Happily Ever After

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She looked down at the poem. ‘A Happy Ending for Me’. She ripped the page out of her notebook and tore it into tiny pieces, her bottom lip sticking out as the tears she had pushed down inside her came up; and as she sank to the floor, Eleanor Bee hugged her knees and told herself that one day, it’d be OK. She’d be a grown-up, and she would have a happy ending. The nice sort. Happily ever after, with a house full of books, a video recorder to tape Neighbours and all the clothes she wanted from Dash and Next.

But even as she sat there, rocking herself, tears dropping freely onto her scabby knees, her dark fringe falling into her eyes, she knew that sounded stupid.

‘London eats up pretty girls, you know.’

‘Not me!’ she assured him triumphantly. ‘I’m not afraid!’

Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber

April 1997 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)

‘SO, ELLE, WHAT are you reading at the moment?’

Her palms were stuck to the leather chair and Elle knew if she moved them they would make a loud, squeaking sound.

‘Me? Oh …’ Elle paused, and tried to gently manoeuvre one hand out of the way, but found she couldn’t. ‘I don’t know. Um …’ She racked her brains for the ‘buzz phrases’ she and Karen had gone over that morning in Karen’s tiny kitchen. Karen had written them on Post-it notes.

Buzz phrase. Buzz phrase. Oh, God.

‘Well, I love reading,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m passionate about it.’

Jenna Taylor tapped her biro on the grey plastic desk. She cast her eyes over to the blue fabric wall dividers, then looked back, forcing a smile to her face. ‘Yes, that’s great, so you’ve said. What are you actually reading at the moment, though?’

Elle already knew this interview could not be going more badly. It was like when she’d begun her second driving test by pulling out and nearly crashing into a grey Mercedes which meant an automatic fail, and she’d still had to take the rest of the twenty-minute test. But her mind was a total blank. She could feel the angry red blush she always got when she was flustered starting to mottle the skin below her collarbone, creeping up her neck. Soon her face would be luminous red. She moved one hand. A high-pitched, farting shriek emanated from the chair. ‘Um – what kind of thing do you mean?’

Jenna’s voice was icy. ‘I mean, can you demonstrate that you’re up to speed with what’s going on in the world of publishing at the moment? If you love books as much as you keep saying you do, it’d be great if you could give some examples of what you’ve read lately.’ She smiled a cold smile.

Elle looked around the tiny open-plan office. It was almost totally silent. She could hear someone typing away at the next office space to Jenna’s, and the whirr of the air conditioner, but apart from that, nothing. No one talking at all. They were all reading, probably. Being intellectual. Making decisions about novels and biographies and poetry and other things. How amazing. How amazing that she was even here, having an interview at Lion Books.

‘Lately …’ Elle knew what the truthful answer was, but she knew there was no way she could actually admit it. She was halfway through Bridget Jones’s Diary and it was the funniest book she thought she’d ever read, plus at least once every other page it made her shout, ‘Oh, my God, me too!’

But she couldn’t say that. She was at an interview for one of the most respected publishers in London. She had to prove she was an intellectual person of merit. Intellectual person, yes. She coughed.

‘Well, the classics, really. I love Henry James. And Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights is like one of my favourite books ever… . I love reading. I’m passionate about …’ Oh, no.

Jenna crossed her legs and wheeled the chair a little closer. ‘Eleanor, look around my office. If you’d done your research you’d know I publish commercial women’s fiction.’ She slapped some spines on a shelf, dragged out a handful of thick paperbacks. ‘Gold foil. Legs in lacy tights. I need a secretary who wants to work with commercial authors.’ Her face was hard. ‘If you like Henry James so much perhaps you should be applying for a job at Penguin Classics.’

Elle could feel hot tears burning at the backs of her eyes. The red blush was crawling across her cheeks, she knew it. I don’t understand Henry James. I only liked The Buccaneers on TV. I’ve applied for jobs everywhere and no one’s interested. I’ve been sleeping on a friend’s floor for three months and eating Coco Pops twice a day. I’m drinking in the last-chance saloon, Jenna. Please, please give me a break.

