Happily Ever After (19 page)

    2. Spa weekend? I have a very dear friend who did the same last year in Mexico and it was so special. Can your mother travel to Mexico?

    3. Wine tasting in France, or even California? Bethany lives in Sonoma and I know would be happy to host us. I know this is not suitable for your mother.

    4. Girls’ weekend to Rome or Barcelona. Again, this might incur costs for my US friends, so maybe we should consider our options.

My preferred option would be a trip to New York. Let me know what you think! Look forward to talking with you soon. It’s so truly exciting.

Melissa x

PS I would love your mother to feel she is still welcome to come along if that’s appropriate.

Elle sat back in her chair and tried to breathe calmly. She earned £17,500 a year. She lived in the most expensive city in Europe, she took home just over £1,000 a month and she considered that a major achievement. Flights to New York, she knew from booking Rory’s trips there, cost at least £300. Then there was the hotel, the cocktails, the shopping till dropping… And what did she mean about Mum? Miss OCD, well, Rhodes was right about that, for sure. Twenty-four hours ago they’d never met, and this morning she was supposed to have come up with a four-point plan for Melissa’s hen weekend?

Elle had been almost relieved to discover that, though her affair with Rory had turned everything else she believed on its head, she was still bewildered by most weddings. She wanted to be with Rory, always, forever. But the rest of it—expensive once-worn dresses; thick, cloying cakes in icing like white cement; heavy, unscented flowers that looked like plastic; and this mysterious code of womanly behavior around weddings she couldn’t understand that used words like “girlie,” talked
about garters and involved a lot of screaming—left her cold. Elle had been to a wedding of a school friend the previous summer, in Dorset. The hotel had cost £120, the train fare was £50, the present was £40, the hen weekend was £170, and she’d ended up eating Rice Krispies for the rest of the month till payday. She wouldn’t have minded if it was Libby or Karen, or even Sam, but she didn’t even
like
Charlotte that much, and she couldn’t remember why she’d agreed to go except that it seemed you couldn’t do anything involving weddings by halves. There was a moment when, sitting round the table listening to all these girls talking incessantly about their boyfriends and relationships and how he never washed his socks and what kind of wedding they’d have, Elle had understood why her mother, who, after all, read fairy stories to children for a living, had said to her a couple of years ago, in one of her more expansive moments, “Be careful before you settle down, love. It’s the living with them that’s hard, not the falling in love. Anyone can buy a big white dress, you know.”

She thought about this a lot now she was with Rory, and felt Mandana would approve. They were in the hard period now. The future would be brighter.

As Elle was typing him an email, just a silly thing to say hello, she saw him dash in half an hour before the editorial meeting. He was dripping wet, the rain was still lashing the building and the square outside.

She had just written:

I know you’re having a hard time. I love you. I just wanted to say—

“Elle?” a voice behind her said, and Elle jumped, and pressed Control and Tab instantly, praying they hadn’t seen her. It was
Posy. “Have you got the figures for the new Victoria Bishop contract I asked you to print off?”

“Yes, yes…” Elle said, her fingers clumsily shuffling piles of paper in her in-box. “Um—oh…”

“Everything all right?” Posy said, her cheeks slightly pink. She was always suspicious, convinced something was going on behind her back. Elle could feel her face burning. She nodded, mute. “Look, just bring them to the meeting, Felicity’ll go mad if they’re not there. She’s in a funny mood today. OK?” she added.

“Yes… yes! Fine. Sorry, you gave me a shock.”

Elle sat back and breathed out.

The wind that day was so high that even up on the second floor, leaves blew past the old windows, which rattled loudly as the various members of the company took their seats for the meeting. Elle sat down and passed the sales figures over to Posy. “Here they are,” she said. “Hope they’re OK.”

Editorial meetings still made her nervous, even after all this time. You couldn’t anticipate Felicity’s mood, or her point of view. Posy didn’t smile. She just nodded. “Thanks,” she said. She was sitting in a row with Jeremy and Loo Seat, who was looking uncharacteristically somber.

