Happily Ever After

She looked down at the poem. ‘A Happy Ending for Me’. She ripped the page out of her notebook and tore it into tiny pieces, her bottom lip sticking out as the tears she had pushed down inside her came up; and as she sank to the floor, Eleanor Bee hugged her knees and told herself that one day, it’d be OK. She’d be a grown-up, and she would have a happy ending. The nice sort. Happily ever after, with a house full of books, a video recorder to tape Neighbours and all the clothes she wanted from Dash and Next.

But even as she sat there, rocking herself, tears dropping freely onto her scabby knees, her dark fringe falling into her eyes, she knew that sounded stupid.

‘London eats up pretty girls, you know.’

‘Not me!’ she assured him triumphantly. ‘I’m not afraid!’

Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber

April 1997 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)

‘SO, ELLE, WHAT are you reading at the moment?’

Her palms were stuck to the leather chair and Elle knew if she moved them they would make a loud, squeaking sound.

‘Me? Oh …’ Elle paused, and tried to gently manoeuvre one hand out of the way, but found she couldn’t. ‘I don’t know. Um …’ She racked her brains for the ‘buzz phrases’ she and Karen had gone over that morning in Karen’s tiny kitchen. Karen had written them on Post-it notes.

Buzz phrase. Buzz phrase. Oh, God.

‘Well, I love reading,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m passionate about it.’

Jenna Taylor tapped her biro on the grey plastic desk. She cast her eyes over to the blue fabric wall dividers, then looked back, forcing a smile to her face. ‘Yes, that’s great, so you’ve said. What are you actually reading at the moment, though?’

Elle already knew this interview could not be going more badly. It was like when she’d begun her second driving test by pulling out and nearly crashing into a grey Mercedes which meant an automatic fail, and she’d still had to take the rest of the twenty-minute test. But her mind was a total blank. She could feel the angry red blush she always got when she was flustered starting to mottle the skin below her collarbone, creeping up her neck. Soon her face would be luminous red. She moved one hand. A high-pitched, farting shriek emanated from the chair. ‘Um – what kind of thing do you mean?’

Jenna’s voice was icy. ‘I mean, can you demonstrate that you’re up to speed with what’s going on in the world of publishing at the moment? If you love books as much as you keep saying you do, it’d be great if you could give some examples of what you’ve read lately.’ She smiled a cold smile.

Elle looked around the tiny open-plan office. It was almost totally silent. She could hear someone typing away at the next office space to Jenna’s, and the whirr of the air conditioner, but apart from that, nothing. No one talking at all. They were all reading, probably. Being intellectual. Making decisions about novels and biographies and poetry and other things. How amazing. How amazing that she was even here, having an interview at Lion Books.

‘Lately …’ Elle knew what the truthful answer was, but she knew there was no way she could actually admit it. She was halfway through Bridget Jones’s Diary and it was the funniest book she thought she’d ever read, plus at least once every other page it made her shout, ‘Oh, my God, me too!’

But she couldn’t say that. She was at an interview for one of the most respected publishers in London. She had to prove she was an intellectual person of merit. Intellectual person, yes. She coughed.

‘Well, the classics, really. I love Henry James. And Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights is like one of my favourite books ever… . I love reading. I’m passionate about …’ Oh, no.

Jenna crossed her legs and wheeled the chair a little closer. ‘Eleanor, look around my office. If you’d done your research you’d know I publish commercial women’s fiction.’ She slapped some spines on a shelf, dragged out a handful of thick paperbacks. ‘Gold foil. Legs in lacy tights. I need a secretary who wants to work with commercial authors.’ Her face was hard. ‘If you like Henry James so much perhaps you should be applying for a job at Penguin Classics.’

Elle could feel hot tears burning at the backs of her eyes. The red blush was crawling across her cheeks, she knew it. I don’t understand Henry James. I only liked The Buccaneers on TV. I’ve applied for jobs everywhere and no one’s interested. I’ve been sleeping on a friend’s floor for three months and eating Coco Pops twice a day. I’m drinking in the last-chance saloon, Jenna. Please, please give me a break.

‘… If you’d told me you liked Bridget Jones, for example, or you were reading Nick Hornby, or Jilly or even bloody Lace I’d have some indication that, despite your total lack of office experience, you were interested in working in publishing. Hmm?’ Jenna fingered a lock of long Titian hair with her slim fingers.

‘I do like Bridget Jones,’ Elle said softly. ‘I love it.’

‘Really.’ Jenna obviously didn’t believe her. She looked at her watch. ‘OK, is there anything else you’d like to say?’

