The lift door slides open onto the thirtieth floor, a vast open-plan area, its high smoked-glass windows looking out across the Thames and Lambeth. When Emma had first come to London she had written hopeful, ill-informed letters to publishers and imagined the envelopes being sliced open with ivory paper knives in cluttered, shabby Georgian houses by ageing secretaries in half-moon glasses. But this is sleek and light and youthful, the very model of the modern media workplace. The only thing that reassures her are the stacks of books that litter the floor and tables, teetering piles of the things dumped seemingly at random. Stephanie strides and Emma follows and around the office faces pop up from behind walls of books and peer at the new arrival as she struggles to remove her jacket and walk at the same time.
‘Now, I can’t guarantee that she’ll have read it all, or read it atall in fact, but she’s asked to see you, which is great, Em, really great.’
‘I appreciate this so much, Stephanie.’
‘Trust me, Em, the writing’s really good. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t have given it to her. It’s not in my interest to give her rubbish to read.’
It was a school story, a romance really, for older kids, set in a comp in Leeds. A sort of real-life, gritty Mallory Towers, based around a school production of Oliver!and told from the point of view of Julie Criscoll, the mouthy, irresponsible girl playing the Artful Dodger. There were illustrations too, scratchy doodles and caricatures and sarcastic speech bubbles like you might find in a teenage girl’s diary, all jumbled in with the text.
She had sent out the first twenty thousand words and waited patiently until she had received a rejection letter from every single publisher; a complete set. Not for us, sorry not to be more helpful, hope you have better luck elsewherethey said, and the only encouraging thing about all those rejections was their vagueness; clearly the manuscript wasn’t getting read much, just declined with a standard letter. Of all the things she had written and abandoned, this was the first which, after reading, she hadn’t wanted to hurl across the room. She knew it was good. Clearly she would have to resort to nepotism.
Despite various influential contacts from college, she had taken a private vow never to resort to asking favours; tugging at the elbow of her more successful contemporaries was too much like asking a friend for money. But she had filled a loose-leaf binder with rejection letters now, and as her mother was fond of reminding her, she wasn’t getting any younger. One lunch break, she had found a quiet classroom, taken a deep breath and made a phone-call to Stephanie Shaw. It was the first time they had spoken in three years, but at least they actually liked each other and after some pleasant catching up, she came out with it: Would she read something? This thing I’ve written. Some chapters and an outline for a silly book for teenagers. It’s about a school musical.
And now here she is, actually meeting a publisher, a real-life publisher. She feels shaky from too much coffee, sick with anxiety, her febrile state not helped by the fact that she has been forced to bunk off school herself. Today is a vital staff meeting, the last before the holidays, and like an errant pupil she had woken that morning, held her nose and phoned the secretary, croaking something about gastric flu. The secretary’s disbelief was audible down the phone-line. She will be in trouble with Mr Godalming too. Phil will be furious.
No time to worry about that now because they are at the corner office, a glass cube of prime commercial space in which she can see a reedy female figure with her back to Emma, and beyond that a startling panorama from St Paul’s down to Parliament.
Stephanie indicates a low chair by the door.
‘So. Wait there. Come and see me afterwards. Tell me how it went. And remember — don’t be scared. .’
‘Did they give a reason? For dumping me?’
‘Not really.’
‘Come on, Aaron, just tell me.’
‘Well, the exact phrase was that, well, the exact phrase was that you were just a little bit 1989.’
‘Wow. Wow. Right, okay. Okay, well — fuck ’em, right?’
‘Exactly, that’s what I said.’
‘Did you?’
‘I told them I wasn’t best pleased.’
‘Okay, well what else is coming up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘There’s this thing where they have robots fighting and you have to sort of introduce the robots. .’
‘Why do the robots fight?’
‘Who can say? It’s in their nature, I suppose. They’re aggressive robots.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Okay. Car show on Men and Motors?’
‘What, satellite?’
‘Satellite and cable’s the future, Dex.’
‘But what about terrestrial?’
‘It’s just a little quiet out there.’
‘It’s not quiet for Suki Meadows, it’s not quiet for Toby Moray. I can’t walk past a television without seeing Toby-bloody-Moray.’
‘That’s TV, Dex, it’s faddy. He’s just a fad. You were the fad, now he’s the fad.’
‘I was a fad?’
‘You’re not a fad. I just mean you’re bound to have ups and downs, that’s all. I think you need to think about a change of direction. We need to change people’s perception of you. Your reputation.’
‘Hang on — I have a reputation?’
Emma sits in the low leather chair and waits and waits, watching the office at work, feeling a slightly shameful envy of this corporate world and the smart-ish, young-ish professionals who occupy it. Water Cooler envy, that’s what it is. There’s nothing special or distinctive about this office, but compared to Cromwell Road Comp, it’s positively futuristic; a sharp contrast to her staffroom with its tannin-stained mugs, torn furniture and surly rotas, its general air of grouchiness and complaint and dissatisfaction. And of course the kids are great, some of them, some of the time, but the confrontations these days seem more frequent and more alarming. For the first time she has been told to ‘talk to the hand’, a new attitude that she finds hard to reason with. Or perhaps she’s just losing her knack, her motivation, her energy. The situation with her headmaster certainly isn’t helping.
What if life had taken a different route? What if she had persevered with those letters to publishers when she was twenty-two? Might it have been Emma, instead of Stephanie Shaw, eating Pret A Manger sandwiches in a pencil skirt? For some time now she has had a conviction that life is about to change if only because it must, and perhaps this is it, perhaps this meeting is the new start. Her stomach churns once more in anticipation as the PA puts down her phone and approaches. Marsha will see her now. Emma stands, smoothes down her skirt because she has seen people do it on television, and enters the glass box.
Marsha — Miss Francomb? — is tall and imposing, with aqualine features that give her an intimidating Woolfish quality. In her early forties, her grey hair cropped and brushed forward Soviet-style, her voice husky and commanding, she stands and offers her hand.
‘Ah you must be my twelve-thirty.’
Emma squeaks a reply, yes, that’s right twelve-thirty, though technically it was meant to be twelve-fifteen.
‘ Setzen Sie, bitte hin,’ says Marsha, unaccountably. German? Why German? Oh well, best play along.
‘ Danke,’ Emma squeaks again, looks around, settles on the sofa, and takes in the room: trophies on shelves, framed book covers, souvenirs of an illustrious career. Emma has the overwhelming feeling that she shouldn’t be here, doesn’t belong, is wasting this redoubtable woman’s time; she publishes books, real books that people buy and read. Certainly Marsha isn’t making it easy for her. A silence hangs in the air as she lowers the venetian blinds then adjusts them so that the exterior office is obscured. They sit in the half-light, and Emma has the sudden feeling that she is about to be interrogated.
