Miss South

by Kay Williams

  “You are obviously very passionate about what you do, Miss South.”

  Wow, he remembered my name, and hadn't glazed over through my lecture.

  “Science fiction is the new fantasy. It can't be disproved, and so long as your story is solid, your plot is thick and your characters are thought provoking then the book becomes about those things. And if you can suspend your disbelief and enjoy the plot and the characters then you'll find the setting becomes more comfortable. Because the story as a whole wouldn't be believable if it was set here and now.”

  “When is your book on the market, Miss South?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Several of the authors looked at me in surprise.

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Nervous,” I found myself chuckling and the response made Heronsgate smile.

  “Good luck to you, Miss South.”

  “Thank you.”

  Heronsgate managed to refocus back on the room as a whole, repeated his initial question and though there were more answers this time he engaged no one as personally as he had me for the rest of the session. All the speakers were applauded as the talks wound down and though I tried to catch Alana's attention she didn't seem interested in talking again. It was an attitude I was used to when people found out my genre, so I let it slide and saw myself home instead of vying for her approval.

  # # #

  My phone was buzzing on the bed side table; I blinked the alarm clock into focus and frowned at the time. It could have been my parents, they would be a couple of hours ahead of UK time by now and wanted to boast about their current destination and not worked out the time difference.

  Groping for the device I unlocked the screen and yawned as I read the message

  'Are you awake?'

  I scowled at the text message. My parents I would have forgiven but it was six am; of course I wasn't awake, Lucy should have known better to text me such a stupid question. Burton must be on earlies if she was up at this time as well, she always got up to see him off to work. I hoped my eventual partner wouldn't expect me to do that, if he had to get up early and had the misfortune of waking me while doing it he would end up sleeping on the sofa.

  'No.'

  'Good. Check your sales.'

  What?

  Yes, technically today was the day the novel would go live and anyone who had pre-ordered it would have had their download at midnight and they would now be showing on the sales site she had made, but what could it possibly say that would have made her text me at this ungodly hour.

  I called up the site and was met with four sales of the digital version and one of the paperback.

  It was nice to know that the advertising that Lemon Grove had done before the book was launched had drummed up some interest, and I was surprised someone would want to buy the extortionately priced paper book when there was a much cheaper digital one available, but five sales was hardly going to pay my rent next month.

  'I am never talking to you again.'

  'I think it’s impressive!'

  '5,000 is impressive. 5 is a loaf of bread and a pint of milk.'

  'Small steps! I didn't start with a huge client database either.'

  I smiled at that; she did have a point. Dropping my phone onto my side table, I closed my eyes and attempted to go back to sleep. I had a library promotion later this afternoon so there was no reason why I couldn't get another couple of hours sleep. This was my last week off before I went back to work and I was going to enjoy it as much as possible.

  After my lie in, breakfast at lunchtime and an hour getting into planning the crime for my next title I made my way to the library for my first foray into meeting the public. I wasn't worried about it; I didn't expect anyone to be there.

  I wasn't disappointed in underestimating the event, Lemon Grove had reserved a function room in the library and put up posters of my book, we had a few people wander in and we talked to them about the book and gave away download coupons so they could get the first chapter free with the option to purchase the rest at a discounted price. It would have been a dull waste of the afternoon if I hadn't brought my computer and during the many quiet spells I had plenty of time to finish a chapter. We cleaned up when the library closed at seven, even though Jonathan didn't eat he still came with us when Rosemary and I grabbed burgers and beer, and I was grateful that even if the novel failed as epically as I suspected it would that I had least made two friends out of the experience.

  On the way home I checked my sales.

  I was still sitting on five.

  I spent the rest of the journey texting my parents and reassuring them that I was fine, the book was doing exactly how we expected it to and wishing I had had the ability to save up for a ticket to be on the same holiday they were on.

  # # #

  I was in the shower when the doorbell rang.

  Unlike some people I didn't abandon the hot water to race to the front door. I hadn't ordered anything that would need signing for, and being local election time it was common for people to go door to door ringing bells for their candidate. They could just post the flyer through the letter box I wasn't getting into a political debate at eight in the morning.

  I finished up, dressed and made my way to the kitchen to flip on the kettle and take my phone off charge. I frowned at the display, I had missed one hundred and seventy calls, most of them from withheld numbers, but several had come from Lucy and Rosemary.

  My voicemail box was full.

  Lucy at least had the sense to send a text when I hadn't answered.

  'Do not open your front door! Check your sales! Watch channel six! Call me!'

  The doorbell rang again.

  I read the text message again.

