Very occasionally, I’d come home and catch Milo in my kitchen with Nick and Vince. I would leave the house and not return until I was sure he was gone. I had to give Vince an ultimatum. It was either Milo or me. I knew Vince would choose me. We went back to sharing a bed because we both had physical needs, but the bond of trust between us had broken. Neither of us had cheated and yet our marriage was dead. We didn’t have the courage to end it. We lived our lives separately.
I got on with things, work was busy, and Cooper Rivera had expanded further. Carla was taking time off with her first child after her third round of IVF treatment. She deserved it, but it meant that I didn’t have much time to think about anything else. I had, however, worked on a short story collection of my own. I had dealt with enough literary agents in my time to know who to approach about my own work, and April Ngeow agreed to look at it after first querying why I wouldn’t want to publish it myself. I was honest: ‘I need the validation.’ Two days after I’d submitted, she called me.
She represented a children’s writer and a spy novelist I edited so I was pleased to note the same excitement in her voice when she talked about my work.
‘Erin,’ she said, ‘this isn’t like anything else I’ve ever read.’
‘Uh-oh,’ I said, dismayed because I knew how publishers wanted to label their books, and I didn’t fit into any box, or I fit in too many of them. I had turned down submissions for this very reason. What section of the bookshop is this going to fit in? I had foreseen all these problems.
‘First of all, I would like to represent you.’ My heart lifted. April had her own agency and a significant hit rate with her authors. She knew the taste of every editor in New York and beyond.
‘But,’ she said, ‘I think we’re going to have to go the long way round with this.’
She explained that rather than putting it out to the big five publishers and their various imprints, she wanted to submit a story to theNew Yorker.
‘TheNew Yorker? I can’t imagine a magazine that prestigious would be interested in my weird little stories.’
‘Listen up, buttercup, if I ever hear you belittle your own work like that again, I’m going to come up there and stomp your ass, you hear me? These stories are works of art. We have to make sure the whole world knows it.’
A wave of relief washed over me. If you were an unknown writer who got published in theNew Yorker, it was almost a guarantee that editors would be knocking on your door.
I waited three months before April told me the first story from my collection had been accepted. I wasn’t sure who to call. Vince read books that I gave him to read, but I don’t think he would choose to pick up a book if I didn’t nudge him. Nick was more of a reader, but non-fiction mostly. I knew Carla would be thrilled for me, but she was enjoying time out with her long-awaited baby. I called Saima, my oldest, newly divorced friend. Saima was the only person who knew everything that Ruby and I had been through. She knew about Nick and his friendship with Milo, and Principal Bermingham and the abduction.
‘Awesome,’ she said when I told her the news. ‘Where are we going to celebrate?’ It was just the right thing to say, especially as we had yet to celebrate her divorce from Binto. She booked a table at Mooo. As we were on our second cocktail, she asked, ‘Look, none of my business, but why are you not celebrating this with Vince?’ I explained that we’d grown apart, that we didn’t communicate much and how that had all started with him befriending Milo.
‘Erin, don’t get me wrong, but why do you think Milo knew about you being stalked by Bermingham? He was the one who called the cops and got you rescued.’
I paused before I answered. I could not countenance the thought of Saima betraying me too.
‘He used to visit Milo in prison –’
‘Yes, but only for the first year or two. Milo stopped him visiting because he was saying such awful things about Ruby and you. Milo thought he was unhinged.’
‘How do you know this, Saima?’
‘Vince told my brother-in-law.’
Saima’s brother-in-law was good friends with Vince. I hadfirst met Vince at Saima’s. It seems they had been talking about Milo and me behind my back.
‘Yeah, what else did he tell him?’
‘I’m not saying this to hurt you, Erin, but Vince knows Milo well now. Says he’s a reformed character, that if he raped Ruby, he has learned his lesson. Says that Bermingham kept turning up at Milo’s diner when he got out of prison, trash-talking you.’
There it was. ‘Ifhe raped Ruby? Saima, you are supposed to be my best friend. How could you say that?’ I had pulled my chair back from the table.
‘Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m sorry, I’m just telling you what Vince told Tony, and Tony told my sister. Let’s change the subject. I must tell you about Binto –’
I let it go. I couldn’t lose Saima. I sat up close again. ‘What’s the asshole done now?’
She looked perturbed. ‘Actually, we’ve been talking about getting back together.’
The night of celebration fizzled into awkwardness.
Later, when I told Vince my news, he was pleased and congratulated me. He didn’t really understand what a big deal this was, but he was distracted, glued to a hockey game on TV.
My story was published in theNew Yorkerand I was thrilled. And then it went viral. It was shared on social media platforms all over the world. It was read by millions of people. There was a bidding war for my short-story collection and my agent sold it to the editor I liked best for a ‘significant six-figure deal unprecedented for a short-story collection’.
Vince was thrilled for me. Carla was too but worried that I would now leave the company we had built together. I assured her that I would not, but I intended to work an academic year going forward, from October to May. She was relieved.
