the desk in front of her. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said.
‘Is there a problem?’ Elspeth asked, panic in her voice.
‘I have a phone,’ Elle said, unable to believe it. ‘And a computer.’
‘Of course you do,’ Elspeth said. She looked at her suspiciously.
A voice from the office behind them boomed, ‘Elspeth. Come here, please.’
Like a cartoon character, Elspeth shot across the floor. Elle watched her open the old wooden door, saw a flash of a flared dark pink corduroy skirt, a woman whose hair was swept into a big bun, fat fingers with two massive rings cutting into them, and the big carved wooden desk she’d sat at the previous week for her interview. Felicity. ’Rory says the manuscript—’ she heard, and then the door shut.
‘Take a seat then,’ Libby said, watching her. ‘Don’t stand around looking like a lemon.’
‘No,’ Elle said hastily. She sank down into the scruffy black chair in front of her and put her hands tentatively to the keyboard. There was an empty blue plastic in tray, a shiny black phone with a tangled cord, and a wire pen holder, with four biros and a pencil in it. She stroked the keyboard of her computer, opened the top drawer of the desk. ‘There are Post-its,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I have my own Post-its.’
Libby smiled. ‘You are daft.’
She put her headphones back on and carried on typing. Elle opened the drawers a couple of times and pressed the button on the front of her grey computer monitor. She stared at the shelves by their desks. Trying to look like she had something to do, she reached over and picked some books out. There were old hardbacks, each stamped at the bottom of the spine with a gold bluebird, and lots of paperbacks, most of them pretty old, some green and orange Penguins. Lots of Victoria Bishops in hardback, all called things like To Carry the Night and Lanterns Over Mandalay, lots of Thomas Hodgsons: Old Tom On Dartmoor, Old Tom’s Springtime, Christmas with Old Tom … She rolled her eyes. How boring!
There were lots of thrillers. She stood up and picked a few off the shelves. Funeral in the Bunker, which had a big swastika across it. Old historical novels, called things like Katharine’s Promise and To Catch a King. One shelf had a row of copies of the same book, Quantox’s Dilemma, the only vaguely new thing she could see anywhere, by someone called Paris Donaldson, with a hilarious photo of the author, in black-and-white, posing looking moodily into the distance. Elle wanted to laugh. He looked a bit like her flatmate Alex.
But it was the bottom shelf that was most alarming. It stretched out on either side of the desks, row upon row of books all with a heart on the spine entwined with the words ‘MyHeart’. Elle’s eyes nearly popped out as she read the titles. He was a Sheikh … She was a Nurse. My Lord, My Captor. The Dastardly Duke’s Revenge. Devil in a White Coat.
‘Oh, my goodness …’ Elle whispered, trying not to laugh. ‘Libby … what’s MyHeart?’
Libby looked up at her, and then took off her headphones again with a sigh. ‘What?’
‘What’s MyHeart?’ Elle pointed.
‘Our romance list. We publish two a month. Posy’s in charge of it.’
‘So … I’ll have to work on those books then?’
‘Er – yes.’ Libby raised an eyebrow. ‘Why, is that a problem?’
Elle blushed. ‘No, of course not! It’s just … they’ve got such funny names, don’t you think?’
‘MyHeart is the most successful part of the company, apart from the four big authors,’ Libby said. ‘I wouldn’t make fun of it anywhere near Felicity, if I were you.’
Elle flushed with shame, feeling perspiration flowering on her forehead, under her armpits. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to …’ How stupid she sounded! Her eyes were dry; she rubbed them. She thought she might still be a bit hungover. The bank holiday weekend, despite her best intentions, had been a big one, from which she was still recovering. The beautiful weather and the Labour landslide meant everyone was in a euphoric mood. They’d stayed in Holland Park all day, drinking, chatting, flirting. She’d even snogged Fred again, and this time she’d really enjoyed it. It was nice, kissing someone in a park as evening came, feeling the moist grass between your toes, his lips on yours, your fingers twining with his …
Libby carried on typing. Elle sat up straight and blinked hard, wondering what the hell she should do next, when the door to Felicity’s office opened and Rory emerged with a woman in her mid-thirties. The carved wooden door closed again as though someone was standing behind it, showing people in and out, in the manner of an audience with the Queen.
Rory was frowning. ‘We should have gone for it, Pose. It’s lunacy to be turning it down. Don’t listen to her.’
The woman ignored him and walked towards Elle. ‘Eleanor? Welcome! I’m Posy. Nice to meet you. Sorry not to have before. So glad you’re here!’ She was pretty, rather flustered looking, with pink cheeks and thin hair which curled tentatively at her neck and behind her ears; she looked the way a Posy should. ‘Now –’ She pulled up a chair and sat down next to Elle at her desk. ‘Let’s go through some things, shall we?’ She smiled, and ran her hands over her forehead. ‘You’ve met—’
‘Hey, Posy, give the kid a chance.’ Rory stood behind her and put his hand on Posy’s shoulder. ‘Hi, Eleanor. Great to see you again. Welcome. Has Libby been showing you the ropes? You should cultivate her, even if she is a bit stroppy and supports a rubbish football team.’
Libby, who had carried on typing throughout this exchange, could obviously hear enough of it through her headphones, as she raised one palm. ‘Talk to the hand,’ she said.
‘Rory,’ Posy said. ‘Why don’t I run Eleanor through some stuff, take her round and introduce her to people.’
‘Good idea, very good idea,’ Rory said. ‘We can take her to lunch afterwards.’
There was a slight pause. ‘Well …’ said Posy. ‘Abigail Barrow’s just delivered and I have to – I can’t really.’ She turned to Elle. ‘Sorry, Elle. We’ll take you out another time.’
‘Oh, no, please, I’ll be fine,’ Elle said hurriedly. She couldn’t imagine anything worse, sitting with her bosses making small talk. And anyway, she wanted to fulfil her cherished lunch plan: find a Pret A Manger, have a sandwich, and sit in a park with the Evening Standard like a proper office worker.
Rory leaned forward. ‘I’ll clear out. Why don’t we have a chat after Posy’s finished with you. We’re really glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘It’s a nightmare, getting used to things. I hated it, when I first started.’
‘Were you a secretary?’ Elle asked.
Posy gave a snort of laughter. ‘Rory! That’s a good one. He’s never sent a fax in his life. Now, come on, Elle, let’s—’
‘Only ever worked at Foyles and here, for my sins,’ Rory said, ignoring her. He grimaced. ‘I’m nepotism in human form, you know. My mother wanted me to be involved in the business, and – well, I love books, of course, though we need to change. It’s an interesting time to be in the game.’
‘“The game”,’ Posy scoffed, sitting back down again. ‘Rory’s very flash, Eleanor. I’m staid and boring and like actually editing my books and building authors. Rory has a horror of the mid-list and he only likes authors who look attractive in photos.’
‘Like Paris Donaldson,’ Elle said seriously, but was surprised when Posy roared with laughter and Rory, after a second of looking annoyed, slapped his hands on the desk and joined in.
‘She’s sharp, that one,’ Rory said. ‘Yes, like Paris Donaldson, exactly. All the guys wanna be like him, all the girls love him. Gold dust.’
‘I think he’s a prick,’ said Posy. ‘But we don’t agree about anything, do we, Rory?’
‘No, my love,’ Rory answered easily. ‘We don’t. I’ll leave you two to it. Good luck again, Elle.’
He wandered off, whistling. Elle saw the look Posy gave as her eyes followed him. ‘Er …’ she said, after a moment. ‘Right, let’s get on with it.’
By lunchtime, Elle was ready for food, and she could have done with a large drink, too. Her head was buzzing. She had been walked through everything by Posy, who would say, ‘It’s very important you don’t forget to do this,’ and, ‘Please make sure you always check this extremely carefully,’ but if Elle was honest she hadn’t understood about seventy-five per cent of what she’d been told. Posy kept explaining things and Elle kept writing them down in her ring-bound notebook, sentences that didn’t seem to make any sense.
You need to keep an eye on Jews to make sure you don’t run out of stock didn’t look right, in fact it looked downright disturbing.
When proof covs come in from prod send 1 to agent 2 to the author, with note from Posy pp me file the other two, one in the author file, one in the covs circ file. What did this mean?
If Ed Victor or Abner Stein phones get Posy immediately. No matter where she is. If someone called Lorcan phones put him on hold and find P or Tony, don’t let him ring off, impossible to track down.
But if woman called Georgina King phones saying she’s a MyHeart author and she has the support of the RNA, get rid of her. Do not put her through to P. She is a lunatic. Elle had nodded and stuck a Post-it on the bottom of her monitor with ‘Georgina King Lunatic’ in large letters, trying to look as though she was On It. Finally Posy said, ‘Is that all starting to make some sense? Is there anything you’re not clear on? I know it must seem a bit overwhelming, but just ask if there’s anything. Really important you ask.’
Just ask. Elle was so used to hearing that, in every job she’d had, temping, summer jobs, Saturday jobs. Just ask. It was a load of rubbish. They never meant it. If you did pluck up the courage to ask they looked at you as if you’d just been sick all over them. And where should she start, anyway? RNA? Grid? Jews? But this time she had to try. She took a deep breath. Which should she pick?
‘Who’s Lorcan?’ she asked.
‘Lorcan?’ Posy nodded. ‘He’s the model we use on nearly every MyHeart cover. Big muscly guy, long hair, white teeth, you know the kind. He’s almost as popular as the actual books. We’re always trying to pin him down for shoots and he’s never around. So when we can get hold of him, we have to cling on for dear life. He’s the bane of Tony’s life.’ Elle looked blank. ‘Tony the art director. Look, why don’t I take you round to meet everyone now?’
She walked Elle around the floor, briskly introducing her to a sea of faces Elle knew she’d never remember. People were friendly but uninterested. When Posy said things like, ‘Sam’s the marketing assistant, she works with Jeremy, our marketing director,’ Elle would smile and nod, though she actually wanted to shout, ‘I’ve no idea what’s going on! I can’t shake your hand because I’ve sweated through my stupid new jumper and you’ll see my armpits are wet!’
‘Fetch your jacket and I’ll walk out to lunch with you. I need to get a sandwich too.’
Elle swivelled around and realised she had no idea where she actually sat, she had lost her bearings completely. Posy looked at her as if she were a complete moron.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elle whispered. ‘Just a bit confused, can’t remember where I’m going.’
Something in Posy’s expression changed. ‘You poor thing. I remember what it was like, my first day in my first job. I cried in the loos.’
Now I want to remember where the loos are and go and cry in them, Elle thought.
‘SO THEY’RE ALL nice, then?’
Elle took another sip of her wine. ‘I think so. They seemed nice. Rory’s really funny. Posy’s a bit strait-laced, but I think she’s OK.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m exhausted. It’s mental, first day at a job, you have no idea what you’re doing or where anything is.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’ Karen patted her arm. ‘You’ll be brilliant.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ Elle smiled affectionately at her old friend. ‘And Karen, thank you so much for having me to stay.’ She glanced at Alex and Cara, who were next to them, whispering to each other – Alex and Cara had one of those tedious ‘flirty relationships’ where everyone around them wanted to tell them to just get on with it and shag. ‘I know I’ve outstayed my welcome. I’m really grateful to you, to all of you.’
Karen shook her head. ‘My pleasure. You’d do the same for me.’ She drained her pint. ‘Another drink?’
‘My round,’ Elle said, standing up. ‘I’ll get these.’
She was tired, but she practically skipped to the bar. It was so nice to be able to get the drinks in, for once. It was so nice to be able to go to the Lav Tav, the Lavenham Tavern, their local, which was a proper gastropub, with nice food and floorboards, a log fire, and lovely rickety old tables and chairs. It didn’t do cashback – the Elephant and Castle, round the corner, was much dodgier but it always gave you cashback, no matter how perilous your finances. She’d been drinking a lot at the Elephant and Castle the last couple of months but that period was over, she hoped. No more men with scary dogs on bits of old chain or women with no teeth wearing their coats inside and sitting in silence. It was the Lav Tav for her from now on – lilies on the counter and David Gray on the stereo.
Standing at the bar, Elle inhaled with a sense of weary satisfaction. She was in the pub after a hard day’s work. It was a good feeling. She—
‘Eleanor? Wow!’ someone said in her ear. ‘I didn’t realise you lived round here!’
Elle turned. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Hi there!’
It was a girl she’d met at some point in the day. Elle stared at her blankly, and then she remembered her: buck teeth, short blonde hair, unfortunate sparkly grips in her hair and too keen. She was assistant to Handsome Jeremy, the saturnine marketing director; Elle remembered him, he’d smiled and said, flirtatiously, ‘How very lovely to have you here.’ This girl had been bobbing around next to him, and she’d kept saying, ‘Another girlie! Brill!’ Shit. What was her name?
‘I’m Elle,’ she said, hoping to buy time and prompt a response.
‘I know that!’ the girl said. ‘Durr! Can I get you a drink? Are you with some friends? I’m with my boyfriend Dave, shall we join you?’
‘Sure!’ said Elle. ‘Um – I’ll just get these.’
By the time she’d taken the drinks over, the girl and her boyfriend Dave had sat down at the table, and had introduced themselves to Karen and Cara and Alex, who were ignoring them and whispering in each other’s ear again.
‘So how long have you been at the company?’ Karen was asking.
‘I’ve been there a year,’ the girl said. ‘It’s a marvellous place! Miss Sassoon is amazing, last year she gave us all a five-pound Marks voucher for Christmas. When I phoned Mum to tell her, she was like, that’s what the Queen gives everyone at Buckingham Palace! Amazing.’
What the hell is your name? Elle smiled. ‘It seems like a nice place to work,’ she said.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said the girl. ‘It’s great. Dave says I go on about it all the time, don’t you, Dave!’ She nudged Dave, who said nothing and went back to staring into his pint. ‘So where do you live, Eleanor?’
‘Just round the corner, for now,’ said Elle. ‘But it’s only temporary, I need to find a place.’
‘Seriously? That’s so weird.’ The girl sucked on her straw. ‘My flatmate’s just moved to South Africa, it was all really sudden. Really sudden – like she went last week, only told me the week before that.’ She stuck her tongue out. ‘Dave said she was sick of me, but it wasn’t like that! Anyway, you should come and see it. The flat, I mean.’
‘Wow, that’s – where is it?’ said Elle. She didn’t want to commit, but then she caught Alex’s eye, and he gave her a cold look.
‘It’s at the top of Ladbroke Grove, above a cab company, right by the Sainsbury’s. You know that big sign appealing for witnesses for that assault? Right there. It’s actually really safe round there, that’s not a problem, honestly.’ She smiled her toothy smile. ‘Anyway, I’m looking for someone, and the rent’s like eighty quid a week each which is amazing, so—’
A shadow fell over the table. ‘All right, mate?’ Alex said, leaping up.
‘Hi, mate. Hi, everyone. Hi, Elle.’
‘Hi, Fred,’ Elle said, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘How’re you?’ she said nonchalantly, flicking her hair and sounding uninterested – this was something she’d picked up from observing Cara, who had men flocking round her like bees round honey.
Fred nodded. ‘Good, good. It’s nice to see you, Elle, how’s the first day been?’
‘Good,’ she said, pleased. The girl from work was grinning expectantly up at her. ‘Yeah, this is one of my new work colleagues,’ she said. ‘Um –’
Fred waited, as Karen stared at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elle blurted out eventually. ‘I can’t remember your name. I’m really sorry. I – I met loads of people today.’
