by Marian Keyes
Once again the room froze into stillness. All that moved were optic muscles as everyone played eye-tennis between Richie and Jojo. The seconds ticked for too long, Jojo’s hand beneath the phone became slick with sweat, then Richie caved. ‘Obviously this is only an example. Like, obviously.’
‘Oh,’ Jojo feigned breathy surprise, ‘it’s only an example. Don’t make that call just yet.’ She folded the sweaty phone away and winked at Olga. ‘Could be embarrassing.’
As people watched their dreams waver and dissolve, suddenly they were staring at Richie like he was a trickster.
But the sting in the tail was the announcement that the following day three of the Lawson Global guys were going with Richie, Jim Sweetman and Mark to a luxury country hotel to play golf and bond. Jojo tried to hide her disbelief. Mark had not told her about this and also, when did that shit-head Gant learn to play golf?
‘How come I’m not invited?’
‘Why should you be?’
‘I brought in more money than any other agent last year and I’m on course to do it again this year.’
‘Can you play golf?’ Richie asked.
‘Sure I can.’ Like, how hard could it be? Especially if she pretended every golf ball was his head.
‘Shame,’ Richie wall-eyed her. ‘It’s already booked and there are no more places.’
‘So no women? Isn’t that a little sexist? There are laws against that sort of thing.’
‘What law says a bunch of guys can’t get together to play golf? And who’s saying there won’t be any women?’
He let that sink in and Jojo said, ‘Oh, I’d forgotten about your fondness for lap-dancers.’
‘I hadn’t,’ he grinned and rage filled her up. ‘Jim likes them too and Mark is bound to love the –’
‘Excuse me,’ Mark interrupted.
Dan Swann roused himself from his customary reverie and began to murmur quietly, ‘Fight, fight, fight!’
Mark took control. ‘OΚ, that’s enough. And Richie, don’t be ridiculous, there won’t be any lap-dancers. At least there’d better not be.’
Jojo thought that that actually made things worse. Everyone was thinking, Mark Avery’s girlfriend doesn’t want him near lap-dancers. These were her colleagues and they were looking at her like she was a nagging wife. The boundaries were way too blurred.
After the meeting closed she went to Mark’s office, closed the door behind her and said, ‘You never told me you were going away to play golf with these guys.’
‘You’re right, I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re not the boss of me.’
It was like a staple gun to the heart. ‘Mark! What’s happening? Why are you being so horrible?’
‘Why are you being so horrible?’ He was far too calm and at times like this she remembered, really remembered why she’d fallen for him in the first place: his strength of character, his ability to see the big picture…
‘I’m not being horrible, Mark.’
He shrugged. ‘And I’m just doing my job.’ He was still not engaging.
‘Even when it conflicts with me?’
‘I don’t see it that way. You may not believe me, but everything I do, I’m doing for us.’
Thanks to Slimeball Gant things with Mark were starting to get messy; she would not allow it. She made a big, almost superhuman effort to get over herself.
‘I believe you.’
* * *
Saturday morning, Jojo’s flat
Before Mark left for his golf weekend, Jojo said, ‘You’re not to tell those Lawson guys what I’m like in bed.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I know what guys are like, telling sexist jokes and discussing women.’
‘How?’
‘Because I’m one of them.’
He put his hand on her waist, then slid it upwards. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’
He took his hand away and she replaced it.
‘Jojo, we don’t have time for this.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘I’ll be late.’
‘Good.’
Twenty minutes later
‘I really have to go now, Jojo.’
‘Go.’ She smiled from the bed. ‘I have no further need of you. Bye, honey. Have a horrible time.’
‘I will.’
That afternoon
Jojo was in Russell & Bromley with Becky when her phone rang. Caller display showed it was Mark. ‘Mark!’ she exclaimed. ‘Just the man I want to speak to. What’s the difference between a bonus and a penis? I’ll tell you – your wife will blow your bonus! Ba-boom!’
