Malcolm was sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper when Helen emerged from the flat below carrying a mop and bucket.
‘I was thinking of making something to eat,’ he said, not looking up.
Helen glanced at Malcolm but didn’t comment. She put the bucket down to close the door and the mop handle slid along the edge of the bench and collided with the wall.
He looked up briefly.
They hadn’t made up after their fight the previous evening, before she left for the Women Writers’ Guild Awards. And she wasn’t in any mood to make up now. She felt foolish for saying the things she had said in her speech and couldn’t help but blame Malcolm. His last-minute refusal to attend had rattled her. As a result she had acted the fool, slept poorly and had woken angry.
She carried the bucket into the tiny utility room and poured the water down the large sink. She rinsed the mop and wrung it out, before taking the towels out of the washing machine and putting them in the dryer.
When she returned to the kitchen, Malcolm hadn’t moved.
He said, ‘Can I make you a sandwich?’
‘I’ve bought some things for lunch. Amy will be here at one,’ she replied in icy tones, clearing away the tin of coffee Malcolm had left out and washing and then drying his teaspoon. ‘You’ll have to wait until she arrives.’
She looked around but couldn’t see the coffee mug he’d used. He’d probably left it upstairs or in the living room.
Malcolm didn’t say anything further. He had forgotten the young editor was coming today as his mind had been on other things. The oven clock showed it was almost one. He folded the paper twice and laid it on the table.
Then, having watched his wife wipe clean the clean benches, he said, ‘You’re in the paper.’
‘What?’ She hadn’t been expecting anything more from Malcolm and turned to him. He was holding out the paper. He had folded it so the article he was referring to was prominent.
‘It would appear you upset a great many people with your speech. You’re as much a pariah as I am now.’
She took the paper and quickly scanned the article.
‘There’s barely a word about me.’
‘Apparently most of the talk was on social media.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter then, does it.’
‘I wonder if you’ll make the ten o’clock news.’
Helen turned from him with impatience. She had hoped he might never hear about what she had done. She sincerely wished she could unsay it all. If only she had read the speech she had prepared, she thought – and then coloured at the memory of the stumbling, rambling nonsense she had shared publicly.
A small vase containing the bouquet of wildflowers caught her eye. She’d bought them for the flat. To escape further comment, she carried them downstairs.
Helen had already spent the morning cleaning the flat. She now crossed the room quickly and placed the vase on the coffee table. Daniel, Geraldine and the boys were to have been Helen’s first guests. She’d had the walls repainted, the floors polished and the bathroom redone with them in mind. She’d even had the tiny kitchenette fitted out with everything a young family might need.
But instead of her family Helen had prepared the flat for a comparative stranger, Amy.
She stood for a moment and looked around. The room was sparsely decorated and very white, but Helen liked it all the more for its simplicity. Everything looked clean and tidy.
She tried to imagine Daniel’s boys in the room, perhaps on the sofa watching TV, but found she couldn’t. All she knew of them, really, was what she could divine via Daniel’s Facebook page. She couldn’t even manage to conjure up the sound of their laughter.
She’d already removed all of the framed photos of Daniel, Geraldine and the boys in preparation for Amy’s visit. And the toys she had brought down from the attic had been carried back up. She’d left the bottom shelf of the bookcase as it was. It was filled with picture books she’d ordered online. Amy would have to excuse this one reminder of the flat’s intended purpose, she thought.
She noticed it had just turned one o’clock. She popped her head into the bathroom one last time, checking everything was as it should be. Clean white towels. A selection of creams and soaps. Then the bed. The white embroidered duvet covering was one of Helen’s favourites. She had bought a few more pillows as well. It looked luxurious. Then the living area. The bouquet of wildflowers on the coffee table by the sofa gave the area a homely air.
On the bed was the reason for Amy’s visit. The three manuscripts, all newly printed and tied with string.
Version one.
Version two.
Version three.
Helen viewed them with suspicion.
Left alone with Amy, the manuscripts would do all the talking.
But what would they tell her?
Helen felt exposed. She had brought this crisis upon herself. She had reneged on the deal. And she was beset by fears.
She did not want to lose her house.
She did not want to lose her reputation.
She did not want to lose the respect of her husband.
The madness of it all was that she was relying on Amy to discover a way out for her. Amy who was young enough to be her granddaughter. Amy who had not read her work before. Amy who judged the success or failure of a novel by the number of copies sold.
And yet the thought of Amy’s arrival had paradoxically lifted her spirits slightly. Helen had been so alone in her trouble. Malcolm had given her no solace. The writing of versions two and three had been done in complete isolation. No agent, no editor, no husband. No one but herself. She felt lost and was a stranger to her own art. She yearned for a voice other than her own, for a companion in her crisis.
