Wishful Thinking (2 page)

There was a gloomy silence while we contemplated Jerry Beauman. I hope to God he isn't going to feature much in this story, but you may as well know (if you don't already) that he's good-looking in a ratty sort of way and has recently dumped a long-standing wife to be seen out with a designer bimbo of Oriental origins who looks inscrutable at a succession of book launches. His whole life has been embittered by the fact that, although he appeared at the launch party in
Bridget Jones' Diary,
after editing all you could see was the back of his head.

‘We ought to have a real wish,' said Georgie. ‘Toss a penny in for the fairy, or whatever it's called.'

‘Might be a nix,' Lin said. She's into folklore. ‘Or a minogue.'

‘
Minogue
?' Georgie and I, in unison.

‘It's a kind of fairy. Honest. And there are kelpies and selkies and—'

‘Never mind,' Georgie interrupted. ‘Let's just wish. I could do with a little fairy-luck right now. Or even a lot.'

‘One big wish?' Lin asked. ‘Or three small ones?'

‘What's a big wish?' I was intrigued.

‘Well . . . world peace, that sort of thing.'

‘Let's keep it realistic,' said Georgie. ‘Just untold wealth and happiness. We don't want the fairy to be overstretched.'

After some serious thought we each dropped a penny in – I had to give one to Lin, since she had no change – and wished. I wished hard, eyes shut tight, the way I did when I was a child, though I knew it was pointless. Afterwards, we all felt better. Like doing the lottery. Pointless, but fun. ‘Besides,' Georgie said, ‘we've got more chance of having our wishes come true than winning the lottery, any day.'

‘I doubt it,' I said. ‘You don't know what I wished for.'

‘Can't be as impossible as mine,' said Georgie. ‘I wished to clear my credit-card bill. Among other debts.'

Lin said: ‘Aren't we supposed not to tell?'

‘Why? I want to make sure the fairy – nixie – whatever it is – hears.'

‘In that case,' said Lin, ‘I wished to meet the Man in my Life.'

‘You've had lots of men in your life,' I pointed out. ‘At least – several.' Lin wasn't the promiscuous type.

‘I mean
the
man,' Lin explained. ‘You know. The One. When your eyes just meet across the room and you
know
.'

‘My eyes just met Jerry Beauman's over the foie gras,' Georgie remarked. ‘It was an accident. I happened to look up, and there he was, looking at
me
. Yuk.'

‘Awful,' I said sympathetically.

‘What did you wish for, Cookie?' Lin asked.

‘Let's just say mine really will strain the fairy's magical powers,' I responded.

‘Like world peace?'

‘More.'

‘Come on then,' said Georgie.

I didn't say ‘no laughing' because they were my friends.

‘I wished to become a sex goddess,' I told them. ‘I thought that would give the fairy a real challenge.'

No one laughed. It might have been better if they had.

So that was how it all started. You wish for things – incredible, impossible things – and then you begin to want them, and wonder if they could ever happen. And from wanting and wondering it's only a short step to asking yourself what you can do to
make
them happen. A short but significant step. One of those ‘All journeys start with but a single step' steps. Like it said in the verse: ‘
To wyshe is to aspyre
'. Not that we would have taken that step if it hadn't been for Georgie, of course. It's always Georgie who looks for the lever on the floodgates, rather than simply going with the flow. She's the sort of person who grabs life by the balls – and squeezes. Scary to be around, but never boring.

Anyway, she had the easy wish. Money. Quite a lot of money, true, but much easier than finding your One True Love or turning an overweight Ugly Duckling into a sex goddess.

‘
You
don't know the size of my credit-card bill,' Georgie said darkly. ‘Did you see that survey recently that said everyone in the country owed seventeen grand on their credit cards?'

‘No,' I said.

‘And there are lots of people who only owe about a thousand?' Her tone suggested this was profoundly unnatural.

‘No.'

‘Well, all those excess sixteen thousands are on
my
bill. Believe me.'

‘
No
!'

‘All of them?' Lin demanded, wide-eyed.