‘Oh.’ Elle looked down at her sweating thighs, clad in bobbling black tights and a grey and black kilt that, she realised now, was far too short when she was sitting down. ‘Just that … Oh.’

I know I screwed this up, can you give me another chance?

I really need this job otherwise I have to go back to Sussex and I can’t live with Mum any more, I just can’t.

I have read Lace, some bits several times, in fact, it’s just I can’t talk about it without blushing.

My skirt is too short and I will address this issue should you employ me.

No, no, no. ‘I – no. Thank you very much. It was lovely to meet you. I … fingers crossed!’ And Elle finished by holding her hands up, making a thumbs-up sign with one, and crossing her fingers with the other.

‘Right …’ Jenna said. There was a pause as both of them stared at Elle’s hands, shaking in mid-air. ‘Thanks for coming in, Ellen. Great to meet you.’

‘Eleanor …’ Elle whispered. ‘Yes,’ she said more loudly. ‘Thanks – thank you! For this opportunity.’ That was one of the phrases, she remembered now. ‘I’m a keen enthusiastic self-starter and I’ll work my guts out for you,’ she added, randomly. But Jenna was ushering her out down the narrow maze of passageways, and Elle realised she wasn’t listening, and furthermore she, Eleanor Bee, still had one hand cocked in a thumbs-up sign. ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, as they reached the lifts.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Jenna smoothed down her lilac crêpe dress and fanned her fingers through her glossy hair.

‘Ah. Nothing,’ Elle added. She got into the lift. ‘Thanks again. Sorry. Thanks then – bye.’

The lift doors closed, shutting out Jenna’s bemused face.

I MADE A thumbs-up sign.

Elle weaved her way down the Strand, swinging her handbag and trying to look jaunty. ‘Let’s all go down the Strand,’ she sang under her breath. ‘Have a banana. Oh, what …’ Her voice cracked, and she trailed off. She glanced at her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. She looked awful, that stupid short skirt, why had she bought it? And that silly blue top, it was supposed to look like silky wool, but what that actually meant was that she had to hand wash it. Her light brown hair was too long and thick, tucked behind her ears and sticking out in tufts. She stared at the window again, and winced. She was looking into the window of a Dillons bookshop with a banner bearing the legend ‘Our Spring Bestsellers’.

‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin … I read that last summer, why on earth didn’t I say that?’ Elle smacked her forehead gently with her palm. ‘The Celestine Prophecy – oh, God, that’s the crazy book Mum’s reading, did she really want me to talk about that? That’s not literature!’ She stared at the array of books. ‘The Beach … Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus … what does that mean?’

Elle slumped her shoulders and stared at the Pret A Manger next to the bookshop, where busy office workers were coming out clutching baguettes and soup. She wanted to eat in Pret A Manger. She’d never seen them before she came to London and to her it seemed the height of glamour, to go into a shop with other office workers and buy a proper coffee and a croissant.

But she didn’t have the money for a coffee from Pret A Manger, nor a desk nor a job. Elle caught her bottom lip with her top teeth to stop herself from crying. Come on, she told herself, standing in the middle of the Strand as people pushed past her. Buy an Evening Standard, go back to Karen’s, have a cup of tea while you go through the Jobs section and you’ll feel much better. There’s something out there for you. There is.

The truth is, Eleanor Bee was starting to get desperate. It was April. She’d left Edinburgh University the previous summer, and was still trying to find a job. It seemed all her other friends had something to do: Karen had a job as a runner at a TV production company, her old university flatmate Hester was doing an MA in Bologna, and the other, Matty, was in teacher training college. Her ex-boyfriend Max was a trainee accountant, she’d bumped into him off Fleet Street the other day. It was just before an awful interview at an educational publisher where Elle had not really understood what they were talking about and when they’d said, So do you think that sounds like something you could do?, she’d replied, Sure, can I let you know? No, the grumpy, large, middle-aged man in cords had said. I wasn’t offering you the job. I was asking if you thought you’d be able to cope with the job. Thank you, we’ll let you know. She was sure bumping into Max was the reason she’d been so flustered. Not that she even cared about Max that much – he was using hair gel, for God’s sake, and kept getting out his stupid new CD Walkman to show off to her. But it was the principle of the thing.

