by Paula Daly
‘Your husband never wanted money from me, Jane.’
‘So what did he want?’
‘He wanted recognition. Prestige. He wanted what I just got on the stage in there.’ He motioned to the theatre behind him. ‘He couldn’t bear to see me getting the kind of adulation he so coveted, and so he had to destroy my career.’
‘You don’t think he got sick of you getting all this adulation when he knew you’d lied your way in? When he knew your career was a lie?’
Frankie didn’t answer.
‘Did he threaten to expose you?’ I asked.
‘Yes!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Yes, he threatened to expose me! What? You think I’d do something like that over nothing? You think I’d shoot him in the head over nothing? Jesus Christ, Jane, I’m not an animal.’
Frankie was breathing hard and a fine layer of sweat had now appeared on his upper lip.
‘You were waiting for him,’ I said. ‘Leon didn’t stand a chance, did he?’
‘I wasn’t waiting for him,’ he replied. ‘I came around that day to sort things out. I wanted to be reasonable. I was sick of all the online shit and wanted to hear what Leon had to say. But when I got there he was all riled up after arguing with that old guy opposite and he basically laughed in my face. He told me if I didn’t come clean and admit to plagiarizing the manuscript then he’d do it for me. He refused to discuss it.’
‘And so you shot him.’
‘Yes, Jane, I shot him. I hadn’t planned for this to turn violent though, whatever you might think. But Leon was laughing at me … and then the nail gun was right there, and before I knew it I had it in my hand and …’ Frankie shrugged, as if really it was all out of his control.
‘What about Alistair?’
‘What about him? You told me yourself you were going to speak with him. Then you would’ve known, Jane. You would’ve known all of it.’
‘But did he really have to die? I can’t believe he actually let you in to his apartment.’
‘I told the stupid fuck I’d come to apologize.’
I smiled.
‘What’s so amusing?’ he said, as I continued to smile, but he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Look, I’m going to need that file from you,’ he said. ‘And any other copies you have of Alistair Armitage’s novel. I want your assurance that you’re not storing this thing anywhere, that all the copies have been destroyed.’
I pointed to the microphone attached to his collar.
‘You’re still transmitting inside the auditorium, you dickhead.’
And Frankie frowned in confusion.
He looked from me to the theatre and back to me again.
Then the theatre doors opened and Hazel Ledecky was standing there, flanked by two detectives. She nodded once in my direction.
‘Good luck, Frankie,’ I said, and he seemed really quite bewildered.
I turned, started to make my way towards the exit.
Behind me, I could hear Ledecky explaining to Frankie his rights, asking if he understood. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Mr Ridonikis? Do you understand, or do you want me to repeat it to you?’
40
When the story broke it went global.
Even though Frankie could never have claimed to have celebrity author status, he sold enough books, in enough different countries, for there to be worldwide interest. Frankie was charged with the murder of Alistair Armitage, and for the attack on Leon – grievous bodily harm. The trial was scheduled for the summer. And Frankie had been remanded in custody until then.
There was huge speculation around what length of sentence Frankie would receive. Long, was all I was hoping for. A reporter was filmed asking Frankie what he would do with his time inside, should he be convicted, and Frankie answered, ‘Write my masterpiece.’
He even had a smile on his face as he said it.
That was until the reporter informed him that any monies earned from such a book, while he was detained by Her Majesty, would probably not be his to keep. Jeffrey Archer, the reporter said, had had to give all of his royalties away to charity when incarcerated for perjury because there was such an uproar. And Frankie’s smile faded rather quickly after that.
I wondered if he’d end up in Walton Gaol. With Ryan Toonen. It sickened me every time I thought about it – that Frankie had set that up.
After the dinner party during which Frankie had been so supportive, so supposedly stunned to find out we were struggling financially, he’d made sure, through his circle of ex-cons, that Toonen was paid to threaten me in Walton. This was in response to Oona’s suggestion that I should snoop through Leon’s computer. Frankie was shit-scared of what I might find so he organized Toonen to attack me to make sure I stayed away.
I hoped he suffered inside. I hoped, after taking away Leon’s brilliant mind, after taking away the lives we had before, after sending some bastard to scare Jack in the playground, to scare my darling boy, I hoped Frankie Ridonikis really suffered. I hoped he found prison life unbearable.
We had endured enough and now it was his turn. But we would get through it. We would keep getting better.
The media circus lasted close to a week, during which there were reporters camped outside my door day and night, camera operators pointing zoom lenses through my windows. Boom poles and microphones were held aloft by tired-looking assistants. And then, as tends to be the way with these things, they got bored and moved on to something more interesting, to the next story, and we tried to get back to our lives again.
Eden stayed on to help us, and Leon continued to improve, but more often than not it was three steps forwards, two steps back. I resumed work on Leon’s novel again. I worked at it every day, every spare moment I had, and eventually, in the early spring, I sent it off to his publishers.
I waited in anticipation, checking my emails daily, hourly, trying to remain busy, my mind occupied, but it wasn’t always easy.
And then, ten days later, I received a response.
