Girl Friday

by Unknown

  ‘I most certainly do,’ Edie said, flexing her muscles. ‘I do Pilates twice a week and play tennis every weekend.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Tory said.

  ‘Tory!’ Kit instantly admonished. ‘You can’t ask that! It’s rude.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Edie dismissed Kit. ‘I like people who speak their minds. I’m eighty-three years young.’

  ‘Wow!’ Tory said. ‘You look amazing.’

  ‘You see?’ Edie beamed with delight. ‘That’s because I take care of my body and my mind.’

  ‘So what do you do?’ Kit couldn’t help but ask.

  ‘I’m a realtor.’ Edie’s chest puffed up with pride. ‘The star of the Burton Holloway group for the last thirty years.’

  ‘Thirty years!’ Tory, at thirteen, couldn’t fathom doing anything for that long. ‘That’s a lifetime.’

  ‘Almost!’ Edie chuckled. ‘I’m going to speak to my friend Robert McClore about you. He’s been looking for an assistant for ages, and he keeps trying out these silly young things who haven’t a clue how to use their initiative and don’t have a bone of common sense in their bodies. He needs someone like you. Know how to type?’ She examined Kit with a beady eye.

  ‘I… of course.’ Robert McClore! The famous writer! Kit grinned, thinking this was the most exciting thing to have happened to her since she once sat in the same restaurant as Ray Liotta.

  Kit had realized that knowing she would have to get a job was very different to actually finding one. In the early days, she didn’t have the strength to actively look, being too busy packing up the house, making lists of what was hers and what was Adam’s. Too busy sorting out the books into his and hers piles, wondering what on earth to do with the Duxiana bed, and all the extra furniture that Adam didn’t want, the furniture that wouldn’t fit into a new, smaller house.

  Too busy running, so she wouldn’t have to stop and deal with the anxiety, the fear. Could she do this by herself? Was she really that strong?

  But once she bought this house, she knew she would have to find something, and Edie’s suggestion was a blessing in disguise.

  *

  Robert McClore is probably the most famous person to live in Highfield. Neighbouring towns have their share of movie stars and rock gods, but Highfield has one of the biggest names in literature today.

  He is talked of in the same breath as Clancy, Patterson or Grisham. He is one of the giants in men’s commercial fiction, and the airports stack his small, meaty paperbacks high every summer.

  He is read by all the men who profess not to enjoy fiction. The men who read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, who, if they read books at all, read biographies, history books, business tomes, and who only ever pick up a blockbuster when they’re flying to sandy destinations with their wives and families.

  His books have been turned into movies, each one more successful than the last, and the script for The Last Landing is still studied by film students all over the country, lauded as an example, as the example, in fact, of the perfect thriller.

  He moved to Highfield thirty-five years previously with his wife, Penelope, a model. They were part of the beautiful crowd, the artists and writers who summered in Highfield, who drove down on Friday nights with the back seats of their sporty little convertibles stuffed with cases of champagne.

  They were the golden couple, until Penelope disappeared from their yacht while they were sailing, with friends, in the Greek islands during the summer of 1978. It was the biggest story of the year, and to this day there are people who believe Penelope was murdered, that there was far more to the story than met the eye.

  Their friends, it was true, were there. Plum Apostoles, who had made a fortune in shipping, was rumoured to have been having an affair with Penelope. Plum’s wife, Ileana, was thought to have been having an affair with Robert. Plum had, it later came out, served time in prison for assault. There was talk of huge rows, drunken parties, but Robert never spoke about it again.

  Nor did he remarry. The parties and the high life stopped as soon as Penelope disappeared, and he became something of a recluse.

  Hillpoint, the grand old house perched at the top of Dune Road, overlooks the calm waters of Long Island Sound. The house itself is approached by a long, gravel driveway. As the electric gates swing noiselessly open, and you round the corner, you catch a glimpse of the large white columns of the house before it comes into view in its entirety.