‘That’s OK. It’s Sam!’ Sam stood up. ‘Hiya! This is my boyfriend Dave. I’m Sam! What’s your name?’
Fred smiled at Elle. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What’s my name?’
‘Er –’ Elle couldn’t believe it, but she had to think for a moment. ‘God. It’s Fred. I’m going mad.’
Fred sat down, next to Alex, who slapped him on the back, while Cara smoothed her short Afro back from her forehead, and took another sip from her drink. Karen smiled at Fred ingratiatingly, while Elle, thoroughly flustered now, stared at the ground, thinking she’d better go to bed early, and then remembering with a sinking heart that the bed that awaited her was orange and green seventies acrylic, and had fag butts stuck down its back. She was so tired all of a sudden, all she wanted to do was sleep, get into work and attack this job properly. Tomorrow is another day, as Scarlett O’Hara would say.
‘So –’ Sam leaned forward, speaking loudly into her ear. ‘Do you want to come and see the flat? I mean, I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but it’s pretty nice and cheap, and I’m going to be spending lots of time with Dave, obviously, so I won’t be around much, and it’s Ladbroke Grove, and you could move in right away, and we could go to work together and be like amigos, you know, look out for each other.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I think it’s actually amazing, in fact, don’t you? The universe is telling us it’s supposed to happen, otherwise why would me and Dave come in here the same night you’re in here?’
There were several things Elle could have said to this speech, and if she’d been older and more jaded she might have done, but she was sick of sleeping on a manky sofa, and she wanted to put her books out and her CD player up.
‘I’d love to come and see it,’ she said, turning to Sam. ‘When’s good for you? Tomorrow?’
‘Yeah!’ said Sam, clapping her hands together. ‘Amazing!’ She clinked her glass against Elle’s. ‘You’ll love it. What a day! Just think, this morning we hadn’t even met!’
This morning seemed to be a thousand years ago. All the things that had happened. It felt as if, finally, she was on her way somewhere. Elle pulled discreetly at the armpits of her raspberry sweater. Amidst the maelstrom of new faces and facts she’d learned something concrete today, at least. Don’t wear tight-fitting, pale-coloured, wool-mix knits when you’re nervous.
September 1997 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
ON THE FIRST day of the month Elle woke early, with a pounding headache. Her throat was dry, her eyes puffy and sore from the crying she’d done the previous day. The room was too stuffy. She opened the window and lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling, blinking. Cool air blew in from the street, though Ladbroke Grove was quiet, and Elle knew suddenly that, even though it was only the first day of September, autumn was here. She sat up in bed, rubbing her tender eyes, as the memory of the previous thirty-six hours slowly returned.
She wished she didn’t have to go to work. Could she just call in sick? She’d drunk an awful lot over the weekend, which was partly why she felt so dreadful, but it was the crying too; she’d cried all day. She had forgotten how crying always made her feel rubbish the next day, as if she’d been beaten up and left for dead.
Elle and Libby had been at Kenwood House on Saturday night, listening to the open-air concert (on the other side of the boundary, so they didn’t have to pay). They’d taken a blanket, some crisps and wine, and though they didn’t have a corkscrew and Elle had had to jab the cork into the bottle with her hair clip, it had been loads of fun. It always was fun with Libby, whether they were eating pasta at La Rosa, the tiny Italian place in Soho that only bouncers and strippers frequented, or arguing drunkenly over books (Elle, at Posy’s recommendation, had just read the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard, and thought they were the best books she’d ever read; Libby refused to touch them on account of their pastelly covers), or films (Elle wept through The English Patient, Libby snorted with laughter every time burnt-out Ralph Fiennes appeared on screen), or boys in the office (to Elle’s fury, Libby tormented her about her alleged crush on Rory, and Elle couldn’t come up with anyone in return for as Libby said, ‘Publishing boys are total losers, Elle, get a grip’).
They’d ended up at the Dome in Hampstead, and drunk even more. It had been a brilliant evening. When Elle had fantasised about the life in London she’d wanted it had been something like this, sitting in cafes discussing life and books long into the night, feeling the city under her feet, the still-terrifying but exhilarating sense of possibility out there. Daily life at Bluebird was alternately monotonous and scary: after four months she was starting to see just how far away was her dream of being a glamorous editor. You didn’t get to be a glamorous editor by sending faxes to important literary agents called Shirley that began, ‘Dear Shitley’. Glamorous editors didn’t leave prawn sandwiches in filing cabinets, stinking out the office for a week with a smell so awful Elspeth became convinced they were being haunted by the ghost of a disgruntled author. They didn’t photocopy four hundred pages of manuscript upside down, resulting in an entirely blank pile of paper, and they certainly didn’t pass out in a corner of the pub after too many house whites, to the amusement of their colleagues. Yes. Elle knew she had a lot to learn.
The two of them had stayed out so late that they were shivering in the night air as they said their goodbyes. As ever, Elle had felt guilty, creeping back to Ladbroke Grove at two in the morning, but Sam had been fast asleep. However, the next morning she woke Elle up by knocking on her door in floods of tears, her eyes huge, her fingers in her mouth.
‘Princess Di’s dead,’ she said, and Elle made her repeat it, because it just didn’t sound true.
They had spent all day crying, watching TV and listening to Capital play sad songs, going out in their pyjamas to the shop next door to get chocolate and Bombay mix and cheap wine and now it was Monday, and life was supposed to go on as normal, and of course it would, because it was stupid, Elle hadn’t actually known Princess Diana. But, like so many girls, she felt as if she had, as if she – not that she belonged to her, that was stupid. But as if she sort of knew her, that if they’d ever met they’d have been friends.
Tears pricked Elle’s eyes as she remembered the coffin coming off the plane, the Prince of Wales standing ready to greet it, his face lined with grief. ‘The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack’: that was Shakespeare, wasn’t it? Oh, how pretentious it was, quoting Shakespeare. If Libby could hear her she’d laugh her head off. Elle pulled the duvet over her, the Monday morning feeling of dread stronger than ever.
Suddenly, footsteps came padding loudly towards the bathroom, and the door was slammed with a bang. Elle winced, preparing herself. The radio came on, Chris Evans’s voice slow and clear.
‘It’s Monday and, well, look, it’s a hard day for us all, and we want to remember a wonderful woman, so here’s Mariah Carey and “Without You”. In memory of our Queen of Hearts.’
‘YOOOOOU …’ came Sam’s voice, shrieking tonelessly through the paper-thin walls. ‘… WITHOUT YOOOOOOOU …’
Sam was ‘a morning person’, as she frequently told Elle when Elle asked her to please not tunelessly wail ‘Mr Loverman’ at 6.45 a.m. Being a morning person, it seemed, meant not being bothered by the fact that you were totally tone deaf. Elle turned onto her stomach and screamed into her pillow, as she did every single morning. If she was ever called for jury service and there was someone on trial who’d killed their flatmate or neighbour for something similar Elle knew she’d have no hesitation in finding them not guilty. Every evening, she told herself Sam wasn’t so bad, that actually they had a laugh over a glass of wine and some trashy TV. And every morning she woke up to what sounded like a drunk tramp gargling with petrol and razor blades, and she felt murder in her heart.
She even blamed Sam for the break-up of her semi-relationship with Fred. They’d seen each other, admittedly rather half-heartedly – he’d gone away for two weeks and not told her – during the summer. The second or third time he’d stayed over, Sam had woken them both up by singing the Cardigans’ ‘Lovefool’ in such a painful way that Fred had left without having a shower, claiming he had an early meeting and needed to get home and pick up a suit. Since Fred was, as far as Elle knew, working in a cafe off Portobello while writing his screenplay that was going to win him an Oscar, this was clearly a lie, but she couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t called her since. Elle had tried to mind, but she didn’t, to be honest. Fred belonged to the era of sleeping on sofas, watching daytime TV and feeling totally hopeless, and that all seemed years, not months, ago.
Forty minutes or so later, Elle was showered and dressed. It was still early, just after eight, and as she stood in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, she sifted through her feelings, trying to work out why she still felt she’d missed something. Was it Princess Di, throwing her off? Or was it work? The trouble was, she could never remember anything specifically she hadn’t done. It was the horror that there was another bomb, an uncollected urgent manuscript waiting in the post room, or another Dear Shitley fiasco, just waiting to explode, that she feared the most. In her darker days – and this was one of them – she wasn’t sure what the future held. How on earth was she supposed to show them she’d be a good editor when no one had the faintest idea who she was, except maybe vaguely as the idiot who’d ordered Rory a cab that took him to Harlow instead of Heathrow? She was still staring into space as Sam came in.
‘Hiya,’ she said. ‘What a strange morning. I feel very emotional still. Do you feel emotional?’
‘Yes,’ said Elle coolly, the post-shower-singing fury having not quite worn off. ‘It’s weird.’
Sam looked pleased. Her nose twitched. ‘We’re so similar. Ready for another Monday?’
‘Not really,’ said Elle. ‘I feel like crap.’ She sighed.
‘I don’t,’ said Sam. She tucked her hair behind her ears and slung her flowery Accessorize bag over her shoulder. ‘But then I’m not the one who stayed out with Libby all night Saturday! Am I!’
She laughed, just a little too heartily but Elle, still cross, bit her tongue. Sam always wanted to come along with Elle. Elle hadn’t minded at first, but after Sam had fallen over onto Karen’s birthday cake at her party in July and then got so drunk she’d passed out at Elle’s friend Matty’s housewarming in Clapham under a pile of coats in the hallway, Elle had started reining in the invitations. They were flatmates, they weren’t joined at the hip. She’d spent her university years being the one who took the drunken mess home and she was damned if she was going to do it any more.
‘I’m off,’ Sam said. She was always in by nine, and usually left before Elle. ‘You in this evening?’
Then Elle remembered. She said, ‘I knew there was something I had to remember. Rhodes is coming over tonight.’
‘Your brother?’
Elle nodded. ‘I totally forgot. That’s why …’ She trailed off, and added, ‘I haven’t seen him for –’ She tried to remember. ‘Well, since Christmas, and then he left early.’
‘How come?’
‘Had a big row with Mum.’ Elle didn’t say any more.
Sam picked up her rucksack and changed the subject. ‘Wow, this manuscript’s heavy. I’ll see you in a bit?’
Putting her mug in the sink, Elle grabbed her bag. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. She double-locked the flimsy wood-chip door, and followed Sam down the stairs, out into the September sunshine.
‘Did you finish it?’ Sam said. Elle looked blank. ‘Polly Pearson? Isn’t it brill?’
Her handbag was suddenly heavy on her shoulder. Elle peeked at it, saw a thick manuscript, untouched since Friday. ‘Oh, my God.’ Elle’s face paled. No wonder her hungover brain was trying to tell her she’d forgotten something. It was two things. Rhodes tonight and now … and now this. She clutched the heavy bag. Of course. ‘I promised Rory … I said I’d finish it over the weekend.’
‘But you’ve read most of it,’ Sam said perkily, holding the straps of her rucksack and whistling as she strode along, like one of those stupid creatures in the Girl Guide handbook. Elle looked at her with loathing.
‘That’s not the point –’ Elle squeezed her eyes tightly shut. ‘I wanted to gather my thoughts, have a proper response. Be … you know, like Libby. Have something to say.’ Rory and Posy never asked her opinion on anything. She was virtually invisible, to them, to Felicity, to everyone. This was the first manuscript about which they’d said, ‘Elle, we’d like to know what you think.’ As though they were interested in her opinion. Libby was the one who could chat fearlessly to Rory and Jeremy in the pub, whom the authors knew when they rang up: ‘Yes, Paris, it is Libby,’ she’d say, if she picked up Elle’s phone for her. ‘How are you? What can I do for you today?’ She was able to go up to agents at launch parties and introduce herself, and she always knew the right thing to say: ‘Hi, I’m Libby, Felicity’s assistant? Yes, we spoke last week! I just wanted to say how much I loved Broken SWAT Team / Mother of All Ills / Lanterns Over Mandalay.’
Sam cut in on her thoughts. ‘Hey, do you want to go to Kensington Palace after work and lay some flowers?’
‘No,’ said Elle crossly, though she did want to, very much. She pulled the dog-eared manuscript out of her bag and started reading it as she walked along the street. ‘I need to finish this before we get in.’
‘Fine,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll hold you.’ She took her elbow and grinned at Elle, as Elle walked off the kerb. A bus swerved to avoid her, then hooted loudly, the passengers shaking their fists at the pair of them.
SAM RABBITED ALL the way in on the Tube, about how much she loved Dave (though Elle had met him but once since she’d moved in), and about how her sister had told her yesterday if the baby was a girl she’d call it Diana Frances, in tribute. But Elle had become adept at blocking out Sam’s voice. She smoothed the manuscript on her lap and began to skim the last seventy pages, eyes darting in panic over the double-spaced lines. It was eight thirty. She had an hour.
The novel was called Polly Pearson Finds a Man, and unusually it had been sent to Rory, not Posy. It was by an Irish fashion journalist called Eithne Reilly, and already there was an offer on the table of £150,000 for two books, a sum so huge Elle found it hilarious.
‘Jeremy says everyone’s going to go mad for it,’ said Sam. ‘Oh. We’re at Oxford Circus already, isn’t it amazing how quickly the journey goes when there’s someone to chat to!’
Elle looked up, wild-eyed. ‘Help me. Does Colette get her comeuppance?’
‘Yes, she gets fired. And it turns out Roland is a real bastard, and Max is lovely, and she’s got it all wrong, because Colette lied to her about the Gucci account.’
Elle turned to the last page.
‘Damn you, Polly!’ Max Reardon said, striding towards her. ‘I want you to come back to Dublin with me. As my wife, not as my features editor!’
‘Max …’ Polly stared at him with huge blue eyes, filling up with water and running down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Max … Yes, please! Only one thing?’
‘What, darling?’ said Max, enfolding her in his arms and kissing her.
‘I want the job too. And I know what my first commission will be. “How To Find A Man”.’
The End
‘That’ll have to do,’ she said, stuffing the manuscript into her bag. ‘At least I know what happens in the end. Big surprise, it ends happily ever after.’ Elle followed Sam as the Tube doors slammed open.
‘Isn’t it amazing? Did you like it?’ Sam said, as they climbed onto the escalator, surrounded by silent fellow commuters.
‘Sort of,’ said Elle. ‘It’s so cheesy but it’s romantic. I loved Max even though he’s got the same name as my awful ex, which shows it must be good.’ Libby had thought it was rubbish, but Libby would. Elle couldn’t help it, she’d enjoyed it, but was that wrong?
‘I couldn’t put it down,’ said Sam. ‘So funny! The bit in the All Bar One!’ She hugged herself, and then whipped out her Travelcard. ‘Here we are, back on Tottenham Court Road,’ she sang. ‘What a lovely—’
‘Look, Sam,’ Elle said, suddenly desperate for a moment of peace and quiet, ‘I’m going to treat myself to a coffee and a croissant. I’ll see you in the office. Don’t wait for me,’ she added, amazed at how firm her voice was.
Elle stood in the queue, hugging her bag to her chest, smelling the coffee and feeling calmer already. Yes, this was a good idea. Sure, it was £3 she didn’t have, but she needed a pick-me-up, because all that crying and wine-drinking had left her feeling very feeble. She’d think of something intelligent to say about Polly Pearson as she walked to Bedford Square, and all would be well.
