Anyway, even if Charlotte wasn’t Charlotte, with pure evil running through her veins instead of blood, she was hardly an expert on relationships. Lately, she and Douglas kept having the same fight over and over again.
‘Fucking shut up!’
‘No, you fucking shut up!’
There was always Celia, but if Neve intimated that all was not right in pancake paradise, Celia would come up with fifty different variations on ‘I told you so,’ and she’d be unbelievably smug about it too. So when Neve went down to Celia and Yuri’s flat the night before the AGM to pack Celia’s suitcase because she was flying to Berlin to shoot fashion for Skirt, she resolved to keep her mouth shut.
It wasn’t hard. Celia was far more interested in how many outfit options she’d need for five days, and while Neve diligently folded clothes and made sure all of Celia’s many bottles and jars of beauty gloop were screwed tightly shut, Celia was on her iPhone checking the weather in Berlin, then she had to call Grace to find out how many outfits she was packing, and all that Neve had left to do was ball Celia’s socks and put them in her shoes, when Celia finally deigned to speak to her.
‘So, hey, meant to ask you if you’re planning on dumping Max in the next couple of days?’ she asked hopefully.
Neve’s head shot up from her silent contemplation of Celia’s suitcase. ‘Why? Has he said something?’
Celia didn’t notice Neve’s distress as she was standing in front of the mirror in just pants and a T-shirt with a platform sandal on one foot and a peep-toe shoe boot on the other. ‘Do I dare risk an open toe?’ she mused, before she turned back to Neve. ‘It’s just it’s his birthday this weekend and Grace says that if you’re still faux dating, I should chip in more money for the Fashion Department’s present. So, are you?’
As far as Neve knew she was, but if Max hadn’t even told her it was his birthday then she didn’t imagine she’d be faux dating for much longer. ‘I suppose,’ she said, without much enthusiasm.
‘OK. Can you lend me fifty quid then?’
Neve tossed a balled-up pair of socks at Celia, which missed their target by a good few metres. ‘No, I can’t! It’s three days until I get paid and I’m broke.’ And now she had to buy a birthday present for Max too.
‘But it’s three days till I get paid too and I earn less money than you,’ Celia pointed out.
It was hard to believe when Neve was barely earning fourteen thousand a year before tax that Celia had actually found a job that paid even less. ‘But you don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage.’
‘Well, neither do you,’ Celia sniffed. ‘Come on, don’t be tight.’
‘I’m not being tight,’ Neve said indignantly. ‘You’d have loads of money if you didn’t fritter it away on shoe boots and hot pants …’
‘They’re called short shorts, Grandma.’
‘Well, I’m paying off two student loans and I have gym fees and Gustav fees – and have you any idea how much I spend a week on organic fruit and vegetables?’ Neve demanded. ‘I’m not lending you any more money. You never, ever pay me back.’
It was a fair point, because by Neve’s reckoning, Celia owed her well over a thousand pounds, but it was something neither of them mentioned. Apart from now, because Neve was in a foul mood and Celia was the only person she dared take it out on.
‘Snippy, much?’ Celia kicked off her shoe boot and stood on one leg in her platform heel, but still managed to convey huge amounts of pathos. ‘If you’re not going to lend me money, then it would really help if you could dump Max so I only have to put in twenty quid.’
Neve hadn’t considered it before, but dumping Max would be a solution to one of the many problems that was weighing down on her. ‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ she said and wasn’t even attempting to be funny, but Celia grinned and pretended to check the calendar on her phone.
‘Nuh-huh, Neevy! You said you’d date him for two months and you’ve still got another four weeks to go.’ She gave her sister a stern look. ‘You know what they say about quitters, don’t you?’
Chapter Eighteen
Rose had ordered sandwiches from Pret A Manger for the AGM. They were arranged on platters in the Reading Room (the Archive was closed to visitors in honour of such an auspicious occasion) along with a tray of tired-looking fruit. Neve paused in the doorway and looked at the sandwiches in dismay – Rose knew she could only eat wraps because they had fewer carbs. She knew and she obviously didn’t care because she already thought of Neve as an ex-colleague.