  Gracious, regal, impressive, it is a house that is often whispered about, for few have actually seen it, few have ventured beyond those intimidating electric gates. Some of the mothers that Kit knows, women who have grown up in Highfield, say they went trick or treating there as children, that Robert and Penelope left the gates open every Halloween, when they threw huge parties for all their New York friends, and they let anyone come, lavishing delicious gourmet candy on all the local neighbourhood children.

  The house was designed by Cameron Clark in 1929, but it is a house that hasn’t been seen for years. Aside from the people who take care of Robert McClore, few are allowed beyond the gates.

  Robert McClore spends his time writing a book a year, consulting on the movies, and occasionally, very occasionally, appearing at an event in town to benefit one of the local charities. His name appears far more often than he does, as a generous donor to everything charitable, including being one of the giant supporters behind the rebuilding of Highfield Library.

  Kit sat in her kitchen and looked at her new neighbour.

  ‘Of course I know how to type,’ she said, despite not having typed for many, many years. Still, nothing that a spot of practice wouldn’t cure.

  ‘Know how to read?’ Edie peered at Kit with a twinkle in her eye, while Tory burst out laughing.

  ‘Is Robert McClore really looking for an assistant?’ Kit asked.

  ‘Yes, and he’d like you.’

  ‘How do you know? You don’t know me.’

  ‘No, but I like you already, and that’s always a good sign.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  Edie smiled. ‘I was his… well, not assistant, exactly… more like his Girl Friday. Oh it was hundreds of years ago, when he and his wife, gorgeous thing, first moved to Highfield. I used to cook for them, do a spot of cleaning, and even go on movie sets with him. It was quite the life.’

  ‘It sounds amazing. Did you do it for long?’

  A look of sadness came into Edie’s eyes. ‘A while. Until Penelope died. You know the story?’

  Kit nodded. Everyone in town knew the story.

  ‘Robert was a changed man when he came back. He went into hiding for a while, hence that ridiculous reputation he has as a recluse.’

  ‘You mean he’s not?’

  ‘Robert!’ Edie barked with laughter. ‘He loves people! He’s just private. There’s a big difference. He couldn’t stand the attention after Penelope’s death, and refused to let anyone help him. Including me. That’s when I decided to get my realtor’s licence instead.’

  ‘But you’re still in touch?’

  ‘Of course! I shall ring him tonight when I get home.’

  Kit chose her clothes carefully, but it all went horribly wrong at the last minute. You’re going for an interview to be an assistant to a novelist, she told herself, as she glared at her black skirt suit in the mirror, not an accountant.

  She whipped off her suit and put on black pants and a blue shirt, then tore the pants off and pulled her chinos on. Too casual. Oh God. What on earth was she supposed to wear? She wanted to be professional, but not too professional. Casual, but not too casual.

  In the end she settled on brown pants and a blue cashmere sweater with a pretty scarf, and all the way over to Robert McClore’s house she fought the urge to run home and change.

  ‘You will be fine.’ Edie was driving, and kept chuckling to herself about how nervous Kit was. ‘He’s terribly nice, and you’ll charm him. You’ll see.’

  But as soon as they pulled t
hrough the gates and Kit saw, for the first time, the grandeur of the house, she almost went to pieces.

  Edie bypassed the front door and marched straight in the back – ‘He never keeps it locked,’ she whispered to Kit, ‘but don’t tell anyone’ – striding through the kitchen and calling out a loud, ‘Hellooo?’

  ‘Edie!’ It was slightly surreal, this man who was so famous suddenly standing before her. He gave Edie a huge hug, then turned to Kit with a warm smile on his face.

  ‘I’m Robert,’ he said. ‘You must be Kit.’

  She was instantly disarmed by his warmth, although now, eight months later, she knows that it is only because of Edie that he was relaxed; more often, with strangers, he is polite and always gracious, but distant – the price of fame meaning he has to truly trust before he can let anyone get close.

