Not Another Happy Ending (2 page)

The superstitions and playground taunts of childhood were long gone, but now she attracted a different kind of unwelcome attention, from the Armani-skinned lizards with large cufflinks who frequented the bars on Byres Road. And these days there was no dad to tell her it would all turn out happily in the end.

He was the one who'd inadvertently introduced her to the world of books, dropping her off in the public library to wait while he took care of a little business at the bookies across the street and then nipping in for a swift pint—or nine—at the pub next door. As he gambled and drank away their benefit money she immersed herself in books.

Even after he walked out of her life she continued to visit the library, just in case he came back. She hated him for leaving, but more than anything else she wanted him to come back. And as she waited for him to swing through the door with his big grin and too-loud voice, she
read. The library was her playground, her university. Here she was surrounded by familiar faces. Hello, Cinderella. Cheer up, Tess. Good day, Mr Darcy. As the years passed,
The Brothers Grimm
became
The Brothers Karamazov
until one day she picked up a pen and began to write her own stories.

Raindrops streamed down the cheeks of her reflection in the window. She remembered what ‘tristesse’ meant.

After almost a decade in Scotland, Thomas Duval still dreamt in French. Four years of university in Glasgow, followed by a brief internship with Edinburgh publisher Klinsch & McLeish (ending in a spectacular bust-up with the notoriously spiky Dr Klinsch) and then five years building up Tristesse had left him a fluent English speaker trailing a wisp of a French accent along with the added charm of a stray Scottish vowel. But at night, in his dreams, he was once more the golden boy from the Côte d'Azur, raised under hot blue skies, bestride his old Benelli motorbike racing the rich kids in their Ferraris and Lambos along the twisting coast road between Saint-Tropez and Cannes. And always with a different girl riding pillion.
Mais, bien sûr
.

But somehow despite the sun-soaked childhood, when he'd first arrived in Glasgow something stirred in his soul. He'd always loved Walter Scott, James Hogg, the gloomy heart of the Scottish canon. The first time it rained he
walked around the city without an umbrella until he was wet to the skin. He'd never felt so alive, which was ironic, since he came down with a bout of flu and missed the rest of Freshers’ Week. But his affair with Scotland had begun. His family thought he was mad. He ignored them and bought an umbrella. Soon, the tanned limbs of Brigittes and Hélènes gave way to the pale, freckled legs of Karens and Morags.

Still asleep, Tom reached an arm around the shape beside him in the wide bed. He began to mutter in French, a low, rhythmical sound, languid and masculine, capable of snapping knicker elastic at twenty paces, then slid one hand beneath the rumpled sheets—and froze. His smile slipped, replaced with a glower of cheated surprise.

He sat up and flung the covers from the bed. Beside him lay a chunky six-hundred pager. He'd just tried to make sweet love to a manuscript, and not even one worthy of his moves. A glance at the title—
The Unbearable Sadness of Daal—
brought back last night's bedtime reading: mediocre writing, derivative plot and two hundred pages too long.

He huffed and turned a bleary eye to the small bedroom. Manuscripts littered every surface. Uneven stacks of them sprang from the floor like heroes turned to stone by a Gorgon's stare. He was behind in his reading, as usual. He had put his romantic life on the back burner in favour of pursuing a different prize—glittering success as a publisher. So far he was frustrated on both fronts, not helped
by his strict adherence to one of his few rules: never shag a writer—especially not one of your own. He was still looking for The One. Just one critically acclaimed—and more crucially—best-selling book would take his struggling company to another level.

Once showered and dressed he stood over the espresso machine as it gurgled and hissed in protest before grudgingly offering up a shot of treacle-black coffee. Tom drained the cup and immediately poured another. His broad frame filled the narrow galley kitchen like a Rodin bronze in an elevator. The living quarters were crammed into a mezzanine above Tristesse's offices and consisted of two small bedrooms and a holiday camp for bacteria masquerading as a kitchen, littered with plates growing more life than the average Petri dish. Less
cordon bleu
, more cordoned off.

He juggled a new manuscript and a piece of toast. Concentration fixed on the page he failed to notice that the marmalade he spread thickly over the toast was in fact mayonnaise. He took a bite. Disgusted, he toed open the pedal-bin at the end of the counter—and discarded the manuscript. Swiping a finger across his phone he checked the time.

