A Certain Chemistry (9 page)

Hugh looked at me pleadingly. I turned away and let my head drop to the angle that indicates you’re fascinated by seeing what titles are on someone’s bookshelf.

“Um, she
is
head of publicity, Amy. I think—”

Fiona swept through the door at just that moment, and some of the tension left Hugh’s shoulders—though he still had enough to keep him going for a week or so. She wasn’t exactly flustered, but she was a little agitated and had obviously hurried over from whatever she’d just been doing.

“Sorry,” she said, without especially looking it. She rolled her eyes and shook her head—“Phew! My frantic world, eh?”—before repeating the apology. “Sorry, I appear to be all behind.”

“Oh,
no,
” replied Amy reassuringly. “Just a bit heavy around the hips, that’s all.”

Fiona looked at Amy. Amy looked back at Fiona with an innocent smile on her face. Fiona continued to look at Amy. Finally, Fiona dug up a good-natured grin from somewhere deep, deep inside and said, “Hahaha” (just like that; she didn’t actually laugh so much as
say,
“Hahaha”). “I get it.” She walked to her chair, going around behind Amy (tugging the sides of her skirt down as she did so), and added, “Yes, very funny.”

I joined them around Hugh’s desk, taking the free seat between Amy and Fiona.

“Right,” began Hugh.

“I’m
terribly
sorry, but you aren’t allowed to smoke in here.” Fiona smiled at Amy.

“I’m not smoking, Fiona.” Amy smiled back.

“So then,” continued Hugh, “Georgina Nye’s book. I believe it’s all sorted out between you and her now, Tom?”

“Abso
lute
ly,” replied Amy. “Just dotting a final few
i
’s and crossing a couple of
t
’s.”

“So, you haven’t actually signed yet?” Fiona asked.

“As good as.”

“But not actually?”

“As good as actually.”

“I . . .” said Fiona, writing something on her pad. “see.”

Amy took the cigarette from her mouth and tapped it on the top of the table. “Georgina Nye,” she said, talking to Hugh, “has told her agent to commission Tom. They’ve met twice already. Tom has a good angle for the book”—I didn’t, of course, but at this point Amy looked at me with a secret eyebrow arrangement she had, so I nodded to everyone reassuringly—“and time is a real issue here. Anyone who thinks Tom isn’t going to be the person to do this book is, well”—she looked over at Fiona and waggled her hand a little, as though the word temporarily escaped her and she was asking Fiona for help locating it. Just as Fiona began to open her mouth, Amy continued. “. . . an arsehole. Georgina’s agent, Paul Dugan, and I are simply nailing down the details.”

“Good,” said Hugh. “Fine.”

Fiona ostentatiously brought the tip of her pen down to rest on her notepad. “You say you have an angle, Tom?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Abso
lute
ly,” added Amy, but Fiona kept her gaze on me. I thought she looked a little tired, though, actually. Her eyes hadn’t got quite their usual penetration; it was as if her pale blue irises were, well,
pale
instead of icy. Maybe she’d been working too hard and it was catching up with her.

“Yes,” I repeated, with a smile.

She peered at me, and something between surprise and confusion ghosted across her expression for just a moment before irritation settled in and made itself comfortable. “Well, would you mind telling me what the angle
is,
at all? Because—who knows?—I might want to mention it in some small way during the publicity campaign.”

“The whole Scottish thing is already a given,” I said, playing for time. “That’s all going to be there. George as a Scottish actress,
The Firth,
a big launch to coincide with the festival—I don’t have to tell you all this, Fiona.”

“But you seem to be doing so anyway, Tom. And don’t think I’m not grateful for that.”

“But—
but
. . .” I held out my hand, index finger and thumb slightly apart, as though showing the exact, yet deceptively small, size of
but
. . . or something . . . God, I don’t know
what
I was doing. “What’s the problem with the Scottish angle?” I sat back in my chair, smiled, and folded my arms, clearly waiting for her to give the obvious answer. Which I’d then repeat because I certainly had no bleeding idea what it was.

Amy popped her cigarette back into her mouth and stared at Fiona expectantly.

“Um, well . . .” Fiona glanced across at Hugh.

