Chapter 20
It was a sleepy Thursday afternoon, and Jules was supposed to be doing the filing while Flo served customers, but instead,
bored, she was doomscrolling through Portneath Books’ Instagram feed. That Cally woman was seriously on it with the social
media marketing, she had to admit. And then she saw it.
“Damn it!” exclaimed Jules, chucking the phone down onto the desk with irritation.
“What?” Flo asked, scurrying in, alarmed.
“Raymond Perry,” Jules said. “He’s doing a signing at Portneath Books too next week, and it’s scheduled to be right after ours.” Ha. Roman definitely hadn’t mentioned that during any of their meetings.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s on their Instagram feed,” Jules replied, showing her.
“Better after than before, though,” suggested Flo, peering at the times on the post.
Jules sighed.
Raymond Perry, author of a hugely popular crime fiction series, was hot property in publishing—but famous for being tricky and bad-tempered.
Jules was already nervous about having him in, fearful that whatever razzmatazz she could conjure up would fall short of his expectations.
Now she was going to be sharing potential queues of adoring fans and, more to the point, sales with Portneath Books.
And that was revenue she could not afford to lose.
She narrowed her eyes. She and Roman might be enjoying each other’s company now, but there was no letting up in the battle
between the two shops. Right. She would do everything in her power to ensure Capelthorne’s sold more signed copies than Portneath.
They were first, at least, so there was every chance they would.
A full thirty minutes after Raymond was due to arrive, he swept into the shop, leaving any apologies to the scuttling, nervous
publishing representative who slipped in behind him. Jules’s heart went out to the poor girl. God knows, she had been in that
position herself far too often. The stress engendered in having to keep a diva author happy came back to her in a rush. She
settled Raymond at his suitably large and prominent table, with a stack of books and more in a box at his feet, soothing him
with plans of lunch at Freya’s in a bit and offering hot drinks and his choice of biscuits in the meantime.
“I’ll have hot water with a slice of lemon,” he told Jules. “And I mean hot but not boiled, and not a scrap of limescale,
please. In fact, if you could heat up some mineral water—preferably Evian—I would be most grateful.”
“I’m so sorry we’re late,” gabbled the poor publishing assistant, who turned out to be an anxious twenty-two-year-old called Miranda.
“I can’t get him to leave anywhere on time, plus he refused to do the signing in the Waterstones shop in Exeter because he
said he wanted to ‘rest,’ and the office is going to kill me if he does that again here. He’s already muttering about not
wanting to go across the road after lunch.”
Jules briefly entertained the pleasing possibility of Raymond re neging on his arrangement with Portneath Books, but looking at the poor quaking wreck in front of her, she jumped to reassure her.
“Don’t worry,” Jules said, “we’ll give him a slap-up lunch and keep a sharp eye on the clock. The restaurant’s lovely, and
it’ll put him in the best mood ever, I promise you. He’ll be a pussycat this afternoon.”
As long as he didn’t sell as many books for Roman as he would hopefully do for Jules.
Unexpectedly, Raymond was the model of charm, just as long as Jules kept funneling a steady flow of adoring fans his way.
Whenever there was a lull, he would industriously start signing all the copies he could lay his hands on, which was annoying,
as Jules had been hoping to return unsold stock to the publisher. She wasn’t allowed to do so once it had been signed, but
it would be uncharitable to assume this was exactly why Raymond was doing it.
The signing session passed smoothly enough, and then Jules took him, Flo, and Miranda out to a hopefully convivial lunch at
Freya’s. His mood improved further in the face of a locally caught crab starter, Hollytree Farm lamb cutlets with tiny, fresh
peas, and a large helping of Freya’s famous triple chocolate mousse to follow, all dispatched with nearly a whole bottle of
the local sparkling wine. He also managed to imbibe two glasses of port taken with heroic amounts of a delicious soft, blue-veined
sheep cheese, also from Hollytree Farm. Jules and the other two women watched in awe as he packed it all away, and Jules couldn’t
help but make an autobiographical connection between him and the hard-drinking, big-eating protagonist in his books.
Jules escorted him personally to Portneath Books, where she was pulled into the staff room by Roman for a kiss and a debrief.
“He’s a despotic toddler, like most of them,” Jules divulged. “Good luck.”
“Sales?” Roman shot back, his eyes narrowing.
“Sixty-eight copies,” said Jules smugly. “And quite a few backlist sales too.”
