Chapter 5

      It’s not until Emma has switched on her computer and made herself a coffee, that she notices the bottle of champagne on her desk. ‘We got it!’ shouts the note attached to its front. She races round to Miranda’s office. Digby is there.

      ‘Ah Emma.’ Emma is almost touched that he’s remembered her name. ‘Congratulations – wonderful news. We must have lunch to celebrate. I’ll get my secretary, er –’

      ‘Fiona?’

      ‘Ah yes, Fiona, to arrange. Quite so. Well I must –’

      Lose some weight? Find a proper job? Finish my sentences properly? thinks Emma.

      ‘ – go to a meeting. Yes. Quite so. Well done – again.’ He shambles off.

      Miranda sweeps over and folds Emma in a mother-hen embrace. ‘Well done, Emma. Passion never fails eh? At least not with authors.’ She holds Emma at arm’s length, studying her face as if considering a particularly tricky cryptic crossword clue. ‘Richard seems to have taken a shine to you.’

      Emma tries to hold her gaze, but fails and pretends to study the photograph on the wall of Miranda as a young editor with Evelyn Waugh.

      ‘Just be careful, Emma. Creatives can be complex creatures, you know.’

      ‘I know. I’m just his editor. Strictly professional at all times. How much did we pay in the end?’ asks Emma, changing the subject.

      ‘Enough, but not as much as Joanna wanted so at least that’s some blessing. Richard is coming in to sign the contract this afternoon. I called The Bookseller and they’re sending a photographer to mark the happy occasion.’

      ‘Great’

      ‘See you later then and well done, my dear.’

      Emma practically skips back to her desk and is delighted when she bumps into Jacqui, head of publicity and Joel’s sidekick. Emma observes that her scarlet nails are looking particularly talon-like and her pouting lips shine with matching lipstick and gloss.

      ‘Emma, darrrrling. I hear we got the booook – haauuuw splendid,’ she rasps sounding like the snake from The Jungle Book.

      ‘Thank you,’ says Emma smiling. Jacqui looks perturbed that she has mistaken her comment for congratulations.

      ‘We-ell, if yoou’ll excuuse me, I’m just orff to see Jooel.’

      ‘Oh lovely, I’ll come with you,’ says Emma. Jacqui frowns but says nothing.

      Joel’s office is the size of a broom cupboard, but he does have an impressive view over the roofs and occasional spire of central London. Pictures of every kind of motivational speaker and business guru, whose flesh Joel has pressed, hang on his walls. His favourite is the one of Alan Sugar pointing accusingly out of its frame signed with the words ‘You’re bloody fired, Joel mate’. As Jacqui walks in his face lights up and then falls as he sees Emma behind her.

      ‘Jacqui. Emma.’ The two names are uttered in tones relative to his feelings for each of them.

      ‘Hi, Joel. I just wanted to check that you’d heard the good news? About Richard?’ asks Emma, grinning shamelessly.

      Joel’s face remains fixed in a smile, but his eyes betray panic.

      ‘Oh, didn’t Digby tell you?’ says Emma without mercy. ‘We got it. Isn’t that fantastic?’

      ‘Congratulations, Emma. You must be delighted. I suppose Jacqui and I will have to do our best to market the unmarketable, eh?’

      Emma is almost impressed by this neat left hook, but nothing can dampen her mood today. ‘I’m sure you will, Joel. See you later,’ she says, skipping back down the corridor like a schoolgirl who’s just got one over on the mean kids.

      Diana Darcy looks at herself in the mirror and is satisfied. Despite the onset of grand-motherhood and the advent of her sixties, she senses that she is still a good-looking woman. Her mother taught her that to dress well is to live well, and it is a sentiment she carries with her still. Sometimes, when she is shopping in town or out with the children in the park, she notices the fat people, the unkempt, the careless and their appearance disgusts her.

      ‘Mum, don’t be such a snob!’ Rachel hisses as her mother wrinkles her nose at another overweight child in a tracksuit getting wedged at the top of a slide.

      ‘Rachel, dear, it’s just indicative of our society. I read about it in the paper. Overweight mothers breed overweight children. It’s tragic really.’

      Diana pats her hair, fixes a bracelet onto her wrist and dabs a little of her perfume behind each ear. She checks her appearance once more, smoothing her skirt and removing a hair from her black cashmere jumper.

      ‘Ah, my vision, my life.’ Edward appears at the door, bowing in a mock-romantic gesture.

      ‘You old fool,’ laughs Diana fondly. ‘Right, I’m going to meet daughter number one and those recalcitrant children for coffee. What are your plans?’

      ‘Oh don’t worry about me. The Telegraph crossword beckons. Do we have any Kit Kats?’

      ‘No. No chocolate for you, not with your cholesterol,’