Not Another Happy Ending. David Solomons

Prejudice. Are you crying?’

      ‘No.’ There was a snuffle from the darkness.

      ‘You are. You're crying like a little girl.’ He took a step into the room. ‘What are you reading?’

      ‘Nothing.’ Tom attempted to hide the manuscript propped open on his lap, but it was too late. ‘It's a non-fiction proposal,’ he said, ‘about the endangered Chinese Crested Tern.’ He wiped his cheek. ‘Very moving.’

      ‘Bollocks. It's Jane's novel, isn't it?’

      Tom shot him a look. ‘You can never tell her. Never. Promise me, Roddy.’

      ‘OK, OK. But I don't know what you're so worried about—if you hadn't noticed, Glasgow city centre on a non-football Saturday is chock-a with reconstructed males in floods when they discover Boots has run out of their Hydra Energetic Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser.’ He yawned. ‘How many times have you read that book anyway?’

      ‘A few.’

      ‘Uh-huh. I'll leave you two alone then. There's a box of man-sized tissues by the sofa.’

      ‘Roddy!’

      ‘For the crying, sicko.’

      ‘Ah, right. Thanks.’

      Roddy shook his head and, smiling at his friend's mood, set off upstairs.

      ‘She's more real than any writer I've ever known,’ Tom whispered. ‘She stands there, a red flame in a downpour. I think she's the one.’

      Roddy froze, then quickly trotted back to the doorway. ‘Oh my god. So it's finally happened. The lothario—what's French for lothario?—doesn't matter—anyway, the great lover from Saint-Tropez meets the girl of his dreams and—twist ending—turns out she's a redhead from the Gallowgate. It's love across the borders. Jeux Sans Frontières. Or is that It's a Knockout?’

      Tom scowled. ‘She's the one Tristesse has been waiting for.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Roddy. ‘No bridesmaid dress for me then.’

      ‘I don't care if her novel sells a single copy, it is a great piece of work.’ He reflected on that with a tilt of his head. ‘Naturally, I wouldn't object if it does sell a few copies.’

      ‘Naturally.’

      ‘Shitloads would be good, actually.’

      Tom drained his glass and thumped it down on the table. ‘But she can write, Roddy. The darkness, the terrible beauty of her prose. She does not mistake sentiment for emotion, she plays with language, sometimes it almost destroys her. She leaves a piece of herself on every page. She is unafraid to use her life, her self—whatever the cost. It's very brave.’ He took a deep breath. ‘In her soul she is a poet.’

      ‘That's nice.’ Roddy studied his friend in the gloom. ‘Have you told her?’

      ‘Don't be ridiculous.’

      ‘Why not? People like to be told they're doing a good job.’

      ‘Such petty considerations do not concern an artist such as Jane.’

      ‘An artist …?’ Roddy's face lit up. ‘Oh wait a minute, you do fancy her, don't you?’

      Tom pursed his lips and blew out dismissively.

      Roddy pointed excitedly. ‘Did you just pah? You did. You just pah'd.’

      ‘I did not. And that is such a cliché. I thought you were going to bed.’

      Roddy narrowed his eyes. ‘Have you two … done it yet?’

      Tom threw up his hands. ‘Typical Anglo-Saxon prurience. Next you'll be asking me if I first requested her father's permission.’

      ‘You did! You two did it.’ Roddy's voice dropped to an appalled whisper. ‘But what about the golden rule—don't shag your own novelists?’

      ‘I never said it was a golden rule.’ Tom shrugged. ‘It's just a rule.’

      ‘It's the bloody Prime Directive, mate!’

      ‘This is not the time to be quoting Star Wars.’

      ‘Trek, you philistine.’

      ‘Well then, say it why don't you?’ Tom invited the expected disapproval with a brusque wave. ‘No good will come of this. You cannot work together and sleep together. Come on, where is your petty bourgeois censure?’

      ‘Au contraire—as we Anglo-Saxons like to say—I think it's a great idea. You two make a lovely couple.’

      Tom shook a finger at Roddy. ‘Hey, hey, hey—who's talking about a couple?’

      ‘Well, I just thought—’

      ‘Do I fancy her? Yes. Did sleeping with her make the edit more enjoyable? Naturally. But for fuck's sake, Roddy, why does every hook-up have to be Happy Ever After?’

      Sunday morning tiptoed into Jane's bedroom on a gentle breeze and the muffled blare of a radio from the flat upstairs. Through a gap in the curtains a bar of daylight striped the wooden floors and the bed where the two of them had spent most of the night. The rest of it they'd spent in the bath. And on the kitchen counter. And then on her desk in the bay window.

      She lay there watching him sleep. They hadn't really discussed what this was, what they were: was this just part of his editing process, along with square sausage rolls and coffee from Café Gandolfi? Was he her boyfriend? Somehow she couldn't bring herself to ask, didn't want to seem needy. She was trying very hard to be cool and aloof—for a change. And anyway she saw him every day and it didn't seem to matter. The edit was intense and intimate, but in all this time he hadn't said those four magic little words she so wanted to hear: I love your novel.

      She was wearing one of his shirts, though couldn't remember putting it on. She did remember being naked and the ensuing tussle that had visited every room in the flat and lasted half the night. In their passionate frenzy they'd broken a vase filled with fresh flowers and now the memory of last night's lovemaking was suffused with the scent of peonies. Beside her, he stirred. He rubbed his eyes, kissed her good morning and then reached past her for the manuscript on the bedside table. Slipping on his spectacles he began to read.

      They had started the final chapter of the edit last week and now all that remained to review was the ending. She studied him, absorbed in her novel, aware of nothing but her words. He must have read the ending countless times—perhaps more than she had, certainly more than any other section of the novel. Finish strongly, he'd said to her often. It was a rule of writing, like ‘cut adverbs’, ‘show, don't tell’, and ‘never sleep with your editor’.

      ‘So, the ending,’ he said at last.

      She propped herself up on her elbows. ‘You think it's too sad.’

      ‘I love sad. I'm French.’ He propped his spectacles on his forehead. ‘The way you describe her mum's death …’

      Perhaps it was more memoir than fiction, she thought. Certainly it was only the most delicate skein that separated the events in the novel and her real life. But she hadn't acknowledged it—not to him—until now.

      ‘I was seven when she died.’

      ‘You must miss her very much.’

      ‘There were aunties. A lot of aunties.’

      ‘And your dad?’

      ‘My dad left us. Me.’

      ‘Do you hate him?’

      ‘It'd be easier if I did, right? What kind of man walks out on his family like that?’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I do hate him, but the fact is I don't know him. Is it wrong, but I wish I knew where he was?’

      She flung off the covers and