Happily Ever After

‘I don’t,’ said Sam. She tucked her hair behind her ears and slung her flowery Accessorize bag over her shoulder. ‘But then I’m not the one who stayed out with Libby all night Saturday! Am I!’

She laughed, just a little too heartily but Elle, still cross, bit her tongue. Sam always wanted to come along with Elle. Elle hadn’t minded at first, but after Sam had fallen over onto Karen’s birthday cake at her party in July and then got so drunk she’d passed out at Elle’s friend Matty’s housewarming in Clapham under a pile of coats in the hallway, Elle had started reining in the invitations. They were flatmates, they weren’t joined at the hip. She’d spent her university years being the one who took the drunken mess home and she was damned if she was going to do it any more.

‘I’m off,’ Sam said. She was always in by nine, and usually left before Elle. ‘You in this evening?’

Then Elle remembered. She said, ‘I knew there was something I had to remember. Rhodes is coming over tonight.’

‘Your brother?’

Elle nodded. ‘I totally forgot. That’s why …’ She trailed off, and added, ‘I haven’t seen him for –’ She tried to remember. ‘Well, since Christmas, and then he left early.’

‘How come?’

‘Had a big row with Mum.’ Elle didn’t say any more.

Sam picked up her rucksack and changed the subject. ‘Wow, this manuscript’s heavy. I’ll see you in a bit?’

Putting her mug in the sink, Elle grabbed her bag. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. She double-locked the flimsy wood-chip door, and followed Sam down the stairs, out into the September sunshine.

‘Did you finish it?’ Sam said. Elle looked blank. ‘Polly Pearson? Isn’t it brill?’

Her handbag was suddenly heavy on her shoulder. Elle peeked at it, saw a thick manuscript, untouched since Friday. ‘Oh, my God.’ Elle’s face paled. No wonder her hungover brain was trying to tell her she’d forgotten something. It was two things. Rhodes tonight and now … and now this. She clutched the heavy bag. Of course. ‘I promised Rory … I said I’d finish it over the weekend.’

‘But you’ve read most of it,’ Sam said perkily, holding the straps of her rucksack and whistling as she strode along, like one of those stupid creatures in the Girl Guide handbook. Elle looked at her with loathing.

‘That’s not the point –’ Elle squeezed her eyes tightly shut. ‘I wanted to gather my thoughts, have a proper response. Be … you know, like Libby. Have something to say.’ Rory and Posy never asked her opinion on anything. She was virtually invisible, to them, to Felicity, to everyone. This was the first manuscript about which they’d said, ‘Elle, we’d like to know what you think.’ As though they were interested in her opinion. Libby was the one who could chat fearlessly to Rory and Jeremy in the pub, whom the authors knew when they rang up: ‘Yes, Paris, it is Libby,’ she’d say, if she picked up Elle’s phone for her. ‘How are you? What can I do for you today?’ She was able to go up to agents at launch parties and introduce herself, and she always knew the right thing to say: ‘Hi, I’m Libby, Felicity’s assistant? Yes, we spoke last week! I just wanted to say how much I loved Broken SWAT Team / Mother of All Ills / Lanterns Over Mandalay.’

Sam cut in on her thoughts. ‘Hey, do you want to go to Kensington Palace after work and lay some flowers?’

‘No,’ said Elle crossly, though she did want to, very much. She pulled the dog-eared manuscript out of her bag and started reading it as she walked along the street. ‘I need to finish this before we get in.’

‘Fine,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll hold you.’ She took her elbow and grinned at Elle, as Elle walked off the kerb. A bus swerved to avoid her, then hooted loudly, the passengers shaking their fists at the pair of them.

SAM RABBITED ALL the way in on the Tube, about how much she loved Dave (though Elle had met him but once since she’d moved in), and about how her sister had told her yesterday if the baby was a girl she’d call it Diana Frances, in tribute. But Elle had become adept at blocking out Sam’s voice. She smoothed the manuscript on her lap and began to skim the last seventy pages, eyes darting in panic over the double-spaced lines. It was eight thirty. She had an hour.

The novel was called Polly Pearson Finds a Man, and unusually it had been sent to Rory, not Posy. It was by an Irish fashion journalist called Eithne Reilly, and already there was an offer on the table of £150,000 for two books, a sum so huge Elle found it hilarious.

‘Jeremy says everyone’s going to go mad for it,’ said Sam. ‘Oh. We’re at Oxford Circus already, isn’t it amazing how quickly the journey goes when there’s someone to chat to!’

Elle looked up, wild-eyed. ‘Help me. Does Colette get her comeuppance?’

‘Yes, she gets fired. And it turns out Roland is a real bastard, and Max is lovely, and she’s got it all wrong, because Colette lied to her about the Gucci account.’

Elle turned to the last page.

‘Damn you, Polly!’ Max Reardon said, striding towards her. ‘I want you to come back to Dublin with me. As my wife, not as my features editor!’

