“No, I’m not,” Elle said indignantly.
“Yes, you are. I saw you last week, devouring that book at your desk. You told me you liked it.”
He looked genuinely upset. He’d never been cross with her; it was awful. Posy was stern, sometimes a killjoy; Rory was funny, kind, a bit lazy, sure, but she’d always thought he was on her side. “I was, I enjoyed it, but I’m just saying it’s not—”
“Not what? Proper art? Oh, for God’s sake.” He waved his hand at her, as if she’d disappointed him, played the wrong move in a game she didn’t know she was in. “Forget it. It’s OK. It’s her, not you. She’s going to learn one day, and then it’ll be too late.” He wandered off, and left her staring after him, bewildered.
RECOUNTING ALL THIS back at home to her brother that evening, Elle was still in shock.
“So I spilled coffee over her, and she didn’t even seem to mind too much! She didn’t shout or anything. I thought I was going to get fired, and then she asked me what I thought of a manuscript!” She poured Rhodes another glass of wine and drained her own. “Honestly, Rhodes—well, you have to meet her to see what I mean, but she’s an amazing woman, really remarkable. Her husband died when she was thirty, left her alone with a small son, and this company to run, and she’s done it—she knows everyone, she’s always going to the most glamorous parties. Last week, she went to the Women of the Year lunch, and Joan Collins was there, can you believe it?”
“Right,” said Rhodes, stuffing his face with Twiglets. “So then what happened?”
His tone suggested polite boredom but Elle, wanting to make her older brother see how wonderful her new world was, couldn’t stint on any of the details. “Well,” she said. “So… We have this really great conversation, you know, about literature. About all these really interesting things.”
From the battered old sofa in the corner of the kitchen Libby chimed in. “Elle, that’s rubbish. You talked about romance novels and then she stitched you up. If you ask me she played you like a Stradivarius.” She threw some peanuts in her mouth and crossed her legs, as Rhodes watched her admiringly.
“. . . Anyway,” Elle plowed on, “Rory was really cross with me, he said I was the one who’d stuffed everything up.” She remembered Rory’s grim face as he stood over her. You’re a snob, Elle. She hated him thinking badly of her.
“He’s playing you too,” Libby said. “The pair of them. Sometimes I think I can’t wait to leave that place. It seems all cozy-cozy, but the politics will ruin them in the end.”
“Mm.” Elle didn’t like it when Libby talked like that. “Supper’s nearly ready.” She drained the pasta and stared at it, desperately, not sure what to do next.
“I’m starving,” Rhodes said, as though he could read her mind.
“Just applying the finishing touches!” Elle trilled, slightly too loudly.
If Sam were here she’d have bought some four-cheese pasta sauce from Sainsbury’s just in case. Sam planned her meals in advance. But Elle liked to wing it, with mixed results. She grabbed a glass of red wine that she happened to know had been there since the previous day, and chucked it into the pan, then some basil leaves from the withered plant on a saucer by the sink. It didn’t look like much so, rather desperately, she shook some soy sauce and vegetable oil in after them.
“Who’s hungry?” she said, clapping her hands and trying to sound like an Italian mamma. “Hey? Come and get it!”
Rhodes sat down at the tiny table and stared at the pan, and Elle felt a flash of weary despair. They had a whole evening to get through. Her own brother, and he was a stranger to her.
“Mm,” Libby said. “Smells delicious. Is Sam coming back?”
“No, she’s out tonight.” Sam had gone to Kensington Palace after all, taking Dave with her. Elle was glad she wasn’t here. There was a guilelessness about her that made Elle fear for her at Rhodes’s hands. She knew he’d be vile about Princess Di, for starters. She handed Libby and Rhodes each a bowl. The winey-soy-oil had gathered at the bottom, leaving a faint red sediment on the pasta. “So,” she said. “Sorry for going on about work, it’s just been a crazy day. It’s brilliant, but it is weird. You know.”
“Not really,” said Rhodes. Elle opened her mouth, but he carried on. “Ellie, you didn’t do anything wrong. They’re the ones using you, not the other way round.” He took another mouthful and stopped, then waved his fork in the air. “Hm. What’s in this pasta?”
