‘Well, the family of Laura Holden, Charles’s wife, were very well connected and they tried to keep as many details out of the press as possible,’ Neve explained. ‘It was bad enough that Charles was a traitor, without being an adulterer too.’
‘I should probably read this novel then,’ Jacob Morrison said, although he didn’t sound overly keen at the prospect.
‘You can’t.’ Mr Freemont had been silent all this time, though periodically his tongue would slide out of his mouth so he could moisten his chapped lips. ‘Neve was under strict instructions to send everything pertaining to Lucy Keener back to the solicitor administering her estate.’
‘George, I think it’s fairly obvious that everything pertaining to Lucy Keener wasn’t sent anywhere,’ Mary Vickers said gently. She seemed highly amused by it all. ‘It’s very exciting. Maybe Ms Slater has discovered a new literary star.’
‘So, Neve, do you have a copy of this novel?’ Jacob Morrison asked, and for the life of her, Neve didn’t know whether still being in possession of all of Lucy’s papers was a good thing or a sackable thing. She threw Chloe an imploring look.
‘It’s being stored off-site,’ Chloe said, which sounded a lot better than admitting it was in an archive box in Neve’s spare room. ‘You’ll want to see the first few chapters of the biography Neevy’s written too. Absolutely unputdownable.’
‘Why don’t you just bang me out a synopsis instead? No more than two pages,’ Jacob suggested, reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket to extract a business card. ‘You can include it with a copy of the manuscript of er, Dancing on the Edge of the World, is it?’
Neve stretched across to take the card and said thank you and smiled and nodded, but she knew that Jacob had only asked her to write a synopsis to be polite, in much the same way that he’d probably read the first page of Dancing on the Edge of the World and decide that it had no literary merit. He was a super-agent with a couple of Man Booker Prize winners on his client roster and at least three sex-and-shopping novelists who were always on the bestseller lists. He wouldn’t ‘get’ the novel and Neve almost didn’t want to send him the manuscript because she felt fiercely protective of Lucy – which had to be the reason why the universe (or Lucy’s solicitor) had entrusted her literary estate to Neve.
The meeting was finally wrapping up. Neve was painfully aware of Mr Freemont’s squinty eyes resting first on her and then on Chloe as Harriet Fitzwilliam-White thanked them all for attending, as if they’d had any choice in the matter. Then the Trustees were getting up, Jacob Morrison slipping Chloe another one of his cards as he walked past her.
Chloe, Rose, Mr Freemont and Neve sat there listening to the sound of five pairs of feet tramping over the parquet flooring in the foyer. Mr Freemont waited until they heard the door close behind them, then turned to Neve, his weak chin wobbling in fury. ‘Well, I would never have expected that from you, Miss Slater,’ he hissed, as Neve cowered back in her chair. She’d known that she’d bear the brunt of Mr Freemont’s anger. He wouldn’t dare start on Rose or Chloe, because they didn’t even pretend to respect his authority. ‘I expressly ordered you to return those papers. What you’ve done … well, it’s theft.’
‘Oh no, it isn’t, George,’ Rose snapped, as Chloe took advantage of the distraction to slip out of the room. ‘It’s not at all like theft. It’s a pity you don’t spend less time writing me memos about my excessive use of Post-it notes and spend more time thinking of ways to generate new business.’
‘We’re not about generating new business; we’re about protecting a literary heritage,’ Mr Freemont snapped back. Once they got on to this particular subject, they’d be going at it for hours, so Neve felt perfectly justified in jumping up and racing for the door with a muttered, ‘Sorry,’ flung over her shoulder.
‘I want a word with you!’ she squeaked furiously at Chloe who was hurrying down the stairs that led to the basement. ‘Stop right there!’
Chloe didn’t stop, but waited for Neve at the bottom of the steps, hands on her hips and an innocent expression on her face. ‘It’s all right, Neevy,’ she said demurely. ‘No need to thank me.’
‘I should thank you for completely blind-siding me?’ Neve protested. ‘A warning would have been nice.’
