'Sexy,
funny and poignant'
SOPHIE COUSENS
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Slow Burn Summer
Slow Burn Summer
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‘Sorry about this, can you just hold him for a second while I wipe this off me? It’s like he has this wild sixth sense that I’m wearing clean clothes, must throw up all over him straight away.’
Kate glanced at the familiar green door behind the harassed young guy thrusting the baby out towards her, knowing the fastest way to get round him was to refuse, but old parenting instincts die hard. She recognized the exhausted look in the guy’s eyes, and the I’m-holdingon-by-a-thread-here tone in his new-dad voice. Sighing inwardly, she held her hands out for the red-faced, squirming baby.
‘I’d keep him at arm’s- length, he’s just filled his nappy. He’s like a grenade, goes off at either end without notice.’
‘Yeah, they do that,’ she said, trying to surreptitiously check her watch without tipping the baby to one side. ‘Hello, you,’ she whispered, thrown straight back to Alice’s baby days by the unexpected weight of a baby in her arms. He was surprised enough to stop crying and stare up at her, silent when she stroked the pronounced curve of his cheek with the back of her finger.
‘I think he likes you, you should keep him. I’ll come back for him in about eighteen years,’ the guy said, finally finding a pack of baby wipes in the bottom of his overstuffed
changing bag and scrubbing ineffectually at the baby sick down the front of his hoodie.
‘Trust me, you’ll look back when he’s eighteen and wish he was this small again. He’ll still be throwing up, just beer-induced rather than milk,’ Kate said.
‘God, I’d kill for a beer right now,’ the guy sighed, giving up on his scrubbing and shoving the wipes back into the bag. Kate caught his eye and he shook his head and laughed. ‘I don’t mean it.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It gets easier.’
Lifting the baby on to her shoulder, she waited while he reclipped his baby carrier in place and gave himself a shake.
‘Thanks for being cool,’ he said, wrinkling his nose as he took his son back. ‘We better go and find somewhere to change you, hadn’t we, bud?’
Kate glanced sideways as he moved away into the lunchtime crowds and found the shoulder of her black jacket covered in baby sick.
‘Shit balls,’ she muttered, dragging it off to examine the damage. She’d spent the last two days deciding what to wear for the job interview, and none of her plans had involved baby sick.
Sighing, she did the only thing possible: shoved her jacket in the nearest litter bin, reassured herself she wasn’t underdressed, then threw her shoulders back and turned towards the painted green door again. It was open, an older guy heading out just as she headed in. She stepped aside with a tight smile, giving him a wide berth.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t vomit on you too,’ he said, having clearly witnessed the whole incident.
She shrugged lightly, an it-happens gesture designed to move things along.
‘I think you have some in your hair,’ he said, peering at her.
Kate touched her curls and groaned when she found them damp. ‘Oh, for the love of God.’ She’d stashed a hairband in her pocket earlier and reached for it on autopilot, patting herself down and belatedly realizing she wasn’t wearing her jacket any more.
‘In the bin,’ the guy said, rueful. He looked like someone never likely to find themselves in such a ridiculous situation, well put together from his suntan to his tweed jacket to his polished shoes.
‘Well, that’s that, then, isn’t it? Message received,’ she said, glancing up at the skies in surrender. ‘I can’t go into a job interview with no jacket and sick in my hair, can I?’
He looked at her for a moment, then silently unknotted his tie and handed it to her.
‘For your hair,’ he said.
Kate looked at it, surprised, and then at him.
‘You’ve come this far,’ he said, by way of explanation.
She swallowed hard and nodded. He was right. She could salvage this. Tying her hair back, she took a deep, grateful breath.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
He nodded and held her gaze for a second, then stalked away into the London street scene.
Unaware of the drama playing itself out on the street below, Charlie Francisco sat at his late father’s desk with Kate Elliott’s letter smoothed flat in front of him. It was
addressed to Jojo Francisco, as much of the mail still was, despite his father’s untimely death a few months previously. Known around town as the ‘starmaker’, Jojo had been a charismatic talent agent who’d operated solely on his famous gut instinct, his killer negotiating skills disguised by his lovable, eccentric demeanour. His sudden passing had come as a shock to everyone, clients, associates and rivals alike, but most of all to Charlie, his only child and the slightly unwilling heir to his agenting throne.
