spin-off marketing, all of it, but that’s it. This writer is now a desiccated bloody locust, OK, and there’s nothing else to suck out of him. Go on to the next thing.’
But she hadn’t said that. Because, apart from anything else, Minerva Cinch didn’t represent flash-in-the-pan clients.
And she didn’t
have
the next thing.
The drink came. Another admirer had approached Philip. She clocked his swivel-eyed panic.
There were two alternatives, neither of them ideal.
She could take him away. Take his arm and lead him along Park Lane to the pedestrian subway, then into the darkness of Hyde Park. There, by the Joy of Life Fountain, she would kiss him – tongue in, if she could bear it – thank him for everything, pull a small pearl-handled revolver from her handbag and shoot his brains out of the back of his head. She had nothing, in principle, against mercy-killing and the sound of the traffic would drown the shot. The countervailing arguments were that she didn’t have a gun in her handbag, and that, given the weather and what she was wearing, she’d freeze her tits off before they were halfway there.
Or, when Philip was announced as the winner, help him to his feet, aim him at the stage (if this snootfest featured anything as vulgar as a stage), fake a period cramp and hasten unto the nearest exit. Home to Notting Hill for clothes, the EuroStar to Paris before midnight, the French cottage by dawn, rip the phone line out of the wall. A year later, come back and try to reconstruct her credibility.
Anything, really, rather than have to sit there watching Philip fail to make a speech, to watch him stand there in his droopy cummerbund like a wet firework and be displayed as the personification of Failed Second Novelist in a modern morality play. Not even a play. A
mime
. A sodding
tableau
.
There were – had to be – other possibilities; but before she could think of them a person wearing long white hair and a cloak appeared from somewhere and struck a gong.Almost simultaneously, the doors to the Banqueting Suite were opened inwards and she and her neurasthenic client were swept towards their ghastly destiny.
They found themselves seated at one of the six tables closest to – yes, there was one, with a lectern in front of blue curtains – the stage. Three of the other tables featured a doomed shortlisted writer. They all knew. She could tell at a glance. More than a glance, actually; she met and relished the bitter gaze of her arch-rival, Bronwyn Yronwode of Rawnsley and Yronwode, two of whose clients were here as losers.
The dinner was, considering the occasion, less than fantastic. Minerva drank recklessly, hopelessly. She and Philip shared their table with four others: a terribly anxious aristocratic girl called Jonnie from Gorgon PR; Gloria Rowsel from the BBC, who looked, and possibly was, pregnant; someone from Amazon, whom she should have schmoozed but couldn’t be arsed; and one of the judges, the Ikea Professor of Utopian Studies at the University of Gateshead, who spent most of the meal staring with pessimistic lust at Minerva’s bosom.
Had it not been for Jonnie, who suffered from logorrhoea, and Gloria, who held the world record for name-dropping (thirty-two in under four minutes), there would have been no conversation at all. The only intelligent thing Philip could manage was ‘Yes’, when the Utopian asked if he wanted the salt. He prodded and dismembered his Coq au Cidre like a clueless haruspex.
When, at the end of the meal, they were offered portor brandy Minerva demanded both and poured them into the same glass. She draped one arm over the back of her chair and gazed about her, but mostly at Bronwyn Yronwode, with a devil-may-care expression on her face. Then the stage was lit up, and she prepared herself for the worst.
In accordance with the tradition that governs these events, a great deal of time was taken up by people whose only function was to introduce the next person who would
But she hadn’t said that. Because, apart from anything else, Minerva Cinch didn’t represent flash-in-the-pan clients.
And she didn’t
have
the next thing.
The drink came. Another admirer had approached Philip. She clocked his swivel-eyed panic.
There were two alternatives, neither of them ideal.
She could take him away. Take his arm and lead him along Park Lane to the pedestrian subway, then into the darkness of Hyde Park. There, by the Joy of Life Fountain, she would kiss him – tongue in, if she could bear it – thank him for everything, pull a small pearl-handled revolver from her handbag and shoot his brains out of the back of his head. She had nothing, in principle, against mercy-killing and the sound of the traffic would drown the shot. The countervailing arguments were that she didn’t have a gun in her handbag, and that, given the weather and what she was wearing, she’d freeze her tits off before they were halfway there.
Or, when Philip was announced as the winner, help him to his feet, aim him at the stage (if this snootfest featured anything as vulgar as a stage), fake a period cramp and hasten unto the nearest exit. Home to Notting Hill for clothes, the EuroStar to Paris before midnight, the French cottage by dawn, rip the phone line out of the wall. A year later, come back and try to reconstruct her credibility.
Anything, really, rather than have to sit there watching Philip fail to make a speech, to watch him stand there in his droopy cummerbund like a wet firework and be displayed as the personification of Failed Second Novelist in a modern morality play. Not even a play. A
mime
. A sodding
tableau
.
There were – had to be – other possibilities; but before she could think of them a person wearing long white hair and a cloak appeared from somewhere and struck a gong.Almost simultaneously, the doors to the Banqueting Suite were opened inwards and she and her neurasthenic client were swept towards their ghastly destiny.
They found themselves seated at one of the six tables closest to – yes, there was one, with a lectern in front of blue curtains – the stage. Three of the other tables featured a doomed shortlisted writer. They all knew. She could tell at a glance. More than a glance, actually; she met and relished the bitter gaze of her arch-rival, Bronwyn Yronwode of Rawnsley and Yronwode, two of whose clients were here as losers.
The dinner was, considering the occasion, less than fantastic. Minerva drank recklessly, hopelessly. She and Philip shared their table with four others: a terribly anxious aristocratic girl called Jonnie from Gorgon PR; Gloria Rowsel from the BBC, who looked, and possibly was, pregnant; someone from Amazon, whom she should have schmoozed but couldn’t be arsed; and one of the judges, the Ikea Professor of Utopian Studies at the University of Gateshead, who spent most of the meal staring with pessimistic lust at Minerva’s bosom.
Had it not been for Jonnie, who suffered from logorrhoea, and Gloria, who held the world record for name-dropping (thirty-two in under four minutes), there would have been no conversation at all. The only intelligent thing Philip could manage was ‘Yes’, when the Utopian asked if he wanted the salt. He prodded and dismembered his Coq au Cidre like a clueless haruspex.
When, at the end of the meal, they were offered portor brandy Minerva demanded both and poured them into the same glass. She draped one arm over the back of her chair and gazed about her, but mostly at Bronwyn Yronwode, with a devil-may-care expression on her face. Then the stage was lit up, and she prepared herself for the worst.
In accordance with the tradition that governs these events, a great deal of time was taken up by people whose only function was to introduce the next person who would
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