school, in L.A. While Heddy wants to open a shop in Chelsea selling her ghastly fucking jewellery. You know, the rough diamond stuff she designs herself that was inspired by her gap year in Thailand?’
I smiled; Heddy Houston’s jewellery designs – ‘every bracelet tells a story’ – were beloved of magazine editors and fashion mavens everywhere, but to me they looked childlike and naïve, and I guessed that like me John was a man who liked a diamond ring to look like a diamond ring and not a half-eaten boiled sweet.
But my smile lasted only as long as it took for it to dawn on me that I was probably out of work.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re saying that you want to wind the whole thing up. The
atelier
– everything?’
‘That’s right, old sport. The whole shooting match. Everything. I’ve bought a house in Chelsea – in St Leonard’s Terrace. As soon as the builders have finished with it I’m going to sell the penthouse in Monaco and move back to London. And to hell with the income tax. I want to go to the Garrick Club on a Friday, walk down the King’s Road on a Saturday, and see Chelsea play football on a Sunday. I want to watch the BBC and ITV and eat fish and chips in the Ivy and have Christmas with all the trimmings. And I’m going to spend the rest of the week writing a book – I mean not just the plot, but the whole thing, the way I did when I first started writing. I’ve got an idea that I might have one good book in me – the sort of book that might last a bit longer than the glue on the spine, if you know what I mean. I think perhaps that if I go back to basics, so to speak, I might even win one of those smaller awards – a dagger, or an Edgar. Maybe something better. Fuck knows.’
‘But what about your fifteen-book contract with VVL?’
‘To hell with it. And to hell with them, too. I’ll just have to pay them back the twenty million dollars advance.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ John grinned. ‘Yes.’
‘But what about
Dead Red
?’
‘Don’t worry, you can finish
Dead Red
and get paid just like we agreed, old sport; for that matter all of you guys can finish whatever it is you’re writing now. That should also help to soften the blow for VVL. Naturally I’ll try to cushion the blow for you and everyone else in the
atelier
with some sort of severance package. Which, of course, will be rather more generous in your own case, Don, since you’ve been with me the longest. Fifty thousand quid. How does that sound?’
‘Very generous,’ I said, although I could have pointed out that in any normal year this was only half of what I made from writing John Houston books.
‘And I certainly haven’t forgotten my promise – to try to find you a decent outline for a bestseller of your own, old sport.’
I felt my heart skip a beat; this was something much more worrying than a catastrophic reduction in my earnings.
‘Holy shit, John. You goddamned asshole.’
‘What?’
‘What do you mean “try”? You already said you were going to give me the outline of
The Geneva Convention
.’
As a reward for twenty years of loyal service, John had previously promised to ‘donate’ me the very much-needed plot for a book I was going to write myself, just as soon as I’d finished writing
Dead Red
. This was to be a stand-alone thriller about a Geneva-based hedge fund called
The Geneva Convention
and John had said it was one of the best outlines he’d written in a long time; when I read it I knew he wasn’t wrong, and I had no doubt that provided I observed all of the lessons I had learned while writing thrillers for John then
The Geneva Convention
might actually make me a small fortune. Perhaps even a large one. My own agent, Craig Conrad, had listenedto my description of John’s outline and assured me he could probably sell it to someone at Random House for at least fifty grand; all that I had to do was write the damn thing.
‘I
I smiled; Heddy Houston’s jewellery designs – ‘every bracelet tells a story’ – were beloved of magazine editors and fashion mavens everywhere, but to me they looked childlike and naïve, and I guessed that like me John was a man who liked a diamond ring to look like a diamond ring and not a half-eaten boiled sweet.
But my smile lasted only as long as it took for it to dawn on me that I was probably out of work.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re saying that you want to wind the whole thing up. The
atelier
– everything?’
‘That’s right, old sport. The whole shooting match. Everything. I’ve bought a house in Chelsea – in St Leonard’s Terrace. As soon as the builders have finished with it I’m going to sell the penthouse in Monaco and move back to London. And to hell with the income tax. I want to go to the Garrick Club on a Friday, walk down the King’s Road on a Saturday, and see Chelsea play football on a Sunday. I want to watch the BBC and ITV and eat fish and chips in the Ivy and have Christmas with all the trimmings. And I’m going to spend the rest of the week writing a book – I mean not just the plot, but the whole thing, the way I did when I first started writing. I’ve got an idea that I might have one good book in me – the sort of book that might last a bit longer than the glue on the spine, if you know what I mean. I think perhaps that if I go back to basics, so to speak, I might even win one of those smaller awards – a dagger, or an Edgar. Maybe something better. Fuck knows.’
‘But what about your fifteen-book contract with VVL?’
‘To hell with it. And to hell with them, too. I’ll just have to pay them back the twenty million dollars advance.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ John grinned. ‘Yes.’
‘But what about
Dead Red
?’
‘Don’t worry, you can finish
Dead Red
and get paid just like we agreed, old sport; for that matter all of you guys can finish whatever it is you’re writing now. That should also help to soften the blow for VVL. Naturally I’ll try to cushion the blow for you and everyone else in the
atelier
with some sort of severance package. Which, of course, will be rather more generous in your own case, Don, since you’ve been with me the longest. Fifty thousand quid. How does that sound?’
‘Very generous,’ I said, although I could have pointed out that in any normal year this was only half of what I made from writing John Houston books.
‘And I certainly haven’t forgotten my promise – to try to find you a decent outline for a bestseller of your own, old sport.’
I felt my heart skip a beat; this was something much more worrying than a catastrophic reduction in my earnings.
‘Holy shit, John. You goddamned asshole.’
‘What?’
‘What do you mean “try”? You already said you were going to give me the outline of
The Geneva Convention
.’
As a reward for twenty years of loyal service, John had previously promised to ‘donate’ me the very much-needed plot for a book I was going to write myself, just as soon as I’d finished writing
Dead Red
. This was to be a stand-alone thriller about a Geneva-based hedge fund called
The Geneva Convention
and John had said it was one of the best outlines he’d written in a long time; when I read it I knew he wasn’t wrong, and I had no doubt that provided I observed all of the lessons I had learned while writing thrillers for John then
The Geneva Convention
might actually make me a small fortune. Perhaps even a large one. My own agent, Craig Conrad, had listenedto my description of John’s outline and assured me he could probably sell it to someone at Random House for at least fifty grand; all that I had to do was write the damn thing.
‘I
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