‘
All
of them,' Georgie said firmly.

‘Couldn't you remortgage your house?' I suggested. ‘My aunt Jenny—'

‘Dunnit. I just ran the bill up again.'

‘Take in a lodger?'

Georgie shuddered. ‘I know about lodgers. The fun ones have their music on full blast all night and leave unspeakable items of dirty washing in the bath and drink all your booze without telling you. And the nice, quiet ones who don't drink or smoke turn out to be axe-murderers.'

‘A cat?'

‘How would that help? Cats don't pay rent.'

‘No, but . . . it's very soothing to stroke their fur. And they make nice purry noises. And catch mice. That might stop you worrying about your bill quite so much.' Just in case you haven't guessed, I
do
have a cat. A mog-standard tabby called Mandy, short for Mandelson, because he has this intense way of looking at you, as if to say:
I know where you live . . .

‘I don't worry about it
enough
,' Georgie said. ‘That's why it keeps increasing. I only worry about not worrying about it.'

Lin and I gave up.

I think I should tell you something about the publisher for whom we work. (You can see I'm an editor, can't you?
For whom
, not
who we work for
.) It's called Ransome Harber, and for the benefit of any illiterates who haven't heard of it, the company is a big conglomerate owning lots of different imprints. About a year ago we acquired the small independent Cuckoo's Nest, in order to turn their MD into our Chairman. ‘We liked the boss so much, we bought the company . . .' I work in Ransome hardbacks and the main paperback arm, Twocan, with the famous logo of a double-headed bird, twin profiles back to back. Other imprints we have swallowed or spawned include the vintage Angus McAngus, Sparrow children's books, the sci-fi/fantasy Phoenix (the company is very bird-minded, for some reason), and the tiny but wildly lucrative Eros, which produces pornography for women. Editors only do short-term placements on the Eros list ever since the tragic and very expensive case of someone who stayed there two years, developed a pathological horror of sex, and scooped a small fortune after suing the company for work-related trauma. Georgie runs the Publicity Department for all the imprints, with Lin as her main assistant and several others specialising in different areas. Eros doesn't need publicity, though Promotions will sometimes arrange to give away, for example, a leather G-string with each book (or vice versa). That evening Georgie had organised a launch party for someone at Porgy, a label publishing writers from ethnic minorities. I was going for the free booze, and because Nigel was away at a convention.

The writer was a bespectacled guy with beautiful manners called Vijay Ramsingh (his editor had changed it to VJ, to recall VS) who looked much younger than his thirty-one years. PR had suppressed his middle-class origins to imply an inner-city background and an authentic Voice of the People (in these circumstances, it's not the book that matters, it's the image of the writer). He looked faintly bewildered, as authors often do when caught up in the publicity machine. ‘Congratulations,' I told him, over a glass of Château Plonque in the carefully chosen party venue, an Islamic wine bar off the Edgware Road. Well, maybe not actually Islamic, but it looked it, with frescoes of camel trains on the walls and nibbles consisting of pounded-up chickpea and things wrapped in other things. ‘You must be very pleased,' I went on. The party was well attended by the literary press; Georgie always knew how to create a buzz.

‘Will there be any other writers?' Vijay asked innocently.

‘I shouldn't think so,' I said. ‘This party's for you.' Excess writers aren't encouraged at launches, unless they happen to be critics as well, or so famous you can't turn them away. A stray writer can be a loose cannon, especially if there's booze available. With authors, two's a crowd.

‘But . . . isn't that Todd Jarman over there?' A note of genuine excitement had crept into his voice.

‘Of course not,' I insisted, looking round.

I was wrong.

My heart didn't exactly plummet, but it did slither down a few notches. Todd Jarman is a thriller writer whose books are so classy that broad-minded critics have been known to hail them as Littritcha. A couple of years ago his stuff was adapted for television with a rising star in the role of his main detective, and Jarman promptly went mega. For the first eight books, his hardbacks just managed four-figure sales; now, they go straight into the Top Ten. Always difficult, he became virtually impossible to deal with, but an editor who'd been there practically from the beginning managed to cope, if only by barely altering a word. Then the editor took a career change and switched to being an agent, hassling the publishers instead of the writer. Long-suffering Laurence Buckle took over, lasting less than a year before Jarman dug his heels in, saying he didn't want to be turned into another Jerry Beauman.