‘Don’t just stand there, Neevy,’ Chloe grumbled from behind her. ‘Move!’
The five Trustees always sat on the window side of the long table that ran the length of the room, and the Archive staff would cram themselves in along the other side. But it wasn’t quite as simple as that, because no one wanted to get stuck next to Mr Freemont. Not just because he was grumpiness incarnate, but because he had severe odour issues, which was little wonder when he’d worn the same pair of grey trousers, grey shirt and maroon cardigan every day for the entire three years that Neve had worked at the Archive. Come rain, come shine, come blizzard, come heatwave, Mr Freemont never deviated from his outfit and never took it off either, if the stench that emanated from him was anything to go by.
So choosing a seat for the AGM, or any meeting that Mr Freemont attended, was like a game of musical chairs. The rest of the staff jostled, side-stepped and, in the case of Chloe, body-checked, in their efforts to secure a chair as far away from Mr Freemont as possible. Right now, they were shuffling restlessly from foot to foot by the reception desk as they waited for Mr Freemont to enter the room and take his seat.
At five to one exactly, he bustled into the room, paused for one, suspense-filled moment, then purposefully strode to a chair exactly halfway down the table – but didn’t sit down.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he demanded querulously of his staff. ‘Sit!’
No one moved, apart from Neve who took a timid step forward.
‘Don’t do it, Neve,’ Philip hissed in her ear but she ignored him because she was mad at him, and by inching herself ahead of the staff she was in prime position to gallop to the other end of the table when Mr Freemont sat down exactly level with the tray of sandwiches, which were positioned left of centre, just like he did every year.
Neve allowed herself a faint smile of triumph as Rose was almost sent flying by one of the part-time PhD students and lost precious seconds so she had no choice but to sit next to Mr Freemont, her face turned the other way and utter loathing oozing from her every pore.
After fifteen minutes of desultory chit-chat and eating those sandwiches that they were positive that Mr Freemont hadn’t touched with his smelly fingers (it was an absolute, unequivocal certainty that he didn’t wash his hands after he peed), the five Trustees trooped in.
There was the old man who’d fall asleep within the first five minutes. Behind him was the crusty Professor of Medieval History at University College London, who always wanted to know why they didn’t archive any material written before the 1700s. Neve rather liked the dishevelled woman from the Arts Council but she didn’t like Jacob Morrison, literary super-agent, with his sharp suits, air of superiority and the way he always looked right through her. Bringing up the rear was the Chairwoman of the Board, Harriet Fitzwilliam-White, whose father had founded the Archive and generally regarded the staff as not mentally competent enough to protect his legacy. Last year, Neve thought that she and Rose might actually come to blows over the thorny topic of upgrading from Windows ’98.
It was impossible for Neve to slump on her hard-backed chair like everyone else as the meeting started. She was far too anxious to slump and was mentally rehearsing the impassioned speech she’d give in defence of her work ethic when the moment arose.
The moment was taking a long time to arise. Instead, they spent a laborious hour going over the minutes of the last AGM, before moving on to the other items on the agenda.
It was the same as
it ever was. The only good news was that they’d secured some funding from a couple of small bequests and a grant from a bunch of book-loving do-gooders – but it didn’t seem like much funding. Certainly not enough to maintain four full-time members of staff, assorted part-timers and keep them in Post-it notes and teabags. Not that anyone else seemed particularly bothered, though it was hard to tell. When Neve scanned the assembled faces she was met with glazed eyes.
Mr Freemont was the only Archive employee who actually spoke, as he pedantically explained his criteria for choosing their latest acquisitions and mooted the possibility of having a more stringent vetting procedure for allowing access to the Archive. He’d had a real bee in his bonnet ever since he caught Our Lady of the Blessed Hankie popping a mint humbug into her mouth while she was in the Reading Room.
‘… even though I’d like to draw your attention to the sign at Reception, which clearly states that all food and drink is strictly forbidden.’
