Wishful Thinking

by Jemma Harvey

  ‘Mum been at you?’ Some things needed little explanation.

  ‘Mmm. You know how it is. You never brought the dreaded Nigel to meet them, you’re looking peaky, your job at Ransome has bad pay and no prospects. The usual.’

  ‘All jobs in publishing have bad pay and no prospects. As it happens, I’ve had promotion – in a way.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I’m editing Jerry Beauman’s next book. Apparently, it’s a privilege. He’s supposed to be the biggest bastard in the business – but that’s top secret.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sophie. ‘Who can I tell?’

  ‘Whom,’ said the editor in me, but Sophie didn’t notice.

  We went to Harrods in quest of an outfit for Sophie to wear to someone’s wedding, but my sister, easily sidetracked, wandered into departments of designer children’s clothes and scooped up frilled and beaded miniatures of teenage gear – ‘Hermione will look so sweet in that!’ – and diminutive macho jackets and sweatshirts for Raphael. From our last meeting I remembered him as one of those boys who manages to be grubby no matter how often you wash him, while Hermione, not surprisingly in view of her mother’s attitude, was a proper little madam. ‘She’s so fashion-conscious already,’ Sophie cooed. ‘Mind you, they all are nowadays. I bought her a new party dress last month – the loveliest thing, yellow with sequined appliqués – and she looked at it and said: “Mummy, I can’t wear that! It’s so yesterday!” Wasn’t that sweet?’

  Personally, I felt Hermione’s dress sense might benefit from a good spanking, and on an impulse I said so.

  ‘Spanking?’ Sophie laughed. ‘Darling, nobody spanks any more. It’s Victorian. Besides, she’d probably get hold of the school lawyer and prosecute us for child abuse.’

  School lawyer???

  In due course, we went to lunch. I ordered salad, and Sophie reverted to the subject of my supposed anorexia, nagging me to have the cannelloni. ‘It’s summer,’ I pointed out. ‘Everyone eats salad in the summer.’

  ‘Nonsense. You don’t like salad; no one does. People only eat it to look healthy. You’ve never lost weight, Em, it can’t be good for you. You’re not one of Nature’s dieters.’

  And so on.

  By the time she went, not long after tea, when I resisted her Marie Antoinette-like urging to eat cake, I felt worn out, both mentally and physically. Who was it who said you choose your friends but your family you’re stuck with? Back home I rang Georgie, who agonised at length about her outfit for the opera that night, and Lin, who inquired in beseeching accents if I and/or Georgie might consider another stint of babysitting, as Andy Pearmain was in town next week. The multi-pierced teenage tough-girl had apparently retired from the lists in an advanced state of trauma. I hedged, wavered, and finally succumbed, wondering where I could get a Kalashnikov. When I eventually hung up I found myself revising my reaction to that line about choosing your friends. The work environment cultivates an unnatural intimacy, and friendships are forced along like hothouse plants. Either that, or I was a very bad chooser.

  In the evening I went out with a selection from my wider social circle, but it didn’t offer much relief. We went to an Indian restaurant where I ordered very hot curry on the grounds that I don’t like it much, and therefore wouldn’t eat a lot. Unfortunately it was even hotter than I thought, my tongue began to blister at the excess of chilli, and I had to sit with a mouthful of milk for about ten minutes to cool it down. Then we went to a downmarket wine bar, where the first person I saw was Nigel with a couple of friends.

  I hadn’t seen him since that terrible confrontation in the bookshop, and my stomach quailed, my knees turned to water, my voice stuck in my throat and my heart shrank. All the standard symptoms, in fact. I hated myself for my weakness, for the horrible mixture of excitement and terror and returning shame that battered my nervous system. I was supposed to be a sex goddess, with an undulating hour-glass figure worthy of Jessica Rabbit, but the sheer panic I felt was more reminiscent of Roger. I told myself I wasn’t ready for this, I didn’t want him to see me, I would have my drink and leave, unnoticed, unrecognised, unacknowledged. We went to a table some distance from him and I sat down in a corner, where I could see him and hopefully remain unseen. But there was a part of me that wanted to catch his eye, wanted him to look at me, see my change of image, speak to me – that treacherous part of me that said: This time, it will be different. This time, he’ll appreciate you. This time . . . this time . . . this time . . .

