The Mini-Break Read online

  ‘Yes yes yes, this all sounds excellent, Lulu, but when can I get my hands on the bloody thing? I’ve had to invent a lot of reasons for the delay. Poppy over at Finch and Murray was being her usual enthusiastic self but I could tell she was tetchy. You’re going to miss your slot if you’re not careful.’

  I was suddenly rather irritated. ‘So I miss my slot. So what, Sally? What is Poppy going to do? Come over here and give me a smack? I don’t think so. I’ve given them stuff over the years that’s made them a fortune. I’ve never missed a deadline. I think just for once they might cut me some slack.’

  ‘Don’t sulk,’ Sally said. She opened the window, letting in the noise from the traffic below us and with it a gust of rain. She closed it again with a grunt of annoyance. ‘This must be the most miserable spring on record. I’ll have to go up on the roof to the hut. Bloody smoking regulations. What’s the matter with people? Everyone seems to have basic human rights but me. Why haven’t I got the right to frigging smoke when I want to? I own this office, I should be allowed to smoke in here.’

  ‘Then smoke,’ I said. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  ‘Complaints from the management committee,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come up with me?’

  ‘No, not really. Why don’t you take Jassy and me out to lunch any more? We used to have some great times. Remember?’

  ‘Publishing’s not like that now and you know it,’ Sally muttered. She was already pulling on her raincoat and digging about in her handbag for her cigarette case. ‘So when can I have this much changed and much promised work?’

  I thought about it. I still wasn’t satisfied but I couldn’t put up with all this nagging.

  ‘End of the week,’ I said.

  ‘Definitely?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Right. Well look, I’m going up onto the roof with all the other criminals for a cancer stick. You go and finish your blasted heroine’s journey and I’ll see you on Friday. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, yes, give it a rest.’

  I left, taking the stairs down the five flights from Sally’s office as a sort of nod to exercise. I liked Sally; I liked the relationship we had. She was without fail moody, rude and impatient and Jassy and I were her favourite clients. God knows what she was like with the rest of them. She had the reputation of an attack dog and half the editors in London were terrified of her.

  Outside it was getting dark and the afternoon was cold and wet, an English spring at its worst. Why did we always seem to get rubbish weather these days? Was I just imagining my childhood winters had been crisp and cold with every Christmas a white one. Spring a time of sunshine and blossom? I stood for a moment and looked up at the sour sky, tinged to a nasty jaundiced colour by the streetlights.

  Devon wasn’t like this. Devon had proper starry skies and proper weather and proper men.

  Sod it!

  I had been doing so well in my attempt to not think about him.

  I crossed over and looked down at the river Thames, which was flowing sluggishly, a flotsam of cardboard and sticks wedged against Waterloo Bridge. I could do with a cigarette too if I was honest.

  I thought about the progress of Choose Yes and felt slightly sick with dissatisfaction. I’d been wrestling with it for months now. I wasn’t used to this at all.

  Usually the idea became the plot, which became the book.

  This light-hearted tale of love and happy-ever-after in Oxford amongst the dreaming spires now seemed pedestrian and more than slightly tedious. Perhaps I was too close to it? Perhaps I had read it too many times? I was sure there was at least one more plot hole but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered to go looking for it. The copy-edit would sort that out. But was Darcy still a sweet and attractive character or had I now messed about so much that she was, as I suspected, smug and irritating?

  I walked along by the side of the river for a few minutes, getting colder and wetter and more miserable.

  I collected a couple of bags of groceries, hailed a taxi and went home. I cleared out the rest of the ghastly food Benedict had left in my fridge, wiped all the shelves and sprayed them with the special biodegradable, planet-loving cleaning spray that didn’t clean at all as far as I could tell. Instead it left a greasy slick over everything. Then I organised all my additive-rich food inside and made a sandwich. That took care of a couple of hours and I tried to decide on the best place to write. The sofa seemed too soft, the chair in the window too hard. I had a small desk in an alcove where I had successfully churned out thousands of words before now. Today I couldn’t settle to anything and I had a mountain of work to get through before Friday. I began to panic.

