Wishful Thinking (31 page)

On which thought I reached the restaurant, and there he was, not looking mean and moody but actually quite welcoming, in a saturnine sort of way. I apologised for my lateness (five minutes), pleading a meeting which had overrun, though in fact I'd simply miscalculated how long it would take me to get there. I don't normally drink at lunchtime – it makes me sleepy for the whole afternoon – but Todd was already nursing a whisky and when we came to order I decided, rashly, to share a bottle of wine.

‘Good,' Todd said. ‘I hate drinking alone. It makes me feel like an alcoholic.'

D.I. Hatchett, I recalled,
did
drink alone, often. There were frequent scenes of gloomy introspection over a solitary glass of something or other. ‘Your character does,' I said. ‘Are you like him?' I'd never ventured to comment on the parallels before.

He made a wry face. ‘I suppose most authors resemble their main characters,' he said. ‘But Hatchett drinks more than me. The stress of his job. Being a writer isn't nearly so stressful – or at least, it wasn't until I started to work with you.' But his tone was light, mocking; he even smiled. ‘Mind you, I'd like to drink more heavily, only my body won't let me. Getting to middle age, I'm afraid. Heavy drinking means heavy hangovers. I don't fancy that.'

‘You're not middle-aged,' I found myself saying, confusedly. ‘Middle age starts at fifty . . . or more.'

‘What am I then?' he asked, looking quizzical.

I fished for a word, and found one. ‘Mature,' I declared. ‘Like – like Stilton.'

‘I see. Improved flavour, but smelly. Sounds appropriate. Anyway, Hatchett's younger and tougher than me, though he's probably ruining his liver. Fortunately, political correctness hasn't caught up with him yet.'

‘How much like you is he?' I pursued, feeling daring.

‘Much better in a fight. I keep fairly fit, but it's years since I was involved in a punch-up. On the other hand, I've got more brains. I always know who-dunnit and why. I give him the clues, but he can be bloody obtuse. It usually takes him a whole book to catch on.'

‘Good thing too,' I said. ‘Otherwise we'd both be out of business.'

‘Am I too obvious?' He sounded almost diffident, a trace of Hatchett's self-doubt creeping in. ‘I can't tell. How quickly do you get it?'

I hesitated before answering, realising he was genuinely worried. ‘Fairly quickly. But I'm supposed to. I read differently from other people – more analytically – I have to, I'm an editor. I started reading Agatha Christie when I was twelve, and after I'd got through a couple and sussed out her style I
always
guessed the murderer. If you haven't cheated, if you've given the reader all the info, the final twist shouldn't really be a surprise, more a revelation. Only most readers get caught up in the story, and so they race through without stopping to think. That's how it's done. The quickness of the pen deceives the brain. Judging by your sales, you do it very well.'

‘You're paying me compliments,' he said lightly. ‘Now I
know
this is a special occasion.' But he looked pleased.

‘Hatchett has a very sombre view of life,' I went on. ‘It's all poverty, and deprivation, and despair, and rich people who are indifferent or corrupt or both, and people in power who abuse their position. Is that how you see things?'

‘Now, the difficult questions,' he said. ‘Yes. And no. It's . . . how I feel I
ought
to see things, because I suspect that's how they are. I'm privileged – insulated – I go to dinner parties in Hampstead and Islington with other privileged, insulated people – when I feel I should lead a more useful life, I should try to change things. So I lead the life I
should
be leading in fantasy, and make money out of it. Sounds pretty contemptible, doesn't it? I even let myself like people, sometimes. Hatchett's a morose sort of bastard – he doesn't like anyone much. Especially writers.'

‘Books can change things,' I insisted. ‘They help people to
see
 . . .'

‘That's the sop I throw to my conscience,' he said. ‘When it needs sops.'

‘And you
should
let yourself like people. There are good guys out there. Your Helen . . .'

‘You don't care for her much, do you?' he said with disconcerting acuity. ‘Don't bother to deny it: I can hear the effort in your voice whenever you mention her. She does good, yes, but . . . she knows it. In recent years I think she's become a little too sure of her own rectitude. Like a pillar of the church in the Victorian age. She disregards people who don't need her help or whom she feels don't deserve her attention. Now I'm doing it again – criticising my girlfriend – you'll be down on me like a ton of bricks. But I noticed she was offhand with you: she does that sometimes. Don't let it upset you. She cares desperately about her clients, and I think, on a subconscious level, she feels that fulfils her quota of caring. She wasn't like that when I first knew her, but since she became successful . . .'