And Amy had come and she had seemed so capable, so matter of fact, so practical. Her youth, which had surprised Malcolm, excited Helen. Her abundant energy and pragmatism would help cut a path out of the woods Helen found herself in.
Helen took one last look around and then climbed the internal stairs to the house. As she reached the top, the doorbell rang.
*
Helen opened the door to find Amy standing there with her back turned, waving at a very expensive looking sports car that roared up the narrow street. It tooted twice before turning left at the nearest corner and driving noisily out of view.
It was a warm day and the sun was shining brightly. Helen shaded her eyes as Amy spun around and exclaimed, with a look of surprise on her face, ‘Oh!’
Helen said, ‘You’re on time.’ And wondered at Amy’s surprise. After all, she had pressed the doorbell.
‘I’m sorry. I’m not normally punctual, but Liam was in the army and does everything by the book. We’ve been swimming at Hampstead Heath. It was lovely, but he knew I had to be here so he hustled me on.’
‘Was that who . . . ?’
‘Yes, that was him. The car’s new. He’s obsessed with driving it. Any chance. He’s like my personal chauffeur at the moment.’
Helen wavered a moment. Amy was wearing little blue shorts, barely shorts at all, and a white singlet. Her bikini was showing and her feet were shod in flat sparkling sandals. And what was worse, her hair, which looked wet, was in messy pigtails. She wore no makeup and looked younger and more stunning today than she had the last time. To avoid Malcolm’s raised eyebrows, Helen took Amy down the outdoor steps to the street door of the flat.
As they went down Amy said, ‘I was at the event last night.’
Helen busied herself with opening the door and entered without comment.
Amy followed her in, dropped her bag on the floor and said, ‘This is nice.’
Amy saw that the rectangular room was divided into two distinct areas. The furthest end was the bedroom, with a queen-sized bed, bedside tables and a built-in wardrobe. And beyond the bed, through an open door, Amy could see a small bathroom. And nearest her, bathed in the natural light of the two large windows, was the living room, with a sofa, a reading chair, a coffee table and bookcase.
Looking down at the small backpack, Helen said, ‘Is that all you’ve brought?’
‘I’ll only be here a couple of days. As I said, I’m a fast worker. I do this sort of thing all the time.’
Helen didn’t know what to say in reply to this, so said nothing. Instead she opened the folding doors that hid the compact kitchenette.
Amy nodded, and added, ‘I’ll buy new clothes if I need them.’
Helen closed it up again.
‘Lovely flowers, Helen,’ said Amy, bending down to smell them. She lifted her gaze to Helen and smiling, added, ‘Thank you.’
Helen smiled warmly in return. The first sign of warmth Amy had won.
‘There’s a laundrette on the high street. And restaurants and a takeaway. And a Waitrose.’
‘Handy,’ she said, and regretted it. She felt self-conscious under Helen’s quiet gaze.
‘We had the bathroom redone,’ said Helen, moving towards the back of the flat and turning the bathroom light on. ‘The plumbing had been a nightmare. Everything is new and in perfect working order now.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Before I forget, here’s your key.’
Amy followed her and took the offered key. Then there was a moment of silence.
‘Is that them?’ asked Amy, pointing to the three manuscripts tied with string on the bed. Helen nodded. ‘Real paper manuscripts. I can’t tell you the last time I had to work with one.’
‘Have you ever worked with one?’
Amy smiled. She hadn’t. Her whole working life had been in the internet age. Some of the older editors she knew still did their final proofreads with print. But she didn’t. All that wasted paper.
‘I’ve left the password to the Wi-Fi on the bedside table.’
Amy looked in the direction of Helen’s gaze.
‘I was thinking of having some lunch. I know Malcolm will be hungry. Would you care to join us?’
‘I’d love to. I haven’t eaten anything today.’
‘I’ll leave you to get changed. Take a shower if you’d like. The flat is yours for as long as you need it. Just come up when you’re ready.’ And with that Helen climbed the internal stairs to her kitchen.
*
Amy sat on the bed and flicked the pages of the manuscript closest to her. The flat was very quiet. Very bare. She kicked off her sandals, fell back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The bed was soft. The room had a lovely fresh fragrance. Everything was nice and clean. But she felt a little disoriented. The transition from Liam’s world to Helen’s had been too sudden. More a collision than a transition.
One moment she was in Liam’s Aston Martin, her hands down his pants while he kissed her goodbye, the next she was being shown three unpublished manuscripts by the great Helen Owen.
