6. Melanie #2
‘Fine? Have you seen the changes Larissa wants me to make? Like, is she crazy? The whole heart of the book is being destroyed. She wants me to take Lucian out. I can’t even …
I mean … Lucian is one of the main characters!
He is key to the whole plot! If you take him out, there is no book!
’ Peter’s voice was now at a hysterical pitch.
‘Take a breath. I don’t think you need to take Lucian out, but maybe pare him back a little. I think she’s right about fleshing out Diana and Frankie’s relationship. I agree that Diana’s character needs more backstory.’
‘Backstory? What do you mean? She’s supposed to be bloody mysterious. If we know her whole life story, how can she be enigmatic? Will I just write her CV at the beginning of the book and be done with it? Will that make you all happy?’
Melanie closed her eyes. She was beginning to regret having signed Peter.
He had a lot of talent and potential, but she hadn’t realized how precious and, frankly, pretentious he was.
He truly believed that he was the next Kazuo Ishiguro.
However, she also knew from years of being an agent that often panic and hysteria were actually insecurity.
Occasionally it was just pure ego, and those authors were the hardest to deal with, but they rarely lasted long.
Their ego got in the way and they were usually dropped by their publishers for failing to deliver what they had promised.
Peter, she felt, was mainly insecure, with a dollop of ego thrown in.
‘Peter, you know how talented I think you are. You know how much Larissa and I value your writing, but every author needs to be edited. Even Booker Prize winners. You know that a good edit raises a book to a new level. Of course you don’t have to agree with all of Larissa’s suggestions, but I think you should consider taking some of them on board.
Look, why don’t you put the notes away, have a glass of wine and watch some TV?
Get a good night’s sleep and look at the suggestions with fresh eyes tomorrow.
I’ll have a thorough read-through tonight and send you my thoughts first thing tomorrow. We can talk it over then. Okay?’
‘I don’t drink any more. I told you that.’
He sounded like a petulant child and she had two of those already.
Did he honestly think she remembered everything he said to her?
Did he not know she had forty authors on her list, all wanting big, life-changing book deals?
Now they wanted mega-bucks Netflix deals too.
They wanted Booker Prizes and Hay Literary Festival invites and long lunches and Zoom meetings and phone calls and text messages and FaceTimes and … It was never-ending.
Some of her authors seemed to think she was going to be their best friend, or mother, or co-author, or therapist. In fact, she had to be all of those things every day.
She truly loved her job, but some days were draining and it made coming home and dealing with the twins, their sass and outrage intolerable.
‘Of course, you did tell me. I think it’s a wonderful decision on your part.
Well, then, have a cup of herbal tea and distract yourself with a movie.
I promise you that when you’ve slept on it you’ll be clearer on what you agree and disagree with.
We’ll work it out tomorrow. Don’t you worry, all of us want the best for this book, for it, and you, to shine. ’
Peter sighed. ‘Well, okay, I do feel calmer now. Do you promise you’ll send me your feedback first thing in the morning?’
‘I promise.’ Melanie said goodbye and hung up just as the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of dinner. Now she had to read the Australian manuscript and Peter’s – she’d get no sleep tonight.
They sat down to eat. Melanie wanted badly to read while she ate, but she thought about what Katie had said about the twins needing her and forced herself to turn her phone face-down.
‘So, how’s school?’ she asked.
Janis and Joni looked at each other. ‘What?’
‘How’s school?’ Melanie repeated.
‘We heard you but, like, what kind of question is that?’ Janis asked.
‘A perfectly normal one, I think.’
‘It’s a pointless question,’ Joni said. ‘School is the same every single day. Boring and then even more boring.’
‘Well, something must have happened that wasn’t boring. When I was at school –’
‘When you were in school they didn’t have electricity or iPhones, and kids were just, like, freaks who read books and played chess.’
‘We did have electricity, I’m not that old, thank you, but we didn’t have mobile phones, and reading books does not make you a freak. You could both do with reading more.’
The twins glanced at each other and cracked up. ‘We have Netflix now, and YouTube, and Insta, and TikTok. We don’t need books.’ Janis shovelled a large forkful of chicken into her mouth.
‘Books make you clever, interesting and curious. They open your mind to the lives and worlds of others.’
It broke Melanie’s heart that her kids didn’t read.
If they were readers, she might have been able to connect more with them.
Despite all of her efforts to get them to read, the twins had no interest whatsoever in books.
They regarded being ‘forced’ to read a class novel in school as a violation of their human rights.
Their complete disdain for books really bothered and hurt Melanie.
She knew it was silly to feel offended by it, but she did.
It was as if by rejecting books, they were rejecting her.
Why couldn’t they see how important literature was?
Their little cousin Lucy ate up books, and Melanie could talk to her: they had common ground.
She totally understood why Lucy was Nancy’s favourite grandchild.
Janis waved her fork in the air. ‘Save the “books are the seventh wonder of the world” speech for your authors.’
‘There are already seven natural wonders of the world. You’d know that if you read books,’ Melanie replied.
‘And you’d know who Olivia Rodriguez is if you had social media,’ Janis shot back.
‘And you’d both do a lot better in your exams if you didn’t waste half of your lives on social media.’
‘You’d actually be normal if you had social media.’ Joni backed up her twin.
‘Dad knows who she is,’ Janis said.
‘Music is your dad’s passion. Books are mine.’
‘Because Dad’s cool and actually has an Instagram account.’
Melanie decided to stay silent. The twins were impossible to argue with, especially when they felt they were completely in the right, which seemed to be all the time.
‘Are you coming to our class play next week?’ Janis asked.
Damnit, she had completely forgotten. She was going to Sloane’s celebration dinner with her editor and publicist, plus the head of sales and marketing at Paper&Ink publishers. They were flying in from London and had booked a swanky restaurant to celebrate the Goldstone nomination.
‘Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry, I can’t. I have to –’
‘Go to a dinner?’
‘A book launch?’
‘A meeting?’
‘A book fair?’
‘A Zoom call?’
‘A book awards?’
‘A book festival?’
They were furious, glaring at her, but it was just a class play.
They’d only been back in school four weeks, so it couldn’t be a big deal.
It wasn’t like an end-of-year performance they’d rehearsed for months.
Melanie’s parents were pharmacists who ran a late-opening pharmacy.
They never went to school plays or sports days.
They were busy, working. Her youngest sister, Leona, had been bothered by it, but she was the only one.
Melanie and her older sisters, Niamh and Vivienne, hadn’t cared at all.
Melanie had thought the mums who sat up the front at school events, overdressed and over-made-up, were silly and must have no lives.
Still, the twins were very annoyed and she wanted peace. She raised her hands in surrender.
‘I’m sorry, girls. I’ll get your dad to record it. It’s Sloane’s big celebration dinner.’
‘Whatever,’ Janis said.
‘I’m not hungry. This food is cold.’ Joni pushed her plate away and stood up.
Janis mirrored her twin. They left the kitchen. Melanie was going to tell them to scrape their plates clean of the expensive food and put their plates into the dishwasher, but decided now was not the right moment.
Her phone beeped, it was Peter: Any updates on the edits? Have you looked through them yet? What do you think? Do you agree with Larissa???????? I can’t switch off. I need your feedback!!!!!
Melanie pulled her laptop out of her bag and began to read the editorial notes. It was going to be a long night.