Текст книги "One Day"

Автор книги: David Nicholls

Соавторы: David Nicholls
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

He follows her through. ‘So, where were you then?’

‘I told you. At school, rehearsing.’

‘What were you rehearsing?’

‘ Bugsy Malone. It’s a lot of laughs. Why, you want tickets?’

‘No thanks.’

‘There’s splurge guns.’

‘I reckon you’ve been with someone.’

‘Oh, please – here we go again.’ She opens the fridge. There’s half a bottle of wine, but this is one of those times when only spirits will do. ‘Ian, what is this obsession with me being withsomeone? Why can’t it just be that you and me weren’t right for each other?’ With a hard yank, she cracks the seal of the frosted-up freezer compartment. Ice scatters on the floor.

‘But we areright for each other!’

‘Well fine then, if you say so, let’s get back together!’ Behind some ancient minced beef crispy pancakes, there is a bottle of vodka. ‘Yes!’ She slides the crispy pancakes to Ian. ‘Here – these are yours. I’m granting you custody.’ Slamming the fridge, she reaches for a glass. ‘And anyway, what if I waswith someone, Ian? So what? We broke up, remember?’

‘Rings a bell, rings a bell. So who is he then?’

She’s pouring the vodka, two inches. ‘Who’s who?’

‘Your new boyfriend? Go on, just tell me, I won’t mind,’ he sneers. ‘We’re still friendsafter all.’

Emma gulps from her glass then stoops for a moment, elbows on the counter top, the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes as she feels the icy liquid slide down her throat. A moment passes.

‘It’s Mr Godalming. The headmaster. We’ve been having this affair on and off for the past nine months, but I think it’s mainly been about the sex. To be honest, the whole thing’s a bit degrading for both of us. Makes me a bit ashamed. Bit sad. Still, like I keep saying, at least there are no kids involved! There you go—’ She speaks into her glass. ‘Now you know.’

The room is silent. Eventually. .

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Look out the window, have a look, see for yourself. He’s waiting in the car. Navy blue Sierra. .’

He sniffs, incredulous. ‘It’s not fucking funny, Emma.’

Emma places her empty glass on the counter and exhales slowly. ‘No, I know it’s not. In no way could the situation be described as funny.’ She turns and faces him. ‘I’ve told you, Ian, I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not in love with anyone and I don’t want to be. I just want to be left alone. .’

‘I’ve got a theory!’ he says, proudly.

‘What theory?’

‘I know who it is.’

She sighs. ‘Who is it then, Sherlock?’

‘ Dexter!’ he says, triumphantly.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake—’ She drains the glass.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

She laughs bitterly. ‘God, I wish—’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Ian, as you well know, I haven’t spoken to Dexter for months—’

‘Or so you say!’

‘You’re being ridiculous, Ian. What, you think we’ve been having this secret love affair behind everyone’s back?’

‘That’s what the evidence seems to suggest.’

‘Evidence? What evidence?’

And for the first time, Ian looks a little sheepish. ‘Your notebooks.’

A moment, then she puts her glass out of reach so that she won’t be tempted to throw it. ‘You’ve been reading my notebooks?’

‘I’ve glanced. Once or twice. Over the years.’

‘You bastard—’

‘The little bits of poetry, those magical ten days in Greece, all that yearning, all that desire—’

‘How dareyou! How dare you go behind my back like that!’

‘You left them lying round! What do you expect!’

‘I expected some trustand I expected you to have some dignity—’

‘And anyway I didn’t need to read them, it was so bloody obvious, the two of you—’

‘—but I have limited reserves of sympathy, Ian! Months of you moaning and moping and whining and hanging round like a kicked dog. Well if you ever turn up out of the blue like this and start going through my drawers, I swear I will call the fucking police—’

‘Go on then! Go on, call them!’ and he steps towards her, his arms out to the side filling the little room. ‘It’s my flat too, remember?’

‘Is it? How come? You never paid the mortgage! I did that! You never did anything, just lay around feeling sorry for yourself—’

‘That’s not true!’

