And I clench my jaw, purse my lips and narrow my eyes.
Until I remember that I don’t want to disappoint my readers, and plaster a big smile back onto my face. The whole point of my job is to make people happy. My readers do not want to witness me gettingreallyirritated by this man. They want to know that I’m a happy, nice, kind, unlucky-in-love-but-will-eventually-find-my-soulmate woman, just like my heroines. Which Iam, I hope, except for the eventually finding my soulmate bit. No soulmate exists for me.
I smile some more, going for chinandwarmth projection.
It’s working. Sonja’s returning my smile like she can’t help herself. We’re going to forget about thehollowcomment and move on.
I open my mouth to elaborate on believing in love, and then Jake leans towards me, and speaks quietly, so quietly that it almost certainly won’t be picked up by either Sonja or the microphones. ‘I saw that,’ he says. ‘The eye narrowing.’
I freeze for a second long moment, and then apply an enormous effort not to react to howincrediblyrude and annoying he is, breathe deeply, and do not narrow my eyes again.
Instead, I carry on smiling and pretend that he said absolutely nothing.
‘Hollow?’ asks Sonja, raising an eyebrow in Jake’s direction. Dammit.
‘Ms Cassidy doesn’t seem particularly convincing about believing in love,’ Jake explains.
I turn to stare at him. What the actual? Is he trying to ruin my entire career? Ihaveto appear to believe in love. And Ido. For some people. Just not for myself. Well, not for a lot of people actually. Look at the British divorce statistics. Which Jake, of all people, should know about.
I decide to laugh, not too much and not too little, before saying, ‘Ha, that’s funny. I’m not really sure how someone can seem convincing about believing in love. OfcourseI believe in love. It’s all around us.’ It actually is, insofar as the studio is decorated for Valentine’s Day with pinkness and fluffiness and hearts galore. I adjust the cerise velvet cushion behind me.
‘The thing is.’ Jake leans forward again, the way he did before, except this time he isn’t lowering his voice, so everything he says is going to be broadcast live to the programme’s three million viewers, many of them my readers. ‘It’s dangerous to peddle false narratives around love.’
‘Dangerous?’ Sonja queries while I focus very hard on maintaining a quizzical smile and not re-narrowing my eyes at Jake. Or just digging my kitten heel into his foot. (For a fairly low heel, it’s very spiky, and would definitely hurt him, and right now that would give me great pleasure, even though I am at all other times extremely pacifist and non-violent.)
His response drags me back from a lovely fantasy about crushing his toes.
‘Writers of romance, like Ms Cassidy, peddle dangerous nonsense,’ he says, still with that affable air, as though he’s chatting about the weather or his views on the latest Italian restaurant, rather than being incredibly insulting and alsopossibly costing me alotof sales. ‘They give people – often women – unreasonable expectations.’
‘You mean they expect their other halves to be like the heroes and heroines of romance books and are disappointed?’ Sonja checks.
‘Exactly,’ Jake confirms.
As Sonja, to my horror, begins to nod, I leap in with, ‘I think that it might be a bit of a stretch to suggest that someone reads about a lovely hero or heroine, looks at their spouse and thinkshmm, they don’t bear much of a resemblance to that hero, oh, I know, I’ll divorce him.’
‘Sadly,’ says Jake, ‘it happens all too often.’
‘What?’ I ask. I’mreallyannoyed now. ‘It can’t. It justcan’t.’ I mean, really? How likely is that? Not at all. Surely.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Jake tells me.
‘Yes, I would,’ I agree. I suddenly think of something. ‘Especially since my protagonists are all people with flaws, not models of perfection.’ I smile, probably a little smugly, if I’m honest, because I feel that’s anexcellentargument.
Jake shakes his head. ‘That’s like that clichéd interview question – what’s your biggest fault – isn’t it? No-one ever says, “Well, I’m always late, I’m careless and I can’t write reports to save my life.” They say things like: “I’m too much of a perfectionist because I’msoookeen to do the job well.” And your protagonists don’t havebadflaws, do they? They don’t say nasty things about people; they aren’t huge, infestation-inducing slobs; they don’t torture insects.’
As a divorce lawyer, he must hear about some very bad behaviour, I reflect, before I focus on the matter in hand, i.e. beating him in this argument.
‘Obviously,’ I say with dignity, ‘my characters don’t have those particular flaws. They actually have worse flaws.’
As I pause to gather my thoughts, Jake says sarcastically, ‘Oh, they’re murderers or thieves?’
‘Far worse,’ I say, ignoring his childish interjection, ‘I mean they have flaws that have often been developed by their life experiences. For example, if a person has had several disastrous romances, they might find it difficult to commit to a relationship.’
‘Bad argument,’ Jake replies triumphantly. ‘That person might be incrediblynice; they’ve just encountered some unpleasant partners.’ He is so annoying.
Because he is of course right, in that ofcoursethe protagonists in romances have to be people that most readers will like, because if the readersweren’trooting for them they probably wouldn’t enjoy the books.
I need to regroup. I look at the studio audience – a sea of avid faces – and then at the cameras trained on us, which are sending live footage of this conversation directly into people’s houses all round the country. (Hello Maud!) It does not matter what Jake Stone thinks of me. Itdoesmatter what the viewers think of me.
