by Marian Keyes
It was time to return to London and Mum was sad but tried to hide it. ‘It’s not me,’ she said. ‘The sheep will be devastated. They seem to have adopted Ema as some sort of goddess.’
‘We’ll come and visit.’
‘Do, please. And send Anton my best. Will you see him in London? Has the fear of doing something rash passed?’
I didn’t know. Perhaps.
‘Can I give you some advice, darling?’
‘No, Mum, please don’t.’
But she was on a roll. ‘I know Anton is unreliable with money but better to be with a spendthrift than a skinflint.’
‘How would you know? Who was a skinflint?’
‘Peter.’ Her second husband. Susan’s father. ‘He doled out money like he was pulling teeth.’ I had not known that. Or had I? Perhaps I had suspected it, but after all the insecurity with Dad, I had assumed that Mum enjoyed it.
‘At least being with your dad was fun,’ she said, moodily.
‘So much fun that you divorced him.’
‘Oh darling, I am sorry. But he bored me to sobs with all those wretched money-making schemes. However, after living with a man who calculated how long loo rolls ought to last, I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s better to spend one day as a spendthrift than a thousand years as a skinflint.’ Then anxiety bruised her face. ‘But that doesn’t mean your dad and I are going to get back together. Please don’t get the wrong idea.’
Ema and I returned to London.
I had felt so abject about writing off Irina’s lovely car, that I bought her a new one – well, I had all those lovely Mimi’s Remedies royalties just sitting in my bank. Irina, however, was far from impressed by my flashness. ‘You did not hev to. The insurance people will buy me a new car.’
I shrugged, ‘When – if – you get the insurance cheque, you can pay me back.’
‘You are foolish with money,’ she said, coldly. ‘You make me engry.’
However, despite my buying her a new car, she forgave me enough to let Ema and me resume living with her until we got a place of our own.
As soon as I walked into my bedroom I noticed that the wastepaper basket had not been emptied in all the time I had been away – clearly Irina had been respecting my privacy. Shit The letter from Anton was still there, a corner poking out. I looked at it, wondering what to do, then quickly picked it up and shoved it back in my underwear drawer, unsettled that it was still clinging to me.
Before I gave A Charmed Life to Jojo, I decided to try it on someone who would not humour me; the obvious choice was Irina, who read it in an afternoon. She gave me back the pages, her face impassive. ‘I do not like,’ she said.
‘Good, good,’ I encouraged.
‘So much hope in it. But other people, they will like very much.’
‘Yes,’ I said happily. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Gemma
All of a sudden, it was spring and life was good. Dad was at home with Mam, my book was coming out soon – already it was out in the airports but it was too soon to know how it was selling – and now that I didn’t need to bail Mam out, I had enough dosh to pay off my credit card, sell my car and buy one that men didn’t feel the need to assault.
Maybe, eventually, I could do like Jojo and set up on my own. But because of my writing career, I decided to do nothing for the moment.
The only fly in the ointment of my life was that I was still mortified about my carry-on with Johnny the Scrip and avoided driving past his chemist. But show me someone whose life is entirely cringe-free and I’ll show you a dead person.
In April, a few short weeks before my book came out in the real world, I finally went on my holiday to Antigua. Andrea was coming in place of Owen. Then Cody said he’d like to come and so would Trevor and Jennifer and maybe Sylvie and Niall, and Susan said she’d come from Seattle, and suddenly there were eight of us. Looking at it that way, a week no longer seemed enough, so we changed the booking to a fortnight.
Even before we left Dublin, there was great excitement. In the airport bookshop, seven of us clustered around the small display of Chasing Rainbows and said loudly, ‘I hear this is a great book,’ and ‘I’d buy this book if I was going on my holidays.’ Then when a woman bought one, Cody collared her and told her I was the author and even though she clearly suspected we were taking the piss she let me sign her copy and didn’t object to me shedding a tear or Cody videoing the event.