‘Jojo –’
‘What do you do when your dishwasher breaks down? Hit her! Ba-boom!’
‘Jojo –’
‘Which one do you give the job to? The one with the biggest tits! Ba-boom!’
Sunday afternoon, Jojo’s flat
Mark came straight from the hotel to her.
‘Hey, baby.’ She gathered him in her arms like he’d just come home from war. ‘It’s OK, you’re OK now.’
She followed him into her living room and asked, ‘How bad was it?’
He smiled. ‘Bad. I had to smoke a cigar and you know how you have to cut a bit off the end?’ Jojo didn’t.
‘Well one of the Lawson blokes kept making circumcision jokes about it.’
‘Eeeww. Worst moment of the entire weekend?’
Mark thought about it. When one of the Lawson blokes described another man as, “He’s the one guy who if he fell into a pool of tits would come out sucking his thumb.”’
‘Eeeeww,’ Jojo repeated.
Then Mark admitted, ‘I told them your dishwasher joke. I think they liked it.’
‘Happy to help. How was Gant?’
Mark just shrugged.
‘Help me out here?’ Jojo burst out. ‘Just tell me how anyone could like him. Like, what am I missing?’
Mark thought about it. ‘He’s good with people, he intuits what they like and then homes in on it.’
‘He doesn’t do it with me.’
‘He doesn’t need you to like him.’
‘He will when I’m a fucking partner and he isn’t.’
Her words hung in the air and when Jojo spoke, the anxiety that had dogged her all weekend, and made her buy an impractical, ridiculously expensive clutch bag, broke through. ‘Can we talk about tomorrow? Do you think I’ll get it?’
‘You deserve it.’
‘But do you think I’ll get it?’
‘Tarquin Wentworth, Aurora French and Lobelia Hall have all been there longer than you. If we go on longevity, Tarquin should get it.’
She hit him. ‘C’mon, stop being Mr Let’s-Look-at-the-Facts, we all know it’s between me and Richie Gant.’
‘OΚ, it’s between you and him.’
‘Yeah, and let’s look at the facts. I’m a great agent, I make more money than anyone else including Gant and I’ve done everything I can to blacken his reputation. Can I do more than that? I don’t think so.’
She believed in thinking positive. But she woke up in the middle of the night, thinking not so positive. Mark had gone home and she was glad; she didn’t want him to see her like this. She was imagining what it would be like if she wasn’t made partner tomorrow. Apart from the shock and humiliation, Richie Gant would be her new boss, well, one of them. And he would not be a gracious winner. She’d have to leave Lipman Haigh and start all over again for someone else. Prove herself, build alliances, generate income. It would set her back at least two years. The panic was starting to spiral within her, moving up and up to block her throat.
She got it together. Richie Gant was good – and sneaky. But his corporate sponsorship project was all talk. No one was in any immediate danger of making any money from it. She was a better agent. Fact. She generated more income. Her authors were excellent long-term prospects. How could she not get it?
Lily
Anton was home from work.
He shot into the room and said, ‘Look at what I got sent today.’ I had not seen him so animated in a very long time.
He brandished a book and when I saw that it was Gemma’s book, Chasing Rainbows, I lunged and grabbed it, desperate to read it. Nausea set up a familiar churning.
‘How did you get this?’
‘Proof copy. Jim Sweetman, the media fella over at Lipman Haigh, sent it to me. And the good news,’ Anton said, all aglow, ‘is that it’s not about us.’
‘And the bad news?’
‘There is no bad news.’
But no one ever says, ‘The good news is…’ if there is no bad news.
‘What’s it like?’ I asked. ‘Is it good?’
‘Nah.’ But excitement was hopping from him, zigzagging like colour through the air.
Surprised, I accused, ‘You like it.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do.’
‘I don’t.’
I held my breath because I knew there was a ‘but’ coming.
‘But,’ he said, ‘I’d like to option it.’
