The Men in her Life

Night and Sunday Morning ?’
    Clare nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow of the story.
    ‘... in fact it’s so like one of those films, whenever I think about it, I imagine Mo and Jack in black and white. You know how the story goes: bright, working-class lad wants to better himself and leave his background behind him. Well, that was Jack, in the Laurence Harvey, Albert Finney type of role. But the girlfriends in those films are not really characters, they’re symbols of the world he wants to leave behind and the world he aspires to. Mo represented the working-class bit, and your mum the aspirational bit... the working-class one always gets dumped of course, or killed... except it wasn’t a movie...’ Holly said, looking suddenly sad.
    ‘So she came down from Manchester with him?’ Clare asked.
    ‘They came down from Manchester in 1960. Jack got a job in an advertising agency, Mo demonstrated irons and things in a department store. They were poor and happy at the beginning of swinging London . Must have been great. Jack became a bit of a star at the agency because of inventing Farmer Fred. Did you ever eat Farmer Fred’s Wonderbread?’
    Clare shook her head.
    ‘No, it wasn’t the sort of thing posh families in Hampstead had for their tea, was it? A miraculous triumph of branding over nutrition...’
    Clare laughed. Holly’s perceptions were astringent and she delivered them with an intimidating confidence, but she was so honest it was impossible to feel threatened by her. She could see why she was good at her job. She could weave a yam and sell you a story with complete conviction. It was something she must have inherited from Jack.
    ‘…then Jack meets Philippa,’ Holly went on, ‘a beautiful debutante with brains and ambition, far more appropriate for the life he’s chosen for himself. Then you were conceived. And that’s the end of the story. Or, it would have been if Mo hadn’t been pregnant too. Too proud to tell him, too Catholic to have an abortion, and not Catholic enough to go home to all that guilt and recrimination, so she stayed down here. Everyone likes my mum. She managed.’ Holly’s final sentences were clipped.
    ‘I don’t think that my mother knew about your mother,’ Clare said, wanting to offer some comfort, ‘I hope she didn’t...’
    ‘I don’t really blame her. It wasn’t her fault that she had looks and money,’ Holly said sharply.
    Clare felt suddenly guilty for her earlier reticence.
    ‘My life isn’t really roses round the door,’ she admitted, wanting to repay Holly’s honesty in some way.
    ‘Do you think we’re going to be friends?’ Holly asked, the emotion making her voice sound aggressive.
    ‘Oh yes...’ Clare replied instantly, adding nervously, ‘don’t you?’

Chapter 13

    Holly had heard that one American agent was so arrogant he didn’t even bother speaking to prospective purchasers of his clients’ work until the figure they offered was somewhere near what he was looking for. Instead he kept a buzzer on his desk, like the MISS button in Juke Box Jury, that he would press occasionally just to let the hapless individual at the other end of the line know that he was still there. Holly didn’t know whether the story was apocryphal, but as the producer who was trying to option the new crime novel she had offered him droned on with excuses about why his initial offer would be low, she wished she had the buzzer herself. The inside of her head felt like a lottery machine full of marbles.
    ‘Fifteen hundred against five thousand an hour...’ the producer said, ‘but that is absolutely as high as I can go.’
    ‘Can you get the typescript back to me by messenger then? Bye...’ Holly went to replace the handset on the phone, enjoying the squeals she could hear as he realized what she was doing.
    ‘Sorry, did you say something?’ She spoke into the mouthpiece again.
    ‘What figure did you have in mind?’ he asked.
    ‘I want five up front, and I’m not going to consider less than ten thousand an hour plus repeats and residuals...’
    ‘You’ve got to be joking...’
    ‘I’m deadly serious.’
    She wondered why he laughed, then remembered that Deadly Serious was the title of the novel they were talking about. Her hangover had put a kind of time-lapse delay on her brain.
    ‘Can I think about it?’ he asked her.
    ‘No. You’ve had it exclusive for a fortnight and there’s a buzz about this book. Think about it if you want,