by Anna Jacobs
One day she would go back to Australia to see if it was as wonderful as she remembered: the sunshine, the wide blue sky, the beaches and, above all, the more relaxed feel to the place. One of the first things she’d do was visit the Swan Valley, near Perth. Her parents had taken her and her brother there a couple of times. Jessica hadn’t been old enough to taste the wine, of course, but she’d loved seeing the vineyards, with their rows of dark green vines, and had enjoyed picking her own bunch of grapes. But she couldn’t go yet, not till her mother was better.
She settled down easily into the small branch in Leeds, making friends with Lisa, and going out with Thomas a few times. She was quite prepared to go to bed with him, but as they agreed after a preliminary and unsatisfying fumble that ended with them both feeling vaguely embarrassed, they made better friends than lovers. She was beginning to worry that she hadn’t met any guy she wanted to sleep with, was beginning to think there was something wrong with her.
In the meantime, she was still obsessed by her writing and it saved her sanity while travelling to and from Lancashire.
To everyone’s relief, little by little her mother made progress.
Jessica wondered what had happened to the writing competition and had mentally dismissed it, deciding she’d not got anywhere. Then one day she received a letter saying that due to there being 1,200 entries, the verdict would be delayed, but that she had got through to the last thirty.
That made her day.
At twenty-seven, Jessica told herself, she had plenty of time to achieve her ambition of getting her novels published.
But she missed having solid writing time, missed it so much.
Two
Jivan ignored the people who tried to speak to him as he left the studio. He walked outside, relishing the cool, fresh air after the overheated studio. Getting into his car, he pulled out a fistful of tissues to wipe off the TV makeup, but didn’t set off immediately.
He shouldn’t have agreed to do the interview. He’d butted heads with Sally Mennon before at a writers’ festival, and he didn’t like her or her interviewing style. Well, she was famous for making people angry enough to reveal more than they’d intended. But his publicist had been very persuasive and it was only a half-hour segment after all.
He’d thought he could stay calm, but ‘cuckoo in the nest’ had riled him. It was so accurate a description of his place in his mother’s aristocratic family – the half-Indian bastard son of their rebellious daughter. He let out an angry huff of air at the memory of his childhood.
Taking his time, he drove home to Richmond. He wasn’t in a hurry to confront his wife, who would be furious about his behaviour on TV tonight. Well, Louisa would be even more upset by the end of the evening because he’d decided it was time to have things out with her about their unsatisfactory marriage.
He was dreading the confrontation, though. She could be … vicious, had shocked him a few times during their three years of marriage with sudden quarrels. He detested quarrels, craved a quiet, peaceful home and life. Strange that, when he wrote thrillers for a living.
Louisa greeted him by bouncing out of her chair and yelling, ‘Are you out of your mind, Jivan Childering, antagonising a woman like Sally Mennon?’
‘I must have been out of my mind to have agreed to go on her show.’
‘It was brilliant exposure. But no, you had to waste your opportunity, didn’t you? You’re getting a reputation for being rude and arrogant, did you know that?’
‘And your point is?’
‘If you want to climb to the very top of the bestseller lists and stay there, you need good publicity, not bad.’
‘My books seem to be selling very nicely, Louisa, without me kow-towing to people like that horrible woman.’
‘Your books could sell a good many more copies if you would only put more effort into the publicity. I’m going to practise interview techniques with you tomorrow and I’m not taking no for an answer. After all, I used to be a publicist, and a damned good one too. You don’t have to care about the questions, you idiot, just give suitable responses.’
His stomach lurched and he felt faintly nauseous. Time to do it. ‘I’m not going to practise anything. Least of all with you.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘I want a divorce, Louisa.’
There was utter silence as she gaped at him.
‘Why?’ She threw the word at him like a bullet.
‘Because I don’t appreciate a wife who shares her favours around as freely as you do.’
‘Then you ought to bloody well pay me more attention yourself. What am I expected to do? Stay at home all day and twiddle my thumbs? Give up sex entirely?’
‘You could have got another job, kept up your skills and had something to do all day apart from going to bed with any Tom, Dick or Harry.’
‘I didn’t marry you to keep slaving away for idiot PR companies.’
‘Why did you marry me?’
‘Because we fell in love.’
‘No. I fell in love but you didn’t. I don’t think you’re capable of loving anyone except yourself.’ He’d come to the conclusion that Louisa had married him for his money and fame – and possibly because she thought his mother’s connections would help them get into the top social sets.
But she’d fooled him for a time and he’d believed she loved him. He’d been really sucked in, so happy … for a while. Then so hurt and disappointed.
‘You knew I’d have books to write, PR tours to undertake. The writing is what earns the money you’ve been spending so freely. Which reminds me, I cancelled your credit card today.’
The first vase narrowly missed his head. The second one didn’t.
It knocked him out for a short time and he bled so freely, even Louisa was frightened of what she’d done and drove him to the nearest hospital A&E department. There, after hanging around for a couple of hours, he had the cut on his forehead stitched carefully by a plastic surgeon.