Then when we arrived at our resort, a woman lying by the pool – a different woman to the one at Dublin airport – was reading Chasing Rainbows. And six hundred and forty-seven were reading Mimi’s Remedies, but never mind. I will admit to getting a little pang every time I saw it but nothing I couldn’t handle.
We met Susan who’d flown in a day earlier from Seattle and for the next two weeks, we had an absolute blast. The sun shone, we all got on with each other, there was always someone to play with, but the place was big enough if we needed (that awful word) ‘space’. There was a spa, three restaurants, excellent watersports and all the premium brand liquor we could drink. I had loads of facials, went snorkelling, read six books and tried learning to windsurf, but they told me to come back when I wasn’t banjoed out of my head on free Pina Coladas. We met millions of other people and Susan, Trevor and Jennifer all got the ride. Most nights we danced until sun-up at the crappy disco but – this was the best bit – we didn’t have the fear the following day. (That’s premium brand liquor for you.)
The holiday was a turning point for me. I think I’d forgotten how to be happy but I rediscovered it there. On our last night, sitting at the beach-front bar, listening to the suck and roar of the waves, cooled by fragrant little breezes, I understood that I was free from the bitterness I’d carried for so long towards Lily and Anton. And I no longer wanted to drive over to gloat at Colette. I actually felt for her; with two children, life can’t have been easy, and she must have had really atrocious luck with men – miles worse than mine – if she thought my dad was a catch. (All due respect, lovely man, yadda yadda, but I mean.) I even felt forgiveness towards my dad. I breathed in well-being, breathed out calm and felt benign goodwill to all.
I looked at the people sitting around me – Andrea, Cody, Susan, Sylvie, Jennifer, Trevor, Niall and some bloke from Birmingham whose name escapes me but who was there because he was getting the ride off Jennifer, and thought, this is all I need: good friends, to love and be loved. I have health, a well-paid job, a book coming out, a hopeful future and people who love me. I am whole and complete.
I tried explaining to Cody how light and free I felt.
‘Course you do,’ he said. ‘You’re banjoed out of your head on free Pina Coladas.’ (It had become the holiday catchphrase.) ‘You’ve given up on men,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that.’
I tried to explain that I hadn’t given up, merely reshuffled my priorities, but I didn’t do a very good job of it, probably on account of being banjoed out of my head on free Pina Coladas. But it didn’t matter. Happiness means not having to be understood.
Jojo
Jojo woke up – thought the two thoughts she had every morning – and knew that today was the day that something had to change.
In the first two weeks after she had left Lipman Haigh, life was busy. The phone rang all the time – authors telling her they were jumping ship to go to Richie Gant, Mark begging her to come back, publishing people desperate to know what the story was – then, like the flick of a switch, everything suddenly went very quiet. It was almost like a conspiracy. The silence was deafening and time – very slowly – began to pass.
Jojo discovered that sitting in her living room, trying to run a literary agency with almost no authors, sucked. The final shake-down showed she had lost twenty-one of her twenty-nine authors to Richie Gant and only the small – unlucrative – ones had stayed.
No money was coming in – like, nothing – and it freaked her right out.
Since age fifteen, she had never not had a job;
being without an income felt like flying a trapeze without a safety net.
For thirteen straight weeks, every single morning, it was the second thing she thought of when she woke up. All through February, all through March, all through April. Now it was the start of May and nothing had changed.
She needed new authors but no one knew about her and, funnily enough, Lipman Haigh weren’t forwarding on any manuscripts which had been mailed personally to her.
A profile in The Times, swung by Magda Wyatt, had started a trickle of books coming her way. They were mostly atrocious, but it meant she was still a player. However, so far, none had resulted in a sale.
The days, stuck in her apartment, waiting while nothing happened, seemed way too long. Publishers didn’t take her out for lunch in fancy restaurants so much any more and she had a policy of deliberately swerving big industry do’s where she was likely to run into Mark. However, it was hard to avoid them all because she had to let publishers know she was still alive.
