‘A better book. Jess’s contacts to help you sell it. Is that somehow not enough?’
‘My books sell fine,’ he says. ‘And when a successful literary author brings out a long-awaited next novel, there’s always a flurry of reviews.’ Jess isn’t sure how she manages not to roll her eyes.Successful literary author.She would bet that foodie holiday that she knows what Alex is thinking – that he doesn’t need Bookstagram; that’s for the lesser writers, the author of commercial fiction. Of romance novels, say. For someone like him,TheGuardianis enough.
‘Reviews don’t sell books like they used to,’ Nathan says. ‘And anyway, we’re going for better than sellingfinethis time around. We’re going for stratospheric.’
A smile escapes from Alex, too. Jess is vaguely aware that Nathan is playing both of them to perfection to get to theyeshe is aiming for. But the thing is, she’d love to write a novel. Much as she’d never admit it to Alex, working alongside someone like himwouldbe a good place to start. If only he weren’t so rude and pretentious. The patches on his elbows should have clued her in.
Trust the universe to finally send her a meet-cute, but get the details so very wrong.
Chapter Four
Alex
‘You can’t be serious about this,’ Alex says, the moment Jess is out of the door, her fading footsteps communicating that she is also out of earshot.
The only plausible explanation is that this is a threat. A bluff. Either Alex gets his act together, finds the humour that can supposedly be extracted from this serious plotline, or Nathan imposes an ‘editorial consultant’, whatever that is. And not just any ‘editorial consultant’, but a distractingly pretty one with mesmerising eyes and a worrying penchant for fluffier books – he won’t dignify those books with the wordliterature.
‘As serious as a plane crash,’ Nathan says, the shadow of a smile playing at his lips.
‘Very funny.’
‘It’s not meant to be funny,’ Nathan says. ‘And to be clear, neither is your book. I’m not expecting you to transform it into a laugh-a-minute romp. Just to raise the odd smile, that’s all. So the reader isn’t relentlessly attacked by grimness.’
‘Relentlessly attacked? You really hated it, didn’t you?’
‘Sorry.’ Nathan offers up a tight-lipped smile. ‘I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. The book isn’t grim. At all. It’s got the makings of something great, maybe better than all your other books so far. But it is … well, fairly cheerless.’
Alex refuses to do the undignified thing of going round in circles – a plane crash! Itischeerless! – like a pampered toddler throwing a tantrum. If anyone is pampered here, it’s – what’s her name again – Jess. Who else gets a leg-up in the publishing industry handed to them on a plate like that? She probably doesn’t know what it’s like to have to battle with anxiety. To be ready at any moment to be interrupted because one of the many members of your unwieldily large family needs something from you. Alex has had to navigate all of that. He has had to work hard. He had to read craft books, study for an MFA, write two novels that went nowhere before he finally got a book deal. Jess takes a few photos, posts them online, and hey presto, she is now – in, what, her mid-twenties – deemed to be the saviour of his below-par prose?
‘She had apencilin her hair, Nathan. She was putting her nose in books andsmellingthem.’ What had seemed charming and whimsical at the bookshop feels like something else now – evidence that she is not serious enough for this kind of project. ‘She’ll probably want everyone on the plane to survive. Land on a tropical island flowing with milk and honey and live there happily ever after.’
‘I doubt that.’
Nathan turns away from Alex, then stands and moves towards his bookshelf. He runs his fingers along the spines of a row of books – twenty-nine of them. Pulls out a worryingly orange book, and another with a bright green cover.
‘I want you to go away and read these.’
‘Romance novels?’
‘Yes. Very good ones. They’re warm and witty.’
It’s not an accident that Nathan has used this phrase.Warm and wittywas one of his favourite compliments for Alex’s second novel from a notoriously hard-to-please reviewer atThe Times. He and Nathan had read the review together. Alex is not the type to dance around a room in glee, but if he had been, that would have been the moment.Warm and witty, he had repeated, in awe of this victory, this welcome into the literary firmament by one of its staunchest and most intimidating gatekeepers.He’s deployed an alliteration, Nathan had pointed out.That’s how you know he really means it.
‘Nathan,’ Alex says now – the pain, he hopes, evident in his voice. ‘Please.’
‘These romance novels are surprisingly humorous. They’ve also got emotional depth and they don’t ignore the realities of life. So yes, they’re stories with happy endings. But that’s not all they are.’
Nathan holds out the books in Alex’s direction, nodding at them, a clear instruction for him to take them.
‘Haven’t I suffered enough?’
‘If youhavesuffered, then some people might say that maybe that’s precisely why you need romance novels.’
‘Some people, like Jess?’
‘Maybe some people like me, too. It would do you good to read something fun. And I don’t just mean that it would do yourwritinggood. I meanyou.’
Alex chooses not to interrogate this odd assertion in this particular moment. He’ll return to it later, in his mind; he knows this already. But there are more pressing issues at hand right now, in this conversation, than whether or not he should read romance novels to ‘heal his soul’ or ‘open himself up to the possibility of love’ or whatever the claim is that people make – that even sensible, reliable, serious Nathan seems to be making. He sighs heavily, deliberately, as he takes the books.
