Brigid Coady - Emma Ever After - A feel-good romantic comedy with a hilarious modern re-telling of Jane Austen

‘But we have the beach photos booked in, don’t we?’ Brooke asked quickly. ‘I’m not wasting all that dieting and training if we don’t have shots on the beach.’

‘Babe, that could never be wasted,’ Phil cooed as he kissed her cheek. Brooke giggled.

Emma smiled.

Perfect.

She couldn’t have scripted it better herself.

***

‘The wedding looked amazing,’ Jamie said as he crowded round Emma’s desk on the following Monday morning.

It had been amazing, hadn’t it?

She’d checked the gossip sites all day yesterday, up until Gee had threatened to throw all her electronic equipment out of the flat, telling her that gloating wasn’t an attractive look on her.

‘It was stupendous,’ Emma smiled up at her new assistant. ‘It is a pity we couldn’t get you to be part of the team on such short notice. Next time though. Promise.’

Ever since her coup with Phil and Brooke, the powers that be had taken her skills seriously. Now she had a list of their clients who needed her magic fauxmance matching skills – which meant she needed help.

Jamie had come into the interview a few months ago, all gangly legs and eagerness. He’d been the fifth person she’d interviewed that day. He stood out from the cookie cutter blandness of the previous candidates. He’d tripped over the threshold of the meeting room and floundered in, and she couldn’t help but smile. He was like a puppy who was still growing into his feet.

‘If you had your pick of any artist on Mega!’s books and you were told that you had to make a publicity plan for them who would you pick?’ She’d asked her standard question. Everyone up until then had focused on the company’s highest profile clients, Breach Of The Peace, the famous boyband.

‘I’d work with the Candy Rebels,’ he said, mentioning the girl band who were beginning to make waves. Emma sat up straighter. This was at least different.

‘Why?’ She replied.

Jamie had then proceeded to tell her an amazing but completely implausible and unworkable PR and publicity plan for the four-piece band. It was genius. She could work with someone who had that much creativity. He just needed a bit of common sense and direction. She could give him that.

Before she knew it, she’d been standing up, shaking his hand and asking when he could start. Sometimes you had to go with your gut with plans. She could see Jamie as her right-hand man, taking her plans and making them reality.

And she hadn’t been wrong. It was great having Jamie working for her, no one had fitted into her life as well since Gee.

‘I think what you did was fantastic. Actually, properly, matchmaking people.’ He said

She could feel the pleasure unfurl in her at his praise. She knew she shouldn’t care what people thought but she seemed hardwired to want praise for her organisational skills.

Every time something she planned went well, she could shake off the uncertainty and take a step away from the horrible swooping feeling she’d had all her childhood that things were within a handspan of spinning out of control.

What she wanted was a smooth, clean and successful life.

No bumps, no mess. It was all in the planning.

‘Well, I have to say, Jamie, it wasn’t easy. It isn’t just taking two people and smashing them together, there is some science behind it.’

Science might be stretching it but she had done research and pulled the data and insights from the analytics team. This involved looking at the fan demographic for each of the people in the relationship, working out if they could amplify each other’s reach. It was all about making the media coverage larger, which made them more attractive for sponsorships or jobs. They had to be bigger than the sum of their parts.

‘Well I saw the figures you pulled the other week and I was thinking that we could probably design an app to help do the matches. Automate it, pull in the data – get it to suggest matches maybe? Or at least generate a shortlist,’ Jamie said, his arms waving as he got into it. It wasn’t a bad idea, she thought. They could match so many more people, much quicker. See, this was why it was great working with him, he took her ideas and thought differently.

‘I was talking it over, in a purely hypothetical way, with Rob Martin from Tech Dev, last week.’ Jamie finished. His voice hitched as he mentioned Rob.

Was he blushing?

He was.

So, Jamie had a crush on Rob. Which was sweet, she felt an urge to make Jamie’s life better, to give him a plan, almost as a gift. Everyone needed a life plan. And, okay, so she didn’t think he should be dating at this stage in his career; she couldn’t stop him, but she could make sure he was with someone who would help him.

She racked her brain. Which one was Rob? Was that the one who sat by the door on the next floor down? Well, he wasn’t bad, definite potential, he could be an asset to Jamie’s career. Oh no, she was thinking of Jason and he was definitely straight.

She tried to picture the IT team and… oh, hell no.

Chapter Four

This wouldn’t do.

She looked at Jamie, all eyes and legs. He could do so much better. It wasn’t that Rob was ugly, he was just… just… a blank. He blended into the wall, which was why she was still trying to work out what he looked like. She was sure he was perfectly nice, but he wasn’t the sort of person who Jamie should be with. He seemed to lack drive and you needed someone who met you in terms of career aspirations if you wanted to get ahead. And there was something tickling the back of her brain about him…

Oh, now she remembered, she shuddered. It had been last year, a particularly difficult meeting. There had been screaming, and Rob had stutteringly taken the blame for the loss of a whole batch of social data from the Radio One Music Awards. It hadn’t been pretty. And he’d been a complete doormat because it subsequently came out that it had been his boss who’d done it. Nope, it wouldn’t do. Rob wasn’t going to help Jamie get ahead.

‘That sounds like a really great idea,’ she said with a smile, her mind working feverishly. There was no point in going in too hard at the moment, she thought. You had to ease people into these situations. Make it seem like their idea. If she said too much against Rob at this point it would only make Jamie like him more. People rarely knew what was best for them. What she needed was to find someone more suitable, wave them in front of Jamie’s nose and distract him from Rob…

She really didn’t have time for this but she liked Jamie, and she couldn’t stand by while he made potentially disastrous decisions. She looked round the office. Who…

Max, maybe? No, he’d posted a cute coupley Instagram about moving in with his boyfriend last month.

Who else was gay? She tapped her lip.

Oh, of course, Dan Elton. He’d be perfect. He’d moved from Psyco Records’ publicity department six months ago. He was tall, camp and charming, a little too slick maybe, but he didn’t seem to have a boyfriend. And he was the kind of guy who was going places and would drag you with him.

Maybe he was a bit too competitive, Emma wasn’t a hundred percent sure he hadn’t deliberately buggered up the blind gossip she’d planted about Will Elliot and Annie Elliot on the Pride and Prejudice shoot. But he had just started the job then, so she could give him the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, Dan Elton would be perfect for Jamie.

Now she had to work out a way to make it happen.

She loved a good plan.

Chapter Five

‘Oi, Ems. Why do I have a calendar alert saying we’re having a party next weekend?’ Gee called from the front door as he walked through, letting it slam shut.

Emma flinched, which was more movement than she wanted to make in this blistering Indian summer heatwave. The fan in the corner moved the sluggish air round.