AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was doing a lot of sharing, mostly with her freaky-arse gaze, but I digress.
The camera box blinked, and I narrowed my eyes at the document on the screen. “What is that? A court document?”
“Yep. So it turns out that Yvonne’s sister was just prosecuted by the Department of Work and Pensions for a false disability claim,” Meg explained. “She’s basically bankrupt and is now living with her son and Rose, so Yvonne is trying to get Rose a new deal so they can help her get out of their house. It’s only a small two-bedroom place and they’ve been trying to have a baby, something they’ve stopped since she’s moved in with them.”
I blinked at the screen. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
Meg appeared back on my screen and tapped her temple. “I am a genius.”
“Meg!”
She sighed, sitting back.Finally. “I did some… Internet… digging into Yvonne.”
So it was questionable at best, illegal at worst.
Nothing I hadn’t done as a writer, to be honest.
“That’s how I ended up finding out about her sister. Honestly, the Rose connection was a total fluke because they were pictured going to court with her sister. But it’s a big one.” She leant to the side, just disappearing out of the frame for a moment, before she reappeared with a glass of red wine. “Yvonne is trying desperately to get her a contract under false pretences. She doesn’t sell enough of her current series, and her new agent appears to have fudged her previous sales numbers.”
Wow.
“Yvonne is being a complete headache for us in marketing over this. She’s blaming us for Rose’s last book flopping and it’s not our fault, it was a fucking shit book.”
I wasn’t going to respond to that.
It wasn’t professional.
No matter what I thought.
“Well, what are you going to do now? Are you going to tell Francesca about it?” I asked, referring to her boss.
“I don’t know how to, if I’m honest. I’m not sure if it’s a conflict of interest for her or if that’s even a thing in the company.”
“I can’t see how it wouldn’t be. She’s pretty intimately connected to her, given the circumstances.” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth a few times to make little tick-tock type noises. “Either way, I think you need to share what you know with her. She’s the only one who can actually do anything about it.”
Meg sighed. “You’re right. So how do I bring that up to her?”
“Just ask her if you can have a meeting and tell her what you found. Then you’ve done everything you can, and you know you’ve tried.”
“I wish she’d bloody retire. Yvonne, that is. She’d make my life a lot easier.”
“Is she even old enough to retire?”
“I don’t know. How old do you have to be these days? Doesn’t the government keep raising the age to keep stealing our money? Oh, I’m sorry. I meant to saytaxus.”
It was hard to argue when she was right.
“Whatever,” she continued, putting her wine glass down and switching it for a giant bar of chocolate. “I’ll text Francesca when we’re done talking and ask her for a meeting in the morning.”
“Good idea.”
“How’s the book going?”
“Well, I’ve just finished painting my toenails and I’m talking to you instead of writing, so…” I shrugged.
“It’s going well, then.”
“It actually is. I think I only have about fifteen, maybe twenty per cent of the book left. It depends how the final scenes pan out.” I hugged my knee and rested my chin on top. “Maybe two weeks or so.”
