To: [email protected]
Good morning. The sun is shining here. A blurt of blue irises that wasn't there yesterday hit me when I opened the front door this morning. Almost dispelled the gloomy prospect of watching over 120 Legal Practice students to make sure they're not cheating in their conveyancing exam. But not quite. Every crappy little job I have to swallow right now reminds me of what I should be doing. What I'm trained to do. What I'm best at.
Strange package at the breakfast table this a.m. with an Oxford postmark and no covering letter. Is this your idea of fun? If so, you're going to have to explain the joke. Your Scorpio sting in the tail, I don't always get it.
Wish I was in Oxford; we could walk from Folly Bridge to Iffley and say the things we don't write down. I might even sing to you.
Love, Charlie
Sent from my iPhone
Subject: Re: Ruby Tuesday
Date: 23 March 2010 09:43:13 GMT
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi, Charlie
poetry like that, maybe you should be petitioning the Creative Writing department for work. All those novels about serial killers and profiling — you've got the inside track, you could teach them how to get it right. Poor you. Poets shouldn't have to invigilate exams!
Nothing much to report here. This morning, I am supposedly working on The Programme. When I first envisioned 'I'm Not OK, You're Not OK; Negotiating Vulnerability' I had no idea it would come to consume my life.
Thinking of you. Wishing we could run away and play.
LKx
Subject: It's a mystery
Date: 23 March 2010 13:07:52 GMT
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
1 of 2
Another secret admirer? I don't think so.:-} One would be more than enough anyway, as long as it was the right one. If not from you, then from whom? The only other people I 'know' in Oxford are the few remaining dons at St Scholastika's who taught me, and I can't think why any of them would be sending me a package of newspaper clippings about a current murder trial. Unless someone mistakenly thinks it might interest me professionally because of the Schollie's connection? If so, then it's someone who isn't very current with my present status as the pariah of the clinical psychiatry world.I've scanned in a couple of the articles for your edification. Just so you know what I'm talking about.Hope the seminar programme is going well. I don't know where you find the energy. If I end up teaching students how to do what I used to do best, I will send them all on one of your weekend courses to teach them to develop empathy.Sorry about the weather.Love, Charlie
2 of 2
From the Mail
THE BATTERED BRIDEGROOM
Two city whiz kids callously murdered their business partner on his wedding day then enjoyed a night of wild sex together, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.The evil pair smashed Philip Carling's skull then left him to drown just yards away from the Oxford college garden party celebrating his wedding, the court was told.
Shocked wedding guests taking a romantic stroll by the river found the bridegroom's body floating by the landing stage where the college punts were moored, blood from his shattered skull staining the water.
Paul Barker, 35, and Joanna Sanderson, 34, are charged with murder and fraud. They owned a specialist printing firm in partnership with their victim, which gave them unique access to sensitive City information. Carling, 36, had allegedly threatened to expose Barker and Sanderson as devious fraudsters who were lining their pockets by insider trading.
The prosecution alleges that the two conspirators silenced him within hours of his marriage last July then spent the night in an orgy of noisy sex.
Carling's widow, Magdalene, 28, was in court yesterday as Jonah Pollitt QC outlined the details of the double-crossing conspiracy that her husband's partners carried out at the society wedding in the grounds of St Scholastika's College, Oxford.
While the friends and family of the happy couple celebrated with champagne and smoked salmon, the cold-hearted pair were murdering the groom. Carling went missing shortly before he and his wife left for their Caribbean honeymoon.
The court heard how Barker and Sanderson had been introduced to each other by Carling three years ago. They soon became lovers. A year later, Sanderson quit her job as a merchant banker to join Carling and Barker's company as sales and marketing director.
According to the prosecution, the scams that may have cheated genuine investors of hundreds of thousands of pounds began soon afterwards, using contacts of Sanderson's to set up the money-grabbing trades in stocks and shares. Philip Carling was kept in the dark. Discovering the truth cost him his life.
The trial continues.
From the Guardian
INSIDER TRADING REVEALED
Two directors of a printing company specialising in sensitive documents relating to city takeovers used their inside knowledge to perpetrate a series of frauds that netted them hundreds of thousands of pounds without the knowledge of their business partner, a court heard yesterday.Paul Barker, 35, and Joanna Sanderson, 34, stand trial at the Old Bailey charged with fraud and the murder of their partner Philip Carling, who was threatening to expose them to financial watchdogs and the police. Carling, 36, was killed within hours of his marriage, with the reception in full swing only yards away.Yesterday, giving evidence for the prosecution, Detective Inspector Jane Morrison of the Serious Fraud Office told the court that the conspiracy had come to light as the result of information received from the widow of the murdered man.Magdalene Carling and a friend had been dealing with the dead man's personal effects following his tragic death when a computer memory stick came to light which contained details of Barker and Sanderson's frauds, along with draft letters to the DTI and the police outlining the insider trading and Mr Carling's desire to clear his name even at the cost of implicating his partners.DI Morrison said, 'The letters expressed his shock at discovering what his partners had been doing. They referred to his wedding and said he wanted to start married life with a clean slate. As far as we can discover, he was killed before the letters could be sent as part of a cover-up by Barker and Sanderson.'For the defence, Mr Ian Cordier, QC, asked if it were possible that Mr Carling could have been ignorant of so large-scale a fraud in so small a firm where he was also a partner.DI Morrison said that given the way responsibility was structured following the arrival of Ms Sanderson at the firm, it was very unlikely that Mr Carling would have uncovered what was going on in the normal run of business. It had not been a particularly clever or complex scheme, she added, but it was clear that Mr Carling was not involved in that side of the business.The case continues.