Kate’s handwritten letter had arrived the week previously, a thick white envelope addressed in black ink – fountain pen by the loops and slopes of the letters. He’d turned it over a couple of times before opening it, with a strange sixth sense that it wasn’t going to be something run of the mill. An echo of that gut instinct his father was so famous for, maybe.
Dear Jojo,
I’m one hundred per cent certain you won’t remember me, I was one of your clients twenty years ago. God, I feel old writing that, it’s a lifetime, I know! A literal lifetime, actually – my daughter, Alice, has just turned nineteen and gone to university, not that that’s the reason I’m writing to you (by hand, you’ll note, because I remember how much you always hated technology. I draw the line at purple ink though!).
Or maybe Alice leaving sort of is the reason I’m writing to you, at least in part – she’s left home for a new adventure, and I’m about to turn forty and recently left my husband, so there you go.
If you do remember me at all, it’ll be for chucking my career in to get married and move abroad – ‘a monumental mistake’ you called it, as I remember. I was offended at the time but it turns out you were right. He had that clichéd affair with his secretary – it’s fine if you’re rolling your eyes. It’s taken twenty years, but I guess the joy of ‘I told you so’ never gets old, right? Permission to revel in it granted.
I feel embarrassed to be writing to you after all this time. A bit of me hopes this letter is returned to sender because you’re drinking rum punch on a beach in the Bahamas, but obviously more of me hopes you’re still the best agent in town and willing to let me buy you lunch and apologize in person. We’re talking a sandwich in the park rather than shepherd’s pie in the Ivy, though, just to set your expectations at a realistic level! That’s kind of the point, to be honest. I’ve left my husband and he’s kept all the money – damn me and my lovestruck pre- nup! You did try to warn me, I wish I’d listened.
Is it unrealistic to hope there might still be a place for me in the acting world, Jojo? I know I’d have to start at the bottom again and most likely stay there, but I’m okay with that.
I’ve found myself living in a studio flat and for all I know I might not even remember how to act, so I’m sealing this now and shoving it in the post box before my nerve fails me. And yes – I’m trying to shamelessly curry favour by writing instead of emailing! If by any chance you’ve given up on purple ink and joined the digital revolution, you can find me on kateandclive@ blinkmail.com.
Hope to be in touch soon, Kate
(BTW, Clive is the tortoise my sister and I have co-owned for the last thirty-three years. I set the email up just after my breakup, and I admit there was wine involved. Clive appeared just as I was choosing an email address and it seemed funny at the time because he’s the only guy who I’ve always been able to count on, but now I have to explain who Clive is all the time and it’s not very funny at all really, is it? Will change it to something more professional, obvs.)
Whoever Kate Elliott was, she clearly hadn’t heard about his father’s demise. Her frank letter had been intriguing enough for him to ask his secretary to pull Kate’s paperwork from Jojo’s meticulously maintained archive. It landed on his desk within minutes, a slim manila file with a headshot clipped to the outside.
‘Thanks, Felicity,’ he’d murmured to her retreating back. She’d worked for the agency for at least twentyfive years, her time split between Jojo on talent and Fiona Fox across the hall on literary. They’d been a formidable double act for decades, Felicity the human bridge between them, manning reception and running the ship.
A note had been pushed beneath the photo clipped to the file, his father’s unmistakable purple handwriting.
Foolish child! All that talent down the drain, plug pulled just as she was getting started. Rising star, falling star. Crying waste of talent. And for what? Some misplaced notion
of love being willing to give up your dreams for someone else’s? She’ll be back, no doubt.
Charlie sighed. His father had always been an astute judge of character, and nothing had upset him more than wasted talent.
Jojo’s portrait had watched him from the wall opposite; Charlie had practically heard him telling him to connect the dots. In one hand, a letter from an unknown actor. In the other, a job specifically requiring an unknown actor, someone to pose as a romance author for PR purposes. He studied Kate’s headshot. Clear green eyes, auburn hair falling around her shoulders. It was twenty years out of date, but maybe, just maybe, she had the look of a romance writer. Her letter had pulled no punches – she was freshly divorced and desperate for work, and to be frank he’d have an uphill battle selling the job to anyone more established. Clicking into his email, he’d copied Kate’s address with a resigned sigh. He might be Jojo Francisco’s son, but he drew the line at purple ink.
