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  “[email protected],” Ted read aloud. “Right.”

  “I’m afraid my daughter’s rather young for her age,” she remarked with a hint of embarrassment.

  “Well, that’s marvellous. I’m very much obliged to you. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Angela Pearson as she shut the door.

  Ted went straight home and composed an email to her, working long and hard at giving it an air of having been tossed off in a moment. How to begin? ‘Dear Nicola’? No! That sounded so stuffy and formal in an email! ‘Nicola! Hi!’? – God, that sounded like a middle-aged man trying to sound young and cool. Finally he opted for the terse, constipated format beloved of writers pretending to be working to a punishing schedule.

  Nicola

  Sorry I missed you before you left. I brought my manuscript up to the Queen’s at lunchtime but you’d already gone. I hope everything’s okay. Our conversation last night really cheered me up and, if you still want to read the novel, I’m sending it to you by attachment. But you may be too busy.

  He wondered whether to express some concern about what may have caused her sudden departure but decided against. He hardly knew her and, whatever had happened, it was none of his business. He concluded:

  Take care, Nicola. And don’t get discouraged. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you and it’s going to be fantastic!

  Ted

  He wrote his mobile number in a postscript, then deleted it. The last thing he wanted was to seem importunate. She had his email address. If she wanted to contact him, that would be enough.

  He then downloaded the text of The Tyranny of Love as attachments and launched it into cyberspace, hoping that, wherever she was on the planet, it would find her. But, in his heart of hearts, he doubted if she would ever read it or if he would ever see her again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THAT LITTLE TENT OF BLUE

  The Dragon’s Head occupied the first floor of a small office block off Seven Sisters Road, a short walk from Finsbury Park underground station. Dominic remembered vividly the bleak entrance hallway from the morning he had come for his first interview – fifteen minutes early, his heart racing, nerves aquiver. It had been empty but for an abandoned filing cabinet stacked in a corner alongside a desk bearing a cardboard box. They were still there – even the cardboard box. How full of hope and trepidation he had been that day he had climbed those two short flights of black linoleum stairs to try to sell himself to his possible new employer. Now, at eight-thirty in the morning, he was climbing them again, not for an interview this time, but for his first day as an employee. His insides were churning, but he was also savouring a deep sense of victory.

  He entered the half-glass door and stood gazing around, wondering what to do next. When you’re looking completely spare, being nearly six foot five only enhances the effect, as he had often been made painfully aware. A girl’s voice demanded, rather haughtily, “Can I help you?”

  This was Sonia. Dominic had encountered her at his interview and was a little dismayed that she did not remember him. He was just moving towards her desk to explain himself when another voice intercepted him: “Dominic! Hi! Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing!”

  He turned to find Darren – plump, fresh-faced and about thirty-five – advancing towards him with palm outstretched. He was the editor who would be his immediate boss and mentor and Dominic was glad, since he had taken a liking to him at his interview.

  “Alistair won’t be along till later and you’ll meet the rest of the gang as they stagger in,” he said, leading him through the large, chaotic room full of desks, books, computers and stacks and stacks of files and papers but, at that hour, very few people. “I’m afraid we haven’t been able to organise a desk for you yet, but we’ll get onto that ASAP.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me, Dominic, have you ever heard the term ‘slush pile’?”

  Dominic smiled. Although only starting out on his writing career he already knew that vanishing into the bottomless vortex of the slush pile was the nightmare of all aspiring authors. “Yes I have,” he replied.

  “Well, I haven’t got time for mine so I’m handing it over to you. You can make it your private kingdom. I keep telling Alistair to stop accepting unsolicited manuscripts but he won’t listen to me. ‘You never know what gems you might find in there,’ he says. So find us a gem, Dominic old son, and turn us all into millionaires!”