‘Well, see, I did think about it, but Rose and Philip said you’d pretend that you were OK with it, then you’d have a panic attack five minutes before we went into the meeting and chicken out,’ Chloe revealed.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Neve said, frowning as she thought about it. ‘Except, I would totally do that.’
‘Not telling you was a kindness,’ Chloe went on, tucking her arm into Neve’s. ‘And it worked out all right in the end, didn’t it?’
‘I don’t think that Jacob Morrison is going to like Lucy’s writing. There’s hardly any sex in the novel.’
‘Apart from that bit in the alley during the blackout,’ Chloe reminded her as they entered the kitchen, because it went without saying that they both needed a restorative cup of tea. ‘That was seriously hot without even mentioning specific body parts. Anyway, he’s only one agent …’
‘A super-agent!’
‘Yes, but if he doesn’t get it, then someone else will.’ Chloe filled the kettle. ‘And that someone else will want to represent you too, as Lucy Keener’s official biographer.’
‘I’m not an official anything. Honestly, I only started writing it just to see if I could.’ Neve shook her head. ‘I just … it’s not about me, Lucy deserves to be published.’
‘So, what did I miss?’ asked Philip from the doorway, because he’d scarpered from the meeting with the rest of the part-time staff an hour before it had ended.
As Neve took over the tea-making, Chloe started to fill him in on the details just as Rose bustled in, pink-cheeked and irritated from having words with Mr Freemont. ‘That horrible little man,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘When will he put us all out of our misery and take early retirement?’
It was a rhetorical question that came up at least once every day, so no one even bothered to reply. Besides, Neve had a question of her own.
‘So, why didn’t you tell me about digitising the Archive? And you made a PowerPoint presentation,’ she added accusingly. ‘I could have helped.’
Philip put his arm round her stiff shoulders. ‘Two words: Secret Santa!’
Neve wriggled out from under Philip’s arm, because the three of them were laughing. At her, not with her. Because there was nothing about the Secret Santa affair of last year that Neve found remotely amusing. ‘I didn’t mean to tell Alice that you were her Secret Santa but she knew that I knew and she wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. And then she told me that she’d got Chloe …’ Neve shoved her hands into her hair, dislodging the pins that were holding her bun in place. ‘None of it was my fault. It was everybody else’s fault for telling me who they’d got. I cracked under the pressure.’
‘Which is why we didn’t tell you about Operation Digital,’ Rose said. ‘Thirty minutes and you’d have confessed everything to Freemont.’
‘Not thirty minutes,’ Neve grumbled.
‘You’d have maybe held out for a day,’ Chloe conceded. ‘Come on, Neevy, we didn’t tell you for your own good.’
‘It was horrible. I knew something was up and I thought that you were going to tell the Trustees to fire me to save some money,’ Neve admitted, and as she heard herself say the words out loud, she realised how highly unlikely that scenario would have been.
Philip shook his head. ‘Why would you think something like that?’
‘Yeah, why would you?’ Chloe pulled a hurt face. ‘I’m actually quite offended that you did. You’re one of my best friends, Neve!’
Neve squirmed helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, but all that whispering in corners brought out the worst in me. I’m very prone to paranoia when people won’t make eye-contact with me.’
Rose was certainly making eye-contact with Neve; eye-contact that co
nveyed disappointment and disbelief. ‘I think it’s time you went on another Goddess Workshop, because the first one obviously didn’t take.’
Chloe had other ideas. ‘You know what?’ she said, putting down her mug on the draining board. ‘Tea isn’t going to cut it. Let’s go down the pub.’
Chapter Nineteen
An hour after she’d got home, Neve was sitting fully clothed in her bath, laptop on her knees and a towel wedged under the door so Charlotte wouldn’t be able to hear her as she started typing her synopsis.
And though Neve didn’t want to jinx herself, it was going very well. She’d written her name and the working title of the biography: Falling off the Edge of the World without pausing. She’d even managed a whole paragraph explaining why she was writing a biography about a woman that no one had ever heard of, and now she was staring at a crack in the ceiling and trying to decide if Jacob Morrison needed to know the name of the grammar school that Lucy had attended.
