Page 36 of You Can't Hurt Me

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.

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