Just the Way You Are Read online

  Martin was well dressed, although someone should have told him not to undo the extra button at the top of his shirt, Gemma thought. He wore a bespoke suit, polished brogues and non-novelty cuff-links. He was not too tall, fair and not unhandsome. All good. He looked confident as opposed to nervous, as though he had attended similar events before. Gemma was unsure as to whether his confident manner was a positive thing or not.

  “I did of course try to memorise a dozen opening lines before I sat down but you – and that dress – have left me a little lost for words.”

  Gemma outwardly blushed and inwardly cringed.

  “Well I hope you find your voice again within the next five minutes – and you’re able to tell me more about yourself…”

  “Well I work close by, in insurance. When I’m not being taken out to lunch I’m back in the office, crunching numbers… I’m into motor racing. I feel the need, the need for speed – as well as speed dating, so to speak.”

  Gemma forced a smile and slight laugh, both out of politeness and pity. As she did so she noticed Martin ogle Nancy beside him. After impressing upon Gemma how well off he was (whilst speaking loudly enough for Nancy to hear also) Martin revealed a more sensitive side. He even creased his brow and softened his expression to heighten his sense of sincerity.

  “I guess I’m here because the long hours I work makes it difficult to meet people… I just want to meet someone who has a good heart and who’ll laugh at my jokes, even the ones that are unfunny… In terms of my bad points? Some people call me a perfectionist. I can be obsessed in regards to getting something right…”

  Before Gemma had a window to talk about herself the buzzer went. The sound came as a relief, more than a disappointment. Martin was history.

  “Hi, I’m Colin.”

  Colin was tall, wore glasses and had a few day’s growth which he (and he alone) called a stubble. He unfortunately got the leg of his chair caught on the table before sitting down. Colin’s suit was cheaper than his predecessor’s, but his manner was more genuine (which wasn’t terribly difficult). Colin was also gracious and curious enough to ask about Gemma instead of just talking about himself. He was sufficiently polite – and engaged by the woman in front of him – not to keep glancing at Nancy and her two glaring virtues.

  “I work as an assistant to a literary agent, although hopefully by the end of next week I’ll be a literary agent in my own right, as I should have just closed my first deal,” Gemma explained, her aspect brightening at the prospect of getting her author Thomas Silver – and his novel Daylight – a firm offer from a publisher.

  “Forgive my ignorance of the industry Gemma, but what does a literary agent do?”

  “That’s okay. There are plenty of authors who probably ask that same question. The cynic would say that the job of a literary agent is to collect fifteen to twenty percent of everything an author makes. Others would say it’s our job to earn that fifteen to twenty percent by negotiating a better deal for an author and developing their manuscript. Perhaps the most accurate answer lies somewhere in between those two scenarios though.”

  “So does your agency look after any famous authors, or actors, that I might have heard of?” Colin remarked, clearly interested in the latter more than the former. Gemma had noted his cufflinks in the shape of film projectors.

  “Unfortunately it’s just a literary agency, although someone has just taken out an option on a book by one of our clients.”

  “Cool. If you need a date for the premier let me know. Only joking. Were you able to take a walk around the market before you got here? If it looked familiar it’s because it’s featured in plenty of films. The Mummy Returns, Harry Potter, the second Tomb Raider. To just name a few.”

  “You seem to know your films.”

  “It’s partly what I miss about being in a relationship. Going to the cinema together, sharing popcorn. Or curling up on the sofa at home with a good movie. What’s your favourite film?”

  “Oh I’m not sure. I suppose the last film I saw which made me cry though was 12 Years A Slave,” Gemma said, lying. The honest answer was The Incredible Bert Wonderstone, the movie having made her cry with laughter.

  They chatted some more and got onto the subject of “Dream Holidays”. Gemma said how she wanted to visit Rome and Pompeii. Colin replied by saying how he was making his dream come true, having booked tickets to attend the Sundance Film Festival.

