Not Another Happy Ending. David Solomons

      He grunted.

      ‘But then I read The Final Stop by Nicola Ball and I loved it and she is really talented and really young and I saw your logo on the spine and, well, here I am.’

      She lapsed into a renewed bout of weeping.

      The office door swung open and the secretary in the brown suit entered, flourishing a paper tissue from a man-sized box. He'd come prepared. ‘I'm sorry about him. He was like this at uni. Everywhere he went—crying women.’

      She took the tissue and blew her nose loudly.

      ‘Roddy—’said Duval, trying to explain that, as unlikely as it appeared, this time he was not the cause of the great lamentation.

      Roddy wagged a finger. ‘Uh-uh. You lot are supposed to be charming. Charmant, n'est-ce pas?’

      Jane shook her head, struggling to form words through the wracking sobs.

      ‘I've told you,’ snapped Duval, ‘never try to talk French to me, you—’

      ‘Happy!’ Jane's outburst silenced both men. ‘No, really.’ She bounced out of the low seat. ‘I've … I've never been so happy in all my life.’

      She hugged a surprised Roddy and then circled round his desk to embrace Duval. Gosh, up close he was very tall. In her exuberance she knocked over her umbrella. It sprang open, an inauspicious red blot in the centre of the room.

      But it was probably nothing to worry about.

       CHAPTER 3

       ‘Nine Million Rainy Days’, The Jesus and Mary Chain, 1987, Bianco y Negro

      ‘THIS IS THE marketing department … And this is sales … And this is publicity.’

      ‘Hi, I'm Sophie,’ said a shiny young woman with a sleek bob and perfectly applied make-up.

      ‘Sophie Hamilton Findlay,’ said Tom, ‘three names, three departments. You blame Sophie if no one reviews your book, or if you can't find it in all good bookshops. Don't blame her for not marketing it … I don't give her any money for that.’

      They turned a hundred and eighty on the spot.

      ‘And this is George. He's production.’

      A pinched face looked up from a wizened baked potato overflowing with egg mayonnaise.

      ‘I'm on lunch.’

      ‘You blame George if the print falls off the page, or if the pages themselves fall out. So, you've met the rest of the team. Any questions?’

      ‘Well …’ Jane began.

      ‘Good.’ Duval clapped his hands. ‘Time to get to work.’

      When he suggested heading out of the office for their first editorial meeting Jane pictured them moving to a quiet corner of Café Gandolfi sipping espressos and arguing about leitmotifs. He had different ideas. One thinks at walking pace, he pronounced, and took off along Candleriggs at a clip, brandishing her manuscript and a red pen. Andante!

      She scurried after him, his loping stride forcing her to trot to keep up. The man thought fast. He did not approve of the modern fashion of editing at a distance, he explained, with notes issued coldly via email; adding with a grin that he preferred to see the whites of his writers’ eyes.

      ‘Readers are only impressed by two things,’ he said. ‘Either that a novel took just three weeks to write, or that the author laboured three decades.’ He sucked his teeth in disgust. ‘And then dropped dead, preferably before it was published. No one cares about the ordinary writer. The grafter. Like you.’

      Ouch. A grafter? Really? She'd been harbouring hopes that she was an undiscovered genius.

      ‘And publishers are no better.’ He turned onto Trongate, carving a swathe through commuters and desultory schoolchildren, warming to his theme. ‘Do you recall that book about penguins?’

      ‘Which one?’ The previous year the book charts seemed to be awash with talking penguins, magically realistic penguins, melancholy penguins, there had even been an erotic penguin.

      He slapped a hand against her manuscript. ‘My point exactly! One book about penguins sells half a million copies and suddenly you can't move for the waddling little bastards.’ He stopped, slumping against a doorway. His shoulders heaved like a longbow drawing and loosing. ‘The giants are gone,’ he said sadly.

      Giants? Penguins? Was every day going to be like this? He set off again at a lick.

      ‘So many modern editors neglect the great legacy they have inherited. They are uninterested in language or, god forbid, art; and would prefer a mediocre novel they can compare to a hundred others than a great one that fits no easy category. They care only about publicity and book clubs and film tie-ins.’ He spat out the list as if it curdled his stomach. ‘Most editors are little more than cheerleaders, standing on the sidelines waving their pom-poms.’ He turned to her. ‘I have no pom-poms,’ he growled. Then thumped a palm against his chest. ‘I care. I care about the work. I care about your novel.’

      He stopped again and she felt she ought to fill the silence that followed. ‘Thanks,’ she said brightly.

      Duval cocked his head and looked thoughtful. ‘Of course, it is not a good novel.’

      Sonofa—

      ‘But it could be.’ He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘So I say this to you now, without apology. From this moment, Jane, we will spend every waking hour together until I am satisfied. It will be hard. Lengthy. I will make you sweat.’

      Uh, could he hear himself?

      ‘I will stretch you. Sometimes I will make you beg me to stop.’

      Apparently not.

      ‘I do this not because I am a sadist—whatever you might have heard—I do this to give an ordinary writer a chance to be great.’

      That was terrific, she was impressed—moved, even—but could he not give the ‘ordinary writer’ stuff a rest?

      They came to a busy intersection. Pedestrians streamed past them. At the kerb the drivers of a bus and a black cab loudly swapped insults over a rear-ender; the aroma of frying bacon fat drifted from a van selling fast food. He ignored them all, shutting out the traffic and the smells and the noise, for her.

      ‘I promise that no one has ever looked at you the way I shall. Not even your lover.’

      Jane swallowed. ‘I don't have a lover,’ she heard herself admit. ‘Right now I mean. I've had lovers, obviously. Not loads. I'm not, y'know, “sex” mad. I don't know why I brought up sex. Or why I put air quotes round it. I'm totally relaxed about … y'know … sex. And yet I just whispered it. Very relaxed. I think it's because you're French. You're all so lalala let's have a bonk and a Gauloise. Oh god. I'm so sorry about … well, me, Mr Duval. Should I call you Mr Duval? It sounds so formal. Maybe I could call you Robert.’

      ‘You could,’ he said, ‘but my name is Thomas.’

      ‘Thomas! Yes. I knew that. I was thinking of the other one. From The Godfather? Played the accountant.’

      ‘Tom.’

      ‘No, it was definitely Rob—oh, I see. Tom. Short for Thomas. I had a friend called Thomas. Well, when I say “friend” I—’

      ‘Stop talking.’

      ‘Yes. Yes, I think that would be a good idea.’ She dropped her head, stuck out a foot and screwed a toe into the pavement.

      ‘OK,’ he declared. ‘Now our work begins.’

      And with those words the months spent at her desk writing