Glancing at the clock now, he sighed and folded Kate’s letter back into its envelope. It didn’t matter whether she was right for the job or not. She hadn’t even bothered turning up.
Same ‘Francisco & Fox’ etched on the half-glass door at the top of the narrow, winding wooden staircase, same sickly mix of fear and excitement in the pit of her stomach when she was buzzed inside. Kate could almost feel the echo of her younger self taking a seat on what was quite possibly the same battered leather couch in reception, and she was pretty certain she’d been greeted by the same secretary as all those years ago too. The time-capsule effect did little to settle her nerves. Would Charlie Francisco be a carbon copy of his father, as familiar as all of the other fixtures and fittings, likely to barrel out of his office and bark her name even though she was barely five feet away?
She glanced up when the phone on the secretary’s desk buzzed, and a sharp female voice echoed around the room demanding coffee, stirring decades-old apprehension in Kate’s gut. Her eyes flickered to the closed door bearing Fiona Fox’s name in shouty capitals. Jojo’s longterm business partner was still in situ then, and by the sound of it, every bit as shark-like as she’d been twenty years ago. Kate had been eighty per cent terrified, twenty per cent in awe. Jojo and Fiona had been like the world’s most fear-inducing parents back when she was a teen, and whenever she’d been faced with difficult occasions over the intervening years, she’d asked herself what Fiona Fox would do. What she really hoped Fiona Fox wouldn’t do in
that exact moment was step out into reception and spot her sitting there, because she was already hanging on to the last shreds of her dignity by her fingernails.
She was in luck. Charlie didn’t keep her waiting, which she was grateful for. She’d googled him, of course, and seen his corporate headshot, but his complete dissimilarity to his father came as a jolt all the same. Jojo had been a terrier of a man, a huge personality packed into a compact package, although he’d strained his shirt buttons thanks to too many swanky lunches. Same office, same secretary, but this was a very different Francisco. Taller, certainly. No barrelling, either. He strolled out and extended his hand, radiating a self-assured confidence that felt more Californian beach bar than London office.
‘Kate?’
No barking either, then, and the only thing straining his close-fitting white shirt was his biceps. More wolf than terrier, throwing her off her stride even more than the sicky baby and the ruined jacket.
She shot out of her seat with her hand outstretched, wishing she’d wiped it on her trousers first in case it was clammy. If it was, his business-like half-nod didn’t show it. His inquisitive eyes swept over her mildly dishevelled appearance and seemed to make a snap judgement on her non-suitability for whatever role he’d had her in mind for, the briefest flicker of disappointment, perhaps.
‘Sorry I’m a few minutes late,’ she said. She resisted the urge to elaborate, because baby vomit was hardly the ideal conversational opener at a job interview, was it? Besides, his quickness to jump to the wrong conclusion had pulled on her already-frayed nerves.
‘Come through,’ he said, ushering her into his office and closing the door.
Same green-leather-top desk, same captain’s swivel chair behind it. A different smell, perhaps. Back in the day there had been a linger of cigar smoke and industrial endof-the-day sweat, in contrast to Charlie’s subtly expensive cologne and fresh coffee, as if he’d just wandered in from his post-run morning shower.
‘Your father always said to trust him to steer the ship from that chair,’ she said, her mind rolodexing back through the decades at the sight of it.
‘Did he also tell you he’d steer you clear of icebergs?’
Charlie gestured for her to take the seat opposite.
She laid a hand over her throat for dramatic effect. ‘You mean I wasn’t the only one he used that line on?’
Charlie patted the arm of the captain’s chair as he sat down. ‘He commanded his entire fleet from this thing.’
‘Like Napoleon,’ Kate said.
He raised his eyes to his father’s portrait. ‘I think he’d get a kick out of the comparison.’
‘Well, he was usually right,’ Kate said. ‘And in my case, he definitely was. As I said in my letter, I’ve managed to steer myself spectacularly on to the rocks.’
Charlie’s gaze didn’t flinch. He didn’t seem embarrassed by her candour or seek to make light of her situation.
‘It sounds like you’ve had a tough year.’
A small, wild laugh bubbled up her windpipe. ‘Just a bit.’ She swallowed and cleared her throat, remembering she wasn’t there for a stroll down memory lane. ‘Your email mentioned a job I might be suitable for?’