‘You've been with her a long time, haven't you?' I said, thinking it was rather a waste. ‘You're obviously much better at relationships than Hatchett.'

‘Don't you believe it. I was married at twenty-two: we were madly in love, or what we thought was love, and rushed in where angels fear to tread. It came apart because I wanted to write and wasn't making enough money. My wife left me, but she said it was my fault, and she was probably right. I have a teenage son who's only just got around to forgiving me.'

‘Do you see him?' I asked, tentatively. ‘On a regular basis, I mean.'

‘Yes, of course. But it hasn't been easy. My ex imbued him with the idea that I'd failed both of them. I was supposed to be a solicitor, you see, but I chucked it before I'd done my articles. Maybe that's why I started dating Helen. A latent attraction to the Law.'

I remembered what he'd said about the importance of justice. ‘You think you were wrong to give it up,' I said. ‘You think you should have been more like her, fighting for human rights. But you can influence more people with books, really you can. And you're a good writer. You mightn't have been a good lawyer.'

He laughed suddenly, his face lightening. ‘What a sensible girl you are! All right, enough of me. You've asked all the questions so far. Now it's my turn.'

As lunch progressed, I remember feeling vaguely disturbed that we weren't arguing. After all, it was the arguing which had been fun – wasn't it? But he was unexpectedly easy to talk to. And since he'd been so open about himself, I felt it was only fair to tell him a little about me. More than a little, in the end. I told him about my childhood, about being fat, the diet, my job at Ransome, and my secret ambition to be a writer too.

‘When you've done something,' he said, ‘let me criticise it. Then I can get my own back.'

But I didn't tell him about the three wishes – that was girl stuff – or the story I'm trying to write, this story: it wouldn't be his sort of thing.

We worked our way through fish balls and creamed spinach (me) and veal with red cabbage (him), avoiding the inevitable jokes about fish and balls. I didn't eat much; I was too busy talking. Or listening.

‘I like this place,' he said. (Clever Georgie.) ‘I haven't been here in ages. Helen says Eastern European food's too fattening.'

‘She's right,' I said guiltily.

‘Don't you lose any more weight. I meant what I said the other week. You look fine as you are.'

‘Men always say that,' I retorted. ‘And then they go out with very thin women.'

‘Touché! But she wasn't so thin when I—'

‘You said.'

Suddenly, we were both silent. One of those silences that sneaks up on you and takes over, more forceful than words. But it didn't feel awkward, more – expectant. A tingly kind of silence. We stared at each other until embarrassment kicked in, and I felt myself starting to blush. I
hate
blushing.

‘I must be getting back,' I said hastily, hoping the blush hadn't yet made itself visible.

And Todd, at the same moment: ‘Time I made a move.'

We chatted in a desultory way while Ransome took care of the bill, and said goodbye on a handshake. Maybe it was my imagination that he held my hand just a little too long.

That weekend, something awful happened. So awful that I blush to remember it, even worse than I blushed in the restaurant, the kind of blush that makes you hot all over and goes right down between your legs. When I started writing this book (if it ever becomes a book) I knew there would have to be spicy bits: you can't have this type of novel without spicy bits nowadays. But I didn't want to write about
real
sex – it's too personal, too special; putting it on public view feels like a betrayal of your partner. (Georgie said that was nonsense, and she was happy to give me all the graphic details of her sessions with Cal, but I refused.) So I've written about fantasy sex instead – I don't have any inhibitions about that. I can't imagine Hugh Jackman etc. would mind: it's all pure fiction, even to the roles they play. I would never imagine having sex with an actor as
himself
; that wouldn't be any fun at all. I'd never fantasised about real people, on screen or off, though once or twice I'd tried. Which is why it was such a shock when . . .

