Rule Two 2
Jack
I had good intentions this morning. I could sort of tell that Jessica wanted me to come out with her, and part of me felt like I should. But it’s the first Saturday of freedom since the book circus started and I’ve been thinking about this bit of time like a kid thinks about the school holidays. A whole blissful uninterrupted day to write. Not Seven Rules stuff, which gets edited and double edited and changed by a sensitivity reader, and then edited again until it bears no resemblance to anything I put on the page. They don’t need me for that. Proper writing. The kind I grew up dreaming of, the kind I studied at university.
Every writer will tell you, when interviewed, that he or she sits down at their desk every morning, like you would for any real job. They make it sound like the sitting down is what makes the books happen. So when I stopped working at the BBC and started working from home, I decided to do the same thing. I can assure you that if you sit at your desk every morning and then spend five hours fucking about on Reddit, you will not produce anything.
Thankfully, there’s an email to help me procrastinate today. I see the name of the sender and my stomach does a little backflip. Edward Nestor. Edward is an agent. Not a manager like Clay, who represents people who have been on Big Brother . I don’t think Edward would know how to negotiate a deal for me to get free veneers in exchange for two stories and a grid post, even if he wanted to. Edward is the kind of agent who represents the people I used to watch on telly as a kid. The funny, clever, tweedy Stephen Fry actor-writer types I idolised. The people I dreamed I’d be friends with when I got into Cambridge and joined Footlights. Of course, then I fucked up my A-Levels so I didn’t get into Cambridge, which made joining Footlights impossible (or at least moderately fraudulent).
I emailed Edward’s office some months ago after a couple of glasses of red wine and another fight with Jessica. I’d sent some self-deprecating demi-essay about how I’d always admired the people he represented, that I had written something totally out of my usual ‘brand’ and that I wondered if he might consider reading it. I sent him something I’d agonised over, claiming I’d dashed it off out of interest, to see whether I might be half decent at writing. And to my immense shock, he replied.
Then, last week, I snuck out of the house while Jessica was meditating, claiming I was going to the pub with university friends. But instead, I went to Soho, wearing a jacket I’d had in the back of the wardrobe since my early twenties, one that Jessica hates. It felt important that I didn’t look fashionable. I’d arrived at Edward’s office with my heart in my mouth, turned down a cup of coffee for fear that I might have some kind of embolism if I added caffeine into the mix, then changed my mind and decided that I wanted to take the meeting while drinking black coffee because it might underpin the sort of image that I was trying to cultivate. Edward was going to think me gauche, I had decided. He was going to look down on everything I’d done so far. That was why I needed the black coffee and the tweed jacket.
Only it turned out that Edward, unlike me, isn’t a pretentious wanker. He ushered me into his office, lined with all the books written by all the people he works with, and smiled at me across his desk. ‘I have to ask,’ he said. ‘Why on earth do you want to stop doing all this? You’ve done so well?’
I tried to explain, without sounding like an intellectual snob, that I am a massive intellectual snob. That being paid to go to parties filled with people who add ‘d’you know what I mean though?’ after every sentence makes me tired. That my brilliant and intelligent wife finds it challenging and fulfilling, but I don’t. That I want to write something that I’m proud of. That I know I’m not too good to write self-help books but that it feels completely wrong for me. Edward nodded along, either understanding or doing a very good job of pretending to.
‘I liked your manuscript,’ he told me with a smile. It took me a moment to realise that he means the fiction I submitted to him, not the book I’ve written with Jessica.
‘Really?’
He laughed at my surprise. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It needs work – it owes rather more to Evelyn Waugh than I think perhaps it should – but there is something there.’
We talked for a while about what I wanted to do, where I saw myself, what I wanted to write, and then he sent me on my way, telling me that he would be in touch in due course. I walked through Soho beaming at everyone I saw. Edward was the first person – the only person – I had shown the manuscript to. I have been writing it since I was in my early twenties, in stolen periods at work, in gaps between Seven Rules edits. It was a silly story about the least brilliant son in a brilliant family who accidentally ends up at a prestigious American university and gains entrée to the political classes. And while I knew there was a lot wrong with it, having it as my little secret, as something to work on while Clay told us how to write our captions and the publishers stripped out every vestige of my personality from my chapters of Seven Rules, had been like a little warm glow that no one else could steal.
I hover the mouse over Edward’s message, torn between opening it or enjoying this blissful moment where I know that there is an answer but I’m unaware of what it is. In this moment, the news is good because I won’t allow it to be bad. Schrodinger’s email. Once I open it, I will almost certainly be disappointed. Of course, the stupid, optimistic voice in the back of my head is telling me that it isn’t going to be bad news, that it’s going to be the best news. There is no subject line. I find this endearing because my father also cannot use a computer, and I’ve already started casting Edward as a sort of paternal figure, something which I should unquestionably be working through in therapy.