‘Roddy!’ He barked towards the second bedroom. ‘School!’ There was a thud from inside like a cadaver being dropped by a slippery-fingered mortician, the distinctive chink of many empty beer bottles being inexpertly stepped over and then the door swung open. Out shambled
a figure in a state of confusion and a brown corduroy suit.

‘Have you seen my tie?’

‘You mean the brown one,’ mocked Tom, ‘to match the
chic
suit?’

Roddy stuck out his chin defensively. He was a slightly built man with the sort of boyish face always ID'd when buying a six-pack. He tugged at one of the large lapels. ‘It's not brown,’ he insisted. It flapped like a Basset hound's ear. ‘I'll have you know this is fine Italian tailoring and the young lady who sold it to me called it
marrone
.’

‘You do know that's just Italian for “brown”, right?’

Roddy ignored him, moving aside manuscripts to continue his search. ‘So have you seen my tie or not?’

‘Hey, careful with those,’ said Tom, waving his toast at the unread scripts. ‘I have a system.’

‘Ah-ha!’ Roddy produced a red bow tie from behind one of the stacks and slipped it around his neck.

‘You're seriously going to wear that to school?’

‘It's a valid choice.’

‘For Yogi Bear, maybe.’

Roddy frowned. ‘That makes no sense. Yogi Bear never wore a bow tie. It was a necktie—and it wasn't even red, it was green. Wait, are you thinking of the Cat in the Hat?’

‘If I pretend I just arrived from France and don't understand anything you're saying will you stop talking?’

‘Just for that I'm having your muesli.’

Roddy swiped a bowl off the draining board, wiped a spoon on his trousers and dived in.

‘Hmm?’ Tom looked up from his reading. ‘We're out of muesli. Haven't bought any in weeks.’

Roddy gagged as he spat out the ancient slurry. ‘Aw, you're kiddin’. That's criminal. That's unsanitary, that is. We live in squalor, you know that?’ He threw down the bowl. ‘I'll get something in the staff room.’ He turned to go and paused in the doorway. ‘Oh, don't forget, you've got Nicola coming in this afternoon.’

Tom grunted. A couple of years ago he'd discovered Nicola Ball, a writer of novels set in the unpromising world of public transport (one notable sex scene in her debut had brought whole new meaning to the phrase ‘double-decker’). Recently, she'd featured on some influential lit. crit. blog, hovering near the middle of a list of ‘Scottish novelists to watch under the age of 30’, and the annoying girl wouldn't stop reminding him about it at every opportunity. However, her sales didn't match her bumptiousness.

A buzzer sounded from downstairs.

‘Get that, will you?’ Tom strolled off, head buried in the latest novel plucked from the slush-pile.

‘No can do,’ spluttered Roddy. ‘I've got
Wuthering Heights
with my Third Years …’ He checked his watch. ‘In fifteen minutes. Bollocks.’

The buzzer went again and Tom padded resentfully downstairs. Roddy's question trailed after him: ‘When are
you going to hire an actual secretary?’ The answer was simple: when he could afford one. Which right now felt a long way off.

The postman might as well have been holding a ticking bomb. He brandished what Tom recognised through long acquaintance as unwelcome correspondence from the bank and credit card company.

‘Lovely morning,’ the postman said cheerily, ‘though there's a bit of rain forecast for later.’

Reluctantly, Tom took the mail, which included half a dozen fat A4 envelopes—more manuscripts—and closed the door. With a dissatisfied grunt, he shuffled the official letters to the bottom of the pile and made his way along the narrow passage to his office, deftly navigating around towers of cardboard boxes filled with expensively produced books fresh from the printer. He shuddered at the financial risk; each title was a long shot of vomit-inducing odds, a fragile paper boat set sail on the roughest publishing market since William Caxton thought ‘Hey, what if I put the ink in here?’

Tom threw the mail onto his desk and sat down heavily. Napoleon glowered up at him. It was a bust of the great Emperor, a gift from Roddy on the launch of Tristesse Books, which Tom was in no doubt also conveyed a pointed comment on his high-handed manner. He looked round his tiny office with its clutter of contracts, press releases and inescapable manuscripts; a battered velour sofa with the stuffing knocked out of it (appropriately) and
a couple of low, uncomfortable chairs, perfect to intimidate writers. It wasn't exactly the Palace of Fontainebleau.

