in what is now clear has been the wrong decision, the absolute wrong way to live her entire life.
CHAPTER 14
C amilla stands in the threshold of Jeff Fielder’s office. The editorial meeting is still in progress, so this end of the hall—the editorial department—is completely unpopulated. She glances around Fielder’s assistant’s desk, looking for an appealing pile of manuscript, but doesn’t notice anything special other than the boy’s leather bag, which can only be accurately described as a handbag. A lamentable fashion trend.
She wants to get the hell out of New York City, for good. After growing up in dismal England, then living in dismal New York, ça suffit , as the teachers used to say at boarding school. Enough of these tiny apartments and overpriced grocers, enough of these self-obsessed poufs with their hand luggage and these arrogant financiers with their trophy wives, enough of the crap weather.
So she needs to get on this plane to LA, to continue her purported mission of trying to sell rights—UK book rights, domestic magazine rights, Canadian calendars, whatever derivative rubbish she can pitch—to raise emergency cash. She doesn’t need Brad to tell her that the situation is dire. She can feel the desperation hanging in the air, a miasma of impending financial apocalypse.
The ruin sure did come upon her quickly, more a Pompeii than a Rome. Just a few years ago she was Ms. Midas, conjuring six-figurepaperback deals out of thin air, being consulted on everything, courted, seduced. For a while, she looked totally vindicated in her rejection of the family concern, Papa’s string of shoe stores in the north, a Manchester lad made good enough to buy a house in the part of Pimlico that could pass for Chelsea for those who didn’t know better, and send his girls to school in Switzerland, and drive a pathetically endless string of new Jaguars.
Boarding school backfired when she met an American cousin of her best friend, on ski holiday in Lech. It was love at first sight, nineteen-year-old style, and by May she was ignoring Mum’s entreaties and putting off university and securing a job as a summer au pair for one of those bankery families whose women and children spend their summer in Bridgehampton while Dad comes out at the weekend to get tight and grope the help in the butler’s pantry.
By Labor Day, it was clear that the romance with the cousin was ill-fated. But the ghastly summer job led to a receptionist job at a literary agency—attractive young girls with English accents being the sine qua non of receptionist candidates—and Camilla rang home to announce that she wouldn’t be returning to England or Switzerland, refusing even a single quid from that belligerent insecure old man, thanks-I’ll-make-my-own-way. And she did, for a good long while.
But then that big bully of a beast rose up and ate her profession. First the web devoured book clubs, then magazines, and now its maw is agape, ravenous, ready to swallow the whole bloody publishing business. She had done nothing wrong, other than to not get out sooner. Now it’s almost too late.
Camilla takes a step inside Fielder’s office, then another, pulling in her wheeled luggage, setting her tote bag atop the suitcase.
It’s funny that no one in America has ever questioned her about her university degree. Just as no one looks down upon her for her class, because as far as they know she’s upper.
Camilla sees what she’s looking for: a tall stack of paper in the middle of the desk, Fielder’s antique pen sitting on the top sheet. She takes anotherstep. She cranes her neck forward, takes a step closer, to the edge of the desk, and thumbs through the stack to find the title page: The Accident , by Anonymous. The same thing she noticed on Brad’s desk.
Coincidentally—or not—this is the very same manuscript that Camilla heard about last night, at the party, from that high-energy assistant at Atlantic Talent Management. The girl
CHAPTER 14
C amilla stands in the threshold of Jeff Fielder’s office. The editorial meeting is still in progress, so this end of the hall—the editorial department—is completely unpopulated. She glances around Fielder’s assistant’s desk, looking for an appealing pile of manuscript, but doesn’t notice anything special other than the boy’s leather bag, which can only be accurately described as a handbag. A lamentable fashion trend.
She wants to get the hell out of New York City, for good. After growing up in dismal England, then living in dismal New York, ça suffit , as the teachers used to say at boarding school. Enough of these tiny apartments and overpriced grocers, enough of these self-obsessed poufs with their hand luggage and these arrogant financiers with their trophy wives, enough of the crap weather.
So she needs to get on this plane to LA, to continue her purported mission of trying to sell rights—UK book rights, domestic magazine rights, Canadian calendars, whatever derivative rubbish she can pitch—to raise emergency cash. She doesn’t need Brad to tell her that the situation is dire. She can feel the desperation hanging in the air, a miasma of impending financial apocalypse.
The ruin sure did come upon her quickly, more a Pompeii than a Rome. Just a few years ago she was Ms. Midas, conjuring six-figurepaperback deals out of thin air, being consulted on everything, courted, seduced. For a while, she looked totally vindicated in her rejection of the family concern, Papa’s string of shoe stores in the north, a Manchester lad made good enough to buy a house in the part of Pimlico that could pass for Chelsea for those who didn’t know better, and send his girls to school in Switzerland, and drive a pathetically endless string of new Jaguars.
Boarding school backfired when she met an American cousin of her best friend, on ski holiday in Lech. It was love at first sight, nineteen-year-old style, and by May she was ignoring Mum’s entreaties and putting off university and securing a job as a summer au pair for one of those bankery families whose women and children spend their summer in Bridgehampton while Dad comes out at the weekend to get tight and grope the help in the butler’s pantry.
By Labor Day, it was clear that the romance with the cousin was ill-fated. But the ghastly summer job led to a receptionist job at a literary agency—attractive young girls with English accents being the sine qua non of receptionist candidates—and Camilla rang home to announce that she wouldn’t be returning to England or Switzerland, refusing even a single quid from that belligerent insecure old man, thanks-I’ll-make-my-own-way. And she did, for a good long while.
But then that big bully of a beast rose up and ate her profession. First the web devoured book clubs, then magazines, and now its maw is agape, ravenous, ready to swallow the whole bloody publishing business. She had done nothing wrong, other than to not get out sooner. Now it’s almost too late.
Camilla takes a step inside Fielder’s office, then another, pulling in her wheeled luggage, setting her tote bag atop the suitcase.
It’s funny that no one in America has ever questioned her about her university degree. Just as no one looks down upon her for her class, because as far as they know she’s upper.
Camilla sees what she’s looking for: a tall stack of paper in the middle of the desk, Fielder’s antique pen sitting on the top sheet. She takes anotherstep. She cranes her neck forward, takes a step closer, to the edge of the desk, and thumbs through the stack to find the title page: The Accident , by Anonymous. The same thing she noticed on Brad’s desk.
Coincidentally—or not—this is the very same manuscript that Camilla heard about last night, at the party, from that high-energy assistant at Atlantic Talent Management. The girl
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