Page 41 of So Thrilled For You

Transcript: Inspector Simmons

interviewing Steffani Fox

Steffani: I was having the best day of my life that day. Literally. All my dreams were coming true. Why would I randomly decide to commitarson?

Simmons: That’s not strictly true, is it?

Steffani: What do you mean?

Simmons: Work might’ve been going well, but your friendship circle was strained – wouldn’t you say?

Steffani: Was it? I was too busy negotiating multi-million pound deals to feel any strain with anyone.

Simmons: And Nicki didn’t mind, you doing this at her party?

Steffani: Not at all. She was happy for me. They all were.

Steffi

You see, this is the problem with posh glass houses – there’s nowhere to hide. I desperately need to call Rosa but the downstairs bathroom’s engaged, the upstairs one is off-limits, and I don’t know which bedrooms contain napping infants. I end up sneaking out of the glass doors, muttering ‘holy fuck’ as I step into the heat. I crouch run across the decking, basically ninja roll down the steps, and end up whispering my very important conversation at the back of the garden, behind a half-dead tree.

‘I know it’s a huge decision so I wanted to give you as much time as I can,’ I tell Rosa, sucking both my stomach and arse in so the tree will disguise me. If I move my head even slightly, the party can see me through the glass wall.

‘I really want to say yes to Nina,’ Rosa repeats. ‘I love her.’

‘I know. I love her too. But what Mountain Scape Studio are offering is huge. Even bigger than her. We’re talking a Hollywood blockbuster, Rosa, with associated budget. Nina is amazing but her studio is still on the smaller side. She won’t put up this much money.’

‘But . . . I trust her with this.’

I smile to myself. It’s crazy how my job can change a person in only a few short hours. When I called Rosa on the train platform, she still couldn’t believe she was going to get published at all. Fast forward two hours and she’s now not even considering a multi-million-pound film deal with one of the biggest studios in the world.

‘Nina is amazing and her offer is an amazing thing,’ I tell her. ‘In another universe, one where you weren’t the most talented human being I’ve ever shared oxygen with, we’d be face-down in a bath full of champagne right now.’ Rosa giggles softly down the phone. Good. I need her back down to earth, so she can think properly. ‘But I’ve never seen a film pre-empt like this in my whole career,’ I continue, ‘And, not to be weird, I’m really good at my job. Mountain Scape are aggressive though. It will only be on the table until the end of Monday. It’s huge, Rosa. I just want you to really think it through.’

We talk a while longer until my stomach hurts from holding it in so tightly. We weigh up the things most authors want to weigh up – who will treat the book the most authentically during the adaptation? Who might let them co-write? Who is likely to play the main character? Who understood the book the most? I get all that, I do. I’m in the arts. I love books. But still, I’m an agent. And it’s my job to only really care about, a) how much money, and b) who is most likely to get it green lit? Because getting the TV show or filmactually madeis what brings in more money.

‘I’ll think about it, I promise,’ she reassures me. ‘I . . . it’s a lot. I still can’t believe my book is going to be in a book shop.’

‘Your book is going to be on a billboard in Times Square.’

She shriek laughs. ‘Stop it. A book shop is enough for today. I’m going to go for a walk around Brockwell Park. Calm myself down and have a think.’

‘Get an ice-cream.’

‘Are you kidding? It’s £4.50 for a 99 cone these days.’

‘Rosa, you’re about to turn down one actual million pounds. You can buy the ice cream.’

‘Today doesn’t seem real. OK. A ridiculously overpriced cone and a think, I promise.’

‘I’m here.’ I remind her. ‘I’m at this party thing, but I can sneak out again and chat to you if need be.’

‘Thank you.’

When she rings off, I collapse onto the dried grass, allowing myself my own moment to ride the adrenaline wave. I have to be calm for Rosa, but my body feels like a human party popper. I look out over the sprawling vista to try and stop my brain flailing about from strategy to strategy. I need to hire a real PA, and a film agent, and a foreign rights agent already. Could I poach Anna from JK? No. Stop it, Steffi. STOP IT. Don’t rush ahead. Focus on the view. This view would be amazing if our country wasn’t everything David Attenborough has been trying to warn us about. There’s not an inch of green left in these rolling fields, just parched yellow rectangles, sewn together by browning hedgerows. Even Nicki’s parents’ lawn has fallen. They’re the sort of law-abiding people who keep to a hosepipe ban, even though there’s no one out here to see them cheating. That glass house must be heavily soundproofed because I can’t hear a thing from the seven circles of hell inside. Dante’s Inferno but with fertilised cupcakes. And that’s just the first circle. We’ve not got to the vagina piñata yet, but I saw it flapping in the tiny breeze on the decking. I find baby showers trying at the best of times, but today’s really does feel beyond satire.

