Tania said nothing. She was not a fool. And too many people had shouted at her; she would not be swayed.
‘I think the book Lily is working on now is great,’ Jojo insisted.
‘If Lily Wright wants to write another Mimi’s Remedies, I’d be happy to publish it,’ Tania said. ‘Otherwise, it’s no go. I’m sorry, Jojo, I really am.’
Despite her frustration, Jojo understood. Tania was probably getting it in the neck from everyone at Dalkin Emery. She had accepted a book, bigged it up to the entire company as the publication of the year and it had exploded in her face. Her career trajectory had been knocked sideways by the disaster. No wonder she was being careful.
‘Lily Wright is one of the hottest authors around,’ Jojo said. ‘If you don’t want to publish her any longer, there are plenty of others who will.’
‘I understand, and good luck with it all.’
‘Your loss,’ Jojo said, clattered the phone back and sat in gloomy contemplation. One of the hottest authors around, indeed. If things continued the way they were going, Lily Wright would have to start wearing a bell around her neck.
She buried her face in her hands. Rats. Now she had to tell Lily and she would prefer to shoot herself in the head. With a sigh, she lifted the phone again. Better to get it over with.
‘Lily, I’ve heard from Dalkin Emery about the new contract.’ Very quickly, before Lily had time to get any false hope, she said, ‘I’m so sorry but it’s bad news.’
‘How bad?’
‘They don’t want to buy the new book.’
‘I can write another.’
‘Unless it’s another Mimi’s Remedies, they don’t want to renew the contract. I’m so, so sorry,’ Jojo said, and meant it.
After a period of silence, Lily said quietly, ‘It’s OK. Please, Jojo, it’s really OK.’
That was Lily all over: too sweet to start yelling and blaming.
‘I feel lousy that I didn’t get you to sign with them last May.’
When they still wanted you.
‘Don’t feel bad. No one forced me to wait,’ Lily said. ‘It was my choice. Mine and Anton’s. Just one thing? Is there any hope that Crystal Clear might still resuscitate at this stage?’
‘There are still some ads to run.’
‘Perhaps if Crystal Clear rallies at the last minute, they’ll change their mind. Or someone else might want to publish me.’
‘Attagirl. That’s the spirit.’
Then Jojo hung up, wiped out. Passing on bad news was as much a part of the job as delivering good stuff, but she was feeling more shitty than she had in a long, long time. Poor Lily.
And, on a selfish note, this wasn’t such a great time for Jojo to fuck up. She didn’t often make mistakes and hated when she did. But with the partnership decision coming up, this miasma of high-profile failure was not welcome. She was still in line to generate more income than any other agent this year but the gloss was gone from her crown a little.
The following morning
Jojo called up the best-seller list, trying to type with crossed fingers, praying for a last-minute reprieve. Miracles did happen – although only a sap would have expected it here.
She scrolled down, down, down, down… then stopped.
‘Well?’ Manoj asked, his fingers crossed too.
Jojo sighed. ‘Like a stone off a cliff.’
Her phone rang and she knew who it would be: Patrick Pilkington-Smythe. ‘We’re calling a halt on Lily Wright’s ads. We’ve been throwing good money after bad.’
‘Pulling the plug? Too bad. That last pre-Christmas push could’ve made all the difference.’
He gave a bark of incredulous laughter. ‘Never say die, do you, Jojo?’
‘Calling it like I see it.’
Patrick said nothing. He’d been in this game a lot longer than Jojo had. Pretending things were alright didn’t mean they were. The crater-sized hole in his marketing budget was witness to that.
Deeply subdued, Jojo hung up. She didn’t believe it either.
Gemma
You know, writing a book isn’t as easy as it looks. First, my editor (I love saying that: ‘my editor’) made me rewrite loads of it, making Izzy ‘warmer’ and Emmet ‘more human and less of a Mills & Boon caricature’ – the cheek of her. Sorry, I mean, the cheek of ‘my editor’. Then when I’d done that to ‘my editor’s’ satisfaction – and it took ages, all of August and most of September – some copy-editor (not ‘my editor’) went through it and came back with eight million queries: What was a ‘yoke’? Was Marmoset a real restaurant? Had I got permission to quote from ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’? And to change it to Papa Was a Faithless Fuck?