From the Mirror
CALLOUS KILLERS MADE LOVE FOR HOURS
Two company directors accused of murdering their business partner on his wedding day spent the night after his death in a noisy sex romp, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.Steven Farnham, a fellow guest at the fatal wedding of Philip and Magdalene Carling, stayed in a hotel room next door to the one occupied by the alleged killers, Paul Barker, 35, and 34-year-old Joanna Sanderson.He said, 'There was a connecting door between the rooms, so the soundproofing wasn't very good. Paul and Joanna were obviously having sex, very loudly and over a period of a couple of hours.'I was disgusted. Philip had been brutally murdered only a few hours before. Paul and Joanna weren't just his business partners. They were supposed to be his best friends. But they didn't seem to be grieving at all.'Asked by the defence if sex were not a common reaffirmation of life after a death has occurred, Mr Farnham re
plied, 'I'm a stockbroker, not a psychologist. All I can say is that I was devastated by Philip's death. The last thing I felt like was having sex. And they were supposed to be really close to Phil, so I don't see how they could act as if everything was normal and nothing had happened.'The prosecution alleges that Sanderson and Barker killed their business partner during his wedding at St Scholastika's College, Oxford, to prevent him exposing their illegal insider trading activities which netted them a fortune.The trial continues.
Subject: Re: It's a mystery
Date: 23 March 2010 14:46:33 GMT
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi, Charlie
Fascinating stuff. Makes me glad I've given up newspapers! It must be pretty bewildering for you, though, getting all this strangeness in the post. What an interesting life you lead. I suspect you'd find me very dull by comparison.
I can't help thinking you're looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. If the package came from someone who was interested in you professionally, wouldn't it have gone to the university? I think this is something that connects to you personally. Which make me think it must be something to do with your old college. Anyone connected to Schollie's could get hold of your home address through the alumnae office, couldn't they?
One of the things I've learned from NV is that hardly any of us has mastered the art of asking the right question. Perhaps you should consider what your correspondent has failed to send you? I always like the answer that's not there…I have three one-to-one NV clients this afternoon. My colleagues tell me I should throttle back on the f2f stuff now the program is doing so well, but I don't know. I still like the feeling that comes with making a successful intervention in someone's life. You understand that, I know, even if they're not letting you do it right now.
Till tomorrow.
LKx
4
My mother disappeared when I was sixteen. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.
When I say that out loud, people look at me out of the corners of their eyes, as if I've transgressed some fundamental taboo. But it's the truth. I'm not hiding some complicated grief reaction.
My mother disappeared when I was sixteen. The guards had walked away from the prison leaving the door unlocked. And I emerged blinking into the sunlight.
Jay Stewart leaned back and read her words, head cocked critically to the side. It did exactly what it needed to do, she thought. Arresting and intriguing. Pick it off the three-for-two table, read that intro and you couldn't not want to carry on. That was the secret of getting the punters to part with their money. Simple to understand, hard to do. But she'd done it once already. She could do it again.
When she'd decided to write her first book, Jay had done what she always did. Research, research, research. That was the key to any successful endeavour. Check out the market. Consider the opposition. Acknowledge the potential pitfalls. Then go for it. Preparation is never procrastination. That was one of her key Powerpoint presentation slides. She'd always been proud to say she'd never plunged headlong into anything.
That was just one of the things that wasn't true any more.
Not that she was about to admit so fundamental a change to anyone except herself. When her literary agent had taken her to lunch the week before so he could reveal that her publisher was dangling a new contract before them, Jay had made a point of appearing as cautious and noncommittal as ever. 'I thought the bottom had dropped out of the misery memoir business with the market crash,' she'd said when Jasper had raised the subject halfway through their finicky starters of scallops with mango salsa and pea shoots. As she waited for Jasper to marshal his reply, Jay stared at the food and wondered when exactly it had ceased to be possible to find simple well-cooked dishes in expensive restaurants.
'And so it has.' Jasper beamed at her as though he were the teacher and Jay the favourite pupil. 'That's why they want something fresh from you. Triumph over adversity, that's what they're interested in. And you, my dear, are well set to be the poster girl for triumph over adversity.'
He had a point. Jay couldn't deny that. 'Hmm,' she said, dissecting a scallop and putting a delicate forkful in her mouth. An excuse not to say more till she had heard more.