Jack, it starts.
I wanted to echo what I said last week about your book. It’s not perfect, but there really is something there. I believe with some editing it could be quite brilliant.
Unfortunately, when we met before I had misunderstood the nature of your arrangement with Clay McAvoy Associates, which is why I asked you to send over a copy of the contract. Sadly it transpires that you are an exclusive client of CMA and therefore I would be unable to represent you in any capacity.
If you were looking to leave CMA, I would be delighted to discuss offering you representation, but I understand, given the arrangement you and your wife have, that that may be complex.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – I really did enjoy your book.
All the best,
Edward.
I turn the computer screen off because I can’t bear to look at the email again. When I left his office that day, strolling through Soho feeling smug, pretending I could feel the first stirrings of spring, I had felt so sure that something was going to come of this. I hadn’t even thought about Clay. I hadn’t really thought about Jessica. I suppose I thought they’d publish my book under just my name, and it would be a totally separate thing that I’d have been really proud of. Jesus, I really can be catastrophically thick sometimes.
It has always been made very, very clear to us that we are a package deal, that one of us can’t work without the other. People are always saying that the brand is the two of us, that you can’t be a relationship influencer on your own. And while I try to stay as na?ve as possible about these things, I can’t help thinking that the powers that be are probably right. But perhaps it’s worth asking? Worth a try?
I slink into the kitchen, where Jessica is back from the market and about to start a workout on her Peloton. She’s basically done an entire weekend of activities in the time it’s taken me to read a book, have a shower and read my emails. She’s wearing shiny Lycra clothes and her hair scraped back from her face. I find it’s best not to make any comment about it, even one of approval, because we had an almighty row about her spending two grand on an exercise bike with an iPad stuck to it. She’s on it a lot. She read something about endorphins being good for fertility, but I do occasionally consider that she might be asking quite a lot of her body.
‘You’re back,’ I say, in a tone which accidentally makes it sound like I’m not pleased to see her.
‘Sorry, I should have used the sign-in sheet at the door.’
I am pleased to see her, obviously, I’m just second-guessing everything I say in an attempt to find the right thing. Ironically, meaning that I say the wrong thing all the time, which means she’s more annoyed with me, which means I’m even more inclined to say the wrong thing, and round and round it goes, like a really miserable roundabout.
I half laugh. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’
She looks suspicious as she puts down her giant glass water bottle. ‘Sure.’
I gesture to the kitchen stool, wanting her to sit down. ‘I need to ask you something.’
‘... Okay?’
‘And I don’t know how to put it in a way which won’t seem offensive.’
‘Are you hoping to revisit the topic of anal?’ She smirks. It’s sometimes annoying that I find Jessica so funny. On days like today, where I don’t want to be jolly, she still makes me laugh. It would be very tempting not to say what I’m about to say, to enjoy the lightness in her, let it be contagious. But I’ve got to tell her eventually; I’ve already let my writing become a weird sort of half secret between us and I don’t want it festering for any longer. Plus, she’s in a good mood, which might help.
‘Ha ha,’ I say, taking a run up at it. ‘No. I’ve actually been working on something.’
‘Something?’
‘A book. Well. Potentially a book. It’s only a first draft, it needs a lot of work still.’
She looks horrified, which was what I was really hoping wouldn’t happen. I’m aware that I’m butchering this.
‘What book?’
‘It’s a novel.’
‘You’ve written a novel? When?’
Mostly when I was supposed to be working on my chapters of Seven Rules and pretending to have writer’s block. ‘It’s not very long. I don’t know, between other stuff. That’s not really the point. The point is, I’ve been writing it. And I was thinking ...’ I decide that maybe it’s best to soft peddle this, that I’ll approach it in stages. ‘That I want to look into getting an agent, so I can publish it.’
‘We have an agent.’
‘We don’t have an agent, we have a manager. I want a proper agent.’
I’ve said the wrong thing. I look at the air, as if I can grab on to the words and shove them back in my body, undo the damage I’ve just done. She’s back on her feet and she’s angry. ‘Clay is “proper”.’
‘You know what I mean. A literary agent, someone who handles books—’
‘As opposed to what we wrote, which was what, a catalogue? A coaster?’
‘You know what I’m staying. Stop being deliberatively obtuse.’
‘That’s a big word for your dumb-dumb wife with her low-brow book.’
‘Why are you being like this? You know Clay isn’t an agent. He’s a manager. And you know Seven Rules wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to write.’
‘Yes, we’re all aware that you’d have preferred to write the kind of clever book which sells about seven copies.’
