‘Well …’ I’m staring at my screen, not able to read a single word thanks to the rising dread. ‘Urm …’ I bite my lip and scroll pointlessly up and down through my notes because I know I don’t have anything resembling gritty.
‘It’s not the first time an editor has come back to me recently and expressed that true crime is selling right now,’ she starts. ‘I wouldn’t usually suggest assessing the market and writing for it because by the time you’ve jumped on a trend, the next one has come along, but true crime has been around for years. There’s always a place for it.’ She’s looking at me expectantly, but my mind is blank.
I can’t even bullshit my way through this. ‘Look,’ I say flatly. ‘I don’t have anything like that. At least, not right now. Or maybe …’ My pulse quickens. ‘Something about a stalker? A woman being followed or …’
‘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.