Not Another Happy Ending (6 page)

He pushed the Snowie towards her. ‘You are not Janet.’

‘I can't. I haven't had once since Dad …’

‘I know.’

Slowly, she parted her lips. He popped the sweetie on her tongue and her mouth filled with warm chocolate and the crunch of hundreds and thousands.

In the morning she found him asleep in the armchair, arms wrapped around her manuscript. Was it possible to feel jealous of your own novel? Nothing had happened after Snowie-gate; he had behaved like a gentleman, keeping the conversation professional, the mood workmanlike. Which was absolutely fine with her. A-OK. Hunky-flipping-dory. After all, it was perfectly natural for a modern young woman to invite an attractive man she barely knew to a cottage in the middle of nowhere. A cottage
with one bedroom. There was no pretext; this weekend was all about the sex.
Text
. The fire had burned itself out overnight. No, that wasn't a metaphor. She gathered a handful of kindling from the basket next to the grate and built a new one.

At his suggestion after breakfast they spent the day walking the length of the glen. Around lunchtime it opened out to a dark, glassy loch. The sun was breaking through the thick layer of cloud when they came to a large flat rock by the edge of the water and Tom insisted on stopping. He reached into a chic leather messenger bag, and Jane was sure it was to retrieve the manuscript, but to her surprise he produced a couple of gourmet sandwiches from Berits & Brown and a portable espresso maker, from which he proceeded to make the most delicious cup of coffee she'd ever tasted.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as they ate. The clouds had cleared and now the sun hung awkwardly overhead, lost in an empty sky like a walker who's realised he's been holding his Ordnance Survey map upside down for the last four and a half hours.

‘It's a nice day, I thought we should get out.’

‘No, I don't mean here. I mean
here
here. In Scotland. At the risk of sounding small-town, can I ask what a Frenchman from the Côte d'Azur is doing running a publishing company in Glasgow?’

He lowered his espresso cup. ‘You know, Saint-Tropez is a lot like Glasgow.’

‘It is?’

‘No. Not one little bit.’

‘So, you fancied a change of scene?’

‘I had to get out. I was living in a pop song. A
French
pop song. Do you know how many hours of sunshine the Côte d'Azur receives annually?’

‘How many?’

‘A fucking lot.’

‘Wait, you're saying you came to Scotland … for the rain?’

He shrugged and rooted around the ground before picking up a smooth, circular stone.

‘Why Glasgow?’ Jane continued. ‘You do know it's Edinburgh that has the book festival, right? And if you want to be a publisher isn't Paris a more obvious choice? Or London, or New York?’

Gripping the stone in the curve of his index finger and thumb he sent it skimming across the flat loch. It sank on the second bounce. ‘
Merde!
’ He turned to Jane. ‘The world has been overrun by
ersatz
writers, musicians and artists. All we have are writers who write about writing, singers who purposely break up with their lovers so that they may sing about heartache. I came because Glasgow is still somewhere real. And I came to find someone real.’

His eyes definitely did not bore into her soul. Real eyes didn't do that. So why did she feel so utterly naked?

‘Jane, I think I came to find y—’

‘
Guten Tag!
’

Above them on the edge of the loch stood a party of walkers with bare knees, ruddy cheeks—and yellow cagoules. Their round smiles deepened into Teutonic puzzlement when Jane and Tom's laughter shattered the stillness.

They returned to the cottage. The weather closed in shortly before they reached shelter and they were both soaked through. When she entered the room, towelling her hair dry, she found him occupying his usual place in the armchair by the fire.

‘We need to talk about the sex,’ he announced.

The sex.
Le
Sex.
Finally
, she thought.

There were, however, cultural proprieties to be observed. A nice girl simply didn't acquiesce to such an indecent proposal. ‘I don't think we do,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I am not talking about “the sex” with you. You've got some cheek, you know that? Just because I asked you up here doesn't mean I'm ready to jump into bed.’

‘The sex,’ he said evenly, ‘in chapter seventeen.’ He opened her novel to the relevant page.

‘Oh,’ she said, unfolding her arms. ‘Yes.
That
sex.’

Tom stabbed a finger at a section halfway down the page. ‘I'm confused. What is going on here?’

‘What are you talking about? It's …’ She circled behind
him, craning her neck for a sight of the offending paragraph. ‘Perfectly clear.’

