Secrets of a Happy Marriage

by Cathy Kelly

  Also, high shoes made her look taller, which was handy because since The Break Up, she had developed a wild hunger for chocolate. Not any old muck, no. But fabulous quality chocolate: proper stuff that cost proper money.

  It still made you put on weight, though. With gorgeous high heels, Cari could hide the extra pounds and pretend she was a lean five foot seven, instead of a not-so-lean five foot four in flats, which she almost never wore.

  She’d already scanned the list and knew she needed to pay attention in about five minutes’ time, when the talk would move on to books likely to sell in her territory, because with so many books released every moment, a person would go mad trying to remember them all. Books that sold well in Australia might do zilch in Ireland and vice versa. A wise publishing person knew the difference.

  New book meetings were long and exhausting and Cari was dying for the afternoon ten-minute tea break so she could fill her mug with strong coffee, snaffle a chocolate biscuit, and be ready for the final round.

  Cari had hoped to get a moment alone with the UK office’s publishing director, Jennifer, a charming but tough woman with a Cleopatra black bob rippled through with grey streaks, but Jennifer hadn’t returned her email earlier in the week and throughout the day-long meeting had appeared to be in a very bad mood and hadn’t met Cari’s eyes. Strange and unsettling.

  When tea break finally rolled around, Edwin Miller, the managing director of all of Cambridge, had gently asked her to stay back for a moment.

  Gavin Watson, a publisher in London and therefore higher on the food chain than Cari, stayed in the room also, along with Jennifer, who was looking more annoyed than ever.

  ‘I don’t want the Irish contingent to miss your flights and I’d hoped to talk to you afterwards, Cari,’ Edwin was saying.

  He managed to shove Jeff Karan, the Irish MD and Cari’s direct boss, out the door and Cari felt the danger.

  Jeff was looking at her with that hangdog expression he often wore, as if he wanted to stay, wanted to protect her, but he was no match for Edwin, who had been managing director so long the joke was that his first printer had been a certain Herr Gutenberg.

  Edwin closed the door.

  Cari felt all her focus hone in on him. The animal instinct that told her danger was afoot had pinged up from ‘mild emergency’ to ‘oh hell, sound the alarms, children and women first’.

  ‘As I said, I’d hoped to get you on your own afterwards, Cari,’ Edwin said in his charming way, ‘but we’re running late, as ever, so let’s do it now.’

  His complicit gaze at Gavin, who was beyond connected in the British publishing world, made Cari hit Anxiety Level Four. Gavin’s grandfather had founded Cambridge Publishing, the grand old publishing house which was home to all the imprints. While the various imprints, like record labels, dealt with different areas, there were two other commercial imprints other than Xenon, but Xenon was the biggest.

  Edwin wasn’t just the managing director of Xenon, but deputy managing director of Cambridge.

  Gavin was tipped for the top – mainly for his connections and his ruthlessless, certainly not for his ability to edit or to manage human beings, Cari thought.

  ‘Cari, do sit,’ said Edwin, and she knew then things were bad.

  She sat, nervously, like colt about to run.

  ‘This is going to be hard,’ Edwin began, shooting his cuffs which were, as always, French and decorated with cufflinks from some wealthy, aristocratic ancestor, ‘but we have to think of the company and of the authors. You know how they are – capricious, certainly. Tricky. And sometimes—’ Edwin faltered. ‘Sometimes they want change.’

  ‘Who wants change?’ Cari said.

  Sitting be damned, she got to her feet and began to pace. All her life, she’d been a pacer. If she was going to the scaffold, she wanted to be on her feet so she could poke a spike heel into a captor’s foot.

  She looked over at Gavin who was smirking. He was younger than her, certainly. Doing that cool thing with a beard and a fake-manly sort of shirt in a lumberjack style. Probably never held a damn axe in his life. She narrowed her eyes at him.

  ‘John Steele wants a new editor.’

  Edwin’s words sucked all the air out of the room for a moment. Cari thought she might not be able to breathe.