Hugh turned away and let his head drop to the angle that indicated he was fascinated by seeing what titles were on his own bookshelf.

“Well,” Fiona continued falteringly, “it’s Scottish. The Scottish angle is a good angle, but it won’t be a hook everywhere.”

“Precisely,” I replied.

“Abso
lute
ly,” confirmed Amy.

I really felt I’d done enough now, so I leaned forward and, moving on, said to Hugh, “Will you be doing bound proofs?”

“Oh, I don’t—” began Hugh, but Fiona rapped her pen on the desk.

“I’m sorry, but I think I missed the bit where you explained what angle you’ve got lined up, just now. Could you go over that again?”

Amy saw me hesitate in replying and, rightly, guessing that this hesitation would last for between four and six weeks, took over. “The thing you appear to be missing, Fiona, is that Georgina Nye is a woman”—she took an exaggerated breath before she would have gone on to say “—with lovely hair” or “—who can juggle oranges” or I don’t know what because suddenly I had a tiny spark of inspiration and jumped in.

“A
woman
. Georgina Nye is a
woman,
” I said.

Fiona affected astonishment. “And you coaxed this information out of her after just the
two
meetings, Tom? Wow. With that in our pocket the bidding war for newspaper serialization rights will be savage.”

“I meant . . . Fiona,” I said, using her name like a criticism, “that
The Firth,
like all soaps, is especially strong with women viewers. Not only that, but Megan is seen as a crusading female character and George herself is known as someone that even the
Daily Mail
regards as the acceptable face of feminism. Go with that angle and we can keep the hard-core fans on board but broaden the book’s appeal far wider.”

Fiona stared at me intently. Hugh raised his eyebrows and nodded thoughtfully. Amy reached across and ruffled my hair. Fiona didn’t speak for a moment or two.

Eventually, she found her reply. “Are you ill in the head?” she said flatly. “This is a star autobiography. What do you think will happen if we promise a star autobiography and then turn up carrying a book? Just decide what the revelation we’re going to use in all the press releases will be, and build the rest of the damn thing around that.”

“There
are
no revelations,” I explained. “The woman is completely sensation-free.”

“What about her father?”

“Lovely man. Gentle, always did his best—they’re still close now.”

“Former lovers?”

“From what she’s told me, there have only been a few, and they’ve always parted amicably.”

“Christ almighty! Are you telling me that no one’s beaten her up
at all
?”

“Seems not.”

Fiona looked at Hugh in bewilderment. “Did we know this when we signed the contract?”

“Um . . .” Hugh began, but Fiona wasn’t going to wait for him.

“Self-harm? Miscarriage? A brief period hooked on antidepressants?”

“Nope.”

“Jesus—what’s the woman been doing for the last thirty years? We’ve got nothing here.
Nothing
.”

“Not unless you let me go with the thoughtful, feminist line.”

Fiona was still examining me for signs of weakness, but now I could see she was also slightly desperate to believe that I was right. “And you think you can pull that angle off?” she asked.

“Definitely. I won’t just crank out a by-the-numbers celeb autobiography here; this’ll be something really special.”

Fiona didn’t reply.

“
George
is really special,” I went on. “It’s too good an opportunity to waste—a celeb book with genuine merit.”

“Has she had some kind of eating disorder, maybe?”

“No.”

“Right . . .” she said, slowly: forcibly psyching herself up. “Merit . . . I can do a campaign with that. Yes.” She actually started to become a little enthusiastic. “Yes, ‘not just another celebrity cash-in.’ I like it. ‘Brave.’ ‘Intelligent.’
’Unique.’
’A celebrity autobiography that dares to be different—like nothing you’ve ever read before!’ In fact, I’ve still got some stuff from the last time we ran that campaign: a couple of years ago—it was for that cricketer with the lisp, but the framework is transferable.”

“Do you think Georgina Nye will be happy going in this direction?” Hugh asked.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” I said. “If we do it well, that is. In fact, she actually said to me that she liked the idea that I’d make her look clever. And I’ll keep in lots of showbiz anecdotes and fashion tips too, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

“Abso
lute
ly.”

Everyone seemed in agreement.

Amy threw open her arms. “Nye will love it. I mean, who’d complain about being portrayed as smart and socially aware on the one hand and having a one-and-a-half-million-quid advance thrown at her on the other?”

