FRAUD Read online

  “When did you first know you wanted to be an actress?” Dominic asked.

  She thought about it. “I can't remember ever not wanting to be an actress. Not that I was extrovert as a child. I was actually quite shy and introspective and totally lacking in confidence. Can you believe that? But I always loved performing, even in those silly little plays kids put on for their parents, because I found that being in character – being someone else and escaping from myself was like a kind of release. I know it sounds weird but I felt kind of safe when I was in a role. The acting came offstage when I was trying to be me. I didn’t know the lines and I didn’t understand the character.”

  “Did you feel the same way about writing? Was that an escape too?”

  A frown passed over her face. “Dominic, I want to talk about my acting not my writing. That’s what matters to me.” Then she added, more gently, “We’ll talk about my writing tomorrow. Maybe.”

  “Okay. I think we should take a break now anyway.”

  They walked into Stratford town centre to pick up some milk and a paper and, to his dismay, she seemed depressed. In the evening he opened a bottle of Shiraz and made a curry. She picked at it for a while but left most of it.

  “Sorry. It was delicious. I just don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “It’s okay.”

  They watched a film on DVD but Dominic sensed her heart wasn’t in it. When it had finished and he had turned off the television, he said, “Nicola, is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, fine,” she sighed. “I’m just knackered, that’s all. Reliving stuff, it’s always... exhausting. I think I’ll go to my room now, if that’s okay.” But before leaving him, she did something she had never done since coming to the flat, that she had never done ever – she kissed him on the cheek then briefly stroked his arm. “Dominic, you remember the other day when we were sitting together and it was raining, and I asked you if you wanted to go on seeing me after I left Malvern Hall?”

  “I remember.”

  “I said it because... I was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Of being alone.”

  “It’s okay. I was flattered you thought of me in that way. Surprised but flattered.”

  “I’m sorry I’m such a pain in the arse. But thanks for putting up with me. Thanks for believing in me.”

  She went off into the little spare bedroom which Dominic had used as an office and which she insisted on occupying, even though it was barely more than a cupboard. After she had gone, he settled before his laptop. Since she had not allowed him to use his Dictaphone he had to rely on memory and he wanted to get down everything she had said before he forgot it. He thought of her reaction when he had asked her, tentatively, about her writing.

  Eventually he went to bed himself but could not sleep. His head was in a whirl, his brain struggling to absorb the information she had given him, to try to comprehend her, to comprehend the situation he found himself in. Believe in her? Little did she know that the real reason she was there was because he didn’t believe in her. Or, at least, he didn’t believe her. And yet there was something about her – a directness, an innocence, a vulnerability – that made it almost impossible to imagine she would ever commit a blatant and premeditated act of deceit. Why should she need to anyway, when she had so much talent of her own? And yet there was still the evidence he had seen with his own eyes. How to explain that manuscript which had turned up on his desk all those years ago?

  Around midnight, or maybe later – he had no idea – he heard the door open and close and he could make out a shadowy figure beside his bed.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered.

  “Yeah. I can’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.”

  With one deft and graceful movement she pulled her outsized tee-shirt over her head and tossed it on the chair, and for a moment she was a wraith in the half light, shaped by the shadows around her breasts and the hollow of her navel and the black inverted triangle under her abdomen. Then she pulled back the quilt and slipped into bed beside him. He took her in his arms. She was shivering and he was startled by how thin she felt. But her shivering soon ceased. It was so long since he had felt the warmth of another human being against his skin and, all of a sudden, any doubts he had had about this frail, damaged creature no longer seemed to matter.

  “Dominic?” she murmured.

  “Mmmm?”

  “You won’t let me down, will you?”

  “No. I’ll never let you down.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SIX YEARS EARLIER

  Looking back, Ted Haymer often wondered if Tuesday the fourth of March, 2002 was the worst day of his life. Not because it was his fifty-fifth birthday, though that was bad enough – the sudden, sinking realisation that you are closer to sixty than you are to fifty, or closer to seventy than you are to forty; nor even because of what actually happened on that day, though that was bad enough too. It was because, in the long, dark hours of retrospection of which his life now mainly consisted, he found himself, again and again, tracing back to that day the chain of events which had led to the loss of the only woman he had ever truly loved.

  That day, strangely enough, had started out rather well – better, at least, than most of the other days over the preceding weeks, months, years – he had lost track of how long it was. The sun was shining. That was something. The collar doves in the garden beyond his bedroom window were endlessly repeating their monotonous, dreary call, suggesting that they, at least, thought it was spring. But it was more than that. Ever since surfacing into the daylight of consciousness he had been aware that something was missing – that black despair which was normally squatting in his head like some warty, heavy-lidded toad, waiting to pounce before he had had time to defend himself with rational thought. Its absence was so surprising and unfamiliar that it affected him positively, rather as the simple absence of the headache is a positive ‘high’ for the migraine sufferer once the affliction has passed. He had almost forgotten what hope felt like, but he fancied that this could have been it – or something remarkably like it.

