I felt my mouth go dry.
“It, um, was in number of newspapers, actually…” This subject was even more dangerous than lost contract. After all, I did have a copy of the contract somewhere, but my column was no more. “My copy. I have it. But it’s, um—in Newcastle. Davey mailed it by mistake.” With any luck, the computer and my contract would come back soon.
“You have a copy? Of the overseas phone message?”
“What phone message?”
Henry rummaged in his pockets. “That’s why I’ve been looking for you…”
“You have a phone message for me? From the States? Who? When?”
Plant. Let him not be dead.
“It came sometime last week. I believe. Alan Greene took the message. I thought it was from a buyer. Somebody at Ryderbooks, in California. They’ve ordered from us in the past.” He reached in his jacket pocket again.
I wanted to hit him in his pinched little face. “What—what did it say?”
“Oh, nothing much—some chap wanted you to know he’s well. It must be back in my office. Do you want me to fetch it?”
I bit my lip as Henry unearthed the message from his desk. I could hardly read Alan’s misspelled scrawl.
“Mr. Silas Ryder called. Tell Camilla that Plantagenet is out of the woods,” it said. “I’m taking him down to the beach house. All is well.”
Even though I no longer had to worry about Plant’s imminent demise, my anxieties didn’t fade. I made a point of avoiding Henry and Alan and stayed out of the Maidenette Building as much as I could, hoping to avoid discussions about my contract. Henry might have forgotten, but Alan Greene was another story.
It was impossible to work in my room anyway, with the construction noises echoing from the dungeon. Luckily, I’d finished my edits. The Professor seemed pleased with the results, but he didn’t have anything hopeful to say about publication.
I spent much of my time walking around the town, admiring the ancient buildings. All that history in Swynsby’s stones and timbers seemed to reduce my own problems to insignificance. The maligned Richard III had slept in that house. The Separatist “Pilgrim Fathers,” on their way to catch the Mayflower, had hidden from their persecutors in that building. King Canute had staged his feigned attempt to stop the tide right there on the banks of the Trent.
I felt a bit like King Canute, trying to stop the waves of bad luck that had been crashing over me.
The tragic tales from Swynsby’s history mixed with my own bittersweet memories of visiting the monuments with Peter—although those memories were fading into a misty past as well.
Vera and Meggy were beginning to speak of Peter in the past tense. He had become a sort of legend, like Robin Hood himself. I had to face the fact that he really might not come back. And that my book might not be published—or if it was, that nobody would help me promote or market it.
I had to come up with a plan B. I couldn’t ask Plant for help. If he’d been near bankruptcy before I left, he’d be pushed over the edge with hospital bills.
I thought about applying for work in one of the shops around the market square—or maybe setting up a stall of my own. It might be fun to sell bolts of cloth, pots of geraniums, or hot potatoes in their jackets. But I’d need money to start such a thing.
I thought of trying again to find my ex, who still owed me hundreds of thousands. Jonathan must have hung onto some of his money if he was gallivanting around Indonesia or wherever it was. If I could get him to give me something, anything—what I used to spend on one handbag—I could at least get myself home to my own country where I’d have more hope of getting work. Some blogger said Jonathan had been spotted in Bali. The last time I saw my lawyer, he’d talked about hiring a private detective. Maybe he could...
No. I still owed that lawyer serious money.
By the end of the next week, I still had no plan B. Or C or D or Z—and was down to my last five pence. Liam and Davey hadn’t bought any groceries recently, so I had eaten nothing by Friday afternoon but a couple of stale biscuits I’d found in the back of a cupboard. I couldn’t bring myself to walk around the market with all its enticing smells, so I braved the unpleasantness of the office. It didn’t help that Plant still hadn’t written. Silas’s message had quelled my major worries, but I still wanted to hear from Plantagenet himself.
Rosalee clomped in for her editorial conference with the Professor, looking dramatically wan and unkempt, because, she informed everybody, she had cramps.
Vera said Alan was “down the pub” so I had free access to the computer. I signed in and there it was, finally: a message from Plantagenet.
It was annoyingly breezy and uninformative: “I’m being lazy at Silas’s house in Morro Bay. He’s promised to nurse me back to health with loving care. Unfortunately, the love is of the tough variety: cholesterol and alcohol-free, involving hours of forced marching with sand in my shoes. And only short sessions at the computer. He’s afraid I’ll start stressing about the film—yes, it’s still in development. Thanks for your tales of Adventures in Sherwood. It sounds as if you’re having a merry time indeed.”
He went on to complain about hospital food, condescending doctors, and the trials of being without his stolen cell phone. No apology for the long silence. Not a thought to what I’d been going through, worrying about him. I stared at the computer screen in anger for several moments before I realized I couldn’t blame for thinking I was having a merry time.
After all, I’d sent him all those merry messages.
Finally I scrolled down to read more of his newsy chatter. Much of it was about the awful things happening to Felix, the bookstore man. He’d been arrested for killing Lance/Larry. Apparently Lance’s autopsy showed signs of foul play after all. No doctor could confirm he’d ever had a heart condition. But Felix had one. And Lance had apparently died of an overdose of the same heart medicine Felix was taking.
I flashed on Peter telling me about his heart “tablets.” I hoped that Peter, wherever he was, had been taking care of his heart.
If he had one.
And he wasn’t a murderer.
And he was planning to come back.
I scrolled through Plant’s message: “Even if Lance was actually murdered, charging Felix is ridiculous. He had nothing to gain, and they weren’t even involved any more. Silas is doing what he can to help with legal expenses.”
Murder. Lance might really have been murdered. With heart medication. I knew I should be concerned for Felix, but at the moment all I felt was anger at Plant. He’d been out of the hospital for weeks. How could he have left me hanging so long without a word? And how could he write this anticlimactic nonsense?