  We ordered a bottle, and I drank. I couldn’t have said if it was white or red.

  ‘What’s the matter, Cookie?’ asked one of my companions, seeing my rigid attitude and glazed eye.

  ‘Nigel,’ I said. ‘Over there.’

  ‘Oh, Lord . . .’

  It was a mistake to say anything. The nudging and whispering of my friends seemed to me more noticeable than a shout. I sank back into what shadows there were, trying to change colour, like a chameleon, against the cushions of the bench. Nigel didn’t seem to be with a girlfriend – an omission guaranteed to give me false hope – but was leaning forward, talking to two guys whom I’d met occasionally, a long-haired vegetarian called Rom (whatever that was short for) and a thin Asian with overlarge specs. At a guess they were rearranging the world – that, or discussing the shortcomings of absent fellow ideologues. I watched them, hawk-like, feeling queasy. Drank more wine. Ate a handful of something (crisps? peanuts?). Then back to the wine. Any minute, I thought, he’ll look round and see me. Maybe it would be better to attract his attention, to have the advantage of making the opening gambit . . .

  God knows how long this went on. Belatedly, I was aware of being drunk. Not too drunk, but drunk enough. Dutch courage stiffened my sinews, put the joints back in my knees. I got up, went to the loo, retouched my face. On the way back, I stopped at his table.

  ‘Hello, Nige.’ Not a good opening line, not remarkable for cutting-edge wit, but I was sufficiently pissed not to care.

  ‘Cookie. Hi.’

  ‘How are you?’

  I was conscious of him looking me over, of the other two surveying me with deadly unenthusiasm. Sobriety seeped coldly into my head.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said, in a curiously similar tone to Sophie’s. Accusatory. Critical. ‘You should be careful. You don’t want to—’

  ‘Get anorexia? Yes, I know. I’m a long way off the twiglet figure just yet.’

  ‘You’re looking pale, too. Poor Cookie. Been having a bad time?’

  I stared at him, slightly baffled. He didn’t look cruel or scornful, the way he had at our previous meeting. In fact he was looking gentle, lightly teasing, an expression I remembered too well. I muttered something about work pressure.

  ‘I’m sorry I was a bit hard on you last time. But you were pretty vile, booting me out like that. It was that harpy Georgie, wasn’t it? Awful old slag. For God’s sake, don’t end up like her.’

  ‘She’s not a slag,’ I said. ‘She’s—’

  Nigel wasn’t listening – a habit of his. ‘Poor old girl. You must have been pretty down, wasting away like that. I should’ve known it would hit you hard.’

  Wasting away? Wasting . . . ?!

  ‘You think I’ve been pining for you?’ The surge of indignation that rushed through me was so violent I could feel the heat of it in my face. ‘Pining – for you? I’ve been on a diet. Not anorexia, not a green and yellow melancholy – a DIET. People do that. And now I feel good, and I’m told I look good, and I miss you like – like a pain in the gut. Goodnight!’

  It wasn’t a great exit-line, but I was pleased with it. In that moment, I thought I was well rid of him. How dare he – how dare he – assume I had been pining away, missing him, going into a decline? The fact that I had was immaterial. That wasn’t why I’d lost weight – was it? I strode back to my table, plumped myself down and demanded more wine.

  Someone said: ‘Perhaps we should move on.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I s
aid, ‘as long as there’s alcohol at the end of the move.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  I think I ground my teeth. There’s nothing like anger to give you a lift. ‘Don’t ask.’

  Several wine bars later, the anger had worn off or been forgotten and I knew I’d blown it. Not that I wanted Nigel back – or if I did, it was only out of pride, nothing else – but I wanted to behave with dignity, to be coolly unattainable (while at the same time being a sizzling sex goddess), to see him torn by vain lust, racked by might-have-beens. What I didn’t want was pity, sympathy, kindness. I couldn’t decide which was more humiliating, kindness or cruelty – not that it mattered. Neither had shown me to advantage. Sunday morning found me hungover and depressed. I thought about eating, just for comfort, the way I used to, and found I had no inclination. Maybe I was becoming anorexic after all.