  “Perhaps you would like to come with me. Obviously we’d have to get to know each other some more first,” he enthused, hopeful that she could get the time off – and pay for her own flight.

  Gemma’s draw dropped, even more than the broker’s had when he had gawped at her sister in the market. She was just about to reply, but their time was up.

  Saved by the buzzer.

  Colin was nice, but…

  4.

  Next to sit down was Gordon. Gordon worked in IT support. He was confident without being arrogant and special in that he seemed normal. He was fun, engaging and self-deprecating. And as delicious as the cake she had devoured at the restaurant. Gemma started to like him, right up to the point where she noticed the mark on his hand from having recently taken off his wedding ring. She duly made a note to check for wedding rings on future participants – and men in general. They are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of them.

  After Gordon came Michael. Michael’s broken nose gave him a rugged, rough air. He wore a polo shirt with jeans. He was fully aware of how handsome he looked. Unfortunately he was also completely unaware of how shallow he was, Gemma judged. He spent over half of the allotted time complaining about a number of the other women he had spoken to throughout the event so far, which Gemma found less than endearing. One was a “stuck-up bitch” and the other was so dull as to make “a northerner seem interesting”. Gemma began to suspect that Michael’s broken nose had come from his last girlfriend, or his own mother.

  After Michael came Kevin. Kevin wore a slim-fit shirt, which was ill-advised. He spoke more through his nose than mouth, which gave his voice a slightly grating nasal twang. And in his nasal twang he spent a great deal of time whining about his ex-girlfriend, Becky. She had cheated on him and stolen money out of their joint account. Gemma sympathised with the heartbroken civil servant, though she couldn’t wholly blame Becky for leaving.

  Gemma spoke to a few more participants, although she found herself increasingly glancing at her watch. She needed a break – and a drink. A few guys took an interest when she mentioned her job. More than one asked if she published any erotica (to which she had to patiently explain the difference between a publisher and an agent). More than one asked her how much money literary agents and authors made. More than one mentioned how their mum read, but they found it “boring”.

  A good man is hard to find.

  *

  Gemma made her excuses to Chad and Kelly that she wouldn’t be able to stay for the duration of the event once the buzzer sounded at the break. They kept smiling whilst saying how they were “sad” and “disappointed”, but “understood”. They seemed to speak as one and finish each other’s sentences like Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee.

  Gemma decided to walk off some of her disappointment. She crossed over London Bridge and walked along the Thames. A breeze tempered the muggy air of the summer evening. A few party boats went by full of half drunk, or completely drunk, revellers. The glow from dusk was receding, like the retreating tide, but the skyline was illuminated by the lights on the buildings, HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. Gemma was at first philosophical in regards to the, at best, underwhelming event. It was an experience… Perhaps I’m being too critical and bitchy like Victoria and some of the guys there were half decent… I could and should have given them more of a chance. I should have given myself more of a chance… She consciously selected some upbeat songs to play on her iPhone. Who can be ever be truly sad whilst listening to Take That or Michael Bublé?

  Gemma became wistful however when she thought about h
ow she had already found a half-decent guy and had let him go. Daniel. She had met him at a mutual friend’s house party over a year ago, rather than through a computer algorithm or a Chad and Kelly. He was sweet and nice looking and had just qualified as an accountant. At first he had acted quite shy, which Gemma found endearing. She enjoyed bringing him out of his shell and introducing him to new people and experiences. In some ways Gemma was Professor Higgins and Daniel was her Eliza Doolittle. Daniel understood her sense of humour and the rhythms of her moods. He was neither over-possessive nor distant. He knew what to put in a risotto for her, what to say when she over-complained about her sister or her work – and even which TV box sets to buy her. The little things add up.

