My heart sank. There was no reason for her to recognise my barely legible notes when I could hardly make sense of them myself and why would she hear my voice when she wasn’t listening for a different tune?
‘There’s no way you wrote that book,’ CJ said, poking his nose at the manuscript until Joe snatched it away. ‘You’re a man.’
‘Which disqualifies me how?’
‘Because it was obviously written by a woman,’ my ex spluttered. ‘It’s for women. It’s about women.’
‘It almost sounds as though you’re saying you don’t believe a man could write a convincing female experience,’ Joe replied, clutching the stack of papers under his arm. ‘Ironic, considering.’
In the five years we were together, Colin often got annoyed or frustrated but he didn’t get angry, not really. CJ, it seemed, did. It wasn’t a good look on him. His lips curled back until he was all tooth and gum, his features soured and a blotchy red rash coloured his throat.
‘It’s mindless shit is what it is,’ he announced, squaring up to Joe in a not at all flattering stand-off.
‘It’s not shit!’ Charlotte all but screamed as she forced her way in between them. ‘How many times do I have to tell people? It’s a feminist masterpiece. It’s—’
‘A book about the frustrations women have to put up with every day and how they deserve to have their needs met,’ Joe said, parroting back exactly what I’d told him as CJ backed away.
‘It’s porn,’ Aunt Carole said, clutching at her padded gilet in horror. ‘Filth. Plain and simple. No one is reading something like that for the story, they’re reading it to, well, I don’t think I need to say any more.’
‘So what if they are?’ Charlotte answered. ‘Show me a society in the history of humankind that hasn’t had porn? Just because you all had to hide your grotty magazines under the mattress, don’t come for my books.Butterfliesis healthier than Big Butts Monthly.’
‘Is that a real magazine?’ Bryan asked, too enthusiastically.
Before that moment, my worst recurring nightmare always involved having to resit my A Level history exam completely naked but this was so much worse. Standing in my parents’ garden while my family argued about my book and the societal impact of porn would haunt me for the rest of my life.
‘You could make the argument,’ my mother inserted, commandeering the conversation with her calm, quiet voice. ‘That reading erotica, or romance if that’s what we’re calling it, is a feminist act.’
‘You could?’ My head sprang up like a jack-in-a-box. ‘You specifically?’
‘If you subscribe to the theory that feminism is about choice,’ she replied. ‘Women, everyone, should have the choice to read, write and be whatever they want. In that sense, these books could, I suppose, be considered a radical act.’
‘And not frivolous, predictable, badly written, misogynistic nonsense?’
She blinked a couple of times, her huge eyes owlish behind her glasses, but wasn’t fazed by my reminder of her own earlier review.
‘As you know, I haven’t read it. But from what I can gather, the overall message of this book in particular doesn’t seem to be harmful in any way.’
‘It’s not harmful, it’s empowering,’ Charlotte said, now fully wrapped around Joe’s arm. ‘Writing misery in this century should be illegal, things are shit enough. Do we really need anotherDeckled Edges?’
‘Deckled Edgesis a satire,’ CJ blustered. ‘It’s a dark comedy.’
Charlotte wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘So dark I couldn’t see the laughs.’
‘What exactly is going on here?’ My dad elbowed his way to the front of the group, looking from guest to guest for an answer. ‘I go inside to use the loo and five minutes later all hell’s broken loose?’
‘Dad, it’s the most amazing thing ever. Joe is Este Cox!’ Charlotte said, welded to his side so tightly it would’ve taken a crowbar to get her off him.
‘Este, is it?’ Dad looked Joe up and down and nodded. ‘Perfectly fine with me, son, happy to call you whatever you like but I don’t know if you’ll have such an easy go of it with Gregory.’
‘Hugh, darling, no,’ Mum pressed two fingers toher forehead, right between her eyebrows, and closed her eyes as she took a breath in. ‘He isn’t changing his name to Este. It appears that Joseph here has been writing under anom de plume. He’s the author of your daughter’s latest literary obsession,Butterflies.’
‘Is that right?’
I couldn’t believe it. Dad looked thrilled. England winning the World Cup, bacon being declared a health food, Gillian Anderson asking him out for tea thrilled. ‘Then congratulations are in order, Joseph. You must tell us everything.’
‘No, really, it’s your birthday,’ Joe said as he desperately tried to wrangle his arm away from my limpet-like sister. ‘Like I said, I used a pseudonym for a reason. No one knows I’m the author and no one can know I’m the author so please, I really need you to keep it under your hats.’
‘They will,’ Charlotte promised, skewering everyone with a threatening look. ‘On one condition. You do a signing at my bookshop.’