‘… If you’d told me you liked Bridget Jones, for example, or you were reading Nick Hornby, or Jilly or even bloody Lace I’d have some indication that, despite your total lack of office experience, you were interested in working in publishing. Hmm?’ Jenna fingered a lock of long Titian hair with her slim fingers.

‘I do like Bridget Jones,’ Elle said softly. ‘I love it.’

‘Really.’ Jenna obviously didn’t believe her. She looked at her watch. ‘OK, is there anything else you’d like to say?’

‘Oh.’ Elle looked down at her sweating thighs, clad in bobbling black tights and a grey and black kilt that, she realised now, was far too short when she was sitting down. ‘Just that … Oh.’

I know I screwed this up, can you give me another chance?

I really need this job otherwise I have to go back to Sussex and I can’t live with Mum any more, I just can’t.

I have read Lace, some bits several times, in fact, it’s just I can’t talk about it without blushing.

My skirt is too short and I will address this issue should you employ me.

No, no, no. ‘I – no. Thank you very much. It was lovely to meet you. I … fingers crossed!’ And Elle finished by holding her hands up, making a thumbs-up sign with one, and crossing her fingers with the other.

‘Right …’ Jenna said. There was a pause as both of them stared at Elle’s hands, shaking in mid-air. ‘Thanks for coming in, Ellen. Great to meet you.’

‘Eleanor …’ Elle whispered. ‘Yes,’ she said more loudly. ‘Thanks – thank you! For this opportunity.’ That was one of the phrases, she remembered now. ‘I’m a keen enthusiastic self-starter and I’ll work my guts out for you,’ she added, randomly. But Jenna was ushering her out down the narrow maze of passageways, and Elle realised she wasn’t listening, and furthermore she, Eleanor Bee, still had one hand cocked in a thumbs-up sign. ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, as they reached the lifts.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Jenna smoothed down her lilac crêpe dress and fanned her fingers through her glossy hair.

‘Ah. Nothing,’ Elle added. She got into the lift. ‘Thanks again. Sorry. Thanks then – bye.’

The lift doors closed, shutting out Jenna’s bemused face.

I MADE A thumbs-up sign.

Elle weaved her way down the Strand, swinging her handbag and trying to look jaunty. ‘Let’s all go down the Strand,’ she sang under her breath. ‘Have a banana. Oh, what …’ Her voice cracked, and she trailed off. She glanced at her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. She looked awful, that stupid short skirt, why had she bought it? And that silly blue top, it was supposed to look like silky wool, but what that actually meant was that she had to hand wash it. Her light brown hair was too long and thick, tucked behind her ears and sticking out in tufts. She stared at the window again, and winced. She was looking into the window of a Dillons bookshop with a banner bearing the legend ‘Our Spring Bestsellers’.

‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin … I read that last summer, why on earth didn’t I say that?’ Elle smacked her forehead gently with her palm. ‘The Celestine Prophecy – oh, God, that’s the crazy book Mum’s reading, did she really want me to talk about that? That’s not literature!’ She stared at the array of books. ‘The Beach … Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus … what does that mean?’

Elle slumped her shoulders and stared at the Pret A Manger next to the bookshop, where busy office workers were coming out clutching baguettes and soup. She wanted to eat in Pret A Manger. She’d never seen them before she came to London and to her it seemed the height of glamour, to go into a shop with other office workers and buy a proper coffee and a croissant.

But she didn’t have the money for a coffee from Pret A Manger, nor a desk nor a job. Elle caught her bottom lip with her top teeth to stop herself from crying. Come on, she told herself, standing in the middle of the Strand as people pushed past her. Buy an Evening Standard, go back to Karen’s, have a cup of tea while you go through the Jobs section and you’ll feel much better. There’s something out there for you. There is.

