The Girl On the Page Read online

  ‘Aren’t you going to help?’

  He didn’t answer her.

  Helen then realised that this was the longest conversation they’d had since Daniel and Geraldine walked out. The acknowledgement of this made her uneasy. Malcolm always had so much to say, normally. He was never idle. Never. Seeing him sprawled out on the sofa like this was unusual. Out of character, even. She realised she had avoided conversation with him because she had been waiting for something from him.

  ‘Have you had time to read my manuscript?’ She hated having to ask, she felt physically sick saying the words, but his silence on the subject had forced her into it. It had been weeks since she had given him the manuscript of version three. Which was the only title it had as yet: ‘Version three’.

  ‘No, I haven’t found the time. Besides, my opinion isn’t useful to you anymore. I don’t understand your recent writing.’

  ‘This new version isn’t anything like the earlier version you read.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. I’ll get to it soon. I promise.’

  Helen had to leave the room. As she walked to her office she recognised the opening few notes of ‘Maggie’s Farm’, which she silenced by shutting her door. The nausea she had felt returned. She collapsed into her reading chair and stared intently at the floor, trying to steady herself.

  That was her husband in the other room, the man she had lived with and loved for nearly fifty years. She was sure of that fact. And yet, even knowing that, she was equally sure that somehow, he wasn’t.

  Chapter 6

  American Psycho

  I had just arrived back at the office. I had a ton of work to do and regretted that third glass of wine. As I walked through the open-plan area I noted the empty desks. Every day there seemed to be more. Great people were leaving Morris and Robbins now that it had been bought out by Seelenlos, and quite a few were taking their authors with them.

  It was a little depressing but also an opportunity. I was taking on some great authors who were not ready to jump. Morris and Robbins was an old and respected name and still attracted a great deal of loyalty.

  If only they knew what was really going on behind the scenes.

  While at lunch I received a series of emails from the new publishing director, Julia O’Farrell, asking me to come and see her on a very urgent matter. She almost ruined my lunch with Kathy Lette.

  I collapsed into my chair and woke my computer. I noticed it was already past four o’clock.

  ‘How was lunch?’ asked Valerie, my cubicle buddy. Valerie has been an editor for twenty-something years. She is as weird and wonderful as they come. She has three kids, her husband plays in a covers band and her hair is blue. It has been pink, then orange and then grey, but now it is blue. And she sometimes wears socks and sandals. Not always, just sometimes. She doesn’t give a fuck.

  ‘I’m in love,’ I answered, swinging my chair around so I faced her. ‘Kathy has absolutely no boundaries. I was laughing the whole time. I now want to marry her.’

  I offered Val my phone so she could see the selfie I had taken with Kathy – our lips pursed and cheeks pressed together.

  ‘Is she looking for a new publisher?’

  ‘No, she wants me to jump ship. Her agent and publisher were there as well. They want me to work with her. I told them I could work freelance.’

  ‘It’s not really your thing, though, is it?’

  ‘Everything is my thing.’

  ‘But even you couldn’t start taking on authors on top of the ones you’re looking after here. We’re all swamped as it is.’

  ‘I already do.’

  ‘Don’t take on Kathy Lette. All the best commercial authors already think the sun shines out of your arse. Don’t give me yet another reason to hate you.’

  ‘You don’t hate me, Val.’

  ‘I fucking do. Everyone does. You’re fucking gorgeous, rich as fuck, and,’ she lowered her voice, and leant in towards me, ‘you’re fucking Liam Smith, the hottest man in publishing.’

  I slapped her arm.

  ‘On top of all that, you don’t need to be here, but you stay. I mean, what’s not to hate? If it wasn’t clear that even with all these advantages you’re fucking miserable, we’d have poisoned your coffee by now.’

  ‘I love you, Val,’ I said, standing. I took her face in my hands and kissed her forehead. ‘I have to go and see Julia. Something urgent.’