Neve looked at Lucy’s diaries neatly stacked on her bathroom stool, and was just hoping that inspiration would leap up and seize her by the throat, when her phone rang.
She snatched it up and answered it within two rings because it was just the kind of noise that usually sent Charlotte into a frenzy.
‘Hello?’ she whispered.
‘Angelface, it’s Max. How are you?’
Now that the AGM was over and Neve felt more in control of that aspect of her life, she also felt better equipped to deal with Max. She wasn’t sure she had the guts to dump him, but she wasn’t going to take any nonsense either. Or she was going to try really hard not to take any nonsense. ‘I’m fine,’ she said quietly. ‘How are you?’
‘All the better for hearing your voice, gorgeous.’ Max’s voice sounded as if it had been oiled and Neve knew him well enough to know that when he was tossing endearments around like confetti at a wedding, it could mean only one thing.
‘If you want a favour from me, then just come right out and ask me, and if it’s something I want to do, then I’ll do it,’ she told him.
Neve heard Max’s swift intake of breath. ‘Oh, so I’m not allowed to compliment you now, is that it?’
She didn’t have the energy for this, not after such an emotionally draining day and two glasses of Pinot Grigio without even a hint of spritz about them. ‘Max, I don’t want to have a fight but is there something you need from me?’
Max paused and Neve swore to herself that if the next words out of his mouth were in any way combative, she’d pull the plug on their pancake relationship there and then, she really would. Or she’d send him an email once he’d rung off.
‘Well, yeah, there was this teensy little favour I wanted to ask you,’ Max said finally, and despite her earlier statement, Neve was instantly suspicious. Now that Max had spat it out, she remembered that when people wanted a favour from her, it usually involved Celia borrowing money or Rose trying to stick her with a load of filing. ‘OK, ask away,’ she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
‘My dog-sitter’s just called and he won’t take Keith while I’m in LA because he says that Keith terrorises his Cocker Spaniel, though I think it’s the other way round,’ Max burst out indignantly. ‘Christ, the dog’s called Aloysius. It automatically makes you want to terrorise him. And yeah, Keith barks at other dogs but it’s a nervous bark and he’d never—’
‘Do you want me to take Keith?’ Neve interrupted eagerly. ‘I’d love to!’
‘Derek says he’ll still walk him during the day but you’d have to give him a key and I know it’s asking a lot …’
‘Max, it’s no problem. I’d love to have a little doggy flatmate.’
‘You’re using the creepy voice again,’ Max reminded her sternly. ‘Look, are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all,’ Neve assured him. ‘Keith might even keep Charlotte at bay. I don’t think she can tell a nervous bark from a bark that says, “If you don’t stop screaming at Neve, I’m going to rip out your jugular.”’
‘Not that Keith would ever rip out anyone’s jugular.’
‘Of course he wouldn’t, but Charlotte doesn’t know that. And he can come over on Sunday with you and settle in and I can take him running with me. He’d love that.’
‘I can’t put him in kennels for a week, he’d have a nervous breakdown.’
‘Well, you don’t have to,’ Neve said. ‘Honestly, you must have known I’d say yes.’
‘Honestly? After Monday, I thought you might tell me to fuck off.’
Neve heard a noise from the flat below and froze for a second. The front door slammed and she held her breath, but the sound of footsteps was getting fainter, instead of reaching a crescendo as they approached her landing. Even so, she lowered her voice. ‘I wouldn’t have done that, and not even because I don’t say that word.’
‘Well, you might have told me to fuck off really politely,’ Max chuckled. ‘Why do you keep whispering? Are you with someone?’
‘I’m at home,’ Neve said, still in a whisper. ‘I think Charlotte’s just gone out but she and Douglas have been rowing all week and it makes her really trigger-happy with the broom so I’m doing some work in the bathroom. That way, she can only hear me if she goes to the loo.’
‘Sweetheart, this is no way to live,’ Max said gently. ‘You can’t let her get to you.’