  I calmed down by making some proper coffee in a cafetière and chucking the decaffeinated stuff Benedict liked down the waste disposal. I did a bit more fiddling about with my book and phoned Jassy. She didn’t answer and I remembered she was going to some exhibition at the Natural History Museum and had probably turned her phone off. I did a bit of sighing and then went out onto the balcony to have a cigarette. If I was hoping to sell the flat quickly it wouldn’t do to have it smelling like a giant ashtray. I wasn’t actually sure that I was enjoying smoking again. Which was just as well as the price seemed to have rocketed in the last few years.

  I plumped up the sofa cushions and straightened the rug in front of the white pebble gas fire. Then I tweaked the carefully chosen ornaments that Benedict had put on the coffee table next to it. Two glass things we had bought in Murano and a weird sculpture of three things that were supposed to be ducks. Benedict had bought it for me as a birthday present last year when I had been hoping for a cashmere sweater.

  I’d dropped enough hints. And I’d dropped the catalogue into his briefcase with the corner of the right page turned down and even the colour and size ringed in red biro.

  I went and found a plastic box and packed all of the ornaments away. Then, getting into the swing of things, I went through the whole room picking up stuff that was his. There was a lot. I ended up with two boxes and three black bin liners full of his books, magazines, clothes, maps, chargers and discarded bike-themed gadgets to show him how fast/slow/accurately/brilliantly he was pedalling. Twat.

  I had some more coffee and sat out on the windy balcony in my coat to have another cigarette. Perhaps I would develop a terrible nicotine addiction and a rattling cough? I would lie on a couch, pale and wan like a modern-day Mimì from La Bohème and blame Benedict. My phone rang. It was my estate agent who already had the lively cough I had been imagining.

  ‘Christy Church here from Church, Barratt and Glym. Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I want to send one of the chaps round to take some measurements and we are going to need some better photos. When’s convenient?’

  I looked around. It looked a bit shambolic actually what with my tidying up and chucking out.

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon?’ I said, ‘I’m having a bit of a—’

  ‘Good. One thirty,’ she said. ‘We have the spare set of keys you gave us; you don’t need to be in. In fact we prefer it if you are out. People get very precious about things and Barry likes to move things, you know. Get the place looking stylish.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Never one to waste words, Christy ended the call and suddenly and totally unexpectedly, I began to cry. Proper crying too. Huge sobs and tears and snot and everything. I sank down onto a chair and howled. I cried so hard I gave myself a headache. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child. Probably when some guinea pig or other had died or escaped. Or when Jassy had got the boy I’d been after. That happened a lot.

  What was I doing with my life? Was this it? Producing a series of books about love and kindness and tenderness and people meeting their soul mate. Their Mr Right. The love of their life?

  I didn’t know about any of those things. I might just as well write about life on Mars or ghost hunting or world peace. They were just as unlikely as finding the one man in the univers
e who understood me, cared for me and who didn’t smell, have any disgusting habits or look like Donald Trump.

  God, crying is really exhausting if you do it properly and I don’t think the cigarette helped. It made me feel worse than if I hadn’t bothered. I sat in the chair for a while after I eventually stopped producing my own personal tsunami and tried to calm down.

  *

  I was back at Sally’s office on Friday afternoon feeling far from happy with life. There was something about this latest book that I knew wasn’t right. But I didn’t know what it was any more than I knew what was wrong with me. I was half hoping Sally could at least sort out the book, and I didn’t have to wait long. She opened the email I had sent her the previous evening. When I sat down in one of her stylish but uncomfortable chairs she didn’t waste a moment.

  ‘Thanks for coming in. You look shit by the way. Are you ill?’

  ‘Bit of a cold coming, I think,’ I said. Evidently all that time messing about with Touche Éclat and eye shadow had been wasted.

