Happily Ever After

by Harriet Evans

  “Right—” said Elle. Suddenly, weirdly, she heard her dad’s voice, that long-ago lunch in the boiling heat, the day he’d put the shelves up. “I think you should go to New York. Leave your mum behind.” She had. She’d done what he said. She’d done it for herself, and it had been the right thing to do. Except—

  “Your turn,” Melissa said. “You need to know it. When you’re over you’ll see what I mean, Elle. You Brits, you’re in denial about putting a label on something that’s a disease.”

  You sound like a Woody Allen film, Elle had thought. Denial, labels. Instead she had said, “Thank you,” which was the only thing she could think of. Thanks for telling me it’s my problem now, not yours.

  After their awkward good-bye Elle had gone home, walking back from the subway in the freezing slush, and she sat on the edge of her bed for a long time. She didn’t know what to do; she felt totally alone. She couldn’t ring Mandana and ask her if she was drinking, how she was; she wouldn’t tell her. Elle knew her mother well enough to know how cunning she was, and in that she agreed with Melissa. She knew if she just turned up on the doorstep her mother would clam up. In the end, she RSVP’d to the invitation that had been staring at her reproachfully on the nightstand since it had arrived two days ago and booked a ticket. She didn’t want to come back for the wedding. She had to come back, to see her mum. She’d see for herself then.

  “SO, ELLE,” CARYN her boss said, pacing up and down Elle’s tiny office, her eyes snapping with excitement, cracking gum. “What happens at an English wedding, huh? Hugh Grant making a speech? People in stupid hats? A panto?”

  “A panto.” Elle laughed. “Caryn, do you know what that word is?”

  “Panto?” Caryn pronounced it pintoww. Her default English accent was worse than Marc’s, worse than Dick Van Dyke’s. Even though she was the head of a large publishing division that had many bestselling international authors, Caryn was Queens and always would be. Sometimes, Elle thought, she took a little too much pride in it. Elle didn’t feel the need to let someone know within five seconds of meeting them that she came from a small village near Gatwick Airport, whereas Caryn would immediately say, “I’m from Queens,” as if it would be rude to withold this information from a stranger. “Oh, God, I never knew she was from Queens, I wish she’d told me,” Paul, the rights manager, had once said in a bar, and Elle had nearly fallen off her chair laughing, but also partly with shock: in New York publishing, you were professional, you didn’t slag off your boss or take the piss, you didn’t go to the pub and drunkenly rant, and you certainly didn’t sleep with your coworkers.

  “Panto. It’s a stupid British thing British people do,” Caryn said, crossing her tiny, sinewy arms and smiling her glaring white smile at Elle. “I don’t know. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” said Elle. “That’s completely right.” She thought of the pantomime they’d always gone to see when she was small, the year when Rhodes got picked from the audience to be shot out of a cannon by Lionel Blair, how she’d been so scared they really would fire it that her mum had had to explain it was a trick, just for fun.

  “Are you a bridesmaid?”

  “No, no,” Elle said. “In the circumstances…” she trailed off.

  “Thank God. I think you’re nuts to even be going,” said Caryn. Elle didn’t know if this was out of some tiny attempt to show she cared, or because in her absence Elle would miss the Fall Schedule Presentation and Sidney was particularly on Caryn’s back at the moment about everything. “But is it the crazy production it is here, though? Like Judy’s wedding last year? The doves dyed blue and the groomsmen having singing lessons to learn ‘When Doves Cry’ a cappella as she walked down the aisle? Come on.” Caryn slapped her thighs. “Nothing can be as heinous as that.”

  Elle laughed. “Not as much. Fewer bridesmaids.” She’d been to a wedding with Mike earlier in the month in New Hampshire, where there had been eight bridesmaids, with identical hair and dress, of identical height and weight, with eight identical groomsmen on their arms. There had been a wedding planner with a radio mic in her ear, a proper swing band, and on each table for the men there were cufflinks with the bride and groom’s initials and for the girls, jeweled Melissa Odabash flip-flops to put on when their heels started to hurt. It was like a military operation.