Neve was starting to feel less anxious now and more like she might actually die from sheer boredom. She stifled a yawn and caught the eye of Mary Vickers from the Arts Council, who smiled at her.
‘Well, that’s certainly given us all something to think about, George,’ Jacob Morrison suddenly said, cutting Mr Freemont off mid-rant. ‘Shall we move on to Any Other Business now?’
‘I hadn’t finished,’ Mr Freemont reminded them. ‘I also wanted to talk about the umbrella-stand in—’
‘Please, George, I would like to get out of here some time before midnight,’ Mary Vickers said, with a rueful little smile, as if she was riveted by the conversation but had another very important engagement.
Mr Freemont settled back on his chair with an aggrieved huff and Neve gripped the edge of the table because Any Other Business could mean anything. Maybe Rose had also discovered that she sometimes faxed her mum in Spain when no one else was around; that was probably grounds for instant dismissal.
‘So, Any Other Business?’ Harriet Fitzwilliam-White looked around the table without much enthusiasm.
‘Yes. Rose and I would like to discuss something,’ Chloe said, actually daring to stand up. ‘We have a proposal to take the Archive into the twenty-first century and bring in new revenue too.’
‘I thought we’d talked about this, Chloe,’ Mr Freemont snapped, spraying breadcrumbs across the table because he was in the middle of stuffing down the last prawn-cocktail sandwich. ‘And I made my thoughts perfectly clear.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Chloe said evenly, looking directly at Jacob Morrison as she spoke, and Neve noticed that Chloe was wearing a much darker lipstick than she normally did and a smart grey dress and nipped-in jacket that was an upgrade on her usual jeans and jumper. ‘But maybe I wasn’t being perfectly clear, as you didn’t seem to grasp the concept of bringing in our own revenue streams so we’re not reliant on donations.’
‘That’s certainly something I’d like to hear,’ Jacob Morrison said, lounging back on his chair. ‘Who doesn’t love a new revenue stream?’
‘It won’t take long,’ Rose said crisply. ‘I made a PowerPoint presentation.’
There was a faint murmur rising up. Neve still wasn’t completely on board, as she had a horrible feeling that one way of bringing in a new revenue stream was by getting rid of her and using her annual salary of fourteen thousand, three hundred and forty-seven pounds (before tax) to secure some hot literary collection. She also hadn’t known that the Archive possessed a computer that was capable of producing a PowerPoint presentation without crashing.
Everyone else seemed a lot more excited as Chloe started to talk and Rose pressed buttons on an ancient laptop. Their plan was to start digitising the Archive and introducing subscription charges, as well as joining up with other literary archives and academic libraries to create a database of dead people’s writings. Apparently there were all sorts of organisations queuing up to fund such an innovative project.
It actually sounded do-able, though Neve could see a lot of scanning in her near future, if she got to keep her job. Maybe they’d want to hire some computer whiz kid, she thought, as she looked down the table and saw Mr Freemont’s head sinking lower and lower in defeat, which made the three greasy strands of hair that he combed over his ghostly white bald pate even more prominent.
She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and not for the first time either. Yes, he smelled awful and he was cantankerous, curmudgeonly and also rather misogynistic because he always tried to turn down any new acquisitions from women writers, but Neve knew what it was like not to fit in. She doubted that Mr Freemont had ever fitted in anywhere in his life, so it was no wonder that he’d turned his back on personal hygiene and good social skills.
Chloe and Rose had finished their presentation and shared a small, smug smile as absolutely everyone, except Neve and Mr Freemont, fired questions at them, which was absolutely unheard-of in an AGM. Usually you only spoke when you were spoken to and spent the rest of the time avoiding eye-contact.
Jacob Morrison had whipped out his BlackBerry and was pencilling in a meeting with Chloe, Rose and Harriet Fitzwilliam-White to discuss the matter further. Chloe was beaming, Rose was serene in her victory and Mr Freemont kept opening his mouth, only to close it again, as he realised that digitising the Archive was going to happen whether he liked it or not. Neve saw Philip give her a surreptitious thumbs-up, and light finally dawned: Mr Freemont was the one being thrown under the bus, not her.
