The Deal (8 page)

She shook hands with her host and sat down. He was six feet tall, slim with fair hair. She knew instantly that Alistair was not a flirt.

The publisher poured a glass of white wine and passed it to her. He then filled another glass with sparkling water and repeated the process. The waiter arrived and handed them menus before placing a basket of bread, a small dish of olive oil and a bowl of olives between the two diners.

“Are you comfortable?” asked Alistair.

“Very,” she replied. She was congratulating herself on her choice of a dark green two-piece outfit. She had decided not to wear a blouse and now she felt comfortable. It was mid-week in early June and the weather was getting warmer each day.

“Oliver says I must impress you,” he said.

She lifted her glass of wine.

“To you and City Fiction,” she toasted. “I’ve never been here before. I must say, Bleeding Heart is an unusual name for a restaurant.”

“It’s called ‘The Bleeding Heart’ because, in 1626, Lady Hatton was bludgeoned to death by her lover.” Alistair paused and sipped some wine. “He left her dismembered body in the courtyard. They say that the locals were transfixed by her heart continuing to pump blood over the cobbles.”

He handed her a menu.

“Wow. I generally eat vegetarian food,” said Sara.

The waiter returned. Sara selected the trinity of baby beetroot with goat’s cheese mousseline and a walnut and cider dressing as a starter, followed by a pappardelle of roast wild mushrooms with chervil. The waiter said “merci” and turned to Alistair, who waved his hand in the air. The waiter wrote something down and nodded.

“You’re a regular here?” she said.

“They know I’ll always choose the sea bass if they have it and I like a Caesar salad as a starter.”

“Is food important to you, Alistair?”

“I can’t resist food and decent company,” he replied. “Often I’m with authors or agents, sometimes both. But then I have to work.”

“What will you be trying to achieve?” she continued, as she sipped the water and then drank some more wine.

“The job has changed from when we first started,” he said. “Initially we specialised in finance books, many of which were, essentially, vanity publishing.”

“That’s where the author pays to have his book published?”

“Yes. In the world of publishing it’s the cheap end. A professional publisher would only commission a book if he thought it saleable and worthy of his list.” He sipped some water. “I thought there was a market there and I was right. I found that lots of people in the City thought that they could write and I gave them an opportunity. Production costs, and especially printing overheads, have been falling in recent years so it’s not as expensive as in the past.”

“So what has changed?”

“As we became profitable and acquired more titles I started to want to enter the world of general publishing. I was being offered new books all the time. We tried a few and realised that a small niche publisher had a future.”

“I’m never certain what the word ‘niche’ means.” Sara said, as she smiled at her host and sipped some wine. She was not only listening to his responses, but also studying his face. He was treating each of her points with genuine gravity and trying hard to provide full answers. She found herself beginning to relax and enjoy the lunch. She was being taken seriously.

“In my world I think it reflects a choice,” he said. “City Fiction concentrates on thrillers and political stories reflecting the world of finance in modern times. Forgive the lack of modesty, but I give the business an edge by being in the City and by knowing people. I find that the books come to us now either from agents or from City people themselves.”

“And so you spend more time with authors?” Again she smiled, but then hid her expression behind her glass of water.

“Our authors are our assets,” he replied. “The newer ones can be nervous, perhaps uncertain. They can be lonely. Writing is a solitary occupation. As they become more experienced, and especially if their book, or books, are selling, the issues of advances and royalties will surface. It’s easier to transact deals with their agents. I do enjoy my time with the authors though. They can be very interesting in their own right, of course.”

The waiter arrived to serve the starters and to replenish the wine glasses. He raised the bottle slightly and Alistair nodded.

“We haven’t finished the first one,” she laughed.

“We will,” he responded. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“So, is publishing basically a numbers game?”