“Yes, it’s delicious, Elle,” Libby said, cutting across him. “Rhodes is right, don’t let them mess you around, Elle. Just be careful next time. Rory’s out for himself, you know, so’s Felicity.”
“Rory’s not out for himself.”
“Ya-hah,” said Libby, sardonically. “Right.” She turned to Rhodes. “So, what do you do? Something with money, then?”
“I work at Bloomberg. Analyst,” Rhodes said. “In New York—went to college there, stayed on to do an MBA, got the job at Bloomberg after that. They love the Brits.”
“Hm. Isn’t New York dangerous?” Libby said. “My dad wants to go, and my mum’s always terrified. ‘No way, Eric! I’m not setting foot in that place! Who wants to be mugged and shot, eh?’” she said, exaggerating her Northern accent. Elle knew she was deliberately provoking him; Libby was always going on about how they should go to New York for a few days. She was obsessed with the place.
“What? No way is it dangerous,” said Rhodes. He seemed incensed by this. “Typical small-minded Brits, that’s what it is. You know, it’s bollocks, this is 1997, those were problems in the eighties, they’re long gone. It’s a fucking great place.”
He pushed his plate away.
“Sorry, Ellie. I can’t eat this. I think it’s the jet lag. Have you got a pizza menu?”
Elle stared at him, a red flush of fury mixed with embarrassment creeping up her chest to her neck. “No, I bloody haven’t!” she said.
“What’s that on the fridge?” Rhodes pointed to a takeaway menu.
She hated the way he wound her up, she wished she didn’t care what he thought, didn’t want to try and make him like her, be impressed by her. It was pathetic. Something inside Elle snapped. “You’re not having a fucking pizza!” she shouted.
“Why?”
Elle was practically gibbering. “You can’t just rock up here and be all, ‘Oh you’re being stupid and I work in New York and I’m sooooooooooo amayyyyyyyyyyzing.’ You always have to be the coolest person in the room, don’t you?”
“I am cooler than you,” Rhodes said, blankly. “I mean, Jeez, Ellie—”
“Don’t call me Ellie! It’s babyish!”
Rhodes watched her impassively. “Look, don’t go mad,” he said. “I only wanted to see how you were and find out about your job. Ellie.”
Elle wiped her nose with her arm. “No, you don’t! You come because you have to, you never ask about Mum and how she is—”
Rhodes interrupted. “Hey! You haven’t asked me a single question about how I am. You rabbit on about your job and these people I have no idea about, you serve some kind of soy sauce pasta mulch, and then you start throwing stuff around and shouting at me.”
Elle stared at him. It was horrible how much she let him wind her up, always had done, how they wouldn’t ever talk about the stuff that lurked just beneath the surface. “Don’t you understand—?”
“Yes,” said Rhodes, nodding, as though he was trying to be reasonable. “I do. Promise. It’s just the facts are quite simple. You chucked coffee over the head of your company. Because of this she is aware of you for the first time since you joined, so you actually effectively networked, though I wouldn’t use that method again. She asks your opinion because she needs backup for her own strategy, and your boss is angry because she used you against him. That shows they both value your opinion, to an extent. It’s a good thing. And it shows it’s not your fight, it’s theirs.”
“That’s what I said,” said Libby.
“So the question become
s,” pursued Rhodes, putting his fingertips together, “what do you do next to maximize this situation for yourself?”
“Er—does it?” said Elle. “Isn’t that a bit—creepy?”
Rhodes laughed, and flung his leg out, pulling his trouser leg up. He put one hand on his thigh, and cupped his chin with the other.
“It’s business. The business may be selling books to grannies who like knitting patterns, but it’s still a business. And if they’re at loggerheads you can use it to your own ends. But first, you’ve got to work out who’s got the biggest dick. Pick that person and stick with them. The old lady, or the son? Sounds like the old lady to me, he sounds like a prick.”
“Rory’s not a prick,” Elle said. “He’s great. Isn’t he, Libs?”