'Your story's an inspiration,' Jasper persisted, his lean and wary face uncharacteristically kindly. 'And it's aspirational. The readers can relate to you because you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth.'
Jay swallowed, raised an eyebrow and smiled. 'The only silver spoons around when I was a baby were those cute little coke spoons my mother's friends wore on chains round their necks. Not many of my readers came from that universe either.'
Jasper gave a tight professional smile. 'Probably not, no. But your publisher's market research indicates that readers do feel close to you. They feel they could be you, if things had just been a little bit different.'
No chance. Not in a million quantum universes. 'Tangents,' Jay said, her attention on her plate. 'The facts of my life touch the edges of their lives in enough places for them to feel a shivery sort of connection. I see how that worked with the misery memoir. The readers can snuggle under their duvet, all smug and cosy because they escaped my descent into the procession of hells my mother dragged me through in the first sixteen years of my life.' She drew her breath in sharply, hearing it whistle through her teeth. 'But triumph over adversity? Isn't that a bit like rubbing their noses in it?'
Jasper frowned. 'I'm not sure I see what you mean.' Somehow, he'd managed to clean his plate with predatory efficiency while Jay was still barely a third of the way through her food. It was one of the reasons Jay had chosen Jasper as her agent when she'd first decided to write her misery memoir. She liked the people with appetite to be ranged on her side.
'Unrepentant gave them the chance to feel sorry for me. To be glad that they had escaped what I went through. But an account of how I triumphed at Oxford, set up a successful dotcom company, sold out before the bubble burst then went on to found a niche publishing business while knocking out a bestselling misery memoir… Well, it seems to me that all I'm doing is providing them with reasons to hate me. And that's not a recipe for selling books, Jasper.'
'You'd be surprised,' Jasper said, his voice dry as the Chablis they were drinking. 'People who know about these things tell me the punters love to read about people like them who have made it.'
Jay shook her head. 'What they love reading about is vacuous celebrity. Talentless show-offs who will do anything for their moment in OK magazine. Idiots who think appearing on The X-Factor is the pinnacle of achievement. That's people like them. I am not people like them.'
'You do a good job of pretending.'
'Only up to a point. Then there's the lesbian thing. By ending the book where I did, I managed to keep my adolescent yearnings more or less off-stage. But writing about Oxford and after — it's hard to see how I can avoid it.'
Jasper shrugged. 'The world's moved on, darling. Lesbians are cool now. Think Sandi Toksvig, Sam Ronson, Maggi Hambling, Sarah Waters.'
'You still wouldn't want your daughter to marry one.' She finished her appetiser and placed her cutlery neatly together on the plate. 'At best, they'll think I'm a lucky bastard.'
'They certainly will if they find out the size of the advance,' he said, his eyes narrowing in pleasure. 'Half as much again what we got for Unrepentant. Which is terrific in a flat market.'
A waiter whose designer suit had patently cost more than Jay's outfit whisked their plates away. 'Do you think they only hire staff who fit the suits?' she said absently as she watched him swagger back to the kitchen.
Jasper ignored the question and stuck heroically to his pitch. 'But you're a TV face now too. Ever since they started inviting you as a special guest investor on White Knight, you're on the radar.'
Jay scowled like a disgruntled teenager. 'And that's the last time I let you talk me into going aga
inst my better judgement. Bloody White Knight. I can't buy a packet of spaghetti in the supermarket without someone trying to pitch me their brilliant business idea.'
'Stop pretending to be a curmudgeon. You love the attention. '
'I am a curmudgeon.' Jay paused while artfully arranged slices of pink lamb surrounded by neat piles of Puy lentils interspersed with perfectly carved miniature root vegetables, all set on massive porcelain plates, appeared in front of them. 'I meant what I said the other day. I really don't want to do any more White Knight.'
She could see Jasper biting back his frustration. 'Fine,' he said, his smile thin and his voice tight. 'I think you're crazy, but fine. So why don't you do something instead that gives me a legitimate excuse to keep everyone at arm's length? "Sorry, she's writing. She's got a deadline." Plus you know you enjoyed the process of writing Unrepentant. And you also discovered you have a talent for writing memoir.'
Jay couldn't deny that she liked the idea of Jasper telling the world to go away. Bar the door and keep the barbarians out while she gorged on love. She knew enough about the arc of relationships to understand that the rush of emotional and sexual intensity between her and Magda would pass soon enough. You couldn't postpone the first flush till you could create a window in the diary. It came and went on its own timetable. And this had come so instantly, so unexpectedly, so unpredictably it was hard not to fear it might fade just as fast, though it was hard to imagine how it could fade when Magda's beauty made her heart flip every time she cast eyes on her. Having an excuse to hide from the world so she could bind Magda closer to her only had an upside. Never mind that in the long run the book wouldn't make her any friends. She had enough of those.
She sighed. 'Oh, all right, then,' she said, more grumbling than gracious.
Jasper's grin was naked delight. 'You're not going to regret this.'
Trick of the Dark Page 2