“Where did you get that figure from?” Hugh said to Amy uncomfortably. “We haven’t disclosed the actual sum.”

“Bill told me.”

“Bill?”

“Bill—the guy who delivers the sandwiches here.”

“Oh, right.” Hugh nodded.
“Bill.”

I’d forgotten it was Sara’s birthday in two weeks.

“Have you remembered it’s my birthday in two weeks?” she said.

“Of course,” I replied.

Sara loved birthdays. She loved any kind of celebration, in fact—and they loved her too; they played to her sunny disposition. Sara and celebrations fitted together as perfectly as, well, as perfectly as any food items she prepared for them almost certainly wouldn’t. On her twenty-seventh birthday we had literally danced all night, the two of us . . . at home . . . alone. Well,
Sara
had danced all night, at least. As far as I know, that is—I’d passed out on the sofa at some point, but the last thing I could remember was her dancing. And when I woke up the next morning she was still there in front of me, still dancing.

Sara, irresistibly, is just the right side of being a nutter.

“It’s a bit special, you know.”

“Special?”

“I’ll be twenty-nine.”

“Yeah, I know that. But why is that special?
Thirty’
s special.”

“Tch.” She shook her head, amazed that I was such a dullard. “Twenty-nine is the last birthday you have as a twenty-year-old. That’s really special.” She fiddled with the buttons on the old-fashioned, almost Victorian nightdress she was wearing. I was still sitting in front of my computer, thrashing out an introductory chapter for George’s book.

“And thirty?”

“Aye, that’s special too,” she said.

“Though not as special as thirty-one—you don’t get to be another prime number for six years after that.
That’
s the kind of thing that’ll really make you take stock of your life.”

“Noooo . . . my sides!”

“So, what do you want for your
special
twenty-ninth birthday anyway?”

“Something I’ll remember.”

“What? Like a damn good beating, you mean?”

“A clever tongue is a wonderful gift, so it is . . . but it always holds the danger of making me come over there and thump you, you wee English bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah . . .”

“Och—
brave,
are we?”

“Come on, tell me what you want.”

“Surprise me. Surprise me with something fabulous.”

“Yeah, right. Just tell me what you want. I don’t do surprises.”

“You used to surprise me when we were first going out with each other.”

“Only accidentally. I simply did the same things I’ve always done, but you didn’t know me so well, so they looked surprising.”

“Yeah.
Terrifying,
some of them. Come on—do something extravagant. Something romantic. Do you remember that film the other night where he—”

“Oh, no. Oh no you don’t. How many times do I have to say this? ‘Films aren’t real.’ That big, romantic-gesture stuff only ever happens in films. Normal people don’t do things like that—picking you up from the pub in a candlelit helicopter stuffed with Turkish delight or some such bollocks. You think Hugh Grant’s like that in real life? Is he arse. I bet his girlfriend thinks herself lucky if she gets a kiss on the cheek and a ten-pound gift voucher for Boots.”

“Well, you see, that’s where you’re wrong. Because it’s not just in films. You know Sadie, from work?”

“The one with the thing?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Her boyfriend called me up and arranged it so she’d have two weeks’ leave booked, but she didn’t know about it. Then he turns up at work one Monday morning—she thinks she has a day at the checkout ahead of her—but he just turns up at five past nine, goes up to her, and asks her to marry him. She says yes, and he says, ‘Right, this position’s closed, then.’ He’s got a taxi waiting outside with a suitcase of her clothes that her friends have secretly been round and packed for her, and they’re off to the airport right away for a holiday he’s booked in the Balearics. There wasn’t a dry eye in the shop.”

“Now
that,
” I said, with some degree of righteousness, “is pure bloody arrogance.”

“You
what
?”

“Well, for a start, think of all the things that could have gone wrong there, from Sadie saying, ‘Actually, it’s your brother I’m really after’ downwards. It takes an awful lot of ego to think up something like that and imagine it’ll be a perfect romantic moment and not a disaster.
And
I’ll tell you something else—and this is the thing it’s really worth keeping in mind—the bloke who did it? He did it for
himself
. So that
he’d
look really great. Why did he have her friends do the packing for her?”