by Jemma Harvey
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Wishful Thinking
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
WISHFUL THINKING
Jemma Harvey
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Epub ISBN: 9781409039747
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Copyright © Jemma Harvey 2004
Jemma Harvey has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
Special thanks to Harry Graham’s niece for permission to quote ‘Calculating Clara’ © 1899
‘One Perfect Rose’ by Dorothy Parker © 1926 Excerpt quoted from The Penguin Dorothy Parker, Penguin 1977. Reproduced by permission of Pollinger Limited and the proprietor.
‘Nobody’s Chasing Me’ Words and Music by Cole Porter © 1949 (renewed) Buxton-Hill-Music Corp, USA. Warner Chappell North America Limited, London W6 8BS. Lyrics reproduced by permission of IMP Limited. All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Century
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There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
G. B. SHAW: Man and Superman
There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on earth.
C. S. LEWIS: The Screwtape Letters
Chapter 1
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
SHAKESPEARE: Macbeth
It all began the day we went to the Wyshing Well.
(Of course, it didn’t really, because things never actually begin, they just continue on from stuff that’s happened before, but that’s where I’m going to start.)
The well was in the gardens of the Bel Manoir, a Palladian mansion recently converted into a hotel and restaurant, complete with understated Oriental décor – the Prince Regent effect without the vulgarity – and a celebrity chef presiding over the cuisine. (He presided but I doubt if he actually cooked – unless there was a TV camera around.) We’d been lunching there with one of our authors, Jerry Beauman, to celebrate his release from prison. Georgie didn’t like the choice of location at all – the prices on the wine list went well into four figures – but Beauman is one of our Big Names so she had to agree. There wasn’t much to celebrate, in our view. Beauman had been doing time for some sort of financial fraud so elaborate even he claimed he hadn’t understood what he was doing, although the judge hadn’t believed him. All Jerry could do was make the most of the rather dubious publicity and spend his gaol-time working on a new book about a wronged hero, duped by a villain who envied him his glamour and success, incarcerated despite his innocence until following his release he is finally able to turn the tables on his accusers and vindicate his good name. I wasn’t listening to his account of the plot over the meal (I’m not his editor) but I knew what it would be. I was only there because the Publishing Director couldn’t make it. Georgie (Georgina Cavari, Publicity) grabbed the wine list in her capacity as official hostess and did her best to keep the bill down. Unfortunately, Beauman is a major seller, if not quite as major as he boasts, and since there really is no such thing as bad publicity for a writer we toasted him with sinking hearts, knowing the book would be a huge success. At least, it would be after Laurence Buckle – who is his editor – had done the necessary revisions.
Once Jerry had swanned off with poor Laurence in attendance to discuss the manuscript Georgie, Lin and I tottered into the garden to recover.
We’re the heroines, so I’d better tell you something about us. Just quickly, for now. I’ll do the flashbacks later.
If I take us in order of age, I start with Georgie. She’s forty-two, but you wouldn’t know it. I’ve heard some of the girls saying: ‘If I look half that good when I’m her age . . .’, the way people do, only I don’t join in because I don’t look half that good now, and I’m twenty-nine. She’s nearly as tall as a model and has a double-D bust on a size eight figure and the kind of skin that looks as if she should be advertising face cream for the older woman: ‘Because I’m worth it.’ Her hair is a short, professionally-tousled mop streaked several different shades of blonde, and she has big brown puppy-dog eyes which effectively conceal the fact that she’s a cynic, pragmatist and optimist by turns, and sometimes all at once. She used to be married to an Italian count but, as she says, ‘the conte didn’t count’. Titles are two a penny in Italy, apparently, where everyone is a member of the aristocracy or the Mafia, or both. She lives alone in a house she can’t afford and refuses to have a cat, on principle.
Lin’s next. Lindsay Corrigan, née Macleod. Where Georgie is gorgeous and glam, Lin’s beautiful. Her makeup’s haphazard and her clothes tend towards ethnic, but it doesn’t matter. She’s the real McCoy, an unearthly fairy creature who looks as if she’s just stepped out of the hollow hills, all wispy body and flawless face and misty Pre-Raphaelite waves of red-gold hair. And underneath there’s a nice girl from Edinburgh whose looks have taken her places she didn’t really want to go, namely to single parenthood in a house in Kensington, a succession of nannies who never seem to work out, and no leisure for a life of her own. And looks like hers – unlike Georgie’s – don’t last. She’s thirty-o
ne and it’s starting to show: there’s a faint tarnish of time and stress on all that flawlessness, a hint of mortal wear-and-tear on immortal perfection. She isn’t particularly vain, but we’re vain for her, and we’re afraid she’ll wilt like a dehydrated flower before Mr Right comes along to pluck her.
I know, old-fashioned bollocks, unsuited to the Liberated Woman. But Lin’s an old-fashioned girl. She thinks Women’s Liberation still means burning your bra.
