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‘Are you north of the river or south?’
‘North,’ I say.
‘Great. My office is close by. Do you mind waiting for a little while?’
‘No problem.’ I eye my half-empty teapot – yes, I can definitely have another one of those. ‘I have some writing to do,’ I say, and then the hot shame hits, because I really do. That bloody book.
‘Okay, then.A presto, Tori.’
I drink the rest of the tea, order another, drink half of that and eat an immense sugary doughnut before I feel brave enough to take my tablet out of my bag and open that document. There it is: my first ever book, due for delivery… oh shit, three months from now. Sixty thousand words down and thirty thousand to go.The Laird’s Lady’s Guide to Highland Living.
What a fucking stupid title.
It was my agent Richenda’s idea. Well, the actual book was my idea because, after a few years of writing various things including a sort-of-funny column forModern Country Lifestyles– confessions of an ex-townie, pheasant plucking for beginners, the best green wellies on the market for under £75 – I’d wanted to do something really substantial. Wanted to have a book on the shelf, an ISBN to my name, something I could wave at people who said oh yes, but you’re not aproperwriter, are you? I mean, you’re not reallypublished, ha ha, am I right? So the year before last, after a particularly vile shooting party had rolled off to their beds after having a good laugh at my expense all evening, I’d put together a book proposal – not a good one, necessarily, but fired by a certain amount of righteous fury – assembled a few of my recent columns into a file, and emailed it all off to a few agents.
The very next day, Richenda had got back and asked if we could talk on the phone. And from there it had all rather snowballed, because Richenda is a dynamic personality, to put it politely, and had very firm ideas about what The Market would and would not accept.
‘Posh country satire is out,’ she drawled in her husky, rather Sloaney voice. ‘It died with Jilly Cooper.’
‘Jilly Cooper isn’t dead,’ I said.
‘No, darling, thank God. But you’d actually have to be her to pull it off these days, more’s the pity. I mean, what you’ve sent me here is good, and a few years ago I dare say I could have sold it. But for today’s market? No, no, what you have to offer is yourstory. The decaying aristocratic family, the rebellious younger daughter defying her toxic mother—’
‘Mummy isn’t toxic,’ I put in. ‘She’s just a bit old-school.’
‘Defying her toxic mother,’ Richenda repeated, ‘and running off to marry her old college sweetheart who – oh joy of joys! – just happens to be the hard-working laird of a Highland estate. It’s aspirational and relatable all at once and that, darling, is exactly what the market wants. What does your father make of the match, incidentally?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Even better,’ Richenda said.
And soThe Laird’s Lady’s Guidewas born. I’d been doing well with it – had been on track to submit it, via Richenda, to Swithin and Sons: the impressively big publisher she’d somehow managed to land me. For the first months it had been a sustaining thing. Writing it meant reminding myself why, when Duncan’s allocated time at Oxford was up and the running of the estate fell to him – being left fatherless at an early age was one of the things he and I had in common – I followed him up to Scotland without a thought. It meant remembering, over and over again, why it was that I’d abandoned a hard-won journalism internship and left my lovely cosy flat and all my friends to move to a place where I had no ties at all apart from Duncan. How much I had loved him; how willing I had been to give up my world and become part of his.
And then at some point last winter, between the lashing rain and the boiler clapping out again and the badly behaved brides and the gangs of stockbrokers arriving, weekend after endless weekend, to shoot badly at fat, stupid pheasant, it started to feel less like creative nonfiction and more like lying through my teeth. I tried to struggle on, but eventually I stopped and stayed stopped. Hardly likely to finish it now, am I?
I didn’t tell Richenda when I fell behind, but I should really, really tell her about this. I open my email and start a new message.
Dear Richenda, I
‘Tori?’
I look up. There’s a man standing in front of my table. He’s thin and nervy-looking and he’s wearing a sleek navy suit and a crisp shirt without a tie, which might look a bit dickish on some men but, on him, looks perfectly right. ‘That’s me,’ I say.
‘Marco,’ he says, and holds out his hand. I stand and shake it, and then I gesture to saysit downand he gestures to sayjust going to the barand we both smile awkwardly at one another.
‘Do you want anything?’ he asks.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘If you’re sure. You’ve got the contract, right?’
I sit down, gratefully close my unfinished email to Richenda and bring the contract up on the screen. When Marco sits down with his espresso, I turn the tablet to face him.
‘Thanks,’ he says. Stirring sugar into his coffee, he starts reading. ‘This looks fine,’ he says after a while. ‘Three plus two, three months’ notice, two months’ deposit, one month’s rent for Chiara’s fee… okay. How’s your Italian?’
‘Rusty. Chiara made some notes for me, though.’
‘Good. Did you have any questions?’
