Chapter One
“I meant ‘bibliophile,’” protested Petra desperately. “I meant to say he was the publishing world’s greatest ‘bibliophile.’”
“Ah,” said Petra’s boss, Alistair, looking sympathetically at her over the top of his glasses. “Predictive text can be a nightmare.
You deleted it?”
“Of course I deleted it,” said Petra. As soon as her phone’s “do not disturb” clicked off, the tsunami of notifications had woken her.
Bleary-eyed, she was initially excited that her final, late-night task of the day—generating social media content—had gained
some traction at last. The huge number of cry-laughing and shocked reactions was puzzling though. And then there had been
the comments, and then—in search of understanding—the sickening rereading of her post... So—yes—she had deleted it. And
her account. Not before her post had been screenshotted and shared thousands of times though.
Petra swallowed, eyeing up Alistair’s waste bin queasily as she wondered, in horror, if she was going to be sick. But, on
reflection, why even worry? Calling your best client a “bibulous pedophile” beat vomiting into your boss’s wastepaper basket
hands down on the “unthinkable things that might happen” scale. At least when the most unthinkable thing happened you could
stop worrying about the most unthinkable thing happening. There was that.
“I mean, I don’t think I actually know what ‘bibulous’ means,” Alistair went on. “It might even be a compliment.”
“It means ‘drunk,’” Petra informed him.
“I did not know that,” mused Alistair.
Yup. She had not only gratuitously called her most lucrative client a child molester, she had—in fact—called him a drunken
child molester.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Petra nodded miserably. The telephone call had been distinctly one-sided. And shouty. The gist of the conversation, she explained to Alistair, was that she was extremely
fired.
“Clients come and go,” sympathized Alistair. “And being a little bit infamous? That can be a good thing in our line of work.”
“Yeah...” said Petra, trying—and failing—to reflect his positivity. “At least I still have Isabella May,” she said. Isabella
was her second-highest earning client, although she was also a spoiled, demanding woman who took up a huge amount of Petra’s
limited time.
“Ah,” said Alistair again. “You’ve not read your emails then?” He screwed up his face into an exaggerated mask of sympathy.
“What? How so?” Petra exclaimed, indignantly.
“I suspect Henry Atherstone might have gotten to her,” Alistair suggested apologetically. “He’s been hovering.”
“That’s illegal,” said Petra hotly. Unfortunately, as she knew full well, poaching each other’s clients wasn’t literally a
criminal act, but it was seriously frowned upon. As was insulting your own authors online.
“What do I do now?” she asked, her question being directed not so much at Alistair but more at the universe—a universe that
had just dumped on her from a great height, much like a passing seagull might.
“Lie low,” he said. “This too shall pass. And—even before this happened—I’ve been thinking you need a change of scene. A fresh challenge.”
At this, Petra’s eyes filled with tears. She sniffed, and gazed out of the window, hoping he hadn’t noticed. So now he wanted
to get rid of her. Fair enough.
“I’m resigning, obviously,” she began.
“Woah, easy tiger,” he chuckled. “I’m not asking for your badge and gun. I’ve had an idea... Did you ever come across a
lovely young woman called Jules Capelthorne on your travels? Junior editor at Farquarson and Trimble?”
Petra shook her head, mutely. Publishing was full of lovely young women. They came and then they went. It was a tough industry.
“Jules was one of the ones who got away,” Alistair went on. “Moved to Devon, started running a bookshop by the sea, just got
married to the local Romeo...”
“Living the dream,” commented Petra, sourly. And then she was ashamed. God, she was turning into a miserable person; she couldn’t
even feel positive about the good fortune of a woman she had never met.
“So,” Alistair went on, undaunted, “apparently Jules and her new husband are off on a huge honeymoon trip, taking in all the
great bookshops of the world, and they need someone to mind the shop for six months. I saw it on Facebook. You get your own
little flat above the shop, a reasonable salary, and all the books you can eat—I think it would be perfect for you. I’ll put
in a call?” His hand hovered over his phone, as he sought her permission.
Petra gave him a tiny nod of acquiescence. Fine. It wasn’t like she had any choice. Six months surrounded by books, which
were now—she had decided—her personal nemesis. Great.
And at the seaside too. With her luck, those incontinent seagulls were going to be forming an orderly queue.
Alistair had seemed pretty keen on getting her out of the office, Petra reflected, sitting on the train just a few hours later.