Then I had to proof-read it, scrutinizing each individual word to make sure it was spelt correctly, until the little black letters started linking arms and dancing jigs in front of my blurring eyes.
Mind you, with the advance they’d given me I wasn’t complaining; I’d nearly collapsed and died when Jojo told me: sixty grand. Sixty grand. Sterling. I’d have happily sold the book for four pee because being published was reward itself; instead they wanted to give me one-and-a-half times my annual salary and, to add whatever the opposite of insult is to the opposite of injury, it was tax free. (In Ireland income from ‘artistic endeavour’ isn’t taxable.)
My imagination, fevered at the best of times, went wild entirely at the thought of all that loot: I’d give up my job and travel around the world for a year. I’d replace my heartbreaking car. I’d go to Milan and buy up all of Prada.
Until I returned to earth and saw that this windfall was a result of my mother’s misfortune. She was going to have to move house early in the new year; the advance money could make the difference between a hell-hole and a hovel.
Also I owed Susan big and when I asked her what she’d like she admitted she’d gone a bit mad buying furniture and stuff for her apartment in Seattle and would appreciate one of her store cards being paid off. (On account of Susan’s dad being a stingy yoke, she had no control with money.) ‘Pick a card,’ she’d said. ‘Any card.’
So I picked her Jennifer Convertibles one and promised to wipe out the two grand debt.
Promised but not done because as yet, by the end of November, I hadn’t actually seen any of the advance. It had been divided up into a third on signature – but they’d spent forever tinkering with the contract and I’d only signed it a month ago – a third on ‘delivery’ then a third on publication. I thought I’d ‘delivered’ at the end of June when they’d bought the book, but they saw it differently. I hadn’t ‘delivered’ until they had a manuscript they were happy with and this had taken until two weeks ago.
We’d finally agreed on a name. No one had liked my suggestion of ‘Sugar Daddy’. Or ‘Mars Attack’. ‘Shockolat’ was a runner for a while, then someone at Dalkin Emery suggested ‘Chasing Rainbows’ and suddenly everyone was happy. Except me, I thought it sounded a bit nice.
The day the cover arrived was a great one, though. A soft-focus watercolour, in blues and yellows, it was a smudgy image of a girl looking like she’d lost her purse. But it had my name on it. My name!
‘Mam, look!’
Even she got excited. She was nothing like as pitiful and bewildered as she’d been in the first post-Dad months. Dad’s desire for a permanent financial settlement had changed her – it made her angry, no bad thing.
The dreaded phone call about Colette being up the pole still hadn’t come from Dad. But in the summer he’d sent us a letter confirming that the minute the year’s separation was up, he’d be applying to the courts to sell the house. From then on, it was like we were living on borrowed time. And something else was different – from the day he’d left, Mam and I had regarded his absence as temporary, like our lives had just hit the pause button. But after we got this letter, I had to negotiate some changes; we couldn’t go on as we were.
It wasn’t easy – Mam produced rivers of tears and a selection of illnesses both fake and re
al – but then she seemed to come to terms with my need for space and by the end of the summer I got to sleep in my own flat three or four nights out of every seven. I saw her a lot more than most thirty-something women see their mothers, but it still felt like glorious freedom.
She studied the blurry girl on my book cover. ‘Is she meant to be you?’
‘No, only figuratively.’
‘Only I was going to say her hair is the wrong colour. And she looks a bit all-at-sea.’
‘Like her father has just left her mother?’
‘Like she thinks she’s left the gas on or can’t remember the right word for something. Mummifying, say. She’s thinking to herself, it’s what they did to Egyptian kings when they died, before they put them in the pyramids. It begins with M, it’s on the tip of my tongue, oh, what is it?’
I looked again. Mam was right. That was exactly what she looked like.
‘You’ll have to show it to Owen,’ she said slyly.