He turned his frustration to the morning mail, tearing open the top envelope and removing the bulging manuscript from within. He scanned the cover and blew out his cheeks in disbelief. Then held it out in front of him, squinting at the title to make sure he'd read it correctly. Which he had. There it was, in black and white, Cambria twenty-four point.
Quelle horreur
.

‘
The Endless Anguish of My Father
,’ he read aloud, allowing each word its full weight and bombast. ‘By Jane Lockhart.’

Worst title this year? Certainly it was the worst this month. Briefly he pondered summoning the author for a meeting, purely for the satisfaction of telling her just what a brainless title she had concocted and, he felt confident asserting this without condemning himself to the unpleasant task of reading one more word, that she was a hopeless case with no chance of making a career as a novelist. But he was busy. Taking the manuscript in the tips of his fingers, he gave a shudder of disgust.

‘Ms. Lockhart …
au revoir
.’ And with that he tossed it into the cavernous wastepaper basket by the side of his desk.

‘Tinseltown in the Rain’, The Blue Nile, 1984, Linn Records

T
HE BOWLER WAS
a great idea. She rocked that hat. It was her lucky hat, always had been. Not that Jane could recall specific examples of its effect on her good fortune at this precise moment, but she was sure there must have been some in the past.

It was an awesome hat. It had been a last-second decision to take it to the meeting and she'd plucked it from its hook above the umbrella stand along with her favourite red umbrella. Not that the umbrella was lucky. Who has a lucky umbrella? In fact, weren't they notoriously unlucky objects? Yes, it was bad luck to walk under them. No, that couldn't be right. That was ladders, of course.
Open
them! You weren't supposed to open them indoors in case … what? Non-specific, umbrella-related doom, she supposed.

Oh god, she was losing it.

It was nerves. The email from Thomas Duval of
Tristesse Books inviting her—correction,
summoning
her
—
to a Monday morning meeting had arrived last thing on Friday, leaving her all weekend to obsess. It had to be bad news; nothing good ever happened on a Monday morning. But if that were the case then why demand a meeting? If he wasn't interested in publishing her novel, surely he would have rejected her in the customary
pro forma
fashion, and he hadn't
Dear Jane-d
her, not yet.

She felt a spike of anticipation, which was instantly brought down by a hypodermic shot of self-doubt. Perhaps he was some sort of sadist who got his kicks torturing writers in person. But that seemed so unlikely. She'd been propping herself up with this line of thinking throughout most of the weekend, extracting every last drop of hope from it, until halfway through the
longueur
of her Sunday afternoon she decided to Google him and discovered that Thomas Duval was indeed just such a sadist. The Hannibal Lecter of publishing, blogged one aspirant author who'd evidently suffered at his hands. Attila the Hun with a red Biro, recorded another.

She dismissed the opinions of a few affronted authors—all right, fourteen—as a case of sour grapes and sought out a more cool-headed assessment of his reputation. There was scant information available on the
Bookseller
’s site, the industry's go-to journal, but she dug up half a dozen snippets of news. The names changed, but on each occasion the substance remained the same: breaking news—Thomas Duval falls out acrimoniously with
another of his writers, who storms out in high dudgeon, swearing never to write one more word for that arrogant, temperamental sonofabitch.

Well, at least he was consistent.

She jumped on the subway at Kelvinbridge and rode the train to Buchanan Street in the centre of town. By the time she reached the surface, the early rain had given way to patchy sunshine and she enjoyed a pleasant stroll through George Square to the Merchant City. European-style café culture had come late to Glasgow—until 1988 if you said
barista
to a Glaswegian you risked a punch on the nose. But when it did arrive it came in a tsunami of foaming milk. An area of the city once referred to as the ‘toun’ these days sported sleek cafés on every corner, where, at the first warming ray, outside tables sprouted like sunflowers, and were just as swiftly populated by chattering, sunglasses-wearing crowds who always seemed to be waiting just off screen for their cue.

Jane headed along cobbled Candleriggs past the old Fruit Market, before stopping outside a set of electric gates. One of the residents was leaving and as the gates whirred open she slipped inside, finding herself in a large, sunlit courtyard bordered by a Victorian terrace on one side and a glassy office block on the other.