The sight of the manuscripts had made things real for Amy. She had become cavalier about the work she did and the privilege of working with famous authors. But, as she had tried to explain to Julia, the authors she had always worked with were entertainers. Helen Owen was in a different league. These manuscripts were in a different league. They mattered.
The short conversation she’d just had with Helen reinforced this impression. Helen had been more reserved than she had been when they first met. This time she had seemed calm and assured. This was the Helen Owen she had expected to meet that first time. A Helen Owen who had no need of her help in anything.
Amy had thought Helen might be a complete mess. Having kicked the hornet’s nest last night Helen was under attack from all sides. She was at the centre of a social media shitstorm. But as far as Amy could see, she didn’t give a fuck. She was her normal composed self and seemed to think nothing of it.
And I am supposed to help her, Amy thought.
She was suddenly overwhelmed by the task that faced her. Everything was going to be more difficult than she imagined. And there was no escape. She’d said she would help her. She would have to stay here a few days at the very least. To make it look like she had put in an effort.
She picked up the fattest manuscript – the one Julia wanted – version one. She’d read it and get it over with. If it had potential that would be that.
She flicked the pages and breathed in their scent before dropping the manuscript back on the bed alongside the other two.
Amy felt like screaming. She wasn’t used to doing things she didn’t want to do.
She covered her nose with the palms of both hands and breathed in deeply. Gone was the scent of flowers, brilliant writing, obligation and clean bedsheets. The scent on her hands was Liam. A delicious contraband in Helen’s neat flat.
‘Fuck it,’ she said aloud, then sat up and picked up the smallest of the manuscripts, labelled ‘Version three’, untied the string and let the cover page fall on the bed. From their first conversation she knew this was the manuscript Helen thought her best work in years. She allowed herself to read only the first line, then put the manuscript back on the bed.
She was suddenly filled with conviction that Helen was right, the book was good. Better than good, brilliant. She smiled at her intuition. It was madness but it didn’t mean it was wrong.
But as her tummy rumbled she thought of lunch and remembered what Helen had said. I’ll leave you to get changed. Take a shower if you’d like.
She retrieved her bag, took it into the bathroom and shut the door. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door. Her hair was a mess in pigtails, but otherwise she looked as she might any day in summer.
Change and shower.
What had Helen disapproved of most – her obscenely short shorts or her liberally applied eau de Liam?
Helen was almost eighty years old. Of course she would disapprove of her shorts. They barely covered her bottom. But would she still recognise the scent of a man? Do we forget such things over time? After last night’s speech, Amy wouldn’t be surprised if Helen opposed sex before marriage.
Amy looked at her reflection in the mirror and tried to see herself as Helen would. There was no avoiding the conclusion Helen would come to – she, Amy, wasn’t taking this seriously.
She stripped down quickly. She turned on the shower and hugged herself. Her skin felt different. She hadn’t been swimming at Hampstead Heath in years. It was like childhood, swimming.
She raised her hand to her nose one last time, then stepped into the shower.
*
Malcolm was upstairs in his office when he heard voices on the landing. He stepped out and found Helen and Amy, who had changed into jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair pulled neatly back in a ponytail.
‘I’m just showing Amy around. Lunch is ready. Go down, we’ll be there in a moment.’
Amy gave him a kiss on the cheek, which startled him, and then she followed Helen up the next flight of stairs.
Malcolm headed downstairs. In the kitchen he found Helen had heated some little quiches, which were still in the oven, though it was off and the door was ajar. She had also arranged a plate of cold meats and had thrown together a simple salad. There was a loaf of bread on the table as well. And small white plate with olives beside three very old jars of mustard and Branston Pickle. He thought the selection was odd. She had obviously been unsure what to prepare. They rarely sat down for lunch. It was an informal meal for them and they generally ate whatever they could put together. He usually had a ham sandwich. As plain as you like. He opened the fridge and took out an unopened bottle of white wine. He set three wine glasses on the table and sat.
After a moment, he poured himself a glass. He didn’t as a rule drink in the middle of the day. But he thought he might take it up. Especially if he was to be thrown into the company of Helen’s young editor.
*
‘So you were there, were you?’ asked Malcolm, suddenly speaking.
‘It was like she’d thrown a bomb.’
Helen and Malcolm had finished eating their lunch, but Amy was still picking at the salad from the bowl with her fingers. While they had eaten, Helen had quizzed Amy about her authors, and Malcolm had only spoken when necessary, only half listening. It all sounded like gossip to him. Though he had to admit, Amy was a sharp cookie. What she’d said about Jeffrey Archer had made him laugh.