It could have been a trick of the light, but something
shifted momentarily through Charlie’s dark, watchful eyes. Was he regretting inviting her in, deciding whether to even bother telling her about the job he’d called her there to discuss? He glanced down at his desk. Kate did the same, seeing her file, the twenty-years-out-of-date headshot, Jojo’s flamboyant purple ink. Charlie quickly slid a thick, blank-covered, spiral-bound book over the top of it.
‘This book is in need of an author,’ he said, splaying his hand flat on its plain front cover, summer bronze against snow white.
She frowned, unsure what he meant. ‘Doesn’t it already have one?’
His expression said yes, but also no. ‘Not one prepared to have their name across the front of it.’
‘Is there something wrong with it?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘Quite the opposite. It’s a love story for the ages.’
Kate was trying, but the pieces weren’t slotting into place. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not clear what you’re saying,’ she said eventually, a tiny shrug to imply it wasn’t her fault he was being vague.
He steepled his fingers over the book cover, a small sigh suggesting she should try harder. ‘It’s the work of an extremely established author, but it doesn’t fit their brand. It’s a one-off diversion from their usual genre, and they’re not willing to see it published under their own name.’
‘So why don’t they just use a fake name, a pseudonym?’
He took a moment to consider his words. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that. They don’t want to be
connected to this book in any way. They’re not prepared to risk a pseudonym that might be linked back to them at some point in the future.’
‘So my name would be on the cover and my photo on the jacket?’
He nodded, watching her wrap her head around the concept.
‘Do I have to actually do anything?’ she said, trying to decide if it was something she could sign up to. ‘Besides get a new headshot?’
‘Something less teenage might be a start,’ he said, just on the right side of sarcasm.
‘I was nineteen, actually, and a fool,’ she said, prickled. ‘And now I’m thirty-nine, and still a fool, apparently.’
Awareness flickered through his eyes; he opened his mouth to reply and then seemed to think better of it. He turned the manuscript over in his hands instead, dark lashes hiding his eyes, a reset back into professional mode before he spoke again.
‘So it’ll be classed as a debut novel, which in the usual run of things shouldn’t mean face-to-face interviews, but your photo would be on social media pages, you could expect online interviews, podcasts, that kind of thing. Nothing too strenuous and the publisher will give you all the background info you need.’ He paused. ‘You’d need to be on time for things, obviously.’
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘If you must know, a baby was sick on me on the street right outside. I had to put my favourite jacket in the bin.’ He narrowed his eyes, almost as if he didn’t believe her. Reaching a hand behind her head, she pulled the tie from her ponytail, closing her eyes for a
second as a waft of baby sick hit her when she flapped her curls around her shoulders.
‘Some guy gave me his tie to fasten my hair back, but here, let me share my sour, crispy curls with you as proof.’
He sighed and passed her an elastic band from a pot on his desk.
Kate resisted the urge to flick it at him, feeling like a moody teenager as she fastened her hair back again to stop herself from gagging. If it wasn’t for the fact she really needed the job, she’d have got up and walked out just for the satisfaction of the flounce. As it was, she put her shoulders back and acted like the grown-ass mature woman she was.
‘Would I need to use my actual name?’
He paused and gave her question due consideration. ‘Would you prefer not to?’
She chewed the inside of her lip, thinking. ‘If I’m going to view it as playing a role, I think I’d find it easier if it’s not my real name.’
‘I’d suggest you keep Kate so it feels natural when someone addresses you, but I can help you settle on a different surname, perhaps?’
The idea of reinventing herself as a completely new Kate wasn’t entirely without appeal.
‘Can I know who the actual author is?’
‘No. And I think that’s for the best, because then you wouldn’t need to guard the secret.’
She folded her arms and looked at him levelly across the desk. ‘Is it you?’
His eyes opened a little wider, startled. ‘Why do you ask that?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You look like a guy who wouldn’t admit to writing love stories.’
‘I’d be proud as hell if I’d written this one,’ he said after a few silent seconds.
‘But what if I have questions about the story? Surely I need to know it inside out so I can field anything that’s thrown my way?’
He loosened the knot of his tie a fraction as he swallowed. ‘Perhaps a good first step would be for you to read the book?’ He pushed the manuscript towards her. ‘Think of it as being sent a script to read, see if you connect with it, if it gives you the magic feeling.’
‘Now you do sound like your father,’ she said, because however different Charlie was from Jojo Francisco, ‘the magic feeling’ was a phrase she’d heard in this office several times before.