Vera noticed my distress.
“Bad news from home, dear?” She reached into her drawer and pulled out a bakery box that smelled of lemon and vanilla “Have a lemon tart, love. Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps.”
I accepted the tart gratefully. It would have been delicious under any circumstances, but now it was ambrosia—lemony-creamy with a not-too-sweet, melty crust. But after I’d eaten half of it, I wrapped the rest in a napkin to save for dinner.
I didn’t know when food would come to me again.
Day after day, I perused the classifieds in the
Swynsby Sentinel.
I fantasized that maybe I could lie my way into a job without a work permit. Pretend to be Irish—or Polish, maybe, some Euro-person with a funny accent.
I was considering my qualifications as a washer-upper or perhaps a salad
chef de partie
when Rosalee came out of one of her Friday editorial meetings, her lower lip set in a pout.
“I can’t believe the number of corrections they want me to do.” She modulated her voice to a stagy whisper. “I don’t know why that professor guy can’t do them himself. What does he get paid for, anyway?”
She insisted I go to the Green Man with her immediately. I tried to beg off, citing lack of cash, but Rosalee was unswayed.
“Don’t worry about it. You can pay me back whenever you get to the bank.”
Over beer (mine) and a pink Bacardi Breezer (Rosalee’s) I finally broke down and admitted my financial woes.
Rosalee gave an unbelieving stare. “But you’re like, a celebutante and everything. You were married to that guy on
The Real Story
, weren’t you?”
I decided to tell the whole truth, even though Rosalee was sure to spread the news to people back home. At this point, I didn’t care if the media found out. Snarky remarks on Page Six or some society-watcher’s blog weren’t going to affect me. The celebrisphere I once inhabited was as far from my present reality as the world of Robin Hood. I tried to explain in a few sound bites how I’d managed to sink so low, so fast.
“After he lost his TV job, Jonathan lost pretty much everything we had—mostly to Bernie Madoff, he says—so I never got my divorce settlement. A friend paid my fare over here, and I thought I’d be getting an advance on my book, but I didn’t. I don’t even have the money to get home.”
“That is so unfair. Why didn’t it happen to Paris Hilton or somebody who deserves it? I mean, you’re so nice. Honestly, I expected you to be a snot, but you’re totally not. I never liked that Jonathan Kahn, anyway. Not after I saw the You Tube thing of him with all the hookers…oh my god—gross! I would have divorced him, too, baby girl. Although, you know, for an old guy, he’s pretty buffed.”
I tried to smile as I sipped beer. In her way, Rosalee was comforting
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ve just hit a bad patch.”
“You know what I think?” Rosalee said after pondering this for a moment. “I think you need a job.”
Rosalee’s way of stating the obvious as if it were breathtaking insight tested my ability to maintain a straight face.
“Unfortunately, I have no permit to work in England. I haven’t figured out how to apply for a job without one.”
“You could work for me without a permit. I’d be willing to pay anything not to have to do this stupid editing myself. Well, not anything, but how about twenty an hour? I can give you English money. That’s like seventeen pounds and something, right? Totally under the table. I just got five thousand pounds for my advance, so I might as well share.”
I stared into my beer mug, wondering if human heads could actually explode. Mine felt as if it might.
“An advance?” I said finally. “Five thousand pounds? You’ve been paid?”
“Well, duh,” said Rosalee, slurping her pink drink. “It’s not like I’d have come over here without getting a check first. I had them transfer the money to my bank after they faxed the contract.”
Rosalee was paid an advance. Almost four times what I had been promised. How was it that I couldn’t get paid a few pence for reading the slush pile, but this woman got thousands for an unreadable book? Obviously funds existed at Sherwood, somewhere.
I tried to cover up my anger.
“You got the money—before you arrived? But I thought you were coming over here anyway. That’s what Alan Greene told us.”
Rosalee didn’t answer. Her attention was elsewhere. Her cowboy, again dressed in John Wayne-tribute regalia, had arrived. He swaggered toward the table.
She jumped up and kissed him.
“Colin! You’re early. We didn’t eat yet.”
“You object to me joining you pretty ladies for supper?”
Whatever his sartorial crimes, I had to admit I was happy to see the generous Colin as well. After he ordered fish and chips and drinks all around, Rosalee blurted that I was her new “assistant” who would help her “jump through whatever hoops those picky guys want” to get her book published. She then went on to announce I was returning to Puddlethorpe with them so I could work over the weekend.
Before I could say a thing, Colin was making our weekend plans—promising to take the two of us to Sherwood Forest for the annual Robin Hood Festival.
Since this all sounded infinitely more fun than a weekend of ear-splitting dungeon building, I accepted the invitation with enthusiasm.
But I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the dungeon. A soon as the word escaped my lips, Colin’s interest was piqued.
“Those degenerates are building a dungeon on Threadneedle Street? This is something I must see.”
So after dinner and several beers, we all traipsed back to the factory.
Much was there to greet me at the door, but he growled at Colin and Rosalee, so I had to shut him in the office while I led them to the dungeon. I expected the construction crew to be finished for the day, since it was past seven, but I heard voices coming from the Rat Hole. From the top of the stairwell, I saw the door below standing open. A bright light shone from inside.
Colin rushed toward the stairs and Rosalee pounded after him.
A roar came from the hole as we descended.
“Do you mind? This is private! We’re doing a bloody photo shoot!”
Frozen halfway down the stairs, I saw a remarkable scenario: two young women—I recognized one as the maroon-haired karaoke singer from the pub—chained to the wall: quite naked. Wielding a nasty-looking cat ’o nine tails was a small, knobby-kneed man dressed in a rubber fetish outfit. Capturing the whole thing on camera, looking quite professional with a tripod and studio lights, was Alan Greene.