by Paul Burston
I didn’t know you when you were twenty, or even thirty. We don’t go back that far. Still, I find it hard to believe that you’ve really changed so much that I can barely recognise you. Which leads me to the unpleasant conclusion that I never really knew you at all, that the person I heard but wasn’t allowed to see in court today is the person you’ve always been. I’ve been had, basically. And what really makes me angry is that I should have seen this coming. The writing, as they say, was on the wall. Because you’re a professional liar, aren’t you, Tom? You make up stories for a living. And today in court you told a load of stories about me.
But here’s the thing. Everyone has their own story to tell. And tomorrow I’ll have an opportunity to tell mine. It won’t be as melodramatic as yours. I won’t put on a strange voice, or hide behind a curtain or a screen. I’ll stand before the court and speak plainly for all to see. I’ll tell them everything.
All men have secrets, Tom, and I know yours. I know the truth about you. So be warned. Tomorrow I’ll expose you for the liar you are. And heaven knows you’ll be miserable then.
Yours
Evie
4
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
Lucinda King was seated at her usual table in the dining room at the Groucho Club, fiddling with her phone. Her familiar black bob was tucked behind one ear, and she appeared to be frowning, despite the widely held belief that she was no stranger to Botox.
She didn’t look up as Tom entered the room, which irked him more than he cared to admit. Through no fault of his own, he was at least fifteen minutes late. Cabs were a luxury he could no longer afford, so he’d been forced to take the Northern Line from Oval, experiencing the kind of delays that had earned it the nickname The Misery Line. Were Tom in Lucinda’s place, he’d have been scanning the entrance by now, wondering where on earth he’d got to. There was a time, not so long ago, when she’d have displayed more concern than this. A lot had changed since then.
Tom had dressed for the occasion in a Zegna suit and Hugo Boss shirt, purchased with the advance from his first book and currently feeling rather damp around the back and armpits – another of the indignities of tube travel. His attire was possibly a little formal for a lunch meeting, but the suit gave him confidence – something he’d been rather lacking of late.
He coughed as he approached his agent’s table and she leapt to her feet and greeted him with a disarming smile. ‘Tom, darling! How have you been? Has that ghastly woman had her comeuppance yet?’
There wasn’t a lot about Tom’s life that Lucinda didn’t know. She’d been his agent for the past seven years – and for the first four of those she’d been very attentive, parading him at book awards and publishing house parties, taking him out for long, boozy lunches and opening chilled bottles of champagne whenever he visited her office to sign contracts or just catch up.
But that was then. Apart from a chance meeting at last month’s Costa Awards, he hadn’t seen Lucinda in person for the best part of a year. She was rarely available to talk on the phone and sometimes took days to respond to his emails.
The reason, of course, was that Tom Hunter was no longer her golden boy. She had other, younger, more marketable clients these days – all those photogenic blondes fresh from their MA courses, each hailed as the most exciting new voice in fiction by the same critics who used to shower him with praise and were now rather less effusive – if they bothered to review him at all. He wondered if the exciting new blondes had all this to look forward to, or if it was a fate reserved for those, like him, who’d enjoyed such enormous success with his first novel that anything less than a film tie-in was now seen as failure.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, and planted a kiss on his agent’s proffered cheek. ‘And no, she hasn’t had her comeuppance yet. But I refuse to let it get me down.’
‘That’s the spirit!’ Lucinda exclaimed as they both took their seats.
Around them, the cream of London’s creative industries radiated self-importance with their booming voices and company expense accounts. Tom spotted a few familiar faces and a knot of anxiety tightened in his chest. He used to love coming to the Groucho. That was before his last book bombed and his nemesis began her campaign of public humiliation. He wondered whether many of those exchanging nods of recognition with him were secretly enjoying his fall from grace.
‘Now, tell me everything,’ Lucinda said. ‘How’s life in Vauxhall? How’s the new book coming along?’
‘Shall we order first?’ Tom asked, reaching for the menu. He hadn’t eaten properly in days. His mouth watered as he considered the options – fillet steak, Dover sole; even the liver sounded appetising.
‘Of course, darling,’ Lucinda cooed. ‘The lamb sounds good. Or are you veggie? I forget.’
Of course you do, Tom thought bitterly. He wondered when his agent last entertained one of the exciting new blondes. She probably knew everything there was to know about their dietary requirements – assuming they ate anything at all.
‘The lamb sounds perfect,’ he said, and pushed the menu away.
‘Are we drinking?’ Lucinda asked.
For a split second Tom took this as a reproach about his recent alcohol intake. Then, seeing her inspect the wine list, he relaxed. ‘I’m game if you are.’
‘It is Friday,’ Lucinda said, adopting an uncharacteristically girlish voice, the kind less authoritative women often used to excuse their indulgences. ‘I’m sure this calls for a bottle of something. And red wine does have its health benefits. All those lovely tannins!’
She gestured to the waiter, who took their orders and complimented them on having chosen so wisely.
‘I think we’ll be the judge of that,’ Lucinda quipped when he was out of earshot. ‘So tell me, darling – how’s the new book?’