There was a muffled hushing sound as the door opened and Felicity, flanked by Floyd and Rory, swept into the room and sat at the head of the table.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said, shuffling her papers. “Well, what a ghastly day. My morning has been enlivened somewhat by an article in
The Times
which says that—”

Elle groaned inwardly. Felicity loved a story. Why she thought it fostered company unity to hear a long tale about her childhood pet kitten, or the time she’d met Queen Mary, Elle had no idea. But she was always doing it, especially at the
start of editorial meetings. Elle looked down at her To Do list. Already she’d been annoyed by an email from the agent of a chick-lit author Rory had bought (to try and emulate
Polly Pearson
) called Katy Frank, saying they both thought the type on the new jacket was disastrously tomato-colored and this was a very serious matter. It had added, at the end:

Katy’s very worried about the takeover rumors and she’s not the only one. Are they true? Give us a scoop!

“Anyway,” Felicity was saying, “you may well have seen the article yourselves, or heard about it from friends. I can assure you there is nothing to worry about.”

Elle sat up. What was she talking about?

“The situation is this.” Felicity put her fingers together, her booming voice still slightly wheezy from the walk upstairs. “Someone has offered to buy Bluebird Books.”

Elle looked at Rory, but his eyes were fixed on the table. Did he know? Then she bit her lip; she understood now. Of
course
he’d known.

“They are a much bigger company, a conglomerate. Briefly, their bid would only be successful were enough members of the board to agree to sell them enough stock that they could mount a hostile takeover. Now, I have spoken to all of the board”—Felicity gave a rattling cough, and Elle looked at her in alarm, but she seemed unperturbed—“which is made up of relatives of my father’s and relatives of his original investors. We have nothing to fear. The sale will not go through. My son and I will be here for years to come.” She looked over at Rory, who gave her a quick smile. The room watched, transfixed. “Especially Rory! But you won’t be seeing the last of me for quite some time”—she reached forward, and patted the old mahogany table—“God willing.” There was a murmur of
approval around the room, and she beamed. “And so to business, but before we do—any questions?”

Joseph Mile raised his hand. “I have a question,” he said slowly. “Who are the board members considering the bid?”

Felicity gave a growling sound in her throat and stiffened slightly. “The ins and outs aren’t relevant, Joseph,” she said.

“They are relevant, if I may,” Joseph persisted. There was a tense silence. “I ask so you can reassure us that the offer to buy shares is being considered by only a couple of members of the board, rather than the majority.”

Felicity closed her eyes briefly. “Very well,” she said. Rory shot Joseph a look of anger. “My father’s cousins, Harold and Maud Sassoon, have the largest joint block of shares. They are considering the bid. I expect them, however, to reject it.”

“Why?” Joseph asked.

“Because I hope I have persuaded them that my vision for Bluebird has been and continues to be the right one,” Felicity said.

Joseph Mile nodded. “Thank you,” he said, pursing his lips delicately, as if he had won some excellent debating point. Elle saw Rory shoot him a look of pure loathing.

“Rory,” his mother said. “Do you have anything to add? You’ve been here through all this.”

“Not really,” Rory said. He turned to the rest of the room. “Look, guys, this has been a big shock. We’re one of the last independent publishers in London, and we’ll show them—ah.” He paused and then gathered himself. “Yes, we’ll show them. Bluebird can carry on into the twenty-first century stronger and better than before.”

Felicity looked at him in delight. “Excellently said,” she nodded.

“Lazy git just doesn’t want to work for anyone else,” Floyd whispered to Elle, when the meeting ended and everyone filed
out murmuring to each other, unsure of what to make of it all. “Likes having the ideas and getting you to do the work. He’d sink like a stone in another company.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Elle replied loyally, her head spinning. Someone behind her tapped her on the shoulder.