As Elle turned off Tottenham Court Road, clutching her paper cup of coffee, with her croissant in a waxy paper bag, she inhaled again, and smiled. It was a beautiful day now, the trees in the square at their darkest green, about to turn. She was early, too, for once. ‘Polly Pearson is a serviceable piece of chick lit, which I found to be—’ No, too pompous.
‘Polly Pearson? Oh, thanks for letting me read it, Rory. Yes, it’s very much of the genre but there’s a refreshing lightness of touch which reminded me of a – of a … a sherbet fountain. A feather. A feathery syllabub. Syllabub? Or do I mean sybil?
She turned the corner and checked her watch. It—
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! OH, MY GOD!’
Elle had bumped into something, and the shock made her fingers squeeze together, popping the plastic lid off her cup and pouring scalding coffee into the air.
‘My – God!’
‘Shit!’ Elle cried, seeing her coffee everywhere, all over this large bulky shape, which she realised was a person, a woman. It stared at her, blazing anger in its green eyes, and she felt her bowels turn to liquid. Oh no. Noooo.
‘What on earth,’ Felicity Sassoon bellowed, brown liquid pouring down her face, ‘are you doing, you stupid little girl?’
Passers-by on the wide pavement ignored them as Elle dropped her bag and croissant to the ground, and started dabbing at Miss Sassoon, who stood still, dripping with coffee, her huge bouffant grey hair flattened, her pale blue tweed jacket stained with brown. She resembled an outraged plump exotic bird stuck in London Zoo during a downpour. Elle ineffectually patted her, blotting the coffee with her thin brown Pret napkins. She reached her chest, and was about to start there, but Miss Sassoon pushed her away, furiously.
‘Clumsy creature,’ she said. ‘Get off me.’ She looked at Elle properly for the first time. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
‘Yes …’ said Elle. ‘I’m so … I’m so sorry … Miss Sassoon …’
Felicity Sassoon stared at her, and her eyes narrowed. Elle stood still, the feeling in her stomach confirming what she’d known since she’d woken up.
This was going to be an awful day.
SHE’D ESCORTED FELICITY to the office, into the care of Elspeth, who nearly fainted with alarm when her great leader had appeared stained and bedraggled, the damp residue of coffee-stained napkin clinging to her jacket and skirt, and Libby, who had rolled her eyes at Elle, as if to say, What the hell have you done now? After everyone else had gone back to work, Elle turned on her computer and then, telling Libby she was off to get something from the stationery cupboard, she escaped to the Ladies, where she cried for what seemed like hours but was in fact only a few minutes. She would be fired. Felicity would ring up everyone in publishing and warn them against hiring her. Probably she was doing it now.
When she’d finished, Elle went to the sinks, wiping her nose and staring at herself in the mildewy old mirror. She looked awful: red eyes, red nose, still puffy and ravaged from a weekend of crying and drinking. She rinsed her face with cold water and patted it dry, because that was what heroines always did in novels when they’d had a shock, but it just made her face even redder than normal and took off the Boots concealer she’d so carefully applied to the spot on her cheek. She looked down at the newly laundered towel on the handrail: it was streaked with light brown.
She was just giving another shuddering sigh, when there came a knock at the door.
‘Elle?’
It was a man’s voice. ‘Hello?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Elle, it’s me, Rory. Open the door.’
‘No,’ Elle said, not knowing why.
‘Come on. I wee in the men’s loos, don’t worry. Open the door.’
Elle unlocked the bathroom door and Rory’s head appeared. ‘Dear me,’ he said, looking at her shiny red visage with alarm. ‘What on earth’s wrong?’
Elle burst into tears again. ‘Coffee … Miss Sassoon furious … Poor thing … a punk outside Buckingham Palace, he brought flowers …’
‘What? Who brought flowers?’
‘The punk, he came straight from a night out clubbing and left a wreath.’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I cried all day, those poor boys … oh. Then this morning … wasn’t looking where I was going … I probably scarred her, I’m so stupid.’ Elle sobbed, her hands over her face.
Rory patted her arm comfortingly. ‘It was an accident, Elle. Felicity’s fine. The jacket’s at the dry-cleaner’s already and Elspeth’s bought her some more Elnett, so everything’s OK. Don’t take on so.’
Elle cried even louder. ‘Oh, God,’ Rory said, squeezing further into the tiny bathroom and putting his arm round her. ‘What on earth have I said now?’
‘Granny Bee always said, “Don’t take on so,”’ Elle told him, staring up at him. ‘It just reminds me of her, and she’s dead now too … oh …’
Rory squeezed Elle’s shoulders and smiled. ‘Well, she was right. Elle, please don’t cry. I hate seeing you like this,’ he said solemnly. ‘Now, dry your eyes, and come back out. Felicity wants to see you.’
Elle felt as if ice had been poured down her back. ‘Oh. No,’ she said.
‘It’ll be about Polly Pearson, don’t worry. She’s not going to yell at you.’
Elle didn’t believe him.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Rory said. ‘Trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘There you go. Don’t look so dramatic, sweetheart.’ He bent down and kissed her, only on the top of the head, but Elle stiffened.
‘I’m OK now,’ she said, and stepped away, trying not to blush.
‘Sorry,’ Rory said easily, after a tiny pause. He patted her arm. ‘I was channelling your granny again. That’s the kind of thing grannies do, isn’t it? I have no idea. Mine ran off with a bearded lady from the circus when I was a young boy. Ready?’
‘Er, sure,’ said Elle. She wished she had some powder – her face was gleamingly shiny – but if she was about to get fired perhaps it didn’t matter. She held her head up high and marched out of the loo, followed by Rory, past an astonished Sam.
‘Don’t let her boss you around,’ Rory whispered in her ear. ‘Good luck, kid.’
Elle knocked on the door. It’s fine, she told herself. I hate it here anyway. I’ll leave and work in a bookshop, and I’ll never have to read another stupid romance novel again.
She knew as she thought it that this was a total lie. That she didn’t mind the monotony of photocopying, the fear of failure, if she could just stay a while longer. She liked it here. She liked the feel and smell of a brand new book, fresh from the printer’s, Jeff Floyd the sales director’s shout of joy when Victoria Bishop went Top Ten, the notion that, unlike school, you went somewhere every day and you wanted to be there so you worked hard, you even enjoyed being bottom of the class, because one day, just one day, you might get better.
‘Come,’ the voice from inside the office boomed, and as she opened the door, Elle was surprised bats and grovelling henchmen didn’t fly out to greet her.
She peered inside. ‘Ah, Eleanor,’ Felicity Sassoon said, behind her vast mahogany desk. ‘Come and sit down.’
‘Miss Sassoon – I’m so so sorry,’ Elle began, shutting the door behind her. She sat down and took a deep breath. ‘Are you – all right?’
‘Yes, of course I’m all right,’ Felicity said impatiently. She fiddled with the ring that was always on the second finger of her left hand, a huge antique amethyst in a claw setting. She was wearing a different jacket. Elle’s eye strayed to the locked cupboard behind her, containing, she knew, the fully designed layouts of the Illustrated Queen Mother Biography, ready to go to press the moment the Queen Mum died. No one had seen inside it for years. What else did Felicity have in there, aside from several Harris Tweed ladies’ jackets? A policeman’s uniform, a sexy maid’s outfit?
Elle blinked. Felicity wasn’t the kind of person who you imagined having a romantic life. Though she had been married to Rory’s father Derek, no one knew his surname, and she was always referred to as ‘Miss Sassoon’. Office legend had it that Felicity had given Derek a heart attack, and that, according to Jeremy, ‘He was glad to get away from her. Died with a smile on his face.’
‘Elle,’ Felicity said firmly, looking down at her jotter. Elle suspected she had her name written down there. Eleanor Bee. Mousy. Moronic. Shy. Skirts too short. Scalded me Monday 1st September 1997. ‘I wanted to ask you something. I noticed earlier, as you were attempting to mop the contents of a paper cup of boiling coffee from my person, that you had the manuscript for Polly Pearson in your bag. Have you read it?’
‘Er …’ Elle was blindsided. She swallowed. ‘Yes, almost all of it.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘Um –’ She hadn’t had time to come up with the apposite, one-line summing-up. Elle cleared her throat and sat on her hands, breathing deeply. She had to tell the truth, otherwise it’d be obvious.
‘Well … I actually quite enjoyed it.’
Felicity frowned. ‘Why?’
Elle fidgeted. ‘It’s romantic, it’s funny, it’s really readable,’ she said, trying to explain.
‘I don’t understand how that’s different from a MyHeart book,’ Felicity said.
‘It’s very different,’ Elle replied. ‘I like MyHeart,’ she added nervously. ‘But they’re … sometimes … maybe they’re a tiny – a bit old-fashioned. Um –’
She slumped down in her chair again, afraid she’d gone too far, but Felicity leaned forward. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, one of the last MyHearts I had to check over, the nurse who had the affair with a doctor had a baby by him and she ran away and never told him because of the shame and now he’s all wounded and thinks she hates him,’ Elle said. ‘That wouldn’t happen nowadays. If I got knocked up by someone at work, you know –’ she waved her arms around, getting into her stride, ‘say Jeremy, I wouldn’t go into hiding, I’d say, “Er – hey, Jeremy, what are we going to do about this then?”’ She paused, as Felicity’s eyebrows shot together. ‘Or – or anyone! You know.’ She could feel her old enemy, the blush, spreading over her collarbone. ‘It’s just a bit unrealistic. Like a Ladybird fairy story where everything’s fine in the end. Women aren’t idiots. I mean, those books are really good, but …’ She trailed off again. ‘That happy ending business – it’s all a bit contrived. I don’t ever believe it.’
‘You don’t believe it?’ Felicity smiled, and her eyes searched Elle’s face. ‘How unromantic of you, Elle, what terrible talk for a young girl.’
It wasn’t true either. The truth was, Elle wanted to believe in happily ever after, more than anything. But to admit it would be to discount what she knew to be the real facts of life. So she didn’t know how to reply to this, didn’t know how to admit that she longed, secretly, to have her perspective changed, by something or someone, she didn’t know which.
‘Look at Princess Diana,’ she said eventually.
‘Diana, Princess of Wales,’ Felicity said, correcting her sharply. ‘She was never a princess in her own right, merely by marriage. A fact she would have done well to remember. She is not the example I’d choose, Eleanor.’
‘But she –’ Elle began, then saw they had veered way off territory. ‘I just don’t like stories where it’s obvious who they’re going to end up with. Real life’s just not like that.’
Felicity shook her head, as if she didn’t know what to do with Elle. ‘Well, I’ll believe you, though I do think that’s sad, dear. Everyone needs some escapism, now and again. What about Georgette Heyer? Do you like her?’
A childhood of Saturday mornings spent at the Shawcross library, reading while her librarian mother stamped books and made recommendations, meant Elle knew Georgette Heyer’s name. She said, ‘I’ve heard of her. I’ve never read her.’
Felicity looked absolutely astonished. ‘What? You’ve never read Georgette Heyer?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘I am amazed. Never read Georgette Heyer. My God.’ Felicity bowed her head as if she were a medium, acknowledging Georgette Heyer’s spirit in the room. ‘She is, quite simply, the best. Jane Austen would have liked her.’ She breathed in slowly through her nostrils. ‘And I do not say that lightly.’ She reached behind her and handed Elle a copy of Venetia. It was a seventies paperback with a view of a girl in a cornfield. ‘Take this. I am dumbfounded you haven’t read her. You, of all people.’
‘Why me?’ Elle said, biting her finger nervously.
‘Well, Eleanor, you won’t remember, but I was impressed with you at our interview. You had opinions about books. And you were enthusiastic. That –’ Felicity stabbed a pencil into her jotter, ‘is a very good thing. Don’t lose it.’
You won’t remember. Elle wanted to laugh. ‘Thank you!’ she said, her face lighting up with pleasure.
‘Go away and read that. What a treat you have in store. Now, I’ve gone off-piste again. One of the pleasures of discussing books, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Back to business. Polly Pearson. Why’s it so marvellously different?’
Confident now, Elle spoke in a rush, the words tumbling out of her. ‘Well. It’s about someone near my age, living in London, having fun, trying to sort her life out, and she likes watching Friends and ordering takeaways and even though it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, I know about five people who’d like it, and we’ve not had anything like that at Bluebird before.’ Elle wanted Felicity to like it, she didn’t know why, other than that she wanted Rory to be able to buy it and she wanted him to be pleased with her. She delivered the killer line. ‘After all, you always say if when you’re reading it you can think of three people you know who would like the book then you should definitely publish it.’
The dark green eyes – so like her son’s, Elle had never noticed it before – were scrunched up tight. ‘Hm,’ she said, and Elle detected a note of uncertainty in her tone. ‘Very interesting. I’ll be honest with you, Eleanor. Rory wants us to bid for it. He wants us to go to £200,000, blow the other offers out of the water. He says it’ll show everyone Bluebird can compete at the top. But it’s a hell of a lot of money …’
She trailed off and stared thoughtfully at Elle. ‘This Bridget Jones vogue, it’s lasting much longer than I suspected. Bridget Jones in New York. Bridget Jones Moves to the Countryside. And I’m afraid I simply don’t get it.’ She sighed; a shadow passed over her face. ‘Rory thinks I’m past it, that I can’t spot a good book when it’s right under my nose,’ she said unexpectedly.
Elle wanted to reassure her. ‘Look, like I say, it’s not completely fantastic. Perhaps it’s a bit cynically done.’ She stopped, and realised this was true. ‘And the characters are cardboard thin, like she read some other books like it and thought, “I can knock one of these off myself.” But I still enjoyed it.’
Felicity’s eyes gleamed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That is what I wanted to hear. Thank you.’
Elle smiled with relief. ‘Oh – good. Um – is that all, Miss Sassoon?’ she asked politely.
‘Yes, dear,’ Felicity replied. She got out her Dictaphone. ‘Libby. Email to Rory Sassoon, Posy Carmichael …’ She pressed the Pause button. ‘Read Georgette Heyer. Let me know how you get on.’ She made a shooing gesture, and Elle shot out of the cool dark office, shutting the door gently behind her.
‘How did it go? Are you clearing out your things?’ Libby asked, sotto voce, as Elle sank into her chair.
‘No, it was OK.’ Elle’s shoulders felt as though they’d sunk four inches lower with relief. ‘She just wanted to ask about that Polly Pearson book.’
‘Hope you told her it was total rubbish,’ said Libby.
‘No,’ said Elle. ‘I said it was OK.’ She paused, and looked down at the battered old Pan paperback in her hand. ‘At least, I think that’s what I said.’
It wasn’t till after lunch that Elle came back, much restored by a tuna baguette and a walk to the British Museum in the sunshine, to find Rory standing by her desk.
‘What did you say to my mother?’ he demanded. He ran his hands through his light brown hair, scrunching it till it stood on end. Elle looked blank. ‘To Felicity, Elle,’ Rory said. ‘About that damned book. Come on, what did you say to her?’
Elle sat down and put her bag on the floor. ‘I don’t know,’ she began. ‘Why?’
Rory had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hands on his hips. He glared at her, his face grim, his eyes dark. She’d never seen him look so angry.
‘I went out for the rest of the morning and I get back to this. She’s sent the most fucking absurd email, saying she won’t authorise a bigger offer.’ He scratched his scalp furiously. ‘She says we can match the first offer but no more. We won’t get the bloody thing now, the agent’s after money. This was our chance to show we’re not some piddling old-fashioned grannies’ club, that we’re in the game! She was going for it this morning. What did you say to her?’