‘And whatever money you did earn went on stupid videos and take-away—’

‘I chipped in! When I could—’

‘Well it wasn’t enough! Oh, God I hate this flat, and I hate my life here. I have got to get out of here or I will go crazy—’

‘This was our home!’ he protests, desperately.

‘I was never happy here, Ian. Why couldn’t you see that? I just got. . stuck here, we both did. Surely you must know that.’

He has never seen her like this, or heard her say these things. Shocked, his eyes wide like a panicked child, he stumbles towards her. ‘Calm down!’ He’s gripping her arm now. ‘Don’t say things like that—’

‘Get away from me, Ian! I mean it, Ian! Just get away!’ They’re shouting at each other now and she thinks, Oh God, we’ve become one of those crazy couples you hear through the walls at night. Somewhere, someone’s thinking, should I call the police? How did it come to this? ‘Get out!’ she shouts as he desperately tries to put his arms around her. ‘Just give me your keys and get out, I don’t want to see you anymore—’

And then just as suddenly, they’re both crying, slumped on the floor in the narrow hallway of the flat they had bought together with such hope. Ian’s hand is covering his face, and he’s struggling to speak between great sobs and gulps of air. ‘I can’t stand this. Why is this happening to me? This is hell. I’m in hell, Em!’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She wraps her arms around his shoulder.

‘Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me? You were once, weren’t you? In the beginning.’

‘Course I was.’

‘Well why can’t you be in love with me again?’

‘Oh Ian, I can’t. I’ve tried, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.’

Some time later they lie together on the floor in the same spot, as if they’ve been washed up there. Her head is on his shoulder, her arm across his chest, taking in the smell of him, the warm, comfortable smell that she had become so used to. Eventually, he speaks.

‘I should go.’

‘I think you should.’

Keeping his red, swollen face averted, he sits and nods towards the mess of paper, notebooks and photographs on the bedroom floor. ‘You know what makes me sad?’

‘Go on.’

‘That there aren’t more photographs of us. Together I mean. There’s thousands of you and Dex, hardly any of just you and me. Not recent anyway. It’s like we just stopped taking them.’

‘No decent camera,’ she says weakly, but he chooses to accept it.

‘Sorry for. . you know, flipping out like that, going through your stuff. Completely unacceptable behaviour.’

‘S’alright. Just don’t do it again.’

‘Some of the stories are quite good, by the way.’

‘Thank you. Though they were meant to be private.’

‘What’s the point of that? You’ll have to show them to someone someday. Put yourself out there.’

‘Okay, maybe I will. One day.’

‘Not the poems. Don’t show them the poems, but the stories. They’re good. You’re a good writer. You’re clever.’

‘Thank you, Ian.’

His face starts to crumple. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it? Living here with me?’

‘It was great. I’m just taking it all out on you, that’s all.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘So.’

‘So.’ They smile at each other. He is standing by the door now, one hand on the handle, not quite able to leave.

‘One last thing.’

‘Go on.’

‘You’re not seeing him, are you? I mean Dexter. I’m just being paranoid.’

She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Ian, I swear to you on my life. I am not seeing Dexter.’

‘’Cos I saw in the papers that he’d split up with his girlfriend and I thought, you and me breaking up, and him being single again—’

‘I haven’t seen Dexter for, God, ages.’

‘But did anything happen? While you and I were together? Between you and Dexter, behind my back? Because I can’t bear the idea—’

‘Ian – nothing happened between me and Dexter,’ she says, hoping he’ll leave without asking the next question.

‘But did you want it to?’

Did she? Yes, sometimes. Often.

‘No. No, I didn’t. We were just friends, that’s all.’

‘Okay. Good.’ He looks at her, and tries to smile. ‘I miss you so much, Em.’

‘I know you do.’

He puts his hand to his stomach. ‘I feel sick with it.’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘Will it? Because I think I might be going a bit mad.’

‘I know. But I can’t help you, Ian.’

‘You could always. . change your mind.’

‘I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Righto.’ He shrugs and smiles with his lips tucked in, his Stan Laurel smile. ‘Still. No harm in asking is there?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I still think you’re The Bollocks, mind.’