As soon as she was sure he was all right, Louisa let her anger off the rein and for once forgot to be careful what she said in public.
‘I should have thrown the whole cupboard full of china at you!’ she shrieked when he told her to go home on her own and leave him in peace.
He saw two nurses at the nearby central desk exchange glances.
Later, as they were waiting in a cubicle, he tried again to send her home, because his head was thumping. Louisa told him he was ungrateful and worked herself up into another bout of yelling. Everyone nearby heard her telling Jivan that her affairs meant nothing and he was nothing but an old-fashioned fool.
She was wrong. They had meant something to him and had hurt him badly. He’d believed he’d found someone who would love him for himself, unlike his mother or father.
Yet again, he’d been let down. Well, it wouldn’t happen again. He could live a full life on his own, what with his writing and keeping fit, not to mention the gun club he’d joined for research purposes, to make sure his hero did the right thing. He’d stayed in the club because he’d found he had an aptitude for shooting, a good eye and a very steady hand.
He moved his things out lock, stock and barrel, and found a quiet flat in another suburb.
Louisa’s ranting at the hospital was helpful when it came to the divorce, but even so, the dissolution of their marriage didn’t happen easily. She contested every stage, insisting she didn’t want a divorce, begging him to go with her for counselling.
He refused to do that, so she refused to negotiate a financial settlement, as required by law. When the legal system forced her into it, she and her lawyer tried to take everything she could from him, including future earnings from his writing.
He’d rather have given up writing than work to pay her. He could have lived, if he was careful, on the small income his father had settled on him. And she knew it.
But he found good lawyers as well, and in the end the legal boffins reached some sort of agreement on beh
alf of their clients and persuaded both clients to accept it.
In order to get her off his back, Jivan gave Louisa the Richmond house as a final and absolute financial settlement.
Believing she’d got as much as she could out of him, and that he wasn’t good enough with the press to climb to the top of the literary tree, she signed on the dotted line and immediately put the house she’d claimed to love up for sale.
Louisa went back at work as a publicist and Jivan thought that would be the end of it. Another big mistake.
She’d whispered to him when the divorce went through that she’d make him sorry, though he couldn’t understand why she was so angry with him. She had been the unfaithful one, after all.
As the months passed, he found himself being repeatedly harassed, in big ways and small. Not only were hostile articles published, supposedly based on interviews he hadn’t given, but Louisa – it must have been her – played other dirty tricks on him.
A caterer turned up at the house he’d rented one weekend with party food costing a fortune. He hadn’t ordered it and got into a legal row when he refused to pay for it.
Subscriptions to pornographic magazines were taken out in his name and the filthy things came through the post for months before he could stop them.
Several times windows were smashed in his new flat in the middle of the night. He had CCTV fitted but that didn’t help much, because the perpetrators wore hoodies and balaclavas and kept their faces away from the cameras.
People complained that he’d not turned up for events he’d been booked for. Only he hadn’t even heard of half the events, let alone agreed to appear there.
He couldn’t believe it when the harassment continued into the following year. Some of the news articles came from a journalist called Frenton, who was a friend and occasional lover of Louisa.
As soon as the negative fallout from one article died down, another would appear. The lawyer he consulted said it wasn’t worth trying to prosecute those publications, who were known for making up stories about the rich and famous. Most of the time they got away with it, so they didn’t mind paying a fine occasionally and it didn’t stop them.
‘Fact of life in your position, my dear chap,’ the lawyer said, and sent him a massive bill for this unwelcome opinion.
But the harassment was slowing down his writing, making him reluctant to go out in case they followed him and snapped photos to which they could pin misleading labels.
Women! You were better off without them … however much your body protested its celibacy.
To his relief, his editor, Anna Stephens, knew him well enough to ignore the rumours, and proved to be a rock in the storms that swept his life.
She was old enough to be his mother and was not only a good editor, but had a sane view of the world. He found it comforting to talk over a few problems with her, something he could never have done with his own mother, who was in America at the moment living it up with her latest husband. She hadn’t been in touch since sending him a message after his divorce: ‘Better luck next time.’
Next time! As if he’d put his head on the chopping block a second time.
That comment was typical of his mother. Amanda had been born a Childering and reverted to the name between marriages. She’d been drifting in and out of his life when convenient since he’d been a small child. She was now on her fourth husband.
‘You’re well out of that toxic marriage,’ Anna told him gently one day. ‘Try not to dwell on it, Jivan. These things happen.’
‘Louisa was right about one thing: I did leave her alone a lot. My lifestyle simply isn’t compatible with wedded bliss.’
‘She knew what she was getting into when she married you. She’d been around the tracks.’
‘Did you know what she was like?’
‘I’d heard rumours, but you were so happy, I didn’t like to tell you about her reputation. I hoped she’d settled down and really did love you. She put on a good pretence for a while, even fooled me, and I’m not easily fooled.’