‘Max …’ Polly stared at him with huge blue eyes, filling up with water and running down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Max … Yes, please! Only one thing?’

‘What, darling?’ said Max, enfolding her in his arms and kissing her.

‘I want the job too. And I know what my first commission will be. “How To Find A Man”.’

The End

‘That’ll have to do,’ she said, stuffing the manuscript into her bag. ‘At least I know what happens in the end. Big surprise, it ends happily ever after.’ Elle followed Sam as the Tube doors slammed open.

‘Isn’t it amazing? Did you like it?’ Sam said, as they climbed onto the escalator, surrounded by silent fellow commuters.

‘Sort of,’ said Elle. ‘It’s so cheesy but it’s romantic. I loved Max even though he’s got the same name as my awful ex, which shows it must be good.’ Libby had thought it was rubbish, but Libby would. Elle couldn’t help it, she’d enjoyed it, but was that wrong?

‘I couldn’t put it down,’ said Sam. ‘So funny! The bit in the All Bar One!’ She hugged herself, and then whipped out her Travelcard. ‘Here we are, back on Tottenham Court Road,’ she sang. ‘What a lovely—’

‘Look, Sam,’ Elle said, suddenly desperate for a moment of peace and quiet, ‘I’m going to treat myself to a coffee and a croissant. I’ll see you in the office. Don’t wait for me,’ she added, amazed at how firm her voice was.

Elle stood in the queue, hugging her bag to her chest, smelling the coffee and feeling calmer already. Yes, this was a good idea. Sure, it was £3 she didn’t have, but she needed a pick-me-up, because all that crying and wine-drinking had left her feeling very feeble. She’d think of something intelligent to say about Polly Pearson as she walked to Bedford Square, and all would be well.

As Elle turned off Tottenham Court Road, clutching her paper cup of coffee, with her croissant in a waxy paper bag, she inhaled again, and smiled. It was a beautiful day now, the trees in the square at their darkest green, about to turn. She was early, too, for once. ‘Polly Pearson is a serviceable piece of chick lit, which I found to be—’ No, too pompous.

‘Polly Pearson? Oh, thanks for letting me read it, Rory. Yes, it’s very much of the genre but there’s a refreshing lightness of touch which reminded me of a – of a … a sherbet fountain. A feather. A feathery syllabub. Syllabub? Or do I mean sybil?

She turned the corner and checked her watch. It—

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! OH, MY GOD!’

Elle had bumped into something, and the shock made her fingers squeeze together, popping the plastic lid off her cup and pouring scalding coffee into the air.

‘My – God!’

‘Shit!’ Elle cried, seeing her coffee everywhere, all over this large bulky shape, which she realised was a person, a woman. It stared at her, blazing anger in its green eyes, and she felt her bowels turn to liquid. Oh no. Noooo.

‘What on earth,’ Felicity Sassoon bellowed, brown liquid pouring down her face, ‘are you doing, you stupid little girl?’

Passers-by on the wide pavement ignored them as Elle dropped her bag and croissant to the ground, and started dabbing at Miss Sassoon, who stood still, dripping with coffee, her huge bouffant grey hair flattened, her pale blue tweed jacket stained with brown. She resembled an outraged plump exotic bird stuck in London Zoo during a downpour. Elle ineffectually patted her, blotting the coffee with her thin brown Pret napkins. She reached her chest, and was about to start there, but Miss Sassoon pushed her away, furiously.

‘Clumsy creature,’ she said. ‘Get off me.’ She looked at Elle properly for the first time. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

‘Yes …’ said Elle. ‘I’m so … I’m so sorry … Miss Sassoon …’

Felicity Sassoon stared at her, and her eyes narrowed. Elle stood still, the feeling in her stomach confirming what she’d known since she’d woken up.

This was going to be an awful day.

SHE’D ESCORTED FELICITY to the office, into the care of Elspeth, who nearly fainted with alarm when her great leader had appeared stained and bedraggled, the damp residue of coffee-stained napkin clinging to her jacket and skirt, and Libby, who had rolled her eyes at Elle, as if to say, What the hell have you done now? After everyone else had gone back to work, Elle turned on her computer and then, telling Libby she was off to get something from the stationery cupboard, she escaped to the Ladies, where she cried for what seemed like hours but was in fact only a few minutes. She would be fired. Felicity would ring up everyone in publishing and warn them against hiring her. Probably she was doing it now.

When she’d finished, Elle went to the sinks, wiping her nose and staring at herself in the mildewy old mirror. She looked awful: red eyes, red nose, still puffy and ravaged from a weekend of crying and drinking. She rinsed her face with cold water and patted it dry, because that was what heroines always did in novels when they’d had a shock, but it just made her face even redder than normal and took off the Boots concealer she’d so carefully applied to the spot on her cheek. She looked down at the newly laundered towel on the handrail: it was streaked with light brown.

She was just giving another shuddering sigh, when there came a knock at the door.