  The slush pile in this case was an enormous cardboard box beside Darren’s desk within which lay an assortment of manuscripts which – Dominic had to admit – did look pretty slushy. Some were in folders, some in A4 envelopes, some were loose-leaf and secured by giant paper-clips or stout elastic bands. Beside the box stood another with ‘Rejections’ scrawled on one flap in black marker pen and the journey between the two was about six inches. “I’ve filtered this lot out on the basis of synopses and covering letters,” he said, scooping up an armful of paper from the top of his filing cabinet. “We always ask for that.” He took the uppermost manuscript and lodged one buttock on the side of his desk while Dominic positioned himself at his shoulder. “Imagine you're a shopper in Waterstones. You're bored, you're knackered, your legs are aching and you've got to find something for the wife’s birthday tomorrow. You pick up some book because the cover catches your eye. The blurb on the back tells you it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread but you've learned to ignore that. You open it and read the first paragraph. The question is, do you read the second paragraph or move on to something else? Take this one for example. ‘The house where I spent my childhood was by the sea.’ Okay. Sea’s good. ‘The windows of the kitchen and living room looked out over the bay, but the little latticed window of my bedroom looked towards the path leading to the lighthouse.’ Well done, madam, you’ve cured my insomnia in the space of a sentence. Now, if she’d said ‘the lighthouse where Sebastian first shoved his hand up my skirt’ I might have been mildly curious.” Noticing Dominic’s rather alarmed expression, he added, “Only kidding.”

  “So that’s a rejection, then?”

  “‘Fraid so.”

  “And supposing I am burning with curiosity?”

  “Then read for as long as it holds your attention. If you get to the end of the sample and are feeling seriously onanistic then write ‘RFM’ –‘Request full manuscript’ on the attached slip. But don’t do it lightly – we don’t want to give the poor bastards false hope and saddle ourselves with a load of extra work into the bargain. Otherwise put ‘SR’ – ‘Standard rejection’.”

  “Right,” murmured Dominic, wondering what onanistic meant.

  “When it gets back to Sonia she'll send a pro-forma to the author giving them the good news. The manuscripts only get returned if they’ve enclosed an SAE, otherwise they go in the recycle bin. If they haven’t been reclaimed after six months they get pulped and go to make more paper on which more authors can write yet more books to be rejected. So basically we’re a recycling centre – we recycle dreams. Hey, that’s not bad!”

  Dominic was feeling a little seasick. Having slaved away on his own novel for eight long years he felt nothing but sympathy for those poor authors whose beloved manuscripts lay slumped in that box like corpses after a battle.

  “But don’t you think a book sometimes… takes a page or two to get going?” he ventured.

  “Your shopper in Waterstone’s not going to give it a second chance, so why should you? He’s your customer, Dominic – instant gratification required, boredom threshold nil. Any you’re not sure about, just refer them to me or Alistair.”

  He then got called away to the phone. Dominic took the heap of manuscripts and retreated to a chair against the wall, dumping them beside him on the floor. He took the uppermost and held it as reverently as if it had been an unknown work by Jane Austen that had been unearthed in an attic in Godmersham. To him it was no less precious. For, however poor the book it would always have another significance of which its
author would be unaware. It was the first manuscript which he, Dominic Sealy, would read as a professional editor.

  He removed the massive elastic band and the pages sprang out of his hand, flying everywhere. He glanced anxiously around and spotted a girl, whose name he did not yet know, watching him from her desk. He smiled sheepishly and she smiled back, very sweetly, as if to say, ‘Don’t worry’. The next ten minutes were spent crouched on the floor, gathering up the pages and getting them back in numerical order.

  Finally settled, he read the first paragraph then mentally stood back and considered his reaction. Was he burning with curiosity to read the second? Well, he wasn’t exactly burning, but he was quite interested. So he read the second paragraph, then the third… and the fourth, and the fifth.

  It was the first novel of a woman whose husband had been posted as ambassador to all sorts of weird and wonderful parts of the world and was clearly autobiographical. Dominic was in the middle of a hilarious passage about a dog which had found its way into a very posh reception at the embassy and eaten all the canapés when he noticed an outstretched palm in front of his nose.

