Annie Lyons - Not Quite Perfect

‘True, but even geniuses have their off days.’

‘Indeed we do. So how are you then, Mrs Summers?’

Tom is looking earnest now and Rachel isn’t sure if she wants to take the conversation down this route. She’s enjoying a bit of flirtatious banter and doesn’t want to spoil it. She sighs and looks slightly vague. ‘Oh, you know.’

‘Ah, you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s just that I really need to talk to Steve and haven’t had the chance.’

‘Hmm, sounds serious.’

‘Well, not as serious as Third World poverty, but important in our lives.’

‘Sorry, Rachel, I didn’t mean to pry.’ Tom looks slightly embarrassed and Rachel feels guilty.

‘It’s OK, really it is. Oh shit I’m making this into more than it is. Right, well Steve can’t be bothered to come home and talk to me properly, so you are officially my designated male for the evening.’ Rachel thinks Tom might be blushing, but she’s had too much wine to stop now. ‘Steve wants us to move to Edinburgh.’

‘Right,’ says Tom as if he’s waiting for the punchline.

‘That’s it.’

‘Right,’ repeats Tom, ‘and that’s bad because –’

‘Because it’s so far away from everything we have here; from my family, my friends. I mean, surely you’d miss me!’

‘Of course, of course,’ says Tom nodding with enthusiasm.

‘And he knew about it over a month ago and didn’t tell me about it.’

‘Ah.’

‘So I’m frankly furious and would like to discuss it with him rationally.’

‘I see.’

‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘You need to tell me why I should go and how great it could be and how unreasonable I’m being.’

‘Do you think you’re being unreasonable?’

Rachel considers this question. She knows the answer. ‘I just wish he could have talked to me about it earlier, discussed it properly, from the beginning. Not waited until it was a done deal.’

‘Well, on behalf of Steve and men everywhere, I would like to apologise for our general crapness. We are weak and feeble beings and essentially simpletons at heart.’

Rachel laughs. ‘OK, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be ranting at you.’

‘It’s OK. I have very broad shoulders.’

Rachel’s mobile starts to ring. ‘It’s Steve.’

‘Look, you go ahead. I’ve got to go on snail patrol anyway. And remember, don’t be too hard on him, he’s just a weak and feeble simpleton.’ Tom squeezes her shoulder and Rachel feels a little jump in the pit of her stomach.

‘Hell-o,’ she says uncertainly into the phone.

‘Rach, look I’m sorry. I should have spoken to you about the move earlier. I know. It’s just that we’re so exhausted and it’s difficult to find the right time with the kids and everything.’

Rachel listens to his voice and watches Tom leave, giving her a little backward glance and mock salute as he leaves.

‘Rach?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Can we start again? Please?’

‘‘kay’

‘I’ve asked your mum and dad to have the kids on Saturday. We can go for lunch and talk it all through properly? OK?’

‘OK,’ she agrees knowing she’s been unreasonable too. ‘Sorry for snooping. I sort of wish I hadn’t but I guess it’s better to have everything out in the open.’

‘I guess. OK, no more secrets and no more snooping. We’re a good team and we need to stick together. Listen, I’ve got about another hour to do here and then I’m coming home. Don’t wait up sweetheart. I love you.’

Rachel can hear him waiting for her reply. ‘I love you too,’ she says and she means it.

It’s not until Emma has switched on her computer and made herself a coffee, that she notices the bottle of champagne on her desk. ‘We got it!’ shouts the note attached to its front. She races round to Miranda’s office. Digby is there.

‘Ah Emma.’ Emma is almost touched that he’s remembered her name. ‘Congratulations – wonderful news. We must have lunch to celebrate. I’ll get my secretary, er –’

‘Fiona?’

‘Ah yes, Fiona, to arrange. Quite so. Well I must –’

Lose some weight? Find a proper job? Finish my sentences properly? thinks Emma.

‘ – go to a meeting. Yes. Quite so. Well done – again.’ He shambles off.

Miranda sweeps over and folds Emma in a mother-hen embrace. ‘Well done, Emma. Passion never fails eh? At least not with authors.’ She holds Emma at arm’s length, studying her face as if considering a particularly tricky cryptic crossword clue. ‘Richard seems to have taken a shine to you.’

Emma tries to hold her gaze, but fails and pretends to study the photograph on the wall of Miranda as a young editor with Evelyn Waugh.

‘Just be careful, Emma. Creatives can be complex creatures, you know.’

‘I know. I’m just his editor. Strictly professional at all times. How much did we pay in the end?’ asks Emma, changing the subject.

‘Enough, but not as much as Joanna wanted so at least that’s some blessing. Richard is coming in to sign the contract this afternoon. I called The Bookseller and they’re sending a photographer to mark the happy occasion.’

‘Great’

‘See you later then and well done, my dear.’

Emma practically skips back to her desk and is delighted when she bumps into Jacqui, head of publicity and Joel’s sidekick. Emma observes that her scarlet nails are looking particularly talon-like and her pouting lips shine with matching lipstick and gloss.

‘Emma, darrrrling. I hear we got the booook – haauuuw splendid,’ she rasps sounding like the snake from The Jungle Book .

‘Thank you,’ says Emma smiling. Jacqui looks perturbed that she has mistaken her comment for congratulations.

‘We-ell, if yoou’ll excuuse me, I’m just orff to see Jooel.’

‘Oh lovely, I’ll come with you,’ says Emma. Jacqui frowns but says nothing.

Joel’s office is the size of a broom cupboard, but he does have an impressive view over the roofs and occasional spire of central London. Pictures of every kind of motivational speaker and business guru, whose flesh Joel has pressed, hang on his walls. His favourite is the one of Alan Sugar pointing accusingly out of its frame signed with the words ‘You’re bloody fired, Joel mate’. As Jacqui walks in his face lights up and then falls as he sees Emma behind her.

‘Jacqui. Emma.’ The two names are uttered in tones relative to his feelings for each of them.

‘Hi, Joel. I just wanted to check that you’d heard the good news? About Richard?’ asks Emma, grinning shamelessly.

Joel’s face remains fixed in a smile, but his eyes betray panic.

‘Oh, didn’t Digby tell you?’ says Emma without mercy. ‘We got it. Isn’t that fantastic?’

‘Congratulations, Emma. You must be delighted. I suppose Jacqui and I will have to do our best to market the unmarketable, eh?’

Emma is almost impressed by this neat left hook, but nothing can dampen her mood today. ‘I’m sure you will, Joel. See you later,’ she says, skipping back down the corridor like a schoolgirl who’s just got one over on the mean kids.

Diana Darcy looks at herself in the mirror and is satisfied. Despite the onset of grand-motherhood and the advent of her sixties, she senses that she is still a good-looking woman. Her mother taught her that to dress well is to live well, and it is a sentiment she carries with her still. Sometimes, when she is shopping in town or out with the children in the park, she notices the fat people, the unkempt, the careless and their appearance disgusts her.

‘Mum, don’t be such a snob!’ Rachel hisses as her mother wrinkles her nose at another overweight child in a tracksuit getting wedged at the top of a slide.