Wishful Thinking (23 page)

‘Georgie!' Lin and I exclaimed, almost simultaneously.

‘What are you suggesting?' I pursued.

‘Well, he evidently got this money illegally, so it isn't really his. And ill-gotten gains are anyone's for the taking, aren't they?'

‘
Georgie
!'

‘Half a million would pay my credit-card bill – keep Lin in nannies for the next ten years—'

‘GEORGIE!'

‘It's just a thought,' she protested. ‘Maybe – maybe the Wyshing Well fairy
meant
you to overhear that phone call. Maybe it was Fate. Maybe we're fated to have half a million pounds.'

‘Fate isn't like that,' I said, taking a Hardyesque view of life. ‘Fate's a sadistic deity playing Monopoly with the destinies of men. And women. Do not pass Go and collect five hundred grand. Go to Gaol.' Those whom the gods wish to destroy, I reflected, they first cause to run up large credit-card debts.

‘Have a little faith,' Georgie said. ‘Cultivate optimism. When you're older, you'll learn that's the only way to get by. You just have to keep hoping life will get better – usually in the teeth of the evidence. Anyhow, wishes don't always work out the way you expect.'

‘If you ask me,' I said, ‘that damn fairy's been nothing but trouble.'

I didn't know it, but there was a lot more trouble yet to come.

I didn't get time to check up on Jerry's deal, of course; I was too busy working on his novel. The hero was a self-portrait – weren't they always? – with all the bad bits left out, a sort of cartoon Beauman. Not the Simpsons: Disney. In prison, he palled up with other convicts, bluff, gruff, tuff guys, ex-blaggers with 'earts of gold who respected him for his man-to-man approach and standing up to the nastier screws. Once out and struggling to clear his name, the old lags were there to help. A few friends had remained true, braving public opprobrium and social ostracism; the untrue were exposed as treacherous and shallow, fellow travellers in the wake of the tabloid press. After elaborate plot and counter-plot, the Danglars who had set him up and the de Villefort who had sent him down both got their comeuppance. Carried away on the tide of Jerry's creativity, I even persuaded Beauman to insert a Fernand de Morcerf who swiped the hero's wife while he was behind bars, thus allowing him to wind up with his post-porridge girlfriend who had assisted him in proving his innocence. (In the original version, he dumped his wife from motives of misguided nobility after his conviction, but no one was going to go for that.) Sorting out the plot to both my satisfaction and Jerry's cost me several nights' sleep, and the whole business filled my mind to the exclusion of all else. Much as I loathed him, tailoring his book was an opportunity – a challenge – it was even fun.

The next time I saw Nigel, I had hardly thought about him for days. It was at an event for independent booksellers, where they would all get together and complain about the big chains, occasionally issuing edicts which would be reported briefly in the trade press and then ignored. I was putting in a courtesy appearance on behalf of Ransome, to show that we were sensitive and caring and wanted small bookshops to stock our writers. It hadn't occurred to me Nigel would be there. He had often deplored the market control exercised by the big book chains, but in the past he would have considered this kind of event too cosy and middle-class for his taste. But there he was, drinking cheap wine and eating bits of things on sticks, his pocket-torch jaw designer-stubbled, his dirty-blond hair looking – well, dirty. My heart didn't leap, but it twinged a little, like a pulled muscle that hasn't quite healed. He was talking to a lanky individual with an even lankier beard and a woman whose proportions would have made me look slender
before
my diet. She was dressed in several tiers of brocaded chiffon and resembled a well-upholstered sofa surmounted by an expensive haircut. Her face, I noticed, was very pretty.

Once again, I was smitten with the dilemma of whether to go over and say hello. I procrastinated, talking to a man from the wilds of Buckinghamshire who apparently specialised in poetry. A fool or a madman, I concluded, but it was impossible not to admire his resolution. When the conversation wore out I let the natural currents in circulation carry me towards Nigel.

‘Hello, Cookie.' He broke off whatever he was saying to greet me, but he didn't look particularly thrilled. ‘Still on the diet?'

‘No,' I said. ‘I'm comfortable the way I am.'

