Chapter 6
6
A week later, I face another slew of job application rejections and suffer through a range of aborted phone calls to connections in the industry who were suddenly ‘late for a meeting’ they’d forgotten about. I’m no expert on human behaviour, but even I gathered they couldn’t all be late for a meeting. This brush off is mortifying. Humiliating. I curse Alexander. He’s probably living his best life on some deserted beach, mai tai in hand, while I white-knuckle my way through the mire.
I clench a balled-up tissue as I doomscroll job ads, searching for a pathway that will tide me over, but I can’t find anything that suits my background, not with people I don’t know, at any rate. Publishing is a small world and like any meaty scandal, this has spread far and wide. I’m too scared to look on Twitter in case I stumble on a hashtag of my name trending for all the wrong reasons.
Hitting the pavement to visit bookshops in the local vicinity with my CV is the next best course of action to apply for a job in person. Surely the gossip hasn’t made it to bookshops. While it’s not editorial, my first love, it’s still in the book world, and right now an income is the priority.
I stand and stretch, my shoulders stiff after stooping over the laptop. A walk will reinvigorate me before I pick up my daughter. I’m hoping to take Eloise to the Bibliothèque Rainer-Maria Rilke on boulevard de Port-Royal and sign her up for a library card. By Parisian standards it’s a small library, but it’s teen friendly and will be a peaceful place for Eloise to study as I slowly let her have more freedom now that she’s made a few friends. Before I head out, I fill up a water bottle, as my budget is now strictly for necessities. I’ve put an amount aside for a celebratory dinner once I do find employment. Positive thinking and all that.
After dropping my CV into various places, I lose track of exactly where I am – which doesn’t often happen. This new scatterbrained version of me is rather alarming at times and I only hope the change isn’t permanent. When I turn to double back, I’m surprised to find myself by the laneway of The Paris Bookshop for the Broken Hearted.
Did my broken heart lead me here? I have a stern talk with myself. It’s one thing to briefly lose my navigational skills, but quite another believing broken hearts magically find their way to a bookshop for a potion and a passage and a cure!
The only reasonable cure for a broken heart is time, and depending on the severity of the break, that pain may never fully disappear. I’m reminded of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the centuries-old tradition of fixing broken pottery with golden seams. The pottery is more beautiful for these so-called ‘flaws’ when fixed with golden threads to bind the pieces back together. I love the thought that those scars are emphasised rather than camouflaged. If I were to follow the philosophy of Kintsugi, what are the golden threads that patch a broken heart back together? Time? Patience. A holiday? They don’t seem golden enough somehow.
Maybe as always, I’m overthinking it. It’s meant to be metaphorical.
What else cures a pain such as this? A pain I rarely admit I’m feeling because I’m the adult. I’m the one guiding this ship. Maybe Valérie is on to something and the remedy is different for everyone. If so, what are my golden threads made up of?
A new romance? Real love. I swipe the thought away before it takes hold. Love is not the answer.
I’m brought back to the present when the ornate bookshop door swings open as a tour group leave carrying bags of books. As I move to let them pass, a sign in the window catches my attention: Bookseller wanted. Apply within.
How can this be? A perfect solution that is… too perfect. I think back to my previous visit. I didn’t confide in Valérie about my lack of employment so it’s not as though she could orchestrate this just for my benefit, could she? All part of her plan to fix the broken part of me. It’s clearly just a coincidence she’s looking for staff and one I should take advantage of since I’m also looking for work.
Henri’s smug face comes to mind. Could I work in a place he frequents?
What am I even saying? There’s no guarantee I’ll get the job. Anyway, the bigger problem would be working in a place where books aren’t in any discernible order. Though I am adept at assimilating in the most hostile of environments, which this is not, so it should be achievable no matter how disorganised it is. The methodical part of my brain will have to deal with it.
Which brings me to the next problem: do I tell Valérie about my vast experience in the book world? If she searches my name on the internet, she’ll soon stumble on one of the many articles written about London Field Publishing, the company that had my name on the masthead right beside Alexander’s. My beloved boutique publishing house that is now no longer a going concern, leaving a staggering heap of betrayed authors in its wake. If I don’t tell her and she finds out, that’ll be infinitely worse. A lie by omission is still a lie. It’s hard to know – will she judge me on sight?
Even my biggest supporters, my best friends in the world of publishing, struggled to understand how I remained blithely unaware, or they suspected that I turned a blind eye and enjoyed the spoils, when I did no such thing. The only thing I’m guilty of is trusting Alexander and believing the systems in place would keep my investment safe.
It came crashing down when I overheard my editorial assistant Molly-Mae on her mobile phone one afternoon. She was whispering about an author with missing royalties. How the heck Molly-Mae knew about this and I didn’t was the first shock. Soon enough, the terrible truth came to light and the world as I knew it came crashing down…