Wishful Thinking (10 page)

Jarman evidently caught the bewilderment in my gaze. ‘Helen's rearranging the place,' he offered unexpectedly. ‘She thinks this is too nice a room to waste as a study: she wants me to move upstairs. As you can see, she's started re-doing it already, but I'm holding on. This is Custer's last stand over here – if you managed to fit in any history around your dedicated study of the English language.'

‘Little Bighorn,' I said. ‘I saw a movie. Wonderful how good their camerawork was in those days.'

He didn't smile, of course. ‘Coffee?' he inquired, picking up the inevitable unwashed mug which probably features on every writer's desk in the universe.

‘Tea,' I said, to be awkward. ‘Please.'

He threw me a dark look but made no comment, merely inquiring my preferences in milk and sugar on his way to the kitchen.

‘Just milk.'

He returned presently carrying two mugs, tea for me, coffee for himself, and wearing an expression suggestive of gritted teeth. ‘Here you are.' He handed me the tea. ‘Miss Cook – Emma—' (Have you noticed how men always say Miss when they're being polite, and Miz when they want to offend?) ‘– we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. Alistair assures me you're very good at your job. Under the circumstances, I think we should try to start over again.'

He wasn't being sincere, I told myself. Of course he wasn't. So I didn't have to be sincere either. ‘All right,' I said, juggling with my mug to extend my right hand in a gesture that felt somewhat forced.

His grip was firm and strong. He would have made a good strangler.

‘Have a seat,' he said, indicating the sofa. ‘I'm afraid it isn't very comfortable.' I had already shed my coat on to the satellite-dish chair.

We sat down on the sofa, I produced the annotated manuscript, and we got to work.

Détente lasted until the first page.

Some writers work quickly and carelessly and need extensive editing to tidy up their prose. A few are dyslexic and make regular grammatical errors. (A lot can't spell, but spellchecks can deal with that.) An editor's nightmare is the perfectionist writer who thinks he/she never makes a mistake, whose command of language is faultless and who knows by instinct when even a comma has been misplaced. Todd Jarman was – of course – one of the latter. I knew bloody-mindedness had made me overenthusiastic, but by the time Todd had begun with the acid-tongued scorn, graduating through sarcasm and contempt to pure rage, I was determined to concede as little as possible. There was something about him that seemed to flip a switch inside me, cancelling out the tact and diplomacy with which I had handled Oonagh Mallory of the potato passions and turning me into the editorial equivalent of a virago.

I found myself saying whatever came into my head – and the remarks that came into my head were the sort you usually only think of after the event and, in a professional context, would have been better left unsaid. (Later, I thought how good it would have been if I had been able to come up with the same quickfire nastiness in my final scene with Nigel, instead of expending it on the far less appropriate target of Todd Jarman.) By the time we got to Alistair's suggestions for plot development we were in a state of total war and I knew in my gut I would be out of a job by the end of the week. I might get away with calling an author arrogant and pig-headed to his face but I had twice accused him of over-writing and once of lack of clarity. Jarman prided himself on his clarity and the raw simplicity of his style.

‘You want
what
?' he said. ‘
Another body
? We've already got three.'

‘You can never have too many bodies,' I said blithely. ‘Look at
Taggart.
They have one before every ad break.'

‘Of all the ludicrous comparisons – ! I don't intend to take my cue from some crap TV show named after a hero who died years ago – and can you blame him? My work is rooted in the stark realities of street crime—'

‘There are over two hundred murders every year in London and the southeast,' I declared. ‘You can do four of them.' It was utter rubbish – I hadn't the faintest idea of the annual murder rate – but I had noticed with Nigel the efficacy of statistics in any argument, and I was prepared to improvise. With a belated flicker of tact, I
didn't
point out that it was a crap TV show which had made Jarman's books a hit.

‘A fourth murder would involve manipulating both my characters and plot. I don't intend to do that. I won't pander to the national appetite for gore.'

‘Considering that your first body is a prostitute dressed as a nun with stigmata on her hands and feet and an upside-down cross cut into her forehead—'

‘Every detail of that crime was psychologically significant.'

