Elle held her breath. Gray Logan was a giant of the New York literary scene, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, professor at Columbia, beloved by every reviewer, bookseller, and book-buyer in Manhattan. “What about Owen?”
Stuart pressed the ground-floor button and the doors closed. “Owen’s retiring next month, it’s gonna be quiet, his wife’s ill
and he doesn’t want a commotion. So, Elle, I wanted to talk to you about becoming Gray’s editor. You could be the UK liaison point too, even though you’re in the US. You could deal with Bookprint UK more effectively, make sure they don’t screw it up again. We can’t lose Gray Logan. What do you think?”
“I’ve never edited anyone like him before,” Elle said. “He’s… well, he’s literary, isn’t he?” They were on the twenty-fourth floor. That initial, first whoosh of the elevator made Elle’s heart jolt, it always did. She swallowed. “It’s just—my friend Libby looks after him in the UK.”
“OK, so it’s strange for you,” Stuart said. “I’m sorry, this is probably inappropriate when you’re about to catch a plane. Think about it. We’ll discuss it when you’re back.”
“It’s fine,” said Elle. “I’ll do it.”
“You sure you don’t mind? Your friend—it wouldn’t be awkward?”
The lift doors opened. Libby’s face, the daisies in her hair, receded into the background, as the glass lobby appeared before them, yellow cabs on Broadway flashing past them in the distance. “I’m partly going back to see her,” Elle said, after only a faint pause. She gritted her teeth. “You know, she won’t mind.”
“HE THAT IS
in a towne in May loseth his spring.” Elle remembered this long-forgotten George Herbert quote from her A levels as she negotiated the narrow lanes in her Polo hire car. She had had lunch off Dover Street with Heather Dougall, writer of cozy crime mysteries about an old lady and her cat (they couldn’t give them away in the UK, but they sold like hotcakes in the States) and listened to her litany of complaints about Bookprint UK. After lunch, she walked through Mayfair up Old Bond Street towards Selfridges, looking at the expensive bags, the jewelry, the rich ladies and gentlemen in their smart cars—this was the London American people thought existed, the London of
Mary Poppins
and
Upstairs Downstairs
. She rather liked it, it was so far removed from her own experience. For a few more moments, she could enjoy being a tourist, rather than engaging with it all.
As she got into the car and switched the radio onto Capital, and as the sun shone through the heavy white clouds, she allowed herself to fall in love with London again, just a bit. She headed out down the Fulham Road, glancing at the floppyhaired posh boys ambling along the wide pavements, the pretty blond girls with their huge handbags hanging painfully off their tiny wrists. A Maroon 5 song finished playing, and then “Toxic” came on… Elle smiled, this wasn’t too bad. It was going to be OK.
Her plan was to go back to Mum’s later this evening, after the rehearsal dinner at the hotel. The rehearsal dinner was a stupid American tradition, she didn’t understand why they all had to gather for a dinner the night before the wedding when they’d be doing the very same thing some eighteen hours later. This was England, the bride and groom were English, it wasn’t
a wedding in Ohio, where everyone had come from thousands of miles to be there.
She shook these thoughts out of her head, but she couldn’t help feeling apprehensive as she sped out of London. She’d come back to bury something, to exact her own revenge by having a good life. To lay to rest the ghost of her tender years.
As she came off the main road and into the proper countryside, foaming with cow parsley and early honeysuckle, wood pigeons cooing loudly in the trees, hedgerows high with fresh new greenery, Elle felt nostalgic in a way only an English spring can make you. She couldn’t help thinking about all the books that made her think like that,
I Capture the Castle, The Forsyte Saga,
even
The Wind in the Willows
. She had taken the train to Marlow once with her mother, and walked along the wide Thames peering into the rushes and riverbanks. There weren’t any toads or otters in Manhattan. She hardly had time to read anything that wasn’t a manuscript, anyway.
Sanditon Hall was badly signposted, a track off a small road, and Elle missed it and had to go back, so it was close to eight when she arrived. As she drove down the long graveled lane, slightly dizzy with fatigue, she scanned the horizon for the hotel. She could see the horse chestnuts in bloom, the black iron guards around the trees in the park, rusty with age. Her heart was thumping in her chest.
“Come on,” she said out loud, but in a quiet voice. “You’re here now. Why are you nervous? It’s all in the past. It’s not a big deal.”
Elle got out of the car, pulled her hair out of her cardigan and shook it so it fell around her face. She reached into her bag to put some lip gloss on, and then she stopped. Why did it matter, why did any of it matter? She’d got this far without turning back and running away, she could go a bit further, and
without lip gloss too. Elle walked up the steps of the Georgian house, the stone warm in the sunshine, and into the circular black-and-white vestibule, feeling a bit as though it was her first day at work again. “I’m here for the wedding dinner?” she told the helpful man on reception.
“Of course,” he said, signaling right with his hand. “The Friends and Family Dinner is taking place in the Orangery, madam. If you’d like to follow me…”
He took her bag and walked her to the end of a corridor, with a sign at the end.
Y
ATES
/ S
ASSOON
W
EDDING
F
AMILY AND
F
RIENDS
D
INNER
“Are you family or friend?” the polite receptionist asked, making small talk. The murmur of conversation came from inside.
“I’m—” said Elle. She had to think about it. “Friend?”
“Well, they’re all in there,” he said. “If you need anything else?”
“Thanks.” Elle watched him walk away, and then pushed the door open. Her skin felt as if it were burning, there was a rushing sound in her ears, this was unreal, yet she was doing it, there was a dull damp mark on the gray paint of the door where her perspiring hand had pushed it open.
“Oh, my God, you’re here!” A girl detached herself from the crowd nearest the door and rushed over to Elle, in a cloud of voluminous chiffon. “Elle, I can’t believe you made it.”