‘Are they having sex? Because if they are, you should know that it's improbable.’

‘Ah, well,’ she wagged a finger, ‘that's because I'm writing it from the woman's perspective—something you clearly don't understand.’

‘Right.’ He held the page at arm's length, rotating it first one way and then the other, as if looking at it from another angle would make the scene clearer. ‘So where exactly is her leg meant to be?’

Oh, the man was maddening! Jane swatted him with her towel and made a grab for the manuscript. ‘Give that back!’

He was too fast for her. He led her around the room, dangling the novel at arm's length, just out of her grasp. At first she requested him curtly but politely to desist in his childish behaviour, but when he ignored her she resorted to a tirade of foul language. He doubled up with laughter at hearing her swear. Which meant that he failed to notice the trailing cord of the standard lamp as he swept around the room once more.

‘Ow!’ He slammed into the floor, his knee taking the brunt. ‘I hate this place!’

She stood over him to gloat. ‘Serves you right. It's a good scene. It's full-blooded, lusty—’

Tom rubbed his knee mournfully. ‘—physically impossible.’

With one final cry of irritation she lunged for the manuscript. He teased it out of reach and with his other hand swept her legs from under her. She crumpled, sinking down beside him. So near to him now she saw that he had kept his promise—no lover had ever looked at her this way.

‘It's not impossible,’ she said, swallowing. ‘You just have to be … bendy.’

That raised an eyebrow. ‘This is drawn from personal experience?’

They were close enough to breathe each other's air.

‘Well, that's not something you're ever going to find out.’ She let the words hang there. Just the two of them in the overwhelming silence of the cottage. Not a milk frother to disturb the stillness.

A small part of her couldn't help but observe the situation from a distance: an unfairly attractive Frenchman, a hearthrug in front of a crackling log fire, a Highland cottage. If she'd written it, he would have struck it out. Infuriating, exasperating man.

She waited. In all the romances she'd read people kissed adverbially. Hungrily, madly, passionately. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Wondered about the hardness of his bristles and the softness of his lips. Wondered if she should make the first move.

And then she didn't have to wonder any longer.

‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me?’, Travis, 1999, Independiente

‘Y
OU STILL UP
?’ Bleary-eyed, Roddy surveyed the wreckage of the evening: a card table strewn with the last hand, a drained bottle of something in equal parts cheap and noxious, and Tom. He sat in the quiet darkness of his office with a supermarket brand cognac, swirling the dregs around the fat-bottomed glass. The pale liquid caught the light of a streetlamp.

‘I'm off to bed. Got Jane Austen with my Fifth Years first thing tomorrow,’ Roddy said wearily. ‘Or, as I prefer to call it, Pride and Extreme Prejudice. Are you crying?’

‘No.’ There was a snuffle from the darkness.

‘You are. You're crying like a little girl.’ He took a step into the room. ‘What are you reading?’

‘Nothing.’ Tom attempted to hide the manuscript propped open on his lap, but it was too late. ‘It's a non-fiction proposal,’ he said, ‘about the endangered Chinese Crested Tern.’ He wiped his cheek. ‘Very moving.’

‘Bollocks. It's Jane's novel, isn't it?’

Tom shot him a look. ‘You can never tell her. Never. Promise me, Roddy.’

‘OK, OK. But I don't know what you're so worried about—if you hadn't noticed, Glasgow city centre on a non-football Saturday is
chock-a
with reconstructed males in floods when they discover Boots has run out of their Hydra Energetic Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser.’ He yawned. ‘How many times have you read that book anyway?’

‘A few.’

‘Uh-huh. I'll leave you two alone then. There's a box of man-sized tissues by the sofa.’

‘Roddy!’

‘For the crying, sicko.’

‘Ah, right. Thanks.’

Roddy shook his head and, smiling at his friend's mood, set off upstairs.

‘She's more real than any writer I've ever known,’ Tom whispered. ‘She stands there, a red flame in a downpour. I think she's the one.’

Roddy froze, then quickly trotted back to the doorway. ‘Oh my god. So it's finally happened. The lothario—what's French for lothario?—doesn't matter—anyway, the great lover from Saint-Tropez meets the girl of his dreams and—
twist ending—
turns out she's a redhead from the Gallowgate. It's love across the borders.
Jeux Sans Frontières
. Or is that
It's a Knockout
?’