Guess who was co-opted next.

So far, we'd only spoken once, over the phone, when I'd been given the unenviable task of telling him his latest title was too long for the dust-jacket artwork. He'd expressed himself in the kind of language his hero reserved for the discovery of a particularly unpleasant corpse. I really,
really
didn't want to meet him face-to-face unless I was fortified with Prozac and a gallon of Rescue Remedy.

‘What's
he
doing here?' I asked Lin in a panicked whisper.

‘Dragged here by his girlfriend, I think. She's a human rights lawyer. Someone at Porgy sent her Vijay's book for a quote, and apparently she adored it.'

The girlfriend was much in evidence, a sleek blonde whose mere profile exhibited steely intelligence, effortless competence, and designer grooming. I loathed her on sight. Beside her, Jarman was inspecting the crowd with the sort of dark, probing gaze that would have bored holes in woodwork. He looked grimly handsome, tight-lipped, even saturnine – but perhaps that was my fault. Put on the spot by the Art Department, who had themed his jackets over several books and knew a change could damage sales, I'd finally got him to knock three words off the overlong title, but he hadn't been happy. Of course, it could have been sheer paranoia that made me imagine he was searching for me. Maybe he always looked murderous at launch parties.

‘Nobody tell him I'm here!' I hissed.

I headed towards the bar for a refill, wishing I'd stayed at home. Mandy's ice-green stare was menacing, but at least I'd never had to edit him. And with Nigel away I could have watched
EastEnders . . .

There are mysterious currents that circulate at parties, sweeping people inexorably together – or apart. Skilled socialites know how to ride them, borne round the room in the mainstream, talking to all the most interesting guests, while someone like me invariably gets stuck in the boring little eddies round the edge. On this occasion, however, I was hoping for a boring little eddy at the bar. But those same currents which always divide you from that really attractive man glimpsed about ten people away can be still more malevolent, casting you in the path of the one person you wish to avoid. I got my drink, stepped backwards – and collided with Todd Jarman.

Aiming for the bar was probably a mistake.

I gasped: ‘Oh – er – hello.' That was a mistake, too. If I'd said nothing and moved on he wouldn't have spoken to me.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘Which is worse – the red or the white?'

I was drinking red. ‘Don't know,' I said. ‘I haven't tried the white.'

He took a glass of red and, instead of slipping back into the party mainstream, positioned himself beside me in conversational mode. Under other circumstances, I'd have been flattered. He's famous (for a writer) and, more important, quite good-looking, if your taste runs to tall, dark, saturnine men. At that moment, mine didn't. He has off-black hair and a rather long face with a hooky nose and the kind of lean cheeks that have a thin line running down from the jut of the cheekbone. Possibly a smile line, though most people who have them don't seem to smile much. Romantic novelists of the fifties would have called him lantern-jawed, though that's an image that has always baffled me. I've never seen anyone with a jaw that looked remotely like a lantern. I didn't register eye colour, but I noticed he hadn't bothered to shave.

‘Have you read Vijay's book?' I asked, desperate to evade the subject of his own.

‘God, no. Helen loved it.' The girlfriend. ‘That was more than enough to put me off.'

‘Why?' I said. He was annoying me already.

‘She likes earnest, well-meaning fiction that says something significant about society, preferably without any excitement getting in the way. I like a good story.'

‘
White Fang
,' I said promptly. ‘Rattling good yarn. Never needed to read another.' I was thinking of Radlett Senior in
The Pursuit of Love
, but I didn't expect Jarman to recognise the allusion.

He did. I could see it in his face. His eyebrows went up at the outer edges, a good trick if you can do it. ‘Exactly. Have you read it?'