“Muddle through?”
“It’ll be fine,” Elle said firmly. “Don’t worry.”
Celine nodded curtly and moved on, and Elle breathed in and leaned against the wall, looking around her. The conference room was in a faceless international hotel in Mayfair. Cream draped blinds hung at each window, blocking out the view of London; you could be in Singapore, Sydney, Berlin, anywhere. The walls were covered in oat-colored fabric, the ceilings were low, the furnishings were minimal. Knots of people stood around the huge room, drinking coffee, murmuring. You could tell the Brits from the Americans straight off: they were slightly larger, they were wearing colors, their hair wasn’t as good. Feeling guilty for thinking this, Elle waved to Caryn and Stuart, who were deep in conversation in the corner of the room.
A disembodied voice said, “If you’d like to go in, please, and find your seats. We’ll start soon, thanks.”
Elle picked up her bag, holding her BlackBerry in one hand, and strode towards the conference hall. She looked at her watch. She hoped they wouldn’t start late. She’d agreed to meet Felicity for lunch, for some reason, and she wanted to go to Waterstones and Smith’s beforehand, check out some bookshops.
“Hi, Elle!” Annabel Hamilton was bouncing up at her side. Her hair was frizzy, and she had some kind of stain on her cardigan. “How are you? It’s been so long!” she said. She kissed Elle on the cheek, and Elle reared back in surprise at the unexpected physical contact. “Do you want to sit with me? Us Brits should stick together, eh?”
“We have assigned seating,” Elle said. “But I hope to see you later, Annabel.”
As Annabel strode ahead of her, huffily, Elle caught herself, as she did occasionally, and laughed. “You’re being a complete tool,” she whispered to herself as she went into the room. “Get over yourself.” She took her seat, and looked at her watch. 9:30. One hour to go. Two girls walking past looked at her and then down at their feet, picking up the pace. “Oh, my God, Tors—that’s Eleanor Bee. The one from New York,” the first one said, in a perfect middle-class publishing girl’s accent, the kind Elle used to be surrounded by and which she hardly ever heard anymore. Elle pretended to be studying her BlackBerry. “She used to be Rory’s secretary.”
“Oh, my God, didn’t she—” the second one began, before lowering her voice and scurrying on. Elle strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear, which was probably a good thing, though she wanted to grab them and say, “Solidarity, young women!,” like an ancient suffragette. She smiled, for the first time since she’d got to the conference.
“Nice to see you,” Rory whispered, an hour later, as he joined Elle on stage. He kissed her on the cheek. “Should I bow and call you madam?”
“No, sir,” Elle said, kissing him back. “How are you? How’s Libby?”
Rory drew breath. “She’s good, really good, she loves Tunbridge Wells, it’s great, we have some great friends, and
number two on the way, very exciting, it’s another girl, I was hoping for a boy so we could complete the double act and call him Rhett, but hey, that’s great.” He rocked on his feet, eyes crinkling at the corners, the old expression she knew so, so well. “Yep, it’s great.” He turned to Tom. “Our daughter’s called Scarlett, you see.”
“Yes.” Tom nodded politely. “Hi, Elle,” he said. He kissed her and sat down. The room was filling up, delegates filing back into their seats after a coffee break and looking up expectantly at the platform.
“So,” said Rory, rubbing his hands. “We should have talked about this before, I suppose, but that’s the way of these things! Any pointers, anything you think we should focus on?”
She remembered his hail-fellow-well-met, I’m-a-nice-chap, jovial-jester act. You had to hand it to him: Rory was a survivor, against all the odds. In the eight years since Bluebird had been sold he’d seen off better men and women, and somehow hung on to his job, a mixture of nepotism, cunning, and charm. He was just clever enough.
“Pointers? No, nothing,” said Tom. “Just that—e-books are rubbish and you should all carry on buying proper books from nice independent bookshops?”
Elle sat down next to him, with Rory on her right. The platform was insanely small. She wished she could space herself out instead of being trapped between the two of them.