  ‘You poor thing. She came out here looking for you about two hours ago. She didn’t look happy. I said you were lunching with an author.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  *

  ‘You know, Julia,’ I said, as I stood at the door of her office, ‘yours is the only office in this place without books. Not a good look for the publishing director.’

  The corner office was large and sparse – floor-to-ceiling windows took the place of two walls. Near the door were two very low white leather two-seater sofas facing each other, separated by a glass coffee table. No ornament. The whole look was an homage to the eighties. Or American Psycho. On the far side of the room, facing the door, Julia sat at a steel-framed glass-topped desk. The desk was empty but for her open MacBook, a lean-looking printer and her iPhone. The only thing missing was a generous splattering of blood.

  Even though she must have known there were no books in the room, Julia glanced around her office, pausing briefly to look out at the view.

  ‘You do have a spectacular view of London.’ I sat on one of the two uncomfortable moulded plastic chairs in front of her desk. ‘But so do the offices above and below yours. I don’t know what they do in those offices. This one is a publishing house. Some examples of the trade wouldn’t go amiss. The least you could do is display a few of Liam’s books. His sales helped pay for the view.’

  Julia ignored all of this. It was her best defence against my shit and she knew it.

  I resented being summoned to her office. She was a corporate interloper. She wasn’t publishing. But she said she needed to see me face to face. I tried very hard only to have dealings with Julia via email. And she normally respected that. She hated me as much as I hated her.

  Still trying to get a rise out of her, I said, ‘You don’t even look like a publishing director. You’re management. Entirely interchangeable with management from any other business. Your predecessor, Maxine, however, was pure publishing. You could see it from a mile away. Tough as nails, too.’

  Not a flutter.

  Julia tapped her keyboard. The printer spat out two sheets of paper. She motioned for me to reach for them. I did.

  Well, this was interesting.

  In the middle of the first page was a name and address, with a helpful map marking the route from the tube.

  ‘Helen Owen?’

  Julia nodded.

  I looked at the second page. Julia had put together a simple equation. In short, if Helen Owen didn’t sell a fuck load of copies of her next book, Julia would have a substantial hole in her budget. Something the new German owners of Morris and Robbins would not want to see.

  ‘May I have that?’ Julia asked. I handed her the second sheet of paper. She glanced at it and then tore it into tiny shreds.

  ‘This is why I’m here,’ said Julia, placing the paper in the bin at her feet. ‘To clean up messes like this.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it? Helen Owen isn’t my sort of thing. To be honest, I thought she was dead.’

  ‘Not dead. Not yet. I don’t know what my predecessor was thinking, but the deal they gave her was ludicrous. What’s worse, she’s late. She was due to deliver ten months ago. It was another of Maxine’s indulgences. Now it’s my problem.’

  ‘Can’t you cancel the deal?’

  ‘I’m within my rights to do so. But I believe the advance has been spent. If we were to move to get it back we would be sending two of this country’s most revered writers bankrupt.’

  ‘Two writers?’

  Julia smiled. ‘Her husband. Malcolm Taylor.’

&
nbsp; ‘I’d forgotten. He’s still alive, too?’

  She nodded. ‘He’s just been longlisted for the Booker.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘As you know, Amy, publishing isn’t what it was. Tesco and Amazon have squeezed us. The margins are no longer there. We need to . . .’

  ‘Yada, yada, yada. Get to the point.’ None of this was news to me.

  ‘We can’t afford to absorb the loss of Helen Owen’s advance. And we can’t really afford the publicity that would be generated if we were seen to be hounding national treasures to their grave to recover that advance – though we will if we have to. To be honest, the lawyers are already drawing up the paperwork, but the best solution for everyone is still getting her to deliver.’

  ‘I vaguely remember people talking about the deal. I wasn’t involved in the acquisition though. I don’t think I read anything. I really know nothing about it. Val might. I’ve never read her, either. Who was her editor?’

  ‘Clarissa Munten? Recently retired.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Everybody knows her. She actually wrote the book on editing. Set text at uni. You knew that, right?’

