‘But really they’re thrown in the bin?’
‘In a New York second.’
Stefan checked his watch and stood up. Jago took the hint. Besides, he’d arranged to call Laurie Spink in five minutes’ time. ‘I’ll be off,’ he offered. ‘So you’ll do it?’
Stefan shrugged. ‘No. It’s not really me, I think.’
‘Of course it’s you!’
‘I’m not a writer, Yago.’
‘No problem, big guy. We’ll write it for you in the office. I’ll ghost you. Happens all the time.’
‘Monstrous boobs may be for some the cat’s pyjamas, but – no.’
‘Stefan, why are you doing this to me?’
‘Because it’s a free country.’ Stefan shrugged. ‘East is east and west is west. Genetics is not all beer and skittles.’
Jago was confused, but more than that, he was hurt. Journalists always pout if you puncture their plan, even if they’ve only had the plan for the last ninety seconds.
‘Why do you call it copy?’ Stefan asked.
Jago looked puzzled.
‘Call what copy?’
‘Copy. I mean, the writing is supposed to be one-off, I think?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far. This is journalism we’re talking about.’
‘I mean, would you ever say, “Gosh, hey, this is very original one-off copy”?’
Jago had had enough. ‘If I ever said, “Gosh, hey,” at all, I’d lose my job, Stefan. As should you, I might add.’
He strode out of the canteen, and extracted his mobile phone from an inside pocket. Stefan had just completely wasted his time. What a two-face! ‘Gosh, hey, this is very original one-off copy!’ he said, with Stefan’s careful accent. He couldn’t wait to get back to the office to try that one on the guys.
Belinda spent the morning writing an imaginary riding-in-Ireland piece for Jago’s paper, and wondering what had happened to Neville. He was not his usual bouncy self. Even when the phone rang and it was her mother (eek!) there was only a twitch or scuttle from Los Rodentos. Someone phoned up to ask Belinda to appear on radio (she declined, but felt agitated); she remembered Stefan’s birthday was next week; the usual pressures most certainly applied. But no trampolining by small furry bodies. The rats were on a go-slow. Ever since she’d decided to hire Linda, she’d felt like the proverbial sinking ship. ‘Psst, Neville,’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’ Not a scuttle; not a squeak. Life was odd without his wheeling and bouncing. She pictured him with little round spectacles, like John Lennon. But no matter how much she hummed ‘Imagine’ to encourage him, he simply wasn’t interested.
Belinda always had a marvellous time alone with her imagination. Having invented quite a good travel piece, if she said so herself (‘Wind and soft rain whipped the ponies’ fetlocks; my hat was too tight, like an iron band’) she was now plotting the next Verity novel, Atta Girl, Verity!, in which Verity’s impoverished mum would break the terrible news that she couldn’t afford to stable Goldenboy at the Manor House any more – or not unless Verity took a backbreaking after-school job pulling weeds in Camilla’s mummy’s seven-acre garden.
How she enjoyed visiting pain and anguish on Verity, these days. She beamed as she considered Verity’s fate. Ho hum. By the rules of such fiction, Verity must, of course, come back from a perfect hack on Goldenboy, and be rubbing him down with fresh-smelling straw when in the distance, eek! splash!, Camilla falls into the ornamental fishpond! Run to the rescue, Verity! Don’t care if your plaits get wet! Recover Camilla unconscious, apply life-saving techniques, and after a feverish period awaiting Camilla’s recovery, receive as reward (wait for it) free stabling for the rest of your life! And not forgetting double oats for good old Goldenboy!
The children’s book world was mainly supplied these days with grim stuff about discarded hypodermics, but Belinda knew her own smug little readers would lap up the free stabling plot all right, mainly because they had already proved themselves stupid with no imagination. How easy they were to manipulate, these little princesses. Psychoanalysis might never have been invented. ‘Camilla cuts off Verity’s plaits,’ she wrote now, mischievously. ‘Verity caught cheating in the handy-pony. Shame increases when V investigated by RSPCA; maltreatment of G Boy exposed on national TV by Rolf H. V’s mother seeks consolation in lethal cocktail of booze and horse pills, and is shot by vet. Camilla wins Hickstead.’
Just then a key turned in the front door. Mrs Holdsworth? Belinda felt stricken. She’d been so busy torturing Verity! What was the etiquette for sacking a cleaning lady? Did you let her do the cleaning first, or what?
‘Only me,’ called Mrs H, coughing as she slammed the front door, and struggled out of wellingtons.
Belinda stayed paralysed at her desk, panicking. ‘Hello!’ she called, and waited.
‘“Come into the garden, Maud,”’ sang Mrs H, coughing between words. ‘“For the black bat night has—”’ Here a great explosion of phlegm-shifting, culminating in ‘God almighty, Jesus wept.’
She popped her grey head round the study door, fag in mouth. Here goes, thought Belinda, then noticed that Mrs H’s left arm was suspended in a rather grubby sling.
‘Don’t fucking ask,’ said Mrs Holdsworth gloomily. ‘Doctor says six months. I tell you what for nothing. My fucking brass-polishing days are over.’
‘That’s awful,’ sympathized Belinda. ‘And when they’d hardly begun. What a shame. I’m sorry.’
‘So am I. No grip, you see.’
‘I’ve been thinking—’ Belinda began.
‘Fucking stairs are the worst, of course.’
Mrs H scratched her knee through her overall, using her one good arm. Recollecting that there were three floors to her house (plus attic), Belinda didn’t see how an injured wrist stopped you from going upstairs, but she said nothing. Asking Mrs Holdsworth to elaborate on an intriguing statement was a mistake she’d regretted on too many occasions, and she now had a policy of restricting herself to a noncommittal ‘Mm’ wherever possible.
‘Mm,’ she said now, with as much of a funny-old-world tone as she could manage.
Mrs H continued to stand in the doorway. It always grieved her to spend less than half of her allotted three hours telling people how long it was since she bought a scarf. She tried again. ‘Bleeding great ’urricane on the way, apparently.’
‘Mm.’
‘That Salman Rushdie was in the butcher’s again. I said to him, “Very good, mate. Disguising yourself as a pork chop, are you? That’s fucking original.”’
‘Mm.’ Belinda pretended to be deeply engrossed in her notes.
‘My boy says he’s written a new book called Buddha Was a Cunt. Is that true?’
In the café, Maggie read last week’s Stage from cover to cover, filling time before her therapy appointment at two p.m. Maggie had run the gamut of therapy over the years. She’d done Freudian twice and Jungian three times, but had so far avoided Kleinian because Belinda had once said, ‘What, like Patsy Cline?’ which had somehow ruined it. Belinda had an awful way of belittling things that were important to you, by saying the first thing that came into her head. Kleinian therapy would now only involve singing maudlin I-fall-to-pieces country songs, which was what Maggie did at home anyway without paying.
Nowadays Maggie was working with a new therapist, Julia, who was the best she’d ever had. The idea was to work on isolated problems, and correct the thinking that led to inappropriate behaviour