And then there’s me. Twenty-nine (see above). Emma Jane Cook, known as Cookie, because everyone in publishing is called Emma these days. I’ve got all the things you’re supposed to have: an Oxford degree and a good job (well, mostly) and my own flat and a boyfriend called Nigel – but that’s his parents’ fault and there are lots of nice men called Nigel. (‘Only yours isn’t one of them’: Georgie.) I mean, it sounds good, doesn’t it? But then there’s the catch. The fly in the ointment. Me. A big fat fly – really fat, not Bridget Jones Oh-God-I’ve-gone-over-nine-stone fat, not a-couple-of-inches-of-spare-tyre fat, not I-can’t-get-into-my-size-10-jeans fat, but fat fat. FAT. Over two years’ intermittent dieting I’ve just about got myself down from a twenty to a sixteen, if it’s generous. And I’m only five foot four, so it isn’t like the weight’s spread out. My bust is vast, but it’s balanced out by my hips, bum, thighs – you get the picture. My face is okay, but who cares? Hazel eyes, really good eyebrows (if anyone notices eyebrows), big lips that would look sexy on a thin face, but on mine, they just look – you’ve guessed it – fat. Hair dark, curling into a frizz. Big hair ought to counterbalance big body, but not in my case. I dream of slinky, sexy clothes with split skirts clinging to every lack of curve, but I wear loose, baggy, shapeless things to hide my loose, baggy, shapeless figure. I’m not really heroine material – unless there’s a point in this story when I go on a miracle diet, and everyone suddenly discovers how beautiful I am. But I doubt it. I’ve tried every miracle diet there is, and only a very few pounds have oozed reluctantly away, like It girls forced to leave the party early. No, I’m just the narrator. Like Fanny in The Pursuit of Love, I just chug along comfortably while all the exciting things happen to my wonderful, glamorous friends.
Or so I thought that day at the Wyshing Well.
It was in a little arbour at the end of a gravel path so smooth it looked as if it had been ironed. Trellises arched over it, tangled with climbing plants, supposedly making it secretive and mysterious, but on that grey January day the effect was mostly rather dark. The well itself looked old, with green mossy stuff growing over the lip. There was no bucket, only the rusty chain wound round the winch. Chickenwire covered the top, presumably in case prospective wishers (well-wishers?) felt suicidal and tried to hurl themselves in. Or maybe they might want to retrieve the coins, a few of which could be seen glinting in the depths. On a plaque nailed to the side of the well there was a verse in a Tolkienesque script:
Toss a penny in the welle
Thynk on your hearte’s desyre.
The charm wille aid who aids himsel
To wyshe is to aspyre.
The sentiment seemed a bit pragmatic to me, a God-helps-them-who-help-themselves type thing, not what you’d expect from the fairy folk, but I paid it no attention at the time.
‘Jerry Beauman to be rearrested, this time for indecent exposure, after flashing in front of a group of children and several gorillas in Regents Park Zoo,’ Georgie said moodily. ‘The gorillas will be permanently traumatised.’
‘Your wish?’ asked Lin. ‘Okay. I’ll add . . . the judge gives him ten years, in a cell with no laptop or writing paper. How’s that?’
‘Life,’ I said. ‘And then he wakes up one morning believing he’s turning into a Tellytubby.’
There was a gloomy silence while we contemplated Jerry Beauman. I hope to God he isn’t going to feature much in this story, but you may as well know (if you don’t already) that he’s good-looking in a ratty sort of way and has recently dumped a long-standing wife to be seen out with a designer bimbo of Oriental origins who looks inscrutable at a succession of book launches. His whole life has been embittered by the fact that, although he appeared at the launch party in Bridget Jones’ Diary, after editing all you could see was the back of his head.
‘We ought to have a real wish,’ said Georgie. ‘Toss a penny in for the fairy, or whatever it’s called.’
‘Might be a nix,’ Lin said. She’s into folklore. ‘Or a minogue.’
‘Minogue?’ Georgie and I, in unison.
‘It’s a kind of fairy. Honest. And there are kelpies and selkies and—’
‘Never mind,’ Georgie interrupted. ‘Let’s just wish. I could do with a little fairy-luck right now. Or even a lot.’
‘One big wish?’ Lin asked. ‘Or three small ones?’
‘What’s a big wish?’ I was intrigued.
‘Well . . . world peace, that sort of thing.’
‘Let’s keep it realistic,’ said Georgie. ‘Just untold wealth and happiness. We don’t want the fairy to be overstretched.’
After some serious thought we each dropped a penny in – I had to give one to Lin, since she had no change – and wished. I wished hard, eyes shut tight, the way I did when I was a child, though I knew it was pointless. Afterwards, we all felt better. Like doing the lottery. Pointless, but fun. ‘Besides,’ Georgie said, ‘we’ve got more chance of having our wishes come true than winning the lottery, any day.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what I wished for.’