  ‘Look, Lulu, you know I’m one of your biggest fans,’ she said.

  Oh boy, this didn’t sound good. That was the sort of sentence inevitably followed by the word but.

  ‘But I have to say this one, what’s it called Choose Something?’

  ‘Choose Yes,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘Well it’s not quite what I was hoping for. I’ll be honest, there are chunks of some of your other books in this one. Now usually that doesn’t really matter but this time, well … I’ve had a look through and for a start you’ve already used the name Jake Collins.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘In Best Before Date. I know you have because it made me think of Jackie Collins. And the sex scene in chapter seven is practically word for word the same as a sex scene in Five Miles to Midnight. Did you realise you’ve just swapped snow for sand? Again I think you could get away with it to some extent, but when both times your MC is wearing – and I quote word for word – nothing but a smile as big as her need for him. He pulled her down on to his body, hot hard and ready for her, insatiable and knowing. Then I think you’ve come a bit adrift.’

  My mind whirled.

  ‘Did I?’ I said, feeling a bit sick.

  I never had conversations like this with Sally. She’d supported me, found me publishers, cut me deals all round the world. It was my – what was it? Seventeenth book? I couldn’t actually remember. Eighteenth?

  ‘I thought we were friends,’ I said rather pathetically.

  Sally made a noise of sheer exasperation. ‘Of course we are bloody friends, you daft mare! This has nothing to do with being friends and you know it. This is to do with business. Your business. My business. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said rather sulkily.

  ‘Don’t sulk.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. I’m doing this for your own good. Look you’re a great writer, you’ve got a massive fan base, you shift thousands of books. And I want this one to be just as good as the other nineteen.’

  ‘This would be my twentieth book? I didn’t realise,’ I said.

  Sally shook her head at me and sat down with a bump. ‘Jassy is working on her fifteenth. She’s like you used to be. The Darling sisters. Churning out bestsellers like a well-oiled machine. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘perhaps I’ve got …’

  Sally held up a hand. ‘Don’t give me any crap about writer’s block. You always said there was no such thing. Two years ago we did a whole live Twitter feed on there being No Such Thing as Writer’s Block. It created a massive thread.’

  ‘Yes all right.’

  ‘So?’ Sally said.

  I held my face between my hands and closed my eyes. ‘I don’t know. I feel like I’m in a fog. I can’t seem to concentrate. I used to be able to get the words out like a machine gun. Now I’m hard put to string a sentence together. That’s why I went to Devon remember? That and Jassy’s knee.’

  Sally thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps you need a proper holiday?’

  ‘I hate holidays; you know I do. Anyway, I think my passport is about to expire.’

  ‘No one hates holidays. Renew your bloody passport. Take some time off. Think about things and recharge the old batteries.’

  I sat and gnawed at a thumbnail for a few seconds.

  ‘Old batteries. That’s rich. Do you know I’m nearly forty? I know I only admit to thirty-six, but I’m actually thirty-nine. If I carry on like this I’ll soon be younger than Jassy. I’ll be forty in August.’

  ‘So?’ Sally said with a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘Who cares? Lots of people knock off a few years.’

  ‘But I know I’m going to be forty in August. I care. Nothing changes that. I wrote my first book when I was nineteen. What am I doing?’

  ‘Is this a why are we all here moment?’ Sally said, tapping a packet of cigarettes on her desk. ‘If so, please spare me. We’re here to produce books that people buy, Lulu. We’ve both bought houses and flats and shoes and meals at the Ivy because of it.’

  ‘But what about me?’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you pleased you have achieved so much?’ Sally pulled out a cigarette and looked longingly at it. ‘Oh fuck this. If anyone complains I’ll say it was you.’

  She went and opened the window and lit up, taking in a deep drag of nicotine with a face that registered near ecstasy.

  Perhaps I should have one of hers if it guaranteed such pleasure?