Let's start again. Nigel's friend Terry Carver had sent me his children's story just before I went to Crete, but I didn't want to take it with me and I hadn't made time for it until now. I'd e-mailed him confirming receipt and said I would get back to him asap, so on the Saturday afternoon I decided to tackle it. I'm not much of a judge of the genre, but I thought it was good, and should be passed on to the relevant imprint with a vote of confidence from me. But for all the merits of the story, I found it hard to concentrate. My mind kept wandering off at vague tangents and having to be hauled ruthlessly back on track. In the evening I went to a barbecue in Hampstead (I thought of Todd and his dinner parties) which promised a selection of single men, but I left early. It was too hot to go near the brazier, too hot for hot food, and the men seemed immature and dull – or mature and dull – or just dull.

The flat, too, was sweltering. Mandy was restless and whiny, evidently wanting to get out of his fur, but short of a shave there was little I could do about that. I lay in a lukewarm bath to cool down, offering to lift him in with me, but even the worst heatwave won't drive a cat to water. He quietened down later, once he had turned up his nose at dinner and put me in my place to his own satisfaction. I lit some candles – they don't give out any significant heat – and lay on the sofa since the bedroom, under the roof, was horribly stuffy. I was thinking about Todd, re-running extracts from our lunch-date. Gradually, I found my fancy roaming down unknown avenues. Supposing he'd come to the barbecue . . . Or we might meet at a dinner party, on an evening when Helen couldn't make it, and we'd be seated together, talking exclusively to each other, unaware of the people around us. My imagination fabricated various conversations, all of which, like tributaries, flowed naturally into the same stream of thought. In due course, he would take me home. (By taxi: we'd been drinking.)

Back at my flat, he came in for coffee. I didn't offer; he didn't ask; it just happened. I was moving round the kitchen doing the usual things with a cafetière when I found he was studying me the way he had once before, the time he said: ‘Stand up'; that dispassionate, assessing gaze, as if I was a horse for sale. Yet somehow it
wasn't
dispassionate, and I didn't feel at all like a horse. ‘You have a great body,' he said. ‘Really great. Don't diet any more. Leave everything . . . just . . . the way it is.' His eyes rested a fraction too long on my breasts. I wasn't wearing anything particularly revealing, but it felt like it. Hastily, I returned to coffee-making.

‘Black, no sugar, isn't it?' I said.

It was.

I poured him a drink (in my fantasy, there was whisky in the flat) and he took it from me, standing very close, looking down at me – he's much taller – in a strange, unsaturnine fashion, his face set, focused, as I had seen it sometimes bent over the manuscript. It was curious how much I'd noticed his expressions when we'd been together, how clearly I could re-create them in my mind. When he accepted the glass his hand touched mine, a touch that made me warm all over, in fancy and in fact.

In the living room we sat down on the sofa, side by side. Mandelson checked Todd out with his customary scornful air; I apologised for his haughty manners and explained the origin of his name. Todd laughed. (That was another expression I'd learned: how the lines in his cheeks deepened and crooked around his mouth.) We talked about writing, and life, and how, like Jake Hatchett, relationships had never worked out for him. ‘Maybe the real problem,' he said, ‘is that I've never found the right woman.'

‘Not even Helen?' I asked, daringly. It's easy to be daring in your imagination.

‘Helen and I aren't great together any more. I fell for her because she was a lawyer – because I admired her high ideals – she represented the route I thought I should have taken, the career I should have had. I always feel I copped out, being a writer.'

‘No you didn't,' I objected, passionately. ‘You write wonderful books. You mightn't have had wonderful court cases. Anyhow, in books they always get the right guy. As I understand it, it doesn't always happen that way in court.'

He laughed again – I was good at making him laugh – and put down his drink, and then his arm was around me, and he was coming closer, closer, and I couldn't escape, I didn't want to, and his mouth reached mine, and we were kissing and kissing, tongues entwined, his free hand exploring my breast. In a tiny corner of my brain I was horrified at myself, because this was a real person, not a boyfriend or casual lover but someone I
worked
with, and at some future stage I would have to face him (hopefully not for ages), with the guilty memory of this moment lingering in my head. But I couldn't stop. He was undressing me, slowly, exploring my body with unhurried skill, but behind the restraint I sensed a growing urgency, akin to desperation. And then he was on top of me, and I felt his crotch jutting against me, the hard ridge of his erection straining at his flies. Now was the time to call a halt, before it was too late – but it was already too late.