They wanted a meeting in London.
They wanted a meeting in London with me.
I had submitted the manuscript with Leon’s name on the front but with a note attached explaining that because Leon was unable to type, he had dictated the rest of Red City, and I had transcribed his words. I was hoping that the editor would find a certain romance to the situation and, as Frankie had suggested when he told me to complete Leon’s novel, that it might be used to market the thing. This was an outright lie, I knew, but I figured we were entitled to be a little sketchy with the truth after what we’d been through.
At the end of March, I stood on the platform at Lime Street Station in my best coat and boots, receiving the kind of send-off one usually gets before embarking on a one-way trip. My mother was there, as well as Gloria, Leon, Eden, Jack and Martha, and there was a frisson of excitement amongst the group, but underlying it all I could feel the weight of expectation: Everything depends on this, I could feel them thinking. Everything.
I just hoped I didn’t screw it up.
With the train ready to board, my mother held my face in her hands, last night’s vodka on her breath, saying, ‘You deserve this. You’ve worked so hard, you’re brighter than you give yourself credit for, and nobody deserves a shot at this more than you. Make sure they understand what they’re getting. Make sure they know how much you’ve put into it.’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her it didn’t really work like that.
Writing’s like sport, in that if you’re good enough, you get to play. (And, also like sport, if they think they can make money out of you, then you get to play too.)
The kids clung to my legs and I lifted each one of them in turn.
‘Give Mummy a good-luck kiss.’
Martha planted a kiss on the end of my nose and asked when I would be back.
‘Tonight. But you’ll be tucked up in bed, so I’ll creep in when you’re asleep. Be a good girl for Daddy.’
She assured me she would, and it occurred to me as I said
those words that we had reached a kind of milestone. This would be the first time I would go away and leave Leon in charge of the children. Sure, Eden would be there too, though Eden was still classed as a minor. But as I looked around at my hotchpotch family, I realized that we were all doing a pretty good job of taking care of each other now. We relied on each other. We were there for each other. We were doing OK.
Leon stepped forward. He took Martha from my arms and placed her on his hip. Still tired from such an early start, Martha rested her head against Leon’s chest and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
‘This is a done deal, baby,’ he said to me. ‘Don’t be nervous. They’ll want the book. I promise.’
I wanted him to be right. I so hoped he was right.
I leaned in for a kiss and then boarded the train.
It pulled away from the platform and I waved to them from my seat next to the window. The back of my shirt was wringing with sweat and I was grateful the adjacent seat was vacant as my hands were shaking. I had to tuck them under my thighs just to get them to still.
I kept rehearsing what I was going to say. Kept running through the various responses to the question I was dreading: ‘Is this really Leon’s work? Did Leon actually dictate this novel?’
I still hadn’t decided which way I was going to play it. Erica had said: Deny everything, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me to pull it off.
Ten minutes outside Euston and the train slowed. Passengers began putting on coats, collecting briefcases from the overhead shelves, making their way to the end of the carriage, ready for a swift disembarkation. I stayed seated and let them go first. I didn’t want to be rushed. I glanced at my watch. I’d allowed ninety minutes to get to HarperCollins.
I queued for a black cab behind a mother and daughter who were beyond excited to be seeing 42nd Street that evening, the daughter tapping out rhythms with her feet on the concrete. I tried to settle myself. My cab driver was from Kosovo. He talked for the entire journey, which I found reduced my nerves, so I encouraged him by asking the odd question here and there. He’d been a lecturer in economics in his home country and told me that he missed his mother, but not the rest of his family, or the people of his village for that matter, who were all, according to him, ‘jealous shits’. He deposited me at the front of HarperCollins with forty minutes to spare and I made my way in trying to look as if I belonged there.
I was given a visitor’s pass and asked to wait in the lobby. Ruth Pumford, Leon’s editor, would be down to collect me shortly.
Within minutes, I heard the whoosh of a door opening, the sound of footsteps, and ‘Jane!’ as Ruth exclaimed my name, warmly, upon entering. ‘So good of you to make the trip south.’ We’d never met but she greeted me as if we were long-time buddies. ‘How was it? Not too awful, I hope?’
I blustered out a reply, said something meaningless about a woman conducting business calls in the quiet carriage, and Ruth agreed it was the height of bad manners. Once in her office, she asked her assistant if she wouldn’t mind getting us drinks. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Ruth asked. ‘I think we have some redbush, Jane, if you’re off caffeine.’
‘Coffee’s fine.’
Ruth’s office was big. She was a senior commissioning editor and had been at HarperCollins ‘half my life – I should really think about a change of scenery,’ she confided, ‘but I’d just hate to lose my authors! They’re like family. How is Leon, by the way?’
‘Doing better, thank you.’
She was a diminutive woman, tiny in frame, who wore the loose, flowing clothes of a committed yogi. There were pictures of her children in graduation robes on the desk and a couple of manuscripts held together with bulldog clips.
Red City was not among them, I noticed.
‘Well,’ she said and fixed me with a big bright smile, ‘we should really get to it, shouldn’t we? Now that we’ve dragged you all the way here.’