She knew about Owen: in fact she’d met him. And oddly enough, considering her suspicion of anything that interfered with my time with her – like my job – she approved of him. I told her not to bother because he wouldn’t be around for long. Our string of encounters – I wasn’t going to call me and Owen a relationship, that would be overstating the case – continued to have a ramshackle, rickety feel, like we could have a bust-up at any minute and never see each other again. And yet, we carried on, bickering enthusiastically, past the summer and into the autumn. And now here we were in November and we were still an item – an item that would be in the damaged-goods section were it for sale, but all the same.
‘Owen.’ I shrugged dismissively.
‘Don’t play it down for me,’ she said. ‘He’s a younger man, he’ll break your heart, but you’re going to marry him.’
‘Marry him. Are you insane?’
We made wary eye-contact, then Mam said, ‘Please don’t ask questions like that as – what’s that they say? – a punch in the mouth often offends.’
I smiled at her. Sometimes I had hope, I really did.
‘I keep telling you,’ I said. ‘Owen is a temporary measure, a bodge boyfriend, something that’ll do until the professionals get here.’
But Mam was adamant he was my Mr Right. ‘You’re yourself with him.’
Yes, but I was the wrong self with him: not the nice Gemma.
All the same. He:
was very good in bed
er… um, was a good dancer
ah…
‘I didn’t get to my age without learning a thing or two about romance,’ Mam went on.
I didn’t say anything. It would have been too cruel.
‘You girls talk about finding The One, but The One comes in all shapes and sizes. Often you don’t realize that that’s who you’ve met. I know a woman who met her The One when she was on a ship, following a man out to Australia. On the journey out she palled up with a lovely chap but she was so fixated on the man in Australia that she didn’t realize the chap on the ship was her The One. She tried to get the first fellow to marry her, then came to her senses. Luckily the second chap was still interested. And I know another girl who…’
I tuned her out. Marry Owen? I didn’t think so. How could I marry Owen when I was going to get back with Anton? Something that Owen knew all about and approved of. (He’d get back with Lorna, I’d get back with Anton, we’d all go on holidays to the Dordogne together. We often discussed it.)
On Mam went, getting almost animated, which was good because it meant I didn’t have to talk to her and I could have a little think. I felt slightly uncomfortable because there was someone besides Owen I wanted to show the book jacket to: Johnny the Scrip. It only seemed fair because he knew all about the book; he’d been so encouraging about it, when I used to be a regular visitor.
I didn’t see him so much any more and not just because Mam no longer needed so many tablets. No, around the time the flirting with Johnny was starting to blossom into something more meaningful, I’d had a little think. Fair-to-middling insane, as I was, I’d experienced a window of sanity and realized that Owen was my boyfriend. Despite our ups and downs, despite the fact that I’d never expected we’d last, for as long as it continued I was going to treat him right – like I was a grown-up or an unselfish person, or something.
Johnny must have been having similar thought processes because the next time I went to him after having had my little think, he asked, ‘How’s your non-boyfriend?’
I coloured. ‘OK.’
‘Still seeing him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ The word, as they say, spoke volumes.
He didn’t say that he wasn’t going to step on someone else’s toes, but it was clear that that was what he meant. He had more respect for himself. So by silent mutual agreement, we both retreated. Besides, the thing that had united us – our isolation from the rest of the world – was no longer a factor. I’d gone and got a life for myself and though I knew it was mad, I felt like I’d abandoned him.
Sometimes when I was out on the piss with Owen I’d see him and he’d smile but wouldn’t come over. Once I thought I saw him with a girl. Well, he was with a lot of people but he was standing closer to her than any of the others. She was nice-looking, with a really cool, choppy haircut and I will admit to feeling jealous but that might have been because of her fabulous layers as much as anything. However, the next time I saw him he wasn’t with her, so maybe I imagined the vibe.
Mostly, I was very good: I respected our decision. Once when I’d had a demanding week with Mam’s prescriptions requiring several visits I even went to another chemist.
