She giggled. ‘You're funny.’ Then she sniffed and wiped a hand across her damp cheek. ‘Roddy, why do I keep letting him do this to me?’ She jabbed a finger in Tom's general direction.
‘I don't know,’ said Roddy. ‘Maybe you're a masochist?’
She appeared to give it some thought. ‘No, I tried that a few times. I quite liked the being tied up part, but in the end it turns out I'm more of a sadist.’
Roddy gulped. ‘That's nice.’
She threw a dark look at Tom. ‘It's just him. He's the only one who can make me feel this …’
‘Vulnerable? Fragile? Waif-like?’
‘… Fucking furious.’
Tom had had enough. He flung a finger towards the door. ‘The two of you. Leave. Separately.’ He glowered at Nicola. ‘Why are you still here? Go and write!’
Faced with her boiling French editor, her lip began once more to tremble. She gathered the manuscript to her chest and scrambled out.
‘Get thee to a Costa Coffee!’ Tom half-chased her into the passageway. ‘And don't come back until every word sings from the page.’
‘Bye then, Nicola,’ said Roddy trailing after her rapidly disappearing figure. ‘See you at the launch.’
She banged open the front door and hurried out, almost colliding with a woman in a dark blue business suit marching across the courtyard. The square-shouldered suit gave her a purposeful air and she observed the crying girl depart, never once breaking stride in her far from sensible heels.
Tom watched her uneasily from the doorway of his office. Without waiting for an invitation the woman clipped along the corridor, pushed past him, placed her briefcase on his desk and made herself comfortable in his chair.
‘If you try to make me cry,’ she said coolly, ‘I'll inform the Inland Revenue about your yacht.’
‘Anna,’ said Tom, hoping that he was faking enough sincerity. ‘Great to see you.’ He paused before adding, ‘Wasn't expecting to see you.’ He followed her inside, inquiring with a nervous laugh, ‘Good news?’
Anna LeFèvre possessed a French surname and was distantly related to a family of 17th-century Parisian tapestry weavers, but that's where the entente cordiale ended, much to Tom's dismay. She was his banker; a Relationship Manager in modern parlance or, as she referred to it, ‘touchy-feely marketing shite’. Spotting her name on the bank's website back when he'd opened his account Tom had sought her out, confident that their French connection would enable him to shave an interest point or two off his overdraft and perhaps bend the lending rules in his favour. His confidence had proved misplaced. Anna was as severe as her dark bobbed hair—and as straight.
She sat behind his desk in his chair while he squatted in the low seat of shame reserved for authors. Her eyes never wavered from the laptop screen as she scrutinised the company's books. Tom could imagine more painful examinations, but they involved disposable gloves and the removal of his trousers. At least Anna stopped at baring his accounts. She scrolled through various ledgers and bank accounts, pausing from time to time in order to raise an eyebrow or cluck disapprovingly. When she had finished she let out a long, low whistle and finally turned to him.
‘You and me are going to lunch.’
‘Great!’
Released from the enveloping sense of dread that had descended upon him since she walked through his door, Tom leapt up and announced happily, ‘We'll go to Rogano. On me.’
She drummed her fingers on his desk.
‘Let's go to the wee café next door,’ she suggested, then glanced back at the screen. ‘And I think I'd better pay.’
A waitress with serious glasses and more serious tattoos landed a couple of plates on their table by the window. Tom surveyed the sandwich on Anna's, then looked at his, then back at hers again.
With a motherly sigh of exasperation, she said, ‘Do you want to swap?’
Barely had she finished the question when he nodded—’Yeah’—and was already sliding the plates by each other.
‘OK? Now can we talk about Tristesse Books’ books?’
Tom took a great bite and answered through a mouthful. ‘Mmm-hmm. But if we have to talk figures, can you do that thing where you use vegetables?’ He plucked a cherry tomato from the weedy salad that accompanied the sandwich and in a business-like voice intoned, ‘Imagine this tomato is my cash flow.’
‘Perhaps you've forgotten, but a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.’ She took the tomato from him and plonked it down on the side of her plate. ‘Don't play with your food.’
