Authors: Katie Fforde
The receptionist was very kind. ‘I’m terribly sorry but you’re at the wrong place. We’re the head office but Emmanuel and Green are in Park Street.’
Sian would have liked time to cry. She’d set off early, her mother’s Oyster card in one pocket and her father’s
A-Z
in the other and all should have been well. Sadly the tube was chaotic because of an electrical fault on one of the lines and she wasn’t sure enough of the buses to try one of them. She was already running late. At least she assumed so – she didn’t actually know what time the meeting was.
‘What’s the quickest way to get there?’
‘Bicycle, frankly, but otherwise, take a cab. I’ll ring them to say you’re on your way if you like. What’s your name and who were you going to see?’
‘I don’t know! I mean, I do know what my name is, obviously, but I don’t know who I’m going to see and they won’t have heard of me.’
The receptionist regarded her kindly, possibly relieved that she wasn’t going to have to deal with a madwoman for very much longer. On the other hand she was a bit curious. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘I’ll think of something when I get there. Thank you!’ Sian called as she ran out of the door.
In the taxi she tried to calm down and stop worrying about the meter, which seemed to be going up alarmingly quickly. Fortunately her father had thrust some notes into her hand and now she came to examine them, she realised she had sixty pounds extra. At least that was all right. And as they got nearer she realised it was in a part of London she knew a bit from having had a job there once, which reassured her a little.
At last, having gone through horrendous traffic, the cabby pulled up. ‘Here you are, love.’
She leapt out, said, ‘Keep the change,’ and ran up the steps to the entrance.
It was a much smaller building than the previous one had been and Sian felt this was a good thing. There wouldn’t be quite so many meetings; she had a better chance of tracking down the right one.
Moments later she was at the door and then realised she had to speak into a microphone, another tiny nail in the coffin of her self-confidence. She hated these at the best of times; she could never make them work and as she wasn’t on any list, even if they heard her properly they might not let her in. With a supreme effort of will she made herself sound calm and professional.
‘I’m here with Angus Berresford and I’m a little bit late?’ The raised inflection at the end might help, she thought.
The door clicked, she pushed and it swung open. ‘Hello!’ She was rather hoping to find Gus waiting in the foyer. ‘I’m even later than I thought. Has the meeting started?’
The woman, wearing a telephone headset, looked rather startled. ‘Er, yes it has,’ she said.
Relief that she didn’t say ‘which meeting?’ caused Sian to smile. ‘If you could just point me in the right direction?’
What she really wanted was to be taken by the hand and led to the right room, but the telephone started ringing just then. The receptionist waved a hand. ‘Second floor, third on your right. Er, the lift’s that way.’ The girl pointed as Sian set off in the wrong direction.
The lift was slow and Sian had time to count her blessings. She hadn’t left her sketchbook in the cab, it wasn’t raining and she didn’t need to go to the loo. Lots of blessings really. Another blessing would be if they had water in the meeting. Currently all the moisture that should have been making her mouth work seemed to be running down her spine leaving her mouth incredibly dry. The scarf she’d added to hide the paint stain on her shirt was adding to the stress by making her far too hot.
She fell out of the lift into a corridor set with many doors. What was it the receptionist had said? Third on her right? Counting the door in front of her as number one, she counted two more doors, knocked boldly and went in. It was the Gents. Fortunately no one was in it. Why wasn’t it marked? Indignant, she came out again and saw that it was marked, she just hadn’t noticed the symbol. She then spotted another symbol on a door that indicated the Ladies. Should she take time to sort herself out a bit? She was already late, would a few more moments make a difference? She was through the door before she could answer her question.
The Ladies did have someone in it. A young woman was washing her hands. ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Sian. ‘I’m late for a meeting and I can’t find it. I don’t suppose you’d know where it is?’
The woman went to the towel and pulled down a section and went about the drying process. Then she added hand cream from the dispenser. For Sian time seemed to have stood still but she realised that it must only have been a few seconds.
‘Who’s it with? Your meeting?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sian gave a probably insane-looking smile. ‘It’s with Angus Berresford. Any ideas?’
‘Oh yes. They’re in the committee room at the end. I’ll show you.’
‘The receptionist said third on the right.’