She smiles because he wants her to smile. ‘No, you’reThe Bollocks, Ian.’

‘Well I’m not going to stand here and argue about it!’ He sighs, unable to keep it up, and reaches for the door. ‘Okay then. Love to Mrs M. See you around.’

‘See you around.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’

He turns and pulls the door open sharply, kicking the bottom so that it gave the illusion of having hit him in the face. Emma laughs dutifully, then Ian takes a deep breath and is gone. She sits on the floor for one minute more then stands suddenly, and with a renewed sense of purpose grabs her keys and strides out of the flat.

The sound of a summer evening in E17, shouts and screams echoing off the buildings, a few St George’s flags still hanging limply. She strides across the forecourt. Isn’t she meant to have a close circle of kooky friends to help her get through all this? Shouldn’t she be sitting on a low baggy sofa with six or seven attractive zany metropolitans, isn’t that what city life is meant to be like? But either they live two hours away or they’re with families or boyfriends, and thankfully in the absence of kooky pals, there is the off-licence called, confusingly, depressingly, Booze’R’Us.

Intimidating kids are cycling in lazy circles near the entrance, but she’s fearless now, and marches through their centre, eyes fixed forward. In the shop she picks out the least dubious bottle of wine and joins the queue. The man in front of her has a cobweb tattooed on his face, and while she waits for him to count out enough small change for two litres of strong cider, she notices the bottle of champagne locked in a glass cabinet. It’s dusty, like a relic of some unimaginably luxurious past.

‘I’ll have that champagne too, please,’ she says. The shopkeeper looks suspicious, but sure enough the money is there, bunched tightly in her hand.

‘Celebration, is it?’

‘Exactly. Big, big celebration.’ Then, on a whim. ‘Twenty Marlboro too.’

With the bottles swinging in a flimsy plastic bag against her hip, she steps out of the shop, cramming the cigarette into her mouth as if it were the antidote to something. Immediately she hears a voice.

‘Miss Morley?’

She looks around, guiltily.

‘Miss Morley? Over here!’

And striding towards her on long legs is Sonya Richards, her protégé, her project. The skinny, bunched-up little girl who played the Artful Dodger has transformed, and Sonya is startling now: tall, hair scraped back, self-assured. Emma has a perfect vision of herself as Sonya must see her; hunched and red-eyed, fag in mouth on the threshold of Booze’R’Us. A role model, an inspiration. Absurdly, she hides the lit cigarette behind her back.

‘How are you, Miss?’ Sonya is looking a little ill at ease now, eyes flicking from side to side as if regretting coming over.

‘I’m great! Great? How are you, Sonya?’

‘Okay, Miss.’

‘How’s college? Everything going alright?’

‘Yeah, really good.’

‘A-levels next year, right?’

‘That’s right.’ Sonya is glancing furtively at the plastic bag of booze chinking at Emma’s side, the plume of smoke curling from behind her back.

‘University next year?’

‘Nottingham, I hope. If I get the grades.’

‘You will. You will.’

‘Thanks to you,’ says Sonya, but without much conviction.

There’s a silence. In desperation Emma holds up the bottles in one hand, the fags in the other and waggles them. ‘WEEKLY SHOP!’ she says.

Sonya seems confused. ‘Well. I’d better get going.’

‘Okay, Sonya, really great to see you. Sonya? Good luck, yeah? Really good luck,’ but Sonya is already striding off without looking back and Emma, one of those carpe diem-type teachers, watches her go.

Later that night, a strange thing happens. Half asleep, lying on the sofa with the TV on and the empty bottle at her feet, she is woken by Dexter Mayhew’s voice. She doesn’t understand quite what he’s saying – something about first-person-shooters and multiplayer options and non-stop shoot-em-up action. Confused and concerned she forces her eyes open, and he is standing right in front of her.