She didn’t blame him. She was a Jonah now—a sailor’s bad luck omen—likely to cast their literary agency’s boat onto the publishing rocks of failure if she was left to contaminate their little enterprise a minute longer than absolutely necessary.
There was a sword of Damocles hanging over all those who were on the commissioning end of publishing. A “there but for the
grace of God” feeling, knowing how capricious the industry could be. Anything approximating guaranteed success was well beyond
the gifts of all literary agents—if they were brave enough to admit it.
Of course, they rarely were, and Petra was as guilty as the rest of them.
Which literary agent didn’t revel in the moment when they communicated to a breathless wannabe that they were prepared to
represent that writer’s work? Seeing their little faces light up—faces that were pale after too many years bunkered inside
with their laptops, hammering away on work that might never see an audience—work that still might never see an audience.
Naturally, those involved would do everything they could to increase its chances.
The new acquisition would be edited and polished to the best ability of all, and then the manuscript would ping into the inboxes of half a dozen editors with too much power at their fingertips.
And then—when that lot ghosted her—another half dozen editors would be selected, and so it would continue.
Finally, when even the obscure little presses had declined—including the ones that never got their print books into the shops and the ones that never paid the pitiful royalties on time, or at all—then Petra would be the one to put the author’s dying hopes out of their misery as they both pretended to believe her excuses: that the market was unbelievably tough at the moment; that no one was buying anything; that there had been near misses, rave rejections— that it might even get picked up in the future, when the market caught up with this particular writer’s vision. ..
After a suitable period of mourning, the writer would pluckily begin something new, something that would perhaps more closely
echo the zeitgeist, both telling each other that—next time—the outcome would be so entirely different.
Was Petra such a terrible judge of talent? She had certainly had a bad run just lately. And with the contracts she had managed to procure, the advances had been abysmal or just full-on non-existent. Alistair had been generous and kind for far
too long, continuing to pay her a subsistence wage until she started generating some proper income for the little agency.
If it wasn’t for her bigger clients—well, her ex-clients—she would not have been justifying her existence there at all. No,
he was well rid of her, despite being more than kind in offering his counsel to her remaining clients during her sabbatical.
She couldn’t help thinking they would all be cracking open the champagne with their cornflakes on reading their emails that
morning, learning they were going to be represented by a proper agent at last.
Where on earth was Portneath anyhow? It had turned out there was a regular train there from Paddington, so it couldn’t be too remote, could
it? All she knew was if she got to Penzance at the furthest tip of Cornwall—next stop, America—she had gone too far. She held
up her phone. Seriously, no mobile signal? She wasn’t in London anymore, that was for sure. Petra impatiently logged her phone
on to the train’s pitifully weak Wi-Fi and googled. Here it was, a tourist information office listing.
Portneath is a pretty little seaside town, nestled on the coast at the foot of the rolling hills of Devon’s South Hams. As well as offering charming beaches and plentiful holiday rental accommodations—both in town and in nearby villages such as the delightful Middlemass—the town is a magnet for lovers of good, locally produced food.
It has a Saturday market, along with a range of excellent independent stores, including a well-regarded bookshop.
Ha! thought Petra. A “well-regarded bookshop” now, maybe. Just wait until she had had her cursed hands on it for six months.
What a pity. And Jules had seemed so nice on the phone too, breathlessly thanking her for stepping in at the last moment,
apologizing that she and Roman would not be there to greet her, but explaining they would leave the keys for the shop and
flat with a friend who ran the restaurant next door.
It looked like rain. There were heavy clouds, purple with yellow underbellies, pressing low onto the horizon. Would it snow,
even? In early January that was entirely plausible. The tourist information definitely seemed to be positioning Portneath
as a summer holiday destination. It was probably one of those seaside towns that were derelict and bleak through the winter. Most of those
delightful independent stores and fancy restaurants probably didn’t even bother opening until Easter. Great. No wonder Jules
and Roman had decided to vacate. If she was them, she would probably do the same.
Her mind swirling with these bleak thoughts, Petra rested her head against the glass and gazed unseeing at the countryside,
the craggy, desolate landscape of Dartmoor perfectly echoing her mood. As the train wended slowly on its way, taking her to
her fate, she punished herself with her litany of every personal failing, real and imaginary, for the whole of her twenty-eight
years to date. Her eyelids grew heavy, and the view became blurry.
She had better not fall asleep and end up in Penzance.