She hoisted her briefcase on to the table and flipped it open. ‘How many new writers have you thrown money away on this year?’
‘I only throw money away on good writers. Good Scottish writers.’ He waved his sandwich and grinned. ‘I'm very patriotic.’
She drew out a glossy black folder and a typewritten list. ‘Good, maybe, but commercial?’ She read from the top of the list. ‘The Thought's Stream.’
‘It's highly experimental,’ he explained. ‘The main character is a drop of water.’
Unimpressed, her eye fell upon the next entry. ‘Death of a Conductor?’
‘Nicola Ball is one of Scotland's most exciting novelists under the age of thirty,’ he shot back confidently, before burying his head in his chest to mumble, ‘who happens to be obsessed with public transport.’
She went through the list one by one, tutting like a schoolmistress reviewing an errant pupil's exam results until she reached the final entry. ‘Earnest Shards,’ she sighed dismally.
‘Ah.’
‘Tom, what were you thinking?’
‘It's a wonderful book. It deserves to be published.’
Anna sat back and folded her arms. ‘I admire the sentiment, but you paid too much for it. Don't argue—you know you did. And there's bugger all chance you'll see a penny of it back.’
‘I might,’ he said quietly.
She banged the table. ‘Not unless you get the author to rewrite it with a bunch of vampires and a lot of kinky sex.’
Tom considered the idea for a moment and then dismissed it with a scowl. He took another bite of his sandwich. ‘It doesn't matter anyway. One hit pays for all the rest—that's how this business works. And I have a bestseller in the wings.’
‘Jane Lockhart, yes. So how's the new book shaping up?’
He made a face. ‘Je ne sais pas. I have no idea. She won't let me read a word until it's finished.’
‘You're kidding me, right? Your entire business rests on that novel.’
He gulped. It was the first time he'd heard it expressed as bluntly as that. ‘Relax,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as Anna. ‘It'll be just like the first one: a bunch of beautifully written, utterly miserable characters, three cremations and seven types of rain. But so long as it does half as well as Happy Ending, I'll be able to buy a real yacht.’ He sighed. ‘OK, a big dinghy.’
‘I heard on the grapevine that after she finishes this novel for you she's moving publisher. I have a friend at Klinsch & McLeish says they're in advanced negotiations.’
‘Klinsch & McLeish.’ Tom blew out his cheeks disparagingly. ‘Y'know what they're called in the trade?’ He made a tight fist and then opened it abruptly. ‘Clench & Release.’ He dismissed them with another puff. ‘They're brutal. Bourgeois Edinburgh bastards. They're not right for my Jane.’ He corrected himself. ‘For Jane Lockhart.’
‘So talk to her! Persuade her to stay.’
‘I don't want her to stay. After she delivers her new novel, I want her to go. Far away.’
‘Oh for god's sake, Tom, Tristesse Books is on the verge of compulsory liquidation.’
Tom opened and closed his mouth without speaking. There was no smart answer to that.
‘And I've had an offer,’ said Anna.
‘Well,’ he purred, ‘you're a very attractive woma—’
‘Shut up.’ She took the glossy folder she had retrieved from her briefcase at the same time as the list of unprofitable n
ovels and slid it across the table. ‘They're called Pandemic Media.’
An over-complicated logo was emblazoned on the front of the folder, the sort of thing that could only have been designed after going through three committees, a test audience and an in-depth consultation with the CEO's cleaner.
‘I can only assume they're run by a suicidal madman,’ Anna went on, ‘since they want to invest in you.’
He pushed away the folder. ‘You mean buy me out, move the company to London and let people called Jocasta and Strawberry cut half the authors from my list. Uh-uh. No way!’
‘You have to look at this, whether you like it or not.’ She tapped the folder sternly. ‘Pandemic Media want the edgy frisson a name like Tristesse Books would bring them. And trust me, you could really do with the cash.’
‘I don't need Pandemic Media. I have Jane Lockhart.’ He felt his confidence undercut by the yawning hole opening up beneath his feet. Oh god, his whole business, his whole life's work relied on that annoying woman. ‘This time she's going all the way!’ he declared with a forced smile.