  ‘Well? Aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  Sally sat on the window seat and smoked her cigarette, looking thoughtfully out at the Thames.

  ‘I wanted to be a doctor you know,’ she said. ‘I had all sorts of unrealistic ideas about what it would be like. I’d have been useless at it. I couldn’t do chemistry. I went to a girls’ grammar school and the science teaching was crap. Brilliant if you wanted to be a teacher or a civil servant but … well, never mind. Then – here’s a funny thing – I wanted to be someone like you.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘I wanted to be you at one point. Not now obviously because I’ve married Henry and we have Enid. But some years ago – before I met Henry – I thought that if anyone had it all, it was you. Clever, popular, talented, attractive, successful. And now you’re telling me I was wrong?’

  ‘Look, Sally, I’m not so stupid to think a man would solve my problems but I have had a succession of Benedicts. The last one – like Elvis – has just left the building. Jassy has Ralphie. And no I wouldn’t want Ralphie Sutton if I were paid. I don’t have a Henry. And I don’t have an Enid. How is she by the way?’

  ‘Fine. Nearly six. Growing up fast. A nightmare and a delight in equal parts. That’s what you get for having a child when you’re forty-three so just think about it.’

  ‘Goodness, is she really?’ I shifted in my chair, trying to think. ‘I have to find something else. I can’t seem to focus. Maybe I have executive burnout. Perhaps writer’s block actually does exist? And I’m selling my flat. I’ve told Benedict he has a month to find somewhere else.’

  ‘Bollocks. I know! Go to India and visit an ashram. Learn how to meditate and find your inner whatsit. Isn’t that what people do when they have a midlife crisis? Or unlock the secrets of the universe by giving some dodgy shaman in Thailand your bank account details and PIN. That will solve all your problems. There’s nothing like having no money for making you focus.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Charming.’

  Sally stubbed out her cigarette on the windowsill and turned to look at me.

  ‘Seriously, Lu, take some time off. Get over Benedict. You don’t have to sell that flat just to get rid of him do you? But you do look shit. In fact you look as though you’ve spent the last few days crying. I can stall the publishers with this book. I’ll tell them some old spiel about you exploring a new genre or researching the Pilgrim F
athers or something.’

  I turned away so she couldn’t see how close I was to crying again.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, rather crossly.

  ‘There we are then, that’s settled. Go away from London. Get away from all this. Use Barracane House all you like. It’s going to mean we will be late delivering the next book, but I can sort that with the publishers. Ask them to cut you some slack. Maybe I’ll pop down at weekends and see how you’re doing. I know! I’ll bring Enid. That’s a great idea! No sooner do I get her back into school than they spring a holiday on me. I never have any idea what I’m going to do with her. Why is it that the more expensive the school is the shorter the terms are? I keep meaning to keep a log of how many days she actually spends a full day in the classroom. Nature studies and she’s out in the grounds looking for beetles in her official fifty-quid wellies. Art appreciation means a ruinously expensive outing to the National Portrait Gallery. Home economics means a trip to Waitrose using the official twenty-quid school clipboards. A couple of days in her company will knock all this nonsense out of your head.’

  *

  Barracane House.

  Devon.

  The damp, wind-scored moors.

  That incredible feeling of being in the right place.

  Joe.

  Chapter Eleven

  I got back to my flat just before three o’clock. It was a dark, depressing afternoon with freezing rain splattering onto my legs. Bloody English weather. Maybe I did need to get some sunshine.

  I changed the sheets, packed a couple of cases, cleaned out the fridge into a cardboard box to take with me so at least I would have a few vegetables and bread. Then I sent a couple of emails and rang Benedict. Of course it went straight to answerphone so I left him a long message telling him to get on with finding somewhere else to live. Eventually I was cut off by the beep so I phoned back and left another message, not quite such a polite one this time and again was cut off. So I phoned back for a third time and told him I’d found the pregnancy test in my bathroom and then called him out for the unprincipled rat that he was.