  He looked up at a tall, gaunt man with striking features and a mop of curly, greying hair, then shot to his feet and shook the hand.

  “Welcome to The Dragon’s Head, Daniel. How are you settling in?”

  “It’s Dominic, Mr. Milner.”

  “Sorry. Dominic. And I’m Alistair from now on. We don’t stand on ceremony around here!”

  “Right.”

  “I see Darren’s already offloaded his slush pile onto you.”

  “Yes!” Dominic laughed.

  “Well, you never know, you might find us a gem in there. God knows we need one. Sorry about the desk situation, by the way. We’ll arrange one for you ASAP.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Right! Mustn’t let the grass grow! Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any problems.” And he swept off into his office and shut the door.

  Dominic returned to his manuscript of which he had now reached page forty-seven without coming to a decision. He had formed a picture in his mind of the heroine (or authoress?) – petite, brown hair, bustling, efficient. But he was also detecting another dimension – a pathos, a vulnerability. It was at about ten thirty that the thought suddenly struck him: this woman had devoted months, possibly years to writing this book, she had poured all her tears and joys and precious memories into it – her moments of loneliness, of homesickness, of feeling out of control and unequal to the task expected of her. She had reworded sentences, honed paragraphs, probably sat up until one or two in the morning working on those stubborn passages that refused to come right. Then, full of hope, she had sent a sample to The Dragon’s Head, knowing that some nameless, faceless editor was going to make a decision which could change the course of her entire life. And that editor was him. He imagined her waiting with bated breath for his response, her heartbeat quickening when she saw the packet addressed in her own hand lying on the doormat. Then she would tear it open and discover... what? A bland, standard format rejection letter full of insincere regrets and insincere good wishes for her writing career? It had never occurred to him until that moment what a weight of responsibility rested upon his shoulders. And he had been in the job just under three hours.

  Around eleven Darren brought him a cup of coffee. “I didn’t know whether you took sugar so I took a chance and bunged in two.”

  “Thanks. That’s perfect,” smiled Dominic, who didn’t take sugar.

  “How are you getting on with those manuscripts?”

  “Um…”

  “Not as easy as I made it sound, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t!” he laughed.

  “So, are you ready for some more?”

  “Well, actually I’m still on the first one. The trouble is it seems pretty good. And she once met the Dalai Lama. And Bob Geldof. I just can’t decide.”

  Darren held out his hand, eyeing his protégé knowingly. Dominic put the manuscript into it. He spent three minutes glancing over the first page. “Rejection,” he pronounced, handing it back.

  Dominic said nothing.

  “Look, Dominic, I know where you’re coming from. I used to feel the same way myself when I started out in this business. But the fact is we get around three hundred unsolicited manuscripts a month – most of them are pretty good but we simply don’t have time to read them all. You’re just going to have to learn to be a bit ruthless. And to speed up!”

  Riding home in the tube to the little room he had found in Walthamstow, Dominic reflected upon his first day at The Dragon’s Head. He hadn’t made any disastrous cock-ups and all his colleagues seemed to like him (except Sonia, who, he had quickly discovered, didn’t like anybody except Alistair). Jim, Darren’s fellow-editor, was nice. Patrick, the marketing director, seemed always in a hurry, but was perfectly friendly whenever he paused for breath. Greg, who looked after IT and the company’s website, was pleasant enough in a mumbly, geeky kind of a way. And Debbie – the girl who had smiled at him when he dropped those pages – she was sweet. He felt a little glow of warmth whenever he thought of her.