I don’t know what to say to that. I feel like she’s hit me. Jessica is kind. She tips like a Rockefeller, holds doors open for everyone, lets strangers pour their heart out to her. So when she says something cruel it burns. And she knows me inside out, every cell. So on the rare occasions she wants to hurt me, she’s really bloody good at it.
‘Maybe I would,’ I say, so pained that I’m actually enjoying the prospect of saying something nasty. ‘Is it so wrong that I’d like to write a book aimed at people who can actually read? Rather than peddling incredibly obvious advice to anyone stupid enough to buy it because you take nice pictures and put them on Instagram? Just because you’re happy to make money pretending that we’re endlessly happy doesn’t mean I am. Not everyone wants to sell snake oil.’
She looks horrified. ‘Fucking hell, Jack,’ she says, staring at me.
‘Sorry,’ I say quietly, looking at the floor.
We both stand there. I know I should say something conciliatory, but I don’t know what. I think maybe I want her to lose her temper, to throw the kind of Mediterranean tantrum she was so fond of in her early twenties. I know what to do with that. But I don’t know what to do with this miserable grey silence, and that’s why we keep getting stuck like this, not liking each other. Not able to be properly nice to each other. How long has it been like this, I wonder.
‘I should shower,’ she says, interrupting my spiral.
‘Right.’
‘We’ve got Tom and Grace’s dinner.’
‘Can’t let Tom and Grace down,’ I say, sarcastic. I’m not even really attempting to be polite anymore. She rolls her eyes.
‘I was thinking we’d leave at seven,’ she responds, telling me without saying it that even if I had been attempting to clear the air with a blazing row, it’s not happening. Sometimes I wonder if she does this on purpose, refuses to rise to it when I’m sort of asking for a fight.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she says eventually. ‘I get that you want to do other things. And eventually I’m sure you can. But for now, can’t we just enjoy what we’ve got? It’s a pretty amazing job. No cramming on the Tube at rush hour, no last-minute bailing because you’ve got a breaking story – it’s a sweet deal.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, looking at the floor.
The day I found out I’d got the job at the BBC was – after the day I kissed Jessica for the first time, and our wedding day – the best day of my life. I’d grown up idolising the place, probably because the only things my parents really valued were the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the NHS, and the BBC. Old, clever, brick sort of institutions which they trusted with their whole hearts. They weren’t the only reason I enjoyed the job, obviously. I loved it, all of it. Finding stories, trying to cover them better and deeper than our competitors. Shrinking a huge, long-running news story down into a seven-minute piece which would leave the listener feeling equipped to debate it at dinner. It was brilliant. I worked there for the better part of a decade and I didn’t ever think I’d leave. Seven Rules changed that. One afternoon I was at my desk and Helen, the terrifying and brilliant editor, asked me for a ‘quick chat’. I cheerfully assumed it was about some long working programme she wanted me to produce. But instead she sat across from me and told me that I was distracted, tired and not myself, that my social media book project was clearly zapping my focus and that technically I wasn’t allowed to moonlight anywhere else. She said it all nicely, obviously. She was a nice person. Then she put her very cold hand on mine and said, ‘Why don’t you take a sabbatical, and when the book stuff is finished, we can look at you coming back?’ So I did. And then I went home and told Jessica, who didn’t pause before she started jumping up and down about how great it was.
I didn’t tell my parents. Still haven’t. I don’t mention work. My name isn’t read out in the credits to programmes anymore, so they must know. I have absolutely no desire to discuss it with them, so I’m not going to.
‘Jack?’ Jessica says, in a tone which suggests she’s been trying to get my attention for a while. I shake my head, dismissing the memory.
‘Yep, sorry.’
‘I was asking whether you minded going down to the wine shop and getting something to take to Tom and Grace’s?’
‘Of course,’ I say, going to find my coat.
I close the front door behind me and breathe in the cold, pleasingly dirty London air. It’s starting to get dark so the sky is orange-pink, the old-fashioned streetlights giving their best Mary Poppins impression. I stride down the road towards the wine shop, trying not to ask how it’s possible that Jessica can have misunderstood my feelings about my career so completely.
Jessica
Ever since we took the Seven Rules money and bought the kind of house I used to salivate over on Rightmove, we’ve lived a ten-minute walk from Tom and Grace. If I’m letting myself be a cow, I’ll also internally acknowledge that we now have a much fancier address than they do. Obviously thinking this, even privately, is not the hallmark of a good friend, but I’m still a bit bitter from the times Grace declined to come over to our house because she didn’t think she could park their brand-new Volvo on our scuzzy street, her word.
As we stride down the pavement, Jack is half a pace ahead of me and I’m unfairly annoyed that his longer leg length means he’s winning the race he probably doesn’t know we’re in. ‘Slow down,’ I whine.