Anna leant forward. ‘Are you sure? Because the trade is waiting. Two thousand bookshops have allocated shelf-space, a hundred thousand readers are stocking up on tissues, and if she doesn't deliver soon …’ She pronged the tomato with a fork. Juice oozed through the pierced skin. ‘… your tomato's looking like ketchup.’
Tom surveyed the perforated tomato and swallowed hard. ‘She called me on Monday, said she was starting the final chapter and I could expect it by the end of next week.’
Anna rolled her eyes. ‘And when in your experience has a writer ever finished a novel when she said she would?’
Tom conceded with a shrug, unhappy about where this conversation was leading.
‘Call her,’ Anna commanded. ‘Find out how close she really is to finishing.’
‘There's no point—when she sees it's me she won't even answer.’
Anna placed her own phone on the table. ‘I believe it's called a “workaround”.’
Tom stared at the phone like it was a revolver with one bullet in the chamber. He didn't want to speak to her. The last time they'd spoken Jane had called him just to give him the brush-off. It was too painful to hear her voice. For a time after they'd broken up he'd sat in his office and played old voice-mail messages from her, just to hear what she sounded like when she wasn't angry with him. One day Roddy had caught him in the act and gently but firmly encouraged him to delete the messages. It was over.
Anna gave him a look like a python considering a plump mouse. Grumbling, he picked up her phone.
‘This is a waste of breath,’ he said, dialling Jane's number. ‘She'll deliver the novel. She may be a miserable pain in the arse, but when she's writing she's like a guided missile.’
Jane's hand was a blur as she whisked a bowl full of cake mixture to an elastic consistency. This wasn't a displacement activity. This was baking. Baking could hardly be counted a lesser activity than novel writing. Baking produced actual stuff. Stuff you could eat. Almost every time.
When she'd returned from her shopping expedition she had opened her laptop and tried to squeeze out a few words, but to no avail. Rather than squander the whole afternoon, she had cracked out the flour and butter. When the mixture looked just right she dipped in a finger and tasted. Frowning, she consulted an open recipe book.
‘Tea-spoon?’
She picked up a tablespoon and studied it accusingly. As she figured out if it was possible to rescue the cake, across the room her phone rang, vibrating against the lid of her laptop.
‘Willie,’ she called to him, ‘will you get that?’
Willie sat at his desk, eyes narrowed at the page cranking steadily through his typewriter. She called his name again, but it was obvious he couldn't hear her over the clacking of keys. With a frustrated puff she blew her fringe off her forehead, shoved the brimming cake tin into the hot oven and marched across the room.
The phone throbbed on the laptop like a pneumatic drill. From the lack of a caller ID it wasn't anyone in her contacts list and she didn't recognise the number. She snatched it up, bothered by a faint sensation that she'd missed something important.
‘Hello?’
‘Thursday or Friday for the manuscript?’
‘Grease-proof paper!’ She raced back to the kitchen to find the square of parchment that ought to be lining the cake-tin instead laid out on the counter-top. She stared at it mournfully.
‘You're certain it will be finished next week?’
She'd recognised his voice immediately, but her cake crisis had taken precedence. Well, she didn't have to tell him anything. He didn't have to know.
‘What are you doing?’ Tom probed.
‘Nothing,’ she said guiltily. She winced—why had she said anything? Hang up. Just hang up now!
‘Are you … baking?’
She killed the call and cringed. He knew. He knew what the baking meant.
Almost immediately the phone rang again. She jumped at the sound. It was him, of course, persistent as ever. The handset felt like a hot scone burning her palm. There was only one rational course of action. In one swift coordinated move she swung open the fridge, tossed the phone inside and slammed the door. The muffled ringtone continued through the insulated layers.
She looked round to discover Willie peering at her over his spectacles in bemusement. She wasn't sure how exactly to explain her actions without coming across as a complete nutcase. She smiled weakly. No. That didn't help.
Halfway across the city, in the café next to Tristesse Books, Tom stared at the phone in horror.
‘She's baking.’
Anna waved her hands in mock terror. ‘Oh no! It's a cake-tastrophe!’ Pleased at her pun, she was irritated when Tom didn't even crack a smile. ‘So, she's baking. What, you don't like her Victoria sandwich?’