I was stunned into silence.
All I could think was that he had not optioned my book. Either of them.
It was five weeks since we had moved out of our house, but it felt a lot longer. We had passed a bleak Christmas in our cubey flat – the bleakness made worse by Jessie and Julian being expected home from Argentina but delivering a last-minute cancellation.
Despite several invitations for New Year’s Eve – everyone from Mikey and Ciara to Viv, Baz and Jez to Nicky and Simon – we spent the night alone and toasted each other with the champagne Dalkin Emery had given me in those long ago days when Mimi’s Remedies had been storming the charts and they still liked me. Our toast was to ‘next year’, in the hope that it would be better than the year just gone. Then January had dawned but – what can I say? – it was January. The best anyone can do is breathe in, breathe out and wait for it to pass.
Crystal Clear did not, as I had prayed for, rally at the last minute. My confidence and creativity were in shreds and since October I had done no writing. What was the point when no one would publish it? It was too cold to go out and I spent my days with Ema, watching Dora the Explorer and Jerry Springer.
Losing our home had been catastrophic but I was under no illusions that there was still a lot further to fall. Anton and I were unravelling. I was watching it happen from a distance, like it was happening to another couple.
We no longer had anything to say to each other; our disappointment was too huge a presence. I bitterly resented Anton’s recklessness with money. I was obsessed with the house we had lost and felt it was all his fault. He had persuaded me to buy it – I kept remembering my many and varied objections – and if we had never bought it, we could not have lost it. The loss was excruciating and I felt unable to forgive him. For some reason I kept thinking of the day he had taken me shopping in Selfridges; we had not had a penny and what did we do? Go further into debt. At the time, I saw it as a glorious carpe diem, now it signalled idiotic irresponsibility. The type of irresponsibility that urged us to buy a house which we could only lose.
And, although Anton did not articulate it, I knew he blamed me for not writing another hit book. Briefly, we had been on the crest of the wave and it was difficult to adjust to all that excitement and hope being whipped away.
We barely spoke and when we did, it was simply to snap childcare instruction at each other.
It felt like a long, long time since I had drawn a proper breath. Every inhalation was a shallow panicked little effort which brought no relief and I never slept more than four hours a night. Anton kept promising me that life would improve. And he seemed to think it just had.
‘Chloe Drew would be perfect for the lead!’ he enthused.
‘But Eye-Kon have no money to option the book.’
‘The BBC are interested in a co-production. They’ll put up the money if Chloe is on board.’
I leant towards him quizzically. He had already spoken to the BBC? He was putting a deal together? ‘Have you actually spoken to Chloe about this?’
‘Yep. She’s game.’
Oh my goodness.
‘Gemma will never let you option it. After what we did to her, you haven’t a hope.’
But he had a hope. I could see it in his eyes. Already he was persuading her and using whatever means necessary. I knew that Anton, for all his shabby, laid-back charm, was ambitious but the extent of it impacted like a blow to the chest.
Because our lives had collapsed so spectacularly before Christmas, he needed this desperately. It had been a long time since he had successfully pulled a deal together. He had gone back to making his dreaded infomercials to bring in some money, but this was where his heart lay.
‘Lily, this will be the saving of us!’ He was a ball of fervour. ‘It’s got fantastic commercial potential. Everyone could make a pile of money from it. Life would get back on track for us.’
Anton needed this for his pride. And he needed to feel something good could happen to us. But to secure the rights
to her book, how far would he go with Gemma? Because of the fierceness of his desperation, I was hit with a powerful conviction that it could be quite some way. Her last words to me flashed into my head: remember how you met him because that’s how you’ll lose him.
‘Don’t get involved in this,’ I urged, low and desperate. ‘Please, Anton, nothing good will come of it.’
‘But Lily!’ He insisted. ‘What an opportunity! It’s exactly what we need.’
‘It’s Gemma!’
‘It’s business.’