  ‘Not everyone had the privilege of going to university.’

  I was struck by this. I stared at her in silence for a bit, thinking about my struggle to get into publishing. ‘What are you doing here? I mean, how did you get through the door in the first place? Publicity? Sales? Postroom? You baffle me. Surely people like you make much more money selling arms in the Middle East or overpriced pharmaceuticals to cancer sufferers – why the fuck did you choose publishing?’

  Julia smiled again and said nothing.

  I had more right to be sitting where she was. She was a usurper. God, I wanted to smash that face in. I’d slap her Mac closed and use that. Make sure the rounded corner knocked a few teeth out.

  I looked around the room to calm myself. ‘Publishers used to drink. It was a thing. Something you could rely on. Do you have anything hidden in a drawer or cabinet?’

  ‘If I can ask you to concentrate for another minute or two . . . Helen Owen? Will you take her on?’

  ‘Why me?’

  Julia was silent. I stared at her impeccably manicured hands as I tried to work out what was going on. Julia wasn’t telling me everything.

  ‘Are you telling me she’s had no M&R support or contact since the takeover?’

  ‘None that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Is there anything to look at? A partial or a few sample chapters?’

  ‘We don’t have anything.’

  ‘Surely Maxine based her offer on something?’

  ‘My understanding is that there was a complete manuscript.’

  ‘Was . . .’

  ‘The original manuscript has gone missing,’ Julia admitted.

  ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘We believe Maxine took it with her, but she denies the accusation.’

  ‘She’s with Penguin now.’

  ‘Don’t bother. We’ve all tried. She’s very bitter.’

  ‘And Helen Owen herself?’

  ‘Well, according to Maxine’s brief handover notes, Owen grew dissatisfied with the original manuscript and went off to rewrite it.’

  ‘And Maxine let her?’ I asked, incredulous.

  ‘All of this coincided with the takeover. Maxine was fighting for her own survival. You remember what it was like.’

  ‘Like the opening scene of Star Wars.’

  Julia stared at me blankly.

  ‘You were Darth Vader, she was . . . doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Just meet with her and have a look at what she’s writing.’

  ‘You don’t get it. She’ll take one look at me and slam the door in my face.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . Maybe because she’s like Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch. And I help write explode-y action books.’

  ‘I heard you did some moonlighting for Jeffrey Archer.’

  ‘Different league. Helen Owen sits on the shelf with A.S. Byatt, Edna O’Brien and Margaret Drabble, and all of those other eminent women I haven’t read enough of. And you haven’t heard of. The woman is . . .’

  ‘Desperate. I’ve spoken with her. I made it plain that she would have to work with you otherwise her life would become complicated.’

  ‘Great. Brilliant. Good work. That’s much better. Now I’ll turn up there looking like a bloody bailiff.’

  ‘I was courteous but firm.’

  ‘Wait, did you make it clear you were her publisher? Over the phone you can sound like an automated message service.’

  A slight grimace. Got her.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just come back from a very long lunch with Kathy Lette so of course I’ve been drinking.’

  I don’t think that was the answer she expected. For a moment she looked embarrassed. She gathered herself.

  ‘Kathy Lette, the funny Australian? She’s not ours, is she?’

  ‘No, Penguin want me to go and work for them. Probably at Maxine’s urging. She knows how good I am.’

  This stopped Julia completely. I don’t know if she was considering the point I wanted her to consider, that I might go and work elsewhere, or whether she was counting my misdemeanours – drinking, long lunch, fraternising with the enemy.

  ‘Exactly. You’re in demand. They need you and I need you. Helen needs you. Because you’re good at this. This is what you do best. You’ve done this sort of thing before. Find out what Helen’s writing. Steer her in the right direction. You’ve a talent for turning disasters around.’

  ‘I’ve never done this sort of thing with the likes of Helen Owen, Julia. How the hell do you expect me to help Helen Owen? I don’t think you know how this all works. Valerie would be better suited to this.’