Emma hauls herself upright and smiles. She has seen this show before. Game Onis a late-night TV programme, with all the hot news and views from the computer games scene. The set is a red-lit dungeon composed of polystyrene boulders, as if playing computer games were a sort of purgatory, and in this dungeon whey-faced gamers sit hunched in front of a giant screen as Dexter Mayhew urges them to press their buttons faster, faster, shoot, shoot.

The games, the tournaments,are inter-cut with earnest reviews in which Dexter and a token woman with orange hair discuss the week’s hot new releases. Maybe it’s just Emma’s tiny television, but he looks a little puffy these days, a little grey. Perhaps it’s just that small screen, but something has gone missing. The swagger she remembers has gone. He is talking about Duke Nukem 3Dand he seems uncertain, a little embarrassed even. Nevertheless she feels a great wave of affection for Dexter Mayhew. In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right. I will call him, she thinks, as she falls asleep.

Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow, I will call him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN. Two Meetings

TUESDAY, 15 JULY 1997

Soho and the South Bank

‘So. The bad news is, they’re cancelling Game On.’

‘They are? Really?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘Right. Okay. Right. Did they give a reason why?’

‘No, Dexy, they just don’t feel they’ve cracked a way of conveying the piquant romance of computer gaming to a late-night TV audience. The channel thinks that they haven’t got the ingredients quite right, so they’re cancelling the show.’

‘I see.’

‘. . starting again with a different presenter.’

‘And a different name?’

‘No, they’re still calling it Game On.’

‘Right. So – so it’s still the same show then.’

‘They’re making a lot of significant changes.’

‘But it’s still called Game On?’

‘Yes.’

‘Same set, same format and everything.’

‘Broadly speaking.’

‘But with a different presenter.’

‘Yes. A different presenter.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t know. Not you though.’

‘They didn’t say who?’

‘They said younger. Someone younger, they were going younger. That’s all I know.’

‘So. . in other words, I have been sacked.’

‘Well, I suppose another way of looking at it is that, yes, in this instance, they’ve decided to go in a different direction. A direction that’s away from you.’

‘Okay. Okay. So – what’s the good news?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, you said “the bad news is they’re cancelling the show”. What’s the good news?’

‘That’s it. That’s all. That’s all the news I have.’

At that precise same moment, barely two miles away across the Thames, Emma Morley stands in an ascending lift with her old friend Stephanie Shaw.

‘The main thing is, and I can’t say this enough – don’t be intimidated.’

‘Why would I be intimidated?’

‘She’s a legend, Em, in publishing. She’s notorious.’

‘Notorious? For what?’

‘For being a. . big personality,’ and even though they are the only people in the lift, Stephanie Shaw drops her voice into a whisper. ‘She’s a wonderful editor, she’s just a little. . eccentric that’s all.’

They ride the next twenty storeys in silence. Beside her Stephanie Shaw stands smart, petite in a crisp white shirt – no, not a shirt, a blouse– tight black pencil skirt, a neat little bob, years away from the sullen Goth who sat next to her in tutorials all that time ago, and Emma is surprised to find herself intimidated by her old acquaintance; her professional demeanour, her no-nonsense manner. Stephanie Shaw has probably sackedpeople. She probably says things like ‘photocopy this for me!’ If Emma did the same at school they’d laugh in her face. In the lift, hands clasped in front of her, Emma has a sudden urge to giggle. It’s like they’re playing at a game called ‘Offices’.

The lift door slides open onto the thirtieth floor, a vast open-plan area, its high smoked-glass windows looking out across the Thames and Lambeth. When Emma had first come to London she had written hopeful, ill-informed letters to publishers and imagined the envelopes being sliced open with ivory paper knives in cluttered, shabby Georgian houses by ageing secretaries in half-moon glasses. But this is sleek and light and youthful, the very model of the modern media workplace. The only thing that reassures her are the stacks of books that litter the floor and tables, teetering piles of the things dumped seemingly at random. Stephanie strides and Emma follows and around the office faces pop up from behind walls of books and peer at the new arrival as she struggles to remove her jacket and walk at the same time.

‘Now, I can’t guarantee that she’ll have read it all, or read it atall in fact, but she’s asked to see you, which is great, Em, really great.’