“You’ve got four shops now,” said Rory. “You’re practically a chain, Tom. A corporate sellout.”
Tom ignored him.
“Four?” Elle said. “That’s brilliant.”
He smiled at her, looking pleased. “Thanks. Yes, the original one in Richmond, one in Marylebone, Kensington, and Hampstead. I’m fighting to bring books to the liberal elite. The struggle goes on.”
“Where’s the next one?” Elle asked. “Don’t tell me.” She held up a finger, as if testing it in the wind, for divination. “Bath.”
He laughed. “Spot-on. You know your onions.”
“And shallots.” Elle felt mildly hysterical.
“And scallions. Isn’t that something in New York?” Tom said. “Something onion-based?”
“Anyway.” Rory was drumming his fingers, as Celine emerged from the side room. “What about e-books?”
“I don’t know, let’s make something up.” Elle felt reckless. This was the first meeting for which she hadn’t minutely prepared for in she didn’t know how long. “We know what we’re talking about, Tom, even if you think publishers are evil and booksellers are the oppressed masses.”
“Oh, be quiet,” said Tom cheerfully. “You ghastly corporate sellout.”
She shrugged, and held her hand out, as if to pat him on the shoulder.
“You’re
engaged
?” Rory said, looking at the diamond on her finger.
“Oh.” Elle looked down, as if to verify this. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“To Gray Logan?” Rory shook his head. “Wow, I heard you were seeing him, but—that’s great, Elle! Massive fan of his. We must have you both down to Kent for lunch!”
“Oh,” said Elle. “Yes, that—we really must.”
“Congratulations,” said Tom. He looked up at her. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks,” she said. She could feel her skin flushing red. “It’s not a big deal.”
He turned to her, and she wished she’d never said anything. “Why?”
“Oh—” Elle waved her hand, suddenly conscious of her ring like never before. It was so
big
. Like a bauble. She had bought rings like this from Hamleys with her Christmas pocket money.
5p a time, they’d cost her, big glass diamonds, gold with green emeralds. The thin gold or silver paint always wore off, leaving a greenish-black mark on her finger. “It’s just—I didn’t think I’d be the sort of person who got married, that’s all.”
“What, you don’t want a Jane Austen–themed wedding with six bridesmaids in massive hats?” Tom said. “I’m surprised. I thought that was your kind of thing.” Elle glared at him, but Rory was checking his BlackBerry, his chin sunk into his chest, and didn’t hear them. “That was the last time I saw you.”
There was a pause.
“Er—” said Elle. “Yes.”
He leaned towards her. “Elle, I’m so sorry about your—” he began, but from the side, Rory suddenly said, “Hey, Tom, how’s Dora? Mum was asking.”
“She’s very well,” Tom said. His knee was against hers; next to her, the arm of Rory’s battered navy suit was pressing into her arm. “She’s very into
Hannah Montana,
I’m sorry to say.”
“Who’s Dora?” Elle asked, feeling stupid.
“My daughter,” Tom said. “I called her Dora too. I shouldn’t have done it. Very confusing.”
“How old is she now?”
“Six—” Tom said, and then he leaned forward. “Elle—”
Next to them, Celine tapped the microphone. “Good morning,” she said, covering it and turning to them. “We are starting in a moment. Please let’s have a good, robust discussion. No holds barred. Any questions?”
Each of them shook their heads, mutely. “Good morning again,” said Celine to the rest of the room. “Let me introduce the three speakers for our debate on e-books. Rory you will know, as he works here and has responsibility for them in the BBE division at Bookprint UK.” She shot him a disdainful look.
I love Celine,
Elle found herself thinking, staring at her perfectly
poised head. “Tom Scott is owner of the UK’s fastest growing independent book chain, facing many challenges, including digital publishing. And Eleanor Bee is the publisher of Jane Street, one of Bookprint US’s most successful imprints. She started out in the UK and moved to the US seven years ago. She took over Jane Street last year and has added five million dollars to their turnover already.”