The truth is, Eleanor Bee was starting to get desperate. It was April. She’d left Edinburgh University the previous summer, and was still trying to find a job. It seemed all her other friends had something to do: Karen had a job as a runner at a TV production company, her old university flatmate Hester was doing an MA in Bologna, and the other, Matty, was in teacher training college. Her ex-boyfriend Max was a trainee accountant, she’d bumped into him off Fleet Street the other day. It was just before an awful interview at an educational publisher where Elle had not really understood what they were talking about and when they’d said, So do you think that sounds like something you could do?, she’d replied, Sure, can I let you know? No, the grumpy, large, middle-aged man in cords had said. I wasn’t offering you the job. I was asking if you thought you’d be able to cope with the job. Thank you, we’ll let you know. She was sure bumping into Max was the reason she’d been so flustered. Not that she even cared about Max that much – he was using hair gel, for God’s sake, and kept getting out his stupid new CD Walkman to show off to her. But it was the principle of the thing.

In February, Elle’s best friend from school, Karen, had said she could come and sleep on her sofa. ‘You’re never going to find a job in publishing in a tiny village in Sussex, Elle,’ she’d said briskly. ‘Bite the bullet and come to London.’ And Elle had accepted, nervous but also overwhelmed with excitement. London. She’d dreamed of moving to London, of living in the big city, since she was a little girl. She’d conquer it. She’d own grey wellington boots with heels. And have a matching grey briefcase, like the Athena poster of the city girl hanging off the back of a Routemaster bus blowing a kiss to her handsome boyfriend that Elle still had in her bedroom.

But London was very far from the welcoming and bustling literary salon Elle had expected it to be. Notting Hill was grimy, full of cracked pavements and crack addicts, and sleeping on the floor in Karen’s was no fun. She’d been here two months now. She’d applied for every job going, written to every publisher she could find in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to ask them for work experience. But no one was interested. She was discovering she’d been totally naive to think they would be. She’d had four interviews, and this one today, at a major publishing house, was like the big one that had to work out, and she’d clearly totally one hundred per cent blown it. She’d thought she was so prepared: she had read everything, everything, in fact Karen said the trouble with her was she couldn’t get her nose out of a book.

She hated the way she spent her days now. She’d sit in the silent flat, feeling crappy about herself and knowing she should buck up, watching Richard and Judy and dreading the moment when Karen would get back from work and say, in an increasingly unsympathetic tone, ‘So, what did you get up to today then?’ Her social life consisted of going to the pub or sitting around in the dark flat off Ladbroke Grove waiting for the electricity meter to run out. Plus Karen’s other flatmates, Cara the chef and Alex the ad man, clearly found Elle a hindrance rather than a delightful addition to communal living.

On the Tube back to Notting Hill, Elle wondered for the first time if she should have come to London at all. It wasn’t how she’d expected it, and even though she was used to not fitting in, she’d never felt less welcome anywhere, in her whole life. It struck her that if she packed up her meagre possessions this evening and got a train first thing tomorrow, she’d be back at her mother’s by lunchtime. But then – what? She and her mother, in the converted barn Mandana had bought after the divorce, doing what? Would it be worse than being here? Probably not.

Elle had a stroke of luck as she got off at Notting Hill Gate. Someone had left an Evening Standard behind on a seat and she scooped it up. It was a cold April day and she shivered in her thin coat, the paper clamped under one arm, as she walked through the empty streets, trying not to let her mood sink any lower.

It was just really hard, though, trying to find your place in the world. At university it had been so easy. You knew where you were going each day, what you were doing, and with whom. After university, the rules had suddenly changed, and Elle felt she’d been left behind. But the irony was, she knew exactly what she wanted! She’d always known! She just wanted to work with books, to read fine literature, to meet authors and to learn to edit, to have conversations like those she used to have with her Victorian Literature tutor Dr Wilson, about the Brontës and Austen and whether Middlemarch was the great Victorian novel or not and … that sort of thing. Of course, she knew she’d have to start at the bottom – she didn’t mind that at all, in fact she rather thought she’d like it. But that didn’t seem to make a difference.

