“How did it go? Are you clearing out your things?” Libby asked, sotto voce, as Elle sank into her chair.
“No, it was OK.” Elle’s shoulders felt as though they’d sunk four inches lower with relief. “She just wanted to ask about that
Polly Pearson
book.”
“Hope you told her it was total rubbish,” said Libby.
“No,” said Elle. “I said it was OK.” She paused, and looked down at the battered old Pan paperback in her hand. “At least, I think that’s what I said.”
It wasn’t till after lunch that Elle came back, much restored by a tuna baguette and a walk to the British Museum in the sunshine, to find Rory standing by her desk.
“What did you say to my mother?” he demanded. He ran his hands through his light brown hair, scrunching it till it stood on end. Elle looked blank. “To Felicity, Elle,” Rory said. “About that damned book. Come on, what did you say to her?”
Elle sat down and put her bag on the floor. “I don’t know,” she began. “Why?”
Rory had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hands on his hips. He glared at her, his face grim, his eyes dark. She’d never seen him look so angry.
“I went out for the rest of the morning and I get back to this. She’s sent the most fucking absurd email, saying she won’t authorize a bigger offer.” He scratched his scalp furiously. “She says we can match the first offer but no more. We won’t get the bloody thing now, the agent’s after money. This was our chance to show we’re not some piddling old-fashioned grannies’ club, that we’re in the game! She was going for it this morning.
What did you say to her?”
“I didn’t say anything!” Elle said, trying not to squeak. “I just told her I really liked it, that it was a lot more realistic than most MyHeart books, and I said I enjoyed it, Sam enjoyed it—”
Behind her, Libby coughed loudly.
Rory brandished a piece of paper.
“Asking the younger members of the office for their views,”
he read, in a low, angry voice,
“and trusting to my own instinct as well, I came to the conclusion that, in the words of a junior employee, ‘It is cynically done, with cardboard-thin characters, as if the author had read other books and merely thought she could knock something similar off herself.’ And therefore not something Bluebird should be spending its money on, no matter how forceful the desire to surrender to a seductive albeit—I believe fleeting—zeitgeist.”
He bent down, so his lean face was near hers. “Did you say that?”
Perhaps if Elle had been older or more experienced, she’d have told Rory not to drag her into his feud with his mother. But she wasn’t. “I—I did,” she said quietly. She couldn’t believe this was the same Rory who laughed and joked all day long,
who’d been so sweet a few hours earlier, kissed her on the head. “But I also told her I enjoyed it a lot, despite all that, I promise, Rory—”
“Elle—” he began, and then stopped. He closed his eyes briefly. “For God’s sake, you don’t get it, do you? This is a commercial business.” He clenched his hands into fists. “It’s not your fault,” he said, after a moment. “I’m sorry. It’s just—now someone else will make it a huge bestseller and we’ll be left trying to persuade Smith’s to take the umpteenth Jessie Dukes about sisters in the Blitz.” He leaned forward again. “You’re a snob, Elle, you know that?”
“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 becomes,” 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.