Yeah,
Elle thought, scanning the room for someone to be impressed by this. But they were all listening politely, and she realized the majority of them didn’t know or care in the least that she’d once been a scruffy talentless mess in too-short skirts with a tendency to burst into tears and lose prawn sandwiches in filing cabinets. It was her story, not theirs.
There was a shout from the back, and Celine looked up. Someone from the IT team whispered something to her from the bottom of the stage. “We have a slight problem with the sound, so it’ll be another minute,” she said coolly.
The panel sat back again, and Rory once more began tapping away at his BlackBerry.
Tom cleared his throat. She gave him a tight, polite smile.
“I wanted to say I was sorry about your mum,” Tom said quietly. “It must have been very hard.”
Elle nodded firmly. “It was. Thanks for your lovely letter. I’m sorry I didn’t reply.”
He shook his head. “Of course.” He looked almost angry, his jaw rigid, the way he always did when he was upset about something. She remembered that, too. “You should have called me. I wish I could have helped.”
“Helped?” Elle said, blinking as the audience receded. How could he have helped, how could anyone, anyone but her have helped? She bit her lip.
I shouldn’t have spent the night with you,
she wanted to say.
If I’d come home she wouldn’t have died. I’d have gone looking for
her, I’d have found her, it would’ve been OK. But I didn’t, I was with you, instead of with her, and that’s why.
Tom didn’t try to coax anything out of her, in the way some of her other friends had done, convinced that if they didn’t personally witness her grief through tears, then she wasn’t properly grieving. He just nodded. “It’s stupid of me to say it. But I wanted you to know. She was lovely, I’m glad I met her. I am… really sorry.”
“Right, then,” Celine said, speaking into the microphone. “Back on track. As you know, digital is the biggest challenge facing us…”
Elle had perfected an excellent “focused and interested” face, and she assumed this while her mind drifted back to the days after she’d found her mother; she didn’t know why, perhaps because she was seeing her brother tonight, perhaps because she so rarely allowed herself to mention it. She looked over at Tom; people didn’t bring up her mother with her anymore. She’d made it clear, soon after she got back to New York, that she wasn’t going to talk about it.
She’d destroyed the note that said
Sorry Ellie
. It wouldn’t have mattered whether she had or not: it was burned into her brain forever. Often, afterwards, she thought she saw it, the two words jostling in the corner of her eye, in a meeting, on a screen while they were watching TV, while she was talking to Gray’s friends over supper.
Everything else had been sorted out. Rhodes had sold the house and tied up the last of the loose ends, and she’d never been back to the village, not once, and she never would. Everything about her life now was designed to be as far removed from memories of Mandana as it could be. She didn’t keep her mother’s things around. Tried not to have anything obvious that reminded her too much of her. She didn’t come back to England in the spring, either.
Just keep on going, don’t stop, because then it falls apart. She’d learned that was the best way.
“. . . Yep, we do have a lot of ground to catch up,” Rory was saying. “But I just feel… I just think if… good books will sell, and that’s what we really have to focus on. Like there’s this guy we’re publishing at the moment, Paris Donaldson. Amazing guy. Been publishing him for years, never broken through, sells about—”
Elle looked around, and realized that she was in the middle of the panel discussion, which was now apparently in full swing. She had once, after a very bad night when the image wouldn’t go away, driven to JFK to pick Gray up, and when she got there didn’t remember getting in the car or any of the rest of the journey. The effect was just the same. She blinked; she wished she wasn’t so tired.
“Paris Donaldson is not the issue, if you’ll forgive me,” Tom was saying. “The issue is that authors with real talent get overlooked in favor of commerce, and—”
“That’s rubbish,” Elle said wearily. “I get so sick of this discussion. The same thing was happening twenty, a hundred years ago. Look. I read about fifteen manuscripts a week, and those are the ones people think it’s worth my while to read, and they’re nearly always terrible. The trouble is too many people think they can write, and the truth is they can’t, they shouldn’t bother. If someone’s good, they’ll rise to the top. It may take a while but it’ll happen.”