Malcolm was making breakfast. He had been to Waitrose early and had bought bacon, eggs, tomato, baked beans, thick-cut bread, and Cumberland sausages. He didn’t normally drink whisky and had had a few with Trevor the night before, so he awoke feeling the worse for wear. He wanted a big breakfast and assumed the others would all come running as soon as they smelt the bacon frying.
Not long after Malcolm started cooking, Daniel came down the stairs and entered the kitchen.
Malcolm looked at him and smiled. Daniel said nothing but started cutting up the tomatoes.
A few minutes after Daniel’s appearance, the door to the flat opened and Amy appeared in her bathrobe and bare feet. Her hair was a mess and her face was pale and blotchy. It was obvious to both men that she wasn’t feeling the best. It looked like she’d been crying.
‘What’s cookin’, Mal?’ she asked, shyly.
‘The lot. Are you hungry?’
‘Famished.’
‘Has Max gone?’ Malcolm asked.
‘He’s my ex-boyfriend,’ she said. ‘He went home last night. Can I make some juice for everyone?’
They both nodded.
‘Is Helen coming down?’ asked Malcolm.
‘She was on the phone in her office when I passed her,’ said Daniel.
Malcolm checked the time. Just after nine.
*
As they ate their breakfast, Malcolm was telling Amy and Daniel stories about Trevor. In a previous life, Trevor had been an actor. He had walked the boards with Olivier and Gielgud. He had once wooed Maggie Smith. And his first wife had been a famous Greek actress he met while starving in Greece during the war.
Amy was wolfing hers down, as was Malcolm. Daniel was taking his time. He didn’t usually eat much in the mornings. The instant coffee Malcolm had made him wasn’t coffee at all. He didn’t know what it was. He added another teaspoon of sugar.
They all heard Helen coming. Amy jumped up, took her plate from the warmer and placed it next to Daniel at the table. Malcolm poured her some tea. When she entered the kitchen, it was clear something unexpected had happened.
‘I’ve just spoken to Julia,’ she said, and sat down. ‘They found the missing copy of the original manuscript in a drawer last week. She said they’ve all read it and love it. She was telling me how great it was, how proud she would be to publish it, how all of the editorial team were behind it, how the heads of marketing and sales were behind it one hundred per cent.’
‘But . . .’
‘She also said she was assigning someone called Valerie Hodges to the book to replace you, Amy. She said you’d resigned.’
‘What!?’
‘I don’t think she knows you’re living here.’
‘We need to fight this.’
‘No, we don’t. I’m done. They can publish it. Leave it alone.’
‘But if it isn’t what you want . . .’ said Daniel.
Helen was silent. She looked as exhausted as she had sounded.
‘It’s a good book, Helen, and nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Amy, trying to make the best of it. But she felt hollow. She didn’t believe Julia had just ‘found’ the manuscript. It was too much of a coincidence. Liam must have given it to her. ‘As I said before, I know fifty writers who’d throw their mother under a bus to have their name associated with that manuscript.’
‘It means we get to keep the advance and the house,’ said Helen, smiling bravely. ‘That’s a relief.’
Malcolm hadn’t looked up from his plate since she had entered nor the whole time they had all been talking. Helen glanced at him, expecting him to raise his eyes on this news. He didn’t.
‘It’s a lovely house,’ said Amy, filling with self-loathing. Helen looked demoralised. And Amy knew it was because of her actions. Helen had trusted her. Amy had betrayed that trust. Amy had placed her trust in Liam. He had let her down in turn. And now Julia had succeeded in taking the fight out of Helen. And even though this was the perfect time to admit what she had done, the fear of being asked to leave Malcolm and Helen’s life was suddenly too great. Without examining her reasons, and with the rationale of the coward, Amy chose to be silent. She would fix things before Helen and Malcolm discovered the truth.
Amy said with forced cheerfulness, ‘I still want to look into whether we can get the second and third versions published. I think the three books together would make for an interesting study.’
‘Why?’ asked Daniel. ‘You’re in a privileged position, you’ve read all three. I haven’t read any of them.’
‘The three books are variations of the same theme,’ said Amy, eager to leave the table but unwilling to do so while Helen needed her.
‘Like the versions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover Penguin used to publish?’ Daniel asked. ‘I remember them from my university days.’
‘I don’t know those,’ admitted Amy.
‘They were more drafts of the same novel,’ said Helen. ‘Mine are completely new novels. Each distinct from the last.’
‘But they share the same DNA in a way,’ added Amy. ‘Like brothers and sisters. If you’re told they’re family you see the similarities, but not knowing them, you wouldn’t guess their connection.’
‘When I started, Daniel, I knew I could tell the story I had in mind a number of ways. I just decided to write it for a general audience, as you know, in the hope of making some money. I’d spent most of my writing life with the brake on. Carefully choosing every movement forward. This time I rolled with it and reached speeds I never thought I could. Completely uninhibited writing. I did one rewrite and I was finished. The whole process took a quarter of the time I normally take. And as a result, the manuscript was huge. Almost two hundred thousand words. Later, when I decided not to publish version one, I returned to write the second version from scratch. I inhibited my imagination. I wrote with precision, with patience, entirely conscious of every choice. The story shrank considerably. Characters vanished, scenarios, too.
‘The third version was different. I wrote as I’d never written before. I can’t quite describe that process. I suppose one way would be to say I wrote at a molecular level. But that sounds ridiculous.’
‘That’s the version you should read, Daniel. And so should you, Malcolm,’ said Amy.
Malcolm looked up from his plate. He seemed surprised to find himself spoken to. They saw that his face was wet with tears. Daniel had never seen his father cry before and it shocked him. Helen turned away. And Amy said, ‘Malcolm, oh dear, what’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, his shoulders shaking, ‘I feel so sad.’
Amy hugged him as Helen left the table and then the room.
Daniel picked up a sausage from his mother’s untouched plate and took a bite.
‘This sausage is good, but everything else is fucked,’ he said, chewing.