‘You don't understand,’ he said solemnly. Catching a glimpse of himself in the window he saw he was sporting an expression he'd only ever seen on newsreaders announcing natural disasters or the death of a much-loved Royal. He sighed and looked back at Anna.
‘Jane bakes when she's blocked.’
CHAPTER 9
‘Sparkle in the Rain’, Simple Minds, 1984, Virgin
THREE DAYS LATER, Jane was still baking. Four loaves of banana bread nestled under a tiered chocolate sponge. A constellation of cupcakes orbited beside a tray of millionaire's shortcake. The kitchen smelt of caramel and obsession.
She cleared a space on her desk, lowered a cake stand crowned with a freshly baked lemon sponge and flicked her eyes to Willie. As usual he was attacking his typewriter as if leading a cavalry charge. She'd discovered that nothing could distract him when he was in this mood. And she'd tried everything.
‘Slice of cake?’
Click-clack-click-clack.
‘Any laundry need doing?’
Click-clack-click-clack.
‘Blowjob?’
Ting!
Without looking up he swiped the carriage return lever and began a new line. Abandoning her attempt to divert his attention, she admired the cake one last time and grudgingly opened her laptop. The blank page gaped like a wound. No, not a wound. It stood for the emptiness of the universe, she decided; the infinite nothingness which no amount of sponge cake could fill. Slowly she raised her eyes to peer at Willie over the top of the screen.
He continued to pound away, blithely unaware of the existential crisis taking place only a few feet from him. There was something inhuman about his energy. When he had first moved in she'd gawped at his work ethic, then found that her own increased, as if he was pulling her along in his wake, but lately when she eyed him across the valley of their desks she felt herself recoil. She remembered reading that the great Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope, famously schooled himself to write two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. Willie Scott farted more words. Jane imagined Willie flipping him the finger in his rear-view mirror as he eased past a fu
riously bicycling Trollope.
Willie added another completed page to his ever-increasing tower. Soon it would need scaffolding. Jane sighed in exasperation and—OK, she'd admit it—with envy. As he stacked up the pages she just stacked, circling forever over Chapter 37, waiting for permission to make her final approach.
She was stuck.
Blocked.
She tortured herself with idle speculation: perhaps she was fated not to finish this novel. She glanced at the ‘Jane’ trophy on her bookshelf. Perhaps this would be her Sanditon, Jane Austen's unfinished novel. She ramped up the anxiety daydream. Perhaps she'd die of consumption before completing it. She did feel a cough coming on. How bad would Tom feel about that? No, not Tom. Forget about Tom. She didn't care how he felt about anything.
She reached for her water-spray. Her hand closed around the familiar plastic bottle, index finger finding the trigger. Aiming it blindly she spritzed the umbrella plant.
‘You OK, Janey?’
She wasn't sure exactly when Willie had started calling her ‘Janey’. She knew he meant it fondly, so even though she disliked the moniker she hadn't corrected him right away. And now it was too late.
‘Yes. Fine. Just one more chapter.’
‘You not finished that yet?’
She felt her blood boil and imagined jumping out of her seat, reaching across the desk to grab a hank of his stupid wavy hair, pulling down hard and mashing his face repeatedly into his fucking typewriter. Click-clack-click-buggering-clack.
Ting!
In reality she remained fixed in her seat, smiled sweetly and said, ‘Nope. Not quite finished.’ Her trigger-finger spasmed and she drenched the plant once more.
‘Careful, or you're gonna kill that thing,’ he warned her before resuming his typing.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, her eyes suddenly murderous. ‘Yes I am.’
What was she doing? It wasn't Willie's fault she was stuck. With a long sigh she rested her head on the desk. The wood felt cool against her cheek. She glanced at the plant.
‘It was a birthday present from my dad. He gave it to me in the morning and walked out on us that night. I often wondered why I didn't just kill the thing. Chuck it in the bin. Now I think it's because I always hoped he'd come back.’ She stroked the leaves. ‘And that hope, like this ugly little plant, didn't die.’
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