‘Can’t be as impossible as mine,’ said Georgie. ‘I wished to clear my credit-card bill. Among other debts.’
Lin said: ‘Aren’t we supposed not to tell?’
‘Why? I want to make sure the fairy – nixie – whatever it is – hears.’
‘In that case,’ said Lin, ‘I wished to meet the Man in my Life.’
‘You’ve had lots of men in your life,’ I pointed out. ‘At least – several.’ Lin wasn’t the promiscuous type.
‘I mean the man,’ Lin explained. ‘You know. The One. When your eyes just meet across the room and you know.’
‘My eyes just met Jerry Beauman’s over the foie gras,’ Georgie remarked. ‘It was an accident. I happened to look up, and there he was, looking at me. Yuk.’
‘Awful,’ I said sympathetically.
‘What did you wish for, Cookie?’ Lin asked.
‘Let’s just say mine really will strain the fairy’s magical powers,’ I responded.
‘Like world peace?’
‘More.’
‘Come on then,’ said Georgie.
I didn’t say ‘no laughing’ because they were my friends.
‘I wished to become a sex goddess,’ I told them. ‘I thought that would give the fairy a real challenge.’
No one laughed. It might have been better if they had.
So that was how it all started. You wish for things – incredible, impossible things – and then you begin to want them, and wonder if they could ever happen. And from wanting and wondering it’s only a short step to asking yourself what you can do to make them happen. A short but significant step. One of those ‘All journeys start with but a single step’ steps. Like it said in the verse: ‘To wyshe is to aspyre’. Not that we would have taken that step if it hadn’t been for Georgie, of course. It’s always Georgie who looks for the lever on the floodgates, rather than simply going with the flow. She’s the sort of person who grabs life by the balls – and squeezes. Scary to be around, but never boring.
Anyway, she had the easy wish. Money. Quite a lot of money, true, but much easier than finding your One True Love or turning an overweight Ugly Duckling into a sex goddess.
‘You don’t know the size of my credit-card bill,’ Georgie said darkly. ‘Did you see that survey recently that said everyone in the country owed seventeen grand on their credit cards?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘And there are lots of people who only owe about a thousand?’ Her tone suggested t
his was profoundly unnatural.
‘No.’
‘Well, all those excess sixteen thousands are on my bill. Believe me.’
‘No!’
‘All of them?’ Lin demanded, wide-eyed.
‘All of them,’ Georgie said firmly.
‘Couldn’t you remortgage your house?’ I suggested. ‘My aunt Jenny—’
‘Dunnit. I just ran the bill up again.’
‘Take in a lodger?’
Georgie shuddered. ‘I know about lodgers. The fun ones have their music on full blast all night and leave unspeakable items of dirty washing in the bath and drink all your booze without telling you. And the nice, quiet ones who don’t drink or smoke turn out to be axe-murderers.’
‘A cat?’
‘How would that help? Cats don’t pay rent.’
‘No, but . . . it’s very soothing to stroke their fur. And they make nice purry noises. And catch mice. That might stop you worrying about your bill quite so much.’ Just in case you haven’t guessed, I do have a cat. A mog-standard tabby called Mandy, short for Mandelson, because he has this intense way of looking at you, as if to say: I know where you live . . .
‘I don’t worry about it enough,’ Georgie said. ‘That’s why it keeps increasing. I only worry about not worrying about it.’
Lin and I gave up.
I think I should tell you something about the publisher for whom we work. (You can see I’m an editor, can’t you? For whom, not who we work for.) It’s called Ransome Harber, and for the benefit of any illiterates who haven’t heard of it, the company is a big conglomerate owning lots of different imprints. About a year ago we acquired the small independent Cuckoo’s Nest, in order to turn their MD into our Chairman. ‘We liked the boss so much, we bought the company . . .’ I work in Ransome hardbacks and the main paperback arm, Twocan, with the famous logo of a double-headed bird, twin profiles back to back. Other imprints we have swallowed or spawned include the vintage Angus McAngus, Sparrow children’s books, the sci-fi/fantasy Phoenix (the company is very bird-minded, for some reason), and the tiny but wildly lucrative Eros, which produces pornography for women. Editors only do short-term placements on the Eros list ever since the tragic and very expensive case of someone who stayed there two years, developed a pathological horror of sex, and scooped a small fortune after suing the company for work-related trauma. Georgie runs the Publicity Department for all the imprints, with Lin as her main assistant and several others specialising in different areas. Eros doesn’t need publicity, though Promotions will sometimes arrange to give away, for example, a leather G-string with each book (or vice versa). That evening Georgie had organised a launch party for someone at Porgy, a label publishing writers from ethnic minorities. I was going for the free booze, and because Nigel was away at a convention.