  And so, for the past eight months, Kit has been his assistant. Initially, she went in three days a week, just for three hours, to tidy up, answer fan mail, sort out his bills. Robert McClore wasn’t around much while she was there. She’d be in the large office downstairs, while he was in his writing office, a former sunroom attached to the side of the house.

  She would knock tentatively when she needed him, intimidated by his greatness, but slowly they began to chat, slowly they began to relax with one another, and now he brings her coffee when he makes his, and sits in the 1920s art deco armchair in her office, chatting to her about life.

  Three hours a day became five hours a day, four days a week, and Robert told her, just the other day, he didn’t know what he did before she came along. Her chest swelled with pride.

  Finally, for the first time since the divorce, it feels like everything in life is in place. Her kids are settled, her home is calm, she loves her job. She wakes up every morning and cannot believe how lucky she is.

  2

  Robert McClore wanders in and places a mug of coffee on the desk to one side of Kit’s computer. She looks up and smiles gratefully, reaching over for the mug and sliding her chair slightly away from the desk so she can sit more comfortably.

  ‘How’s the research coming along?’ he asks.

  Kit has spent the last two weeks trawling the Internet for information on Navy SEAL training. Every day she collates the most relevant facts, cuts and pastes them, and gives them to Robert. She doesn’t read the books as he writes them, but reads the outlines, the synopses and the research. She never thought this kind of book would interest her – she is much more likely to pick up a book with a pink cover featuring a pair of glossy high-heeled shoes – but since working here she has read most of Robert’s work, and is surprised by how much she likes it.

  This latest features a martial arts expert brought in to train the Navy SEALs. Only he’s not quite what he appears, and mayhem ensues when his terrorist links are discovered.

  ‘It’s fascinating,’ Kit says, for it is, and that is the true beauty of the job. Not that she is gainfully employed and earning her own money for the first time in years, but that she is learning something new every day. Frequently, she leaves feeling that her brain has physically expanded in the few short hours she has spent there. ‘I love learning about all these new things,’ she says with a smile. ‘I never expected I’d be finding out so much when I took the job.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you regret it, then?’ Robert says, sipping his coffee.

  ‘God! No!’ She is forceful, and slightly embarrassed. She looks away, then turns to him again, wondering how it is that such a kind, successful and – yes, okay, she has to admit this, even though he is many years older than her – very handsome man, is on his own so much of the time.

  There are times, particularly like now, when there feels such intimacy between them that she wants to blurt out the question: why are you on your own? But she would never cross that line, would never dare be so presumptuous.

  But she doesn’t understand it. She knows about the terrible tragedy with his wife, yet it seems there has been no one serious since then. Rumours abound about covert affairs with wives of wealthy men, but in eight months here she has never seen evidence of anything.

  There is talk in the town that he might be gay, but she thinks that unlikely. Just as there have been no women, there have been no men either, and she just doesn’t believe it, realizing that he is a target for gossip, false rumours, simply because of his fame.

  She studies him as he leafs through the papers she has collated for him. He has a craggy, handsome face, tanned from the hours he spends in the garden. She watches him through the windows sometimes, knows he is taking a break from writing, but that this is part of the process, that gardening is a meditation for him, and he would not relish being disturbed.

  His hair is more salt than pepper these days, but the silver-framed photos scattered around the house show Robert and Penelope decades ago, Robert squeezed next to Warren Beatty and Meryl Streep at the Academy Awards, and when he was younger his looks weren’t just handsome, they were breathtaking.

  ‘I wonder whether you would come to the reading tonight.’ Robert suddenly lays the papers on his lap and studies Kit over the top of his glasses. ‘You haven’t been to one of my readings and I think you would enjoy it.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like turning up with “people”,’ Kit says and grins, thinking of the stories Robert has told her, how he turns up for book signings, lectures, television shows, with no one, and is usually ignored because people don’t believe it’s him, don’t believe a writer of his calibre could possibly have no ego, ergo no entourage.