Libby cleared her throat and said, “But Rhodes, if he’s a prick, doesn’t that mean the same thing as the biggest dick?”
“No,” Rhodes said, still serious. “It’s totally different.”
Libby got up, shaking her shoulders. “Right,” she said. “I have to go. I said I’d meet Jeremy and some of the others at Filthy MacNasty’s.”
“What the hell is that?” Rhodes said, looking cross and yet intrigued.
“It’s a bar, Shane MacGowan goes there all the time. They do book events, readings, it’s kind of rough and ready. It’s cool, you know.”
Elle had been to Filthy’s over the summer and didn’t like it. It was full of young editors and agents in thick black glasses all trying to outdo each other, and when one of the authors had talked about books being the new drug of choice she’d wanted to laugh out loud. She had tried reading one of his novels and it had been in blank verse with no punctuation and no one had names, they were all called Red-Haired Man, Brown-Eyed Man, and Blond Woman, and of course Blond Woman had taken her clothes off several times in an allegedly necessary-for-the-plot but basically super-sleazy way and everyone said it was art, unlike the MyHeart books, which were of course beneath anyone’s notice there, even though Elle thought the sex scenes were considerably better written. Of course, if she’d said any of this to anyone at Filthy’s they’d have looked at her as if she’d just said she thought Hitler was a tad misunderstood.
Rhodes looked impressed; he was impressed by Libby overall, Elle could tell. She said, “Are you sure, Libs? It’s in Clerkenwell, and it’s nine thirty.”
“It’s fine.” Libby picked up her coat. “I really want to go, and I know you hate that kind of thing. It’s not that far for me to get back from once I’m there. I’ll see you tomorrow, thanks for the lovely pasta soup. Rhodes, great to meet you.”
“Great to—” Rhodes began, standing up, but Libby had gone, waving a slim hand in farewell.
“She’s cool,” he said, staring down the corridor at the front door.
Elle put her palms down on the table and wearily pushed herself up. “The pizza place is just next door. I’ll order you something, shall I?”
Rhodes turned back. “Thanks, Ellie. I mean—Elle. That’d be great.” He cleared his throat, brought his thick black eyebrows together. “Sorry. This was nice too—you know.”
She took a breath and smiled at him. “Like a… starter, maybe.”
“That’s it.” Rhodes smiled back at his sister. Pulling the pizza menu off the fridge, Elle said, “So, Rhodes—are you seeing anyone? Sorry to be nosy. I kind of thought maybe you might be, from something you said.”
Rhodes’s head flipped up. “I am. That’s weird, how did you know?”
“I read about two romance novels a week at the moment,” Elle said. “Call it intuition based on experience.”
“We both have our own skill set, then,” Rhodes said, and Elle wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. “Well, yeah. She’s called Melissa, and I’ve been asking her out on dates for a while, but her boyfriend was this mega-rich WASP and I thought I stood no chance, but she dumped him over the summer, so yeah—I moved in there. Took her for cocktails at the Plaza, played up my British accent, told her all about my idyllic upbringing in the English countryside and—goal.”
“That’s great—I’m happy for you,” Elle said, after a pause. “How do you know her?”
“She’s an analyst at Bloomberg too, assessing global risk,” Rhodes said. Elle nodded as if she knew what that was. “She went to Brown, so she’s super well-connected, but she’s fun too. I want her to visit England with me but…”
He trailed off, and they stared at each other, as though he knew Elle could see the collapse of the shiny artificial world he’d created, of a charming English cottage with a mum who bakes biscuits and has apple cheeks, and a super-involved dad amicably divorced from her and with two great new kids and a lovely new wife. “Yes,” people would say, in this fantasy world. “The Bees managed it so well. They’re just one big happy family.”
Elle couldn’t say anything back to that. She just nodded.