‘I didn’t say anything!’ Elle said, trying not to squeak. ‘I just told her I really liked it, that it was a lot more realistic than most MyHeart books, and I said I enjoyed it, Sam enjoyed it—’
Behind her, Libby coughed loudly.
Rory brandished a piece of paper. ‘Asking the younger members of the office for their views,’ he read, in a low, angry voice, ‘and trusting to my own instinct as well, I came to the conclusion that, in the words of a junior employee, “It is cynically done, with cardboard-thin characters, as if the author had read other books and merely thought she could knock something similar off herself.” And therefore not something Bluebird should be spending its money on, no matter how forceful the desire to surrender to a seductive albeit – I believe fleeting – zeitgeist.’
He bent down, so his lean face was near hers. ‘Did you say that?’
Perhaps if Elle had been older or more experienced, she’d have told Rory not to drag her into his feud with his mother. But she wasn’t. ‘I – I did,’ she said quietly. She couldn’t believe this was the same Rory who laughed and joked all day long, who’d been so sweet a few hours earlier, kissed her on the head. ‘But I also told her I enjoyed it a lot, despite all that, I promise, Rory—’
‘Elle –’ he began, and then stopped. He closed his eyes briefly. ‘For God’s sake, you don’t get it, do you? This is a commercial business.’ He clenched his hands into fists. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just – now someone else will make it a huge best-seller and we’ll be left trying to persuade Smith’s to take the umpteenth Jessie Dukes about sisters in the Blitz.’ He leaned forward again. ‘You’re a snob, Elle, you know that?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Elle said indignantly.
‘Yes, you are. I saw you last week, devouring that book at your desk. You told me you liked it.’
He looked genuinely upset. He’d never been cross with her; it was awful. Posy was stern, sometimes a killjoy: Rory was funny, kind, a bit lazy, sure, but she’d always thought he was on her side. ‘I was, I enjoyed it, but I’m just saying it’s not—’
‘Not what? Proper art? Oh, for God’s sake.’ He waved his hand at her, as if she’d disappointed him, played the wrong move in a game she didn’t know she was in. ‘Forget it. It’s OK. It’s her, not you. She’s going to learn one day, and then it’ll be too late.’ He wandered off, and left her staring after him, bewildered.
RECOUNTING ALL THIS back at home to her brother that evening, Elle was still in shock.
‘So I spilled coffee over her, and she didn’t even seem to mind too much! She didn’t shout or anything. I thought I was going to get fired, and then she asked me what I thought of a manuscript!’ She poured Rhodes another glass of wine and drained her own. ‘Honestly, Rhodes – well, you have to meet her to see what I mean, but she’s an amazing woman, really remarkable. Her husband died when she was thirty, left her alone with a small son, and this company to run, and she’s done it – she knows everyone, she’s always going to the most glamorous parties. Last week, she went to the Women of the Year lunch, and Joan Collins was there, can you believe it?’
‘Right,’ said Rhodes, stuffing his face with Twiglets. ‘So then what happened?’
His tone suggested polite boredom but Elle, wanting to make her older brother see how wonderful her new world was, couldn’t stint on any of the details. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘So … We have this really great conversation, you know, about literature. About all these really interesting things.’
From the battered old sofa in the corner of the kitchen Libby chimed in. ‘Elle, that’s rubbish. You talked about romance novels and then she stitched you up. If you ask me she played you like a Stradivarius.’ She threw some peanuts in her mouth and crossed her legs, as Rhodes watched her admiringly.
‘… Anyway,’ Elle ploughed on, ‘Rory was really cross with me, he said I was the one who’d stuffed everything up.’ She remembered Rory’s grim face as he stood over her. You’re a snob, Elle. She hated him thinking badly of her.
‘He’s playing you too,’ Libby said. ‘The pair of them. Sometimes I think I can’t wait to leave that place. It seems all cosy-cosy, but the politics will ruin them in the end.’
‘Mm.’ Elle didn’t like it when Libby talked like that. ‘Supper’s nearly ready.’ She drained the pasta and stared at it, desperately, not sure what to do next.
‘I’m starving,’ Rhodes said, as though he could read her mind.
‘Just applying the finishing touches!’ Elle trilled, slightly too loudly.
If Sam was here she’d have bought some four cheese pasta sauce from Sainsbury’s just in case. Sam planned her meals in advance. But Elle liked to wing it, with mixed results. She grabbed a glass of red wine that she happened to know had been there since the previous day, and chucked it into the pan, then some basil leaves from the withered plant on a saucer by the sink. It didn’t look like much so, rather desperately, she shook some soy sauce and vegetable oil in after them.
‘Who’s hungry?’ she said, clapping her hands and trying to sound like an Italian mamma. ‘Hey? Come and get it!’
Rhodes sat down at the tiny table and stared at the pan, and Elle felt a flash of weary despair. They had a whole evening to get through. Her own brother, and he was a stranger to her.
‘Mm,’ Libby said. ‘Smells delicious. Is Sam coming back?’
‘No, she’s out tonight.’ Sam had gone to Kensington Palace after all, taking Dave with her. Elle was glad she wasn’t here. There was a guilelessness about her that made Elle fear for her at Rhodes’s hands. She knew he’d be vile about Princess Di, for starters. She handed Libby and Rhodes each a bowl. The winey-soy-oil had gathered at the bottom, leaving a faint red sediment on the pasta. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Sorry for going on about work, it’s just been a crazy day. It’s brilliant, but it is weird. You know.’
‘Not really,’ said Rhodes. Elle opened her mouth, but he carried on. ‘Ellie, you didn’t do anything wrong. They’re the ones using you, not the other way round.’ He took another mouthful and stopped, then waved his fork in the air. ‘Hm. What’s in this pasta?’
‘Yes, it’s delicious, Elle,’ Libby said, cutting across him. ‘Rhodes is right, don’t let them mess you around, Elle. Just be careful next time. Rory’s out for himself, you know, so’s Felicity.’
‘Rory’s not out for himself.’
‘Ya-hah,’ said Libby, sardonically. ‘Right.’ She turned to Rhodes. ‘So, what do you do? Something with money, then?’
‘I work at Bloomberg. Analyst,’ Rhodes said. ‘In New York – went to college there, stayed on to do an MBA, got the job at Bloomberg after that. They love the Brits.’
‘Hm. Isn’t New York dangerous?’ Libby said. ‘My dad wants to go, and my mum’s always terrified. “No way, Eric! I’m not setting foot in that place! Who wants to be mugged and shot, eh?”’ she said, exaggerating her Northern accent. Elle knew she was deliberately provoking him; Libby was always going on about how they should go to New York for a few days. She was obsessed with the place.
‘What? No way is it dangerous,’ said Rhodes. He seemed incensed by this. ‘Typical small-minded Brits, that’s what it is. You know, it’s bollocks, this is 1997, those were problems in the eighties, they’re long gone. It’s a fucking great place.’
He pushed his plate away.
‘Sorry, Ellie. I can’t eat this. I think it’s the jet lag. Have you got a pizza menu?’
Elle stared at him, a red flush of fury mixed with embarrassment creeping up her chest to her neck. ‘No, I bloody haven’t!’ she said.
‘What’s that on the fridge?’ Rhodes pointed to a takeaway menu.
She hated the way he wound her up, she wished she didn’t care what he thought, didn’t want to try and make him like her, be impressed by her. It was pathetic. Something inside Elle snapped. ‘You’re not having a fucking pizza,’ she shouted.
‘Why?’
Elle was practically gibbering. ‘You can’t just rock up here and be all, “Oh you’re being stupid and I work in New York and I’m sooooooooooo amayyyyyyyyyyzing.” You always have to be the coolest person in the room, don’t you?’
‘I am cooler than you,’ Rhodes said, blankly. ‘I mean, Jeez, Ellie—’
‘Don’t call me Ellie! It’s babyish!’
Rhodes watched her impassively. ‘Look, don’t go mad,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to see how you were and find out about your job. Ellie.’
Elle wiped her nose with her arm. ‘No, you don’t! You come because you have to, you never ask about Mum and how she is—’
Rhodes interrupted. ‘Hey! You haven’t asked me a single question about how I am. You rabbit on about your job and these people I have no idea about, you serve some kind of soy sauce pasta mulch, and then you start throwing stuff around and shouting at me.’
Elle stared at him. It was horrible how much she let him wind her up, always had done, how they wouldn’t ever talk about the stuff that lurked just beneath the surface. ‘Don’t you understand –?’
‘Yes,’ said Rhodes, nodding, as though he was trying to be reasonable. ‘I do. Promise. It’s just the facts are quite simple. You chucked coffee over the head of your company. Because of this she is aware of you for the first time since you joined, so you actually effectively networked, though I wouldn’t use that method again. She asks your opinion because she needs back-up for her own strategy, and your boss is angry because she used you against him. That shows they both value your opinion, to an extent. It’s a good thing. And it shows it’s not your fight, it’s theirs.’
‘That’s what I said,’ said Libby.
‘So the question becomes,’ pursued Rhodes, putting his fingertips together, ‘what do you do next to maximise this situation for yourself?’
‘Er – does it?’ said Elle. ‘Isn’t that a bit – creepy?’
Rhodes laughed, and flung his leg out, pulling his trouser leg up. He put one hand on his thigh, and cupped his chin with the other.
‘It’s business. The business may be selling books to grannies who like knitting patterns, but it’s still a business. And if they’re at loggerheads you can use it to your own ends. But first, you’ve got to work out who’s got the biggest dick. Pick that person and stick with them. The old lady, or the son? Sounds like the old lady to me, he sounds like a prick.’
‘Rory’s not a prick,’ Elle said. ‘He’s great. Isn’t he, Libs?’
Libby cleared her throat and said, ‘But Rhodes, if he’s a prick, doesn’t that mean the same thing as the biggest dick?’
‘No,’ Rhodes said, still serious. ‘It’s totally different.’
Libby got up, shaking her shoulders. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I have to go. I said I’d meet Jeremy and some of the others at Filthy MacNasty’s.’
‘What the hell is that?’ Rhodes said, looking cross and yet intrigued.
‘It’s a bar, Shane MacGowan goes there all the time. They do book events, readings, it’s kind of rough and ready. It’s cool, you know.’
Elle had been to Filthy’s over the summer and didn’t like it. It was full of young editors and agents in thick black glasses all trying to outdo each other, and when one of the authors had talked about books being the new drug of choice she’d wanted to laugh out loud. She had tried reading one of his novels and it had been in blank verse with no punctuation and no one had names, they were all called Red-Haired Man, Brown-Eyed Man, and Blonde Woman, and of course Blonde Woman had taken her clothes off several times in an allegedly necessary-for-the-plot but basically super-sleazy way and everyone said it was art, unlike the MyHeart books which were of course beneath anyone’s notice there, even though Elle thought the sex scenes were considerably better written. Of course, if she’d said any of this to anyone at Filthy’s they’d have looked at her as if she’d just said she thought Hitler was a tad misunderstood.
Rhodes looked impressed; he was impressed by Libby overall, Elle could tell. She said, ‘Are you sure, Libs? It’s in Clerkenwell, and it’s nine thirty.’
‘It’s fine.’ Libby picked up her coat. ‘I really want to go, and I know you hate that kind of thing. It’s not that far for me to get back from once I’m there. I’ll see you tomorrow, thanks for the lovely pasta soup. Rhodes, great to meet you.’
‘Great to—’ Rhodes began, standing up, but Libby had gone, waving a slim hand in farewell.
‘She’s cool,’ he said, staring down the corridor at the front door.
Elle put her palms down on the table and wearily pushed herself up. ‘The pizza place is just next door. I’ll order you something, shall I?’
Rhodes turned back. ‘Thanks, Ellie. I mean – Elle. That’d be great.’ He cleared his throat, brought his thick black eyebrows together. ‘Sorry. This was nice too – you know.’
She took a breath and smiled at him. ‘Like a … starter, maybe.’
‘That’s it.’ Rhodes smiled back at his sister. Pulling the pizza menu off the fridge, Elle said, ‘So, Rhodes – are you seeing anyone? Sorry to be nosy. I kind of thought maybe you might be, from something you said.’
Rhodes’s head flipped up. ‘I am. That’s weird, how did you know?’
‘I read about two romance novels a week at the moment,’ Elle said. ‘Call it intuition based on experience.’
‘We both have our own skill set, then,’ Rhodes said, and Elle wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. ‘Well, yeah. She’s called Melissa, and I’ve been asking her out on dates for a while, but her boyfriend was this mega-rich WASP and I thought I stood no chance, but she dumped him over the summer, so yeah – I moved in there. Took her for cocktails at the Plaza, played up my British accent, told her all about my idyllic upbringing in the English countryside and – goal.’
‘That’s great – I’m happy for you,’ Elle said, after a pause. ‘How do you know her?’
‘She’s an analyst at Bloomberg too, assessing global risk,’ Rhodes said. Elle nodded as if she knew what that was. ‘She went to Brown, so she’s super well-connected, but she’s fun too. I want her to visit England with me but …’
He trailed off, and they stared at each other, as though he knew Elle could see the collapse of the shiny artificial world he’d created, of a charming English cottage with a mum who bakes biscuits and has apple cheeks, and a super-involved dad amicably divorced from her and with two great new kids and a lovely new wife. ‘Yes,’ people would say, in this fantasy world. ‘The Bees managed it so well. They’re just one big happy family.’
Elle couldn’t say anything back to that. She just nodded.
They went next door to wait for the pizza in the cramped takeaway place with the minicab drivers and the hoodie boys on their pushbikes, and the glassy-eyed skinny blondes, then they came back upstairs and ate the pizza and Rhodes said it wasn’t too bad, not as good as New York pizza but good for London. They watched the news together on the sofa, the hordes at the palace, the Spice Girls in black at some awards ceremony, the funeral set for Saturday, five more days of revelling in this unaccustomed, unBritish grief. ‘It won’t always feel this sad,’ Rhodes said, when Elle gave a small sniff, and she was touched. ‘Promise, Ellie.’
He helped her make up the sofa bed, and then they carried on talking, and Elle asked him about Manhattan, and he told her about the steam rising from the subway, the place he’d been for breakfast only last weekend which was where the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally had been filmed. About how when he’d taken Melissa for their first date, they’d walked up 5th Avenue afterwards and a tramp outside Central Park had shouted, ‘Marry her, you should marry her!’
‘That’s what it’s like all the time, there,’ he said. He asked some more about her job, how Karen was, whether autumn was a busy time in publishing, how long she saw herself staying at Bluebird. But he didn’t ask about Mum, or Dad, once, and Elle didn’t mention them.
March 1998 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
‘WELL, I THINK it looks really nice,’ Sam said doubtfully, as Elle stared in the tiny mirror of the Ladies’ bathroom.
‘I hate it,’ Elle said dramatically. ‘I don’t know why I had it done. I look like a brassy whore,’ she said, running a strand of hair through her fingers. ‘My hair was fine before. Now it’s insane. Look at it.’
‘It’s great, I promise,’ said Libby, applying some lip gloss. ‘It’s the crappy Bluebird sales conference, not the Oscars.’