  The thing about knowing Lucy and her brothers all my life was that there was an inherit trust in all our actions with each other. She wouldn't be issuing me orders if there wasn't something she was trying to protect me from. My phone started buzzing with another withheld number, I sent it straight to my voicemail box even though I knew they wouldn't be able to leave a message and opened my sales report.

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten, but that didn't change the number.

  I was currently sitting on one hundred and sixty-three thousand downloads, and all fifty of the paper copies had been sold. The numbers made no sense to me; I had only been asleep for eight hours, what could have happened between the disinterested public event we had conducted yesterday and this morning?

  I closed the page, swiped another unsolicited call to voicemail, ignored the door bell and turned on the television to the news channel Lucy had prompted me to. My little rented house sat in the centre of the screen surrounded by cameras and reporters, my neighbours had come out on to the street at the commotion, most of them were being interviewed though several looked to be unimpressed and were seen in the background of a couple of live shots gesturing angrily in their dressing gowns and slippers.

  That was when the reporter on screen began talking about my book. She had obviously never read it from the way she talked about it, but the fact it had become an overnight sensation was revealed when a fuzzy image of Henry Heronsgate sat in a hotel lobby flashed up on screen; he was reading my book. The only paper back I had sold on the release date was sat squarely in his hands and he looked completely engrossed.

  I called Lucy.

  “In the name of the Door what took you so long?” She snapped.

  “I was in the shower!” I protested, and my indignant response made her giggle. “This is madness! I was on five sales last night!”

  “I know, but New York is behind us. That picture was taken there yesterday evening which is our middle of the night. He probably has no idea that he has caused all this yet.”

  “I'm going to kill him.”

  “Harriet!” Lucy bust out laughing. “You gave him a piece of your mind, lectured him into buying your book and now you're complaining because he is reading it?”

  I was getting
another call, Rosemary's named was flashing up.

  “I'm getting a call from my publisher.”

  “Call me later and be careful!” Lucy stressed.

  I hung up on her and rang Rosemary back.

  “I'm watching it on the news,” I said quickly before she could launch into the same list of precautions that Lucy had.

  “Thank goodness you didn't step out of your front door, from the look of things I honestly thought that if you did they were going to tear you into little pieces.”

  “Thanks! That's really helping me stay calm!” I complained, and then because she didn't know that I had seen my own figures I added. “What's happening?”

  “Once that image of Heronsgate hit social media everyone wanted to know what he was reading,” Rosemary explained. “Our site saw huge traffic, not so many sales at first because people were just curious, but given Heronsgate's massive following, like him or loathe him, people want what he has.”

  “And no one can afford his lifestyle, his car or even the shoes he wears, but people can afford a cheap digital book,” I summed up.

  “Our site crashed in the early hours, three retailers have reported complaints of slow connections and there have been hundreds of angry consumers on our message boards saying that they can't get hold of a copy or had to wait hours for their downloads to complete.”

  “How many copies exactly?” I asked, wondering if Lucy's figures could be wrong.

  “Currently almost one hundred and eighty thousand. Some of the purchases are still queuing and not showing as sales yet but they should clear in an hour or so.”

  I was glad my living room was small; it meant when I sat down I landed on the sofa and not the floor.

  “By the Voice,” I managed.

  “At least it will pay your rent next month,” Rosemary tried to tease but she sounded stressed.

  Rosemary wasn't kidding, she wasn't talking numbers with my royalty payment but Lucy's site had listed them and once the extra digital sales cleared I was set to earn close to five thousand pounds by lunchtime, and that wasn't even taking the extra money from the physical books into account. Then again a lot of purchases had been made because they had seen Heronsgate reading it, which did pose an interesting question.

  “Tell me honestly, with this all over the news could we be due another huge influx of sales as Europe wakes up?” I asked.

  “It is very likely. Heronsgate is known the world over and even if he doesn't interest people, others will want to know what all the fuss is about.”

  “What are we going to do?” I managed.

  I was actually frightened, I was trying to ignore the doorbell but the news crews on my driveway weren't going anywhere.

  “The office is currently under the same lock-down as your house. Jonathan is about to go outside and issue a statement, I'm working on the written one for the website,” Rosemary replied. “Basically we are going to ask for patience. We are a small company that never anticipated the kind of traffic that we have experienced. Even our bestselling book never reached these kinds of numbers. Now we are awake we have fixed the crash and people's downloads are now running as they should and we are going to be monitoring it closely to make sure that things go smoothly today. We are going to stress that you need to be given some privacy but you will need to make a statement later yourself. Which would be best conducted from the office if you can get here safely.”

