Chapter 13

13

The morning sun glares a little too harshly as I head for Priya's office, Grayson Inc., a sleek tower built in a curve of the Thames. Her text yesterday was abrupt, unexpected. She wanted to meet again but didn't tell me why, although I suspect it's about the early chapters I emailed her.

It is one of those pellucid days you get in the winter when the air is crystalline, the sky cloudless and sheer. Sharp light cuts across the river like a blade. My eyes ache. It's as if I have evolved to exist only in the crepuscular gloom of Nate's basement study, a liminal space where I'm able to keep the glare of the real world at bay.

Each day I sense Nate is a little more relaxed in my company, a little more confessional, exposing his more closely held thoughts. Yet on a relisten of our interviews, his responses are still somehow evading detail, so I'm forced to fill in the gaps. It's not that I'm making up quotes exactly, but scattering subtle reflection here and there to bring Nate and Eva alive. I convince myself that memoir is the art of persuasion, a magic act of smoke and mirrors, and, really, isn't that all I'm attempting? Now that his voice has almost become second nature to me, it only takes the subtlest of twists to make him sound more revelatory. I'm doing him a favor, helping him to be a better version of himself in print. But massaging can only get you so far, and the text from Priya gnaws at me.

I take up the elevator to the top floor and catch my reflection in the mirrored doors as they close, the crispness of my outline is reassuring. I've erased myself to such a degree in recent weeks I half expect to see a me-shaped hole where I used to be. The elevator shoots up through the bright light, London spread out extravagantly below me. The doors open and there is Priya's assistant waiting to take me to her corner office.

Priya doesn't look up or acknowledge me when I'm shown in. Elbows on desk, palms over her ears, she carries on flipping through the pages of a manuscript.

"Gripping read?" I blurt, instantly mortified by my tone. I sit down opposite her and she glances up at me, unsmiling.

"Yes, but it's not yours."

She retrieves mine from a pile, lets her hand rest on the opening chapter. Her voice is thin, stripped of the faux interest and sparkle that infused our last chat when Nate was with her. She appraises me properly, a small tight smile coiled on her lips. "So. Anna. How long has this taken so far?"

"Four weeks?" My tone falters.

"And how quickly could you finish by if, say, we needed you to cut all of this?"

I stare at the illegible scrawl of her upside-down notes, take a moment or two to digest what she's telling me. This is how Nate must have felt when he saw my criticisms.

"Sorry, you mean start again?"

"Yes, Anna, exactly what I mean."

Her eyes are stony. Only someone more senior than you gets to repeat your name twice in the first five minutes, and it's never a good sign.

"I thought it was along the lines we talked about. I thought—"

"It is nowhere near what we're looking for."

She sighs, leans a little closer to me across the desk. The room suddenly feels smaller. Her large tortoiseshell reading glasses magnify her stare. I want to look away but I can't.

"Oh," is all I can manage.

The first dizzy vertiginous stab of disappointment hits me in the solar plexus. Something inside me starts to crumble. I had entertained the thought of praise, perhaps constructive criticism, but not downright scorn. Her head dips down like a delicate bird as she flits through the pages, immaculate manicured fingers alight upon one page after another.

"Where's the brutally honest edge we talked about in our interview? The blood on the page? The forensic detail rather than the broad strokes?"

"But I thought it was all there, all covered—" I stammer.

She regards me for a moment. Her liquid brown eyes soften. "This is perfectly normal, Anna. It's a process. You have to write the wrong thing so I know what I don't want. It can be frustrating but I'm afraid that's how I work." She inclines her head, as if to apologize for such an adorably quirky streak. I glance down toward the river outside her window, the color of oily black tar. A tugboat no bigger than a single dot from up here draws through the water, vanishes under the bridge.

"I know how difficult he can be," she says. "I know what you're up against. He needs boundaries. But we need less about his research. We need him to be more expressive, to open up about the pain he's been through, the pressure of his career, feeling under suspicion after she died."

"It's not that easy," I say. "He closes down those conversations pretty swiftly. So much so I'm starting to wonder why."

"You think he's got something to hide?"

"Whatever happened is private and personal, and I don't think he wants the world to know about it." I glance up at her shelves and scan some of the author names, mainly female, who have spilled their messy lives across the page. Addiction, abuse, bulimia, self-harm, guilt and shame. Priya's favorite ingredients. She's probably thinking right now about the ghostwriters that she should have chosen instead of me, that could have done a better job. She looks almost sorry for me.

"You'll get there, but we need more about Eva. She is the draw."

"I think Nate's worry is it could be too prurient, a bit low-rent maybe?" I pause. "Maybe if I were to get other voices who could share a little more about Eva, it would help. Like Kath, for example?"

"Kath simply can't be interviewed. She's off-limits for this book, given the recent inquest stunt she pulled. And remember, Anna, it's not prurience, but a responsibility to go there. We can't afford for Nate to turn a blind eye to Eva's story, she deserves our undivided attention."