  ‘I don’t want him back,’ I told the bathroom mirror, spluttering toothpaste. But by evening, alone in front of the television, I was lapsing into fantasies about his abject return.

  In desperation I put on a video, and went to bed with Hugh Jackman.

  The following week Todd Jarman returned his manuscript, with most of my corrections re-corrected. I considered altering them again, sneakily, but decided that would be underhand. Besides, he had – as requested – added a new body. Surprisingly, instead of being a cab driver who Knew Too Much or another prostitute it turned out to be the gangsters’ legal adviser, an ultra-smoothie who, in the previous version, had oozed out of the narrative like cream from a plastic tube. Of course he, too, Knew Too Much, mainly under the heading of client confidentiality, and his gory demise was particularly satisfying. As he was a lawyer, it would have been tempting to probe the incident for subconscious motives, but I guessed the truth was probably more straightforward. Ten-to-one Helen’s social circle included a few slimy solicitors from the opposition team. I rang him up, feeling a strange uprush of confidence, to suggest a session to finalise disputed details.

  ‘It’s really good you killed that guy off,’ I said. ‘I loathed him.’

  ‘I aim to please.’

  We fixed a date and I hung up, turning my attention to the rather more slapdash offering from Jerry Beauman. It was very much as expected. Upright hero, slightly naïve, inveigled into a criminal involvement by evil associates. He himself does nothing wrong, but is left to carry the can for their misdeeds. Sent to prison, a sort of Shawshank Redemption scenario ensues, as he becomes the confidant of the crooked governor and a role model for fellow inmates. Finally released, he sets out to prove his innocence and wreak revenge on the crooks who framed him and the corrupt judge who misdirected the jury and doled out his sentence. In a succession of action-packed chapters, he gathers together a band of ex-cons and other unlikely allies to entrap and expose the bad guys. It was a good story – or rather an all-too familiar medley of good stories – the only problem was the way it was written. There were gaps in the narrative, grammar and punctuation were both erratic, and many scenes needed extensive reworking. My heart sank. (It had done that a lot lately.) My editorial input was going to be a long, long job.

  I went to find Laurence.

  ‘This is a nightmare,’ I said. ‘Have you been through any of it yet?’

  ‘A few chapters. I’ll e-mail my notes to you.’ He was looking grumpy and drinking coffee from a mug with a cartoon nude of Princess Diana on the side. ‘Remember, you’ll have to polish his style.’

  ‘Has he got one?’

  ‘Okay, you’ll have to polish his lack of style. Good luck.’

  ‘I’ve set up a meeting for you,’ Alistair told me later. ‘Thursday week, at his flat.’

  Venturing into the lion’s den chez Jarman looked, in retrospect, like a stroll in the park. Oh, for the safety of publishers’ offices!

  I escaped to lunch and exchanged confidences with Georgie and Lin, only to fall alive into the babysitting trap.

  Georgie and I went on Wednesday (Cal was coaching his son Allan’s football team). Lin departed for her dinner-date looking sunnier than she had in a long while and the two of us, without prior discussion, adopted a Camp-Kommandant stance which worked very well. When the twins demanded suppers that were not on the menu, we told them flatly to eat what was on offer or starve. Sandy protested he was a growing boy; I assured him I would be only too happy to stunt his growth. Demmy, looking like a famine victim, said he wasn’t hungry; Georgie said, ‘Good.’ In the end, they both ate what was available. Meredith said: ‘Look what I can do,’ and Georgie and I both ducked, but it transpired she only wanted to demonstrate a headstand. I pointed out that turning upside down was bad for the digestion, and once all three children were more or less the right way up Georgie rewarded them with a packet of chocolate brownies with which she had thoughtfully provided herself. Later, all we had to do was switch over from Sex and the City; I threatened them with a video of Thomas the Tank Engine, as a result of which they sat fairly contentedly through some unsuitable reality TV before being dispatched to bed. Georgie and I recuperated with a bottle of wine, feeling like the villains in a Dickens novel – the kind who refused to give Oliver Twist seconds of gruel. (I can’t recall their names: I’m not a big Dickens fan.) We were very pleased with ourselves.