Ah yes, the new book. The one Tom had been working on for the best part of three years. The one he was writing out of contract, having been unceremoniously dropped by his publisher. The one he was still no closer to finishing. That new book.
There were a million excuses he could pluck out of the air. He was depressed. His back was playing up. He was suffering from writer’s block. There were far too many other commitments and simply not enough hours in the day.
But unlike just about every other writer he knew, Tom had no excuses. He had the one thing they would all kill for – the luxury of time. He didn’t need to hold down a job to support his writing. He didn’t have to juggle childcare or other family responsibilities. He didn’t even have a significant other who could complain of feeling neglected while he devoted himself to his novel. He lived – and usually slept – alone. He hadn’t had a meaningful relationship in years and had no intention of settling down any time soon. He had all the time in the world – and a dozen chapters he wasn’t really happy with. That worked out at four chapters a year, or one every three months. There were authors who churned out a whole book in less time. The fact that his chapters weren’t much better did nothing to alleviate his feelings of self-loathing.
‘The book is coming along,’ he said, and was grateful for the interruption when the waiter arrived with the wine.
Lucinda held up her wine glass in one perfectly manicured hand. ‘To you,’ she said. ‘And your wonderful new book. Now, when can I see some pages? Have you brought some with you?’
Deep down, Tom knew there was little point in delaying the inevitable. He should just come clean and admit that there was no wonderful new book – certainly not yet and probably not for the foreseeable future. But his pride got the better of him.
‘It still needs a bit of work,’ he said. ‘Another edit, then it’ll be in much better shape. I’d hate for you to see it before it’s ready.’
His agent studied him over the rim of her wine glass. Lucinda was famously tough. She always got the best deals for her clients – and she usually got the best work out of them, too. She knew when to push, how to cajole, and what was required from all parties if a book was to succeed in a
n already saturated market. Publishers were intimidated by her, and authors were awed by the mere mention of her name. Of course, these were the very qualities that attracted Tom to her in the first place. But right now, they terrified him.
‘So,’ she said, fixing him with her forensic gaze. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you. It’s this dreadful woman, isn’t it? What’s happened now?’
Tom grimaced. ‘More emails. Only now she’s threatening to get back at me if I go ahead and testify against her in court. I thought once they’d arrested her, she’d pipe down. If anything, she’s getting worse.’
‘I assume you’ve been back to the police.’
‘I’ve given so many statements to them, that building feels like a second home.’
Lucinda shuddered. ‘You poor thing. But this won’t look good for her in court – breaching her bail and intimidating a witness. Have they set the trial date yet?’
‘Not yet. I’m told it could be another six months.’
‘Bloody ridiculous! And what are you supposed to do in the meantime?’ Lucinda bared her teeth in what could pass for a smile. ‘Apart from finishing your book, of course.’
Before Lucinda took him under her wing, Tom Hunter was just another aspiring novelist with plenty of ambition but no real game plan. His career to that point had been unremarkable. He’d studied English and drama at university, and toyed with the idea of becoming a playwright. But the collaborative nature of the theatre put him off. He didn’t want to entrust his words to the interpretations of actors and directors. He wanted total control.
Before turning to fiction he’d served an apprenticeship of sorts, writing feature articles for the weekend supplements. He travelled widely, stayed in some of the world’s best hotels, and interviewed a lot of famous faces. He made a decent living and developed a taste for a certain kind of lifestyle – comfortable, expensive and usually charged to whoever he was commissioned to write for. Of course this was back in the days before digitalisation – before the notion of ‘free content’ cut great swathes through the industry, slashing budgets and expense accounts and reducing word rates to such an extent that, these days, the only people who could afford to go into journalism were those with wealthy parents.
Tom’s parents weren’t wealthy. His father was a builder and his mother had worked as a nurse before retiring a few years ago. His older brother, Mark, was a lot like his father – practical, good with his hands; a man who knew his place in the world and didn’t need to look very far to find it. And Tom – well, Tom wasn’t. His father’s disappointment in him had been obvious from an early age; and his mother’s love was conditional at best. He’d always felt like a stranger in the family, a dreamer whose dreams didn’t match those of the couple who raised him, and whose achievements were viewed with a mixture of suspicion and what sometimes felt like resentment. He was the first in his family to go to university, the first to move more than twenty miles from the town where he grew up, the first to make it in a profession widely considered both middle class and not quite professional. Yet somehow this was never enough. ‘You can always teach,’ his mother said when he left university with plans to become a writer. ‘People will always need teachers.’
Tom owed his parents a lot. He had his father’s lean, muscular build, strong jaw and thick head of hair, coupled with his mother’s even features and soulful brown eyes. It was a killer combination and one that caught the attention of both men and women. Tom wasn’t so naïve as to think that his good looks hadn’t played some part in his good fortune. But the greatest gift his parents had bestowed on him was far simpler. Without his upbringing he would never have developed the thick skin and sheer bloody-mindedness necessary to turn his dreams of a life less ordinary into reality.
