B00BCLBHSA EBOK (5 page)

“Yes, of course I can,” said Emily. “See you later, Winnie.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, sugar,” said the voice. “Buh-bye.” Emily went back to the table to tell Morgana that Winnie would be late.

“Oh, crikey. I hope she’ll make it in time for tea with Lex,” Morgana said. “She say what time she’d be here?”

She had not. Emily did a passably good imitation of Winnie’s accent as she attempted to relay the details of the conversation as accurately as possible. “I go by the name of Winnie,” Emily drawled.

“Yes! Winnie. Her name’s
Winnie
. Ha ha ha,” Morgana said, as if to cut Emily off. She was behaving rather strangely. “That’s it. I think we get the gist of it! Is she on her way here, now?”

“Winnie?” said Cerys, when Emily had relayed the message. “Winnie…” She was obviously searching her memory for something.

“Not sure if she’s ever reviewed one of yours,” said Morgana, a little nervously. “But she’s very generous, usually. Four or five stars. A great
friend
to romance authors.”

“She sounded American,” said Emily. “She said she’d be a bit late.”

“She is American. She coincided a visit to English relatives so she could attend the conference,” said Morgana. “I do hope we won’t disappoint; she was very keen to join us here.”

“Bloggers make my blood boil, that’s the beginning and end of it. Why can’t people keep their opinions to themselves?” Cerys said.

“We hardly want them to,” said Morgana. “They help us sell books.”

But Cerys tutted and tsked, flicking at crumbs on her lap as if she imagined herself to be flicking minuscule bloggers onto the carpet where they would be crushed beneath her feet.

“Now, the reason I set this up,” said Morgana, with an eye on Cerys, “was so that these bloggers would come here and say nice things about us and our books. The three women who’ve been invited here are winners of a short story competition I organized online—so many book bloggers are also aspiring authors, it turns out—and their prize is to meet us and have dinner, and have a meeting first with my agent, Lex Millington, over tea.”

“Lex?” said Zena, sharply. “He’s still working?”

“We get a little publicity, and they get a little encouragement,” persisted Morgana. “And Polly will drop in and give them some tips about how to get published and make as much money as she does. They’ll love that.”

“Course they will,” said Cerys. “No one ever imagines they’ll get published and be unsuccessful.”

“No, but it’s nice to dream, isn’t it? Lex will have tea with them and be charming. He’ll talk to them about the industry, which means talking about himself, really. He enjoys that—and they’ll enjoy it, too.”

“You’re messing with things you don’t understand,” said Cerys, as if blogging was witchcraft. She leaned forward and waggled her forefinger accusingly. Her next words were prophetic: “It can’t end well.” Then she sat back in her seat and folded her arms.

“So Winnie wrote the best story in your competition?” said Emily to Morgana. She had begun to see that one of the ways she could be most helpful in her temporary new job would be to distract the members of the committee, and calm them when they behaved like tetchy infants. Perhaps Morgana’s jingly, soft-toy appearance had some kind of practical application after all.

Morgana blushed. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. But she has the most popular blog.”

“You can’t just write books that make readers feel good, these days,” said Zena, seeing—before Emily had time to hide it—that she slightly disapproved of the competition being rigged. “You can’t just sit at home and
write
. You got to do competitions and giveaways. You gotta reward people for reading your books. It’s not enough that they feel good when they read them, they got to feel good
about
reading them. In other words, you got to get ’em to like you.”

“One way to do that is to encourage their aspirations,” said Morgana.

“Rrrrright!” Zena bared her teeth, as if—despite what she’d just told Emily—she’d sooner bite her readers than encourage their aspirations. Then she put a spoonful of sugar in her tea, stirred it vigorously, and drank a mouthful, as if she had just swallowed some nasty medicine.

“It doesn’t matter how much encouragement you give, you can’t teach people how to write,” said Cerys. “Good writing comes with practice.”

“Ach,” said Archie, very softly.

Cerys said, “No offense.”