‘I learned from the best,’ he said. ‘I realize it’s an unconventional role, not what you came here expecting. I’d make sure you’re well remunerated for your time, if you decide to take it, naturally.’
His words grounded her, a reminder that her pockets were light and her options were limited.
‘Can I take a couple of days to read it before I decide?’
‘Of course,’ he said, getting to his feet to see her out. ‘Take as long as you need.’
Charlie Francisco wasn’t at all like his father in appearance or demeanour. Jojo had been paternal but unpredictable; being around him had set her nerves on edge. Charlie was a different Francisco altogether. Definitely not paternal, and he set her nerves jangling in a whole other way.
She’d been concerned that she’d be one of several people up for whatever role Charlie Francisco had her in mind for, but as she headed towards the train station with the manuscript stashed safely in her bag, she had a sneaking realization that he didn’t have anyone else anonymous enough for the job on his books. He was asking her to be a ghost author.
Charlie barely had time to sit down after seeing Kate out before Fiona Fox came striding through, no knock on his closed door.
‘Well?’
‘Come in, Fi,’ he said, with a resigned half-smile.
‘Did she say yes?’
He swallowed, watching Fiona pace. ‘She’s going to think about it.’
‘Think about it?’ Fiona said. ‘The woman is on her knees with a twenty-year gap on her CV, and she’s going to think about it?’
Sometimes it felt as if his father hadn’t left the building at all.
‘Let’s just give her time to read the book,’ he said. ‘We need her to genuinely love the story first, which I’m sure she will.’
‘She was dressed like a bloody waitress, that’s going to need work. Looks bohemian enough to carry it off at least,’ Fiona said, gripping the back of the chair opposite his with her expensively bejewelled fingers. ‘I mean, was that a man’s neck tie in her hair? Did she roll in here late, fresh from a bunk-up? We need someone we can rely on for this, Charlie. Is she that person? And as for all that clanky jewellery . . .’ There was an implied shudder to her words, a distaste for anyone who didn’t share her own
taste for power dressing and heavily lacquered hair. Fiona Fox had perfected her signature look in the nineties and never deviated from it for the sake of fashion. Kate Elliott hadn’t struck Charlie as especially bohemian, but in truth he understood what Fi meant. She had an individuality about her that even her blank-slate white shirt couldn’t disguise, from the hastily tied-back curls to her musical silver bangles when she shook his hand. He’d found her candid honesty refreshing; there was no air of desperation even though life had chucked her into the deep end of late.
‘Do you think it’s a fair thing to ask of her?’ he said. ‘The element of subterfuge?’
‘Is the woman an actor or not?’ Fiona threw her hands up in the air. ‘Don’t be gauche, Charlie, it’s dull. Writers use pseudonyms all the time, you’ve been around this business long enough to understand it’s just semantics.’
‘Not usually like this, though,’ he pressed. ‘If it ever came out, it could be a PR train wreck.’ He was trying to find an angle Fi would care about, because she definitely didn’t give a hoot about Kate Elliott.
‘Then make damn sure it never comes out,’ Fi said, steel-eyed. ‘It comes down to putting the right person on this job in the first place, Charlie, a safe pair of hands, because there’s no room for second chances. Does she have the balls or not?’
He’d only met Kate Elliott once, but he found himself very much hoping that she did. She’d breezed through the office this morning like fresh mountain air, no side order of sarcasm or sense of game playing.
‘Let’s wait and see how she reacts to the manuscript first, one step at a time.’
Fi shook her head. ‘Get her on the phone. We don’t have time to work to her schedules, she works to ours.’
‘Fi, she only left the office ten minutes ago. She hasn’t even had time to get to the train station, let alone read the manuscript.’
‘She doesn’t need to read it. We need someone who thinks on their feet and makes decisions based on gut instinct. Is she going to be a rabbit in the headlights when she’s put on the spot? Because she will be. She won’t have a week to make her mind up what to do or say then, will she?’ Fiona sat down opposite him. ‘Call her, Charlie. Let’s see what she’s made of.’
Charlie found himself conflicted. Fiona had been in the backdrop of his life for as long as he could remember, his father’s oldest friend and business partner. She was about as bendable as an iron rod and as warm as freshly churned gelato, but he happened to know she kept a dogeared copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul in her desk drawer and gave monthly to a local cat sanctuary, both facts she’d deny. Fiona Fox was a stalwart in the publishing world, and in Charlie’s world too, and right now she was using their complicated relationship to her advantage, as usual.
