Tell Him About It (3 page)

Adam nodded, shrugged and replied that all was fine in regards to what Sara had said. He wore a distracted, dislocated, look on his face while she spoke however. He seemed to only wake from his trance when the barmaid came over to collect his empty glass and serve him another drink. When Sara finished running through her notes she asked if Adam had any questions.

“Not really. Let’s just take things one day at a time. I should apologise beforehand Sara that I may be dragging you into a media circus, with my ex-wife as the ringmaster and me walking the tightrope, or rather being a clown. Journalists may well approach you with a token interest in the book and then ask about Victoria. I don’t really want to comment and put my private life, or hers, in the spotlight. The press are not good at taking no for an answer, but they’re going to have to learn to do so in this instance. Life has had its pound of flesh out of me. There’s nothing left for the tabloids.”

Adam spoke in a calm, reasonable way but there was a wounded look on his face. For a moment or two she felt sorry for him – but then remembered his wife’s side of the story, his drinking and womanising – which she had witnessed evidence of within ten minutes of meeting him. After a short pause however, Adam Cooper snapped out of whatever mood he was in.

“Yet thanks to the tabloids and various websites you may know everything you need to know about me. But tell me more about yourself Sara,” he remarked, draining the remainder of his pint and then turning to catch the eye of the smiling barmaid again. It struck Sara that he hadn’t known the woman for more than thirty minutes and they acted like they were old friends.

“What would you like to know?” she replied, a little taken aback due to the fact that most authors were far fonder of talking about themselves.

“Some say that we are what we read, so tell me about a couple of books you’ve read recently, although feel free to leave out the ones you’ve been obliged to read for your work, including mine.”

She often spoke to Rosie about the books she read (in regards to people in work they usually only discussed the titles the publishing house released; it never ceased to surprise Sara too just how little some people read, whilst supposedly trying to carve out a career in publishing). And Simon didn’t even pretend to read, or be interested in what Sara was reading, nowadays.

“Just for fun I’ve been re-reading Jilly Cooper’s early, short romance novels. Before she started writing bonkbusters. Her first books are more about love, than sex. The two are not one and the same.”

“No. Though it’s much nicer when they share the same bed.”

Sara didn’t quite know whether to laugh or blush, so she did both. They continued to chat about books, with the conversation spiralling off into different directions. Part of her wanted to act professionally or even coldly towards the author. Before she met him she had predicted that he would be self-obsessed, macho and come on to her – like a number of other soldiers or foreign correspondents turned novelists she had encountered. But he seemed to be healthily self-deprecating, polite and normal (which made him special in a sense, in terms of novelists).

“And so have you read anything else? You must also tell me if I’m eating too much into your time.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sara replied, thinking how she was doing what she had been asked to. Namely look after her author. Besides, she was starting to enjoy herself. “While I was at university I studied Romantic poetry, so I’ve just read the newly published biography of Byron. I’ve got quite eclectic tastes. Are you familiar with Byron?” Sara asked, expecting the negative reply that she always received. But Adam Cooper, she was learning, was different.

“
In secret we met

In silence I grieve -

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

And if I should meet thee

After these long years,

How should I greet thee?-

With silence and tears
.”

Sara’s eyes widened, in shock as much as pleasure. She sat, her mouth agape, as if an echo of Byron himself was sitting across the table. Such had been the sadness – and tenderness – in his voice when reciting the lines that Sara imagined that Adam had pictured her as a lost love, or his ex-wife? Melancholy infected his already dark eyes. He looked endearingly vulnerable after quoting the lines, she considered.

“I read a fair bit of poetry in my youth too. The barmaids love it,” Adam wryly remarked, regaining his composure, politely leaving out the lesson for Sara that she shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Sara was tempted to reply that former models and publicity assistants like it too, but she reined herself in just in time. Authors were not supposed to flirt with publicists – but publicists were definitely not supposed to flirt with authors, whether the said authors had become recently single or not.

“And what have you been reading, if you don’t mind me asking?” Sara asked, genuinely curious.

“Well aside from reading the final draft of my divorce papers – and hundreds of tweets and abusive emails from devotees of my ex-wife – I’ve just finished re-reading
Pride & Prejudice
. I needed to bolster my faith in love and happy endings,” Adam remarked wistfully. “But let’s just hope that we have a happy ending in regards to book sales. Don’t worry though, I’m not a prima donna. I don’t expect you to be a miracle worker,” Adam amiably said. “I’m not sure about me being a miracle worker either, but I am about to turn this water into a glass of wine. Would you like another drink too?”

They both smiled and Adam and Sara looked at each other – differently.

5.

Sara returned to the office after two large glasses of wine. Adam thanked her for all the work she had done and said he looked forward to their book tour together. She suffered a twinge of disappointment in him – and perhaps jealousy in regards to herself – when she watched Adam perch himself on a stool and chat to the barmaid as she left the pub to go back to work. Thankfully her boss was nowhere to be seen at the office. Polly explained that she had left early.
Cruella
had to prepare for an evening out, meeting up with some old school friends from Sherborne. Unfortunately Julian was still at work – and he offered the publicist a look of either dislike or desire through the glass partition of his corner office. Eton had helped turn him into a repressive one minute and a randy toad the next. He should go into politics.

“How was your meeting?” Polly asked eagerly, as Sara sat back down. Sara noticed the copy of a women’s magazine on her friend’s desk, with the page open at an article about Victoria Glass.

“Interesting,” was the publicist’s sphinx-like reply. Sara couldn’t help but suppress a not so subtle grin as she still glowed from the recent drinks and company.

“Well do tell, what’s he like?” Polly said, hoping to mine a nugget of celebrity gossip about the author’s former wife from her friend.