In February, Elle’s best friend from school, Karen, had said she could come and sleep on her sofa. ‘You’re never going to find a job in publishing in a tiny village in Sussex, Elle,’ she’d said briskly. ‘Bite the bullet and come to London.’ And Elle had accepted, nervous but also overwhelmed with excitement. London. She’d dreamed of moving to London, of living in the big city, since she was a little girl. She’d conquer it. She’d own grey wellington boots with heels. And have a matching grey briefcase, like the Athena poster of the city girl hanging off the back of a Routemaster bus blowing a kiss to her handsome boyfriend that Elle still had in her bedroom.

But London was very far from the welcoming and bustling literary salon Elle had expected it to be. Notting Hill was grimy, full of cracked pavements and crack addicts, and sleeping on the floor in Karen’s was no fun. She’d been here two months now. She’d applied for every job going, written to every publisher she could find in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to ask them for work experience. But no one was interested. She was discovering she’d been totally naive to think they would be. She’d had four interviews, and this one today, at a major publishing house, was like the big one that had to work out, and she’d clearly totally one hundred per cent blown it. She’d thought she was so prepared: she had read everything, everything, in fact Karen said the trouble with her was she couldn’t get her nose out of a book.

She hated the way she spent her days now. She’d sit in the silent flat, feeling crappy about herself and knowing she should buck up, watching Richard and Judy and dreading the moment when Karen would get back from work and say, in an increasingly unsympathetic tone, ‘So, what did you get up to today then?’ Her social life consisted of going to the pub or sitting around in the dark flat off Ladbroke Grove waiting for the electricity meter to run out. Plus Karen’s other flatmates, Cara the chef and Alex the ad man, clearly found Elle a hindrance rather than a delightful addition to communal living.

On the Tube back to Notting Hill, Elle wondered for the first time if she should have come to London at all. It wasn’t how she’d expected it, and even though she was used to not fitting in, she’d never felt less welcome anywhere, in her whole life. It struck her that if she packed up her meagre possessions this evening and got a train first thing tomorrow, she’d be back at her mother’s by lunchtime. But then – what? She and her mother, in the converted barn Mandana had bought after the divorce, doing what? Would it be worse than being here? Probably not.

Elle had a stroke of luck as she got off at Notting Hill Gate. Someone had left an Evening Standard behind on a seat and she scooped it up. It was a cold April day and she shivered in her thin coat, the paper clamped under one arm, as she walked through the empty streets, trying not to let her mood sink any lower.

It was just really hard, though, trying to find your place in the world. At university it had been so easy. You knew where you were going each day, what you were doing, and with whom. After university, the rules had suddenly changed, and Elle felt she’d been left behind. But the irony was, she knew exactly what she wanted! She’d always known! She just wanted to work with books, to read fine literature, to meet authors and to learn to edit, to have conversations like those she used to have with her Victorian Literature tutor Dr Wilson, about the Brontës and Austen and whether Middlemarch was the great Victorian novel or not and … that sort of thing. Of course, she knew she’d have to start at the bottom – she didn’t mind that at all, in fact she rather thought she’d like it. But that didn’t seem to make a difference.

What am I going to do? she thought to herself, walking briskly, head down. Will I just be someone who falls through the cracks in society and never gets a job? And turns into one of those weirdos who keeps every newspaper from 1976 and carries a brown satchel and goes through the bins? Oh, my God, is that going to be me?

The cold sharp breeze stung Elle’s eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and the Evening Standard dislodged and fell on the pavement, where a rolling gust of wind carried it off, into the middle of the road. She ran after it, and as she picked it up, noticed it was a week out of date. One whole week. She heaved her shoulders, and looked round for somewhere to dump the offending newspaper. There wasn’t even a bin and she wasn’t so far sunk into depression that she would just chuck it on the pavement. She stomped back towards the flat, muttering under her breath, not caring if she was taking one further step down the line towards being a newspaper-hoarding, bin-rifling weirdo, and thinking that the world was a cruel, cruel place.

ELLE SAT AT the kitchen table, reading the week-old newspaper and sipping a cup of tea, glad to be out of the cold, but still shaking at the injustice of the day she’d had. Absolutely no jobs yet again in the Evening Standard. She’d missed it last week; it had been sold out, and even if she’d had it a week ago it’d have been useless, unless she wanted to go into local government or work for a magazine called Red Knave, and she was sure she didn’t.

Washing-up was piled high in the sink. They’d had people round the night before; Alex had made pasta and a bong, and Karen had made everyone sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ into wooden spoons. Elle had wanted to go to bed early to prepare for her interview, but she couldn’t really get out her duvet and lie on the sofa while five other people were glugging Bulgarian white wine out of a screwtop bottle and yelling about the upcoming election.