Self-sufficiency and a sense of his own worth could only get a man so far. If there was one person who contributed to Tom’s success more than any other, that person was Lucinda King. They first met when he proposed a profile of her to the books editor of a Sunday newspaper, insisting that readers would be just as interested in her as they were in the authors she represented. She’d graciously agreed to give him an hour of her precious time, and the interview took place at her office in Bloomsbury. It was only as the hour was drawing to a close that Tom casually mentioned the novel he’d been working on.
Lucinda didn’t take the bait immediately. But when the profile appeared the following weekend and she was able to see for herself just how good a writer he was, he received an email thanking him for his kind words and inviting him to lunch. Soon afterwards, and on the basis of three sample chapters and a synopsis, he had a two-book deal with a major publisher and an agent most authors would kill for.
The first novel was an immediate success. Boy Afraid was inspired by a lyric from a Smiths song and told the story of a young man struggling to make his way in a world where masculinity was in crisis and male suicide claimed more lives than gun and knife crime combined. Critics compared its author to the likes of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Coe, the Daily Mail named the book ‘novel of the year’ and The Times said simply ‘destined to be a modern classic’ – a quote that found its way onto the mass-market paperback.
As it turned out, the predictions were entirely accurate. The novel topped the Sunday Times fiction chart and was selected for inclusion in the Richard and Judy Book Club. Foreign rights soon followed, and round upon round of author tours, across the UK and beyond. It was while Tom was on tour in America that he received news of the film option. By the time he delivered the second book, the first was on the big screen and he was walking down the red carpet in Leicester Square with the cast and director, scarcely able to believe his good fortune – or the fact that he was now on speaking terms with Ryan Gosling.
Those were the days! When the flush of success was still new and the rewards so great that even his parents stopped asking when he’d get a proper job. When the money from the film came through, he paid off their mortgage and traded in his small studio flat in Stockwell for a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames. He splashed out on designer clothes and vowed never to spoil his shiny new kitchen by doing anything so basic as cooking in it. Instead, he took a New Yorker’s approach to life – dining out at every opportunity and not simply when it was time for dinner.
Tom had a lot to thank Lucinda for – and thank her he most certainly had. In the acknowledgments to his second novel, Little Man, he expressed his gratitude to his ‘superstar agent’ for ‘steering me in the right direction’ and ‘believing in me before I believed in myself’. This last part wasn’t true. Tom had always believed in himself. But it looked good on paper, and he hoped the compliment would make her feel beholden to him in some small way. As for the ‘superstar’ part – well, it didn’t hurt to remind people about the calibre of your greatest supporters. Superstar agents didn’t represent just anybody.
Unfortunately for Tom, few readers made it as far as the acknowledgements. The second book bombed. Fans flocked to Twitter to express their disappointment. The critics waded in with glee. No longer was he hailed as ‘gifted’ or ‘a genius’. The book was denounced as ‘lazy’, ‘dull’, ‘a crushing waste of time, trees and a once promising talent’. One reviewer suggested that the first novel had been a fluke. Another advised him to stop writing immediately, before he destroyed what little credibility he had left. For the first time in his life, Tom knew the full horror of those three little words ‘one hit wonder.’
The question now was whether his agent still believed in him, or whether today’s lunch date was a precursor to her letting him go.
‘I don’t want to pressure you,’ Lucinda said, in a tone which Tom took to mean that she was about to do just that. He wasn’t wrong.
‘Your last book wasn’t quite the success we were all hoping for,’ she continued.
Tom smiled wryly. ‘Difficult second-novel syndrome.’
‘Possibly. Or maybe it was more than that.’ She paused for effect. ‘Perhaps it’s time you thought about
branching out a bit.’
‘Branching out?’
‘Try something a bit different. The market has moved on. People aren’t buying sensitive male fiction anymore, certainly not in the numbers they were five years ago. Have you ever thought about writing crime?’
Tom pulled a face. ‘And destroy what’s left of my reputation? I don’t think so.’
‘A few years ago, I’d have agreed with you,’ Lucinda said. ‘But things have changed. People aren’t nearly as snobbish about it these days.’
‘I’m not a snob,’ Tom replied, though deep down he suspected that he probably was. ‘I just don’t think I’m capable of writing a decent crime novel. My imagination isn’t nearly dark enough.’ Again, he wondered if this was strictly true.
‘We could always try changing your name,’ Lucinda suggested.
Tom was aghast. His first instinct was to say that he’d never been so insulted. But he had been. The sales figures for his last novel were about as insulting as it got.
‘I didn’t realise things were quite that desperate,’ he said. ‘I’m quite happy with who I am, thank you. I’m not about to start pretending to be someone else.’
‘Lots of authors do it,’ Lucinda insisted. ‘Don’t take it so personally.’ She smiled. ‘A rose by any other name…’
‘I’m familiar with the quote. And unless I’m very much mistaken, Romeo doesn’t smell half as sweet by the end of the story. Possibly because he winds up dead.’
Lucinda allowed herself a little laugh. ‘See! I knew you had a dark side! But don’t think of it as an ending. Think of it as a new beginning. A fresh start. We can reposition you in the market and—’