But when Amy made a passing reference to the Women Writers’ Guild Awards he was all ears.
‘Helen’s speech? Like a bomb going off? I bet it was,’ he said, pouring himself another glass of wine.
Helen put her hand over her glass, but Amy allowed him to refill hers. He placed the bottle back down empty, and continued, ‘I have no idea what she said, but if I know Helen, it was brilliant.’
‘No, no it wasn’t,’ said Amy before biting her tongue and glancing at Helen. ‘I mean it was and it wasn’t. On the one hand, Helen, you completely missed the whole point of the night and why there have to be nights like that, totally devoted to women’s writing. But on the other, what you said about genius – how rare it is – it really struck a chord, I think. Or it will, after they stop burning effigies of you on the streets.’
‘Helen the reactionary.’
‘You didn’t come off well either, you know, Malcolm. You didn’t support her on her night of nights. They’re saying you’re the reason she said what she said. Some of Helen’s greatest admirers are defending her because the fault was obviously yours. That you’d upset her. And that the opinions she shared were obviously forced on her by you!’
‘I don’t have opinions!’ he said, with a mischievous grin.
Helen looked at him darkly. ‘That’s all you have. If you’d just come along with me, none of this would have happened.’
‘If you’d told me you were going to start a riot, I would have been there with bells on. I want to read the speech, is it available anywhere?’
‘No, it was nonsense,’ said Helen.
‘People have been sharing bits of it online all morning.’ Amy picked up her phone. ‘I can probably find a full transcript somewhere.’ She stared intently at the phone and tapped the screen rapidly. ‘Here it is. I’ve found it.’ She held up her phone triumphantly.
‘Well, that’s no good to me,’ said Malcolm.
Amy laughed at this, then asked, ‘Is your printer wireless, Helen?’
She nodded wearily, resigned to Malcolm reading it. What did it matter after all?
‘I can probably print it straight from here for you, Malcolm,’ Amy said, waving her phone. ‘Do you want me to give it a try?’
She stood up abruptly and they went upstairs together.
Watching them go, Helen suddenly felt exhausted. Some part of her had expected Amy to offer her an immediate solution to her problem. But of course that was impossible. And she knew it. But the hope had got her through the morning.
She looked at the remnants of their lunch, the dirty plates and glasses. She’d have to clear the table and put things away, but she didn’t have the energy just yet. She sighed and, elbows on the table, rested her head in her hands.
*
‘I can’t get it to connect,’ said Amy, clearly frustrated. She had tried everything she knew to get her phone to talk to the printer. It was a new printer, too, it should connect automatically. ‘Maybe if I email it to myself, I can log on to Helen’s computer and log into my email and print from there.’
‘Or you could read it to me from your phone,’ suggested Malcolm, who had grown tired standing while Amy fiddled with the printer and was now seated comfortably on the sofa Amy had sat on during her first meeting with Helen. He rarely visited Helen’s office, he realised, surveying the neat bookcases.
Amy didn’t respond, feeling unexpectedly shy in front of Malcolm. She was used to reading aloud to people – she did so quite a bit at work – but Malcolm was a different audience altogether. He reminded her of the head of the English department at her school, who’d had standards too high for any child to meet.
‘Or is it too long to read?’ Malcolm said, offering the silent Amy an exit.
‘No, it wasn’t a very long speech.’
That seemed to settle it for Malcolm; he appeared to be waiting for her to begin.
Amy sat on the desk and placed her bare feet on the seat of Helen’s writing chair.
She read the speech.
At one point Malcolm asked her to slow down, but overall, he thought she read it well. When Amy finished, Malcolm asked, ‘What do you think of her speech?’
‘I don’t know. Reading it now, it seems a different speech. Last night it was outrageous. It left those who followed her at the podium in a strange position. All of their prepared speeches had made assumptions about how the evening would progress, which Helen’s speech had then smashed. There was a lot of improvisation afterwards. And raised voices filled with emotion. The organisers were hurt and angry. The eventual winner of the award couldn’t finish her speech because she’d written of her love of Helen’s work. She broke off sobbing.’
‘Do you think Helen should have kept her thoughts to herself?’
‘Yes, I do. In that environment, yes. We didn’t deserve Helen’s speech. She was accusing us of things that just aren’t true. Last year’s winner was fifty-five. Not as old as Helen, but clearly not a young woman.’
‘And yet, Helen has never even been longlisted for the award.’
Ignoring this, Amy said, ‘The award is necessary and it is changing things. I do wish the award would acknowledge more writers of commercial fiction but having said that, there is a flow-on effect from the award. More women are being reviewed and women’s writing is being taken more seriously across the board. You’re a man, you don’t know about inequality.’