  ‘None of Valerie’s books sell anywhere near the numbers your books do.’

  ‘That’s because she works with more literary authors. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

  ‘Go see her. Do that for me.’

  ‘Can’t do it,’ I said, while deciding I could.

  ‘Sure you can. What do you need? A pay rise?’

  I shook my head. I needed nothing from Julia and she knew it. She was only my boss on paper. That’s what made these meetings so fun.

  ‘Who do you want to work with?’

  ‘Now, you’re really stretching. What influence do you have with any of our authors? I bet you couldn’t name five of them without referring to your Mac.’

  Nothing. At least she was consistent. She’d be repeating a mantra – Never rise to Amy’s taunts. Never rise to Amy’s taunts. Never rise to Amy’s taunts.

  ‘Julia, you do know that this is just a phase publishing is going through? Part of a cycle? The wheel will turn. The money men will discover their mistake again. They always do. Publishing needs risk and genius and authenticity and it needs a bit of madness, too. They’ll come round and you’ll be turfed out and someone more suited to the job will take your place. Someone who can read.’

  Never rise to Amy’s taunts. Never rise to Amy’s taunts. Never rise to Amy’s taunts.

  It was after five. To get out of the office I said, ‘I’ll do it. I will visit her. I’ll take a look at what she’s written so far. But that’s all I’ll commit to today.’

  ‘I won’t accept a boring literary novel. I need a Jojo Moyes.’

  I sat in silence a long time. I just couldn’t get a hold of the idea. Julia was asking me to turn Helen Owen into Jojo Moyes. It didn’t seem possible. Jojo was a friend of Liam’s. I had met her a couple of times and had read and enjoyed all of her books. She was a good writer. A clever woman. Very friendly and likeable. But she would never win the Booker. Helen Owen was a writer whose name always came up when people were betting on possible Nobel laureates. The fucking Nobel. What if Helen Owen really was writing something brilliant and I shaped it into
a Richard and Judy pick? If sin still existed in publishing, that would be one.

  ‘Maxine wouldn’t make a substantial offer for a book with zero commercial viability,’ I said.

  ‘The financials of M&R tell a very different tale. If you can’t do Jojo Moyes, I’d settle for Kate Morton or that other historical writer. The Tudor one.’

  ‘Philippa Gregory or Hilary Mantel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. That’s a much larger target on which to land this book. Somewhere between Jojo Moyes and Hilary Mantel.’

  ‘I don’t want brilliant. The market can’t stomach brilliant. Tesco won’t touch it. Think Richard and Judy pick, not a Booker Prize longlister.’

  ‘You’re revolting.’

  I got up and made my way to the door. Then I stopped and returned to the desk.

  ‘Julia, I hope you know I only say mean things because you’re everything that’s wrong with the world. It’s nothing personal.’

  I was at the door when Julia said, ‘You say mean things because you can.’

  Chapter 7

  Google ‘Helen Owen News’

  I swung by my desk to pick up my bag on leaving Julia’s office. Walking along the corridor, I took out my phone, googled ‘Helen Owen news’ and found the Guardian article at the top of the results. I’d started reading before I hit the lifts.

  Books: A life in . . .

  Helen Owen: A Path Through the Moral Minefield

  Iesha Koury

  Thurs 21 Sept 2015 06.50

  As a new generation of women discovers her work, the author of The Uninvited Guest stops to ask, why?

  London isn’t in the best humour on the morning I’ve arranged to meet literary lion Helen Owen for coffee. The heavens open as I emerge from Charing Cross Station. I dash across Trafalgar Square but am wet through by the time I reach the sanctuary of the National Gallery. It is ten past eleven before I look at my notes to discover I was meant to meet Helen outside the National Portrait Gallery. I rush around and find Helen in the foyer. She too has been caught in the rain. By the time we reach Pret A Manger across the road, we are both a bit of a mess.