Happily Ever After

Elle knew she should do the washing-up in a minute; perhaps then Alex would stop glaring at her when he came in and saying, ‘Oh. Hi.’ Which meant, ‘Oh. You’re still here, blighting my life.’ She didn’t like Alex much, all he seemed to do was show off his new mobile phone and take calls on it, then play Tomb Raider all weekend in the sitting room with his friend Fred. Elle had snogged Fred only the week before, more because she’d been trying to get to sleep and it seemed easier to snog him and then let them get on with playing Tomb Raider than tell them to leave. Plus Fred was actually an OK snog, even if she didn’t have much to say to him. He’d been there yesterday too – but he’d been in a funny mood, and she wasn’t sure he was interested any more, which wouldn’t be a surprise, to be honest. He had a job and a flatshare, he wasn’t sleeping in someone’s sitting room and reading week-old newspapers.

Elle took another sip of tea, and turned from the out-of-date Jobs section to the news pages, cravenly aware this was a waste of time. There was a picture of Tony Blair, meeting some old ladies, and smiling. He looked young and tanned, and his hair was pretty good. Elle couldn’t help thinking that was a plus point, not that it should matter but somehow it added to the overall romantic-lead sheen of him. Tony Blair always made her think of that line in Pride and Prejudice when Jane asks Lizzy how long she has loved Mr Darcy for, and Lizzy replies, ‘It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.’

Thinking of this now made her smile weakly. She closed her eyes and thought about Lizzy Bennet and Mr Darcy, wondering how they’d talk to each other after they were married and living at Pemberley. Because that always bothered her, what happened after the couple got over their misunderstandings to live happily ever after. She couldn’t help thinking Mr Darcy wouldn’t be sympathetic if Elizabeth ordered the wrong dinner service when a duke came to stay. She had seen what had happened with her parents, how vicious it had been, and Elle couldn’t ever imagine that they’d once been in love.

John and Mandana had been divorced for seven years. Sometimes it seemed ages ago, sometimes she could still remember, as if it were yesterday, their old, cosy, normal life at Willow Cottage. The final papers had come through as Elle was preparing for her GCSEs. There was a lot of lip service paid to not letting it affect her exams, and people treated her very carefully, as if someone had died: the headmistress even called her into her office for ‘a little chat’, to see if she was all right. Elle hadn’t known how to answer when Mrs Barber had asked her how she was coping. How did you explain that you were a horrible person, because you were glad they were splitting up, glad they wouldn’t be together any more, glad her dad was going away because these days he just seemed to upset her mum so much? Even when they had to sell the house and move to a barn outside Shawcross, and even when John remarried with what Elle overheard a friend say to Mandana was ‘insensitive haste’ she knew she didn’t care in the way she should. She’d wondered whether she was a homicidal maniac – she’d read a book about them and one of the first signs was a lack of empathy. But Elle was just glad it was over, because it was horrible living like that.

To her secret relief, however, Rhodes obviously felt the same way. He’d gone to college in the States and was now an analyst, working for Bloomberg in New York. The last time she’d seen him was at Christmas at Mum’s, and it had been awful – Mum had been drunk, Rhodes had told her she drank too much and was pathetic and anyone could see why Dad had left her, and then stormed out. Elle hadn’t spoken to him since. Mum always drank too much, but it had got worse, that summer in Skye, as their marriage got worse. Elle never knew what came first, like the chicken and the egg. She only knew their old life, where her parents had seemed OK, was over.

So Elle didn’t wonder what might have happened if her parents had stayed together. She knew the real ending after the ending. She wondered about people like Lizzy and Darcy, or Beatrice and Benedick instead. Often she felt she was the only person who didn’t believe they’d stay together, after the book or the play ended. She couldn’t help it; she just didn’t believe it.

She was pondering this, her knees under her chin, legs wedged against the table, when the door slammed and Alex came in.

‘Oh, hi, Elle,’ he said, not looking at her, and slamming his man-bag down on the table. ‘How’s it going? Any luck today then?’

‘OK, thanks,’ Elle said. ‘Yeah, I—’

‘I’m not staying,’ Alex said. ‘Meeting some guys from work at the pub. Just stopped off to change my shirt.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Elle, who found Alex’s obsession with sharp Ben Sherman shirts half tragic, half touching.

‘Hey.’ He stopped and grabbed the paper from her. ‘Can I just check something? Were you looking at it?’

‘At the jobs, but it’s fine, there’s nothing in it,’ Elle said, desperate to talk, even if Alex obviously wasn’t interested. ‘It’s a week old, anyway –’

Alex ignored her and started turning the pages. ‘Our new print campaign for Cape Town should be in here somewhere, we rolled it out last week and the fucking muppets haven’t sent us any copies yet.’

‘But this is last week’s –’

He ignored her, and struggled to turn the pages. ‘That’s fine. Where is it? Hey! There! How cool is that? Yeah, looks good.’

Elle followed his jabbing finger. ‘“Visit Cape Town, for a World of Possibilities”,’ she read. ‘That’s great.’