‘Please, Anton.’ But the light would not go out in his eyes and I could have wept.
How the world turns.
During the past three and a half years, Gemma had been a constant source of worry. But since I had read about her book, my ephemeral dread had solidified and taken real shape. For months now I had been braced for some form of consequence. But I could not have guessed it would manifest itself in this shape; that she would hold the key to Anton salvaging his career, his pride and his sense of hope.
And she could not have timed her rearrival in Anton’s life any better if she had tried: he and I were so shaky…
How shaky? I had to ask myself, as terror darkened my vision. How shaky? What would happen if Gemma launched a bid for him…?
It was then that I discovered I no longer had faith in me and Anton. I had once thought that, as a unit, we were indestructible. Now we seemed small and fragile and perched on the rim of a catastrophe. I didn’t know the precise nature of it, or exactly how it was going to come about, but with hideous certitude, I reached a calm still place right at the centre of me and saw my future set in stone: Anton and I were going to split up.
Jojo
9.00 Monday morning
Probably the most important morning of Jojo’s entire career. On her way to her office, she passed the boardroom – behind the closed door, they were all in there, even Nicholas and Cam. Vote for me. She tried to send voodoo thought waves. Then she laughed at herself: she didn’t need voodoo thought waves. She was a good enough agent.
All the same she was very jumpy. She accused Manoj of banging her coffee cup too loudly on her desk and when her phone rang her heart almost pushed out through her ribcage.
‘We’ll know by lunchtime,’ Manoj soothed.
‘Right.’
But just after ten, someone appeared in her doorway. Mark! But it was far too soon. Could be they were on a break…
‘Hi…’
In silence, Mark closed the door behind him, leant against it, then looked her in the eye. Immediately she knew. But couldn’t believe it. She heard herself say, ‘They gave it to Richie Gant?’
A nod.
She still couldn’t believe it and for a moment felt she might burst from her body. This wasn’t happening. It was just another worst-case-scenario imagining. But Mark was still standing there, looking at her with concern an
d although she felt like she was dreaming, she knew it was real.
Mark crossed and tried to hug her but she moved out of his arms. ‘Don’t blow my low.’
She stood by the window and stared at nothing. It was over. The vote had happened and she hadn’t got it. But it was too soon. They’d only been in that room for an hour. So long had been spent waiting for this that she wasn’t ready for it to have happened yet. A bubble of panic rose. This isn’t real.
She was trying to think logically but her processes were hit hard. ‘Is it because of you and me, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Mark looked grey and exhausted and Jojo had a momentary insight into how horrible this was for him. ‘Who voted for me? As well as you?’
‘Jocelyn and Dan.’
‘I lost three-four. Close, but no cigar, right?’ She forced a wry smile. ‘I just can’t believe Nicholas and Cam didn’t vote for me. I really thought they would.’
Another powerless shrug from Mark.
‘I so don’t get it. I’ve great authors who’re going to have long careers. Short-term and long-term I’m a better bet. What d’you think happened? Seeing as I bring in more money than Gant.’
‘Only just.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That came out wrong. What I mean is they looked at this year’s income and you and Richie are neck and neck.’
‘No, we are so not. I’m ahead, by lots. How can we be neck and neck?’
Mark looked like he wanted to die and she was sorry for taking it out on him. He couldn’t control the other partners, they made their own decisions. But she needed to know. ‘Tell me.’
‘I feel so bad for you.’ His eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘You deserve it and it means so much to you. But the way they look at it is, if Richie pulls off even one corporate deal, that puts him way ahead of the game.’
‘But he’s delivered zilch. He’s talking the talk and they fell for it. It’s a crass, crap idea and I bet no one will go for it. Writers still have some self-respect.’
Mark shrugged and they stood in silence, miserable and separate.
Then Jojo got it and surprise, more than anything, made her blurt, ‘It’s because I’m a woman!’ She’d heard about this but never thought it would happen to her. ‘It’s the glass ceiling!’