Not Another Happy Ending (26 page)

‘Your family estate?’

‘Yes.’

She watched him, unsure if he was teasing her. If he was, then she couldn't tell. He seemed unusually sincere.

‘As an expert,’ he said, ‘you will also be aware that although the grapevine is most productive in sunnier climes it produces wine of the very highest quality where it is at the margin of its existence.’

She thought about that for a moment. ‘So a Scottish wine might be really good?’

‘You still need
some
sun.’

She looked at him. ‘French sun. Scottish rain.’

‘I believe that would produce a highly favourable wine.’

He leaned in. Their lips almost brushing. His breath warm and sweet.

Her phone chirped and the moment shattered like a dropped snowglobe.

She considered ignoring it, the number wasn't one she recognised. But there was a good chance it was Willie. She picked up the phone. ‘Willie?’

‘Hi, Janey.’

Ordinarily she would have winced at the nickname, but there was something in his tone that made her overlook it this time. She left Tom sitting at the desk and moved to the other side of the room.

‘So, how's the trip going? Did you meet Soderbergh?’

He started to answer and then stopped himself. She heard a catch in his voice. He gathered himself. ‘There was no meeting. I've been stuck in the arse end of nowhere. I couldn't get a cab. My phone died. I've been walking for nine hours. In the rain. I just found a call box.’

‘Oh, Willie.’

‘I'm cold and wet and just feeling so …’ She heard him hunt for the right word. He sighed. ‘Miserable.’

Behind her Jane was aware of Tom slipping out of the room. And suddenly she was unhappy too. She told herself it was because of Willie, not because Tom had gone, taking the sunshine with him.

‘But y'know what,’ said Willie, ‘I'm kind of glad the trip turned out so badly because it's made me realise a few things. I miss you, Janey. You're the best thing in my life.’

She could hear it in his voice, knew with dreadful certainty what the next words out of his mouth would be, almost as if she was writing them herself. She held her breath. Don't go there. Please. Not now.

‘I love you,’ he said.

She heard him sigh with perfect bliss, gathering confidence from saying the words aloud. He wasn't finished. There was a gathering pause at the other end of the line and then he said, ‘Let's get married.’

‘I Wish It Would Rain Down’, Phil Collins, 1990, Virgin

‘T
HAT WASN
'
T THE PLAN
,’ said Roddy.

They were standing near the head of the lunch queue outside Mother India's Café. The pungent aroma of cumin and saffron drifted out of the door onto the street.

‘No kidding,’ said Tom. It was the day after he had barged in on a naked Jane; the image of her standing in the hall was vividly etched in his mind. Regrettably, so was the moment when Willie had called. In that instant it was clear to Tom that he'd outstayed his welcome and not wishing to intrude on what was obviously an intimate conversation he had swiftly departed. He was in the hallway when he heard her repeat Willie's proposal.
Married?

He and Roddy had contrived to send Willie on a wild-goose chase so that they could focus on driving a wedge between Jane and her dad. Instead, somehow they'd brought Willie and Jane together. Talk about a plan backfiring.

‘Kind of Wordsworthian,’ said Roddy. ‘Willie's perambulatory journey along the rain-dappled English lanes, reflecting on his place in nature, feeling so wretched that he begins to ponder his very existence and concludes that he needs to make a change. A big married change.’

‘Do I look like I give a flying fuck?’

‘Fair enough.’

‘And you can't have dappled rain. Sunshine is dappled. Dapple. Bloody stupid word anyway.’

The queue shuffled forward.

He'd gone to Jane in order to come clean and apologise, although he couldn't remember if he'd actually said sorry. He presumed not. Given what had subsequently happened his act of contrition would have been a sideshow. An apology—no matter how heartfelt—paled beside a marriage proposal. He certainly hadn't confessed to her about his stupid plan. And when he'd opened the familiar glossy black front door to leave her place it had flashed through his mind that it was for the last time. She was moving on. Moving to Klinsch & McLeish. Moving on with Willie.

‘A lifetime with Willie Scott,’ he muttered. ‘If that doesn't make her miserable, nothing will.’

‘Look,’ said Roddy, a note of exasperation entering his voice, ‘I know things haven't worked out for the two of you, but surely you don't really, actually, totally want her to be unhappy?’