  Eventually they moved in together. Although familiarity didn’t breed contempt, it did breed doubts and an attitude of taking one another for granted. She realised just how much time he spent playing “video games” (as Gemma called them, to Daniel’s slight annoyance). He realised just how much she was devoted to her job. He wanted her to succeed, but he didn’t want to hear how the publishers Bradley House were suddenly interested in vampire novels or transgender crime thrillers. They stopped going out in the evening; he didn’t want to or she was too tired. But at the same time they were often bored at home. The passion went, if it had ever been there in the first place. They would sit in silence and watch TV or he would play his Xbox as Gemma went through a manuscript or answered emails. They expressed their regrets, but the break-up was amicable enough. Some relationships just have a set shelf life. Reality can cause any dream to rust.

  Life gets in the way of love… But I didn’t love him. He was more like a comfortable pair of shoes…

  “But I miss having someone, caring for someone – and having someone care about me in return,” Gemma said to her flatmate and best friend Abbie later that evening as they opened a bottle of wine and sat around watching the latest BBC production of Jane Austen’s Emma. Gemma had first met Abbie at university and they had continued their friendship, in part, because they both now worked in publishing. After Gemma broke up with Daniel Abbie invited her to flat share. Abbie was sweet, petite and had gone on just as many dates over the past couple of months as Gemma had experienced speed dates that evening. “More is more,” Abbie had explained with an impish grin.

  “You’ll find someone. You just need a more effective matchmaker than Chad or Kelly,” Abbie replied, comically dropping part of the Cornetto she was eating on her lap as she did so.

  “I hope so. When I tell people I’m single I see a look in their eyes of pity or disappointment, as if I’m somehow deficient. Or when I mention I’m single to certain guys I think they view me as desperate, or easy prey… I should mention though that, the more I think about it, the more I think that there wasn’t a great deal of genuinely single men present at the event tonight. As soon as we stopped for a break many had their heads down on their Blackberries, texting their wives and girlfriends that they would be late home.”

  Abbie let out a burst of laughter and then pursed her lips and shook her head in disapproval, seeing the lack of amusement on her friend’s face. She sympathised with Gemma, but she also knew how overly critical she could be of men – and the world.

  “So it looks like that you won’t be able to ever find your Mr Knightley at a speed dating event.”

  “I’d settle for finding Jeremy Northam,” Gemma said, referring to the actor who had played Knightley in the Gwyneth Paltrow adaptation of Emma. “It’d just be nice to win first prize for once, the gold medal, whether through luck or working hard at a relationship. But enough about me. I’m boring myself listening to my jeremiahs. How was the launch party? Did you sell plenty of books? Any C-list celebrities turn up?”

  “I vaguely recognised someone from EastEnders, the one who is up on the drink driving charge – in real life as opposed to the show. I also had the misfortune to get stuck talking with someone who said she was auditioning to be on Made in Chelsea. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she would be more suited to The Only Way Is Essex. As per usual the wealthiest and most important, or self-important, people there refused to buy a book. I had at least three “old” and “dear” friends of the author come up to me to ask if I could post them a complimentary copy, having not come out with any money or their credit cards…

  “The author was fun and charming when giving his speech though. Either he drank too much, or his agent or editor had whispered into his ear like the devil, but he was under the impression that he has a bestseller on his hands – and that he will be able to live by his pen for the rest of his life. I hope someone has told him not to give up the day job. The eBook is as ridiculously overpriced as a Lily Allen album – and the size of the print run is about as large as her IQ… Waterstones have ordered in five hundred copies and W.H.Smiths have taken half that amount… The launch party could have as easily been a wake… But there’s my jeremiah for the evening too,” the publicist said to the literary agent, clinking their glasses together.

  5.

  Gemma went to bed early. She wanted to go over her notes once more for her meeting the following morning with Thomas Silver. Her bedroom could have easily been mistaken for a study, or more so a library. Books littered the furniture and floor as if they were breeding like rabbits: shiny chick-lit paperbacks with covers filled with anorexic women (or silhouettes of women, suffering from anorexia); crime novels that didn’t quite look like or read like Lee Child or Jeffrey Deaver; beautiful hardback classic editions of Jane Austen, Dickens and Tolstoy; contemporary literary fiction recommended by The Guardian with unbroken spines that Gemma promised herself she would read but would probably just give away as presents. Due to the amount of books throughout the room there was little space for anything else. Most of her clothes were bunched on a metal rack and billowed out from the breeze coming through the window.

