One Small Mistake(13)
‘We’d need a new spin on it.’
She waits. I lick my dry lips and, just for a second, consider offering up Noah’s story but it’s too real, too raw. I can’t.
‘Why don’t you go home, have a think, come up with a few ideas and send them over to me? Then we can schedule a call to discuss them. Sorry to dash but I’ve got another meeting in half an hour.’
‘No problem.’
She insists on paying even though the book hasn’t sold, and I feel even guiltier. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope, isn’t there? I mean, Darcy wants me to pitch more ideas. She likes my writing. I haven’t completely failed. Not yet. It will take me another six months to write a new manuscript … after editing and submitting, it could be another year or more before I have an offer. If I have an offer. How long do I spend working in a coffee shop, earning minimum wage, with nothing to show for it, before I accept my parents are right and throw in the towel?
When we step out of the cool, air-conditioned café and into the burning sun, Lara turns to me. ‘I’m glad we had this chat.’
‘Me too. I’m looking forward to starting something new.’
‘Good, perfect. Obviously, I want us to continue to work together but it must be on the right project, you understand?’
I nod, even as her ultimatum creates a fog of dread in my chest, cold, dark and spreading: come up with a winning pitch or she’ll drop me.
I met Margot in the first year of university when I went to my lecturer’s office to discuss my ‘Introduction to Media Law and Regulation’ paper and there she was, fucking Anthony Roberts on his desk. After that, I’d sit in his seminars, listening to him talk about the difference in regulatory guidelines between print and broadcast media, all the while knowing he bites his lip just before he comes. Weeks later, I found Margot crying in the self-help section of the library. We went to a bar where she lamented about how she was madly in love with Dr Roberts, but he was banging at least two other girls on campus. Margot swiped a bottle of tequila from behind the bar and we drank it on the way home, shouting ‘Olé!’ at one another and bursting into shrieks of laughter. We’ve been friends ever since.
I’m supposed to be meeting her in forty-five minutes but knowing my book has failed and having Lara’s ultimatum sitting inside my mind like a spring-loaded trap, I’m low. Really low. I’m not sure which is more selfish: cancelling on Margot because my pity-party is single occupancy only or meeting Margot knowing I’m going to be miserable company. Jack would tell me to pull myself together, meet her and put everything else to one side, even just for a few hours. So, that’s what I do.
The heat is so close that by the time I reach the restaurant, I’m sweaty and exhausted, but it’s worth it because the rooftop bar has a breathtaking view of the London skyline. Glass skyscrapers glitter against the horizon and to my right is the Thames, which from all the way up here, looks good enough to bathe in. If I can get through the next few hours without a dark cloud of misery creeping in, I’ll have won.
Margot is sitting in the corner, sipping a cocktail. She’s wearing an icing-sugar-white dress which brings out her natural tan.
I weave between tables, making my way across the roof to her, telling myself to smile, to be positive, and not to focus on the very real possibility I have tossed away a career and moved back to my hometown for nothing. When she sees me, she gives me her movie-star smile, and I feel a rush of love for her. Margot pulls me into a hug; I breathe her in – English pears and freesia, her favourite scent from Jo Malone.
‘I ordered you a drink,’ she says as I slide into my seat.
‘Thanks.’
‘I almost had to cancel. I’m dealing with the bitchiest bridezilla. She has zero respect for my office hours and just calls me in the middle of the night with stupid questions about imported silk. I’ve seriously considered slipping Xanax into her tea. She wanted me to drop everything and drive down to Newquay tonight to look at some candlesticks.’
‘I bet her fiancé’s happy he put a ring on it.’
Margot laughs. Even though she complains, she loves her job; she’s always wanted to be a wedding planner. Her mother told me when Margot was little, she used to sit and watch her parents’ wedding video over and over. Just like a Disney film. ‘How was your meeting? I’m dying to know!’
I absolutely do not want to talk about the car crash meeting I just came from. ‘We’ll get to that in a minute.’ I give her a huge grin so she doesn’t zero in on my misery like a scab and pick at it. ‘First, I have to tell you about my stalker.’
The distraction goes down as smoothly as melted chocolate, as all thoughts of my book immediately disappear as Margot tries to grapple with what I’ve said. ‘What?’
‘It’s this guy who lurks outside the library late at night or sits in the park watching me run laps in the morning.’
Her expression is a mixture of horror and delight. ‘Seriously?’
‘He comes into the coffee shop at least four times a week. He’s so still it’s eerie and he has these black, round-rimmed glasses that make me think of serial killers.’ I lean forward; I am spinning with the thrill of telling a story; it’s the same rush I get when I sit down at my laptop to write, and though this tale is true, it feels like it happened to someone else. ‘He always wears dark clothes and combat boots and when he’s near, I feel him, you know? He has this stare, like he wants something from me.’