  ‘John wants what? A new editor? Not me? I’m the only person he trusts, you know that. Why didn’t he tell me? We’re on the phone all the time. Or get Freddie to talk to me. I’d have talked him out of it—’ She stopped. She was babbling.

  Freddie was John’s agent, the only other person in publishing that John said he trusted, apart from Cari herself, who had discovered his first book on the slush pile and championed it fiercely.

  ‘I told you this wasn’t the way to do it, Edwin,’ said Jennifer now. ‘We should have discussed this in advance with you, Cari, but—’

  ‘But John Steele’s contract is coming up for renewal, Jennifer, and he is very important to the company,’ said Edwin. ‘It’s all happened at very high speed but he wants Gavin to be his new editor,’ Edwin added, putting the final nail into the coffin.

  ‘It’s a guy thing, Cari,’ Gavin said, speaking for the first time and smirking.

  ‘Authors sometimes like to change editors: John feels he’s losing his edge, he wants change,’ put in Edwin.

  ‘Writers are artists, Cari, we must think of them,’ interrupted Gavin.

  ‘Bull,’ snarled Cari, ‘you always say they’re spoiled little prima donnas who earn far too much and expect us to put in their commas. I’m the one who tries to make you see that they get anxious about writing, worried about what we think of their first drafts, and their second drafts, hideously anxious about selling books and letting us all down, and that yes, they are artists.’

  Gavin, who had won, after all, smiled as she repeated his bitchy words back to him.

  ‘I was afraid you’d take it like this,’ he said, with a fake, pitying smile.

  ‘Like what? Angrily?’ snarled Cari. ‘Honestly, why would I be angry when you are stealing my best author?’

  Authors wanted lots of things but generally they told their editors, either in person or via their agents.

  They didn’t do it by discussing it with the MD, publishing director and another editor, and then letting them stick the knife in at the tail end of a new books meeting.

  ‘I told him I’d tell you, smooth it all over,’ said Gavin silkily. ‘As you know, John can’t bear scenes. I was over at his place in Cork on Monday. That’s a lovely new extension they’re building onto the house, and the landscaping is exquisite, isn’t it? I’m going to help him with the London flat he’s thinking of buying. Go the extra mile. He’ll need a base here as he’s agreed to do more publicity. He’s agreed to tour, by the way,’ Gavin added, still smirking.

  Cari heard herself gasp.

  John Steele hated publicity, did perhaps one interview on each continent per book, which did not make him beloved of either the press or the publicity department. He had never toured, and had told Cari that the thought made him physically sick. Somehow, Gavin had succeeded where she had failed.

  Cari knew there was no more to be said.

  She stared at Edwin, who she’d admired, and Jennifer, who could have given her a heads-up to what was going on but hadn’t.

  ‘We need you in Dublin. You’re a fabulous editor, Cari,’ said Jennifer, dark eyes full of pity under that Cleopatra bob.

  ‘You knew I wanted to move to London, move up the company,’ Cari said to Jennifer, trying not to let her voice shake. ‘I found John Steele for us, championed him. I coaxed that first edit out of him when nobody said we’d be able to cut the book from three hundred thousand words down to one hundred and sixty. I coaxed the difficult second book from him. And you let this’ – she gestured in disgust at Gavin – ‘steal him away from me. Fine,’ she said, stalking to the door. ‘Since you’ve already agreed, it seems I’m surplus to requirements.’

  It wasn’t
the best way to leave a room when the company’s managing director and the publishing director were both there and when you had had hopes of a big move to London, a move of which they would be in charge. But suddenly Cari didn’t care.

  Her career was in tatters. The move to London was all predicated on her involvement in John Steele’s meteoric rise and now that he was no longer her author, she’d just taken a tumble down a snake in the corporate world of snakes and ladders.

  Edwin and Jennifer let her go without another word. That told her a lot.

  In the quiet of the lonely office she’d found to lick her wounds, Cari stared down at the street far below and stopped thinking about throwing a TV out the window. What good would that do? No, for the sake of all womankind, she needed to rid the world of Gavin Watson, the slimy, good-for-nothing toad who’d just shafted her.