‘Fine,’ he said, reaching for his mobile with a sigh. ‘But for the record, I think we risk losing her by pushing too hard.’
‘If she’s going to jump, better now than when her name’s on the front of that book.’
Fiona took the seat opposite and watched him place the call, speakerphone on. He privately thought it would be better for all concerned if it went to voicemail. He imagined Kate standing on the train platform searching for her
mobile in her oversized bag, bangles jangling against the plain white cover of the book.
‘Charlie, so soon,’ she answered after a handful of rings, sounding bemused.
Fiona’s eyebrows shot up, as if Kate should be more respectful.
‘Thanks for coming in today, Kate, it was good to meet you.’
She sighed. ‘Are you calling to say you’ve changed your mind because I arrived late, even though I explained why?’
‘Well, that wasn’t –’
‘Or has Fiona Fox vetoed me because –’
Charlie closed his eyes, unwilling to look across the desk. ‘Fiona and I are here together just now, Kate,’ he cut across her so she wouldn’t lose herself the job before she’d even accepted it. ‘We both think you’re a great fit for the role, so shall we fix up a time for you to come back in and dot the i’s and cross the t’s?’
She fell silent for a few beats, the bustle of the train station evident through the phone speaker.
‘I’d prefer to take some time to read the book first, as we agreed?’
Fiona rolled her eyes and tapped her blood-red nail against the face of her slim gold watch. ‘Give her twentyfour hours,’ she stage-whispered.
He shook his head. ‘What, to live?’ he shot back, hopefully quiet enough for Kate not to hear.
‘I’ll call as soon as I’ve read it,’ she said, cool. ‘Monday, maybe?’
Fiona threw her hands in the air, even though it was already Friday.
‘Monday it is,’ he said, wishing he’d refused to call her at all, because he’d ended up unnecessarily compromised in both women’s eyes. He placed his mobile down and looked at Fiona. ‘There. We’ll know she’s the right person by Monday.’
Fiona got to her feet. ‘Your father would have known she was the right person within thirty seconds of meeting her,’ she said, turning on her heel.
Fiona drew unfavourable comparisons between Charlie and his father all the time; he was really hoping it’d ease off as she recovered from Jojo’s loss and adjusted to Charlie’s less shoot-from-the-hip agenting style. In truth, Charlie was still working out what his own agenting style was going to look like. Being his father’s understudy had never been part of his life plan; if it hadn’t been for his alltoo-messy divorce, he’d still be in LA now, knee deep in scripts and studio meetings. Being married to the daughter of one of Hollywood’s sharpest agents had been great until it wasn’t – LA was a big place, yet it turned out there wasn’t room enough for the both of them. His father had been cock-a-hoop when he’d proposed to Tara, the only child of one of his oldest professional friends. The coming together of two legendary agenting dynasties, her father had said in his wedding speech, misty-eyed and champagne happy. And it’d felt that way to Charlie too, as if he’d found his place and his people and his purpose. Neither he nor Tara were interested in agenting, but they’d grown up around the acting industry, and they turned their own love story into a lucrative writing duo telling other people’s love stories.
He’d hit the wall hard in the aftermath of their
break-up, so much so that his father had finally pitched up on his LA doorstep and not left until he agreed to come home to London with him. Home. Therein lay the rub, really. Nowhere felt like home. Not his soulless LA beach house, too showy and void-like without Tara. And not his father’s stuck-in-a-time-warp London town house either, decorated over thirty years ago by Charlie’s late mother and untouched since. To give Jojo his dues, he’d done his best to take care of his son at a point when he really needed taking care of, even if Charlie didn’t accept the help as graciously as he might have at the time. Talent agenting was never on his radar as a career option; he’d agreed to work alongside his father as a stop gap, going in to work at Francisco & Fox to avoid his father hiring a housekeeper to make sure he didn’t have whisky for breakfast. And then Jojo had gone and bloody died, keeled over in his beloved shepherd’s pie at the Ivy, leaving Charlie alone in the captain’s chair, whether he liked it or not. And whether Fiona liked it or not too, which on most days, she didn’t.