What am I going to do? she thought to herself, walking briskly, head down. Will I just be someone who falls through the cracks in society and never gets a job? And turns into one of those weirdos who keeps every newspaper from 1976 and carries a brown satchel and goes through the bins? Oh, my God, is that going to be me?

The cold sharp breeze stung Elle’s eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and the Evening Standard dislodged and fell on the pavement, where a rolling gust of wind carried it off, into the middle of the road. She ran after it, and as she picked it up, noticed it was a week out of date. One whole week. She heaved her shoulders, and looked round for somewhere to dump the offending newspaper. There wasn’t even a bin and she wasn’t so far sunk into depression that she would just chuck it on the pavement. She stomped back towards the flat, muttering under her breath, not caring if she was taking one further step down the line towards being a newspaper-hoarding, bin-rifling weirdo, and thinking that the world was a cruel, cruel place.

ELLE SAT AT the kitchen table, reading the week-old newspaper and sipping a cup of tea, glad to be out of the cold, but still shaking at the injustice of the day she’d had. Absolutely no jobs yet again in the Evening Standard. She’d missed it last week; it had been sold out, and even if she’d had it a week ago it’d have been useless, unless she wanted to go into local government or work for a magazine called Red Knave, and she was sure she didn’t.

Washing-up was piled high in the sink. They’d had people round the night before; Alex had made pasta and a bong, and Karen had made everyone sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ into wooden spoons. Elle had wanted to go to bed early to prepare for her interview, but she couldn’t really get out her duvet and lie on the sofa while five other people were glugging Bulgarian white wine out of a screwtop bottle and yelling about the upcoming election.

Elle knew she should do the washing-up in a minute; perhaps then Alex would stop glaring at her when he came in and saying, ‘Oh. Hi.’ Which meant, ‘Oh. You’re still here, blighting my life.’ She didn’t like Alex much, all he seemed to do was show off his new mobile phone and take calls on it, then play Tomb Raider all weekend in the sitting room with his friend Fred. Elle had snogged Fred only the week before, more because she’d been trying to get to sleep and it seemed easier to snog him and then let them get on with playing Tomb Raider than tell them to leave. Plus Fred was actually an OK snog, even if she didn’t have much to say to him. He’d been there yesterday too – but he’d been in a funny mood, and she wasn’t sure he was interested any more, which wouldn’t be a surprise, to be honest. He had a job and a flatshare, he wasn’t sleeping in someone’s sitting room and reading week-old newspapers.

Elle took another sip of tea, and turned from the out-of-date Jobs section to the news pages, cravenly aware this was a waste of time. There was a picture of Tony Blair, meeting some old ladies, and smiling. He looked young and tanned, and his hair was pretty good. Elle couldn’t help thinking that was a plus point, not that it should matter but somehow it added to the overall romantic-lead sheen of him. Tony Blair always made her think of that line in Pride and Prejudice when Jane asks Lizzy how long she has loved Mr Darcy for, and Lizzy replies, ‘It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.’

Thinking of this now made her smile weakly. She closed her eyes and thought about Lizzy Bennet and Mr Darcy, wondering how they’d talk to each other after they were married and living at Pemberley. Because that always bothered her, what happened after the couple got over their misunderstandings to live happily ever after. She couldn’t help thinking Mr Darcy wouldn’t be sympathetic if Elizabeth ordered the wrong dinner service when a duke came to stay. She had seen what had happened with her parents, how vicious it had been, and Elle couldn’t ever imagine that they’d once been in love.

