Chapter 7
‘That was intense,’ Liv remarks once we’re safely in the car heading back towards Margate.
‘Thanks for going in to bat for me,’ I reply.
‘Why is your father so completely adamant that you’re living on the breadline?
It doesn’t seem to matter what anyone tells him, he won’t listen.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I told him you were probably better off than me, and he took that to mean the patisserie was about to go out of business. ’
‘I think it goes back to when I was first starting out. He read this article online that said most authors earn an absolute pittance and sell fewer than three thousand copies of each title. He tried to put me off so many times by trotting out the statistics that I think they’ve got hard wired in his head. ’
‘But your last two books were top ten bestsellers! Surely even he must realise that’s going to net you more than a few quid.’
I sigh. ‘Welcome to my life.’
‘And the way your mum kept thanking me for “taking you in” as if you would have been homeless otherwise! I’m sorry, Laura. I know it’s not the done thing to be rude about your friends’ parents, but honestly.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘What do your parents think of me?’
‘They love you. Why?’
‘I was just curious.’
‘No. That’s a weird question to come out of the blue, so I’m guessing there’s an agenda behind it. Come on, spill.’
I wasn’t going to say anything to Liv about the conversation I had with my mother before lunch, but it’s been playing on my mind.
‘Well,’ I begin, unsure how to broach the topic tactfully, before realising this is Liv I’m talking to. ‘Your family is much posher than mine, isn’t it?’
She glances over at me, her expression suddenly serious. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘On second thoughts, forget it. You’ll think I’m being paranoid.’
To my surprise, her face lights up. ‘Oh, I see what this is,’ she says with a grin.
‘What is it?’
‘Fine. It’s time to come clean. I haven’t said anything before because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but my parents think you’re a terrible chav and can’t understand what I see in you.’
I’m horrified. ‘Really?’
She laughs. ‘I knew it was that! No, of course not, idiot. They absolutely adore you. Nobody cares about how posh anyone is any more, do they?’
‘Only someone truly posh would say that.’
That’s enough to stop her laughter in its tracks and she looks, if anything, slightly hurt. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nobody has ever looked down on you socially, have they?’
‘I’m sure plenty of people have,’ she tells me earnestly.
‘But it’s bollocks, Laura. There are always people who are posher than you or richer than you, just like there are people who are less posh or poorer.
Who cares? The only person I can think of who got hung up on stuff like that was my grandmother, and she was a terrible old witch. Did you ever meet her?’
‘No.’
‘She’s dead now, thank goodness. She didn’t bat an eyelid when I told her I thought I was a lesbian, but hold your knife the wrong way and she’d positively twitch with disapproval. She’d say, “The Queen won’t invite you to tea if you can’t eat nicely, Olivia.” Mum went for her in the end.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. She pointed out, among a lot of choice words, that none of us were likely to have tea at the palace and, unlike dear Grandmama, the Queen probably wouldn’t give a shit how we held our cutlery because she had better things to worry about.’
‘I can practically hear your mum’s voice saying that.’
‘Grandmama used to drive her nuts. I don’t think there was a lot of love lost between them, if I’m honest. Anyway, the point is that my parents love you. In fact, I think they might wish you were their daughter rather than me.’
‘I’m sure they don’t. They’re really proud of what you’ve achieved with the patisserie.’
‘Yes, but I think we can both agree that they’re probably less proud of the journey I took to get there, and they only know the edited highlights. It would probably kill them if they knew it all.’
‘I sometimes wish my parents knew less about me. Everything they know seems to disappoint them.’
‘They’re proud of you too.’
‘You think? They have a bloody funny way of showing it. I mean, even when you tried to convince them that I was making a reasonable living, they couldn’t be pleased. What was it Dad said? “You’re only ever as good as your last book, Laura. Everyone might hate the next one, and then what, hmm?”’
Liv rolls her eyes in exasperation. ‘If your next book is total shit, then your publishers should spot that straight away and get you to fix it. That’s literally their job, isn’t it?’
