Frances’s concentration drifted as Alain continued to talk. She watched the closed gate and pushed the knuckles of her left hand into her lower back.
What would Jo say when she heard Frances had been rejected? Or would she have had to do the same thing? Frances had always assumed that Jo would be her editor forever. She had fondly imagined them finishing their working lives simultaneously, perhaps with a lavish joint retirement lunch, but late last year Jo had announced her intention to retire. Retire! Like she was some sort of old grandma! Jo actually was a grandmother, but for goodness sake that wasn’t a reason to stop. Frances felt like she was only just getting into the swing of things, and all of a sudden people in her circle were doing old-people things: having grandchildren, retiring, downsizing, dying – not in car accidents or plane crashes, no, dying peacefully in their sleep. She would never forgive Gillian for that. Gillian always slipped out of parties without saying goodbye.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Jo’s replacement turned out to be a child, because children were taking over the world. Everywhere Frances looked there were children: children sitting gravely behind news desks, controlling traffic, running writers’ festivals, taking her blood pressure, managing her taxes and fitting her bras. When Frances first met Ashlee she had genuinely thought she was there on work experience. She’d been about to say, ‘A cappuccino would be lovely, darling,’ when the child had walked around to the other side of Jo’s old desk.
‘Frances,’ she’d said, ‘this is such a fan girl moment for me! I used to read your books when I was, like, eleven! I stole them from my mum’s handbag. I’d be like, Mum, you’ve got to let me read Nathaniel’s Kiss, and she’d be like, No way, Ashlee, there’s too much sex in it!’
Then Ashlee had proceeded to tell Frances that her next book needed more sex, a lot more sex, but she knew Frances could totally pull it off! As Ashlee was sure Frances knew, the market was changing, and ‘If you just look at this chart here, Frances – no, here; that’s it – you’ll see that your sales have been on kind of a, well, sorry to say this, but you kind of have to call this a downward trend, and we, like, really need to reverse that, like, super-fast. Oh, and one other thing . . .’ Ashlee looked pained, as if she were about to bring up an embarrassing medical issue. ‘Your social media presence? I hear you’re not so keen on social media. Neither is my mum! But it’s kind of essential in today’s market. Your fans really do need to see you on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook – that’s just the bare minimum. Also, we’d love you to start a blog and a newsletter and perhaps do some regular vlogs? That would be so much fun! They’re like little films!’
‘I have a website,’ replied Frances.
‘Yes,’ said Ashlee kindly. ‘Yes you do, Frances. But nobody cares about websites.’
And then she’d angled her computer monitor towards Frances so she could show her some examples of other, better behaved authors with ‘active’ social media presences, and Frances had stopped listening and waited for it to be over, like a dental appointment. (She couldn’t see the screen anyway. She didn’t have her glasses with her.) But she wasn’t worried, because she was falling in love with Paul Drabble at the time, and when she was falling in love she always wrote her best books. And besides, she had the sweetest, most loyal readers in the world. Her sales might drop but she would always be published.
‘I will find the right home for this book,’ said Alain now. ‘It might just take a little while. Romance isn’t dead!’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Frances.
‘Not even close,’ said Alain.
She picked up the empty KitKat wrapper and licked it, hoping for fragments of chocolate. How was she going to get through this setback without sugar?
‘Frances?’ said Alain.
‘My back hurts a great deal,’ said Frances. She blew her nose hard. ‘Also, I had to stop the car in the middle of the road to have a hot flush.’
‘That sounds truly awful,’ said Alain with feeling. ‘I can’t even imagine.’
‘No you can’t. A man stopped to see if I was alright because I was screaming.’
‘You were screaming?’ said Alain.
‘I felt like screaming,’ said Frances.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Alain hurriedly. ‘I understand. I often feel like screaming.’
This was rock-bottom. She’d just licked a KitKat wrapper.
‘Oh dear, Frances, I’m so sorry about this, especially after what happened with that horrendous man. Have the police had anything new to say?’
‘No,’ said Frances. ‘No news.’
‘Darling, I’m just bleeding for you here.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ sniffed Frances.
‘You’ve just had such a bad trot lately, darling – speaking of which, I want you to know that review had absolutely no impact on their decision.’
‘What review?’ said Frances.
There was silence. She knew Alain was smacking his forehead.
‘Alain?’
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’
‘I haven’t read a review since 1998,’ said Frances. ‘Not a single review. You know that.’
‘I absolutely know that,’ said Alain. ‘I’m an idiot. I’m a fool.’
‘Why would there be a review when I don’t have a new book out?’ Frances wriggled upright in her seat. Her back hurt so much she thought she might be sick.
‘Some bitch picked up a copy of What the Heart Wants at the airport and did an opinion piece about, ah, your books in general, a mad diatribe. She kind of linked it to the Me Too movement, which gave it some clickbait traction. It was just ridiculous – as if romance books are to blame for sexual predators!’
‘What?’
‘Nobody even read the review. I don’t know why I mentioned it. I must have early onset dementia.’
‘You just said it got traction!’
Everyone had read the review. Everyone.
‘Send me the link,’ said Frances.
‘It’s not even that bad,’ said Alain. ‘It’s just this prejudice against your genre –’
‘Send it!’
‘No,’ said Alain. ‘I won’t. You’ve gone all these years without reading reviews. Don’t fall off the wagon!’
‘Right now,’ said Frances in her dangerous voice. She used it rarely. When she was getting divorced, for example.
‘I’ll send it,’ said Alain meekly. ‘I’m so sorry, Frances. I’m so sorry about this entire phone call.’
He hung up, and Frances immediately went to her email. There wasn’t much time. As soon as she arrived at Tranquillum House she would need to ‘hand in’ her ‘device’. It would be a digital detox, along with everything else. She was going ‘off the grid’.
SO SORRY! said Alain’s email.
She clicked on the review.
It was written by someone called Helen Ihnat. Frances didn’t know the name and there was no picture. She read it fast, with a wry, dignified smile, as if the author were saying these things to her face. It was a terrible review: vicious, sarcastic and superior, but, interestingly, it didn’t hurt. The words – Formulaic. Trash. Drivel. Trite – slid right off her.
She was fine! Can’t please everyone. Comes with the territory.
And then she felt it.
It was like when you burn yourself on a hotplate and at first you think, Huh, that should have hurt more, and then it does hurt more, and then all of a sudden it hurts like hell.
A quite extraordinary pain in her chest radiated throughout her entire body. Another fun symptom of menopause? Maybe it was a heart attack. Women had heart attacks. Surely this was more than hurt feelings. This, of course, was why she’d given up reading reviews in the first place. Her skin was too thin. ‘It was the best decision I ever made,’ she’d told the audience at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference when she gave the keynote address last year. They’d probably all been thinking: Yeah, maybe you should read a review or two, Frances, you old has-been.
Why did she think it was a good idea to read a bad review directly after she’d just received her first rejection in thirty years?