Archie rubbed the palms of his hands on his knees, and then crossed his arms and clamped his hands on his biceps as if to keep his hands still, though Emily noticed his fingers scratching at his skin through his jumper; not in the scrabbly, frantic way of someone who is crawling with ants, but gently, the way that someone might scratch under the chin to comfort a dog or a cat. There was something wary and closed off about Archie. But Emily knew that few writers were as extrovert as the irrepressible Morgana, so Archie’s demeanor didn’t strike Emily as unusual. But watching him sitting there, hugging himself, Emily also saw that there was something boyish and vulnerable in Archie. He caught Emily looking at him and relaxed a bit, and smiled, as if they were two children in a classroom who weren’t paying attention to their lessons.

“Archie was on my Write Back Where You Belong creative writing program,” Morgana explained to Emily. “It’s where we met. But you’re right, Cerys. He’s the only one of my students, so far as I know, to be making a living from writing. Studying creative writing is not necessarily a route to success as a writer.”

Archie said, “No offense taken.”

“It’s such a competitive business these days,” said Morgana. “I’m not sure we should encourage it.” She seemed to want someone to contradict her, but no one did. So she continued: “I had been thinking of asking you all to help me choose a winner from among these three. I know we voted online for these three from the short list—”

“Did we?” said Cerys.

“Did we?” said Zena.

“Yes,” Morgana said. “But I’m wondering, should we choose one winner overall and make a fuss of whoever wins at the gala dinner tonight? Or make a fuss of all three of them as we’ve asked them here and they’ve been kind enough to come.”

“‘I don’t remember a short list,” said Archie.

“I’ve got the three winners here.” Morgana took a sheaf of pages from a plastic wallet in her enormous handbag. “First up is Maggie’s.” She put her glasses on her nose. The page on the top had a short passage printed on it. “The brief was to submit a very short romantic story, no more than two hundred words long.”

“I don’t remember that, M, truly I don’t,” said Cerys.

“Never mind, I’ll read it to you:”

She stood by the hob, waiting for the water in the kettle to boil. She could hear the water bubbling and roiling like her emotions; she watched the steam rising, steadily building like the passion inside her. Steele advanced on soft-soled shoes, his muscled arms swinging. “NERIDA,” he said. “I want you. I have to have you.”

“No!” she cried. “No, Steele, we can’t. We mustn’t. You know what Father would say.”

But he grabbed her and whirled her away from the hob, and he kissed her, his mouth pressing down on hers.

Though his arms still encircled her, she pulled her face away. “I can’t give myself to you now, Steele. I just can’t.”

But his lips found hers again, his tongue opening her mouth like steam unsticking a sealed envelope. As he pressed the powerful length of his body against hers, the kettle whistled on the hob. It seemed to Nerida as though it was mimicking the song of desire that screamed its urgency inside her mind.

She had told him she couldn’t give herself to him now. But if not now, soon. She knew it. He knew it, too.

There was a short silence. Morgana took off her glasses and waited for a response.

“We all have to start somewhere,” said Cerys.

“Indeed,” said Morgana. “Writing doesn’t come as easily to some as to others.”

“It’s quite ambitious,” said Archie. “You’ve to admire her for that.”

“You gonna read this out tonight if it’s chosen as the winner?” asked Zena, jolted into speaking like a fairly normal person for once.

Morgana looked anxious. “Well, it won’t take long. It’s under two hundred words.”

“If you keep all three as equal winners,” said Emily, “perhaps there wouldn’t be time to read out all three stories?”

Morgana looked at Emily gratefully. “Oh, indeed! Yes, perhaps we shouldn’t set our guests against each other by inviting them here and then naming one of them an overall winner. It’s not very nurturing.”

“I take it the others are all of a similar standard?” asked Cerys.

Morgana said, “There was one with a likable, ditzy heroine who had a Maine coon cat. And in the other one the heroine dies in the end.”

“She dies in the end and this is a
romance writing
contest? For the love of all that’s holy, M! Whatever is the world coming to?”

“You must remember. I put them on the RWGB Forum so we could vote.”

“I don’t.” Cerys shook her head, bemusedly, as though she needed to move it from left to right or she might forget it was there.

“Why do so many people want to be a writer?” Zena said. She looked at Emily. “Don’t tell me: you’ve got a book at home, half-started.”

“Oh no!” said Emily. “I don’t want to be a writer. I mean, I like reading—”

“What’s your favorite sort of fiction, Emily?” asked Cerys.