“Hi, Libby,” Elle said, hugging her friend.
“You’re really here, I’m so glad you came.” Libby looked intently into her eyes, and grabbed her wrists. “Thank you. Thanks. It means a lot. Darling, look. Elle’s back.”
A man on the other side of the room turned round. “Elle,” he said.
“Hi, Rory,” Elle replied.
He came forward, then stopped, a couple of feet between them. “Elle, sweetheart. Thank you for coming.”
Libby was watching her, a little too intently, and Elle wished she’d cut her some slack. She hoped with all her might she wasn’t blushing. She had to act cool. Not just for her, for them.
“It’s lovely to be here,” she said.
Libby held Rory’s hands in hers, over her billowing blue chiffon dress. Elle stared at it in surprise. She felt bad, but it was the truth: Libby had put on weight, and the best way to hide it wasn’t beneath layers of flowing material. Elle chided herself for being horrible, and then stopped.
Come on,
she heard a voice in her head saying, one she didn’t really hear that much these days.
You’re at Rory and Libby’s wedding. You’re allowed to be horrible about them, just a bit.
YES, SHE WAS
here. And it was normal, she was behaving normally, they were talking. The bowels of hell had not opened up and sucked Rory and Libby into the earth’s molten core. Elle had dreaded this day for months, ever since she’d heard about the engagement. She’d been amazed they’d invited her: but then she reasoned, why not? She was one of Libby’s oldest publishing friends, and really, who actually knew about her and Rory? It might as well never have happened.
Elle had known they were together, of course, known for over a year now. She didn’t know how it had happened, but then it was none of her business, and she didn’t really want to know. She’d even had a drink with the two of them, when they’d come on a joint trip to New York the previous October. They’d had Manhattans at the Campbell Apartment, and Libby had oohed and aahed over Elle like a doll: “You’re so
successful
!” “Your hair’s so pretty, I love your
dress
!” “You must be working so
hard
!” as if this was compensation for stealing Rory. She hadn’t stolen him, of course, but Elle felt that she was acting as if she had.
They were the perfect publishing couple: it made sense, when you saw them together. Their talk was all gossip: who was sleeping with whom; why X author had left Y editor or agent for Z; who’d paid millions of pounds for some book that had tanked; what A had said to B at C’s launch. They’d clearly forgotten they’d once betrayed each other’s relationships—perhaps it canceled something out, if Rory had blabbed to his boss about Libby’s affair and Libby had given a story to
Private Eye
about Rory’s? Elle had forgotten what it was like, over there, and she didn’t miss it. She found it tiresome, as she did the fact that Rory left them twice, once to go to the bathroom and once to take a phone call about a book he was trying to
buy, whereas Libby didn’t budge, as if she couldn’t risk leaving the two of them on their own.
Yes, that was tiresome, as was the way Libby spoke of their relationship as if it were a living entity, a mascot: “I have to say,” she said with a girlish giggle—
Libby,
who despised cheesy romance, who’d told Elle Rory was a fool and that he was using her!—“a lot of people in the publishing community are really pleased about our relationship, it’s been lovely to hear.” Most of all, though, Elle found Rory’s blank eyes and quiet manner tiresome, as if he didn’t want to unleash the full force of his devastating personality on her in case she burst into tears, ripped off her clothes, and shouted, “Take me now! I still love you, Rory!”
In the wood-paneled, reassuringly old-school New York environment of the bar, with Grand Central Station below with its practiced rush of humanity, she’d felt safe, secure in the knowledge that she was on her patch. In fact, she’d felt more alive than ever, like the heroines in the New York books she loved so much. She was so fizzing with
something
that she’d caught a cab back to Perry Street, knocked on Marc’s door, and when he opened it, handed him a beer and said, “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” he’d said, with his slow, evil smile, and she’d not left until the following morning. As she’d crossed the old parquet flooring in her bare feet and shirt back to her apartment, the morning autumn sun shining in on the honey-colored wood, she’d thought, with a smile, yes. This is the life I’m supposed to be leading. Leave them to their tedious publishing gossip, their endless connections, their wine-soaked evenings, their snobbishness and small-mindedness.
But now it was different, she wasn’t on her own patch anymore. She was at Sanditon Hall, where they should have had Rhodes’s wedding, back in the day when Libby loathed
weddings and was sleeping with Bill. She’d reconsidered a few things in the intervening years, that was for sure.
“Well, I am so glad you came,” Libby said. “It means such a lot. I can’t believe you came all that way!”
“Oh—” Elle began, then she stopped.
I have to check on my mother and I needed an excuse. That’s how it works with her and me. So this is perfect!
“I wanted to be here,” she said, trying to look sincere.
“You look amazing. Amazing! Doesn’t she, Rory?”
“You look like you’re about to take over the world, Elle,” Rory said. “Like a young Tina Brown. Or an old Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Oh, shut up, Rory,” Libby said, pushing him, and Elle heard the Lancashire in her voice for the first time. “Go and see if your mother’s here yet. There’ll be loads of people you know, Elle,” she said, turning back. “Loads from publishing. We told the editor of the
Bookseller
we should send him a photo of the wedding! I’m joking, but it’d be funny, wouldn’t it? Kind of a
Who’s Who
of the Book Trade in 2004?”
Oh, God.
“Sure,” Elle said, looking around her to see who she knew, with a mixture of shyness and dread.
But when Libby suddenly stood back and cupped her hand over her stomach, Elle realized the reason for the weight gain, the voluminous chiffon, the speed of the wedding.
“You’re pregnant?” she said, hoping she wasn’t wrong, that a hoary old sitcomesque scenario wasn’t about to be played out.
“Yes,” Libby said simply. “Nearly six months.”
“Oh, Libs,” Elle said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”