‘Unfortunately, he’s kind of right though. Every writer lives in fear that their next book will be the one that flops, triggering the doomsday spiral.’
‘Dare I ask what the doomsday spiral is?’
‘The publisher drops you, quickly followed by your agent when they can’t get any other publishers to come within a mile of you.
Having enjoyed seeing piles of your bestsellers on the tables at the front of bookstores, you become “special order only” and the only place you stand a chance of stumbling across one of your books in the wild is in a charity shop, which is where you go to buy your clothes now the royalties have dried up. ’
‘Wow. You don’t think like that, do you?’
‘Often. You’d need to have a personality disorder not to.’
She ponders for a moment. ‘I guess it’s not that different from the recurring dream I have where I give everyone food poisoning and the council shuts me down.’
We travel for a while in silence, each contemplating our own doomsday scenario. My mood, already low after lunch with my family, is sinking further.
‘I suspect Mum blames me for Angus leaving too,’ I mutter morosely. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she thought he probably buckled under the pressure of having to support me financially.’
‘Oh, no.’ This is obviously enough to rouse her from her own dark thoughts. ‘We’re not playing that game. Angus left because he’s an arse. Nothing to do with you.’
We lapse back into silence for several miles, each lost in our own thoughts again, before she speaks.
‘How’s Goliath?’
Shit. I hoped we’d closed this topic.
‘Yeah, I’m still not sure it’s for me,’ I tell her carefully.
She frowns but says nothing. Great, now I’ve upset her, but what was I supposed to do?
Tell her it rocked my world just to make her happy?
I’m a little irritated myself now, if I’m honest. I didn’t ask her to buy me a sex toy and, no matter what she thinks, I still firmly believe that it’s not the kind of thing you buy for other people.
When we get back, I feed Meg and try to settle down to some writing.
I’m at a crucial stage; Pauline has been fierce with Claire about Darren’s controlling behaviour, with the result that they’re no longer speaking to each other, much to Darren’s delight.
But it’s finally sown a seed of doubt in Claire’s mind, because she’s realised that Darren has found reasons to take charge of pretty much everything, even her finances.
She wants to believe that Darren has her best interests at heart, but she’s uncomfortable that she’s basically totally reliant on him.
The stage is set for a tense conversation which is going to start the sequence of events that lead to the climax of the first half of the book.
Normally, I have no problem focusing on the story at points like this.
I know where I need the conversations to go and my fingers usually fly across the keyboard because I can pretty much hear the dialogue in my head.
However, I’m distracted after my conversation with Liv in the car, and my mind is once more circling around all the possible things that could have caused Angus to leave.
The truth is that our sex life was the one disappointing aspect of our relationship, from my perspective.
The first couple of times were quite good, if I remember correctly, but he turned out to be a lazy lover who didn’t take much interest in whether I was having a good time or not.
My suggestion to add a vibrator to the mix was intended to wake him up to my frustration, but he completely freaked and said the only way he’d even contemplate such a thing would be if he basically kept it under lock and key so he could ensure I wasn’t using it behind his back.
I rather lost interest after that and, as time went on, sex with him became increasingly mundane and infrequent, to the point that I started to think I just wasn’t a very sexual person after all.
What if Liv is right though, and my writing is suffering because I’m actually frustrated?
I glance down at the boxes under the bed.
I’d rather have done this while I was alone in the house, but my curiosity is piqued now and Liv is downstairs so won’t hear anything as long as I’m discreet.
I bend down to pull out the boxes, opening them and pushing the tissue aside.
Goliath is definitely staying where it is, but I transfer the lube and toy cleaner from Liv’s box into the drawer in my bedside cabinet before turning my attention to the box I ordered.
Inside, there’s a blister pack containing a much more subtle bullet vibrator, and a pink box with the words ‘LadyBliss 2’ on it in a swirly font, which is a clitoral stimulator that had such rave reviews (it really did get one reviewer off in thirty seconds) I had to order it to see what the fuss was about.
I lift it out and turn the box over to read the writing on the back.