‘And then there's the pimp found decapitated in an alleyway whose head turns up in the chilled section at Tesco, and the retired Chief Constable, also dressed as a nun—'

‘I know what happens in my own novel: you don't need to recap. I work out my plots very carefully beforehand. You can't just chuck in an extra corpse because you think the body count is too low. Stick to fiddling with semicolons and the state of the verb, Miz Cook—' the would-be friendly use of Emma had long gone out the window ‘– that suits your mentality. Literary criticism is way out of your league.'

I didn't mention that the whole extra-body thing was Alistair's idea. By then, I didn't care. ‘If you re-read the book properly,' I snapped, implying that he hadn't, ‘you'll notice that the pace slows up badly towards the end. You need something to wake the reader up. There's no point in having a perfect plot if no one can be bothered to stay the course.'

God knows what he might have said to that, but the sound of the front door and a quick, high-heeled step in the hall distracted him. Helen Aucham walked in, slender and power-suited, her hair as perfect as the ramifications of his plot. In daylight her Botoxed complexion looked smooth and flawless. ‘Oh, are you working?' Her gaze skimmed over me without interest. As usual. ‘God, I've had an awful day. They're going to deport Charlie Nguru even though the medical evidence of torture was conclusive. I've got three days to find a loophole. Be a darling and get me a drink.' I wondered how someone so superficial could be so caring. Or vice versa.

‘We – we'd better give it a break,' I stammered, reverting to normal behaviour. ‘We've got a month to sort out any changes . . .'

‘A
month
? And you want
rewrites
?'

‘You're in the catalogue for publication in the autumn,' I whispered. ‘Sorry.' Alistair, a slow reader, had been sitting on the manuscript for some time. ‘Anyway, not exactly rewrites. Just . . .'

‘Another body. A corpse too far. Forget it. There's no way I'm going to fuck this up with an overdose of blood.'

‘I thought that was the whole point,' Helen said with a careless smile. She had left the room to remove her coat and now wandered back in, flicking the sweep of blow-dried hair off her face. ‘Darling, if you've finished—?' Her indifference daunted me. I got to my feet, gathering up my koala. Oddly, I felt a sudden rush of indignation at her dismissal of Todd's work. He might not be saving persecuted heroes, but his books entertained people, diverting them from the trouble and trauma of everyday life. That had to be a good thing. A friend of mine once declared that he was saved from suicide by the latest P. D. James. Todd Jarman's stories were quite capable of distracting any number of suicides.

‘I'll call you next week,' I suggested.

‘Whatever.'

He showed me to the door. As it closed behind me, I heard Helen's voice. ‘Is that your latest editor? Poor thing. What a lump . . .'

Somewhere, according to modern scientific thinking, there was a universe where a reconstituted Tyrannosaurus Rex would smash through the window and devour her on the spot, tearing up the minimalist sofa in the process. Somewhere there was a universe where her corpse – dressed as a nun – would be found spread-eagled on the pale grey rug, rigor mortis completing the work Botox had begun. The main problem with the theory of parallel universes is that the one where all the good stuff is happening is
never the one you're in
. Have you noticed that?

It wasn't until I got back to my flat – my empty, Nigel-haunted flat – that it occurred to me that despite Todd's scorn and fury, for the whole afternoon the secret agony of rejection and humiliation had disappeared altogether. (At least until Helen came in.) It was as if Todd Jarman, of all people, had given me back something of myself. Maybe it was the job, restoring my sense of status. Or something. I ate an unhealthy supper consisting of a sandwich and a can of soup, watched a video of
X-Men
, and went to bed determined to dump Russell Crowe for Hugh Jackman.