‘You aren't eating the nibbles.'

‘I don't like plastic cheese.' I'd never been much of a party nibbler, even when I was tubby. For one thing, you can't always tell what canapés contain until you've bitten into them, and then you can get a nasty shock. For another, the kind of comfort food which was my main weakness meant curling up with a book or video, chocs on the side. Eating on the hoof is much too hazardous. I still recall a regrettable incident at a publisher's Christmas party, involving a paper plate, a fork, and a pickled onion. The onion shot across the room at unbelievable speed and hit Clive James on the ear. His TV career declined shortly afterwards, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

Nigel introduced me to the lanky beard, whose name was Terry, and went on to explain how he was struggling to compete with an especially malevolent branch of Waterstone's, somewhere in the outer reaches of North London. He was soon well away on a tirade which expanded to condemn the big publishing conglomerates, as represented by me, and how we were hand-in-glove with the major booksellers, and it was all a conspiracy to wipe out the gallant independent and crush the voice of literary protest crying out to the people. While he had some good points, I knew this last was garbage. Ransome would happily publish the voice of protest, if the people wanted to buy it. But most of the time, they don't. As an older and wiser (independent) bookseller once put it to me: ‘Everyday life is full of ugly realities. When you open a book, you want to get away from them.' Or, in the words of a successful fantasy writer: ‘Writing isn't about life as it
is
, it's about life the way it
should
be. That's why the good guys always have to win in the end – because in real life they don't, and people need encouragement to keep fighting. Fiction is there to encourage them.' Although I couldn't help wondering what sort of encouragement readers were going to get from the fictional redemption of Jerry Beauman, unrepentant fraudster and ex-con.

When Nigel finally ran out of steam Terry interceded, rather shyly, evidently feeling I was getting a raw deal. ‘I'm sure Cookie here does her best for – for any writer she likes,' he stammered.

‘I try,' I said. ‘But it's pretty difficult. I don't have much influence yet. I'm just a novice among editors.'

Terry then launched into a hesitant appeal for me to look at something he was working on, ‘just for an opinion'. My heart quailing, I asked what it was about, expecting neo-ante-modernism extending the parameters of the contemporary subculture – or something like that. Instead, Terry confessed, with an air of guilt, that it was a children's story.

‘Harry Potter?' I queried doubtfully.

Apparently not. It was about a boy and his cat, and his father marries again, and his stepmother may be a witch and wants to turn the cat into her familiar, but secretly the cat can talk and helps the boy, and . . . Terry petered out, looking embarrassed.

‘It sounds really interesting,' I said, with sincerity. ‘I don't do children's books, but I'd be happy to have a look and pass it on to the right person, if I think it's any good. I'll give you my address—' I didn't have cards; I'd never felt important enough ‘– and you can send me a copy, if you like.'

Terry blushed violently under his beard and Nigel – even though the manuscript was clearly not a voice of protest – cast me a look of approval. To my horror, I found it warmed me. I didn't want it to – I wanted to be over him, as indifferent to his approbation as I was to his political ideology – but it did. Absent-mindedly, I took a cube of plastic cheese with a cherry on the top from a passing plate and turned to the chiffon sofa. We hadn't yet been introduced, and Nigel's jeremiad had effectively excluded her from the conversation. It wasn't my fault, but I felt I'd been impolite.

‘Are you a bookseller?' I inquired predictably.

‘Oh no. I'm an estate agent.'

I stared, at a loss for the right response. You can hardly say: ‘How interesting' to an estate agent. Or can you?

Think of all those property programmes on TV . . .

‘This is Rachel,' Nigel said.

It is rare to be at a loss for words twice within a matter of seconds. My jaw didn't drop – contrary to popular cliché, jaws hardly ever do – but it may have locked. Thoughts whirled madly through my brain, zipping after one another at lightspeed.
Nigel
was going out with an estate agent – he was going out with a fat estate agent – he really was a thin man who liked fat women – no wonder he was anti-dieting – talked of earth-mother breasts – Nigel was
living
with a FAT ESTATE AGENT . . .