‘We’re late!’ he says, as if I need to be told.
‘It’s dinner with our friends, not a train.’
Jack slows. ‘In fairness, I don’t know why I’m in a rush. If we get there late, we might not have to hang out with their dreadful kids.’
I laugh. Jack isn’t often bitchy about people, and I love it when he is. And I especially love it when he’s snide about other people’s parenting. Maybe it’s that whole ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ thing, but there’s something uniting about complaining about people together.
We turn a corner and see their house, big and white with a pale blue front door and somehow perpetually flowering window boxes.
Tom and Grace were the first of our friends to get married, in our mid-twenties. Jack and I were secretly a bit perturbed because we were engaged, expecting to be the first with our sweet little Central London church-and-then-pub affair. Then Tom and Grace swept in with their six-month engagement culminating in a huge country house wedding in the Cotswolds. Obviously we were both being wildly unreasonable, but we enjoyed driving down in our tiny little Peugeot, complaining about the expense of the whole thing, maligning huge weddings, and then obviously had a brilliant time pounding the free bar and hurling each other around the dance floor. When they got back from their honeymoon, they took their fat parentally gifted deposits and spent them on this huge great house. The rest of us still all lived in damp rented flats, so it became the default hang-out for us all. We cooked roasts in their kitchen, threw parties in their garden, treated it like a common room and a co-working space and a nightclub, all with Tom and Grace cheerfully loving each other at the centre of it.
Obviously, these days we’re all older and more grown-up, and basically everyone we know is tied to a mile radius of their own houses because of nap schedules, so Tom and Grace’s is not the social hub it used to be. When Grace first got pregnant, she had grim morning sickness most hours of the day, and understandably couldn’t face hosting long boozy nights in their garden or roasts around their kitchen table, so they closed up shop, and to my massive embarrassment it left a sizeable hole in my social life. For years I didn’t need to plan anything because Grace always did. And on balance it was probably good for me, having to think about what I actually wanted to do, who I really wanted to hang out with rather than just spending time with her friends and then complaining about the ones I didn’t like. I wonder if tonight’s dinner might signal a return to Grace wanting to be hostess again. And I wonder if I want that anymore.
Eventually we hear a small voice shouting, ‘I want to do it, I want to do it, I want to do it.’ After a long pause the door opens and a small child – Raffy – adorable in white linen pyjamas, smiles. ‘I opened the door!’ he exclaims.
‘You did!’ I reply brightly.
Tom stands behind the little boy, sleeves rolled up, smiling and slightly balder than last time I saw him. ‘Hello, darling,’ he says, kissing me on each cheek.
Raffy takes my hand. ‘Come and see my Lego,’ he instructs me. I swallow. I can do this. This isn’t difficult. It’s fine. It’s fun. I’m a happy, child-free woman enjoying her friend’s child.
‘LEGO,’ Raffy repeats.
‘I don’t know if Jessica wants to have a tour of all your Lego,’ Tom laughs, doing absolutely nothing to intervene. He smiles as I’m dragged into the playroom. I know without a shadow of a doubt that later he’ll either thank me for entertaining the kids, or even worse, act like he was doing me a favour by giving me some ‘parenting practice’.
‘If she’s looking at your Lego, she has to look at my animal hospital,’ Ada says, hurtling around the corner in the same White Company pyjamas and shoving her older brother out of the way.
‘Can I see the animals?’ Jack asks from behind us.
Ada studies him, considering his offer. ‘Yes, okay,’ she says gravely. ‘But you mustn’t break anything.’
‘I promise I will do my best not to,’ Jack replies with equal solemnity.
‘Grace’ll be down in a mo,’ Tom says, retreating to the kitchen. ‘I’ll open a bottle.’
I follow Raffy to the playroom. They’re so posh they have a playroom so the rest of the house looks like kids don’t live here. When Grace comes downstairs, she looks perfect in a pair of oversized jeans and a paper-thin cashmere jumper. She’s tanned and slim with delicate gold jewellery at her neck and her wrist, and lots of tiny hoops in her earlobes like a reminder that she’s a Cool Mum. She looks at me, crouching over the Lego. ‘So glad you made it in time for bedtime, would have been awful to miss the children.’
I nod, and don’t say anything, but I pick up a little Lego man and put him in the car. ‘He doesn’t go there,’ Raffy yells, smacking it out of my hand.
I wait for Grace to respond to her son’s impressive right hook. Instead she smiles. ‘You’re so good with kids. How are you, anyway?’ she exclaims. I get up to hug her and she puts her hands on my arms, looking at me searchingly. ‘It’s been ages. Have you even been here since Ada’s birthday?’