I was a mutant known as Chameleon, since my skin reflected, or perhaps refracted, light in such a way that I could make myself invisible at will, provided I had no clothes on. (In fantasy novels invisibility spells invariably extend to clothing. I think this is cheating, so I decided to adopt the scientific approach.) Embittered by the cruelty of non-mutants – like Helen Aucham – I was working for supervillain Ian McKellen, and had been ordered to sneak into Patrick Stewart's college and spy on the so-called students. Caught short in his room by the entry of Wolverine (Jackman), I froze, fearful that a ripple in the air might betray my presence. He stripped and went into the shower, muscles flexing in his lean, pantheresque body, while I waited, motionless, knowing myself trapped. To open the door and slip out unnoticed would be impossible. When he re-emerged, water-droplets beading his bare torso, I found myself terrifyingly conscious of his maleness, of the fact that we were both naked, in close proximity, in his bedroom, though he was still unaware of me. Then he moved in my direction, and involuntarily I shrank back. He sensed something, his hand reached out – and touched my nipple. I stood rooted to the spot, half in fear, half in fascination, while he explored my body, discovering me by touch, murmuring my pseudonym: ‘Chameleon. Chameleon.' His response was obvious: his organ lifted and stiffened into a pole so large and powerful that I flinched at the sight. Then suddenly he slammed me against the wall; I started to fight but knives sprang out of his hand; the tip of one blade pricked my throat. ‘I know you,' he said. ‘I know who you work for. Reveal yourself!'

‘No!' I gasped, and then he was inside me, pounding and pounding at me, filling my unseen body, biting and kissing in the battle for my surrender. I struggled but in vain, unable to resist the pleasure, and visibility flooded through me like a giant blush, showing me in all my nakedness and vulnerability, and I came and came and came . . .

Afterwards, I lay panting and sated, relaxing towards sleep. I speculated idly on the mechanics of invisibility, wondering if in the foregoing scene my mutant powers could realistically be extended to cover hair, eyes, and teeth. J. K. Rowling, of course, had used a cloak.

But then, nothing like that had ever happened to Harry Potter.

On Saturday, Lin, Georgie and I had a girls' night out. We would see each other regularly every lunchtime and often for a quick drink after work, but a full evening together was rare since Lin's nanny problems meant she hardly ever had a babysitter, and even when she did chronic parental guilt usually sent her running back to assist with homework and listen to outpourings of childhood Angst. And until lately I had been preoccupied with Nigel, while Georgie was busy with Cal in the week and socialised with other friends at weekends. However, it was she who had declared a Saturday night session was long overdue, and Lin had persuaded Sean's mother to take Meredith as well as the twins. ‘The house feels so empty without them,' she sighed. ‘So quiet. Like a graveyard . . . It's heaven. I actually managed to tidy all the guff away this afternoon and hoover round. Bliss.'

‘Life can hold no more,' Georgie said absently. ‘How are we getting on with our wishes?'

‘I'd forgotten all about that,' Lin admitted.

‘Do I look like a sex goddess to you?' I snapped. I wanted to talk about Todd Jarman, and Helen Aucham, and alternate universes. I wanted to avoid talking about Nigel. The wishes were a side issue.

But Georgie was determined to stick with it. ‘It's what we really want out of life,' she insisted. ‘We ought to focus on that, instead of being sidetracked by everyday trivia. Achieving your goals is only a matter of determination.'

‘Have you had a row with Cal?' I asked.

‘N-no. But I have to dump him. Soon. He's never going to pay my credit-card bill. I'm still attractive enough to pull a millionaire – I
think
so, anyway – but it's going to get harder. In ten years' time I'll need a millionaire to pay for the plastic surgery so I can pull millionaires. I shouldn't be frittering away the last of my youth – or whatever – on a married man with no spare cash.'

Youth, I felt, was stretching a point, but I didn't argue. After all, I was heading for thirty, and the Bridget Jones years.

‘So what have you done about meeting the Man of your Dreams?' Georgie demanded of Lin.

Lin looked blank. ‘Well – nothing. I mean . . . it's up to Fate, isn't it? You just look across a room, and the magic happens. You can't make your own magic, can you? That's one you have to leave to the fairy in the Wyshing Well.'

Georgie clearly thought that you could make your own magic and was about to say so, but I interrupted. ‘To meet the Man of your Dreams you must start by meeting men,' I pointed out. ‘You should have more social life.'