“In general fiction – which is what we now publish – yes. The objective is to try to create a backlist of titles so that what we call annuity income, by which we mean repeat annual sales, aggregates to fifty percent of the company’s turnover. Put another way, on the first of January each year, we hope to have banked guaranteed sales of our existing titles to pay the overheads in the year ahead.”

Sara sipped some wine.

“You have over ninety titles now. What are your… er… annuity earnings now?”

“Annuity income is the usual term, Sara. You might as well get it right in your report.”

“I’ll decide what goes in the report, Alistair. What’s the answer to the question?”

“Our year end is June so I’ll have our final results fairly soon. We think it will be around thirty-two percent this time.”

“You should have these statistics at your finger tips, Alistair. ‘Around thirty-two percent’ isn’t good enough.”

“Hey, I’m a publisher, remember.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Everything,” he replied. “Amanda and I have flogged ourselves to death getting the company to where it is today. It needs a managing director to run it. I want to be a publisher free of cash-flow worries, independent of the bank and the Inland Revenue, not having to deal with staff matters. I want to work with my authors.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Two million pounds.”

Their plates were cleared and almost immediately the pappardelle of wild mushrooms and Alistair’s sea bass arrived with steaming vegetables. A second waiter opened the new bottle of wine and invited Alistair to sample it. Their glasses were swiftly refilled.

“I think publishing is gambling,” said Sara. “You produce, say, ten books and hope that three will sell.”

“That’s more the American approach, Sara. If Sarah Palin runs off with a new boyfriend, the Yanks will have
Alaskan Lovers
piled high in the book shops within days.”

She laughed and looked more closely at Alistair. She was liking him more and more.

“What you need, Alistair, is some winners.”

“One winner will do,” he laughed.

He reached beneath the table and produced a book which he handed to her.

“As I said, mostly we’re publishing financial and political fiction books. There really are some decent authors around. This is
Sub-prime
which was written by a chap in one of the broking houses. He’s used his knowledge of finance and the tricks that are played to good effect. It’s now sold thirty thousand copies.”

Sara looked at the book and read the cover notes.

Alistair put his knife and fork down and drank some water. He was unhurried and gave the impression of having plenty of time. Sara realised she was feeling very at ease in his company.

“What do you read, Sara?”

“Hey, I’m asking the questions.” She smiled playfully.

“Do you want to know about the team back at the office?”

“No,” she said. “I want to know why JK Rowling was turned down by so many publishers.”

“The conundrum of publishing, Sara. We ask ourselves the same question on a daily basis. At City Fiction we receive on average about ten books a week. We live in fear we might miss the big one. Sometimes the agent approaches us which helps. We know the good ones from the time wasters.” He drank some wine. “You should also look at those authors who only publish one title. It’s as hard to get past the first book as it is to be published in the first place. Now, shall we talk about eBooks and Kindles?”

“No,” she said. “These ten books you receive each week. What do you do with them?”

“It’s a poor answer but I rely on instinct. We have a ‘submissions policy’ statement on our website and if the author has followed that they are more likely to be read.”

The waiter cleared their plates and tidied the glasses.

“Coffee?” asked Alistair.

“Green tea, please.”

The waiter poured the last of the wine and left to organise the hot drinks.

“I’m due to meet Amanda tonight,” said Sara.

“She’ll tell you about foreign rights,” he said. “She travels the world selling our books. She really is beginning to build up our European sales. She’s talking about going to Hong Kong and China.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Find out for yourself.”

“I will,” she said. “But I would have thought that you could discuss her value to the business with me.”

“I know she’s my sister,” Alistair said, “but I can honestly say that she’s one of the loveliest people I’ve ever known. Our parents divorced when we were in our teens so we only had each other. My father went off to the Far East and we lost contact. My mother lives in Hastings and Amanda sees her regularly. She never recovered from the separation and lives alone, though her health is good.”

“And Amanda lives in St. John’s Wood?”

“Yes. She’s a fitness fanatic and works out every morning. She’s dedicated to City Fiction. She reads many of the proofs we receive and, as I say, she travels.”