John and Mandana had been divorced for seven years. Sometimes it seemed ages ago, sometimes she could still remember, as if it were yesterday, their old, cosy, normal life at Willow Cottage. The final papers had come through as Elle was preparing for her GCSEs. There was a lot of lip service paid to not letting it affect her exams, and people treated her very carefully, as if someone had died: the headmistress even called her into her office for ‘a little chat’, to see if she was all right. Elle hadn’t known how to answer when Mrs Barber had asked her how she was coping. How did you explain that you were a horrible person, because you were glad they were splitting up, glad they wouldn’t be together any more, glad her dad was going away because these days he just seemed to upset her mum so much? Even when they had to sell the house and move to a barn outside Shawcross, and even when John remarried with what Elle overheard a friend say to Mandana was ‘insensitive haste’ she knew she didn’t care in the way she should. She’d wondered whether she was a homicidal maniac – she’d read a book about them and one of the first signs was a lack of empathy. But Elle was just glad it was over, because it was horrible living like that.

To her secret relief, however, Rhodes obviously felt the same way. He’d gone to college in the States and was now an analyst, working for Bloomberg in New York. The last time she’d seen him was at Christmas at Mum’s, and it had been awful – Mum had been drunk, Rhodes had told her she drank too much and was pathetic and anyone could see why Dad had left her, and then stormed out. Elle hadn’t spoken to him since. Mum always drank too much, but it had got worse, that summer in Skye, as their marriage got worse. Elle never knew what came first, like the chicken and the egg. She only knew their old life, where her parents had seemed OK, was over.

So Elle didn’t wonder what might have happened if her parents had stayed together. She knew the real ending after the ending. She wondered about people like Lizzy and Darcy, or Beatrice and Benedick instead. Often she felt she was the only person who didn’t believe they’d stay together, after the book or the play ended. She couldn’t help it; she just didn’t believe it.

She was pondering this, her knees under her chin, legs wedged against the table, when the door slammed and Alex came in.

‘Oh, hi, Elle,’ he said, not looking at her, and slamming his man-bag down on the table. ‘How’s it going? Any luck today then?’

‘OK, thanks,’ Elle said. ‘Yeah, I—’

‘I’m not staying,’ Alex said. ‘Meeting some guys from work at the pub. Just stopped off to change my shirt.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Elle, who found Alex’s obsession with sharp Ben Sherman shirts half tragic, half touching.

‘Hey.’ He stopped and grabbed the paper from her. ‘Can I just check something? Were you looking at it?’

‘At the jobs, but it’s fine, there’s nothing in it,’ Elle said, desperate to talk, even if Alex obviously wasn’t interested. ‘It’s a week old, anyway –’

Alex ignored her and started turning the pages. ‘Our new print campaign for Cape Town should be in here somewhere, we rolled it out last week and the fucking muppets haven’t sent us any copies yet.’

‘But this is last week’s –’

He ignored her, and struggled to turn the pages. ‘That’s fine. Where is it? Hey! There! How cool is that? Yeah, looks good.’

Elle followed his jabbing finger. ‘“Visit Cape Town, for a World of Possibilities”,’ she read. ‘That’s great.’

She nodded politely as Alex talked, and looked down again, her eye caught by something, she didn’t know why. And there, right in the middle of the Travel section, amongst ads for holiday lets in Cornwall and cheap flights to Thailand, she suddenly saw the following:

Editorial Secretary Required for Established Independent Publishing House

Enthusiastic Self-Starter / Graduate. Must have office experience

Competitive Salary: £11,000

Please send curricula vitae by post to:

Miss Elspeth MacReady

c/o Bluebird Books Ltd, Bedford Square

‘What’s that doing there?’ Elle asked. She snatched the paper out of Alex’s hand. ‘It’s – what’s it doing there?’

‘Don’t know.’ Alex stared at her, annoyed. ‘Actually, Elle, I was looking at that.’