‘I appreciate this so much, Stephanie.’

‘Trust me, Em, the writing’s really good. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have given it to her. It’s not in my interest to give her rubbish to read.’

It was a school story, a romance really, for older kids, set in a comp in Leeds. A sort of real-life, gritty Mallory Towers, based around a school production of Oliver!and told from the point of view of Julie Criscoll, the mouthy, irresponsible girl playing the Artful Dodger. There were illustrations too, scratchy doodles and caricatures and sarcastic speech bubbles like you might find in a teenage girl’s diary, all jumbled in with the text.

She had sent out the first twenty thousand words and waited patiently until she had received a rejection letter from every single publisher; a complete set. Not for us, sorry not to be more helpful, hope you have better luck elsewherethey said, and the only encouraging thing about all those rejections was their vagueness; clearly the manuscript wasn’t getting read much, just declined with a standard letter. Of all the things she had written and abandoned, this was the first which, after reading, she hadn’t wanted to hurl across the room. She knew it was good. Clearly she would have to resort to nepotism.

Despite various influential contacts from college, she had taken a private vow never to resort to asking favours; tugging at the elbow of her more successful contemporaries was too much like asking a friend for money. But she had filled a loose-leaf binder with rejection letters now, and as her mother was fond of reminding her, she wasn’t getting any younger. One lunch break, she had found a quiet classroom, taken a deep breath and made a phone-call to Stephanie Shaw. It was the first time they had spoken in three years, but at least they actually liked each other and after some pleasant catching up, she came out with it: Would she read something? This thing I’ve written. Some chapters and an outline for a silly book for teenagers. It’s about a school musical.

And now here she is, actually meeting a publisher, a real-life publisher. She feels shaky from too much coffee, sick with anxiety, her febrile state not helped by the fact that she has been forced to bunk off school herself. Today is a vital staff meeting, the last before the holidays, and like an errant pupil she had woken that morning, held her nose and phoned the secretary, croaking something about gastric flu. The secretary’s disbelief was audible down the phone-line. She will be in trouble with Mr Godalming too. Phil will be furious.

No time to worry about that now because they are at the corner office, a glass cube of prime commercial space in which she can see a reedy female figure with her back to Emma, and beyond that a startling panorama from St Paul’s down to Parliament.

Stephanie indicates a low chair by the door.

‘So. Wait there. Come and see me afterwards. Tell me how it went. And remember – don’t be scared. .’

‘Did they give a reason? For dumping me?’

‘Not really.’

‘Come on, Aaron, just tell me.’

‘Well, the exact phrase was that, well, the exact phrase was that you were just a little bit 1989.’

‘Wow. Wow. Right, okay. Okay, well – fuck ’em, right?’

‘Exactly, that’s what I said.’

‘Did you?’

‘I told them I wasn’t best pleased.’

‘Okay, well what else is coming up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘There’s this thing where they have robots fighting and you have to sort of introduce the robots. .’

‘Why do the robots fight?’

‘Who can say? It’s in their nature, I suppose. They’re aggressive robots.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Okay. Car show on Men and Motors?’

‘What, satellite?’

‘Satellite and cable’s the future, Dex.’

‘But what about terrestrial?’

‘It’s just a little quiet out there.’

‘It’s not quiet for Suki Meadows, it’s not quiet for Toby Moray. I can’t walk past a television without seeing Toby-bloody-Moray.’

‘That’s TV, Dex, it’s faddy. He’s just a fad. You were the fad, now he’s the fad.’

‘I was a fad?’

‘You’re not a fad. I just mean you’re bound to have ups and downs, that’s all. I think you need to think about a change of direction. We need to change people’s perception of you. Your reputation.’

‘Hang on – I have a reputation?’