Everyone suddenly turned to look at Emily. There was a sharp-eyed silence. Which would she choose? Historical fiction, like the books written by Archie and Cerys? Sensual romance, like the books written by Zena? Or how about the contemporary romantic comedies that Morgana specialized in?

A small black man approached the group and hovered. He was slight and lithe, like a long-distance runner, neatly (though rather fussily) dressed in a dull brown suit with a mustard-colored waistcoat. It was a little old-fashioned given that he was probably in his late thirties or early forties. He was wearing light brown leather driving gloves, which had the effect of making his hands look slightly too large for his body. Emily hoped that he would interrupt and save her. But he stood there ever so politely, waiting to be noticed. Emily saw that he smacked his left fist into his open right palm a few times, very gently and quietly, with the restlessness of an impatient man who has never really got used to waiting. Everyone ignored him while they waited for Emily’s answer.

After a slightly desperate pause, she said, “I only read nonfiction.”

“Verrry good answer. Very good.” Morgana laughed and shook her head. The others joined in, appreciatively. Morgana said, “It’s difficult to get through these conferences without wanting to kill someone, but if you can get through it without anyone wanting to kill you, you can consider yourself a winner. I can see already that you’re going to be a winner, Emily, you really are.”

“Mizz Blakely?” said the man in the waistcoat.

“Monsieur Loman!” said Morgana, pretending she had only just noticed him.

“I have brought the chocolates for your ladies,” said M. Loman. “Violet crèmes. They have been delivered to the kitchen.”

“How kind of you. I think they can go straight into the gift bags. The hotel will deliver them to the rooms tonight.”

“Shall I get them?” asked Emily.

Morgana looked at her watch. “Would you?” she said. “And then the gift bags are in the basement conference area, under the table outside the Montagu room. They’re easy enough to find.”

M. Loman nodded politely and turned to leave. But Morgana stood and grasped his hand. “Your chocolates are one of the highlights of our conference,” she said. “The authors do so look forward to receiving them. Last year’s raspberry crèmes—mmmmm! I closed my eyes as I ate one and felt
immediately
as though I were strolling through a walled garden in Kent in my negligee, stripping raspberries straight from the fruit canes and cramming them into my mouth, only to find that some superior being, some
God
of confectionery had coated them with dark chocolate. The whole experience was so delicious it just made me want to lie down and die with pleasure.” She released his hand and smiled.

M. Loman walked out of the bar with Emily. He didn’t seem happy. “These writers…” he said. “These women…” He looked as though the image of Morgana strolling through a walled garden in Kent in her negligee was not something he wanted to consider on a Saturday afternoon.

“She’s very lyrical, the way she expresses herself,” said Emily.

“But why express it only to
me
, in the bar of a hotel in Bloomsbury?” said M. Loman, irritably, punching his fist into the palm of his hand as he said “me,” as if to emphasize the injury this caused him. “Why not have every heroine of every novel discuss the merits of my beautiful chocolates? My Trio of Summer Fruits; my Lime and Coconut Caribbean Delights; my Violet Crème Caresses?”

“They’ve got some bloggers coming this year,” said Emily. “Perhaps they’ll mention the chocolates?”

“Bloggers!” M. Loman’s horrified expression suggested he might be getting them confused with something he considered unrefined, like truckers. Or muggers. Or joggers.

When they reached the dining room, Emily and M. Loman parted company—he to return to his confectionery shop in Knightsbridge, she to fetch the violet crèmes from the kitchen. Following directions from M. Loman—fingers thick and clumsy in his leather gloves as he pointed the way—Emily walked through the hotel restaurant to where swing doors marked “staff only” led into a suddenly much shabbier and utilitarian corridor, beyond which was the kitchen. She stared in at the
Titanic
-engine-room steam and noise, at the kitchen staff, and the chefs in their anachronistic uniforms, and she was struck again by the artificiality of the place, and felt again as if she had inadvertently traveled back in time. An angry chef in a white jacket and checked trousers came forward, knife in hand. “No public access!” he hissed. “No! No!”

“I’m trying to find some chocolates that were delivered here,” said Emily. She looked past him and thought she saw the boxes of violet crèmes on a table near a door at the back of the kitchen.