  Caryn looked at her watch. “OK. What time’s your flight?”

  “Nine thirty, it’s fine. I’ll finish up and go straight from here.”

  “That’s great.” Caryn put her hand on the door. “Did you speak to Molly Goodwin?”

  “Sure, and I told her I’d go see her when I’m back to discuss a new contract.”

  “How about Magnolia?”

  “She’s coming up from Georgia next month.”

  Caryn shook her head. “What else is there for me to worry about? You are the best, Elle. So, good work with Elizabeth Forsyte once again. It’s going to be huge for you, that book.”

  One of the things Elle admired about Caryn was that though she was a total workaholic, she belonged to the “hire someone who wants your job” school of management: she actually liked the idea that the people who worked for her should do better than her. Elle had realized how lucky she was in her new boss when Bill Lewis, Libby’s ex and MD of the BBE division, had come over on one of his US trips. Not only was she reminded sharply how little she liked him as a person, she saw how self-aggrandizing he was—in meetings he took credit for books Elle knew other editors had bought—how pompous, concerned only with his own cause. Much like the way he’d treated Libby.

  Libby… Elle shivered. Since she’d booked her flight back to the UK, she’d been thinking often of Libby, and wondering how she was. In a way, she owed everything to her. She’d never have ended up in New York if it weren’t for Libby and her machinations. As she waved good-bye to Caryn and sat down again at her desk, Elle was sharply reminded, she didn’t know why, of the week Diana died. That red-wine-soaked evening at the Dome in Hampstead, eating croque monsieurs and shouting about how much they loved art and literature and life and boys and life—oh, how cringeworthy. Coming home at two, Sam waking her with the terrible news. Sam—where was she now? Watching the funeral with Sam in their old flat, she and Sam sobbing, Libby trying not to roll her eyes. Little things, like Libby’s blue sundress, the crown of daisies she’d made the afternoon after the funeral as they lay in Hyde Park and talked about love.

  It was not quite seven years, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Elle had to search hard within herself to remember being that girl. The girl who hadn’t even kissed Rory yet. She had been thinking a lot about him too, these last few weeks, as the time of her trip grew nearer. She didn’t want to forget how deeply she had loved him, how important it had been to her; she felt as if to discard the memory would be a betrayal of her younger self.

  They’d had a drink the previous year in New York and it had been so strange, to see someone you knew and obsessed over so much, to hear his light, friendly voice again. His hair was the same, chaotic and floppy, his clothes were new versions of what they’d always been—low-key, dashing English bloke round town—but the lines round the eyes, the slight weariness of the face, the desperation with which he’d said, “You’re doing so well for yourself, I wish I had your recipe. You’re so different, you look different.”

  As she had left the bar of the Soho Grand—because of course he, like Bill, stayed at the Soho Grand—Elle had known he was right. She was different. She liked hearing it, because she wanted to recall just enough of it to remember that she never wanted to go back to being the person she’d been before.

  At half past six, Elle shut down her computer and whipped out her suitcase, checked that her dress was still there, checked she had her passport, her BlackBerry, her shiny new blue iPod, and her money, and shut her office door behind her, taking one last look at the sign on the door:

  ELEANOR BEE

  SENIOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR,

  JANE STREET PRESS

  She trund
led down the wide glass corridors, casting one look behind her at the glorious view over Midtown towards Central Park. It was a beautiful evening, still bright. She fished around in her handbag for her sunglasses.

  “Oh, good-bye, Elle!” Jennifer the editorial assistant said, smiling as Elle went past. “Have a great trip, please do let me know if there’s anything you need while you’re there?”

  “Sure,” said Elle. “Thanks, Jen.” She raised her hand in a farewell greeting.

  “Hey, let me get that for you,” Stuart Forgan, senior vice president, said as Elle arrived at the elevator, struggling with her bag, her case, her coat, her pass. “So, you’re off to merry old England, eh?”

  “Sure am,” said Elle, in her best, but still terrible, American accent.