‘I’ve written a book,’ Kate said, flopping on to the other end of the sofa to her sister, careful not to lose any Pinot from her glass. She’d been back from London for a couple of hours, and all she’d done from the moment she’d sat on the train was read the mystery manuscript.
Liv looked at her sharply. ‘Have you? When? On the train home?’
Kate shrugged. She’d made the decision within the first few pages that she was going to say oh-my-God-this-isheartachingly-beautiful yes, so technically, perhaps, she had become an author on the train. ‘Kind of.’
‘Is it a gory thriller about an adulterous twat called Richard who catches his tie in the shredder while doing his secretary and gets yanked face first into the blades? Or maybe he gets dragged into a dark alley by his ex-wife’s violent kick-ass sister? I’d pay good money to read that.’
Liv had taken Richard’s adultery almost as hard as Kate herself – she was the elder sister by two years, and she took her position seriously. They’d lost their mother as small children and been raised by the kind of father whose ‘eccentric scientist’ approach bordered on unintentional neglect. He’d rarely remembered to turn up at parents’ evenings when she’d been small, and he’d chosen to appear at an overseas convention rather than attend her wedding to Richard. It hadn’t hurt her as much as people
might have imagined; he’d never exceeded her expectations as a father.
It had been Liv’s brainwave to move Kate into the flat above her fancy-dress shop in the aftermath of the separation, making decisions because her sister couldn’t face it. It was a far cry from the five-bedroom detached Kate and Richard had shared – or rather she’d thought they’d shared it, until she’d walked in on him in bed with his secretary and realized he’d stitched her into a prenup so watertight that she’d been lucky to leave with her own clothes.
Damn those love goggles. She’d driven away from that house with a few cardboard boxes and a suitcase, her dignity in shreds as curtains around the gated community twitched with barely concealed excitement. She’d headed blindly to Liv and Nish’s overcrowded three-storey terrace, where the welcome was all-encompassing and she’d had to talk her mild-mannered brother-in-law out of paying Richard a visit to relieve him of his teeth. Turkish veneers, not that it was relevant.
‘I’ve been working out,’ Nish had said gamely. ‘And I cycle to the office three times a week now, better for the planet.’
Kate tucked her legs beneath her, already in PJ s even though it was barely six o’clock.
‘It’s a love story,’ she said. ‘An incredibly beautiful one.’
Liv put her head on one side, studying her sister. ‘You’ve lost me.’
Kate reached behind the sofa cushion for the plaincovered book she’d stashed there when she’d answered the door to Liv ten minutes ago.
‘This one,’ she said. ‘It’s an orphan at the moment, and I’ve been asked to be its mother.’
‘You didn’t actually write it, though?’ Liv said, trying to understand. ‘You haven’t blown the dust off those old romances you used to write and got secretly famous, have you?’
Kate swirled the wine in her glass, watching the concentric circles. It had been a long time since she’d written anything, fragile dreams squashed by the reality of life as Richard’s wife, life organizer and hostess. She’d quietly channelled her soul-deep need for creative expression into writing rather than performing for a while, but even that had fallen by the wayside after Alice was born.
‘God, I wish I’d written it because it’s stunning, but no, these aren’t my words.’
Kate had already made two decisions about the book. One, she was going to take the job. She could have called Charlie to let him know, but he’d wound her up by badgering her for an answer before she’d even caught the train home. And two, her immediate family needed to be on board, because she wasn’t prepared to lie to them. Liv refilled their glasses as she listened to the details of Charlie’s unusual job offer, flicking through the pages of the manuscript balanced on her knees.
‘So you basically moonlight as the author online and on the cover, kind of like the book’s official representative?’
‘That’s about right,’ Kate said. ‘But we’d need to keep the fact I haven’t actually written it between ourselves. Nish can know, obviously, but I was wondering about Stevie and Arun . . . would it be easier to just not tell them I haven’t actually written it, so they don’t need to keep any secrets?’
‘My kids will have very limited interest in the whole thing anyway, unless you go viral on social media or something,’ Liv said. ‘If it doesn’t happen on their phones, it doesn’t happen.’
‘I’m not planning on becoming a meme any time soon,’ Kate said. ‘I better tell Alice, though, it feels too much to keep from her.’
‘She called me last night to see how you are,’ Liv said, finger-combing her blonde hair back into a knot at the base of her neck.