There was a sharp rap at the door. ‘Hurry up, please,’ came Posy’s voice. Elle, Libby and Sam hurried sideways out of the cramped room. Posy was waiting for them, resplendent in a floral bias-cut Jigsaw dress. She was wearing blue eyeshadow and mascara and her hair was up. Elle stared; she’d never seen Posy dressed up before. Posy tapped her foot. ‘The authors will be arriving soon,’ she said, in the tones of one announcing the Apocalypse. ‘Let’s go.’
Elle had never heard of a sales conference before she’d gone to work at Bluebird. It was basically the chance for an almighty piss-up, as far as she could tell. There was a presentation, some flashy music on in the background, and then dinner with authors and the reps from all round the country, at a Georgian townhouse in Soho.
The marketing department was in charge for the weeks before the sales conference, and exciting-looking things started arriving for the event: Post-it notes in the shape of hearts and 1998/99 diaries with Victoria Bishop’s new title printed on them – Diary of a Well-Worn Heart – and torches with ‘Be Afraid of the Dark’ for Oona King’s new thriller. Elle thought it was amazing, what they could produce; there was still so much about the whole business that, even after nearly a year, filled her with a kind of wonder that she was here at all. She knew it was tragic to look forward to a work event this much, but she couldn’t help it. Besides, after ten months of working there, she loved nights out with her Bluebird colleagues. Everyone got the same jokes, there was always someone to talk to and something to gossip about: whether Jeremy and Lucy the publicity director were having an affair, what Rory had allegedly said to Felicity during their latest row, how much of a bitch Victoria Bishop really was, and so on.
For this anticipated event Elle had even bought a new dress – dove grey chiffon with beading from Oasis – and the previous night, flushed with excitement and an all-consuming urge to be bold and embrace life, she had walked into a hairdresser’s at the top of Tottenham Court Road and apparently blacked out in an episode of lunacy, because when she came to she saw she’d asked them to cut all her hair off into a crop, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been teamed with a dye job the colour of a field of rapeseed. And it was then that she remembered too late that the urge to be bold and embrace life usually had catastrophic results. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said sadly, grabbing her coat and turning off her computer, catching sight of the yellow hair in the black screen.
Someone lightly touched her shoulder. ‘What’s up?’
Elle turned quickly. ‘Hello, Rory.’ She put her bag over her shoulder, trying to look professional. ‘Right, I’m ready.’
‘Why are you sighing like an old steam engine?’
Elle rolled her eyes back into her head. ‘Er – nothing. It’s silly.’
‘What? Tell me. I’m your boss. We have no secrets.’
‘It’s my … hair. I changed it.’
‘Yes, I noticed that,’ Rory said.
‘Of course you did, it’s horrible,’ Elle said. ‘It’s just horrible.’
‘You look great, Elle, stop complaining. That crop suits you.’
‘Oh.’ Elle smiled at him, but then her face fell. ‘But the colour’s so—’
‘It looks lovely,’ said Rory, slightly impatiently. He looked at his watch. ‘Want to come with me?’
‘Oh. Thanks a lot.’ Elle stared at him. ‘You look lovely too. Black tie’s so flattering, isn’t it.’
‘What a barbed compliment,’ he said, laughing as she flushed with embarrassment. ‘Bet you wouldn’t say that to Jeremy.’
‘Jeremy’s different –’ Elle began in confusion, but Rory steered her towards the stairs.
‘Enough. We’re off to the ball, Cinderelle. Or rather, Soho’s glamorous backstreets. It’s going to be a great night, so stop complaining and enjoy it, your first sales conference. And don’t,’ he said, as they walked towards the front door, ‘drink too much. The wine flows like water at these things. Be careful. I’m responsible for you, after all. No misbehaving.’ He waved his finger at her.
‘Of course not,’ said Elle, feeling much more cheerful.
She annoyed Rory the moment they reached Auriol House by giggling at Jeremy, who was welcoming guests in the doorway. They arrived just after the Irish rep Terry, whom Jeremy was clapping heartily on the back. ‘Go on through, Terry, good to see you, mate. Oh. Hello, Rory. Elle – wow. You look great! Love the hair, babe.’
Elle blushed, stood on one leg and then the other. ‘Oh. Thanks, Jeremy!’ She ran her hand over the back of her head.
‘Come on,’ Rory said testily, pushing her forward with a thumb on her shoulder blade. ‘I have to find Tobias Scott, and you should see if there’s anything you can do.’ He fiddled with his bow tie and Elle thought again how serious he looked. ‘Don’t just stand around looking like a spare part. Felicity hates it. Mingle.’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Tobias Scott the agent? He’s coming?’
‘Yes.’ Rory said, as they walked down a corridor decorated with fairy lights and a huge sign saying, Welcome to the World of Bluebird. ‘He’s being a right slippery old bastard at the moment. I need to corner him.’
‘Why, what’s he done?’ Elle liked hearing about things like this.
‘They’ve asked for much more money for the new John Rainham contract. Felicity wants to go on with him, of course. I want to tell them to – oh, there’s Emma. I need to talk to her too. Get working.’ He patted her shoulder and wandered off.
Typical Rory. Elle rolled her eyes and turned into the first room, where a pink banner hung outside reading, MyHeart. Enter the Land of Happy Endings. Inside, a few guests stood around with glasses of champagne and in the centre of it all, a beautiful man with no top on, surrounded by women. ‘They are releasing the calendar early this year,’ he was saying. ‘To fulfil your needs, that’s what I haff said.’
Elle stared at him. This must be Lorcan, the famous male model they used on MyHeart’s covers. Lorcan got about fifty letters a week; Elle knew because she had to forward them on to his manager. He had long, thinning, crunchy blond hair and an aquiline nose. His chest was totally hairless – she looked at it suspiciously.
‘Well, I’m very grateful to you, I must say,’ one of the ladies, short and plump and wearing a silver sequinned jacket, was saying. She licked her lips. ‘I always tell people, without you on the cover, no one would buy any of my books!’
Next to her, a rather harried-looking Posy said automatically, ‘Oh, come, Abigail, that’s just not true! Elle, there you are! Come over here, meet some people,’ she cried with a mixture, Elle thought, of relief and annoyance. Posy was often annoyed with you, even if you’d just arrived in the room – you should have been there earlier, or not at all, or something. ‘This is my wonderful secretary, Eleanor,’ Posy said. ‘This is Abigail Barrow, Elle.’
Elle blushed. Abigail Barrow was one of MyHeart’s biggest authors, and a notorious cow. But she wrote the most hilarious sex scenes, and Elle and Libby often took it in turns to read them out on slow afternoons when everyone was still out at lunch. She was very keen on two things: animals and sex noises. Her heroes always grunted, her heroines always moaned in ecstasy. She and Libby had a favourite sentence, culled from a particularly ripe episode in An Engagement with Heartache, when Lady Anthea is receiving attentions from Lord Rockfort: ‘With a strangled grunt he knew her then, like a neighing stallion knows his sweet lady mare.’ ‘How well do I know you?’ they’d ask each other. ‘Oh, about as well as a neighing stallion knows his sweet lady mare, thanks,’ and then fall over with hilarity.
‘And here’s Nicoletta Lindsay, and this is Regina Jordan.’
Three authors all in one place; Elle shook hands with them each in turn, politely, trying not to stare, but she couldn’t help secretly feeling slightly disappointed. She’d expected them to be shinier, glowing with some secret creative juice that made them more beautiful, more glamorous, somehow. Regina Jordan wasn’t even a woman; he was a short balding man wearing a blouson leather jacket. He turned away from Elle, addressing Abigail Barrow.
‘I didn’t know you’d been nominated for—’
‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ Elle said to Nicoletta Lindsay, who gave her a thin smile. ‘So, how did you—’
But the sound of a gong, growing louder, came down the corridor, and Floyd appeared in the doorway. ‘Dinner is served,’ he announced.
Lorcan took the lead. ‘Let us leave, ladies,’ he said and held out his arms.
Upstairs, Elle was looking at the seating plan. She flinched in shock as someone pinched her arm.
‘Come here,’ said Rory quietly. She turned round. ‘I’ve moved you,’ he said in her ear.
She could feel his breath on her cheek, and she shivered. ‘Why?’ she whispered. She caught sight of the two of them in the window nearby: her in her floaty grey dress, he in black, whispering in her ear, illuminated by the candles on the tables, like a scene from a story.
‘I was next to Tobias Scott, and the old bastard hasn’t come. He’s sent his son along instead. And I’m not wasting my seat on Tom Scott, he’s absolutely useless. Plus the table’s miles away. So I’ve shifted it around. You can go next to him.’
‘But you’ll be on the—’
Rory shook his head impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just go and sit down, will you? Table Three, I’ve moved your name card.’
Elle shrugged her shoulders. Fine. If Rory would rather end up on the MyHeart table listening to Lorcan talk about his 1999 calendar than sit next to Tobias Scott’s replacement for the evening, well, his loss. She weaved her way back to table three, as Felicity, resplendent in gold satin, her hair even more magnificently bouffant than usual, sailed through the crowd towards the top table, escorted by the famous Old Tom, here in person, thin, bearded and bent nearly double.
‘Good evening!’ Felicity was saying to everyone, as though she were Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition. ‘How lovely to have you here. Thank you for coming. Hello!’
Elle found her place and sat down. ‘Hello,’ she said to the man next to her. She looked at his place name. Tony Rooney. ‘Lovely to meet you.’
Tony Rooney nodded and stared into space.
‘So, then …’ said Elle. ‘What do you do?’ She realised she was unconsciously channelling Felicity.
‘I’m the London rep,’ Tony replied, putting down his pint and staring at her. ‘And who are you?’
Elle was discomfited. ‘Oh. Sorry. I’m Elle, I’m Rory and Posy’s secretary,’ she said.
‘Oh, right,’ said Tony. He gripped his tankard and took another gulp, staring morosely into space.
A couple of other people sat down opposite them; Elle looked at Rory, laughing with the MyHeart authors she should have been sitting with, his hand on Posy’s shoulder. Posy was glowing like a Christmas tree. Elle shrugged, trying not to seem disappointed. She had been looking forward to this evening for weeks, but so far the reality was quite different. It was like the evening version of job hunting, where no one is interested in you and the party seems to be happening at another table.
‘So you’re Rory’s substitute, then,’ someone said, on her other side. ‘I wondered who he’d get to swap with him.’
Elle turned round. There was a man next to her, about Rory’s age, maybe younger. He had dark hair, cropped short, and he was tall and angular; his evening dress hung off him, as if made for a larger man. ‘Oh – no, I think the table plan was wrong,’ she lied. ‘I’m Elle, Rory’s secretary.’
‘Hello, Elle,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘I’m Tom Scott.’
‘Hi, Tom,’ Elle said. There was a silence again, and she said desperately, ‘And what do you do?’
‘I’m an agent,’ he said, looking at her slightly irritably. ‘I work with my father, Tobias Scott.’
‘Oh,’ said Elle, enlightenment flooding over her face. ‘Of course.’
From their table, which really was situated in the most distant corner of the vast room, Tom Scott stared out over the massed crowds. ‘I’m not nearly important enough for Rory to waste his time on,’ he said. He took another sip of his wine.
He was kind of rude, Elle thought; there was something she didn’t like about the awkward way his jaw clenched, how his grey eyes narrowed as he scanned the room. Like he simply didn’t want to be there. Libby was next to Paris Donaldson, who was alternately tossing his hair and whispering in her ear. She caught Elle’s eye and winked at her and Elle winked back, trying to look as though she was having the best time of her life, that her corner of the room was a veritable Annabel’s, champagne flowing, gay laughter, wacky fun.
But by the time the first course was served, Elle and her companions had descended into a silence that confirmed what all of them knew: they were on the duff table. This silence was broken only by Elspeth saying in her fluting voice, ‘What lovely leeks!’
Elle, desperate, turned to Tony Rooney.
‘So, Tony,’ she said. ‘What books are you most excited about for summer and autumn?’
‘I’ve been doing this twenty-five years,’ Tony said, lighting up a cigarette. He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Hard to get excited after a while.’
‘That’s good to hear, good to hear,’ Elle said, nodding furiously.
‘Are you taking the mickey?’ Tony asked.
‘No, no!’ Elle said. What was wrong with him?
‘Are you a rep?’ Tom Scott, next to her, leaned forward and asked Tony.
‘Aye. London,’ Tony answered. He balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and shook Tom’s hand. ‘Tony Rooney.’
‘Tom Scott,’ Tom answered. Tony leaned forward, across Elle, as if she wasn’t there.
‘Who are you here for then, Tom?’
‘I look after – well, my father does – John Rainham,’ Tom said.
‘Your father?’ Tony asked.
There was the minutest pause and Tom looked uncomfortable. ‘He runs the agency, I work there. He couldn’t come tonight, so I stepped in. I’m an agent too …’ He trailed off.
Only got a job because his dad gave him one, Elle found herself thinking, meanly.
Tony nodded. ‘Well, John Rainham’s been good for us,’ he said. ‘Good books, great sense of place, good fan base in the shops. They love him in Greenwich, I suppose they would, eh!’
He smiled, and Tom smiled.
‘Wish you’d have a word with Rory then,’ Tom said. ‘He doesn’t seem to see it your way. He’s being pretty difficult about a new deal.’
Elle interrupted, she knew she had to. ‘Oh, Rory loves John Rainham, he—’
Tony cut straight across her. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘That’d be a shame. He’s a big author for me, Tom. Good man.’
Elle sat between them, and drained her wine glass. She tried to tuck a lock of her newly blonde, stubby hair behind her ear and frowned: usually she didn’t need any help to feel stupid. It was more than that though – she felt irrelevant, like a silly girl whose voice was higher, a waste of space. For the first conscious time in her adult life, Elle wondered how she’d have been treated if she’d been a boy.
‘Tom, my dear, how are you?’ Felicity was standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. He stood up and she kissed his cheek.
‘I’m good, thanks, Felicity, how are you?’ he said. ‘You look wonderful.’
Creep, Elle thought.
‘I’m extremely well, thank you. Now, how’s your dear papa? Such a shame he can’t be here tonight, but you know, we must speak to him and sort out that new contract for John.’
‘Talk to your son about it,’ Tom said, smiling though his eyes were cold.
Felicity seemed to ignore this; she actually batted her lashes at him. ‘That piece on Dora in the Guardian Review was wonderful,’ she said. ‘Were you pleased? I loved it. I can’t wait to read the rest of the biography. It sounds marvellous.’
‘It’s good,’ Tom said, and then stopped. ‘Lovely to see you, Felicity.’
He sat down again. If Felicity was surprised at this abrupt termination of the conversation, she didn’t show it. She patted Elle’s shoulder. ‘Good work, Elle, my dear, good work,’ and moved on.
Flushed with kind words from her idol and full of sudden confidence, Elle turned to Tom. ‘Who’s Dora?’ she asked.
‘My mother,’ Tom said. He ate some bread, chewing it with his mouth open, and pretending to listen to the conversation on his other side, between Nathan the art director and Lorcan’s agent, about Lorcan’s next shoot, recreating a Bavarian castle in Teddington.
In one of those strange moments where a greater force takes over and the imagination leaps further than the facts, Elle pressed her hands together. ‘Dora – Zoffany?’ she asked. ‘She’s your mother?’
Tom nodded. ‘Yup.’ He didn’t seem particularly amazed she’d worked it out.
‘That’s incredible!’ Elle shook her head. ‘Oh – oh, my goodness. She’s one of my favourite novelists, we did her at university.’
‘You “did” her,’ Tom Scott said. ‘What does that mean?’
