Chapter 21

Realism can break a writer's heart.

Salman Rushdie

I'm surprised Iseult left. I'm sure Charles is too. He must have expected that his newly proclaimed fiancée would stay the night with him. The night he and I got engaged, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We made love three times. But she's heading home with her cousin and doesn't seem to care what Charles might want. Everything about this engagement is weird. Everything about this relationship is weird.

Since our split, both Charles and I have seen other people. He went out for a few months with a singer he'd met at an arts festival, and was seeing a music critic for a short time too. But there was certainly no suggestion of him being in love with either Daria or Rowena, and both times the relationship just fizzled out. As for me, I've had a busy social life and have met lots of men. But despite going on occasional enjoyable dates, I've always compared them to Charles and found them wanting. He once said the same to me.

Maybe that's why we never actually got around to finalising the divorce. Maybe, deep down, we always expected to get back together.

But if that was ever the case, it's not now.

He walks back in from the front door, where he was saying goodbye to his new fiancée. I leave him in the living room with a glass of whiskey while I supervise the departure of the catering staff, who've already packed up all their equipment. When I return, he's sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs, his shirt unbuttoned and his bow tie abandoned.

‘One of us had better get a solicitor to file those papers asap,' I say.

‘That'll be me,' says Charles. ‘I'll get on it right away.'

He's bursting with the kind of excitement he usually only has on publication day. As for me, I'm still in shock. Perhaps I was wrong to think, however fleetingly, that one day we might get back together, but being married to him, connected to him, has meant we've had each other's backs in a way that no other relationship between us would. There'll be another relationship now. Him and Iseult. Husband and wife.

But not until we get a divorce.

‘Well, you've certainly brought the new year in with a bang.' I pour myself a glass of red wine from the bottle beside me. ‘I wish you'd warned me.'

‘I didn't know myself.'

‘You didn't know?' I can hardly keep the disbelief from my voice.

‘I mean, I wasn't sure I'd actually do it. Not because I don't love her,' he adds quickly. ‘Because I didn't think she'd like a fuss. But it was such a lovely opportunity . . .'

‘For her not to say no.'

‘She wouldn't have said no.'

‘She might have if she knew you were still married,' I observe. ‘She might change her mind when she learns you weren't truthful about it.'

‘Stop going on about it. I told her about you. The divorce itself is a technicality.'

‘If you say so. I'm not convinced she'll see it like that. You should have told me before you pulled that stunt.'

‘I didn't think you'd care. It's hardly going to affect us, after all. We've made it work between us, haven't we?'

‘Well, yes. But making it work hasn't stopped us sleeping together, has it?' I say this in as offhand a tone as I can, and add that it will never happen again.

‘Obviously.' He looks at me as though I'm crazy. ‘I wouldn't cheat on her with you, Ariel. Those other times were . . . well, they were lovely and all that, but it was just sex, wasn't it?'

I say nothing.

‘It kept us close,' he adds.

Did he think that sleeping with me from time to time made me work harder on his behalf? That I did things for him I wouldn't otherwise have done? If that's the case, he doesn't know me at all.

‘When did you decide you wanted to marry her? It's awfully sudden.'

‘I know it's sudden, but I also know it's right,' he says.

‘Why didn't you tell me about her?'

‘I didn't want to jinx it.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, Charles! Why on earth—'

‘Stop.' He interrupts me. ‘It's none of your business. You're not in charge of my personal life.'

‘Christ Almighty, I've been in charge of your personal life for years. Before, during and after we were married. I organised tonight, didn't I?'

‘You wanted to organise tonight. Same as you want to organise everything I do. You selected my new editor for me. You talked to Maya about PR. You didn't ask me.'

‘Because they're professional things!' I cry.

‘They're personal too. My books are personal to me, if not to you.'

I grit my teeth. This is not the time to get into an argument about what's personal and what's professional.

‘Besides, she needs me,' he says.

‘In what way?'

‘In a way that you don't. You don't need anyone.'

That's true. At least I've tried to make it true. I've always preferred to depend on myself. It doesn't mean I didn't need Charles when we lived together. When you love someone, you need them. But, of course, we don't love each other any more.

‘What do you know about her?' I ask.

‘Now you sound like my mother.'

‘Does she know?' I wonder what Pamela Boyd-Miller will have to say about her son's new fiancée. Iseult seems to be significantly more malleable than me. Perhaps that's why Charles has fallen for her. Perhaps Pamela will too.

‘Nobody knows,' he replies.

‘Except everyone who looks at social media.'

‘It's New Year's Eve.' He shrugs. ‘Social media will be overloaded. Nobody will notice.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. Of course they will. I suppose we could spin something for the PR rounds about falling for your beta reader.'

‘This is my life, not a PR stunt.'

‘I'm shocked you asked someone to marry you, stunt or not!' I exclaim. ‘Charles, seriously, listen to me, because this comes from a place of caring for you – do you really love her?'

‘She's amazing,' he says. ‘She says things like they are. She doesn't tiptoe around me. She told me the manuscript I first showed her was crap. She said that Janice Jermyn's books were better than mine. She doesn't care what I do or who I am.'

‘You're a writer, not a celebrity superstar!'

‘She's young and forward-looking and she has her own career,' says Charles. ‘And it's good that it has nothing to do with publishing.'

‘A customs officer?' I shake my head. ‘Honestly, Charles, it's—'

‘I'm sick of everyone I know being involved in publishing,' he says. ‘You should be too, Ariel. I'm supposed to be a writer and in touch with the world, yet ever since we married, our world has become book launches and reading events and awards dinners and we never do anything that isn't about a bloody book.'

He's saying the same thing I've often said to myself. Yet I love this world and everybody in it. Besides, bookish friendships aren't all about work. Ekene and Maya are proper friends as well as colleagues. Lots of the people I meet in the course of my job are friends too. Just because I don't know engineers or gardeners or even customs officers doesn't mean I'm not living the life I want to lead.

‘She was part of that huge drugs find mentioned on the news recently.' The pride in his voice as he continues makes it sound as though he was involved in it himself. I find it hard to imagine the girl in the green dress and ill-fitting shoes managing to confront drug smugglers, but I guess we all have our strengths. However, I'm perfectly sure that no matter what he might say, the main strength she has as far as Charles is concerned is that she's young.

‘How old is she?' I put the question casually.

‘Twenty-nine,' he replies.

When I was twenty-nine my name was mentioned in one of the trade magazines as one of the Thirty Under Thirty to watch. And of course when Winter's Heartbreak went on to be so successful, there was another piece about me, talking about how I'd fulfilled my potential.

There aren't any articles about me these days. There are younger, hungrier people snapping at my heels, hoovering up the good talent, doing spectacular deals, and they're the ones who make the pages of the trade magazines now. It's not that being in your forties can't be about success and challenges; it's simply that nobody remarks on it any more. They expect you to have done everything you're supposed to by now. And they've moved on to fresher talent.

Exactly as Charles has done. He's found a younger, more vibrant replacement for me. He's moved me from personal to professional, and I have a horrible feeling that eventually he'll try to move me out of my professional role too. Or if not him, her. Because will she really want me working with my not-yet-ex-husband? Will she want me phoning him with details of deals I've done? Will she want me celebrating with him?

Like heck she will.

I feel a sudden spurt of fear. Then anger.

She will not push me away.

Whatever about him marrying someone else, Charles and I have something special together.

A twenty-nine-year-old in a hi-vis jacket isn't going to change that.

Not now, not ever.