‘I spoke to her myself,’ Kate said.
‘Yeah, she told me. She was just double-checking you weren’t faking it for her benefit.’
Kate sighed. ‘I hate that she feels as if she needs to worry about me.’
‘She doesn’t need to. She chooses to, because you’re her mother and she adores you.’
‘Did she tell you she thinks I should go solo travelling in Thailand to find myself? She bombarded me with links this morning.’
‘Yes. Asked me to badger you into going.’
Kate sighed. ‘Oh to be nineteen and think the answer to all life’s problems can be found on a tropical beach.’
‘Can’t they? I can think of worse places to look.’
‘I’m forty next birthday, bit late for my gap year,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t want to run away, Liv, but Alice does have a point. I need to do something to spark my life up, and I think it might have just landed in my lap.’
Liv topped up their wine glasses. ‘So what did you think of Charlie Francisco?’
Kate huffed. ‘Nothing like his father, that’s for sure.’
‘He was a one-off, to be fair,’ Liv said.
Jojo had been in Kate’s life for barely two years, but in that time he’d been a wise teacher, an unpredictably brilliant agent and sometimes a fatherly shoulder. He’d certainly guided her well, straight into the casting department of one of the country’s longest- running soaps. She remembered his joy in personally delivering the news that she’d landed the part she desperately wanted, his pride when she won Most Promising Newcomer at the Soap Awards the following year. He’d helped Liv out back then too, putting her in touch with TV and film costume departments she’d never have got a foot in the door with otherwise. He was that sort of man, expansive and generous with his knowledge and his little black book of contacts; he’d taken both sisters under his wing, and Kate’s resignation like an arrow to the heart.
‘Charlie’s overconfident,’ Kate said. ‘Suntan. Bit flash.’
Liv sniffed. ‘I did some digging. Word is he cheated on his wife, Tara, more than once.’
Liv had a direct hotline to Hollywood gossip through her indiscreet circle of costume department friends; she’d known about several movie-star scandals before even the pushiest of journalists. Not that she ever told anyone but Kate, which didn’t count as they were two sides of the same coin.
Kate sighed. ‘I’m not shocked. He didn’t exactly remind me of Richard, but there’s something about him I didn’t one hundred per cent trust.’
‘He’s hot, though, right?’
‘Oh God, yeah. Seriously hot.’
‘There’s that,’ Liv said.
‘I thought he was the secret author at first. It’s no big leap from writing rom-com movies to novels, is it?’
‘Who knows.’ Liv shrugged. ‘I bet Tara wrote the movies anyway and let him take the credit.’
It was a disappointing but not altogether surprising idea. Richard’s infidelity had layered cynicism into Kate’s everyday thought patterns, her rose-tinted love goggles flung into the nearest dustbin.
‘Watch yourself around him,’ Liv said. ‘All that –’ she pointed towards her own face and made circles in the air – ‘can be distracting.’
Kate knocked back the last of her wine. ‘He should watch himself around me,’ she said, then laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got his number. He might be wolfish, but I’m no Red Riding Hood.’
Liv gathered her stuff together to head home. ‘You do look good in red, though,’ she said. ‘That dress I made for your engagement was killer.’
Kate handed Liv her keys. ‘Shame it didn’t actually kill Richard, it would have saved me a whole heap of trouble.’
She didn’t mean it. Not entirely. Without Richard there would be no Alice, and in truth the early years of their marriage hadn’t been without their good times; but the shock of adultery and divorce had rattled every bone in her body.
Alone again, she flopped back on the sofa and picked up the plain white book, writing her name on the cover with her fingertip. There were few silver linings to her reduced circumstances, but at least there were no inquisitive neighbours or close friends to explain her sudden
new author life to. As ghost authors go, Charlie Francisco couldn’t have picked a better person for the job.
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for seeing me last week, and even more so for offering me such an incredible opportunity. I’ve read the book (twice – I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about Leanora’s story, she’s jumped off the page straight into my heart) and you were right, it’s . . I don’t even have the words for how much I’m in love with it.
It would be an absolute honour to be its official representative, if the offer is still open. Please let me know what I should do next.
All my best, Kate
Hi Kate,
That’s great news, I was very much hoping to hear from you today.
Give me a couple of days to discuss things in-house and I’ll get back to you. Let me know if any days and times are better at your end.
Best wishes, Charlie