  Anne was away at the time. She had gone on a short holiday with her friend Linda, as she did every spring. This year it was to Bruges. Anne enjoyed being a tourist but she knew Ted loathed it and had long since given up trying to persuade him to go with her. “Sorry about your birthday,” she had said as she was leaving. “We’ll celebrate it properly when I get back. Although I’ve hidden a little something for you in the house, for the day itself – I’ll tell you where when I phone tomorrow, so you’re not tempted to open it straight away.”

  “You don’t have to phone tomorrow,” he had said.

  “Of course I do! It’s your birthday!”

  As he was shaving, Ted resolved to use her four-day absence to get his head down and finish the second draft of Three Summers by the Sea – his fourth novel. He would stick to a strict regime: five hours work in the morning, a sandwich for lunch, a brief nap then another four hours before rewarding himself with a Bird’s Eye prawn curry and a couple of glasses of Shiraz while watching one of those artistically pornographic films he used to improve his Spanish. Then two more hours’ work before bed. He wouldn’t weaken once and go to the pub.

  He had been at his desk for an hour when he heard the familiar creak of the gate, footsteps on the path, then the clatter of the letter-box and slap of letters hitting the doormat. Ignore it, he told himself. But he couldn’t – he just couldn’t concentrate while not knowing what awaited him out in the hall. Ted hated mail at the best of times – it was always just bills or junk or a postcard from some wealthy relative holidaying abroad which would be consigned at once, unread, to the rubbish bin. But on the morning of March the fourth 2002 there was another reason for his restiveness regarding what Bob the postman might have brought him. Back in January he had sent off three sample chapters of The Tyranny of Love to a publisher called The Dragon’s Head which he had come upon one day while leafing d
ejectedly through The Writer’s Handbook. The entry had seemed to call out to him: ‘This excellent small publisher,’ the editor had enthused, ‘has somehow avoided going the way of the bigger houses. Founder and editorial director Alistair Milner is renowned for his “hands-on” approach with authors and is still prepared to take a risk with genuine new talent’. Ted, who normally had no belief in invisible forces, had fancied for a moment that his random rifling through The Writer’s Handbook had not been so random after all, that he had been guided towards that entry by some benign power, the patron saint of unpublished authors. Though he had never laid eyes on the man, he had sensed at once that he had found a friend and ally in this Alistair Milner, that he would prove to be the one to finally welcome him in from the freezing wilderness he had spent five years trying to escape and in which he had become so hopelessly lost. Having been rejected by all the major agents and publishers, he had felt the flickering flame of hope flare up again, albeit feebly, as he slid his sample chapters into an A4 envelope.

  He had taken immense care to do everything perfectly, the standard admonition of the Gods on Olympus ringing in his ears: ‘We are inundated with manuscripts and if you do not follow these simple rules your work will not be considered’. The typescript had thus been printed out in double-spacing on pristine paper, along with his synopsis, covering letter and somewhat embellished CV. He had also included, this time, on advice he had often received and always hitherto ignored, something called a ‘Marketing Proposal’. This was supposed to indicate to the prospective publisher your ‘Target Readership’, as well as your ‘USP’ – your Unique Selling Point. Ted had puzzled long and hard over what his Unique Selling Point might be. It seemed a bizarre question. Every novel, every work of art, was unique if it was original and that should be its selling point. So that was what he had finally put as his USP – ‘Originality’. As to Target Readership, he had tapped his pen thoughtfully against his lips. Who the hell was his Target Readership? It had never occurred to him to wonder. Thrusting young businessmen needing something to pass the six-hour flight to Dubai? Elderly spinsters trying to get through endless nights of insomnia? Suntanned singles sprawled on the beaches of Benidorm? He had tried his best to make his novel accessible to everyone because he wanted everyone to enjoy it. So he had finally shrugged and written ‘Everyone’ as his Target Readership. He had then tried, in a formal and professional manner, to point out what he felt to be the novel’s strengths, forcing himself to overcome his natural modesty and blow his own trumpet for once, albeit tentatively. That, after all, was the only way to get ahead in the modern world, or so everybody kept telling him.

  He knew from bitter experience that publishers always took roughly six weeks to come up with a response. What they did with one’s manuscript during those six weeks he could not imagine, since he was sure they didn’t read it. All they did was cast an eye over the first page – a chore to which they might devote six minutes, if you were lucky. And, contrary to common belief, it was not quality in the writing they were looking for, apart from a basic grasp of grammar and syntax, it was something far more subtle and transient –marketability. “It’s all about money nowadays!” he had complained to Anne during one of his many tirades about the publishing industry. “Money, money, money! That’s all they care about!”

  “It’s a fact of life in the modern world, Ted,” she had responded gently but rather wearily. “You're going to have to get used to it. And it’s no good just meekly sending off your manuscripts any more. You’ve got to be pro-active. You’ve got to get out there and sell yourself.”

  “Sell myself?” he had frowned. “I’m a middle-aged, retired librarian. What’s to sell?”

  “You’ve got to do something to get yourself noticed. Like dancing naked in a fountain in Trafalgar Square.”

  “I’d be more likely to get arrested than published!”

  “Exactly. But you might get onto the evening news and then you’d be a celebrity.”