Standard courtesy deserted me, social graces went west. I think I said: ‘Oh.' That was all I could manage for the next five minutes.

Lots of things can leave you speechless, but few compare with the impact of genuine surprise. I wasn't heartbroken; I think the last of my affection withered away in the shock of that moment. If I'd been hurt – if I'd been bleeding inside – I'd have found the words to hide it, the necessary phrases to conceal my secret wound and uphold my pride. Instead, I was merely stunned. I stood there as if I had been stuffed.

Nigel, unbelievably, was looking faintly pleased with himself, as if nabbing Rachel was a major coup. Possibly it was. It could hardly be a minor one.

(There you are. A few pounds down and I make fattist jokes.)

‘Nigel said you were terribly upset when he dumped you,' she said. ‘You threw him out, didn't you?'

I threw him out when he dumped me? What was she saying?

‘It was a really good thing for me,' she went on. ‘It made me get rid of Trevor. Our marriage had been going wrong for ages, but I just couldn't make the break. Then you and Nigel split, and that did it. Nige and I are very happy now. I hope you don't mind too much?'

Was she for real, or just being smug?

I didn't care. ‘Not at all,' I found myself gabbling, idiotically. ‘Glad to have helped. Any time.' I turned away, grabbed Terry, demanding to hear more about the children's story, and tottered off to find a refill. Several refills. Once the shock had worn off a bit, I discovered my main reaction wasn't exactly what I would've expected.

I couldn't wait to tell them all at work.

‘Nigel's going out with a
fat estate agent
?' Georgie and Lin echoed, like a Greek chorus.

‘It's too good to be true,' Georgie continued. ‘If it was fiction, nobody would believe it.'

‘Are you sure you aren't upset?' Lin asked anxiously. ‘I mean, you have been missing him a bit, haven't you?'

‘Not lately,' I said. ‘I hadn't really thought about it, but I just haven't had time. It's one good thing about doing this book of Jerry's: it's taken up every moment. I haven't had the
energy
to miss Nigel, either.' Or to spend the night with Hugh Jackman. I must do something about that soon.

‘I went out with an estate agent once,' remarked Cal, who was propping up the desk in Georgie's office. As PR chief, she merited an office of her own, though Lin, as her assistant, generally shared it.

‘When was that?' Georgie asked.

‘Last time we moved house. About five or six years ago. She was trying to sell me a four-bedroom semi in Cockfosters.'

‘Must've been something about the name,' I murmured.

Cal flicked me a Look. Georgie said: ‘What was she like? Was she fat too?'

‘Nah. Curvy, not fat. I remember noticing her nipples jutted through her sweater, sort of outlined by the knit. It was when she was showing me the master bedroom.' He sighed reminiscently. ‘The owners were away, so we had it off on the bed.'

‘A meaningful relationship,' Georgie said. ‘How long did it last?'

‘Till I told her I didn't want to buy the house.'

‘When was that?'

‘Well . . . after we had it off on the bed, actually.'

We all laughed, though Lin cried out in protest.

‘They don't do that on
Location Location Location
,' I said.

‘They will,' Georgie opined. ‘They just haven't thought of it yet. Fantasy property-buying plus sex: it's an ideal formula. Before you know where you are,
Big Brother
will be out there, picking themselves a castle in Scotland in which to be incarcerated.'

It was an unfortunate allusion. ‘Don't mention Scottish castles,' Lin said. ‘I'm getting nowhere with this dating lark.'

‘How does your shortlist look?' Georgie asked.

‘A would-be comedy writer and stand-up performer with a day job in a laundrette. A member of the chorus in
The Lion King
with gluten allergy. A computer technician who does bellringing on the side.' She tried not to look depressed, but we did it for her.

‘Keep at it,' Georgie said. ‘There are millions of guys on those lists. Some of them must be nice.'

‘These
are
the nice ones,' Lin responded. ‘I told you. Nice isn't enough.'

‘We can see that from your record.' Georgie spoke without thinking.

‘What about yours?' Lin retorted, with a flash of rancour. It's one thing to admit yourself, at an emotional low point, that the men in your life were all bastards; it's quite another to have someone else say it.