They went next door to wait for the pizza in the cramped takeaway place with the minicab drivers and the hoodie boys on their pushbikes, and the glassy-eyed skinny blondes, then they came back upstairs and ate the pizza and Rhodes said it wasn’t too bad, not as good as New York pizza but good for London. They watched the news together on the sofa, the hordes at the palace, the Spice Girls in black at some awards ceremony, the funeral set for Saturday, five more days of revelling in this unaccustomed, unBritish grief. “It won’t always feel this sad,” Rhodes said, when Elle gave a small sniff, and she was touched. “Promise, Ellie.”
He helped her make up the sofa bed, and then they carried on talking, and Elle asked him about Manhattan, and he told her about the steam rising from the subway, the place he’d been for breakfast only last weekend, which was where the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally had been filmed. About how when he’d taken Melissa for their first date, they’d walked up 5th Avenue afterwards and a tramp outside Central Park had shouted, “Marry her, you should marry her!”
“That’s what it’s like all the time, there,” he said. He asked some more about her job, how Karen was, whether autumn was a busy time in publishing, how long she saw herself staying at Bluebird. But he didn’t ask about Mum, or Dad, once, and Elle didn’t mention them.
March 1998
“WELL, I THINK it looks really nice,” Sam said doubtfully, as Elle stared in the tiny mirror of the Ladies’ bathroom.
“I hate it,” Elle said dramatically. “I don’t know why I had it done. I look like a brassy whore,” she said, running a strand of hair through her fingers. “My hair was fine before. Now it’s insane. Look at it.”
“It’s great, I promise,” said Libby, applying some lip gloss. “It’s the crappy Bluebird sales conference, not the Oscars.”
There was a sharp rap at the door. “Hurry up, please,” came Posy’s voice. Elle, Libby, and Sam hurried sideways out of the cramped room. Posy was waiting for them, resplendent in a floral bias-cut Jigsaw dress. She was wearing blue eye shadow and mascara and her hair was up. Elle stared; she’d never seen Posy dressed up before. Posy tapped her foot. “The authors will be arriving soon,” she said, in the tones of one announcing the Apocalypse. “Let’s go.”
Elle had never heard of a sales conference before she’d gone to work at Bluebird. It was basically the chance for an almighty piss-up, as far as she could tell. There was a presentation, some flashy music on in the background, and then dinner with authors and the reps from all round the country, at a Georgian townhouse in Soho.
The marketing department was in charge for the weeks before the sales conference, and exciting-looking things started arriving for the event: Post-it notes in the shape of hearts and 1998/99 diaries with Victoria Bishop’s new title printed on them—Diary of a Well-Worn Heart—and torches with “Be Afraid of the Dark” for Oona King’s new thriller. Elle thought it was amazing, what they could produce; there was still so much about the whole business that, even after nearly a year, filled her with a kind of wonder that she was here at all. She knew it was tragic to look forward to a work ev
ent this much, but she couldn’t help it. Besides, after ten months of working there, she loved nights out with her Bluebird colleagues. Everyone got the same jokes, there was always someone to talk to and something to gossip about: whether Jeremy and Lucy the publicity director were having an affair, what Rory had allegedly said to Felicity during their latest row, how much of a bitch Victoria Bishop really was, and so on.
For this anticipated event Elle had even bought a new dress—dove gray chiffon with beading from Oasis—and the previous night, flushed with excitement and an all-consuming urge to be bold and embrace life, she had walked into a hairdresser’s at the top of Tottenham Court Road and apparently blacked out in an episode of lunacy, because when she came to she saw she’d asked them to cut all her hair off into a crop, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been teamed with a dye job the color of a field of rapeseed. And it was then that she remembered too late that the urge to be bold and embrace life usually had catastrophic results. “Oh, dear,” she said sadly, grabbing her coat and turning off her computer, catching sight of the yellow hair in the black screen.
Someone lightly touched her shoulder. “What’s up?”
Elle turned quickly. “Hello, Rory.” She put her bag over her shoulder, trying to look professional. “Right, I’m ready.”
“Why are you sighing like an old steam engine?”
Elle rolled her eyes back into her head. “Er—nothing. It’s silly.”
“What? Tell me. I’m your boss. We have no secrets.”
“It’s my… hair. I changed it.”
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