by Marian Keyes
‘What about Crystal Clear?’ It was obvious that Anton had been giving this some thought. ‘That’s finished and it’s a great book. Offer that to them.’
It was strange because the very next day, Tania called. She wanted to see my new book. ‘To bring out a hardback to catch the Christmas market.’
I had to make the dreadful admission. ‘Tania, there is no new book.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What with the baby and the tiredness and everything, I just couldn’t manage it. I’ve only done two chapters.’
‘I seeee.’ Silence. Then, ‘It’s just that we thought… with it being a two-book deal… it’s normal to start on the new one as soon as you’ve finished the old one. But, yes, the baby, the tiredness and you have been very busy…’
But clearly she wasn’t happy. Distressed, I rang Anton.
‘Give her Crystal Clear? he reiterated.
‘But it’s not good enough. I couldn’t get an agent with it.’
‘It is good enough. Those agents were gobshites. It’s a great book.’
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
So I called Tania and explained haltingly, ‘I don’t know if you will like it, I sent it to lots of agents –’
Tania cut in. ‘Are you telling me you’ve got another book?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hallelujah. She’s got another book,’ she yelled. Someone whooped. ‘I’ll send a bike.’
Later that night, Tania called. ‘I love it. Love, love, love it!’
‘You’ve read it? That was fast.’
‘I couldn’t put it down. It’s a different book to Mimi’s Remedies, very different, but still has the Lily Wright magic. Roll on our Christmas best-seller.’
Shortly after that Jojo spoke to me about signing a new contract for my third and fourth books. ‘For a much higher advance than the previous one, obviously.’
‘See,’ Anton said gleefully.
Jojo said we could sign now while my sales were buoyant, or we could wait until late autumn when, if my new hardback stormed the best-seller lists, my bargaining position would be even stronger.
‘But what if my hardback doesn’t storm the best-seller lists?’
‘That’s always a possibility, but it’s your call.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘I think you’re in a super-strong bargaining position now but it could be even stronger in November. But Lily, you’ve gotta know this: there is always a risk, there are no absolutes in this game. I’m sorry, sweets, I know you don’t want to, but only you can make the decision.’
Anton talked down Jojo’s disclaimer. ‘She’s not trying to scare you but she has to cover herself. But at the end of the day the decision has to be yours because you’re the one who writes the books. You know I’ll support you in whatever you decide but it has to be you who makes the final choice.’
I had no clue which was best. I was terrified of making a decision because it might be the wrong one and I trusted the opinions of others more than I trusted my own.
‘Anton, what do you think?’
‘I don’t know why, but I think we should wait.’
‘Really? Why don’t you want the money immediately?’
He laughed. ‘You know me so well. But I’m trying to change the habits of a lifetime. Trying to think long-term, you know. And long-term I think you’re likely to get more money if you wait.’
I heard myself say, ‘OΚ, then we’ll wait.’
Deciding to wait until November was less of a decision than deciding to sign a new deal now. Certainly fewer immediate consequences ensued from it. But still I felt agonized.
‘Oh, poor Lily.’ Anton pulled my face to his chest and stroked my hair.
‘Careful,’ I murmured. ‘Don’t rub it away, it’s too thin as it is.’
‘Sorry. Anyway, c’mere, this might put a smile on your little face. You know how I told you our house costs four seven five? They’ve dropped the asking price! By fifty grand!’
‘Why?’
‘It’s been on the market for nearly four months, they must be getting desperate.’
‘Why hasn’t it sold before now?’
‘Because it was overpriced. But it’s not overpriced now, which is why we should get in there. Everyone else will too.’
But I could not commit to borrowing such an enormous sum of money. ‘There are too many variables,’ I said. ‘What if Crystal Clear bombs? What if I can’t write another book and have to return the advance?’
‘Crystal Clear won’t bomb and we’ll get a nanny so that you can devote yourself to writing. We’ll even have a bedroom for her in the new house.’
I made a non-committal hmmm.
‘What else are we going to do when your royalties arrive?’ he asked. ‘Buy a one-bed flat in the back-arse of nowhere and live on top of each other for a year or so, just like we’re doing here, all of us sleeping in one room? Then when more money comes in, we sell it and buy someplace else so that we end up paying two lots of stamp duty. That’s three per cent of the purchase price, it adds up to plenty, it’s about fifteen grand on this house alone and we’d never get that back.’
‘You’ve really been thinking about this.’
‘At the moment, I can’t think of anything else.’ He leant into me, conviction in his eyes. ‘I think this house is exactly what we need. There’s that lovely room that would be perfect for you to write in, we’d have space for a nanny and we’d never have to move again. OK, I agree with you that we don’t have the money yet but it’s coming. But if we wait until all the money is sitting in our bank account, the house will be long gone.’ He stopped for breath. ‘Lily, you and me, we’re crap with money, am I right?’
I agreed. We were hopeless.
‘But for once, let’s try to get it right. Let’s try looking at the bigger picture, Lily, have vision. And let me ask you one thing: do you love this house?’
I nodded. As soon as I had walked in I fell head-over-heels in love and knew it was the one for me.