  He tried to speed up his reading but found it difficult. As a rather solitary child who had grown into a solitary teenager, reading to him had always been a pleasure, an escape, something he liked to savour, and he had got into the habit of taking his time over it. Some offerings even he could see at a glance were just plain bad, but so many seemed pretty good. “If there are any you’re not sure about, just refer them to me or Alistair,” Darren had said. But if he really did that he would be referring almost everything to him or Alistair. What would that say about his critical faculties? So he reluctantly wrote ‘SR’ on slip after slip, every time feeling he was stabbing some fellow author in the back and terrified he was making a dreadful mistake. It was his recurring nightmare: another J.K. Rowling had popped up, a literary superstar who was earning millions, whose latest novel people camped outside Waterstones to grab the moment it appeared on the shelves; and Alistair was saying to Darren, “Didn’t we get a manuscript from her when she was unpublished?” And Darren was replying, “Yes. I gave it to Dominic.”

  On the Tuesday of his second week – after a flurry of furniture rearrangement that put Sonia in a vile mood – he acquired the long-promised desk. His heart soared at the sight of it. No longer would he have to perch on a plastic chair beside his heap of manuscripts like some anxious patient in a doctor’s waiting room. He could now swivel, he could stretch back, he could hold forth, he had somewhere to put his coffee. The next morning, he brought in two little framed photographs from his room – one of his dog and one of his parents – and positioned them carefully, not so much to remind him of his loved ones as to consolidate his claim to the desk and deter anyone who might feel inclined to whip it away again. Why a simple piece of furniture should suddenly boost his self-confidence and give him a sense of being in control, he had no idea. But it did.

  *

  One evening about a week later, he and Darren happened to be leaving the building at the same moment and Darren said, “Fancy a pint?”

  They went to The Green Monkey – a poky little Victorian watering hole a few doors down the road where Darren was clearly a regular – its main attraction being a cramped courtyard garden at the back where he could have a smoke. They took their drinks to the one free table squeezed in the corner and Darren offered him a cigarette, which he accepted. He was not really a smoker but he did not wish to seem uncompanionable.

  Darren lit both cigarettes, took a deep initial drag then contemplated his colleague benignly. “So how's it going, do you reckon?”

  “Fantastic! I'm really enjoying the job. Especially now I've got my desk.”

  “That's great,” Darren smiled, tapping some ash sharply into the ash-tray. “Look, Dominic, a word to the wise, mate. Keep a close eye on the appointments columns. I am.”

  Dominic stared at him in confusion. “Why?”

  He shot
glances to left and right, as though the little courtyard were full of prying ears and eyes. “I shouldn't be telling you this, and for Christ sake don't go repeating it to anyone, but the place is on its uppers. Alistair's passionate about literature, as we all know, and he’s got artistic integrity in spadefuls, but the company's in debt up to the eyeballs. I'm not saying we're going to the wall tomorrow, but if we don't get a major commercial success soon, we'll be in deep shit.”

  Dominic, after a stunned silence, murmured, “I see.”

  “Best case scenario – people start getting laid off. And you know how it works – last in, first out.”

  “Me, in other words.”

  “It's nothing personal. And if it's any comfort, it won't stop with you, although how we can keep the place running on fewer staff I don’t know – we’re all going flat out as it is. The other possibility is that we get rescued – in inverted commas – by one of the giants and just become an imprint but I reckon Alistair would rather die than let that happen. Anyway, sorry to have pissed on your parade, old son.”

  “No, no,” murmured Dominic, still stunned, “I’m glad you told me.”

  It was only as he rode home on the tube that evening that he realised how much he had come to value his job at The Dragon’s Head.

  2

  Two months later, Darren suddenly fell ill, throwing the office into turmoil. Everyone had to adjust their own job description to cover for him and Dominic would often find himself talking on the phone to some top agent or famous author because Alistair, Jim and Patrick were busy on other lines. He was also dealing with agented manuscripts, which he actually found easier since they had already made it through one screening process. But he still had his dreaded slush pile. He was becoming a little more adept at separating the wheat from the chaff, but there was one sample in particular which he simply couldn’t make up his mind about, so he put it aside.