  Stuart smiled and pushed his round glasses further up his nose. “Are you going to the Bookprint offices?” he said, gesturing for her to go ahead of him into the elevator. “I was going to wait till you came back but this is serendipity, in fact.”

  “Oh?” said Elle, trying to look alert and interested but fishing through her handbag for her passport and ticket at the same time. She remembered how much she used to loathe lift encounters. Now she quite liked them. “What can I do?”

  “Yes, well, you might try and discuss Gray Logan while you’re there. Even though they know he’s a New York Times bestseller, they do nothing with him. He says he doesn’t want to be published by us in the UK anymore, and that could affect our chances of doing another deal. Sidney says it needs addressing.” He folded his arms and looked at her over his glasses. “I wondered if perhaps a solution might be to have you on board.”

  Elle held her breath. Gray Logan was a giant of the New York literary scene, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, professor at Columbia, beloved by every reviewer, bookseller, and book-buyer in Manhattan. “What about Owen?”

  Stuart pressed the ground-floor button and the doors closed. “Owen’s retiring next month, it’s gonna be quiet, his wife’s ill and he doesn’t want a commotion. So, Elle, I wanted to talk to you about becoming Gray’s editor. You could be the UK liaison point too, even though you’re in the US. You could deal with Bookprint UK more effectively, make sure they don’t screw it up again. We can’t lose Gray Logan. What do you think?”

  “I’ve never edited anyone like him before,” Elle said. “He’s… well, he’s literary, isn’t he?” They were on the twenty-fourth floor. That initial, first whoosh of the elevator made Elle’s heart jolt, it always did. She swallowed. “It’s just—my friend Libby looks after him in the UK.”

  “OK, so it’s strange for you,” Stuart said. “I’m sorry, this is probably inappropriate when you’re about to catch a plane. Think about it. We’ll discuss it when you’re back.”

  “It’s fine,” said Elle. “I’ll do it.”

  “You sure you don’t mind? Your friend—it wouldn’t be awkward?”

  The lift doors opened. Libby’s face, the daisies in her hair, receded into the background, as the glass lobby appeared before them, yellow cabs on Broadway flashing past them in the distance. “I’m partly going back to see her,” Elle said, after only a faint pause. She gritted her teeth. “You know, she won’t mind.”

  “HE THAT IS in a towne in May loseth his spring.” Elle remembered this long-forgotten George Herbert quote from her A levels as she negotiated the narrow lanes in her Polo hire car. She had had lunch off Dover Street with Heather Dougall, writer of cozy crime mysteries about an old lady and her cat (they couldn’t give them away in the UK, but they sold like hotcakes in the States) and listened to her litany of complaints about Bookprint UK. After lunch, she walked through Mayfair up Old Bond Street towards Selfridges, looking at the expensive bags, the jewelry, the rich ladies and gentlemen in their smart cars—this was the London American people thought existed, the London of Mary Poppins and Upstairs Downstairs. She rather liked it, it was so far removed from her own experience. For a few more moments, she could enjoy being a tourist, rather than engaging with it all.

  As she got into the car and switched the radio onto Capital, and as the sun shone through the heavy white clouds, she allowed herself to fall in love with London again, just a bit. She headed out down the Fulham Road, glancing at the floppyhaired posh boys ambling along the wide pavements, the pretty blond girls with their huge handbags hanging painfully off their tiny wrists. A Maroon 5 song finished playing, and then “Toxic” came on… Elle smiled, this wasn’t too bad. It was going to be OK.

  Her plan was to go back to Mum’s later this evening, after the rehearsal dinner at the hotel. The rehearsal dinner was a stupid American tradition, she didn’t understand why they all had to gather for a dinner the night before the wedding when they’d be doing the very same thing some eighteen hours later. This was England, the bride and groom were English, it wasn’t a wedding in Ohio, where everyone had come from thousands of miles to be there.

  She shook these thoughts out of her head, but she couldn’t help feeling apprehensive as she sped out of London. She’d come back to bury something, to exact her own revenge by having a good life. To lay to rest the ghost of her tender years.