  Her editorial mind, used to dealing with killers from her beloved crime novels and how long it took for a person to die from a lung puncture, crystallised. What sort of weapon did she need? A retractable switchblade she could slide from her sleeve and flick into action, ready to put up against Gavin Watson’s carotid artery? Was more hard core better? A handgun, something menacing and heavy with a silencer on the business end, that she could aim coolly and tell him the warning shots were going straight into his head?

  Or perhaps a bit of street fighting: a sharp blow with the edge of her hand into the soft cartilage of his throat. Then he’d be lying on the floor, flailing and trying to breathe and she could tell him what she was going to do to him next for stealing her author. If only she’d bought that staple gun on sale in Lidl …

  No: Cari felt a film of cold sweat break over her body.

  Not just stealing an author – stealing her best author, the man she’d nurtured for four years, the crime genius who said nobody understood him like she did.

  John Steele was one of Cambridge’s biggest authors. A quiet, unassuming Sheffield man, he’d settled in West Cork in Ireland decades ago and had been writing ever since, although he’d supported his family by working as a carpenter of fine kitchens. When he’d finally summoned up the courage to send one of his novels to a publisher and it had landed on Cari’s desk, she had felt the spark of excitement of which every editor dreamed.

  The hairs on her arms had literally stood up. This, this crime thriller with a brilliant but broken – naturally – hero, was incredible. The book was quite unputdownable. She, who could speed read, had stayed up till three o’clock finishing the huge manuscript and she’d known they must have it. Yes, it needed vast tracts of editing because it was a huge book but it was clever, marvellously written and commercial, the holy grail of publishing.

  A star was born.

  For four years, she had been the conduit between John Steele and the outside world. She had taken care of him, helped make him one of the biggest writers in the world. She was the only person in publishing he trusted, apart from his agent, Freddie, another Sheffield man who also understood John’s reticence with the press.

  She was godmother to his young son, for heaven’s sake! Not that she was the motherly type, she’d protested when he’d asked her, but still, John Steele, the man she’d pushed to number one on book sales’ charts all around the world, had said he’d wanted it.

  ‘I couldn’t have done any of it without you, Cari,’ he’d said. ‘Mags and I want you to be Jake’s godmother. You’re family to us.’

  As family, she’d bought two Minion teddies and a set of adorable clothes for Jake for his second birthday in September. Had braved Hamley’s before Christmas to buy him a bag-load of things, had promised to be his spiritual helper for ever – OK, that had been pushing it because since the wedding, she still felt as if she might get ill every time she stepped into a church, but still – and now John Steele, her finest, most commercial, biggest-selling author, one of the entire company’s biggest-selling authors worldwide, wanted to be edited by Gavin Watson.

  Her position as ‘family’ was being usurped.

  There had been no call from John, no call from his agent. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It was a bloody coup and Cari hadn’t had the slightest idea it was going to happen.

  She sat down heavily in the office’s ergonomic chair and brooded.

  The knife, definitely the knife. So she could watch the blood dripping out of him. Like in Stone Cold Blue Killer, not a John Steele book and one by a first-time Irish author, it had never sold much but she’d edited it years ago and liked it. The killer had been a hunter and he’d hung his victims up on a hunting trestle …

  Somehow, Cari went back into the boardroom after tea break and sat through the rest of the meeting. She nailed a smile to her face but she couldn’t bring herself to add much to the conversation, except when it came time to present her new books. As only one of two editors from Ireland, her remit covered many genres, unlike her UK colleagues who generally specialised, so Cari had fourteen books to present, nine non-fiction and five fiction.

  With Jeff casting sympathetic looks at her across the table, Cari aced it with her acting.

  She started with the small, sweet memoir about a childhood in a remote part of Ireland followed by a Broadway career of an Irish actress, a book she loved, and her presentation of it was delivered as if Cari had spent time on Broadway herself. The women’s fiction novel that dealt with adoption and infidelity had everyone at the boardoom sighing, saying, ‘This could be big.’

  Someone – clearly John Steele’s defection had been on a need-to-know basis so far, although by tonight, everyone, their authors, their agents, their former agents, their former publishers, and the NSA would know – praised Cari’s next book, a debut by a fledgling crime writer, by saying, ‘She has shades of John Steele, not that anyone can beat John!’