It’s not that I’m against celebrating pregnancy, or weddings, or hen dos, or all the other parties I’ve dutifully attended – but not particularly enjoyed – since I turned twenty-seven when suddenly these things started demanding most of my weekends. They are beautiful things. Huge, wonderful life moments in my treasuredfriends’ lives. They were just so generic. So .. . gendered. So utterly lacking in any uniqueness, despite everyone’s best efforts to make theirs different. Hive mind, groupthink, spoon-fed desires. And so, I’ve ended up attending precisely the same wedding multiple times. I could attend a wedding in my sleep, and a baby shower in my nap – they are so paint by numbers. Admittedly, today incudes every single paint colour and every number up until infinity but still none of it feels new. I turn my face up to the glaring sunshine, trying to time it so I get a good vitamin D hit but not too much to cause wrinkles, and I let myself feel hurt. Hurt that a party like this has never been thrown for me because I’ve not yet achieved any paint-by-number life achievement. Mum always warned me not to fall for the trap of these paths. ‘The things people think make them happy, often don’t,’ she always said. ‘Make sure you want things because you want them, Steffi, not because everyone tells you to want them.’ She’d always been so honest about the hardships of being a single mum. ‘Even married women are single mothers,’ she told me. ‘You just wait and see when you get older. See how your mother friends will end up basically doing it all themselves, just with the veneer of a husband and therefore society’s blessing.’ Mum always reassured me that I’m the best thing she ever did, but she was brutally open about the sacrifices. ‘I never want you to make any sacrifices,’ she’d whispered, over and over, year after year, as she got more frail until it was my time, finally, to look after her. ‘I never want you to be held back, Steffi. Wings clipped. Stuck in a house, using feathers to make a nest rather than using them to fly.’ And how I’ve flown, darling Mum – making you proud wherever you are now. I’m soaring so high but my career achievements have never warranted today’s level of command performance. At my agency launch party last month, Charlotte didn’t do all of this for me. And, even though I’d maxed out my credit card to pay for it as I had to pretend I was already successful, not all the Little Women even bothered to come. Lauren used Woody as an excuse – some shit about he wasn’t weaned yet so she couldn’t miss the bedtime routine. I have sympathy for that, I really do. However, I know that if it was myweddingor mybaby shower,then she’d have pushed through whatever torture required to make sure she attended, like she’s done for today. I wouldn’twanther to do that, but the fact she didn’t even think abouttryingshowed that me setting up Foxxy Books wasn’t in the same league as getting married or pregnant. And, yeah, Charlotte came and was so excited and manic that several publishing people came up to me afterwards to tell me they were ‘obsessed’ with her, but she only brought a bouquet of flowers with her. God, I know I sound like a bitch, and they were lovely flowers, but they were what? Forty quid? Picked up from Victoria Station on the way. No homemade fertilised cupcakes for me. Throughout our friendship, I’ve paid to attend all their hen dos, which were multiple hundreds of pounds, even the low-key ones. I’ve attended all their weddings . . . again, multiple hundreds of pounds. Lauren had her wedding in frickin’ Cornwall to get a ‘beach vibe’ so Tristan felt more at home and booked it for a Saturday in July. Do you know how much it costs to stay in a hotel, in Cornwall, at the weekend, in July? Then there was her spa baby shower too. All the money.Mymoney. And I don’t care. I’m happy for them, I really am. But a bouquet of flowers? When I’m achieving things so beyond possible for most people? When I’m being so brave rather than sogeneric? Nicki turned up to my party two hours late.Late!Can you imagine turning up hours late to a wedding? Friendship over. All I’d asked from them was to attend a party, in a bar, centrally located, from 6.30pm until 10pm, to support the hugest thing I could ever do in my life . . . and I get some flowers, a late arrival, and a flake out.

But it’s too hot to stay out here getting angry. I love these women, I remind myself. I do. We just need to survive our thirties, when all our lives are so different, and come through the other side.

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