  Her favourite story, one that he told her just recently, laughing all the while, was when he turned up to a talk show that featured another author, this one female, young, who had enjoyed great success with her very commercial first novel and was suffering from an advanced case, Robert said, of ‘first novel syndrome’, which meant all the attention had quite clearly gone to her head.

  Young, beautiful and charming on the surface, she had arrived with her assistant, her publicist, her editor, her manager, her hair and make-up artist, her sister and her sister’s friend. The production team, panicking, put her in the best dressing room, the one that had home-made pastries and fresh coffee, baskets of fresh fruit on every surface. The one that had two plush sofas and a fridge filled with chilled white wine.

  Robert arrived alone. He was shoved into someone’s office, which they had decided to turn into a makeshift dressing room for the day.

  ‘See?’ Kit had been horrified but had laughed. ‘You need people!’

  ‘Oh pshaw,’ Robert had brushed her off. ‘I can’t stand all that look at me, I’m a star business. I don’t need people, but I wouldn’t have minded some of those home-made pastries.’

  Robert grins at Kit now.

  ‘I don’t want you to come and assist me. I want you to come and be a member of the audience. Come and enjoy.’

  ‘I… I’d love to,’ Kit says. ‘I just have to see if I can get a babysitter.’

  ‘Isn’t Tory thirteen? Couldn’t she babysit?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s already got plans tonight. Let me ask around this afternoon at yoga and see if I can find someone.’

  Later that day, at her yoga class, Kit inhales, sits back on her ankles as she stretches forward in Child’s Pose, then swoops slowly through Chataranga and into Downward Dog.

  She catches the eye of Charlie, who grimaces at her and makes her smile, then she forces herself to stay focused on her breathing.

  The room is absolutely quiet, save for the soft, tinkling music in the background, and Tracy’s melodious voice, taking them through the yoga movements.

  Kit never would have thought she would become addicted to yoga. She remembers first trying it when she was pregnant with Tory. She went to a pre-natal yoga class, armed with all the right gear because she was convinced it was going to change her life. She had cute maternity yoga pants, the matching vest with a painted Buddha on it, and a brand-new hot-pink yoga mat.

  She had entered at t
he back of the class, a little surprised that when she smiled at the other mothers they didn’t smile back, but perhaps, she thought, they were already in a meditative state and didn’t quite see her.

  Kit was looking forward to lying flat on her back and breathing deeply, anticipating an hour of rest and relaxation, of going through the movements in a slow and measured way. After the thirtieth consecutive Downward Dog, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. It didn’t help that she was using her pregnancy with Tory as an excuse to eat whatever the hell she wanted and was subsequently the size of a small whale (she liked to think it was normal that six out of ten people asked her if she was having twins, but she very much doubted it).

  She huffed and puffed her way through the class, threw the yoga mat in the back of the closet in the mudroom when she got home, and forgot all about it until the yard sale when they moved, when someone paid $2 for the mat.

  Since the time of that first class, yoga seemed to sweep the country. Everyone Kit knew was raving about either Pilates or yoga, but it wasn’t until she and Adam separated that she actually decided to give it another go.

  And even then she didn’t really want to, she just did it because Charlie was going, and this, more than anything, was an opportunity to see Charlie more often and grab tea or coffee or lunch, depending on the time of the class, afterwards.

  Charlie had been her lifesaver when she first moved to Highfield. Their girls, Tory and Paige, were in pre-school together, and the minute Kit walked into the pre-school and saw Charlie’s mass of curly red hair, her large open smile, she knew they’d be friends, made it her mission, in fact, to be friends.

  She got Charlie’s number from the school, phoned her the next day and invited her over so the girls could get to know one another before they started school. Given that Tory and Paige were turning two, it was unlikely they’d find much in common, but that’s what mothers of pre-schoolers did, particularly ones who were new to the area – they looked for mothers they liked the look of and invited them over.