But she did her best to stay away because Mark was still the first thing she thought of every morning. Even now, more than three months since she had seen him, there were times when the pain made it difficult for her to breathe.
But today was the day that something had to give.
There was no money left; she had sold her small holding of stocks, cashed in a pension scheme and had run her overdraft and cards to the hilt. She had used everything up, she had a mortgage to pay and whatever else happened, she was not going to lose her apartment.
She had two options, neither of them attractive – she could remortgage her apartment or return to work at a big agency. It was going to be hard (like, impossible) to remortgage her apartment without a steady job. So really, she had one option left, but saying she had two made it seem better.
One part of her told her she was lying down and giving up by going back into the system which had fucked her over the last time. But another part of her said that the important thing was to survive. She had tried very hard with this but the smart girl knows when to stop digging.
She had to eat. And buy handbags.
Since the news got out that she had left Lipman Haigh, there had been job offers from just about every other literary agency in town, all of which she had politely rebuffed. Indeed, she had said that she might be offering them a job in the not too distant future.
And OK, maybe she’d been a little over-confident. But if her authors had stayed with her, it would have all worked out. Anyhow, no point being sore. She had a mental list of who would be least unbearable to work for; she would start at the top and work down.
Feeling a little weird, a little sad, she picked up the phone and rang her number one agency, Curtis Brown. The person she needed to speak to wasn’t available so she left a message, then rang Becky to tell her what she was doing.
‘Oh Jojo! Going back into that patriarchal system is very bad for the soul,’ Becky parroted.
‘I’m broke. And what do I need with a soul? I never use it. If I had to choose between my soul and a handbag, I’d pick the handbag.’
‘If you’re sure…’
When the phone rang she thought it would be someone from Curtis Brown returning her call, but it wasn’t.
‘Jojo, it’s Lily. Lily Wright. I have a manuscript for you. I think, I mean, how can anyone ever be sure, but I think you’re going to love it. Like it, in any case.’
‘You think? Well, let’s take a look!’ Jojo had no hope for this. Lily, a totally great person, was a literary untouchable. After the train-wreck of Crystal Clear, she would never be published again.
‘I live quite nearby,’ Lily said. ‘In St John’s Wood. I could drop it over to you now. Ema and I would enjoy the walk.’
‘Sure! Why not!’ OK, so she was humouring her, but it was better than telling her not to bother, right?
Lily and Ema came, Lily had a cup of tea, Ema broke the handle off a mug and hung it from the inside of her ear like an earring, then they left again.
Some time in the afternoon the woman from Curtis Brown rang back and gave Jojo an appointment for later in the week. And, sloooowly, the day passed. She spoke to Becky several times, watched TV all afternoon even though she had a strict no-daytime-TV rule, went to yoga, came home, made dinner, watched more TV and, at about eleven-thirty, decided it was time for bed. Looking for something to read to ease her into sleep, her glance bounced off Lily Wright’s bundle of pages. Might as well take a look.
Twenty minutes later
Jojo was sitting straight-backed in bed, her hands gripping the pages so tightly that they buckled. She was only a short way into the book, but she knew. This was IT! The manuscript she had been waiting for, the book which would reignite her career. It was Mimi’s Remedies mark two, only better. She would sell it for a fortune.
She glanced at her clock. Midnight. Was it too late to ring Lily now? Probably. Damn!
How early did Lily get up? Early. Yeah, she had a little girl, it would be early.
6.30 the following morning
Was this too early? Could be. She forced herself to wait an hour, then picked up the phone.
Lily
I am not a fool. Even before Ema broke the handle off her mug and wore it as an earring, I knew Jojo was not entirely overjoyed to see me. I did not blame her. The debacle of Crystal Clear had not reflected well on any of us.
