whether by acquiring them from American publishers or by gently prising from the authors the best book they could write, she felt at ease. This was where she belonged. Editing, working with authors, was all she wanted to do. If only it didn’t come with all the additional admin that she found so trying. Once she had dreamed of being a writer herself but that had retreated into the distance as she’d seen what a precarious existence it could be. As she sat at her fashionably curved desk, which gave her a view across the rooftops of central London, she longed for the days when she’d had a secretary who would tidy her desk whenever she went out to lunch, putting everything in order. No longer allowed such a guardian angel, this afternoon she was faced with God knew how many unread emails and assorted muddled papers – a half-read manuscript, minutes from various meetings, costing forms and the still unopened post.
As consolation, she opened her desk drawer and selected a pink-and-brown-wrapped square ganache chocolate, Earl Grey Tea flavour. Every girl needs a particular passion, she thought, as she popped it into her mouth – and hers was good chocolate. It had begun seventeen years earlier when she was thinking about getting pregnant and needed consolation after she’d cadged her last cigarette (she’d given up buying them months before). But, over time, she’d exchanged the bars of Fruit and Nut for specialist brands, so good they demanded she ate less of them (or so she’d convinced herself ). The pocket box of chocolates from Demarquette had been a present from an agent who’d found the most direct way to her heart. As her mouth filled with the divine bitter-sweetness of the chocolate suffused with the delicate citrus undertones of bergamot, she turned to the task in hand.
She tried to live by the maxim ‘only touch each piece of paper once’. It had been shared with her by someone much more successful than herself. Since then she had struggled to deal with or delegate each one as she made herself take it from her in-tray but it just didn’t work for her. So often she’d be interrupted in the middle of dealing with something and would succumb to the temptation to slip that piece of paper into the pending tray – her desk’s graveyard. Once there, nothing ever came out. Of course, there was less paperwork now than there had once been. Welcome to the world of the email. She sighed, noticing that forty more had accumulated during her brief absence. She clicked on the first just as her door opened.
‘Bea. What’s going on?’ Stuart shut the door behind him and, without waiting to be asked, cleared the unsteady pile of manuscripts off the extra chair and sat down. The rich slightly acrid scent of his sweat reached her at the same time as she noticed the damp stains in the armpits of his shirt, which was grubby at the cuff and neck. He was a good-looking guy of about thirty-five, one of the most astute and commercially minded editors she’d come across, but his personal hygiene left something to be desired. His rather brutal haircut and the razor-thin white scar that ran from his right ear to the side of his nose suggested an aggressive streak that she had never, in the three years they’d worked together, come across. If anyone asked him how he’d got the scar, he just smiled and said it was ‘one of those things’. As a result he retained a slightly mysterious aura that clearly made him extremely attractive to some, judging from the comments that Bea had overheard in the Ladies.
‘Not a clue. Why would I know anyway?’ Bea’s attention was suddenly caught by an email from Let’s Have Lunch and another from Mark that had just pinged their way into her mailbox. Damn. She’d have to open them later.
‘Come on. You’re always the first to know everything. Stephen’s always in and out of here.’ Stuart’s anxiety to find out whatever was going on was bordering on desperate. He pulled his fingers one after another so they cracked.
‘Do you mind not doing that? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s happened?’ She hated the way everyone assumed that her long-standing friendship with the managing director meant she knew everything there was to know. Though she hated it even more when she didn’t.
‘Piers arrived just after you left, looking like thunder. He came straight up to Stephen’s office and they’ve been in there ever since. They pulled the blinds so they couldn’t be seen.’ Stuart’s voice rose with excitement as he described the unexpected arrival of the chief executive of Rockfast. ‘Then all the directors were called in, one after the other, and Jan’s been looking for you. They all came out looking absolutely stony and won’t talk to anyone.’ He leaned forward as if expecting Bea to share whatever secret there was.
‘I’ve no idea what’s happening.’ Bea hated confessing her ignorance. ‘Nobody’s said anything to me.’ Only because she’d been a bit late getting back from lunch, dammit.
‘But Stephen tells you everything,’ Stuart sounded outraged that Bea hadn’t got the answer.
‘Not this time.’ But why not? Bea asked herself. She knew that Stephen was talking to the management about retiring early some time next year because he’d decided he wanted to concentrate on his silversmithing. He’d always kept the one thing he was passionate about in second place to his career while his kids were growing up but now they were in their twenties, as he’d told Bea, ‘I’m desperate to give it a proper go before it’s too late.’ Bea had wanted to protest, but she could see he had a point. She had only to glance in the mirror to be reminded that she had her own ticket on time’s winged chariot. So that was next year. If there was something to do with the business, she was sure she’d have got wind of it somehow – smoke signals always drifted off the fire in the end.
‘Here’s Jan now.’ Stuart’s excitement was almost infectious as Stephen’s PA put her head round the door.
‘Bea. There you are. Where have you been? Stephen and Piers wanted to see you urgently.’ Jan’s face was almost hidden by a sheet of blonde hair that she swept back with a perfectly manicured hand to reveal a perfectly beautiful face, and a smile that revealed a set of perfectly even white teeth.
‘At lunch, of course,’ Bea was immediately on the defensive. ‘What was it about anyway?’
‘Can’t say.’ The smile became more like a knowing smirk. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. I’ve been asked to get everyone into the boardroom in ten minutes.’
‘What? It’s Friday afternoon.’ A meeting on Friday afternoon was unheard of. ‘I’ll go and see them now.’ Underneath the desk, Bea’s feet felt about for her shoes. The pain in her blistered toe as she stood up was excruciating but her desire to find out what was going on overrode it.
‘I think it’s too late, Bea.’ Another of those slight self-satisfied smiles accompanied Jan’s withdrawal.
Irritated both by Jan’s cool assumption of control and superior knowledge, and by Stuart’s evident disappointment in her ignorance of what was going on, Bea picked up the phone and called Stephen. Engaged. Outside her office, the rest of the staff were moving towards the board-room in the corner at the far end of the floor. Annoyed that her Let’s Have Lunch date had been today of all days – and how pointless it had been – she followed the last of her colleagues into the room.
The long modern table had been pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows so there would be enough room for everyone. Some perched on its edge, others occupied the chairs that had been randomly spaced around the periphery of the room while everyone else sat on the stained carpet. Bea took a place in the corner by the door, leaning against the wall so she could take the weight off her painful foot. Even turned up full, the air-conditioning couldn’t prevent the room becoming a sauna with that number of people crushed into it. Ties were loosened, jackets were off and pieces of paper flapped as people fanned themselves. Voices rose as speculation mounted. Could Rockfast have sold off the Coldharbour imprint? Surely someone would have heard. Perhaps Rockfast was going under. No, there’d have been word about that too. Perhaps they’d acquired another imprint. Bea stood quietly, as mystified as everyone else, batting away questions
