I know I shouldn't probably be amused by it, but it's so very hard not to be. I make a semi-decent display of pretending not to be anyway. "Your unlimited ability to show sympathy for your fellow human beings constantly amazes me."
Bess waves a dismissive hand. "It's not as if we wereactuallygoing to die. When was the last time a passenger jet crashed on British soil?"
She's not wrong, but I am obliged to call her out on her flippancy."And you took it as an opportunity to exploit their suffering for your own exposure?"
"I didn't expect exposure. I expected the five people who follow me to think it as amusing as I did. It's not my fault it went viral and made the author a kajillion dollars in book sales."
"Right. Which, based on today's stunt, has also turned lucrative foryou. How much did the author of whatever book you got in shot pay you?"
She places her glass to her lips and says the words quickly before taking a drink. The "five thousand pounds" is loud and base-y in the near empty glass.
Five thousand pounds?
I voice my incredulity by saying,"Five thousand pounds?"
"It's the going fee for an influencer on Booktok with a large following, okay?" She says with mild petulance. "I don't set the market rates." She aims the binoculars at Mrs Kavanagh again, but she must have gone, because she raises them to scan the row of houses behind.
I allow this new potentially lucrative reality for Bess to sink in for a few seconds. And as much as I think I should be disapproving, I'm right back at admiration. I tell her as much.
She lowers the binoculars and looks at me. "Because I'm an entrepreneurial badass?"
"Pretty much. God, what I'd give for being paid what I'm worth, let alone five thousand pounds a minute." I am, like all people employed in a female-dominated industry, woefully underpaid for what I do. "Or do you actually read the books you pimp? So it's more like five hundred pounds an hour. Which is less hitman and more lawyer, but – " I wag my head from side to side, calculating the amount. "– still an unbelievable rate of pay."
Bess sniffs. It sounds defensive. Probably because it is. "I...no comment."
I can't let that lie. "You push a product you haven't actually sampled?"
"I read the first couple of pages and it didn't grab me. Look, ultimately it doesn't matter."
"No. Not if you have absolutely zero integrity."
Ignoring me, Bess says, "At the end of the day, I'm an artist and what I'm doing with those videos is a form of art. The authors – or their publicists know this." She raises a finger. "For which, I finally get remunerated. Do you know how much money I've been paid in my entire artistic endeavours? Zero. Once, a painting I did of a stained-glass roof depicting male genitalia, raised twenty pounds in a charity auction for the coastguard. I'd called it 'Crass Ceiling'."
I snort. "As in 'glass ceiling'?"
"I was eighteen, okay? And I thought I was being exceptionally clever."
I can't help but laugh. "It's notunclever."
"It had one bidder."
"Your mum?" I say through a grin.
She offers a wry smile back. "At the end of the night, after she handed over the cash, she gave the painting back to me so I could 'sell it and make some money', she said. I raised twenty pounds pity cash and my mother couldn't even hold up her end of the maternal bargain and pretend to like something her child made. The bloody thing's gathering dust in the attic."
"Well, at least you're consistent in your artistic vision. Aggressive and provocative."
After a pause, Bess says, "Lutek's scared of my art. He says I have a very angry vagina."
I can't help myself. "You know there are creams for that?"
She frowns and flicks her eyes to my face, which I'm sure is radiating the self-satisfied smugness of all jokesters who think they've delivered a tiny bit of genius with their wit. Because that is exactly what I've done.
Bess breaks after two seconds of trying to stare me down. She always breaks with me. My job in the relationship is to hold her actions and words to account, because she needs the ballast, and to make her laugh.
Making her laugh produces more serotonin than an hour's cardio with a chocolate bar chaser.
I say, "You sold that painting last year. That one with the flower thatalmostdidn't look like a giant vulva. That's not nothing."
