Page 9 of Slow Burn Summer

Liv laid her crossed hands over her heart. “If he says ‘You complete me,’ marry him.”

“That’s really terrible advice.”

Kate shook her head, laughing as she set off toward the trainstation at a brisk pace, already wishing she’d remembered to bring a hair band. Would she ever feel like a fully-fledged grown-up? She could only hope that her high-heeled boots and Ruby Slippers lipstick would be enough to hide the fact that inside she was forever in her pj’s with her hair scraped up, eating a family bag of Cheetos in front of the TV on her own.

6

Kate walked through the polishedblack door of the posh Mayfair townhouse restaurant in a last-minute flap, because it had suddenly occurred to her that she’d offered to buy Jojo Francisco lunch in her letter. Did Charlie plan on holding her to it on his father’s behalf? It was the kind of place where someone in uniform opened the door and quietly ushered you in; she was glad of her expensive boots to make her look more well-heeled than she actually was. She’d be washing up for at least ten years to clear a lunch debt in here, and God, the shame of her card getting declined would be hard to come back from. Should she ask him outright before they ordered? She couldn’t possibly. She could always slip back outside again unseen and call him to cancel, say some unavoidable thing had suddenly come up. Except that suggested flaky, and she was already on dodgy ground after baby-sick-gate. A safe pair of hands was a basic necessity for the job she was hopefully about to be hired for.

“Kate.” Charlie materialized beside her, taller by a head. No slipping away unseen, then. “I spotted you coming in.” He noddedI’ve got thisto the approaching maître d’, who smiled and veered away to do something else.

“Just a heads-up.” Charlie spoke quietly, close to her ear, as he guided her through the shady, intimate dining room toward theirtable. “Fiona is with us for drinks, then heading off to another meeting.”

Kate nodded, appreciating the forewarning. Her recollections of Fiona Fox from twenty years ago were of a hard-boiled woman who seemed to be the only person in the world Jojo Francisco deferred to. Would time have mellowed her? Not that she’d ever been woundingly sharp with Kate, perhaps out of deference for Jojo’s soft spot or some maternal protection for the motherless teenager she’d been back then. Maternal was possibly overstating it. More raptor-like, with Kate as one of her eggs.

“Two minutes late by my watch.” Fiona removed the trio of tiny olives from her martini and laid the stick beside her glass, eyebrows arched, no handshake.

Not mellowed, then, Kate thought, knowing full well she was at least five minutes early, because she’d loitered outside for a while rather than come in and risk being here before Charlie. Fiona appeared to have defied the decades, looking exactly as she did the last time Kate had seen her. Hair straight out of the Bonnie Tyler playbook, and she was almost certainly wearing the exact same chunky diamond beetle on her lapel.

“I realize we might have met before but I haven’t the faintest recollection of who you are,” Fiona said, setting the tone early. Kate swallowed the implied forgettability, and didn’t add that she remembered Fiona’s ferocity and occasional bone of kindness. She looked around, wondering what to do with her coat. She didn’t have to wonder for long: a member of the staff appeared and wordlessly whisked it away as Fiona batted her hand toward the seat opposite. “Sit, before someone asks you to fetch a bottle of Bordeaux.”

The none-too subtle attempts to unsettle Kate landed as intended, but she just smiled tightly and took her seat beside Charlie.

“Drink?” Charlie said. “The martinis here are excellent.”

Kate found herself conflicted. She loved a good martini, but feared the alcohol might loosen her tongue a little too much. She needed to stay sharp, to look cool on the outside even if she was a hot mess on the inside.

“Have one, he’s paying,” Fiona said, which—unbeknownst to the older woman—was a considerable weight off Kate’s shoulders. Enough to make her nod in agreement, and within moments an ice-frosted martini glass appeared in front of her. Now. To olive or not to olive? She was a fan in general, but Fiona had laid her olive-laden cocktail stick down beside her glass. She reluctantly placed hers on the table too before sipping too much of her drink in one go and almost spluttering on the throat-stripping strength. Goodbye, nerves; hello, confidence.

“I hope you understand the gravitas of the role you’ve been offered,” Fiona said, fixing her with a stare. “Frankly, I need to be convinced of your commitment.”

Kate ran her tongue over her teeth to remove any stray ruby lipstick traces and tried to keep Liv’sJerry Maguirepep talk at the forefront of her mind—although asking Fiona Fox to show her the money might not be the best way to demonstrate commitment right now.

“Well, I love the book with my whole heart,” she said, taking another good mouthful of martini before plowing on. “My own love story came to a sudden and unexpected end last year, so I can relate. I ugly cried my way through it, in a cathartic sort of way. Not that my husband died—I walked in on him having sex with his secretary, to be totally honest—but I’ve experienced some parallel emotions as a result. The shock, certainly, and the abrupt tear in the fabric of my life. It’s the big things, of course, like living alone for the first time as an adult, but the million small things even more so. I didn’t realize the exact moment of our final argument overwhat to watch on TV. Who knew that having the freedom to watch back-to-back episodes ofMarried at First Sightwould be one of the upsides to divorce? That and not having to buy hummus anymore. Honestly, I’d rather eat grout. I’m still figuring out who I am without him, really. I’m nobody’s wife, and I don’t have to do much mothering now my daughter’s away at uni. You could say it’s just me, alone at sea, looking for a life raft to climb onto. I’m Kate Winslet clinging to that door. This book”—she picked up Charlie’s copy of the manuscript and clutched it to her chest—“this book is my door, Fiona, and I won’t let it sink, I promise you.”

Kate laid the book slowly down on the table and knocked the rest of her drink back in one long gulp, wishing Liv had been at a nearby table giving her the cutthroat sign. Half a violently strong martini and she’d let the hot mess out.

Fiona stared at her, momentarily slack-jawed, and then delicately picked up her cocktail stick and dropped it in her empty glass. She glanced at Charlie with a sigh, then back at Kate.

“As soliloquies go, it was hardly Shakespeare, but we’re tight on time so you’ll have to do.” She scraped her chair back and someone instantly appeared with her coat. “Media training, Charlie, and fast.” Fiona stalked away between tables, leaving a trace of old-school Opium lingering over people’s lunches.

“Well, that went well,” Kate said, finally eating her olives as she sagged in her chair.

“Sorry not to have intervened,” Charlie said. “It was kind of hard to get a word in.”

Kate sighed. “I said too much, didn’t I?”

“I mean, theTitanicreference was a little out there, but I admire that you committed,” he said. “Hungry?”

Kate sat up straight and rolled her shoulders, relief and alcohol softening her bones. “Martini on an empty stomach was a really bad plan,” she said. “I’m actually starving.”

“Go crazy,” he said. “Order a bunch of sides, the whole works. Business credit card.”

—

“So, is ghost authoring somethingthat happens a lot behind the scenes?” Kate said, after they’d ordered far too much food for two.

Charlie filled their water glasses. “Not exactly,” he said. “Pseudonyms are not unusual, of course, or ghostwriters, where someone writes the book on behalf of someone else. Autobiographies, for instance—people in the public eye often get help putting their memories into a cohesive narrative. It’s become more commonplace in fiction too in recent years—the famous name on the front isn’t necessarily the person who wrote the words inside. What we’re planning to do with this book is an unconventional twist on that, I guess.”

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