But occasionally I still made an excuse to see him – come on, I’m not Gandhi. He was like a tub of strawberry cheesecake Häagen Dazs – off-limits but it didn’t mean that I didn’t sometimes get overtaken by an emotional version of the hunger I get when I’m premenstrual. The same kind of Unstoppable Force feelings that had me wrenching open the freezer door and eating the entire tub, compelled me to manufacture an excuse to see Johnny, drive over to his chemist and buy a jar of zinc tablets (say). But I always came away dissatisfied. He was polite, chatty even, but there was no longer any frisson – and that was because he was a decent man with a healthy dose of self-respect. But I suppose no one’s perfect.
‘Mam.’ I interrupted her story about someone else who’d missed her The One when he’d been right under her nose, dancing around in his pelt. ‘Do you need anything from the chemist?’
She thought about it. ‘No.’
‘Should you think about getting your anti-depressant dose increased?’
‘Actually, I was thinking I might try coming down a couple of milligrams.’
‘Oh. OK.’
Fuck it, I’d go anyway.
Echinacea, I decided. That was a reasonable thing to buy, especially at this time of year. At the chemist Johnny greeted me with a smile. Mind you, he did that to everyone, even the old men with all-over-body psoriasis.
‘Name your poison,’ he said.
‘Echinacea.’
‘Coming down with a cold?’
‘Er, no. Just precautionary.’
‘Sensible thinking. Well, we have quite a choice.’
Shite.
He went into details about dosage, liquid or capsule, with or without vitamin C, until I was sorry I hadn’t asked for something more straightforward.
‘Busy at the moment?’ I asked, trying to get him to turn around and talk to me.
‘Oh yes. The six weeks coming up to Christmas is the worst time.’
‘Me too. How’s your brother doing?’
‘Recovering nicely. Or should I say, recovering unpleasantly. He’s doing a lot of physiotherapy on his banjoed leg and he’s not enjoying it.’
I made a couple of ‘ah, well’ style noises, then went, ‘Oh!’ like I’d just remembered something and pulled the cover from my bag. ‘I thought you might like to see it.’
‘What’s
this? The cover of your book!’ He lit up. He looked genuinely happy for me. ‘Congratulations!’
He studied the cover for ages, while I studied him. You know, he really was very nice-looking, his intelligent eyes, his lovely shiny hair. Mind you, it would be a disgrace if his hair wasn’t shiny with him having access to all those hair products…
‘It’s really good,’ he said finally. ‘It’s only smudgy lines but they’ve managed to make her look bereft. Very effective. I’m looking forward to reading it.’
I got a twinge of something peculiar, which I didn’t understand at the time.
‘But the title?’ he questioned. ‘I thought we’d agreed on “Shockolat”?’
‘Shockolat’ had been his suggestion.
‘I loved “Shockolat”,’ I said, ‘But the marketing people didn’t.’
‘Well, we don’t always get what we want.’
Was I imagining it, or was there a deeper meaning to what he’d just said? And the way he’d looked at me while he’d said it? Had I just experienced a leakage of the old frisson?
I suspected I had, then the guilts kicked in and, flustered, I took my leave.
‘Your echinacea,’ he called after me.
Back in August, after Dalkin Emery’s publicity department sent a page from Book News which mentioned my book deal (I wondered if Lily had seen it) I paid for it to be sent every week, just in case there was anything else about me. Although I went through each issue in minute detail I found nothing, but some time in November I came across a mention about Lily. It was part of a piece about how Christmas books weren’t selling well.
Retailers are reporting ‘extremely lacklustre’ sales of Lily Wright’s Crystal Clear. Wright, author of publishing sensation, Mimi’s Remedies, was expected to storm the hardback charts this Christmas but has not even made it into the top ten. The title, originally priced at £18.99, has been discounted widely, retailing for £11.99 in Waterstones and appearing as low as £8.99 in some outlets. Dick Barton-King, Dalkin Emery’s Head of Sales, was quoted, ‘We always knew Crystal Clear was a gift-purchase, not a self-purchase. We expect strong sales in the two weeks before Christmas.’