  As she came off the main road and into the proper countryside, foaming with cow parsley and early honeysuckle, wood pigeons cooing loudly in the trees, hedgerows high with fresh new greenery, Elle felt nostalgic in a way only an English spring can make you. She couldn’t help thinking about all the books that made her think like that, I Capture the Castle, The Forsyte Saga, even The Wind in the Willows. She had taken the train to Marlow once with her mother, and walked along the wide Thames peering into the rushes and riverbanks. There weren’t any toads or otters in Manhattan. She hardly had time to read anything that wasn’t a manuscript, anyway.

  Sanditon Hall was badly signposted, a track off a small road, and Elle missed it and had to go back, so it was close to eight when she arrived. As she drove down the long graveled lane, slightly dizzy with fatigue, she scanned the horizon for the hotel. She could see the horse chestnuts in bloom, the black iron guards around the trees in the park, rusty with age. Her heart was thumping in her chest.

  “Come on,” she said out loud, but in a quiet voice. “You’re here now. Why are you nervous? It’s all in the past. It’s not a big deal.”

  Elle got out of the car, pulled her hair out of her cardigan and shook it so it fell around her face. She reached into her bag to put some lip gloss on, and then she stopped. Why did it matter, why did any of it matter? She’d got this far without turning back and running away, she could go a bit further, and without lip gloss too. Elle walked up the steps of the Georgian house, the stone warm in the sunshine, and into the circular black-and-white vestibule, feeling a bit as though it was her first day at work again. “I’m here for the wedding dinner?” she told the helpful man on reception.

  “Of course,” he said, signaling right with his hand. “The Friends and Family Dinner is taking place in the Orangery, madam. If you’d like to follow me…”

  He took her bag and walked her to the end of a corridor, with a sign at the end.

  YATES / SASSOON WEDDING

  FAMILY AND FRIENDS DINNER

  “Are you family or friend?” the polite receptionist asked, making small talk. The murmur of conversation came from inside.

  “I’m—” said Elle. She had to think about it. “Friend?”

  “Well, they’re all in there,” he said. “If you need anything else?”

  “Thanks.” Elle watched him walk away, and then pushed the door open. Her skin felt as if it were burning, there was a rushing sound in her ears, this was unreal, yet she was doing it, there was a dull damp mark on the gray paint of the door where her perspiring hand had pushed it open.

  “Oh, my God, you’re here!” A girl detached herself from the crowd nearest the door and rushed over to Elle, in a cloud of voluminous chiffon. “Elle, I can’t believe you made it.”

  “Hi, Libby,” Elle said, hugging her friend.

  “You’re
really here, I’m so glad you came.” Libby looked intently into her eyes, and grabbed her wrists. “Thank you. Thanks. It means a lot. Darling, look. Elle’s back.”

  A man on the other side of the room turned round. “Elle,” he said.

  “Hi, Rory,” Elle replied.

  He came forward, then stopped, a couple of feet between them. “Elle, sweetheart. Thank you for coming.”

  Libby was watching her, a little too intently, and Elle wished she’d cut her some slack. She hoped with all her might she wasn’t blushing. She had to act cool. Not just for her, for them.

  “It’s lovely to be here,” she said.

  Libby held Rory’s hands in hers, over her billowing blue chiffon dress. Elle stared at it in surprise. She felt bad, but it was the truth: Libby had put on weight, and the best way to hide it wasn’t beneath layers of flowing material. Elle chided herself for being horrible, and then stopped. Come on, she heard a voice in her head saying, one she didn’t really hear that much these days. You’re at Rory and Libby’s wedding. You’re allowed to be horrible about them, just a bit.

  YES, SHE WAS here. And it was normal, she was behaving normally, they were talking. The bowels of hell had not opened up and sucked Rory and Libby into the earth’s molten core. Elle had dreaded this day for months, ever since she’d heard about the engagement. She’d been amazed they’d invited her: but then she reasoned, why not? She was one of Libby’s oldest publishing friends, and really, who actually knew about her and Rory? It might as well never have happened.