‘I love it too. It’s the perfect house – at a great price. House prices might have dropped this year but they’ll soon take off again. We might never get this chance again. Would it help if we took a second look at it?’
I jumped at the chance, I was longing to see it again.
The calm sense of belonging which had filled me on my first visit was even more profound second time round. Anton was right when he said that it did not belong in London; it was the type of house you might find in a clearing in the woods in an old-fashioned fairy tale. Once I was within its walls I felt safe, somehow touched by enchantment.
Funny how these things happen because the same day that we visited the house, we were notified by Mr Manatee, our landlord, that due to ‘unexpected costs’ he was increasing our rent. When I saw the new figure I almost died – it had more than doubled. ‘That’s outrageous! I’m going to speak to Irina about this, and, oh God –’ I passed a hand over my eyes – ‘and Mad Paddy. If we present a united front, we have a better chance of winning.’
But neither Irina nor Mad Paddy had had their rent increased. Light began to dawn.
‘Manatee must have read about you,’ Anton said. ‘Opportunistic prick. This is extortion.’
‘Anton, we can’t afford the new rent, it’s out of the question.’
Our eyes met, sparking with realization. ‘We’ll have to move.’
I look for ‘signs’ everywhere and I reluctantly acknowledged this as one.
Anton seized his chance. ‘They’re looking for four two five. I say we offer four hundred and see what happens.’
‘We haven’t got four hundred thousand, we probably haven’t got four hundred.’
‘Let’s just make an offer on the house and busk it. You never know what might happen because this isn’t an ordinary chain situation, the vendors –’
Vendors! – he was talking a different language, one that excluded me.
‘– the vendors aren’t stuck in a chain, they don’t need the asking price to buy a new house, they’re just waiting for an inheritance windfall. They’re a lot more likely to take a lower offer, they must be sick of waiting for all that loot, tied up in Dad’s old house that they can’t get shot of.’
‘Anton! We cannot offer to buy a house when we have no money in place.’
‘Of course we can.’
‘You’re not going to believe it!’ Anton cried. ‘They’ve accepted our offer of four hundred grand.’
I felt the colour drain from my face. ‘You’ve offered to buy a house and we’ve no money! What kind of idiot are you?’
He couldn’t stop laughing. He fell onto my neck, giddy with glee. ‘We’ll get the money.’
‘From where?’
‘The bank.’
‘Do you plan to rob one?’
‘I agree with you that we’re not standard mortgage application material. What we need is a bank with vision.’
‘I want no part in this. I want you to ring that poor Greg and tell him you’ve been wasting his time.’
That creased him up again. ‘“Poor Greg” – Lily, he’s an estate agent.’
‘If you don’t tell him, I shall!’
‘Don’t, Lily, please don’t ring him, just give me a little time. Trust me.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Lily, please baby, just trust me.’ He pulled me round to him and his love for me was stamped on his face. ‘I will never do anything to hurt you. I will spend my life trying to make things beautiful and perfect for you and Ema. Please trust me.’
I shrugged. It was not quite a yes, but it was not a no either. It never was.
He took to making phone calls, the type that necessitated turning away from me whenever I came into the room. When I asked, ‘Who was that?’ he would tap the side of his nose and wink. The post began to yield up fat letters, which he spirited away to open in private and when I questioned him about them, there was more nose-tapping and mysterious grins. Of course, I could have insisted on disclosure, but manifestly I did not want to know.
I had a bad dream where I was in a huge warehouse packing mountains of my possessions into a sea of ten-foot-high cardboard boxes. A whole box of single shoes, another one filled with broken televisions, then I was trying to squeeze the William Morris fireplace into a box the size of a biscuit tin and a disembodied voice said, ‘All fireplaces must be securely stowed.’ Then the dream jumped and Ema and I were sitting on the grass strip in the middle of a motorway, with all the boxes and I knew with hollow sick certainty that we had no place to call home.
But when I was awake I thought constantly about the house in a dreamy, love-sick way. In my head I had painted, decorated and furnished all the rooms and I rearranged the furniture constantly, as if it were a doll’s house. I had a cream-painted, curvy, antique French bed, with a matching claw-footed armoire, a high-headboarded brass bed with a charmingly squeaky mattress, carved trunks, rose borders, pot-bellied bedside cabinets, plump bolsters, satin eiderdowns, scatter rugs strewn across my shiny wooden floors…
When I thought about living there, different versions of my life opened up. I wanted to have other children, at least two more, but it was a desire I had tamped down firmly because under our current living arrangements it simply was not viable. But it could happen in the new house.
Then Anton came to me and said, ‘Lily, light of my life, love of my heart, are you free tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Why?’ Suspiciously. The light-of-my-life stuff usually preceded a request to collect his dinner jacket from the dry-cleaner’s for some media do.
‘I’ve got us an appointment with a bank.’
A beat. ‘You haven’t?’
‘Oh, but I have, ma petite, my little pumpkin.’