“Elle.” She turned around; it was Rory.

“Hi,” she said.

“I left a manuscript on your desk. Paris’s new thriller. Can you read it and make some notes, and we’ll discuss?”

“Sure,” Elle said. “I’ll come and see you later—”

His eyes were expressionless. “I said I’d get back to him with initial thoughts by the end of the week so—”

“OK, OK.”

He descended the stairs swiftly, not looking back. “You edit his manuscripts for him?” Floyd said, in disbelief.

Elle wanted to call after Rory, to see him turn round, see his handsome, sad face, reassure him that everything would be OK. “Yes, of course,” she said, after a moment. “I do it for Posy, too. It’s part of my job.”

“Bet Posy doesn’t pass it off as her own work, though.”

Elle ignored him. “Floyd, can you tell me something? I love this company, but why would anyone want to buy us? Aren’t we terribly old-fashioned?”

Floyd gave a short laugh. “You’re such an innocent, Elle. You know, we’re a gold mine, to the right buyer,” he said. “To a big company like Bookprint or Lion Books we’re dead attractive. We’ve got regular authors, big brand names, a profitable reference list, and we’ve got MyHeart. We know what middle England likes. May not be sexy, but it’s a damn good investment. Those ancient cousins have got umpteen greedy children who want the money. The takeover’s going to happen.”

He walked off, and Elle watched him crossly. Jeff Floyd was the gloomiest man she’d ever known; he managed to make
every piece of good news sound like a disaster. “She’s Top Ten again,” he once announced of Victoria Bishop. “But it’s the slowest week of sales for eighteen months. So she’d be dead in the water if she wasn’t.” But his words echoed in her ears. Rory wasn’t lazy. Elle knew she was learning more from Posy about how to edit a book, or negotiate a contract, than from Rory, who had a tendency to perch on the edge of her desk and say, “You need to make a splash. Why don’t you try and poach Helen Fielding?” or, “Let’s poach Jilly Cooper.” He wasn’t the most diligent of editors, but he wasn’t lazy. He loved big ideas, not the development of them. She loved him, but she wasn’t blind to his faults.

She wondered what this meant. When the old independent educational publisher Edward Olliphant had been sold last year all but five people had been made redundant. She looked round the office, and noticed everyone else was doing the same.

“Is it true?” Helena hadn’t been in the meeting. She hissed across the desk. “What they’re saying, that we’re up for sale?”

Elle nodded. “Someone’s tried to offer for us, but I don’t think you should worry. We’re privately owned, and the family has to want to sell. According to Felicity, they don’t.”

“But what if it happens? They’re not going to want you and me, are they? They only take the big people. We’ll be the first to go.”

“Oh, Helena, cheer up. It might never happen. And you never know, we might all die of the plague first.”

She kept her voice light, but she couldn’t help feeling a cold chill, which she assumed must be fear, run through her body.

ON HER WAY
to Sussex that Saturday, still panting as she’d overslept and nearly missed her train, hungover and clutching her coffee, Elle drew out her new Nokia 3660 and winced again. Though it was true that many a happy hour for her could be whiled away texting on her new mobile, she wished there were phone police patrolling the streets of London who would take your phone away if you were rolling out of the pub clearly having had too much to drink and about to climb aboard a night bus with no other distraction than the dangerous world of texting. As had happened last night with disastrous results. Elle clutched her coffee, shuddering at the memory.

Already the office was abuzz with gossip. People were nervous, eyeing each other up, speculating wildly at the pub. Elle could feel the change in the air, and she hated it. She had no idea what was going on; she hadn’t seen Rory on their usual Thursday, had barely even spoken to him. He was either on the phone or absent from the office. On Friday, she and Sam went for Just the One at the George MacRae with some other junior Bluebirds. Halfway through their first glass of wine, Rory had appeared, with Jeremy. They had waved at their table, but gone to sit around the corner.