“Ha!” said Roman. “Ten quid says I beat you. We’ll compare notes when I pick you up at seven. Still okay for tonight?”
Jules’s heart sank. It was a supper in Middlemass with a few of his mates. She could hardly refuse, but she much preferred
having him to herself and was still remembering her wary teenage awe of the “cool crowd” Roman had always so effortlessly
been a part of.
“Sure,” she said. “Should I bring anything?”
“Don’t worry about any of that. Just be ready,” he said, kissing her again, this time chastely on the forehead, and shoving
her gently back out onto the shop floor. There, Raymond was now being expertly charmed by Cally, who was laughing musically
as he regaled her with well-worn anecdotes about his own brilliance.
Roman had been hopeless when Jules grilled him about the dress code for that night’s supper. “I dunno, just casual,” he had
replied vaguely. And: “You’ll look lovely whatever you wear.”
Why even ask? Jules thought in exasperation. Not that she exactly had an extensive wardrobe to choose from anyway. In her tiny attic bedroom
in the flat, she laid out two tops that were the main contenders, either of them to be worn with the boring old jeans she
was now sick of the sight of. With Aunt Flo’s new modest monthly salary paid into her account, she had treated herself to
a pretty green top from the women’s clothes shop next door. It was off-the-shoulder, with gathered ruffles that made the most
of her modest boobs, and green was always a good color with her red hair and green eyes. Freshly showered, she pulled on the
top, jeans, and well-worn but newly washed white trainers. Peering in the dusty full-length mirror, she looked okay but not
up to the sleek, glamorous standards of the other women who would be there, she was sure.
Brushing on a coat of black mascara and a slick of her favorite lipstick, Jules didn’t bother with blusher. Since they had gotten together, their frequent walks had brought out a healthy glow, along with a proliferation of the hated freckles that Roman had dubbed “utterly charming.”
Ignoring Roman’s instruction not to bring anything, Jules had slipped out to the florist and picked up a bunch of peonies
with their fat buds just beginning to unfurl. It would be like bringing sand to the beach she suspected, as supper that night,
she had finally learned, was at Imogen and Gabriel’s house, Storybook Cottage. The garden was supposed to be absolutely amazing—much
of it immortalized in the beautifully detailed paintings Imogen created to illustrate her books.
Jules swallowed her nerves as they arrived. The house, tucked just inside the sheltering walls of the Middlemass Hall estate,
was a ravishingly pretty, double-fronted Georgian house with a wide powder-blue front door under a porch smothered in roses
and honeysuckle currently in full flower. The blowsy climbers twined in turn around great twisted branches of wisteria dangling
its upside-down cones of now fading pale lilac flowers right across the front of the house. It was like a grand country house
but on a more modest scale, borrowing more from the classical Palladian style of Middlemass Hall just up the drive than a
“cottage” had any right to do.
Imogen opened the door with Ruth in her arms. The baby was wearing a pair of über-cute pink spotty pajamas. Kissing Jules
and Roman warmly on the cheek and exclaiming charmingly over the flowers, Imogen led them into the vast kitchen at the back
of the house. It was all flagstone floors festooned with worn Persian rugs and nonmatching chairs around a scrubbed pine table
that clearly served as work surface, desk, and impromptu dining table.
“We hardly ever use the posh dining room nowadays,” Imogen admitted to Jules, at the same time gently unclenching Ruth’s fist to release a handful of Imogen’s curly auburn hair.
Imogen was dressed down in well-worn jeans too, Jules was relieved to see, with a pretty, embroidered teal cardigan and bare feet with painted toes.
As always, Imogen was effortlessly pretty despite a clean-scrubbed face with just a trace of lipstick.
The room was full of bustle, and Roman, for Jules’s benefit, made the introductions, pointing as he went around:
“Simon and Genny,” he said, indicating a couple standing chatting by the French doors leading to the garden. The man was an
impossibly handsome blond, tall and elegant with patrician features. Jules knew from her mum that he was a GP and that Genny,
his wife, was a teacher at the little village primary she had attended herself. Considering how beautiful they both were,
any children were going to be stunning. They were disarmingly friendly and nice, immediately smiling and coming over to say
hello.
“Portneath High!” exclaimed Genny. “I remember you, although I was in the class above, wasn’t I?”
“Great to see you again,” said Aiden, coming out of the larder with a fresh bottle of wine.
“You too,” said Jules. “Um, is Jess here tonight?” She really hoped to have Jess as an ally.