Emma sits in the low leather chair and waits and waits, watching the office at work, feeling a slightly shameful envy of this corporate world and the smart-ish, young-ish professionals who occupy it. Water Cooler envy, that’s what it is. There’s nothing special or distinctive about this office, but compared to Cromwell Road Comp, it’s positively futuristic; a sharp contrast to her staffroom with its tannin-stained mugs, torn furniture and surly rotas, its general air of grouchiness and complaint and dissatisfaction. And of course the kids are great, some of them, some of the time, but the confrontations these days seem more frequent and more alarming. For the first time she has been told to ‘talk to the hand’, a new attitude that she finds hard to reason with. Or perhaps she’s just losing her knack, her motivation, her energy. The situation with her headmaster certainly isn’t helping.

What if life had taken a different route? What if she had persevered with those letters to publishers when she was twenty-two? Might it have been Emma, instead of Stephanie Shaw, eating Pret A Manger sandwiches in a pencil skirt? For some time now she has had a conviction that life is about to change if only because it must, and perhaps this is it, perhaps this meeting is the new start. Her stomach churns once more in anticipation as the PA puts down her phone and approaches. Marsha will see her now. Emma stands, smoothes down her skirt because she has seen people do it on television, and enters the glass box.

Marsha – Miss Francomb? – is tall and imposing, with aqualine features that give her an intimidating Woolfish quality. In her early forties, her grey hair cropped and brushed forward Soviet-style, her voice husky and commanding, she stands and offers her hand.

‘Ah you must be my twelve-thirty.’

Emma squeaks a reply, yes, that’s right twelve-thirty, though technically it was meant to be twelve-fifteen.

‘ Setzen Sie, bitte hin,’ says Marsha, unaccountably. German? Why German? Oh well, best play along.

‘ Danke,’ Emma squeaks again, looks around, settles on the sofa, and takes in the room: trophies on shelves, framed book covers, souvenirs of an illustrious career. Emma has the overwhelming feeling that she shouldn’t be here, doesn’t belong, is wasting this redoubtable woman’s time; she publishes books, real books that people buy and read. Certainly Marsha isn’t making it easy for her. A silence hangs in the air as she lowers the venetian blinds then adjusts them so that the exterior office is obscured. They sit in the half-light, and Emma has the sudden feeling that she is about to be interrogated.

‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, it’s unbelievably busy, I’m afraid. I’m only just able to fit you in. I don’t want to rush this. With something like this it’s so important to make the right decision, don’t you think?’

‘It’s vital. Absolutely.’

‘Tell me how long have you been working with children?’

‘Um, let me see, ’93 – about five years.’

Marsha leans forward, impassioned. ‘And do you loveit?’

‘I do. Most of the time, anyway.’ Emma feels as if she’s being a little stiff, a little formal. ‘When they’re not giving me a hard time.’

‘The children give you a hard time?’

‘They can be little bastards sometimes, if I’m honest.’

‘Really?’

‘You know. Cheeky, disruptive.’

Marsha bridles, and sits back in her chair. ‘So what do you do, for discipline?’

‘Oh, the usual, throw chairs at them! Not really! Just the usual stuff, send them out the room, that kind of thing.’

‘I see. I see.’ Marsha says no more, but emanates deep disapproval. Her eyes return to the papers on the desk, and Emma wonders when they’re going to actually start talking about the work.

‘Well,’ says Marsha, ‘I have to say, your English is much better than I expected.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, you’re fluent. It’s like you’ve been in England all your life.’

‘Well. . I have.’

Marsha looks irritated. ‘Not according to your CV.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your CV says that you’re German!’

What can Emma do to make amends? Perhaps she should pretend to be German? No good. She can’t speak German. ‘No, I’m definitely English.’ And what CV? She didn’t send a CV.

Marsha is shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, we seem to be talking at cross-purposes. You are my twelve-thirty, aren’t you?’

‘Yes! I think so. Am I?’

‘The nanny? You are here for the job of nanny?’

‘I have a reputation?’

‘A little bit. In the industry.’

‘As what?’

‘Just a bit. . unreliable, that’s all.’

‘Unreliable?’

‘Unprofessional.’

‘In what way?’

‘In a drunk way. In an off-your-face-on-camera kind of way.’

‘Hey, I have never been—’

‘—and arrogant. People think you’re arrogant.’