  “I think they already have my number. I missed over a hundred calls this morning while I was charging my phone and my voicemail box if full, but I haven’t listened to any of them yet. Some of them must be enormously long to have filled up my five hours of box time.”

  Rosemary swore and called out the information to Jonathan, he was too far away for me to catch his reply, but she relayed the message.

  “We are going to get our lawyer onto that, we still have Simon's number so we will see if he wants to be involved as well, and we will get you a new phone. Don't answer it for now, not even to people you know, given the current frenzy old friends could easily see this as a way of cashing in on your friendship.”

  I knew that Lucy and her brothers would never do that to me, but I was watching my neighbours, people I knew only to smile and nod at, selling what they thought they knew about me so in a general sense it was fair advice.

  “Okay.”

  “What's your social media presence like? Post any embarrassing pictures or had any confrontations we should know about?”

  “No.”

  “Now is not the time to be coy, Harriet, being a flash in the pan is one of the most dangerous celebrity states there is. While you are making the gossip columnists money they will take advantage in any way they can.”

  “My parents run their own landscaping business,” I explained. “I grew up with their professional example on the internet. I won't lie and say that I haven't shared drunken photos and bitchy comments over text message but they were never saved permanently on the internet in a post or a chat or something like that.”

  “It would be a very unusual person who keeps those kinds of messages,” Rosemary agreed. “Should mean that tabloids will have a field day but if proof is hard to come by the articles shouldn't hold public interest for too long. What about your parents? Where are they?”

  “On a world cruise,” I answered feeling relieved that they were removed from all this insanity. “Going down towards Africa right now.”

  “That's good,” Rosemary sounded as relieved as I felt. “Call them and warn them what has happened, it would be very unusual to go to the trouble of finding them and it might only be local media that track down the ship on its calls but dockyards are very secure so they shouldn't have too many problems. Now, can you get here? Is that possible? Do you drive or should we come for you?”

  “I drive,” I replied, not often because the transport system in London was fairly reliable but with Lucy living in Luton I had kept the car so I could visit her as often as possible. “I can get to you.”

  “Are you sure? They are all over your driveway.”

  “It's fine,” I assured her, Rosemary had never been to my unusual house and in that moment I had never been more grateful for it.

  “Okay. Come around the back when you get here, I'll let you in the fire exit.”

  Hanging up, I hurried up to my bedroom and packed an overnight bag with a few clothes, my computer and essentials just in case the press decided to camp on my doorstep and I didn't feel like coming home.

  Living alone in London was so expensive that when looking to rent I had run so short of options I honestly thought I would end up back in my parents’ house, but then I had found a place that was perfect, if a little strange. The man who owned it ran a small Fusion Drive servicing station out of it, the downstairs of the house and the garden had been gutted so customers could come from the road up the driveway, through the garage and straight into the house, parking in what should have been the living room. They could then sit in the kitchen or the office upstairs while the work was completed on the car. When they left they drove through the dining room, out the patio doors, across the concreted garden and out the back gate to an adjoining road.

  Even with the servicing equipment removed and the house painted the man had had trouble renting the space, without a wall separating the garage from the living room most people hadn't wanted to relax and entertain in the same room as their car.

  I had decided that given the cost of the rent I would hang up a curtain and get used to it.

  Thankfully Fusion power was clean, safe and non-toxic, so there were no dangerous emissions flooding my home when the engine was idling.

  Brushing the curtain back I threw my bag into the passenger seat, moving the coffee table and shoving the small dining table to one side was easy enough. I opened the patio doors and after a brief glance to make sure I was alone I hurried back to get in my car. I rolled it slowly through the house and out into the garden. I got out and locked up before swiftly crossing
the garden and opening the back gates. It was time-consuming to drive my car out on to the road and then have to get out and lock the back gate and I half expected to be mobbed by the media at any moment but luck was with me and I was on my way without trouble.

  I called my parents as I drove, but got their voicemail, after explaining everything I told them not to worry and I would call them with my new number as soon as I could.

  I made a second call to Lucy, she was shocked over the possibly hacked phone and worried at the sheer number of journalists still banging on my front door but I was able to reassure her I was alright and had escaped out of my back gate and that there was a plan, all of which was met with relief and I promised to stay in touch with my new number.

  Rosemary must have seen me on the security camera because she was waiting for me at the fire door when I showed up. I was grateful to see her and for the hug she gave me once I was safely inside, it had been nice talking to Lucy but there was nothing like having another person there for it to feel more manageable.