“Sounds like Miss Perfect.”

“You might learn something then!” teased Alistair. “Though definitely not about men.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sara was surprised at Alistair’s indiscretion.

“She gets herself in a mess with men – but I never said that.”

Alistair handed the waiter his credit card. Their lunch was coming to an end.

“You want two million pounds?”

“Two million pounds.”

“To gamble away on new titles which you hope will sell?”

“To build our business up to a trade sale for many millions of pounds so that, in five years’ time, I can become financially free and travel the world.”

“Well, thanks for lunch, Alistair.”

They stood up and shook hands, before leaving the restaurant with Sara in front. She stumbled over the first of the wooden steps but quickly regained her poise. Later she sent a text message.

“Alistair. Thanks. Please email me 500 words on the impact of eBooks on your business. Sara.”

Dr. Lucy Harriman had found the day’s surgery rather wearing. Perhaps it was, in part, a reaction to the previous day’s drama. Lucy had been in the main office looking for a file when she heard a receptionist taking an incoming call. She indicated that she would talk to the caller. She had already heard enough to have concerns. She listened to the worried mother explaining that she was on her own and her daughter was unusually listless and had been unwell for over a day. In answer to Lucy’s question she said there were no signs of a rash.

Lucy had decided, on pure instinct, to visit and asked that her patients be advised that there would be a delay in their appointments that morning. She’d reached the house in less than ten minutes and found the mother in the driveway.

“There’s a rash!” she’d shouted as Lucy reached her. She’d run into the house and asked the mother for a glass. Her fears were confirmed when she placed it over the rash and the marks remained visible. She’d wrapped the child in a blanket and picked her up.

“We need to get her to hospital now. It’ll be quicker if I take her myself.”

She’d carried her to the car and put her on the back seat, fastening a seat belt around her.

“Close up the house and come to the hospital as soon as you can,” Lucy had said.

She’d reached Ealing General Hospital in eight minutes. She’d parked in the A & E entrance, picked the child up out of the car and rushed in to the desk. She’d said to the receptionist that she was a doctor from Whiteoaks Practice and she thought the child had meningitis. After she was satisfied that the child was being cared for, she’d returned to the surgery and resumed her duties.

Later that afternoon she’d received a call from a doctor at the hospital who confirmed that they had started antibiotics immediately and the child was now out of danger.

“Rather impressive, Dr. Harriman, if we may say so. It’s so difficult to diagnose in young children.”

That day, the man with the eczema had returned and Lucy managed the situation badly. The skin condition was worse and she’d suggested that she should refer him to a consultant. However, she’d added, “unless there is anything else you think I should know about?”

The patient asked what she might have in mind.

“Perhaps there are other matters troubling you?” she had suggested.

“Like what?” he’d asked. He’d then added that this was his third visit and if the doctor hadn’t got all the information she needed to make a correct diagnosis it might be better if he did see a consultant.

It was, however, the mid-morning couple that had really tested her. In many ways she regretted reading Kate McCann’s book. The story of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from Praia da Luz in Southern Portugal on Thursday 3rd May 2007 had become a world event. Kate was a GP, like her, but the McCanns had used IVF treatment to have children. It was impossible for Lucy, reading page after page, detailing both the search for Madeleine and the personal agony suffered by Kate, not to relate the situation the McCanns faced to Scarlett, Lily and Tabitha.

There was one passage when Kate McCann explained why she felt she could never return to her medical work. She wrote that in their surgeries doctors have to deal with many medically trivial complaints. She was worried, after what she’d been through, that she would struggle to offer the degree of understanding and attention that her training required of her.

The husband and wife sitting in front of Lucy weren’t succeeding in their wish to have children. They had gone through test after test, which the husband had hated. They were fit, active, healthy and, apparently, fertile. Now they were beginning to start questioning whether to pay for private help.