‘Arrogant? I’m confident, not arrogant.’

‘Hey I’m just telling you what people say, Dex.’

‘“People”! Who are these “people”?’

‘People you’ve worked with—’

‘Really? Good God—’

‘I’m just saying, if you feel you’ve got a problem—’

‘Which I haven’t.’

‘—now might be the time to address it.’

‘I haven’t though.’

‘Well then we’re fine. In the meantime, I think you might also want to watch what you’re spending. For a couple of months at least.’

‘Emma, I am so sorry. .’

She walks towards the lifts, hot-eyed and embarrassed, Marsha walking close behind, Stephanie following behind her. Heads pop up from cubicles as they pass in procession. That’ll teach her, they must think, for getting big ideas.

‘I’m so sorry about wasting your time,’ says Marsha, ingratiatingly. ‘Someone was meant to call and cancel—’

‘S’alright, not your fault—’ Emma mumbles.

‘Needless to say my assistant and I will be having words. Are you sureyou didn’t get the message? I hate to cancel meetings, but I simply hadn’t got round to reading the material. I’d give it a quick read now, but poor old Helga is waiting in the boardroom apparently—’

‘I quite understand.’

‘Stephanie here assures me that you’re extremely talented. I’m so looking forward to reading your work. .’

Arriving at the lifts, Emma jabs the call button. ‘Yes, well. .’

‘At least, if anything you’ll have an amusing story.’

An amusing story?She jabs the call button as if poking an eye. She doesn’t want an amusing story, she wants change, a break, not anecdotes. Her life has been stuffed with anecdotes, an endless string of the bastards, now she wants something to go right for once. She wants success, or at least the hope of it.

‘I’m afraid next week is no good, then I’m on holiday, so it may be some time. But before the summer’s out, I promise.’

Before the summer’s out?Month after month slipping by with nothing changing. She jabs once more at the lift button and says nothing, a surly teenager, making them suffer. They wait. Marsha, seemingly unflustered, examines her with sharp blue eyes. ‘Tell me, Emma, what are you doing at the moment?’

‘I teach English. A secondary school in Leytonstone.’

‘That must be very demanding. When do you find the time to actually write?’

‘At night. Weekends. Early mornings sometimes.’

Marsha narrows her eyes. ‘You must be very passionate about it.’

‘It’s the only thing I really want to do now.’ Emma surprises herself, not just at how earnest she must sound but also with the realisation that the remark is true. The lift opens behind her, and she glances over her shoulder, almost wishing now that she could stay.

Marsha is holding out her hand. ‘Well, goodbye, Miss Morley. I look forward to talking to you further.’

Emma takes hold of her long fingers. ‘And I hope you find your nanny.’

‘I hope so too. The last one was a complete psychopath. I don’t suppose you want the job anyway, do you? I imagine you’d be rather good.’ Marsha smiles, and Emma smiles back, and behind Marsha, Stephanie bites her bottom lip, mouths sorry-sorry-sorry and mimes a little phone. ‘Call me!’

The lift doors close and Emma slumps against the wall as the lift plummets thirty floors and she feels the excitement in her stomach curdle into sour disappointment. At three a.m. that morning, unable to sleep, she had fantasised an impromptu lunch with her new editor. She had pictured herself drinking crisp white wine in the Oxo Tower, beguiling her companion with engaging stories of school life, and now here she is, spat out onto the South Bank in less than twenty-five minutes.

In May she had celebrated the election result here, but there’s none of that euphoria now. Having declared herself suffering from gastric flu, she can’t even go to the staff meeting. She feels another argument brewing there too, recriminations, sly remarks. To clear her head she decides to go for a walk, and heads off in the direction of Tower Bridge.

But even the Thames fails to lift her spirits. This stretch of the South Bank is in the process of renovation, a mess of scaffolding and tarpaulin, Bankside Power Station looming derelict and oppressive on this midsummer day. She is hungry, but there’s nowhere to eat, no-one to eat with. Her phone rings, and she scrabbles for it in her bag, keen to vent some of her frustration and realising only too late who will be calling.