Chapter 39
39
JESSE
Now
‘Jesse, I’d like you to meet Burgess Hastings,’ Maddie Feynman said, indicating to the old man who was sitting in an armchair in her office. ‘I wanted to get you both in for a powwow because, as much as I would like to say this came from submission and I’m really earning my 15 per cent, Burgess contacted me when he got wind of Remy.’
The old man stood up gingerly.
‘Oh.’ Jesse was puzzled. He’d only submitted the final draft to Maddie in late July, and wasn’t expecting to hear an update until after September, when The Amazing Adventures of Remy the Red Panda would be going out on submission to publishers. But Jesse knew from his dad’s relationship with his agent, a powerhouse called Bill Linkletter, that if your agent called a meeting, you went.
Jesse shook the man’s hand effusively, but carefully. He was older than Jesse imagined people in children’s publishing looked – he didn’t really seem like a children’s kind of guy, he looked about one hundred and four. They both sat down in the armchairs opposite Maddie, and Jesse tried to feel a sense of hope and optimism; he tried to push aside the memory of the last time he was in this room. The coffee stain. His fluster. Her.
‘Biggest regret of my life was turning down Lars Lightning. You know I was sent a manuscript of The President’s Play in 1979?’
‘No, I didn’t…’ Jesse still wasn’t sure who this guy was.
‘I thought, this right-wing clown character of a president will never resonate. People won’t buy it! And then Reagan took forty-four states and I realised I was the clown because The President’s Play was already a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller – and not one of mine.’
Jesse smiled, appreciatively. The man was being kind.
‘But I want to make that right.’
Maddie explained that Burgess wasn’t active in publishing any more, but he was on the board of Talisman, the second largest publisher in the UK. Jesse had heard of Talisman of course, but not Burgess. He looked like he might have retired in 1900.
‘We would have been the biggest publisher in the UK if I’d have bought your father…’ he lamented, as if he were a dying man at solemn peace with his regret.
‘But what about children’s books? Do you publish picture books?’
‘Oh,’ interjected Maddie. ‘Their children’s imprint is the largest in the UK. Tyger. They’re headed up by Kathy Carnegie at their office in Farringdon.’
Burgess explained that Kathy was on holiday with her family in Greece right now, but wild horses wouldn’t have stopped him going along for a chat anyway. Striking while the iron was hot. Before other publishers got wind.
‘We’d love Remy. We’d love Lars and Jesse Lightning. I spoke to Kathy from her holiday yesterday and she can see a series, a TV spin-off, merchandise, the whole shaboodle. She’s very excited.’
Maddie nodded encouragingly.
‘Has she even seen my drawings? Has she seen my dad’s manuscript?’
Jesse looked between Maddie and Burgess.
‘She has now. From a photograph thingy Madeleine did with her phone. And this was even before I saw your drawings in the flesh, young man…’
Jesse laughed to himself. He didn’t feel particularly young. And unless Burgess had been living under a rock for the past ten years he would have seen Jesse’s drawings, his designs, his typefaces, he just wouldn’t know it. ‘I had a feeling about this project. And now Maddie has shown them to me – well I will speak to Kathy and we will make you an offer we hope you might consider…’
Maddie looked between the two men excitedly.
Jesse rubbed his golden stubble. He thought of his dad. He thought of his little rental apartment in a Brutalist block of flats between King’s Cross and Bloomsbury. How the rent was insane but he wanted to buy the two-bedroom apartment for sale next door which was on the market for ￡750,000. It would be perfect for Jesse and Ida. A manageable walk to school. Near his office, near the Eurostar to see his mum. A weighty advance could help him cobble together a deposit without having to take a loan out against Lightning Designs.
‘This sounds wonderful, thank you,’ Jesse said, humbly.
‘I can’t let lightning not strike in the same place twice,’ Burgess said with a twinkle.
OK, that was a bit cheesy , Jesse thought, but the old guy was really sweet.
‘Please do consider it, dear boy. Kathy will contact Madeleine, and I will get our exceptional contracts team to come up with something…’
Maddie nodded. Kathy Carnegie was clearly someone she knew and thought highly of. They could talk later over the fine print.
‘Thank you,’ Jesse said, looking at Maddie for assurance. A flash in her eye and a gentle smile gave him 100 per cent confidence. ‘Thank you very much.’
Maddie’s assistant got them all tea and macarons and they made chit-chat for half an hour before Burgess stood and picked up his Panama hat from the stand by the door and said his goodbyes.
They all shook hands, then Burgess paused in the doorway. He had the look of a man who was once immense. His summer shirt and cream chinos now too big for him.
‘Your father,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I met him at many events, book fairs, dinners, what have you…’
Jesse waited on tenterhooks.
‘He was a scholar and a gentleman. An exceptional storyteller.’
Jesse wanted to cry.
‘His body of work is prolific of course, but it’s wonderful that his legacy will continue through you.’
‘Thank you,’ Jesse said, pressing his palms together, just as his father did.
As Jesse left Fox then he showered and told her to start eating while it was hot. By the time he got out of the bathroom, Minnie had gone, her breakfast untouched.