It was the cornerstone of their plan. But she was happier than ever—engaged to be married, for god's sake. He
had failed. In every previous relationship he had always made them cry, even when he hadn't intended to. So why couldn't he do it to her? ‘It's complicated.’

‘Roddy!’

Tom looked up to see Nicola Ball making her way along the pavement. She waved and Roddy waved back.

‘Is she actually skipping?’ asked Tom.

‘I would say she has a skip in her step, yes.’

‘So … you two?’

‘Yup.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘About what?’

‘She's a writer. I'll grant you the sex can be imaginative—but when you look in her eye you'll always wonder if you're going to end up in her next book.’ Tom shrugged. ‘In the end you're just material.’

He could tell that Roddy wasn't listening to a word.

‘She likes curry,’ he said, smoothing his hair. ‘How many girls do you know who like curry? And not just tikka masala, I'm talking biryani.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘And afterwards we're going to the Art Gallery.’ He nodded across the road at the exuberant red sandstone façade of Kelvingrove Museum directly opposite. ‘To see the
Annunciation
.’ He gave a beatific smile. ‘Curry and Botticelli—that might be my perfect day.’ Then added after a thoughtful pause, ‘And sex. Obviously.’

Nicola bounded up and the two of them embraced. They nuzzled each other and Tom had to look away.

Her new book was selling slowly, but at least it was selling. However, the numbers were nowhere near the level to extricate him from the hole he'd dug Tristesse into. And barring Nicola suddenly gaining overnight celebrity by committing a series of grisly murders that propelled her onto the front pages, or, in an ironic twist, being knocked down and killed by one of the precious buses she wrote about, they were unlikely to amount to much. Still, he wanted to sign her up for another two books. She wrote beautifully and if he could gently steer her towards a subject more befitting her lapidary prose then he was sure she had a great novel in her. But she was a long-term prospect, and as things stood Tristesse Books was not. He had another meeting with Anna LeFèvre later today when he expected her to bring out the torture equipment reserved for serious defaulters.

Finally Nicola acknowledged his presence.

‘Tom,’ she said, her demeanour turning formal.

‘Nicola.’ He inclined his head in a mocking neck-bow.

‘Lovely news about Jane.’

‘What is?’

She tutted. ‘Her and Willie.’

For a moment he'd forgotten. It came back to him like a punch in the gut.

‘Roddy told me. So romantic. Proposing to her in the rain.’

‘He was in a call box.’ He saw disapproval in Nicola's face; the social compact dictated he go along with the
invented story. ‘I'm sure they'll be very happy together,’ he heard himself say.

‘Married writers,’ she mused. ‘Going for long walks to solve tricky plot points, discussing the day's work as they prepare dinner, pillow-talk editing.’ She sighed.

‘Are you kidding?’ he cut across her. Such simpering fantasy could not be tolerated. He would set her straight. ‘Married writers means two utterly self-absorbed people pretending to listen to each other, but only really interested in their own work. Bitter when the other receives a good review, furious when one is invited to a festival but there isn't a place for the other, jealously comparing the size of their royalty cheques. As for pillow talk, try separate bedrooms and most of the sex is imaginary.’

He was out of breath. In the awkward silence that followed his rant the only sound was the snort of air through his flaring nostrils. Why was he so angry? He wasn't sure he even believed what he was saying, but the soft-focus picture Nicola painted had piqued him.

‘Your table is ready,’ said the host at the door.

Roddy linked arms with Nicola and turned to Tom with a rigid smile. ‘See you later then.’

‘I thought we were having lunch?’

‘
We
are.’ Roddy angled his head towards Nicola.

‘So why have I spent the last half hour waiting in this queue?’ He could feel the anger rising again. ‘What am I—a bookmark?’

‘OK, OK,’ said Roddy. ‘Chill. Come for lunch.’

‘Yes, please join us,’ said Nicola.

She looked petrified. Tom felt his stomach lurch; he hadn't meant to frighten anyone, it had just sort of happened. ‘I'm sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I'll see you later.’ He headed off along the pavement.

‘No, come on,’ said Roddy. ‘Come back.’

‘Can't. Don't know what I was thinking—got a meeting. Nicola?’