The following afternoon, we left Ema with Irina and asked her not to put the green face mask on her again, we were still picking bits out of her hair. Then kitted out in our most respectable clothes, we arrived at the bank to be greeted by three interchangeable men in sombre suits. I was embarrassed, as though we had got into their offices under false pretences, but Anton was absolutely dazzling. Even I was convinced. He talked about what a star I was, how this was the start of a storming career, how they’d benefit from getting on board now, how we would remain loyal in the future when we were earning millions and owned other homes in New York, Monte Carlo and Letterkenny. (Ancestral seat of the Carolans.) Then, to back up his puff, he produced letters from Jojo and Dalkin Emery’s accountants, copies of my sales figures to date and related earnings, a projection of sales of Crystal Clear from Dalkin Emery’s Head of Sales and an approximate calculation of how much I could expect to earn from that. (A lot, as it happens. I was astonished at their ambition.)
To assuage their anxiety over us having neither a down-payment nor steady income, he passed around a spreadsheet of proposed repayments, with a lump sum due to be paid when I received my first royalty cheque in September and another lump sum when I signed my new contract in November. ‘Gentlemen, have no fear that you will get your money back.’
With a final flourish, he produced three copies of Mimi’s Remedies which I signed for the wives of the sombre-suited men.
‘It’s in the bag,’ he said, as we got the tube home.
The letter bearing the bank’s masthead came two days later. My stomach sloshed with nausea as we both tried to tear it open. My eyes skidded along the words, trying to extract their meaning, but Anton was faster than me.
‘Shit!’
‘What?’
‘They wish us luck but they’re not making with the readies.’
‘That’s it then,’ I said, devastated yet strangely half-relieved. ‘The fuckers.’
But of course, that was not it. Anton, ever the optimist, simply made an appointment with another bank. ‘Knock on enough doors, someone will eventually let you in.’
Despite another tour de force from Anton, the second bank also turned us down; he did not even stop to lick his wounds before he had lined up yet another. This time, knowing how likely they were to turn us down, I felt an utter fraud as Anton pitched me. And when they sent their letter of regret, I begged him to stop.
‘Just one more,’ he insisted. ‘You give up too easily.’
I was feeding Ema her breakfast, a protracted, messy experience which usually left the floor, walls and my hair splattered with clods of wet Weetabix, when Anton frisbeed a letter onto the table. ‘Have a read of that.’ He was grinning like a loon.
‘Tell me.’ I was afraid to believe, but what else could it be…
‘The bank said yes, they’ll loan us the money. The house is ours.’
This was my cue to launch myself into his arms and be twirled around the kitchen, both of us laughing our heads off. Instead I became very still, and stared at him, almost in fear.
He was some sort of alchemist, he had to be. How did he continue to conjure up dream solutions out of thin air? He had got me an agent, who had got me a publisher, he had ‘found’ my second book when I thought I had none, and now he had secured my dream house even though we had no money upfront.
‘How do you do it?’ I asked, faintly. ‘Have you cut a deal with the devil?’
He polished an imaginary medal on his chest, then laughed at himself. ‘Lily, take a bow. This is down to you about to bring in a ton of money in September and more when you sign your new deal. Without that, me pestering them wouldn’t have cut any ice. They’d have got security to throw me out.’
‘Oi!’ I wrestled the letter back from Ema, who had been using the back of her spoon to carefully cover it with mushy Weetabix. She squawked in dismay, but was trapped in her high chair and could not do much about it. As I read the typewritten page, joy began a cautious trickle. If the bank had said yes, then everything must be fine. Clearly they thought I would earn enough to pay it all back; this was not just a loan, it was an endorsement of my career.
Then I read a sentenc
e which caused my plucky little trickle of joy to make an emergency stop. I gasped.
So did Ema; her eyes were wide and alarmed, just like mine.
‘Anton, it says the loan is “subject to survey”. What does that mean?’
‘Anton! Whazat meen?’
‘They want to be sure the house is worth what they’re lending us for it, just in case we default and they need to repossess.’
I winced. Talk of repossession froze my innards; it brought back the day we left the big house in Guildford.
‘So they do a structural survey to make sure the house is sound.’
‘And what if it isn’t?’
‘Did it look sound to you?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Well, then.’
Anton opened the letter. He read it in silence, but something sombre pervaded the room.
‘What is it?’
‘OK,’ he cleared his throat. ‘This is the result of the bank’s survey.’
‘And?’
‘They’ve found dry rot in the front room. Quite bad, they say.’
I belly-flopped with disappointment and tears sprang to my eyes. Our beautiful, beautiful house. What about the raspberry bushes, the daybed in the bay window, me in the floaty dress, carrying the overarm basket? The bohemian dinner parties I would throw to repay Nicky and Simon, Mikey and Ciara, Viv, Baz and Jez and all the other people who had had Anton and me round to their homes and whom I had never invited here because it was far too small?
I heard myself say, ‘Well, that’s that then.’
‘It is not. Lily, don’t fold on me, dry rot can be fixed! Piece of piss! They’ll still give us a mortgage, but for less. For three hundred and eighty.’
‘Where will we find twenty thousand pounds?’
‘Catch yourself on, Lily, we don’t. We go back to the vendors and drop our offer by twenty grand.’
‘But we still need to fix the dry rot! I repeat, where do we find twenty thousand pounds?’