‘That’s Edward’s office but what with the agent and the art department and head of publicity, they thought it would be too small. It’s in there.’ She paused. ‘Would you like me to announce you?’
Sian considered. ‘Yes please. I’m Sian Bishop. The illustrator,’ she said with more confidence than she felt.
The young woman knocked and went in. ‘This is Sian Bishop, the illustrator,’ she said, and abandoned her.
‘Sorry I’m late!’ said Sian brightly. ‘You just carry on. I’ll pick it up.’
Everyone in the room was staring at her, most wondering who on earth she was and all wondering what the hell she was doing there. She hardly dared look at Gus as she crept round the table. Fortunately there was a vacant chair, and she sat down.
Gus was staring – glaring possibly – from across the table. She couldn’t meet his eye, not until she’d got her breath back and put on the façade of being a normal person, perfectly entitled to be where she was. It would take some doing.
If she’d hoped she could just disappear into the background she was to be disappointed. The meeting was called to a halt.
‘Excuse me?’ said a youngish man in a crushed linen suit. ‘Who is this? Who are you?’ He smiled at Sian, obviously trying not to be rude, but needing to know.
‘This is Sian Bishop,’ said Gus firmly. ‘She’s my illustrator.’
‘Don’t mind me,’ said Sian, heartened by the fact that Gus hadn’t denied he even knew her. ‘I’ll just make a few notes. You carry on.’
There was some shifting and shuffling and then the young man said, ‘As I was saying, what this book needs is total passion and commitment.’ He looked anxiously at the woman sitting at the head of the table.
The words fell into the room like stones when they should have been feathers, dancing around to be picked up and tossed playfully about.
Gus was looking down the table in front of him. The man in the linen suit was drawing a naked lady on a pad, and everyone else was looking embarrassed and disappointed. The woman at the end looked tired.
Sian had to do something.
‘Oh, I’ve got that!’ she said, launching straight in. She’d made a complete fool of herself simply by arriving. With her dignity gone she might as well carry on without it. ‘Absolutely. In spades! I know this book is going to be bloody brilliant! Because Gus – Angus even’ – she allowed the quickest smile ever smiled to shoot in his direction – ‘is fabulous. A fabulous writer, really knows his stuff and is a brilliant communicator.’
‘Those are my lines,’ said another man in a striped shirt and pin-striped suit. ‘I’m his agent.’ But he didn’t sound aggrieved, rather the reverse.
‘But I’ve had the privilege of seeing him in action,’ went on Sian, seeing no one was willing to take the ball from her. ‘Not the exploring part, obviously, you sort of have to be on your own to do that, but the communication! I’ve seen him hold the attention of a lot of small children and adults with wine in their hands. Not the most receptive audience, I’m sure you’ll agree. But he held them in the palm of his hand! If you’ll forgive the cliché,’ she added, feeling she’d gone way over the top.
‘And the writing’s excellent,’ put in the agent. ‘We’ve all agreed that. We just needed—’
‘A bit of extra zing,’ said a young woman in a tight white shirt showing a lot of cleavage. ‘Which Sian seems to have produced!’
Sian smiled broadly at her, deciding that if this woman ever needed a kidney she’d volunteer.
‘Um,’ one of the other men, with curly hair and no tie, said, ‘so would you like to show us what you’ve got?’
Sian produced her sketchbook. ‘Of course I haven’t got much here. Gus and I’ – her glance was accompanied by a blush she hoped no one would notice – ‘haven’t had much chance to work together just recently, but I love him –I mean, the project, the concept of Gus as the new adventurer.’
She hunted for a handkerchief so she wouldn’t have to watch them looking at her drawings.
‘Yes,’ said Gus, looking at her now. ‘Sometimes you have to take a risk with someone, and not always take the safe option, even if that seems the best idea at first glance.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Sian, holding Gus’s eye and ignoring the rest of the room, ‘it may seem scary but it’s less of a risk in the long run. The boring option is more dangerous.’
Someone, Sian thought it might have been Gus’s agent, cleared his throat. Another man, who hadn’t spoken before and wore a suit, sat forward.
‘Well, it seems to me we’ve got a very committed author, a fantastic project and an illustrator who is unusually tied in with the whole premise.’ He pulled Sian’s sketchbook towards him and flicked through the pages. ‘Oh, I like this!’
It was one of Rory, running, his arms flung back, a stick in one hand.