  He had heaved a sigh. “I don’t know, when I look at those gorgeous, exotic girls with their Cambridge degrees and strings of literary awards... or their male counterparts with that look of having worked ten years on an Alaskan oil rig that they’ve somehow managed to acquire living in Wimbledon, I just think, how the hell am I ever going to compete with that, however good my novel? My face doesn’t fit, my background doesn’t fit. Nothing fits.”

  Anne had not known how to respond. So in the end she had just kissed him tenderly on the top of the head and gone off to make the supper. “Don’t worry, my love. You’ll get there in the end. I know you will.”

  “If only I’d been kidnapped by Jihadists!” he had wailed, “the publishers would be gagging for me then!”

  “I know. Life’s so unfair.”

  Ted had always been aware that he and Anne – a solicitor by profession – made an incongruous couple. He was scruffy, she was smart. He was reclusive, she was gregarious. His life was a shambles, hers ran like clockwork. He had once suggested to her that she become his agent and she had replied, “I would, if I weren’t so busy looking after you.”

  Ted’s problem was that he loved writing but little else. His greatest joy was to shut himself up in his study and become as engrossed in his work as the monks of Lindisfarne must have become engrossed in their wonderfully over-the-top manuscripts. When he wasn’t writing he just wanted to be out in the world – incognito, a nobody – observing, absorbing, chatting to people, gathering material like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. He knew that if he had wanted to be famous he should have moved to London after leaving Oxford, been seen at the right parties, got invited to tea by Diana Athill and engaged in some serious arse-kissing. He was too old and cynical for all that now. Nonetheless, he was well aware that he should make more effort to get his work into print and felt guilty that he did not. So he had forced himself to write that Marketing Proposal and get it in the post, along with his sample chapters.

  And that had been seven weeks ago to the day.

  *

  He suddenly rose from his desk, went out into the hall and scooped up the heap of mail from the doormat, sorting through it as he walked to the kitchen to make more coffee. There was the usual junk, a birthday card from his sister (he recognised the bubbly, schoolgirl hand that Betty still retained at fifty-two) and a couple of A4 envelopes. One appeared to be from the bank, but the other… the other was addressed in his own hand. It was the SAE he had sent with his sample chapters.

  Tossing everything else aside, he tore it open and was surprised to find that it contained only his CV and the Marketing Proposal, not the chapters themselves. Maybe publishers didn’t return the samples if they were interested in your work. He had never got far enough to find out. Clipped to the pages was a letter bearing a logo of a red dragon coiled around a triumphant Saint George who, sword aloft, was about to sever its head. He didn’t pause to consider the symbolism of the image.

  Dear Mr. Haymer

  Re. Novel: ‘The Tyranny of Love’

  Having read with careful consideration the sample chapters you kindly sent us, I regret to say that this novel is most definitely not for us. As a small publishing house I suspect we are ill-equipped to take on a project of this magnitude anyway.

  May I take this opportunity to wish you every success with your writing career?

  Yours sincerely,

  Alistair Milner (Managing Director / Editorial Director)

  Ted stared at the letter. And stared. And stared. ‘This novel is most definitely not for us’. ‘As a small publishing house we are ill-equipped to take on a project of this magnitude…’ He shook his head in utter disbelief. What the hell did it mean? Apart, obviously, from rejection. Yet again.

  Heart pounding, he stormed back to his study, crashed down into his revolving office chair and threw the letter onto his desk. Then he sprang forward, dragging open drawer after drawer, clawing aside papers and correspondence until he unearthed a lighter and a pack of Superkings con
taining four rather tired-looking cigarettes. He lit one with trembling fingers, even though he had managed to give up smoking six months earlier. Fuck that!

  After a few deep, calming inhalations he sank back in a daze and stared into space. He knew, of course, what this was about. That Marketing Proposal. Putting ‘Originality’ as his USP had come across as childish and facetious and contemptuous of the material realities of publishing; and putting ‘Everyone’ as his target readership. The whole thing had seemed arrogant and unprofessional, and this letter was a way of taking him down a peg or two. The irony of it, he thought grimly, was that if he had never included that fucking thing his work might have stood a chance.

  He angrily stubbed out his cigarette in his coffee dregs and lit another, breathing the smoke deep down into his lungs and blowing it out into the cloud which was forming over the window. What did they expect from you, these stuck-up, humourless, judgemental bastards? It was a no-win situation – either you kept a low profile and were ignored or you tried to promote yourself and were accused of arrogance. As much as anything, he felt betrayed. For in spite of the brutal commercialism into which publishing had descended, there was still a kind of understanding that publishers and authors were on the same side in this grubby battle – an understanding reflected in the tone of rejection letters which had always hitherto been polite and regretful, often containing a few perfunctory words of encouragement. Never before had he been subjected to anything like this. He felt as though he had been kicked in the guts. And to kick an author in the guts when he was already the one in the supplicant position was about as low as you could sink, like kicking a beggar in the street who’s holding out his cap for a few coins. He looked again at the signature, which was apparently that of Alistair Milner himself, though it looked more like the scrawl of some retarded child. Alistair Milner. He would never forget that name.