God, what a prick. ‘Studied her, sorry.’ Elle was still red with excitement. More than Barbara Pym or even Rosamond Lehmann, Dora Zoffany had been her favourite of the authors she’d studied as part of the Twentieth-Century Female Novelists course. She had read everything she’d written – eight novels, letters, short stories – umpteen times. In nearly a year at Bluebird, she had met lots of authors and spoken to even more, but to be seated next to Dora Zoffany’s son was something else. Dora was a proper novelist. People wrote biographies of her! Bookprint Publishers had only recently been taken severely to task in the Bookseller for letting her go out of print, Elle had read that very article only last week. And here she was next to Dora Zoffany’s son, even if he was an arrogant loser! She smiled happily at him. ‘I’m so – so …’ she started, and then trailed off.
Tom said, ‘What? So impressed? Think I’m more interesting now?’ He ate some more bread.
Elle was stung. ‘No –’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just I really do love your mother’s books.’
‘So do a lot of people,’ said Tom, folding his napkin up into a tight square.
‘Well – all I mean is, you must be very proud of her.’
‘Of course I am,’ he said. He turned to her, a frown puckering his forehead. ‘It’s just I don’t generally sit there thinking of her as a world-class novelist, you know. She was just my mum.’
‘OK. I’m sorry.’ Elle gave up. Fair enough. He obviously didn’t want to talk about her, and she could hear her voice, sounding high and stupid again. She wished she could simply say how much his mother’s books meant to her, and how sad she’d been when she’d died, three years ago.
But Tom Scott didn’t seem to need her sympathy or attention. He turned away and began a conversation with Lorcan’s agent, so that his back was almost facing Elle. Thankfully, just then the tables were swapped so that each rep was moved around, and Tony Rooney left after the chicken, to be replaced by Jeanette, who covered Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and who was lovely, if a little obsessed with the sales ordering systems and their implementation. At least she looked Elle in the eye, though, and they had a long conversation about stock levels and ordering up books from the warehouse which Elle, after the evening so far, found extremely comforting.
By pudding, Elle was a bit drunk. She was two glasses of champagne and several glasses of wine down. Not that it seemed to matter – everyone else was, too. The noise was louder and as pudding was served, the dinner began to break up. Tom Scott stood up and nodded at her.
‘Nice to meet you, Elle,’ he said. ‘Good luck with the job.’
‘She doesn’t need any luck,’ a voice behind her said, and Elle looked up to see Rory behind her. He patted her head. ‘She’s the best, aren’t you, Elle?’
‘Sure she is,’ Tom shrugged, and the shoulder pads in his too-big dinner jacket rose up and down again. ‘Sorry to have missed you this evening, Rory.’
‘Yes,’ Rory said easily. ‘We need to talk soon. Are you around tomorrow?’
Elle saw the flash of panic in Tom Scott’s eyes. He’s totally out of his depth, she thought. ‘Er, sure. Give me a – no, I’ll call you.’
‘I’ll try you as well. Thanks for coming, Ambrose.’
‘Ambrose?’ Elle said, more to herself, picking a grape off its stalk.
Tom ignored this. ‘Bye, then,’ he said, and walked away.
‘Why’d you call him Ambrose?’ Elle stood up, feeling a bit dizzy.
Rory laughed. ‘That’s his real name. Hilarious, eh? Changed it when he went to university. His mother knew mine, I used to have to play with him when we went for lunch there, he was a total square, really holier than thou.’
‘I felt a bit sorry for him,’ Elle heard herself say, to her surprise. She watched Tom walk towards the exit, unnoticed by anyone except her, his thin shoulders hunched, his expression dark.
‘Don’t,’ said Rory. ‘I can say this ’cause I know what it’s like. Loathes the job, loathes himself. I just want to shout “Get a Life” whenever I see him. Anyway, forget about Tom Scott. What’s going on?’
Elle shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Is there anything that needs doing? Anyone I need to look after?’
‘Me,’ said Rory, and he put his arm round her. ‘Let’s get another drink. Jeremy’s settling in at the bar over there. Come on.’
It was about one thirty when Elle looked around the room and realised she was, now, way too drunk to be out any more. Four years in Edinburgh had taught her many things, possibly the most useful of which was that she knew she could drink up to a certain point, but after that never did anything interesting like dancing on the bar with her top off or snogging random strangers. She would merely fall over and then probably be sick. The disco had started at eleven and was still going strong; Jeremy was singing along to the Proclaimers and dancing with Oona King. Floyd and a few of the reps were standing around in a circle, pints in hand, tapping their feet to the music and eyeing up various people. Posy and Loo Seat, aka Lucy, were having an intense conversation in a corner about something that involved them stopping to drink more wine and hug each other every few minutes, both with tears in their eyes.
Elle was standing at the bar with Rory, Joseph Mile – the reference books editor – and Sam. They were talking about their favourite books. ‘Your favourite book is Live and Let Die?’ Joseph Mile was astonished. ‘I must say I’m surprised, even for you, Rory.’
‘Well, it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it?’ Rory said. ‘It’s a bloody great book. What’s yours?’
‘I struggle between Felix Holt, The Radical, or Jude the Obscure,’ said Joseph Mile, pushing his fingertips together. ‘Probably the latter.’
How can he be this sober? Elle thought. She shrank against the counter, hoping he’d ignore her.
‘And you, Sam?’ Joseph Mile said.
‘Autumn of Terror,’ Sam said promptly. ‘It’s the best book there is on Jack the Ripper. It is amazing.’
‘Oh.’ Joseph Mile looked as though someone had just presented him with a bucket of vomit. ‘Hm. Elle? You have a favourite book?’
Elle put her hand on the sticky bar surface to steady herself. She couldn’t think of what her favourite book was, all of a sudden. She racked her brains. ‘Jane Eyre,’ she said, which was partly true and also because, the previous Saturday evening, she and Libby had rented the video of the newest version starring Ciarán Hinds. ‘Ah,’ said Joseph Mile, drawing a deep breath to expound further. ‘How interesting.’ Next to him, Rory watched Elle, a strange expression on his face.
‘She’s the best heroine –’ Elle began, feeling she ought to expound on exactly why Jane Eyre was a good book. Then she heard herself and stopped. It was suddenly too hot in the room; Elle put her hand to her forehead. ‘The red-room,’ she muttered, turning away from Joseph and Rory towards Sam. ‘The red-room.’
‘What?’ said Sam.
‘Sam, I have to … I’m going … go home.’
Sam nodded enthusiastically. ‘Cool, cool.’
‘I’m getting to go a cab, Sam?’ Sam nodded again, and Elle shook her by the shoulders, intently. ‘Sam! I’m getting to go a – getting to go a cab! Listen. You come with me?’
‘I’m going to stay a bit,’ Sam said happily.
‘You sure? You can come with me.’
‘Sure.’ Sam looked at Jeremy, who was now dancing to Stevie Wonder. She waved at him, and he waved back at her, then at Elle: Elle blushed. Rory caught her eye and smiled. ‘Think I’m going to stay,’ Sam said. ‘See you later.’
‘OK, well, OK then.’ Elle raised her hand. ‘I’m off.’
‘Bye,’ said Sam. Joseph Mile raised his eyebrows very delicately. Rory kissed her cheek.
‘You be all right?’ he said.
Another flush of heat and wine flooded through her. She needed to get out. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, almost impatiently, and she went downstairs gingerly, her feet now aching in her shoes.
It was a wet, cold night as Elle emerged into a rubbish-strewn side street in Soho. The rain was slick on the ground, and it was eerily empty. She shivered, and looked back up at the lights of the house, still blazing in the dark. She wasn’t quite sure where she was, she still found Soho extremely confusing, so she set off to walk towards what she hoped was the direction of Regent Street.
Her heels clicked on the splashy streets. She pulled her coat tightly around her. There was a noise behind her, and she heard someone running.
‘Hello?’
Elle kept on walking, slightly faster, and didn’t turn round. ‘Hey – Ello?’
Were they saying Elle or Hello? She couldn’t tell. Elle started to trot.
‘Come back!’ The footsteps were almost behind her.
‘Elle! Eleanor Bee!’
She stopped and turned around, as the person caught up with her.
‘Rory?’ she said.
‘I came down to make sure you were OK,’ he said. ‘Suddenly occurred to me I shouldn’t be letting my employees stride off on their own. Especially when—’
‘I’m not drunk!’ Elle said indignantly.
Rory changed the subject. ‘I saw you leave and I know this is a dead end –’ He gestured ahead of him, and Elle saw that the space she’d hoped was a passageway was in fact an entrance to an office block.
‘Oh –’
He steered her back down the road, and turned left again.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Elle, embarrassed, as they walked through the quiet street. ‘I’ll be OK from here. You can go back.’
‘I was leaving anyway,’ said Rory. ‘It’s fine, honestly.’
There was an awkward silence, as Elle tried to think of something to say, not fall over on the cobbles, and not be hopelessly drunk in front of her boss. Eventually, they turned into another street.
‘We’re on Wardour Street,’ Rory said. ‘Here we go.’ He stuck his hand out. ‘I’ll see you part of the way, is that OK?’
‘Sure, sure –’ said Elle, as Rory opened the door to the cab and she climbed in. ‘Aren’t you – don’t you live the other way, though?’
‘I’m staying in Notting Hill with some friends,’ he said, climbing in after her. ‘I’m having my kitchen done.’
She turned to look at him as the cab moved slowly off. ‘Well, thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks a lot. You’re good boss.’
‘Am I?’ Rory smiled down at her, his face dark in the cab. She knew his face so well, knew him so well, how he drummed his fingers on any spare surface, how he looked vague when trying to get out of things, how his mouth curled to the side when he was making a joke. But she’d never sat this close to him before, because he was her boss. It didn’t feel like that tonight. It was as if they were different people. It was nice. Rory was nice, but then, she’d always known that.
‘Yes, you are,’ she told him. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit drunk. But I can say it ’cause I’m drunk. You’re really nice man. And I like you.’
‘Well,’ Rory said softly. ‘I like you.’
He leaned over, and put his hand gently on her cheek, and kissed her. Elle didn’t move for a second, but then she relaxed, and kissed him back. Rory slid his other arm round her and pulled her towards him. She could taste wine and cigarettes on him; she knew he was drunk too. The funny thing was, it should have felt odd. But it didn’t. He carried on kissing her, and she slid her tongue into his mouth, loving the taste of him, suddenly desperate to feel more. His hand moved over her body, gently tracing the outline of her breast, and it felt wonderful, his fingers on her dress, the fabric moving against her hot skin.
After a minute, Elle broke away, her lips throbbing, her cheeks burning. She looked into the rear-view mirror, but the cab driver was gazing straight ahead. She glanced at Rory, and gave a weak laugh.
‘What?’ he said, stroking her cheek.
‘I’m going to wake up tomorrow and think, “Oh, my God, I kissed Rory last night,”’ Elle mumbled, into his shoulder.
Rory closed his eyes and smiled. ‘What will you think after that?’
‘How lovely it was.’
He kissed her again. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ Elle said. ‘This is weird,’ she added.
‘I don’t think so,’ Rory said, smiling, and she looked at him and knew he was much drunker than she’d realised, but it was Rory, it’d be OK, wouldn’t it?
Vaguely Elle wondered if she’d wake up in a minute, or what would happen tomorrow, at work: would she lose her job, would people find out, was this the right thing to do? But as she looked down at his hand, moving up her leg, she knew that at this exact moment, she didn’t care. He was a man, she was a woman. Worry about it tomorrow, Elle, she told herself. Just for once, worry about it tomorrow.
‘I thought you liked Jeremy,’ Rory whispered in her ear. She could feel his warm breath against her skin, her neck.
‘I like you more,’ said Elle simply, without time to think this through, and she realised it was true as she said it. She kissed him again.
‘Oh, really,’ Rory said. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.’
He pulled her towards him, as the cab rolled west through the rainy, deserted streets.
I have noticed that when things happen in one’s imaginings, they never happen in one’s life, so I am curbing myself.
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
November 2000 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)
IT HAD RAINED for almost two weeks now, non-stop. Huge swathes of the countryside lay under water, and Elle was becoming used to opening her curtains every morning to grey skies, slicing rain on metallic streets. Her umbrella was never dry; it sat, soggy, in the bottom of her damp handbag.
Elle hurried up the stairs of the Savoy and paused at the entrance to the American Bar, gathering herself. She ran her hands through her hair, then rummaged for some lip gloss. She had dressed with care this morning; but she wished she wasn’t so nervous. Coming somewhere like here didn’t bother her these days. Agents didn’t bother her, authors, bosses – she wasn’t a little girl any more, she was twenty-six now. No, it was the meeting itself she was dreading, and why? It was only them, after all. She smiled at the urbane waiter at the door and scanned the room, trying to look calm, confident.
‘Elle, love? Over here!’ someone called from the furthest corner of the bar. ‘We’re here!’
Her mother was standing up, waving enthusiastically. Her voice was too loud; Elle walked over, feeling herself flushing with embarrassment. Mandana was smiling, her face red with pleasure. Elle returned her tight hug, thinking how thin she was, birdlike in fact.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she said, kissing her father on the cheek.
Her father and brother had stood up, identical in shape, both twice the size of her mother. ‘Hi, Elle, love,’ John said. He gave her a strong hug. ‘Lovely to see you.’
‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ She hugged him back. ‘I got caught up at work, I was editing—’
‘It’s fine.’ Rhodes gestured for her to sit down. ‘You’re here now. We’ll get you a drink. So this –’ he stepped aside, as if he were making a big reveal with a cloak, ‘is Melissa.’
Elle leaned forward and shook hands with Melissa, who stayed seated. ‘Hi!’ she said, smiling to reveal perfect white teeth. ‘It’s such a pleasure finally to meet Rhodes’s sister. He’s told me so much about you!’ Her grey cashmere cardigan slid off one slim shoulder. Melissa gracefully slipped it back into place, and put her hands back in her lap.
‘Waiter?’ Rhodes called. ‘Elle, what do you want?’
As Elle looked for a seat, her parents moved so far apart that she had no choice but to sit between them. She put her bag on the floor, and glanced blankly at the menu. ‘Oh – er –’ she said.
‘Elle?’ Rhodes said again.
‘Oh – I’ll have a vodka Martini please, with a twist,’ said Elle, and then instantly wished she hadn’t. She had wanted to seem sophisticated, and it looked quite the opposite, ostentatious and stupid, and besides, lately, she had stopped drinking when Mum was around.
‘Mum?’ Rhodes said. ‘Another drink?’
There was a pause. ‘Oh, I’ll stick to the orange juice, thanks!’ Mandana said. She raised her glass. The hand that clutched the tumbler shook slightly.
Having taken the rest of the order, the waiter moved off and there was a silence.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Elle apologised again. ‘I have to go on somewhere afterwards, and I was in meetings all day.’
It was the wrong thing to say. Rhodes’s nostrils flared. ‘Melissa, you should know we’re lucky Elle’s been able to drop by, even for a few minutes—’
Melissa cut in, smiling again. ‘Wonderful that you’re here, anyway!’ she said. ‘And wonderful to meet you all.’
There was another silence. The last time her family had been together was when Elle had graduated from Edinburgh, over four years ago. Before that, God only knew. She stole a glance at her father, immaculate in his dark blue wool suit. He looked older than Elle remembered, but he always did. In her mind, he was ten years younger, around the time he’d left. It was strange, how ageing affected people. It was in his eyes, around his mouth. An expression; she couldn’t explain it. Elle smiled at Melissa.