Neve fidgeted in her chair, keen for the meeting to end now so she could beetle to the safety of the back office in the basement and avoid Mr Freemont, preferably for the rest of the year, because he was going to be in a filthy mood after this.
‘There was one other thing we wanted to discuss,’ Rose announced, once the hubbub had died down. ‘It’s about Neve.’
Everyone turned to look at her, including old Mr Granville, who hadn’t been able to sleep in all the excitement.
Neve felt a blush scorching her cheeks, which was odd when the rest of her had suddenly gone icy cold. ‘Look, if it’s about that letter,’ she stumbled, ‘the thing is … there was a queue at the Post Office and—’
‘It’s about Neve,’ Rose repeated, glaring Neve into silence, ‘and a woman called Lucy Keener who died a couple of years ago. She never had anything published …’
‘Actually she did have two poems in Time and Tide,’ Neve interrupted, then lapsed into silence when Alice, one of the part-timers sitting next to her, gave her thigh a warning pinch.
‘Which is probably why Mr Freemont didn’t feel that there was a place for her literary estate in the Archive,’ Rose continued smoothly, as if Neve hadn’t spoken. ‘While this is perfectly understandable, we think that decision should be reviewed.’
‘It’s something we all feel very strongly about, thanks to Neve, who has tirelessly championed Lucy Keener,’ Philip said, as soon as Rose had got to the end of her sentence, and Neve wondered if they’d actually rehearsed this, because, as Chloe started talking about how much everyone had loved reading Dancing on the Edge of the World, it was coming across as very polished.
She sat there in frozen silence as, one by one, the other members of staff chimed in with the Lucy love. She didn’t know whether to be mad at them for going behind her back or getting up so she could hug each and every one of them. She’d never have had the guts to plead Lucy’s case before the Trustees.
‘And Neve has even started writing a biography of Lucy Keener,’ Philip finished proudly. ‘Haven’t you, Neevy?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t call it a biography,’ she mumbled, head bent so she could stare at Mr Freemont’s trail of breadcrumbs. ‘It started off as a timeline of Lucy’s life as I tried to collate her correspondence with her diaries and it kind of, well … it just sort of happened.’ She frowned and came to a grinding and agonising halt.
There was silence, then someone coughed and Neve looked up to see Mary Vickers giving her an encouraging smile and she even had Jacob Morris
on’s full attention, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
‘So, Neve, can you tell us a little bit about the mysterious and unpublished Lucy Keener?’ he asked.
She stammered out the first few chronological facts about Lucy, then paused. This wasn’t hard, they weren’t asking her to find the square root of something, and she owed it to herself and God, she owed it to Lucy Keener most of all, not to screw this up. And after Neve thought that, the rest was easy.
Neve didn’t know how long she talked, though at one point, the part-timers left and Rose got up to turn on the lights, but eventually when she could hear that her voice was growing hoarse, she tried to wrap it up.
‘… and she was ashamed of Charles for betraying his country and working for the KGB, but she also felt partly responsible because she’d introduced him to Socialism. When he left his wife and family and defected to Russia, she went with him … it was the only way that they could ever be together. But she was horrified by what she saw over there and she came back to England two years later to find herself completely ostracised, not just for defecting but because she’d run away with a married man, a member of the Establishment who’d turned traitor, and it destroyed her. She didn’t write anything for thirty years, then she started again. Her last poems and short stories, they’re just … well, they’re kind of heart-breaking.’
There was another silence when Neve stopped and swallowed hard because she hadn’t thought she’d get so emotional and choked up talking about Lucy. She smiled weakly and waited for someone to say something.
‘This Lucy Keener, she certainly seems to have had quite an effect on you,’ Harriet Fitzwilliam-White said to Neve. It was the first time she’d ever spoken to Neve. ‘I can remember when Charles Holden defected; the papers hinted that there might be a woman involved, but they never named her.’