  Lin, meanwhile, was sitting in Zilli’s with Andy Pearmain eating bruschetta and wondering why she couldn’t chat away to him as easily as in the past. After all, he was just the same as always. The beard was very short these days, little more than a shadow-line emphasising his jaw; there was a hint of grey in his hair; his habitual expression of sympathetic interest was enhanced by a myriad of tiny lines, smile-lines, thought-lines, furtive etchings of anxiety and stress. Unreasonably, she found herself blaming his fiancée for the latter. He really should have been gay. All the gay couples she knew (Laurence and partner) were in incredibly stable, comfortable relationships with no anxiety factors at all.

  Of course, he could be stressed out by the problems of high-powered banking, but Lin’s a romantic: despite experience, she thinks the only significant strain in life comes from love and family.

  She began to ask him, rather awkwardly, about his bride-to-be: how and where they met, what she did, whether she was another of his otherworldly idealists. What campaigns she would be spending his money on.

  ‘Actually, Cat’s a bit different from the others. She’s into hunting and the Countryside Alliance. I know you won’t approve, but you’re not a country girl. They seem to believe hunting is pretty necessary. Foxes are vermin, apparently.’

  ‘Cat?’

  ‘Catriona. Her parents are friends of my mother’s. All very cosy, you see. When it comes to really getting hitched at last, I return to my roots. She’s not a glamour girl, just sort of clean and glowing. The outdoor type.’

  ‘She looks good in tweeds?’ Lin queried. Her heart was sinking, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it was just chronic pessimism about all Andy’s women.

  ‘She looks good. Wholesome – no makeup – like fresh fruit and wild flowers. Sorry: I’m not much good at the poetic stuff. She reminds me of the way you used to look, when I first knew you.’ Lin stared at him, suddenly stricken. ‘Shit! I didn’t mean that to come out that way. Cat isn’t beautiful like you, but she has that untouched aura. She’s only twenty-four; life hasn’t done anything bad to her yet. I hope it never will. You know, you always reminded me of a wild flower, transported to the big city and stifling in the fumes.’

  ‘Wilting,’ Lin said. The sinking feeling had become a pain, sharper than regret. Twenty-four, she thought. Untouched. Innocent . . . Why did it hurt so much?

  ‘Just – drooping a bit. Stuck in a formal bed by a busy street when it should have been growing on a mountainside in the fresh air.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘It wasn’t my business to say,’ he responded. ‘First there was Sean, then Garry. You chose your own life. I just wanted to be there for you, when you needed a friend. Sometimes, I want
ed to say to you: “I’ll take you away from all this. I’ll take you home” . . . but you wouldn’t have listened.’ Lin’s eyes filled with treacherous tears. One escaped down her cheek, and splashed on to the bruschetta. ‘Never mind. Maybe you’ll go back one day. Who’s the latest unsuitable man?’

  ‘Oh – umm – he’s – he’s not unsuitable . . .’ She couldn’t tell him there was no one – not when he had wholesome Catriona, who looked good in tweeds.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to sound cynical. Bring him to the wedding: I’d like to meet him. I really want you to be happy, Lin. You deserve to be. You’re a very special kind of person.’

  He was looking at her with an expression of tenderness which hurt her somehow. She thought it must have been there before, only she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t cared, and now it was too late. Too late . . .

  ‘You’re getting weepy,’ he said gently. ‘No need for that. Save it till I go up the aisle. There’s nothing to cry for now.’

  ‘I’m not weepy,’ Lin said. ‘It’s – it’s the garlic.’

  ‘At least you’ve got good friends here. It was nice of your mates to babysit. What’re their names? Georgina and—’

  ‘Cookie.’

  ‘The thing is, they belong here. You don’t. To continue the horticultural analogy, Georgina’s clearly an orchid, something out of a hothouse anyway, Cookie – maybe a rose. One with lots of petals. But you’re just a little Scottish flower which misses the wind off the loch.’

  Lin had been born in a village nowhere near a loch and moved thence to Edinburgh, but she wasn’t going to argue with his imagery. Groping for something to say, for a way out of the emotional morass, she returned to the standard questions. ‘What does Catriona – Cat – what does she do?’

  ‘She’s in publishing. Coincidence, isn’t it? But she’s going to give up work after we’re married.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She wants to concentrate on having babies.’

  ‘How lovely,’ sighed Lin.