‘So, welcome to the UK!’ she said brightly. ‘What have you been doing since you arrived? Have you been on the London Eye?’
‘Actually, I did a Masters at LSE so I’ve spent a lot of time in London’, Melissa said, one slim, perfectly manicured finger fiddling with the pearl earring in her finely scrolled ear. ‘And I just love it. It’s my favourite city, you know? So I’ve been catching up with some old friends, and we saw the Tate Modern, and Rhodes took me to Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant on Sloane Street, which is truly amazing.’
Next to Elle, Mandana nodded politely, the tiny circular mirrors on her fabric waistcoat flashing as they caught the light. Elle could tell she wasn’t really listening though; neither was her father, nor, in fact, was Rhodes.
‘So you’re missing the US election!’ Elle said, aware that, like her mother, her voice was slightly too loud. ‘That must be weird.’
Melissa gave a tinkling laugh. ‘You know what? It’s crazy, my girlfriends all think I’m insane for being here instead of there, but I told them, you know what? I have to meet Rhodes’s family, I just have to, and there were reasons – well!’ She smiled, and leaned forward to finish her drink.
‘How wonderful,’ Mandana said automatically.
‘So Elle, Rhodes tells me you work at a publishing house,’ Melissa said, smiling in a friendly way. ‘That’s so fascinating! What do you do there?’
Elle thought back to the book she’d been editing that evening, Romance with a Soldier of Rome, a time-slip erotica novel. Time-slip erotica novels were all the rage at the moment. ‘Well, I started there as a secretary, and I’m now an editor,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ Melissa said. ‘That is amazing. So, you edit the books? What does that mean?’
Elle said, ‘Oh, I’m just a junior, it doesn’t mean very much. It’s our romance list. Doctors and nurses, sheikhs and girls lost abroad, Regency heroines and dashing dukes. All that. A couple of werewolves, sometimes.’
‘Romance!’ Melissa laughed. ‘Oh, wow.’ Then she realised Elle was serious, and her expression changed. ‘That must be fascinating.’
Yes, fascinating, Elle wanted to say. I spent two hours on the phone to Regina Jordan listening to him whinge about sales and how he wasn’t going to change a scene in which a girl is chained up in a Gothic dungeon for two weeks and repeatedly has sex with the sinister Duke yet orgasms every time.
‘What do you read in your spare time, then?’ Melissa asked.
Elle didn’t want to say that she was currently rereading I Capture the Castle for the seventh time. ‘Oh, manuscripts,’ she said.
‘Elle’s done very well,’ her father said, as the drinks arrived. ‘I’m very proud of her.’
‘So am I,’ said her mother softly, beside her, and Elle felt a pain in her chest. ‘They’ve promoted her, she’s obviously very good.’
Elle picked up her drink. ‘Not really,’ she said, not wanting to sound rude but also not wanting to look like a vain bitch. ‘They made me junior editor last year, just so they could offload some work. My friend Libby was offered it but she left, so they gave it to me. I’ve been there over three years, they sort of had to.’
‘Libby?’ Rhodes, who had been looking bored throughout this exchange, sat up. ‘What, that girl I met? You … lived with her, something like that?’
‘I didn’t live with her, but yes, the one you met.’
‘Where’d she go?’
‘She’s gone to work for Eyre and Alcock, it’s a literary imprint at a massive publisher’s. Part of Bookprint.’
‘I’ve heard of them,’ Mandana said. ‘Well, Libby, I only met her once or twice, but you could tell she was a very ambitious girl.’ She said this as if it weren’t a good thing. Elle wondered again why you never heard men described as being ‘very ambitious’ in a pejorative way. ‘Well, it’s great, love. How’s Karen?’
Rhodes clinked his glass. ‘Actually – hurr.’ He coughed. ‘We’ve got an announcement.’
John and Mandana looked up, as Melissa raised the left hand she’d been hiding in her lap.
‘We’re engaged!’ she said. ‘Look!’ She flashed a diamond at them. It sparkled in the dark bar, along with her teeth.
‘Oh!’ Mandana said, leaping up. ‘That’s – well, that’s wonderful!’ She gave her son a clumsy hug. ‘And Melissa, welcome! Oh, welcome to the family.’
As she was hugging Melissa, who was holding her as much at arm’s length as she could, Elle caught her father looking at Mandana, and almost blanched.
My God. He really loathes her, she thought. Elle bit her lip, then stood up.
‘Congratulations,’ she said, hugging Melissa. ‘That’s such great news. I’m – so happy for you.’ She patted Rhodes’s shoulder. ‘Your diamond is so beautiful. And I love silver.’
There was a shocked pause. ‘It’s platinum,’ Melissa said. ‘From Tiffany. Rhodes chose it all by himself!’
Rhodes shrugged, his eyes half closed, and then he turned to Melissa, and kissed her briefly on the cheek.
‘Well,’ John said, as they all sat down. ‘This is great news. Have you set a date?’
Melissa and Rhodes looked at each other and laughed, in that infuriating way couples have when they want to impart what they think is fascinating news. ‘Well, yes, we have!’ Melissa said. ‘Next autumn! Maybe in September, my birthday’s in October and I definitely want to get married before I’m thirty!’ She stopped, and looked at Rhodes. ‘Shall I ask her?’
‘Go on.’ Rhodes smiled at her, and Elle nearly reared back in shock, she hadn’t seen her brother smile since the mid-eighties.
Melissa said breathlessly, ‘Elle, I would love it if you’d be my … bridesmaid?’
‘Me?’ Elle said, trying to sound delighted. ‘I’d – wow, I’d love to!’
Melissa clapped her hands. ‘Really? Oh, gosh, that’s so great. I really felt it was important to have Rhodes’s family involved too, and I want to get to know you better, you’re Rhodes’s sister!’ Elle opened her mouth, but Melissa went on, ‘My best girlfriends are Hayley and Darcy and they’re going to be my other bridesmaids along with my sister Francie, which is four, I know it’s not that many for a bridal party, but I just really don’t want it to be too confusing for the guests, and I can’t wait for you all to meet!’
Elle was touched. ‘That’s so sweet, Melissa,’ she said. ‘How exciting!’
‘Yes!’ Melissa said. ‘And I hope you’ll come over for the bachelorette party, it’s going to be so much fun! Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Um –’ Elle was blindsided. ‘I – no, I don’t.’
‘Elle doesn’t have time for a boyfriend, do you, Elle?’ John said, and Elle realised there was pride in his voice. ‘She’s a Career Woman.’
‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Dad,’ Elle said. ‘They don’t make you sign an agreement at the Career Women’s Coven, you know.’
‘OK. That’s OK,’ said Melissa, ignoring this exchange. ‘But hey, maybe you’ll meet someone before the wedding!’
‘Hey!’ Elle said, holding up crossed fingers. ‘Maybe I will!’ She stared into her Martini glass. ‘Um … I might get another one of these, actually.’
A waiter shimmered into place beside her and took their order again. Mandana said suddenly, ‘Rhodes, love – where’s the wedding going to be?’
Melissa and Rhodes looked at each other and clasped hands again.
‘Well, we’re moving back to the UK after Christmas,’ Rhodes said. ‘I’m being relocated, I don’t know how long for.’
‘Which means it’s going to be so great you’re here to help me!’ Melissa turned to Elle.
‘Oh,’ said Elle. ‘Yes!’
‘Anyway, we want to get married in the States, so we get the chance to go back and see our friends and family,’ said Melissa. ‘My father has a place in upstate New York. It’s near Woodstock, it’s got beautiful gardens, right next to an old coaching inn. We’ll put a rose bower up at the bottom of the lawn, by the stream, and we’ll have the ceremony there. It’s very romantic.’
Elle’s mother sat back against the seat. ‘Oh.’
‘“Oh”?’ said Rhodes, turning to her aggressively. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Don’t be rude to her,’ Elle was quick to defend. She hated the way Rhodes would side with Dad, act like that to Mum. They were so similar, they looked the same; so unapproachable, convinced of their own rightness, with a definite place in the world, never wrong.
Mandana was twisting her small, shiny paper napkin into a spiral between her fingers. Her big brown eyes were sunken smudges in her pale face.
Elle’s father crossed his arms and turned to Mandana. ‘Go on. Tell them.’ It was the first time he’d directly addressed his ex-wife since Elle had arrived.
‘Tell us what?’ Melissa smiled.
Elle felt an oiling trickle of discomfort, like sweat rolling down the back of her neck. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what. The alcohol rippled on her empty stomach. This was so unnatural, all of it, the four of them were never together as adults, and these words like family, engagement, bridesmaid, romantic – the Bee family didn’t use them. They didn’t do this kind of stuff.
Mandana swallowed. ‘I – oh, God. Love – Rhodes – look. I – can’t come.’
‘What?’ Rhodes said sharply. ‘What do you mean, you can’t come?’ John sat back against the banquette. ‘Go on. Tell them, then,’ he said, with something like satisfaction in his voice.
‘I can’t come … if the wedding’s … in …’ Mandana looked up, her eyes flicking from her ex-husband to her son, her thin fingers wrestling in her lap. She cleared her throat. ‘I can’t come if the wedding’s in the States. I’m not allowed back there.’
Melissa’s eyes grew huge and tendons appeared on the sides of her neck. She made a sound in her throat. ‘Mmm?’
Mandana glanced imploringly at her ex-husband. ‘Ah – well, when I was – when I was twenty-five, I was in California. In Haight-Ashbury. I got – ah.’ Her voice was so soft Elle could hardly hear her. ‘I was arrested. For dealing … for dealing pot. Just pot, a tiny bit, nothing else,’ she said, pleading. ‘I was convicted. Given a fine. I got a record. But my visa had expired too, and both those things together mean – well, I’m not allowed back in the country.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m sorry – what?’ Rhodes said. His voice was light. ‘You what?’
Mandana didn’t say anything.
‘Mum, is that true?’ Elle asked, disbelieving. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘She didn’t ever bother to tell me,’ John said.
‘John, don’t,’ Mandana said, a flicker of impatience in her voice, like the furious, rollicking Mandana of old, not this timid woman terrified of making a mistake. ‘Just don’t.’
‘What, I’m the one who shouldn’t say anything?’ Elle’s father didn’t even look at her mother. ‘I always wanted you to know this, you two,’ he said, looking from Elle to Rhodes. ‘Now you understand why she didn’t come to Disney World. I didn’t find out until we actually arrived at the airport.’
The Disney World holiday. Instantly, Elle’s palms started sweating at the memory. The journey to the airport, both parents in a terrible mood, but Mandana worse than usual. She’d be fine for months, then suddenly she’d go mad, and this was one of those days. Queuing up to go through, Elle holding her Dumbo toy, making him fly along the fabric tape separating the queues. Then something happening, and Mandana screaming at John, him shouting back, in front of everyone, but they didn’t care: that was how it was with them. Rhodes and Elle, eleven and eight respectively, had stood to one side, silently watching and holding each other’s hand, not understanding how this holiday – which was basically the best thing that had ever happened to them, which their dad had booked as a surprise and only told them about a week ago – was now, suddenly, going so horribly wrong.
Their mum had left, not even said bye to them. John fussed with passports and pieces of paper, as if nothing had happened. Elle had watched her mother walk away, her shoulders hunched, head bowed, and the further away she’d got the faster she’d walked, as if she was glad to be free, till she was almost running down the long grey terminal building, no one else paying any attention. Elle gazed at her till suddenly she turned a corner and was gone.
‘Where’s Mummy?’ Elle had asked, as they were sitting in Wimpy a little later, eating burgers and chips, trying to recapture the excitement they’d had earlier.
‘She’s not coming. There was something wrong with her passport,’ John had said, and they’d left it at that, and the holiday had been great – children are selfish, it was Disney World, after all – but when they’d got back home a week later, it had been bad. Very bad, because Mum wasn’t good on her own. Curtains closed, a meaty, musty smell through the cottage, everything in a mess, Mum most of all, till she saw them and burst into tears. That was the first time Elle realised she drank too much. Not like Emily from Brownies’ mum who had three sherries and then started singing music hall songs. That was sort of funny. Different from that. This wasn’t funny. But she and Rhodes could boast about their Disney World holiday at school and things went back to normal, sort of, until the next time, and the time after that for a few years more, and then the holiday in Skye, which somehow was the final tipping point.
Elle glanced at Rhodes, wondering if he was thinking the same as she was. But he was watching their mother, and the look on his face was enough.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mandana said eventually. She looked up, her eyes full of tears, her cheeks hollow. ‘I am so awfully sorry. It was a stupid mistake when I was young. I’ve paid for it, but it’s – it’s so awful that you’re suffering too. Of course, you must have the wedding where you want. I’ll be so happy for you, wherever you do it.’
Rhodes spread his fingers out on his knees. ‘That’s not the point, is it?’ He looked at his mother. ‘How will it look, Mum? You’re always going on about that bloody San Francisco trip like it was so pure and free and everything else is crap by comparison and it’s bollocks. You’re full of shit.’
‘Rhodes,’ their dad said sharply. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Rhodes, no,’ Melissa said. She gave a fixed smile, her bottom lip pushing her top lip up, her cheeks puffed out. ‘We may well relocate to London in any case. Perhaps we should think about having the wedding here.’
‘Or in a castle in Ireland like Posh and Becks,’ Elle said, in a misplaced attempt to lighten the mood. The four of them looked at her oddly. The drinks arrived, the waiter putting them gingerly down one by one, and there was complete silence at the table.
‘Well, it would be wonderful if it was, if it was, if it was here.’ Mandana’s stuttering voice was still barely audible. ‘I am so sorry. For everything.’ She stared at her orange juice.
‘No,’ Melissa said suddenly, putting her hand on Mandana’s knee. She swallowed. ‘Um – it’s no problem. It’s good we found out now, so we can do something about it. It’s going to be great. If it’s in the UK, I’ll need Elle’s help even more. Thank goodness!’
Mandana nodded gratefully and Melissa smiled at her, and Elle found herself warming to her, though she didn’t think this was at all how Melissa had expected the announcement to turn out. She picked up her Martini, and drank half of it in a swift gulp. She’d known it was going to be a long night, but it already was.
JUST BEFORE NINE Elle left the Savoy and, dodging the rain and the churning buses, crossed the Strand. She passed the entrance to Lion Books and remembered, as she always did here, that terrible interview with Jenna Taylor where all she’d been able to say was, ‘I’m passionate about reading … I love books, I love them.’ She’d seen Jenna at a party about a year after she’d started at Bluebird and, gauchely, bounced up to her and said hello, but Jenna hadn’t recognised her. At least, she’d pretended not to. Elle had been in publishing for over three years now, and she knew enough to know that bouncing up to people and saying hello was not what you did. Sometimes she missed being gauche, though. She felt as if she’d grown up, but not necessarily learned anything.
Elle hurried up Bedford Street, past the big windows of the Garrick where you could see the walls lined with identical paintings of old white men, then past the diamond-leaded, brightly coloured panes of the Ivy. In the American diner on the corner of Cambridge Circus they were celebrating the US election with a special red, white and blue menu, and different seating areas saying ‘Gore’ or ‘Bush’. When she got to Dean Street, she pushed open a nondescript black door and went inside.
‘Hi,’ she said uncertainly to the man behind the black reception desk. ‘I’m here for the Eyre and Alcock party?’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Sign here. It’s upstairs, to the back. The TV’s on but the announcement hasn’t been made yet.’