The way that Max called her ‘sweetheart’, not in his usual careless, almost mocking way, but as if the word encapsulated exactly how he felt about her, made Neve’s throat ache. ‘I know. It’s just now we’re locked into this cycle and I don’t know how to break it.’
‘Bit like you and me and these stupid arguments we keep having, isn’t it?’ Max said, and it was the last thing Neve expected him to say. ‘Look, Neevy, I talk a good game, but most of it is bullshit and you shouldn’t take it to heart so much.’ Over the phone, with the really good acoustics of her tiled bathroom, every sniff and snort and breath was amplified so Neve could hear the reticence in his voice. ‘It’s just you seemed really sad on Monday morning. Like you felt completely defeated. Am I making you that unhappy?’
Neve shook her head in disbelief. ‘No. No! I mean, the sleeping together is getting me down and this whole dating experiment is much harder than I thought it would be, but that’s not really why I was down on Monday.’ She paused. ‘There was a situation at work, but it’s all better now.’
‘What kind of situation?’ Max asked.
‘It’s really sweet of you to ask, and I do appreciate it, but we both know that my job isn’t the most interesting topic of conversation.’
‘Neve, you’re killing me just a little bit here,’ Max groaned. ‘Will you please tell me what evil has been going down at the Archive?’
Max was making an effort, even though Neve had already said that she’d be happy to dog-sit, and he hadn’t called the Archive ‘that library’, so Neve decided to take him at his word. ‘Well, we had our annual meeting with this Board of Trustees,’ she began hesitantly, but she soon got into her stride and told Max all about the whispered conversations she’d kept breaking up and how she’d let her imagination and suspicions run wild. She told him about the coup d’état at the AGM. She even told him about the biography and how she was completely flummoxed at the thought of writing a two-page synopsis. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve already written six chapters and now I get writer’s block. Worse! I have writer’s paralysis and it’s not even as if I think that Jacob Morrison is going to like Lucy’s novel, much less my amateur attempts at a biography, but I have to at least try. Oh God, I’m not sure I can do this.’
Max didn’t say she could, despite all evidence to the contrary. And he didn’t try and give her a ‘buck up, kiddo’ pep talk. He simply said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Neve admitted. ‘I don’t have a very interesting job and you think the Archive is populated by cardigan-wearing lesbians.’
‘I can’t dec
ide if you have a low opinion of me or a low opinion of yourself.’ Max sighed. ‘Didn’t I just tell you that most of the stuff that comes out of my mouth is utter crap?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Neve whispered. ‘I wish I wasn’t like this. I know it’s tiresome and boring.’
‘You’re not boring, Neevy,’ Max said, as if he really meant it. ‘Synopses are an absolute bitch to write. I hate them. Just write everything down that you think you need to say, don’t look at it for at least twenty-four hours, then start editing.’
‘Oh! I used to do that when I was writing essay outlines at Oxford,’ Neve said. ‘That’s a big help. Thank you.’
But Max wasn’t done. ‘You can tell me stuff, you know. I tell you stuff.’
Neve closed her eyes and when she opened them, she decided that if Max was going to be so forthcoming, then maybe she could be too. ‘Max, we both know there’s a lot of things that you don’t tell me. Like, you didn’t tell me that it’s your birthday on Saturday. I had to find out from Celia.’
Max made a dismissive noise. ‘Birthday shmirthday.’
‘So, what’s the plan for Saturday night?’ Neve persisted.
‘Don’t be mad at me.’
The moment he said that, Neve could feel her hackles rise. ‘Why would I be mad at you?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing. ‘What have you done?’
‘Next Saturday … it’s this thing … Mandy’s booked a table at the Ivy for me and her and our respective agents so we can talk about the next book.’ He paused. ‘Sorry, it was sorted ages ago.’
Neve was appalled. ‘But it’s a special day!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have to do something that isn’t a business meeting disguised as a birthday dinner.’
‘Well, then she’s going to drag me off clubbing and it’s not my actual birthday until Sunday but I have to fly out to LA the next day …’
‘We could go bowling. Celia and I always go bowling on our birthdays.’
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