She nodded politely as Alex talked, and looked down again, her eye caught by something, she didn’t know why. And there, right in the middle of the Travel section, amongst ads for holiday lets in Cornwall and cheap flights to Thailand, she suddenly saw the following:

Editorial Secretary Required for Established Independent Publishing House

Enthusiastic Self-Starter / Graduate. Must have office experience

Competitive Salary: £11,000

Please send curricula vitae by post to:

Miss Elspeth MacReady

c/o Bluebird Books Ltd, Bedford Square

‘What’s that doing there?’ Elle asked. She snatched the paper out of Alex’s hand. ‘It’s – what’s it doing there?’

‘Don’t know.’ Alex stared at her, annoyed. ‘Actually, Elle, I was looking at that.’

‘Sorry, Alex,’ Elle said, clutching the paper to her bosom and looking at him imploringly, almost in a panic: what if he took the paper away, flung it out of the window, how would she get it back? ‘It’s a job, it sounds perfect… . I don’t know why it’s there, it’s in the wrong place… . Please, let me …’ She stared again at the text. ‘“Send curricula vitae … care of Bluebird Books”.’ She bit her lip. ‘Bluebird Books – I’ve heard of them! They’re proper, they – they’re old!’ She ran into Karen’s bedroom and scanned the precariously built IKEA Billy bookcase, crammed full of well-worn blockbusters, their cracked spines stamped with gold. ‘Yes, I knew it! They publish Victoria Bishop! And … Old Tom! They publish Old Tom. Well, Granny Bee would have been pleased.’ She glanced at her watch. It was nearly five thirty p.m. Too late to catch the post. There was no telephone number, either. No, a voice inside her head said. You’re going to go for this. You’re going to do something about this, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.

Elle bit her lip and marched back to the hall, pulled out a telephone directory, and thumbed through it, kneeling on the ground. Alex came into the hall and watched her.

‘Can I have the paper back now, please?’ he said, reaching forward.

‘No! Just give me ONE SECOND, Alex, PLEASE!’ Elle heard herself bellowing. Alex stepped back, annoyed.

‘You’re really starting to outstay your fucking welcome, you know,’ he murmured.

Elle jabbed her finger on the page, and started dialling. It was a week old, that ad – even if it was in the wrong place, what were the chances? ‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ she said. ‘It’s probably hopeless, but I’ve got to give it a go— Hello?’

‘Good evening,’ said a low voice, a girl’s. ‘Bluebird Books, how may I help you?’

‘Hello – yes. I – er – I just saw an advert in last week’s Evening Standard for the job of editorial secretary – I wanted to ask if I could still apply? There wasn’t a closing date.’

There was a silence, and then the voice spoke again, this time even lower, much closer to the speaker. ‘The job ad? You saw it? You want to apply? Oh, thank fuck.’ She coughed. ‘I’m so sorry. I mean, thank goodness.’

‘Thank goodness?’ Elle was astonished. This wasn’t the reception she was used to. The last job she’d rung up about, an editorial assistant’s job at an independent publisher in Bristol, the man on the line had said, ‘Sorry, position’s been filled,’ and put the phone down, like a scene from a film about the Great Depression.

‘You don’t understand.’ The girl on the other end sighed, and Elle realised she was around her age, despite the huskiness of her Lancashire-tinged voice. ‘No one’s applied,’ she said quietly. ‘Not a soul. I don’t understand it. And Miss Sassoon keeps checking, and we have to have someone in soon, otherwise she’ll go totally mad – it’s been a week, a week, and nothing! Nothing!’

‘Look,’ Elle said. ‘I think I know why.’

‘Why? Why what?’ The voice rose sharply again.

‘Well. The ad’s in the holiday homes section,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a total fluke I saw it.’

‘The what?’

‘Holiday homes. Between an ad for a nice cottage in Norfolk and a bungalow in the Lizard.’

There was a terrible silence, pregnant with meaning.

‘Oh … FUCK,’ the voice whispered. ‘FUCK. She is going to kill me. K.I.L.L.L.L. me. How did I—’

‘I don’t think it’s your fault, is it?’ Elle said. ‘It’s the people who do the ads, they put it in wrongly.’

‘She won’t see it like that. Oh, God, oh, Jesus,’ the voice said. ‘What am I going to do? That’s why. Oh, Jesus. She’s going to ask me tomorrow. Oh, Christ.’

‘Listen here –’ Elle said, authoritatively. She nodded to herself. Go for it! ‘Why don’t you get me in for an interview. Eh?’

There was another silence. ‘Yes,’ the girl said eventually, breathing out with a long whistle. ‘OK, can you come in tomorrow, first thing? She’s not got anything on then, neither’s he. And if you’re rubbish, I’ll just confess and we can do it again so we’ve got someone by the time Posy comes back from holiday. ’Cause she said she’d leave if she came back and they hadn’t replaced Hannah … Man alive.’ There was a loud thudding sound.

‘What was that?’ Elle asked, alarmed.

‘I was banging my head on the desk. Look, if you come in, please don’t tell Miss Sassoon. Please.’