“He can hold his drink, as well as a conversation,” Sara remarked, as much to herself as to her colleague. Towards the end of their meeting together Sara had noted how she seemed tipsier than him – and he had drunk three times as much as her. Adam had charmingly shrugged and replied, “I was in the army. Drinking is part of basic training... Life can be hard. Drinking softens the edges.” There had been both a wryness and a wistfulness to his tone. Adam Cooper was certainly more complex than the stock hero in his thrillers, Sara thought.

*

Sara’s phone pinged with a text message as she put the key in the door to her flat in Clapham.

Sorry I couldn’t talk earlier babe. Am out tonight entertaining clients, but chat tomorrow. Enjoy your evening without me (but not too much). Xxx

Although they had made a vague commitment to meet up and go for a drink or see a film Sara was fine to spend the night in. Rosie cooked her world famous (well, Clapham famous) chicken and mushroom risotto and Sara cleaned up afterwards as a thank you. The two friends then watched
Jerry Maguire
(again) whilst chatting idly about everything and nothing – and working their way through a bottle of white wine. When she heard the line in the film, “You complete me,” Sara ironically felt hollow. She thought of Simon and their relationship. Sara realised she was somehow less than herself when with him, or not the person she wanted to be. Mrs Sara Keegan didn’t sound or feel right. But she had now been with him for over six months.
Something
must have been working between them. Better to stick than bust was her mother’s advice – especially after she had learned how much Simon earned.

“It’s not about marrying Darcy, it’s about making sure that you don’t marry a Mr Collins or Wickham,” Rosie had argued a month ago.

Before she went to bed to catch up on some reading Sara checked her emails and also Googled Victoria Glass. She was the daughter of Lord Mells, an aristocrat who had first made his money in property and then had recently increased his fortune through buying up land and selling it on to wind farm companies. For the past five years or so Victoria had been a darling of the tabloids – and broadsheets. Victoria Glass was stunningly beautiful, almost faultlessly so. She was tall, elegant, with classically sculptured features and glossy black hair. Magazines regularly cited her as a style icon. A website once conducted a study on the break-up of news on a given day and discovered that more column inches had been devoted to a dress Victoria Glass wore one evening than to coverage of the civil war in Syria. She had, over the years, modelled for a couple of couture fashion houses and Sara read that she was due to bring out her own perfume and evening wear collection. The paparazzi loved her and she always posed for the camera and would happily give a journalist a quote. Of course she also gave an interview about press intrusion and the need for new privacy laws. Sara clicked on a cynical blog article about the “Tabloid Courtesan” which said that she tipped photographers off when she was due to come out of a club or restaurant, or when her latest celebrity suitor would leave her house the morning after. Victoria also earned money through charging to attend launch parties or fashion shows, where she would sit in the front row next to the catwalk, chatting and laughing with similar tabloid courtesans like they were best friends.

There was little to read of in regards to Adam, although she did find a TV interview on YouTube the couple gave before they were married. They explained how they had met at a film premiere. Three months later they were engaged. The cynical blogger alleged that the engagement and marriage was just a promotional stunt, arranged by Victoria’s agent. Yet as Sara watched the pair during their interview she was convinced of Victoria’s devotion towards Adam. She wasn’t that good an actress, Sara thought – though she read that Victoria had flown over to Hollywood for some screen tests during their marriage.

I can be myself when I’m with Adam... It’s nice to spend an evening curled up on the sofa watching a movie in front of the TV with someone you love, rather than spending a night dolling yourself up and have a dozen cameras flash in your face outside a club... He’s old-fashioned, honourable... You probably think, given our backgrounds, that we haven’t got anything in common... But from that first night, during dinner after the film premiere, we knew we shared a sense of humour and a will to take care of one another in some way.

The marriage did not last long. Sara found a poignant quote from Victoria, from a brief interview she gave on the red carpet at an opening of a West End musical. “We worked better as friends than as husband and wife.” Victoria was criticised by some for milking publicity from her divorce (whilst others argued that she should have been praised for her courage in walking away from her heavy drinking, unfaithful spouse). Both before and after the marriage Victoria was often labelled a “dumb blonde”, despite her black hair. She was far from dumb though it seemed to Sara. She had studied History and Economics at LSE and had proved to be a shrewd networker and businesswoman. She read a feature in a magazine where one prominent feminist had called her “a media whore” whilst another had lauded her as being “an empowered 21st century woman”. When Sara searched for Victoria Glass on twitter she, depressingly predictably, found swaths of messages by perverted men (and lesbians). There also seemed to be a virtual community of internet trolls that directed abuse and vitriol at her.

The messages on twitter reminded Sara of some of the comments she used to receive when she was a model. She sighed, turned off the computer and went to bed.

6.

In the morning Sara filled her time with every possible task, aside from calling the newspapers to pitch interviews with Adam about his ex-wife. She even welcomed being called into the monthly acquisitions meeting, at which the staff discussed various book proposals and submissions and whether they wanted to proceed with them or not. The meetings could sometimes be heated – or humorous – as a number of personalities and departments often clashed about what the company should be publishing. Books could be signed up sometimes due to which editor was having an affair with which member of the sales team (or books were not signed up due to said flings ending acrimoniously). Personal and political tastes more often than not eclipsed commercial sense. The marketing and sales team seldom championed literary fiction and serious non-fiction. Not because it couldn’t sell, but because they neither read those types of books nor understood their appeal. “Old people” read military history; the grey pound (which in terms of a demographic was growing) was uninteresting or insignificant in the eyes of the twenty- and thirty-somethings in the marketing department. When one of the senior editors had called the younger generation “ahistorical” recently the marketing team looked blank-faced, until they looked the definition up on their iPads. Sara hoped that their publishing director would be at the meeting, so as to act as a headmaster when the schoolchildren got unruly and the bickering turned into full blown arguments.