‘Sorry, Alex,’ Elle said, clutching the paper to her bosom and looking at him imploringly, almost in a panic: what if he took the paper away, flung it out of the window, how would she get it back? ‘It’s a job, it sounds perfect… . I don’t know why it’s there, it’s in the wrong place… . Please, let me …’ She stared again at the text. ‘“Send curricula vitae … care of Bluebird Books”.’ She bit her lip. ‘Bluebird Books – I’ve heard of them! They’re proper, they – they’re old!’ She ran into Karen’s bedroom and scanned the precariously built IKEA Billy bookcase, crammed full of well-worn blockbusters, their cracked spines stamped with gold. ‘Yes, I knew it! They publish Victoria Bishop! And … Old Tom! They publish Old Tom. Well, Granny Bee would have been pleased.’ She glanced at her watch. It was nearly five thirty p.m. Too late to catch the post. There was no telephone number, either. No, a voice inside her head said. You’re going to go for this. You’re going to do something about this, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.

Elle bit her lip and marched back to the hall, pulled out a telephone directory, and thumbed through it, kneeling on the ground. Alex came into the hall and watched her.

‘Can I have the paper back now, please?’ he said, reaching forward.

‘No! Just give me ONE SECOND, Alex, PLEASE!’ Elle heard herself bellowing. Alex stepped back, annoyed.

‘You’re really starting to outstay your fucking welcome, you know,’ he murmured.

Elle jabbed her finger on the page, and started dialling. It was a week old, that ad – even if it was in the wrong place, what were the chances? ‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ she said. ‘It’s probably hopeless, but I’ve got to give it a go— Hello?’

‘Good evening,’ said a low voice, a girl’s. ‘Bluebird Books, how may I help you?’

‘Hello – yes. I – er – I just saw an advert in last week’s Evening Standard for the job of editorial secretary – I wanted to ask if I could still apply? There wasn’t a closing date.’

There was a silence, and then the voice spoke again, this time even lower, much closer to the speaker. ‘The job ad? You saw it? You want to apply? Oh, thank fuck.’ She coughed. ‘I’m so sorry. I mean, thank goodness.’

‘Thank goodness?’ Elle was astonished. This wasn’t the reception she was used to. The last job she’d rung up about, an editorial assistant’s job at an independent publisher in Bristol, the man on the line had said, ‘Sorry, position’s been filled,’ and put the phone down, like a scene from a film about the Great Depression.

‘You don’t understand.’ The girl on the other end sighed, and Elle realised she was around her age, despite the huskiness of her Lancashire-tinged voice. ‘No one’s applied,’ she said quietly. ‘Not a soul. I don’t understand it. And Miss Sassoon keeps checking, and we have to have someone in soon, otherwise she’ll go totally mad – it’s been a week, a week, and nothing! Nothing!’

‘Look,’ Elle said. ‘I think I know why.’

‘Why? Why what?’ The voice rose sharply again.

‘Well. The ad’s in the holiday homes section,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a total fluke I saw it.’

‘The what?’

‘Holiday homes. Between an ad for a nice cottage in Norfolk and a bungalow in the Lizard.’

There was a terrible silence, pregnant with meaning.

‘Oh … FUCK,’ the voice whispered. ‘FUCK. She is going to kill me. K.I.L.L.L.L. me. How did I—’

‘I don’t think it’s your fault, is it?’ Elle said. ‘It’s the people who do the ads, they put it in wrongly.’

‘She won’t see it like that. Oh, God, oh, Jesus,’ the voice said. ‘What am I going to do? That’s why. Oh, Jesus. She’s going to ask me tomorrow. Oh, Christ.’

‘Listen here –’ Elle said, authoritatively. She nodded to herself. Go for it! ‘Why don’t you get me in for an interview. Eh?’

There was another silence. ‘Yes,’ the girl said eventually, breathing out with a long whistle. ‘OK, can you come in tomorrow, first thing? She’s not got anything on then, neither’s he. And if you’re rubbish, I’ll just confess and we can do it again so we’ve got someone by the time Posy comes back from holiday. ’Cause she said she’d leave if she came back and they hadn’t replaced Hannah … Man alive.’ There was a loud thudding sound.

‘What was that?’ Elle asked, alarmed.

‘I was banging my head on the desk. Look, if you come in, please don’t tell Miss Sassoon. Please.’