Caryn came back from the market minutes later to see Jesse sitting alone at the bistro table by the pool, swearing she had just seen a girl who looked like Minnie, in Monsieur Delep’s van heading towards Avignon. She realised straight away, from Jesse’s despondent face, that it was Minnie in Monsieur Delep’s van. She had gone without him and without saying goodbye.
‘Oh darling, what’s happened?’ Caryn asked, as she slumped onto the metal chair opposite him, swatting a wasp away from the table. The pancakes looked a little despondent too. ‘Everything seemed so adorable between you two!’ She studied her son. ‘I didn’t want to ask… but I had high hopes.’
Jesse shook his head.
‘I’ve really fucked up.’
‘How?’
Jesse told his mother how he had seen Minnie in a bookshop cafe back in March being dumped by Hannah’s lover; about Minnie approaching Jesse when he was back in the bookshop in May, before his meeting with Maddie Feynman around the corner. About Minnie’s proposition; about her game. About how they weren’t meant to know too much about each other; how they weren’t meant to fall in love. He looked nervously at his mother as if he might already have done.
‘Well what are you waiting for, Jesse?’ Caryn admonished.
He looked up, surprised.
‘What about Hannah?’ he asked.
‘After the way she’s treated you? Fuck Hannah!’
Jesse was shocked. He had never heard his mother speak so vehemently and bitterly about anyone.
‘If your father knew what she had done to you…’ Caryn’s voice cracked and she took a sip of Jesse’s water. ‘If he knew… at the moment when she was most meant to support you…’ Her eyes filled up, her finger jabbed. Jesse saw the heartache his mother carried for him laid bare. She couldn’t finish her sentence. She swatted another creature, a small fluttering dragonfly this time, as Jesse remembered the text message he’d received last night, while he and Minnie were in the pool.
Thanks for making an effort Jesse. Nice touch.
Then the five messages Hannah had sent him straight after. Calling him a headfuck. Asking why he said he wanted to be a family.
Jesse hadn’t wanted to be a family. He couldn’t bear the thought of it since he’d seen JP grab Hannah’s arse in the lobby of The Berkeley. Since he saw her complete and utter lack of remorse at the situation, while he was sleeping in their mates’ spare room and she was having sex in fancy hotel rooms. All he had wanted was to be a dad to Ida.
Caryn took another desperate glug of water.
‘You need to go and find her, darling, it’s so obvious.’ She levelled him with a look of instruction. A mother telling her son what he must do. ‘Nothing much has felt right in the past six months, not until you two walked in together the other night.’
Jesse smiled, defeated.
‘There’s a problem.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t have her number. I don’t know her address. I don’t even know her name.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘What?’
‘You don’t know her name?’ Caryn asked, in despair.
Jesse shook his head.
‘It was part of her rules. Her game, her idea.’
‘It’s so obvious!’ Caryn almost snapped.
‘What is?’
‘She’s Geraldine and Jeremy Byrne’s daughter for God’s sake!’
‘What?’
‘Yes! So I’m pretty sure that makes her last name…’
‘Fuck…’
‘Byrne,’ they said in unison.
Caryn levelled him again.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘How did you know? Did she tell you?’
Caryn shook her head, exasperated by her beautiful boy as if he were seven again, taking so long to make his ice cream look pretty, licking it into a perfect shape on top of his cone, it melted all over his nice new ECCO shoes. She shooed him away.
‘Go! She’ll be halfway to Paris by now.’
Minnie had gone. She wasn’t at the ticket hall in Avignon. She wasn’t on the first train to Paris that Jesse could get. He walked up and down the entire twelve carriages to check, four times. He couldn’t see her at Gare de Lyon and he scoured Gare du Nord for faces, but none of the women he ran to with black hair and pale skin were Minnie.
Jesse had to accept she didn’t want to know him any more. Perhaps it was a bit creepy. Sleeping with your wife’s lover’s spurned lover. Did it look like revenge? It certainly hadn’t been. He’d tried to resist her game; he’d tried to resist falling for her.
In a moment of self-pity around the middle of July, Jesse remembered Minnie said her agent was called Devon, so he googled acting agents called Devon in London. Devon Smith came up who worked for a talent agency called McFadden Higgs. Devon was a beautiful man who looked like an actor himself. Jesse knew instinctively that he was Minnie’s Devon. He clicked on Devon’s list of clients and saw Minnie’s mesmerising headshot.
It would be one way of trying to reach her. But Jesse didn’t try. He felt too predatory. He couldn’t forget how he’d pressed his hand against the bookshop window as he’d watched Minnie being dumped. It was an awful thing not to tell her. He should have told her at the zoo.
As school broke up in July, Jesse submitted his pages to Maddie and moved out of Andrew and Elena’s house, into the Brutalist block near King’s Cross. The thought of spending a long hot summer with the twins was too much, especially while he and Hannah were still at loggerheads over Ida and how custody would play out. Hannah had been furious at Jesse, for the way he had given her hope in June; for the way he had stood her up.
Jesse looked up to the blistering city sky outside Fox & Feynman Literary Agency, looked at his phone and searched the familiar tail number on his plane tracker app.
Wow, Auckland.
That was the furthest Saraswati had been since he’d started tracking her. If she were even on the plane. Maybe Minnie was right. A cleaner or another passenger might have found her. He screwed up his hand in his empty pocket and had an idea. Coffee. Bondiga’s Books was two streets away. Minnie might even be there.