‘Yes, Tom?’ she said hesitantly.

‘You are most definitely one of the foremost writers under the age of thirty in Scotland.’ He smiled broadly.

Her face lit up and she burrowed into Roddy with pleasure. He caught the departing Tom's eye and gave him a big thumbs up, mouthing ‘curry, Botticelli and sex’.

‘Rain in My Heart,’ Frank Sinatra, 1968, Reprise

T
HE BEDROOM GLOWED
with late afternoon light the colour of Lucozade.

When Jane walked in Willie was exactly where she'd left him two hours before, sitting up in bed wrapped in a tartan dressing gown, working on his typewriter which was propped on a wooden tray in front of him. The tray acted as a resonator, exaggerating the clack of the key-strikes. He interrupted his typing to cough consumptively into a fist.

He'd arrived home last week from his disastrous trip down south looking deathly pale and with a streaming cold. Jane's first, uncharitable, thought had been that in such a state he'd be forced to take time off his writing. But she'd been wrong. On his bedside table towered a stack of perfectly squared-off pages, each side a sheer vertical cliff. An unclimbable alp of words. It seemed to her that following the trip, he had recommenced his work with even greater intensity than before. He couldn't have
contracted a fever? Not that she wanted him to be sick. Just a little fever. Something minor to slow him down.

She hovered in the doorway. They hadn't talked about the marriage proposal since his return. He hadn't mentioned it and she hadn't brought it up. She wondered if he'd changed his mind. He'd popped the question at the end of a long and emotional day, but perhaps in the aftermath he was regretting his impulsiveness. If she were being pedantic—and if this wasn't a perfect opportunity, nothing was—then he hadn't popped any question. On the phone he'd said ‘let's get married’—a passive form of words that hadn't demanded a response from her. Technically speaking, anyway. Some women would have evinced delight and rapture; she remembered her surprise—shock—and then the call was over. In a daze she'd turned round to find Tom had gone.

Willie's subsequent silence on the subject had provoked in her a mixture of relief and indignation. Proposing to someone wasn't like putting up a shelf, something you could just say you'll do and then forget about. Then a few days ago when folding away some laundry she'd stumbled upon a ring-box in his pants drawer. She'd debated for at least half a second whether or not to peek inside and when she flipped open the lid to discover a pair of cufflinks she felt only relief.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘A cup of tea? Piece of cake?’

He ignored her, continuing to hammer the keys until he
had filled up the page, and then with a flourish he ripped it out and slapped it down on top of the stack. He turned to her with a broad smile.

‘The phone.’

‘The phone?’

He gestured to the handset on the table. He could have reached it himself, but she was closer. She passed it to him. With a wink, he dialled and turned on the speaker.

‘Global Creative Management, how may I direct your call?’

‘Priscilla Hess,’ said Willie.

There was a click, then a new voice said distractedly, ‘Yes?’

‘Priscilla,’ said Willie with a flashy smile at Jane, ‘it's your favourite client.’

‘Peter!’

‘No,’ he said, sounding wounded. ‘Willie.’ He linked his hands behind his head. ‘Listen, sweetheart, get out the big pen. Time to bill the bastards for my first draft.’ He swivelled his head towards the tower of pages. ‘I just finished the script.’

Jane gawped. Finished? How could he have finished? She couldn't write a word and he had
finished
. This was so unfair. On the other hand, it did mean she'd be free of his incessant typing, at least until he began the next draft.

There was one other topic they hadn't broached since his trip. When he'd departed for London she'd thrust a
portion of her new novel into his hands. What did he think? Had he even read it? She'd dropped numerous hints but he'd singularly failed to pick up on any of them, and in one memorable instance—they'd been waiting for an order at the local Chinese takeaway—he had mistakenly believed she was trying to initiate sex. Either he was oblivious, she reasoned, or he was making a Herculean effort to avoid having to tell her what he really thought.

Her gaze fell on his completed screenplay. Reluctance to read worked both ways. She wasn't sure if she dared read
Happy Ending
the movie, certainly not after he had hinted at the destructive changes he'd made in adapting her novel. The script sat there like some arcane tome bound in flayed human skin, waiting to unleash an evil spirit upon anyone who opened its pages. Not that she was overreacting or anything.