Arthur was livid, sulking all the way down in the lift and refusing to share a taxi back to the office with me. “Promising my own money. Muzzling me. Women everywhere in publishing. They won’t be satisfied till we’re all out.”
Linda was glaring at me as she followed him into the taxi. “I’ll take Arthur back alone.”
I wilted on the pavement. Did they have no idea what might have happened? Did she really not understand what I’d potentially stopped?
“Emma has somewhere else to be,” Linda said pointedly.
I opened my mouth to fight back but the words were lost as Linda closed the door of the taxi. Sometimes I still felt like the grateful assistant she’d first hired. Find your backbone, Emma.
Setting off for the tube station, the rub from my heel shooting pain up my leg, I pulled my mobile from my bag out of habit. I had two missed calls and a voicemail from Hattie.
“Just calling about lunch? Or just a coffee if you can grab some time?”
Guiltily I stared at her name. What I wouldn’t give to see her face. I knew how lucky I was that my sister-in-law also happened to be my favorite friend. If I rang her now and told her about my heel no doubt she’d appear with a pack of Band-Aids. She didn’t normally chase me like this. It really had been too long.
Ping ping ping.
“I’m sorry,” I typed, watching my emails rise, my messages ignite. And then there was the Arthur statement to sort. “Busy workday. Soon though, I miss you,” I added.
Her reply was almost immediate. “How about this evening?”
“Committee meeting, sorry,” I typed.
“OK. Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
Staring at the reply, I bit my lip. I should phone her. Now that I thought about it I hadn’t seen Hattie in weeks, not since that tense Sunday lunch at their house. I really needed to help smooth things over with Dan and Ed. Ed had only been making a joke about Hattie getting under his feet and Hattie had laughed. I don’t know why Dan had to make it so awkward. I didn’t see Ed’s expression but Dan might have misread the look; he can be a bit paranoid when it comes to Ed, I think.
My WhatsApps drew my attention away.
“Oh for . . .”
“Hi, Emu I’ve been soooooo busy I’m not sure I’m going to be able to send it this week. Could you let them know? I just need a little bit more time. Thanks so much. Kisses. Amelia.”
Now I had to mollify her editor. Great. I stuffed my mobile back and plunged back into the tube station, already drafting a reply in my head.
Small relief on opening the office to discover an empty coat hook: Linda would have swept Arthur off for a liquid lunch. I headed down the dark hallway to the small bathroom under the stairs. It happened so quickly. I opened the door, reached for the light just as I saw the figure lurking in the darkness. I screamed, the figure screamed, there was a flash of light—
“EMMA.”
“FUCK.”
The figure was clutching a mobile phone; the figure was my colleague Jas who was inexplicably standing in the dark in the bathroom. As I looked down I saw letters and books on the closed lid of the loo.
“Jas,” I said, hand on my heaving chest, “what the actual . . . What are you doing?”
“I was hiding,” Jas said. “I heard them upstairs—quite ranty—and they called out so I hid—you know she only uses the bathroom on the first floor—and then I thought they’d gone but I wasn’t absolutely sure and then I got obsessed with this submission on my phone. It’s YA—witches but like, so not cliché, and I think it might be really good or the worst thing ever but I want to read on which is good, right? You always say if you want to turn the page then that’s good. The protagonist though, gah, she is making some pooooor decisions and . . .”
“Oh my God, Jas, shut up. I really need the loo.” I hopped on the spot.
“Ha.” Jas bent to scoop up the letters and the books before squeezing past me, her mustard-yellow chunky knit sweater catching on the handle. “Sorry.”
I locked the door, lifted the lid, and sat down.
“I’ll make you a coffee,” she shouted from next door. “I got new pods because apparently Arthur can’t abide granules.”
“That’s a terrible impression of her,” I said as I stepped out of the loo. “It’s more nasally. Abiiiide. Listen . . . abide.”
Jas started laughing as she ripped open a box of capsules. “So, how did the meeting go? Have you seen Twitter? People are still retweeting it. He is the actual worst.” She shivered with her whole body.