‘What she loved was my bank account and the fact that I was a famous novelist, related to some of the top families. But she gets bored easily if she’s on her own and then she’s unpredictable. I’m beginning to think, no, I’m sure that she’s got mental health problems.’
‘Well, leave that mess behind you and let’s concentrate on the manuscript you’ve just turned in. It was worth waiting for. It’s brilliant, far more powerful than Swift Justice. We’re going to push it hard.’
‘That’s nice,’ he said absent-mindedly. But he was already thinking about a sequel. And how to find a peaceful place in which to live and write. So he didn’t realise the implications of her words until later.
When the telephone at work rang, Jessica picked it up, while clicking ‘Save’ on the computer with her other hand. ‘Jessica Lord.’
‘My name’s Anna Stephens. I’m the Publishing Director at Meridian Books and I’m phoning to tell you that you’re one of the three finalists in our Write a Bestseller competition.’
Jessica gasped and the fingers of her left hand jerked on the keyboard, sending random letters flickering across the screen.
‘Hello! Are you still there, Jessica?’
‘Yes. But – I can’t believe it.’
The voice had a tone of gentle amusement. ‘Well, it’s true, I promise you. I’m sorry it took so long to judge the entries, but we had almost twelve hundred of them. Your novel was excellent and we’ll be happy to publish it.’
Jessica couldn’t string any words together. Her wildest dreams had just come true. There should have been bands playing and fireworks exploding around her. Instead she felt spaced out and had to keep gulping for oxygen.
‘We’re having the presentations next week in London. You won’t know which of the three prizes you’ve won until then, I’m afraid. Will you be able to come, Jessica? Meridian will pay your fare from Leeds and your hotel bill for that night, of course.’
Tears started trickling down her cheeks. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she confessed to the voice on the other end. ‘I’m not – thinking straight.’ She pulled off her glasses and brushed away the tears impatiently. ‘Yes, I think I can attend. I mean, I’m sure I can.’ She would go to the presentations if she had to crawl all the way there.
‘Good. I’ll ask my assistant to book you into the hotel we’re all using and she’ll get back to you with the details. I’ll see you next week in London.’
When Jessica put the phone down, the air seemed to roar around her and she couldn’t move.
‘Jess, are you all right? Jess?’
She blinked hard and looked up to see her workmate, Lisa, standing beside her, looking concerned.
‘What?’
‘You’re crying. Was it bad news?’
‘Oh. Am I? Er – no. No, it wasn’t.’ She managed to force some words out, though what she really wanted was to go and sit quietly on her own until she could come to terms with what had happened. But her friend was waiting for details.
‘It was good news, actually, Lisa. Very good. Um – my novel’s won a prize in a big national competition. And – oh, goodness, I haven’t taken it in properly myself yet – they’re going to publish it!’
Lisa shrieked loudly and did a war-dance round the office, which of course made everyone else rush over to find out what had happened.
They all knew about Jessica’s hobby – or rather, obsession – but no one had taken her efforts all that seriously until now. Suddenly her fellow workers were crowding round, congratulating her, patting her on the back, all trying to ask questions at once.
In the end, she cut things short. ‘I need to see Eileen to ask for time off.’
On the way to the assistant manager’s office, she made a detour to stand in front of the mirrors in the women’s cloakroom, staring blindly at her reflection, wondering if she was dreaming.
But even when she splashed cold water on her face, she didn’t wake up. The ti
led walls remained firm and substantial around her and in the end she dared admit to her reflection, ‘I’ve done it! I’m going to have a book published.’
At that moment, she believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, and was utterly certain there was a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow.
The next day was Saturday, so Jessica went across to Rochdale in the afternoon to see her parents. She wanted to tell them in person about her prize.
Her father insisted on studying the entry form. ‘It sounds to be quite a big competition. Well done, love.’
‘What’s the book about?’ her mother asked.
‘It’s another fantasy story. About some aliens on an imaginary planet.’
‘Don’t you ever write about real people?’
‘My characters are very real to me, Mum.’
Her father went to get a bottle of champagne out of the chiller cabinet in the off-licence, which he’d added to the original shop and which was very profitable. He brought Peter back with him and poured out four glasses. ‘Here’s to you, love. Congratulations. I hope you’ve won the first prize.’
Peter raised his glass. ‘I’m glad you’ve been lucky.’
Lucky! Trust her brother to put it down to luck. It was hard work that had got her there, not luck. But she’d long ago learned not to get into arguments with Peter, because there was no way you could ever convince him of anything he didn’t want to believe, especially where his little sister was concerned.
Her father took another mouthful of champagne. ‘Ten thousand pounds would be a tidy sum to have behind you. If you win that first prize, you should put a deposit down on a flat or a terraced house and get your foot on the property ladder. Prices are much lower in Rochdale than Leeds. You could rent a place till you find a job nearby.’
‘Let’s wait and see which prize I get.’ Much as she loved him, she knew her father wouldn’t understand that it was having the book published she cared about, not the money. And she didn’t intend to tell her parents yet that once her mother was out of danger, she was going to resurrect her dream of returning to Australia.