I give a small sigh. "The first time I asked him about Eva's death, he got really upset, angry even. He pushed a chair onto the floor and stormed out."

"The infamous Nate temper," she says dryly. I suppose that confirms my suspicion that his outburst wasn't a one-off at all, despite his insistence.

"I know how Nate can be," she says. "But it's all bluster. You shouldn't be intimidated by him."

"I didn't say I was."

Priya's phone pings. I watch her manicured nails tap on a message alert. "Talk of the devil. I told him you and I were meeting, he knows there's something up. He wants to chat after we finish." She studies the text for a second, shrugs. "I'm not going to tell him what we've talked about. It's up to you how you play it. So, we're good?"

Slowly, I nod, give her a thin smile.

"Just don't be soft on him."

She returns my smile, clearly keen to tick this off her to-do list. What assumptions has she already made about me? That I shy away from confrontation, I'm too easily won over? Is it something she's discussed with Nate? I get the feeling they talk about everything, including me.

She tilts her head, a hesitant smile hovers on her lips. "You know, Nate originally wanted to work on his memoir with me. Of course, apart from the fact that I'm too busy publishing other people's memoirs, I felt he needed someone with more objectivity, someone who is new to the whole...situation." She pauses meaningfully.

"Less...involved?" I offer.

She removes her glasses, a strand or two of her sleek bob falls across her face, and really looks at me.

"Just stick to the task in hand, Anna. If you can." She shoots me a pointed look. "But, in the meantime, can't you be, I don't know, a bit more imaginative? Take him away from the house. Change it up a bit."

I think of Nate pacing up and down that study, both of us trapped in that windowless cell day after day. Her phone vibrates and I can tell from her expression that it's Nate. I shift uncomfortably. She slides her phone across her ear.

"Hey," she says. Her tone shifts, soft and girlish. She raises her palm to me. I'm excused. The razor-sharp line of her hair swings a little as she swivels her chair around. A hoot of laughter follows me as I leave the office.

Questions flood my mind. If Kath and Nate were really aligned on the inquest, why would she be off-limits for the book? And why would she admit that Nate wanted her to work on his memoir? Perhaps it's a way of letting me know how disposable I am if I don't give her what she wants. I was chosen, supposedly for my objectivity, my distance.

She's right about one thing. A different context couldn't do any harm. I can't help thinking that, freed from the confines of his study, the rising tension between us may dissolve. I remember reading about Romney Marsh in one of Eva's profiles, a desolate stretch of coast where she spent many childhood summers in her aunt's clapboard house.

Her words circle as I push open the door to the toilets on the ground floor, open my knapsack and remove my spiky ankle boots. I replace them with some squashy running shoes and wrestle a shapeless black hoodie over my silk blouse. Almost there, except for one detail. I wipe away the scarlet gloss from my lips and draw my hair back into an austere ponytail. Suitably erased, I head home. On my way to the subway, I text Nate.

Hello! Thinking instead of meeting tomorrow as planned, how about getting out of the city for some inspiration?

Nate typing...

Sure, Priya mentioned a Plan B, I think good idea

Nate typing...

Let me know where you decide to take me

I think I already have

I open my communal front door. Old cigarettes, fried food and a floral note of cheap carpet cleaner cling to the air, the universal aroma of every shared hall I've ever lived in. My keys fumble in the lock and I let myself into my own apartment. The sitting room is deserted but the air is still warm and musky. There is an empty bottle of wine next to the sofa, somewhere else in the apartment I can hear talking. From Amira's bedroom, I'm guessing.

I pick up her and Tony's plates and glasses, wander into the kitchen and try to think how I can avoid them. Clearly, he's put his travel plans on hold now they're back together. I make myself some toast, creep to my bedroom.

Grateful to be alone at last, I lie back on my bed and take out my iPad in the one small space that counts as mine. So much for the brief respite from Tony and Amira. Nate and Priya. Their names circle.

Absentmindedly I google them. Priya's recent announcement pops up first and I scan it. "There's such a big appetite among the reading public for eloquent books that investigate grief, and this one won't disappoint. I've known Nate for so many years, I'm thrilled to be working with him on his memoir," she announced to The Bookseller a month ago.

I google her again but nothing interesting surfaces. I try Eva and Priya instead. And up it comes. A much older entry of both of them at one of her sculpture shows. I pinch the screen to expand the image. They look young, barely in their twenties, presumably long before Nate and Eva were an item. Priya's hair is longer, wilder.

A shadow of a smile plays on Eva's lips. Their heads touch, arms around one another.

How much does she really know about what happened to Eva? Why hasn't she mentioned their connection to each other? I close my screen, shut my eyes, as their names swirl through my mind, Priya and Eva, Nate and Priya, a set of dots that refuse to connect.