  Everyone smiled at Cari, none of them having a clue that he wasn’t her author any more.

  John Steele: saving careers left, right and centre, apart from the woman who’d made him and he was screwing up hers.

  When the meeting finally ended, Cari was out the door faster than anyone else. Normally the small Irish team travelled together but not tonight. Tonight, Cari couldn’t bear to hear any sympathy.

  She threw herself into a taxi outside Cambridge House and went to Paddington where she sat in lonely splendour on the Heathrow Express.

  The betrayal filled her mind.

  She wasn’t surprised at Gavin. Gavin would put his grandmother on the game if he thought it would give him an edge.

  And as for Edwin – nobody could be that sweetly nice and remain as managing director for so long. He must have the negatives of so many hideously embarrassing/career-destroying photos. It was the only answer.

  But John Steele … That betrayal was absolute. After the heartbreak of her wedding, she’d felt as if she couldn’t trust anyone again and she’d learned to trust John as he, in turn, had learned to trust her. That he could turn his back on her now was devastating.

  She rifled in her bag for a tissue, and found the post she’d grabbed from the hall floor that morning as she’d got the early flight. Bills, bills, and one hard card envelope, either a wedding invitation – to which she would not go – or maybe a party?

  Her mind on Gavin, John and the pain, she ripped it open.

  Expensive paper.

  With a flashback to her own wedding, Cari remembered that she and He-Who-Must-Never-Be-Named-Again had spent good money on their invitations. Sage-green-lined envelopes, old gold writing on the card, a green card with gold writing for the RSVP.

  Things of beauty. Expensive beauty. She’d burned the RSVPs and the few unused invitations ceremoniously in the back garden afterwards with her sister, Maggie, and cousins Trina and Jojo helping.

  ‘Burn the bastard out of your life,’ darling Jojo had said, and then opened a bottle of sparkling wine, because they were all a bit broke and, as Trina – who never had a ha’penny – said, ‘Champagne would be a mistake in case you thought of champagne when you thought of—’

/>   ‘Him!’ said Jojo. ‘We shall never say his name again.’

  ‘Like Voldemort.’

  Still thinking of this, she unthinkingly ripped open the envelope and stared at it in horror.

  Edward and Bess Brannigan invite you to celebrate Edward’s seventieth birthday party in the glorious surroundings of Lisowen Castle, Co. Kerry on the weekend of 25th March. We would be delighted if you would be our guests for a weekend of celebration.

  She blinked: once, twice.

  Was this a hallucination brought on by sheer temper? Or perhaps a sort of rare high blood pressure anomaly that made nightmares seem true by fizzing through the cerebral cortex with a last-ditch bypass into the optic nerve just to make the whole thing seem real.

  Aeons ago, she’d edited a book about simple things to watch out for health-wise when she was an ultra-junior editor at Factual Anomalies, a small, slightly off-beat publisher of factual manuals. They’d been the sort of publishers who were ahead of the internet curve for oddball information and had plenty of ‘Teach Yourself How To Perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre On Every Species’-type fare. It was harder with dogs than you’d think.

  Unfortunately, the last chapter of said book: ‘If that fails, here’s a guide to speedy, low-risk tracheotomies – you don’t need to be a doctor to do this!’ had been the one that had caused the trouble.

  Allegedly low-risk, non-medically performed tracheotomies never went well, no matter how many manuals you read or how often you’d seen it done on Grey’s Anatomy.

  Factual Anomalies had gone down after a slew of civil injury cases, but still, Cari had learned a lot. Like where the carotid artery was and how easily it might be pierced with a flick knife. That had come from their urban survival guide: ‘How to survive after an apocalypse with just a knife, water treatment tablets and a car battery’, the blurb had said.

  It had sold shedloads. People, male readers particularly, liked being prepared. Cari could still vaguely recall how to build an A-frame shelter from planks of wood and some tarpaulin. Not that there was much call for this in her life. But still, you never knew. In the apocalypse/revolution, Gavin would be first up against the wall, that was for sure.