I leaned in the doorway of the kitchen. “It was . . . well, they still want to publish him so I take it as a massive win as we still have our jobs.”
“Hurrah,” Jas said, pressing down on the machine. “I mean, morally yikes but hurrah for employment.”
“I suggested he contribute to the scheme you were telling me about last week actually, for underrepresented female crime writers.”
“Oh cool—thank you,” she beamed. “Oh, I bought you an apple turnover. It’s in that bag,” she pointed.
“You are the second person today to buy me a baked item,” I said, gratefully picking it up and peering inside. “Thank you.”
“Who else?”
“Dan,” I said through my first mouthful.
“Awwwww.” She often made that sound when I told her anything nice that Dan did. “He’s the best.”
“You’re biased because he brought you a new ‘J’ mug when you told him yours had smashed.”
“But that was basically the nicest thing a human man had ever done for me ergo I will wuv him forever.”
“That is very sad, Jas. You need to hang out with nicer human men.”
“There aren’t any. I have scoured the whole of South London and have come up with nothing, nada, nil. Maybe when I am old I can find my own Dan.”
“Yes, maybe when you are as ancient as I . . . He is pretty great,” I admitted, thinking back to the cinnamon swirl at home, guilt stinging me. Had I even thanked him?
Jas handed me my coffee, the scent filling the small galley kitchen. “I’m chasing up those audiobook contracts today by the way. You’ll need to sign them when they send them across. I was also thinking we should amend the client contract to include those rights; the old one doesn’t mention them.”
“Check you, bossing admin on a Monday.”
Twenty-four with brilliant taste in books, Jas was fantastic. She was great with writers, reassuring, encouraging but firm. I knew I needed to persuade Linda to give her more freedom to start her own list, or we’d lose her. She was ready to go out with her own authors. After Friday maybe that would happen. I didn’t want to let her down. Friday was as much about me as Jas.
“We don’t say bossing it anymore, Emma,” Jas said solemnly. “Us Gen Z say, I’m the CEO of admin.”
“Gotcha.”
Jas laughed as she followed me through to our shared office. She reveled in our age gap. To her The Crown was a history documentary; she’d marvel at my memories of things in the year she was born. “Did everyone fancy Tony Blair when he became PM?” “Was Princess Diana as amazing as she seems?” “Did people really not have mobiles? What happened when you were running late? Did you just . . . have to wait?”
She was very handy when it came to my own parenting. She explained the latest websites, apps, appropriate age for devices, and more. She thought it was cute I was worried about Facebook. “They’re not on Facebook, Emma.” After my session with Jas, Poppy had been shocked to discover I knew that TikTok wasn’t a chocolate bar (as Dan had guessed). Maybe by the time Poppy was old enough to have an account on it another app would have replaced it. Navigating that stuff felt exhausting but Jas had genuinely helped me try to relax and trust my kids to tell me if things were going wrong.
Back at my desk I was balking at the new emails that had popped up since I’d last checked.
“Oh by the way,” Jas said, taking her place in a swivel seat on the other side of the room, her woolen teal coat draped over its back, “Ernestina sent me the latest draft of her book which I read over the weekend and like, I am obsessed with it. I really want to show you the start, see what you think, see whether you think it’s ready to be submitted?”
“Oh, I . . .” I frowned at an email from our film and TV scout wanting an update on the latest Scarlet submission. I didn’t want him to lose heart, I must try to place that novel. Her last book had been optioned but it had all fallen through. I had a call about pitching it to America later with our US agent. That could turn things around. And I should read her idea for her fourth book. I’d been meaning to for ages.
“Only if you’ve got time, obviously, but I really think she’s onto something . . . it feels really current.”
Jas’s voice had faded as I clocked the date in the bottom right of the screen.
Oh God.
How had I not realized its significance until now?
Suddenly Dan’s disappointed face in bed that morning made total sense, his strange quiet, and of course the relevance of the cinnamon swirl I’d casually forgotten on the side.
“Bugger,” I whispered.
Jasmina swiveled round, frowned. “You all right?”
Oh . . . bugger.