I sat up, readying myself in anticipation.
‘I’m afraid it’s going to be a “no” with regards to Red City, Jane.’ And she smiled regretfully. ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’
I swallowed.
I didn’t know what to say.
Really?
I looked out of the window. A bus was stationary at the kerb and the occupants of the top deck were staring. A small child with a fur-trimmed hood waved my way.
‘Could I have some water, please?’ I managed to murmur.
Ruth jumped up. ‘Of course.’ She seemed relieved to get out of the room.
No.
They didn’t want it. They didn’t want Leon’s novel.
How could they not want it? After everything we’d been through? After all I’d put into it?
Ruth returned and handed me a glass. ‘Here you go.’
I gulped down two big mouthfuls. I tried to think of something to say to fill the silence, but I had nothing to say. There was nothing to say.
‘I know this is not the news you were expecting,’ she said carefully. ‘And I assure you we haven’t taken this decision lightly. The team was split … if that makes it any easier. I really wanted to take it on. I really liked it.’
‘Can I ask why the others didn’t?’
‘The style, ultimately. It just didn’t correspond to the rest of Leon’s work. His readers are such a loyal bunch,’ she explained. ‘They want Leon. They don’t want … if I may be presumptuous here … they don’t want you, Jane.’
She watched me carefully and waited for me to take in what she was saying.
She knew.
‘Was it you who wrote the book?’ she asked. ‘I know Leon had done a chunk of it, but are those your words in the last hundred pages?’
I thought about denying it. Thought about being outraged. But what was the point? She knew. They all knew.
‘I wrote the last part.’
I tried to hold it together. I felt so bloody pathetic, but I had so much invested in this. We all had. This was our lifeline. We had pinned everything on this. What were we going to do now?
‘I can’t believe it’s not going to happen,’ I said weakly.
‘I am truly sorry …
‘You did an admirable job, Jane,’ she said after a time. ‘It can’t have been easy, what with caring for Leon and the children too. I know how much you’ve tried to make this work. I know how hard it must have been.’
So why did you drag me down here full of false hope? I wanted to scream at her.
But I didn’t. Because this was publishing. Publishing people were polite.
‘And you’re probably wondering why I dragged you all the way down here, if we’re not going to go ahead with it.’
I lifted my head and feigned surprise, as if that hadn’t crossed my mind at all.
‘Well, we have a proposition for you,’ she said. ‘It’s something you’ll need to think long and hard about, because this wouldn’t be easy. And I appreciate you have a lot of commitments, a lot of responsibilities, right now. But we saw something in your writing. You’ve written novels before, is that right?’
I told her I had.
‘What genre?’
‘Women’s fiction. Family drama. Nothing’s been good enough to be published though,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Well, while your style was not suited to the kind of gritty crime that Leon writes so well, we did feel it might be suited to the domestic thriller genre. Gone Girl and the like. The genre’s showing no sign of cooling off, quite the contrary actually, and we’re always on the lookout for something fresh. We think you could be it. Do you read much domestic noir?’
‘A little.’
‘And do you think you might be able to come up with a story, something set in the home, something with a woman as the main character? We want a normal woman, someone a bit like yourself perhaps. Do you think you might be able to create something thrilling, something that puts the main character in all kinds of jeopardy?’
41
Well, did I?
I told her I’d d
o my best.
I told her I’d go away and put an outline together and get back to her as fast as I could, because, frankly, we needed the money. We needed money fast.
As a gesture of goodwill, she said that if I could come up with something really exemplary, then she might be able to swing an advance my way on receipt of the synopsis. ‘It would have to be bloody good though,’ she warned.
In the end, I didn’t get the advance.
My synopsis was a bit all over the place. Outlining has never been my strong point.
But eighteen months after my trip to London, I was sitting in the lounge, listening to Leon read aloud from one of his novels. After a slow start, he was now working his way through each of his books, and he was growing in confidence. He wanted to read to everyone. Anyone who’d listen. And his mother now came over twice a week, bringing her own reading material. It was kind of fun to hear him tackling Joanna Trollope, Jodi Picoult, Diane Chamberlain, while Gloria dozed quietly in the armchair beside him.
While we sat in the lounge, the doorbell sounded. Leon paused in his reading, and went to answer. He returned with a package, which he’d had to sign for, addressed to me, and all at once he looked very nervous and twitchy.
‘You open it,’ I said.
He did, and he placed the new book in my hands, carefully, reverentially, and then he handed me the note that had been inside.
Dearest Jane,
Please find enclosed the finished copy of your debut novel OPEN YOUR EYES.
Isn’t she beautiful????
I’m immensely proud to have worked on this with you and can’t wait to see it in the shops. Let’s hope it flies off the shelves and into the hands of your new readers!
Much love,
Ruth
I opened the book and flicked through the pages. Sure, the names were different, and I’d given the children slightly different ages, but other than that, everything was the same.
I looked up and Leon was smiling proudly.
‘Well done, baby,’ he said.
Leon’s story had made it into print.
It’s the book you’re holding in your hands right now.