‘Thanks,’ Elle said. She gave him her coat and glanced in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t too wet, her black lace choker was still in place, her mascara hadn’t run. She cleared her throat. For the second time that night, she wished she wasn’t nervous, and again, she didn’t know why, she should be used to it all by now.
This was what you were supposed to do if you were in publishing, wasn’t it? Go to cool Booker Prize parties at media hotspots, hang out at Babington House, get a table at Nobu? As she climbed the narrow stairs, from the main room below she could hear guffaws of laughter, a piano playing. Who was in there? Keith Allen and Meg Mathews? Chris Evans and Blur? On the first floor there were two doors. Both had signs, printed on A4 paper and stuck to the door with sellotape. The first said:
BOOKER PRIZE PARTY: PRIVATE
The second:
Publishing Party: Private
Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, Elle pushed the first door open, and went in.
The room was full of people, and everyone seemed to have their backs to her. They were all talking intently, and in the corner was a smallish TV with the Booker Prize ceremony transmitted live from the Guildhall. Elle helped herself to a glass of wine, looking around for someone she knew and trying not to feel like a spare part. She caught sight of a flash of dark blonde hair, disappearing between two suits. ‘Libby!’ she cried, and the hair turned around.
‘Oh, Elle. There you are!’ Libby embraced her enthusiastically, her face breaking into a big smile. ‘I thought you might not come.’
Elle smelt Anaïs Anaïs and cigarettes, that familiar Libby smell, and closed her eyes briefly, it was so powerful. ‘I had a shocker—’
‘Hold on,’ said Libby immediately. ‘I’m just getting a drink for Jamie. I won’t be a sec.’
She disappeared into the throng. Elle took another large sip of her wine, and remembered she was two Martinis down already. But she didn’t care, to be honest. She was happy just to be out of the Savoy. She couldn’t even begin to process how strange the earlier part of the evening had been. The incongruous memory of the four of them around the table – five, now, of course five. Melissa was going to be part of her family. Elle smiled to herself: how could you join something that didn’t exist? She knew that at some point she had to talk to her mother. Go and see her, maybe this weekend? She knew she was free. These days, Elle was always free on the weekends, just in case.
Libby had totally disappeared. Picking a handful of nuts from a passing waiter, Elle looked around the crowded, noisy room. ‘Well, my money’s on Atwood,’ she heard someone behind her say. ‘But I saw Simon on Saturday at Mark’s, and though he was keeping his cards pretty close to his chest I got the feeling that Passengers might just steal it.’
‘You went to Mark’s?’ his companion asked him, running her fingers through a thick beaded necklace. ‘I did so dreadfully want to go, but we were at Paul’s for the weekend and we just couldn’t drive back for it.’
‘Ah. Well. Did you know—’
Elle moved through the crowd, feeling totally invisible. She could hear snippets of conversations. ‘Paid over five hundred for it – I know. They’ll never make the money back… .’ ‘She’s moving to another publisher, you know. She’s just had enough, and who can blame her.’ ‘I said to him, “Sir Vidia – enough is enough. Let sleeping dogs lie.”’
Elle felt even more of an outsider, now she was in the thick of the party. Why had she said she’d come, when she didn’t want to?
She knew the answer perfectly well, and it made her even sadder. She heard a voice and looked up. Libby was standing by the window, laughing with someone. Elle paused, not wanting to interrupt, but Libby saw her and beckoned her over.
‘Sorry, Elle,’ she said. ‘So rude of me to invite you and then abandon you!’ She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘This is Tom Scott, Tom, this is a dear friend of mine, Elle Bee – oh, it always sounds so stupid when I say your name like that. Eleanor Bee.’
Elle nodded up at Tom. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Elle. I work at Bluebird.’
She wasn’t sure whether to refer back to their only, rather unfortunate, meeting at the sales conference, two and a half years ago. Of course he won’t know me, she told herself.
‘I know,’ he said. He stared at her. ‘We have actually met before. At the Bluebird sales conference. Your hair was a different colour.’
‘Oh,’ said Elle. ‘Sorry – well, yes, I do remember you. Just I thought you wouldn’t remember me.’
‘Really,’ Tom said drily. ‘That’s kind of you.’ He obviously didn’t believe her. Libby laughed.
The scene at the Savoy, the Martinis, the walk through the rain, a loud room full of people she didn’t know and feeling dog-tired suddenly all overwhelmed Elle. She had one last look around and put her hand up to her cheek, to stave off the tears she was horrified to feel rising within her.
‘Um, I think I’m just going to go,’ she said. ‘Sorry, but I’m really tired, and I’ve got loads on tomorrow.’
Libby watched her through narrowed eyes, and then put her hand on her arm. ‘Oh, I’m bloody crap,’ she said. ‘You had that drink with your parents, didn’t you. Was it awful?’ Elle shook her head, unable to speak, then nodded. ‘Oh, man. I’m sorry, Elle.’
Miserable and embarrassed, Elle glanced at Tom, but his expression was unreadable.
‘Here.’ Libby whipped a plate off a passing waitress. ‘It’s for my friend, she’s feeling faint,’ she said. Someone behind them half turned. ‘Typical Libby,’ he said to his companion, and they laughed. ‘Oh, shut up, Bill,’ Libby said flirtatiously, tossing her hair. She handed Elle the plate of canapés. ‘He’s our MD. He’s so annoying! Here, have some food,’ she said, waggling the plate under Elle’s nose.
Elle ate a mini-samosa as Libby watched her intently. ‘So, it was grim then. Did you meet the American girlfriend? What’s she like?’
‘Like an Appleton sister,’ Elle told her. ‘The mean-looking one. They’re engaged.’ She picked up another samosa. ‘And they’re getting married in the US, only it turns out Mum can’t go because she’s got a criminal record in the States.’ She threw the samosa into her mouth.
‘What?’ Libby said, gaping at her. She glanced at a woman passing behind them. ‘Hiya! Yeah! See you in a bit!’ she mouthed.
‘Excuse me,’ said Tom, making to move off. ‘Libby, I’ll catch you—’
‘Oh, don’t go,’ said Elle, hastily swallowing the samosa. ‘I don’t want to drive you both off. It’s just my family. My parents hate each other and my brother hates us all.’ Mad as it sounded to say, as she said this out loud, she felt much better. ‘Yep. I was just meeting my brother’s fiancée. It’s over now. Done.’
Libby nodded intently, then turned to Bill and started chatting, offering him the plate of canapés. Elle’s face fell. Tom moved a little closer, so he was standing next to her.
‘Wow.’ He raised one eyebrow. Elle was impressed, she’d always wanted to be able to do that. ‘Your parents really do hate each other?’
‘Yes. Well, my dad definitely hates my mum. And I don’t think she likes him much, if I’m honest.’
‘That sounds like my parents.’
‘Really?’ said Elle, not knowing what else to say.
Tom nodded. ‘You’re not alone. I mean, I don’t want to sound competitive, but it’s true. Maybe they should get divorced.’
‘They did,’ Elle said. ‘So it’s OK.’ She tried to sound breezy about it, as if it was all fine, but she couldn’t do it. She thought of her mum’s sad eyes, her dad sitting so upright, so tense, the distance between them as they sat on the same sofa.
‘I’m sorry. When?’
‘Oh, ages ago now. I was sixteen when they got divorced. It’s just – I can’t explain it. I don’t ever see them together, we’re never all together, and tonight we were, and it made me see – see things I hadn’t noticed before.’ Her mother’s shaking hands, the orange juice, the Disney World trip, the ring flashing on Melissa’s finger, her brother and father, how they were so angry with Mum, how Mandana just let them be, as if she deserved it, like a dog being kicked by a gang of boys. ‘Sorry,’ she said, simply. ‘I don’t normally think about it much.’
Tom watched Elle. She looked up at him. His jaw was angular, dark with six o’clock shadow, and his grey eyes were kind. He said, ‘Well, that’s something at least. My parents never got divorced, and then my mum died, so my dad was denied the opportunity of cheating on her any more. He was never quite the same again.’
‘Wow,’ said Elle. ‘You win.’
Tom gave a little nod of the head. ‘Glad to hear it. I can play one-upmanship on the sad families any day. The dead mum means I usually win. So cheer up.’ He saw her expression tighten, and said, in a low voice, ‘Hey, I’m sorry. I was only joking.’
‘I know,’ said Elle, shaking her head. ‘It’s just – too many Martinis and no food, after a day editing romance novels. It makes you – a bit nuts.’ She swayed slightly as she stood in front of him.
‘Have a burger,’ he said. He put his hand under her elbow. ‘Here.’ He smiled at the waitress and gestured at the plate. ‘Can I keep this?’
The waitress shrugged. ‘Go crazy.’
‘Eat up,’ Tom continued. ‘Let’s make ourselves really gloomy. Tell me which songs make you cry, childhood pets you’ve lost and the closest you’ve ever come to death.’
Elle laughed. ‘My dog Toogie attacked an otter in a stream and got put down.’
‘That is a depressing story.’
‘Yes. The otter was fine. Not the dead dog. Gosh, I was upset.’
He laughed too, and she thought how nice his face was when he was smiling. How nice he was, in fact. It was strange, being able to chat to blokes without worrying that they might think you fancied them or were making a play for them, because she’d never be interested in them, and she couldn’t ever explain why.
Tom changed the subject. ‘So, you’re editing MyHeart books, then? Do you enjoy it?’
‘Enjoy it?’ Elle was slightly fazed. People never asked her if she actually enjoyed her job. ‘It’s great. I do enjoy it. But you can have too much of a good thing, I suppose,’ she said in a rush. ‘Are you – how’s the – are you still agenting non-fiction?’ she asked awkwardly. ‘I should know, I’m sorry. I don’t deal with a lot of agents yet, not unless they specialise in love stories about doctors and nurses.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Ah, that’s a shame. I do have a submission ready about a doctor and his love for the first female Beefeater, but I guess – not one for you?’
Elle made a mock-sad face. ‘No, sorry.’
‘What about a man with a scabby face and a doctor specialising in skin disorders? Called …’ He trailed off, biting his lip in concentration.
‘Scabs and the City. Pick Me, Scab.’
‘No. I’ve Got A Flaky Boyfriend.’
Elle gave a snort of mirth, catching wine at the back of her throat. She choked and then coughed, then swilled some more wine. He smiled again. ‘You OK?’
‘Scabs? Beefeaters?’ At the sound of their laughter, Libby turned eagerly back to them. ‘What are you guys talking about?’
‘I was just about to tell Eleanor Bee,’ Tom said, ‘that I’m not an agent any more.’
‘You’re not?’ Elle said.
‘No. As you may have noticed at the sales conference, I was a crap agent. I love books, but I’m no good at looking after authors. I hated evenings like that. I’ve got a bookshop instead.’
‘That’s so great. Where?’
‘Richmond. Just back from the river. It’s quite big, on two floors, and the location’s good, we get passing trade.’
‘Tom’s shop is wonderful, Elle. You should check it out one day,’ Libby said. She put her hand on Tom’s arm. ‘And of course, Tom set up the Dora Trust.’ She nodded at Elle, as if to say, Pretend you know what I’m on about.
‘Oh …’ Elle said weakly. ‘Of course …’
‘You’ve heard of it?’ Tom asked.
‘Yes …’ Elle nodded vigorously. ‘It’s an amazing … trust.’
‘Well, well well,’ came a voice from behind her, ‘what have we here? Number one traitor, Libby Yates, defector to the world of the literary wank? Black-and-white photos of stubbly young male authors a must? Covers with huge block type printed sideways on? Eh?’
‘Oh, go away Rory,’ Libby said, but her eyes lit up and she grinned, and gave him a big hug. ‘How are you? Is it true what they say, that we’re about to buy Bluebird? Will I be your boss this time?’
Rory smiled and pretended to ignore her. He waggled his glass in his hand and looked around, as if noticing Elle for the first time. ‘Hello Elby, where’ve you been? Working the livelong day, eh?’
‘I had … a drinks thing,’ Elle said. He nodded vaguely.
Tom reached out and took Rory’s glass. ‘Hi, Rory,’ he said. ‘Shall I get you a refill?’
Rory looked shocked, as if Tom had tried to mug him. ‘What? Oh, hi, Tom. Thanks, thanks a lot.’
As Tom walked off and Libby turned back to Bill, her boss, Elle whispered to Rory, ‘Rory. What’s the Dora Trust?’
‘Oh.’ Rory rolled his eyes. ‘It’s some prize in memory of Dora Zoffany. Old Ambrose there set it up earlier in the year. It’s to raise the profile of women writers.’ He pronounced it ‘wimmin’. ‘Very PC. He got loads of press for it. And Bookprint’s sponsoring it, guess that’s why Libby’s so keen on him.’ His smile became politely fixed as Tom reappeared.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Rory said, taking the glass off him. ‘Was just telling Elby about the Dora Trust, very exciting, etc. etc. How’s it all going?’
‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘We had a meeting with a PR agency last week. And we’re getting a website, though I’ve no idea what we’ll actually put on it. It’s Greek to me at the moment.’
An agent, a young, wiry guy called Peter Dunlop, plucked at Rory’s sleeve. ‘Rory, hey. How are you?’
Elle scrunched up her nose. ‘Well, we set up a MyHeart database, you’d be amazed how many people have the Internet at home now. Or they just give us their work addresses. We email them once a month to let them know what the new releases are and give them special offers. I know it’s silly, but—’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘No, that’s not silly at all. It’s great. Why would you think that?’
Elle was embarrassed to find herself blushing. ‘You know, romances, all that. It’s not on a par with –’ She waved her arm round the room. ‘You know.’
Tom smiled in amusement. ‘Are you indicating the Groucho? Or –’ He looked out over the rainy street below, streaked in yellow from the lights. ‘Or the district of London? Or the amazing literary wonderment that is the firm of Eyre and Alcock?’
She laughed ‘I suppose the latter.’
‘They were going out of business before Bookprint bought them up, don’t forget. Bluebird’s still making money, it’s practically the only old independent left.’
He stopped, as Peter Dunlop nudged him. ‘Hey, Tom, what are you saying about Bluebird?’
‘Just singing its praises,’ Tom said. ‘Especially its excellent MyHeart imprint. I hear the books on that list are brilliantly edited.’
Peter said, ‘You heard the rumour it’s up for sale? Rory says it’s rubbish.’
‘It is rubbish.’ Rory was smaller than both of them. He craned his neck up and said firmly, ‘It’s absolutely not true. We’re doing great.’ Elle watched him, trying not to smile; she found Rory at his most hilarious and strangely adorable when he was trying to play with the big boys, she didn’t know why.
‘That’s not what I heard,’ said the remorseless Peter. ‘I heard the cousins, Harold Sassoon and that lot, want to get more money out of the company. They think Felicity’s losing her touch. Sorry, mate.’
‘Again,’ said Rory, shifting his weight from one foot to another and smiling patiently, ‘it’s not true. Everything’s fine. These stories only come up because people are jealous, they want to see us go under, just because we’re the last of the old school. You know Felicity. She’ll buy some book for two K tomorrow and it’ll sell a million.’
Peter Dunlop shrugged. ‘Bluebird turned down Polly Pearson because of her, we all know that. That’s what I mean about losing her touch. No offence.’
There was a short pause. The success of Polly Pearson Finds a Man and the subsequent two follow-ups, Polly Pearson’s Big Drama
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