Tom scowled. ‘She's the one
Tristesse
has been waiting for.’

‘Oh,’ said Roddy. ‘No bridesmaid dress for me then.’

‘I don't care if her novel sells a single copy, it is a great piece of work.’ He reflected on that with a tilt of his head. ‘Naturally, I wouldn't object if it does sell a few copies.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Shitloads would be good, actually.’

Tom drained his glass and thumped it down on the table. ‘But she can write, Roddy. The darkness, the terrible beauty of her prose. She does not mistake sentiment for emotion, she plays with language, sometimes it almost destroys her. She leaves a piece of herself on every page. She is unafraid to use her life, her self—whatever the cost. It's very brave.’ He took a deep breath. ‘In her soul she is a poet.’

‘That's nice.’ Roddy studied his friend in the gloom. ‘Have you told her?’

‘Don't be ridiculous.’

‘Why not? People like to be told they're doing a good job.’

‘Such petty considerations do not concern an artist such as Jane.’

‘An
artist
…?’ Roddy's face lit up. ‘Oh wait a minute, you
do
fancy her, don't you?’

Tom pursed his lips and blew out dismissively.

Roddy pointed excitedly. ‘Did you just
pah
? You did. You just
pah'd
.’

‘I did not. And that is such a cliché. I thought you were going to bed.’

Roddy narrowed his eyes. ‘Have you two … done it yet?’

Tom threw up his hands. ‘Typical Anglo-Saxon prurience. Next you'll be asking me if I first requested her father's permission.’

‘You did! You two did it.’ Roddy's voice dropped to an appalled whisper. ‘But what about the golden rule—don't shag your own novelists?’

‘I never said it was a
golden
rule.’ Tom shrugged. ‘It's just a rule.’

‘It's the bloody Prime Directive, mate!’

‘This is not the time to be quoting
Star Wars
.’

‘
Trek
, you philistine.’

‘Well then, say it why don't you?’ Tom invited the expected disapproval with a brusque wave. ‘No good will come of this. You cannot work together and sleep together. Come on, where is your petty bourgeois censure?’

‘
Au contraire
—as we Anglo-Saxons like to say—I think it's a great idea. You two make a lovely couple.’

Tom shook a finger at Roddy. ‘Hey, hey, hey—who's talking about a
couple
?’

‘Well, I just thought—’

‘Do I fancy her? Yes. Did sleeping with her make the edit more enjoyable? Naturally. But for fuck's sake,
Roddy, why does every hook-up have to be Happy Ever After?’

Sunday morning tiptoed into Jane's bedroom on a gentle breeze and the muffled blare of a radio from the flat upstairs. Through a gap in the curtains a bar of daylight striped the wooden floors and the bed where the two of them had spent most of the night. The rest of it they'd spent in the bath. And on the kitchen counter. And then on her desk in the bay window.

She lay there watching him sleep. They hadn't really discussed what this was, what
they
were: was this just part of his editing process, along with square sausage rolls and coffee from Café Gandolfi? Was he her boyfriend? Somehow she couldn't bring herself to ask, didn't want to seem needy. She was trying very hard to be cool and aloof—for a change. And anyway she saw him every day and it didn't seem to matter. The edit was intense and intimate, but in all this time he hadn't said those four magic little words she so wanted to hear: I love your novel.

She was wearing one of his shirts, though couldn't remember putting it on. She did remember being naked and the ensuing tussle that had visited every room in the flat and lasted half the night. In their passionate frenzy they'd broken a vase filled with fresh flowers and now the memory of last night's lovemaking was suffused with the scent of peonies. Beside her, he stirred. He rubbed his
eyes, kissed her good morning and then reached past her for the manuscript on the bedside table. Slipping on his spectacles he began to read.

They had started the final chapter of the edit last week and now all that remained to review was the ending. She studied him, absorbed in her novel, aware of nothing but her words. He must have read the ending countless times—perhaps more than she had, certainly more than any other section of the novel. Finish strongly, he'd said to her often. It was a rule of writing, like ‘cut adverbs’, ‘show, don't tell’, and ‘never sleep with your editor’.

‘So, the ending,’ he said at last.