‘Oh,’ said Gus after a minute, having looked at it. ‘That’s Rory.’
He and Sian looked intently at each other. Sian swallowed, hoping she wasn’t going to sneeze or cry or show emotion in some other noisy, messy way.
‘Is this your son, Gus? Are you and Sian …?’ said a woman who hadn’t spoken before. She was wearing an enviable little suit the colour of ripe tomatoes and had curly black hair and perfect make-up. ‘Interesting.’
Gus’s agent frowned. ‘I didn’t know you had a partner, Gus.’
‘Currently it’s a business relationship,’ said Sian, breaking Gus’s gaze.
‘But that may change?’ the woman in the red suit persisted.
‘Obviously they don’t want to talk about their private life in a meeting like this,’ said Gus’s agent.
‘But it would add something …’ said the woman, a little plaintively.
Sian was slightly bewildered by the turn the conversation had taken. It seemed a little unorthodox to be discussing an author’s love life or lack of it in a meeting but if it helped to clinch the deal did it matter? The whole meeting had taken a bizarre turn the moment she’d entered the room. Looking around at everyone’s faces, including Gus’s, she realised her entrance seemed to have cast a spell on them all – a good spell too. There were smiles all round.
A man in the braces cleared his throat. ‘Well, couple or not, I think I can confidently say we’ll be able to make you some sort of offer very soon. We’ll have to do the numbers, see what publicity we’d be able to drum up –supermarket deals, things like that – but I’m very excited about this. Really, very excited.’ He beamed at everyone and then stood up to indicate the meeting was over.
*
Gus’s agent kissed Sian on both cheeks. ‘Well, you brought the rabbit out of the hat at the perfect moment! Things had gone a bit flat after everyone’s initial enthusiasm. You can tell when the energy has gone out of a meeting.’
Gus said, ‘Sian, this is Rollo Cunningham, my agent. The best there is, so he tells me. Rollo, this is Sian my …’ well, she’s my …’
‘Illustrator will do for now,’ said Sian with a smile.
‘But we go back a long way,’ said Gus.
Sian looked at her feet. She’d done her best to show Gus that she loved him by going to the meeting and putting aside all her inhibitions to help his project, but whilst he’d run with what she’d been trying to say, she still didn’t really know how he felt about her. Fiona may have just thought Gus loved her because she wanted it to be true. She needed to hear it from him.
Gus looked at Sian. ‘We need to talk.’
‘We absolutely do,’ said Rollo. ‘We need to thrash out the details and make sure we’re all on the same page. Now I know a nice little place just round the corner. It’s early but that means it’ll be quiet.’
‘I should go back to my parents—’ Sian began.
‘Unless they’re in dire need of their next dose of medication I insist you come to lunch!’ said Rollo. ‘You’re going to be a vital part of this project. Particularly now the publishers seem to have fallen in love with you.’
‘Do you mind?’ asked Gus. He seemed anxious that she should be happy with the plan.
‘No, it’s fine.’ She wanted to reassure him now. ‘My parents are both in good form,’ she said to Rollo. ‘I’d be very happy to come to lunch with you.’
Sian followed them down the road. They couldn’t walk three abreast and she felt it was far more important that Gus and Rollo should be able to talk than it was for her to have her arm held.
They turned into a narrow door, Gus waiting for her so she could go ahead of him. It was dark and cave-like, but as her eyes got used to the gloom she saw there weren’t a great many tables but they were spread with white tablecloths and sparkling glasses. Rollo was talking to the maître d’, obviously an old friend, who ushered them to a table.
‘Old-fashioned English food here,’ he said. ‘Brilliant for nursery puddings with custard.’
‘Perfect place to take Richard then,’ said Gus, looking meaningfully at Sian.
‘It would be.’ Sian allowed Rollo to pull out a chair. She felt Richard deserved a bit more explanation than she could reasonably give here. A pang of guilt attacked her yet again; she’d made him so miserable. She still couldn’t quite believe that Gus actually loved her back and hadn’t just created the flat so Rory wouldn’t be homeless or have to live on a sink estate.
‘And excellent chips!’ Rollo went on. ‘Whatever else we have, we must have chips. And fizz.’ He looked round and a waiter immediately came forward. ‘We need to celebrate!’