But she accepted my new manuscript and promised to read it ‘soon’. Then I returned to Irina’s and waited for Jojo’s call. It came at 7.35 the following morning.
‘Jesus H,’ she shrieked, so loud that Irina heard it in the next room. ‘We’ve got a live one here. Name your price! We don’t have to offer Dalkin Emery a first look. They didn’t keep the faith last Christmas. We could go to Thor. They’d kill to have this, and they’re doing really well at the moment. Or how about…’
I already had a plan. I was not sure I would ever write another book; something terrible seems to have to happen to me before I can produce anything worthwhile, and frankly, I would rather be happy. But this was my chance for a downpay-ment on a secure future.
‘Sell it,’ I instructed Jojo, ‘to the highest bidder.’
‘You got it! I’m on my way to the local copy shop, then I’m gonna make the calls, order the bikes, then sit back and watch them throw money at us.’
Gemma
When I came back from being banjoed out of my head on Pina Coladas it was nearly a week before I saw my parents – just like the good old days. When I did finally get it together to call over, Mam said, ‘This came for you.’
She handed me an envelope that had several addresses crossed out then written over. It had originally been sent to Dalkin Emery and they’d forwarded it on to Lipman Haigh, who’d sent it to my parents. It had a Mick stamp on it.
‘It might be a fan letter,’ Dad said.
I didn’t bother replying. My epiphany in Antigua had mostly survived the transition back to real life, but not how I felt about Dad.
I opened the letter.
Dear Gemma,
I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed Chasing Rainbows. (I got it in the airport on my way to Fuertaventura.) Congratulations on a great read. I was happy that Will and Izzy finally got it together after all their trials and tribulations. I didn’t think it was going to happen, especially when that other man was knocking around. I was concerned that Izzy was on the rebound but now I’m convinced – they make a lovely couple.
Love,
Johnny
PS Come and see me. I have some new surgical gauze in that you might find interesting.
Johnny. Johnny the Scrip. I didn’t know any other Johnny. And he’d signed it ‘Love’.
It was like someone had drilled down and filled up every part of me with relief. He’d read the book. He didn’t hate me. He’d forgiven me for treating him like a stop-gap.
I hadn’t realized the weight of the mortification I’d been carrying.
He wanted to see me…<
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How did I feel about that? I felt that I’d call in on my way home, that’s how I felt! I understood something: I was finally ready. For the past year – more – I’d been way too mad to pursue anything with Johnny and I think I’d wanted to wait until I was myself again before trying to embark on anything with him. I reckon it was why I’d stayed with Owen – being with him kept me from pushing for anything with Johnny. He’d acted as a kind of emotional bouncer.
Not that I felt too bad about using Owen; I had fulfilled a similar role for him.
Then I noticed the date on Johnny’s letter and I was shocked. It was the nineteenth of March – six weeks earlier. It had spent all that time passing from publisher to agent to parents. Suddenly it seemed imperative to leave.
‘What is it? A fan letter?’ Dad asked.
‘Look, I’m off.’
‘But you’ve only just got here.’
‘I’ll come back.’
I drove as fast as I’d driven that first night long ago when I was on a mission to secure drugs to stop my mammy going totally doolally. I parked outside, pushed open the door, and there he was, in his white coat, bending solicitously over some old lady’s hand, admiring her ringworm or something. My heart swelled with good stuff.
Then he looked up and I got the fear: it wasn’t him. It was very like him but it wasn’t him. For a mad moment I feared bodysnatchers, then I realized this must be Hopalong, the famed brother.
I stretched to have a look behind the melamine divider, hoping to see Johnny back there, filling a jar with pills or whatever he did, but Hopalong intercepted me. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Johnny.’
‘He’s not here.’
Something about the way he said it gave me a bad feeling. ‘He hasn’t, by any chance, emigrated to Australia?’ It would be just my luck. And he’d probably meet his The One on the boat…