‘But Helen does. Imagine what it was like fifty years ago. I suppose you can’t. But I was there. Sexism was unquestioned. Helen’s parents had been progressive, they encouraged her to go to university. But both expected her to give up her career when she married. And it wasn’t just the institutionalised sexism. There was her youth. And the subject of her novels – women without men. The old guard were a force to be reckoned with. The writers of the first half of the century were still an obstacle for young writers; they’d lived through the war and were above criticism. And beyond them the Modernists, in whose long shadow everyone wrote. But then every generation has difficulties peculiar to itself; the Modernists had to overcome the universal reverence for the writers of the nineteenth century.’
Malcolm paused. He had forgotten who he was talking to. Was she even listening to him? He glanced up at her. Her eyes were alert, not glazed over as expected. But he had drifted away from the topic, he now realised, and so he returned abruptly to the speech.
‘I think Helen was right to speak,’ he said. ‘She has fought all her life. The quality of her work alone got her reviewed throughout her long career and still does. What she writes cannot be ignored. And those who do ignore her deserve to be called out on it.’
‘She had been invited to speak. I think the organisers recognise what she has overcome.’
‘Alone. With no help from committees.’
‘She wasn’t alone, though, she had you.’
‘No, I had her,’ said Malcolm, looking directly at Amy. ‘She led and I followed. Helen was a published author before we met. In her early twenties. Not as young as Françoise Sagan, but young enough. I was in my thirties before I managed to get a novel published. Her work was well established by then and her reviews were extraordinary. I was lucky to be reviewed at all. I would never have been invited to the literary parties and the dinners if I hadn’t been Helen Owen’s husband. She was and is the star. And she did it all by herself.’
Malcolm stood up and crossed to the bookcase that held Helen’s novels on the bottom shelf.
‘These are all too perfect. They’re Helen’s. I can’t lend them to you. Come into my office and I’ll see if I can dig out my well-worn copies. If you’re going to work on her book, you’ll have to read a few of them.’
He led her out of the room and into his office across the hall.
Amy leant against the doorframe and examined Malcolm’s room. It was a mess. She watched as he rummaged through boxes on his knees, making more mess in the process. Most of the books he was pulling out from the boxes were new to her. As were the books scattered on the bookcases. So many authors and titles she had never heard of mixed in with the usual suspects – Austen, Dostoyevsky, Proust, Flaubert. Not one recent bestseller.
The desk near the window was empty. No computer, either. Then she remembered Helen had said he didn’t use one. No, Helen hadn’t told her, she had read it in that article. Malcolm wrote in pencil.
‘Did you ever meet Jackie Collins?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, finally finding his collection of Helen’s work. He sorted through them.
‘You’re contemporaries. I thought you might have met. What about Wilbur Smith or Danielle Steel or Robert Ludlum?’
He lifted out three of Helen’s novels, balanced them in a pile on the arm of his reading chair and then struggled to get himself back onto his feet. He gave up and settled for rising to the chair and falling into it, steadying the pile of books with his hand as he did so.
‘Why?’
‘I’ve studied them closely. They interest me.’
‘No, I’ve never met them. They don’t interest me. I often find I love a novel right up to the point when its plot is revealed. Like the opening of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child. The scene-setting in that novel is perfection. But when the unnatural momentum of the plot started in, I abandoned the book. I like reading under my own steam. If I do continue, the rewards are the bits between the plot, the bits an editor like you would presumably cut. That’s where the heart and soul of a book exists. All the writers you’re talking about reject readers like me by concentrating solely on plot.’
‘But Jackie Collins sold six hundred million books in her lifetime. Danielle Steel is still writing and has sold six hundred and fifty million. Enormous numbers. Staggering. You have to admit.’
Malcolm didn’t admit anything. He just stared at the young woman. He couldn’t understand what any of this had to do with him.
‘Wilbur Smith and Tom Clancy are only around the hundred million mark,’ Amy continued, feeling it necessary to labour the point in light of his obtuse resistance. ‘But then there’s James Patterson. I’ve met him. Three hundred million. He’s a very clever operator. Liam and I have learnt a lot from him. We’re . . .’
Malcolm raised his hand and held it up like a traffic cop. ‘I love Helen. I love Daniel. I love literature. But I also love baked beans. I love baked beans very, very much. Especially on a baked potato. Surely Helen and Daniel mean more to me than baked beans? That word “love” must have very different applications. So I’m a writer and James Patterson is a writer, both of us are writers. Which of us is baked beans?’