  Although Gemma had read over the manuscript a countless number of times she still felt excited and touched when going through Daylight, by Thomas Silver, once again. The novel centred upon Joshua Stern, a Jewish student during the Third Reich. The book, part romance and part thriller, traced his relationship with his girlfriend Rachel. Their love grows, as the rest of their world crumbles around them. The last third of the novel describes their dramatic attempt to escape from Germany to Britain, through France, as the invasion takes place. The book was intelligent, moving and a page turner. Gemma had genuinely cried after reading the tragic ending too. After being betrayed by a couple of French infantry, who rape and murder Rachel, Stern takes his revenge on the soldiers. He is then captured and imprisoned in a small barn, along with the family who had previously hid him and Rachel a week before. When a sadistic German officer tosses a hand grenade into the barn, in order to murder the prisoners, Joshua throws himself on it and saves the family.

  Gemma’s excitement was also borne from the fact that Daylight was the first book for which she would be responsible for securing a contract. She had inherited the novel from an agent at Williams & Powell Literary Agency who had recently retired. The proposal and manuscript had been largely clean and ready, although Gemma had made a few suggestions to the author via email, which he accepted and appreciated. She enjoyed writing to the novelist and they had shared the odd joke together, as well as book recommendations. They were now in a position to send out material to a number of editors at various major publishers. Happiness would be agenting her first book deal.

  Gemma was a little nervous about meeting her author, but more so she was looking forward to it. She genuinely admired the book (and also the two previous titles she had read by Silver). Her boss, Amanda Williams, had asked her to impress their new client and had confidence in Gemma – and the novel – believing that she could sign Daylight up with one of the big five publishing houses. Thomas Silver had recently moved to the agency, having come over from Roger Ash & Associates. Ash was famous in the trade for having pronounced that nothing would come of eBooks and Kindle – and that he woul
d give “digital rights away on our backlist over my dead body”. At first he remained stubborn, proud or stupid and acted as if eBooks didn’t exist. He then attempted to set his own publishers up and sell his authors’ backlist titles through the Amazon White Glove programme. It was too little and too late. The result was that his agency went bankrupt.

  Thomas Silver had written two books that Roger Ash had agented, but it had been three years since his last paperback had been published. The previous novels, historical thrillers, had been critical and commercial successes. Gemma put the author’s time in the literary wilderness down to the troubles with his agent.

  I want to do right by him.

  6.

  Gemma wanted to look smart and formal for her meeting that day, to project an impression of authority and professionalism, but didn’t want to over-do things as if she were attending a job interview. She wore a navy Jacquard pencil skirt from Dorothy Perkins and a white peplum top from Oasis.

  The offices of Williams & Powell Literary Agency were situated just off Warren Street. The agency owned a whole floor, a labyrinth of frosted glass and gleaming chrome. A number of books published by the agency’s authors were nicely presented in a display by reception. The books on show were often rotated, due to if a particular celebrity chef or bestselling literary novelist was in that day and they needed to feel that they were the agency’s premier brand.

  Gemma worked primarily as an assistant to Amanda Williams who was, along with Tarquin Powell, a founder of the agency. Gemma was occasionally intimidated by her fifty-something boss but she still liked and respected her for the right reasons. The agency, over the past five years, had contracted a little but it could still endure troubled times and turn a healthy profit due the strength of its stable of authors and ability to secure foreign rights. Amanda had tried to move with the times, in light of the eBook revolution, but the times had moved quicker. She still occasionally negotiated six figure deals for titles and sold quality non-fiction and literary novels, yet she could no longer make a guarantee to most of her authors that they could live by their pen.