Page 19 of The Plot Twist

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’

‘It’s fine, I was joking. I understand.’ Martin watched her keenly across the table. ‘Do you want my opinion?’

Allie shrugged, out of any other options. ‘Sure.’

‘I think you should go tonight.’ Allie started shaking her head but Martin pressed ahead. ‘Look, it’s always good to keep in with your contacts. And you never know where inspiration might strike. Could be tonight.’

Allie raised her eyebrow, wondering exactly how long it had been since Martin had been invited to a launch party. It was no longer excessive drinking, fights between authors and dangerous liaisons in the cloakroom. Although she thought back to her inappropriate thoughts about Will, the waiter, outside the cloakroom at the V&A and how hard she had been wishing for any kind of liaison. She flushed slightly at the memory.

Martin noticed the look on her face and smiled. ‘OK, well, what else are you going to do if you don’t go this evening?’

‘Write a novel?’ Allie parried.

‘Fair point. And remind me how the new one is coming along?’

Allie frowned. ‘Alright, point taken, I’ll go to the party.’ Martin looked rather smug. ‘Anyway, if you’re so full of advice on what I should be doing now, tell me what your plan is?’ Allie didn’t intend to sound quite so belligerent but she managed it anyway. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘But seriously, what are you planning to do?’

‘Offer to buy you another cup of tea in the hope I can put off staring at a blank piece of paper for a little longer?’

Allie laughed. ‘Sounds familiar. I’ll get these ones.’ She went to the counter to order more drinks and by the time she came back Martin looked like he was having a bad break-up conversation with his phone.

‘You OK?’ she asked tentatively, sliding his requested cup of Earl Grey across the table to him. Really, she felt that Martin ought to be nursing a single malt whisky in an old pub in the city, not sitting across from her in a bright, modern cafe with a view of the Tate Modern. But this was where she had found him, and Earl Grey was what he had requested. He raised his shadowed eyes to look at her then slammed his phone down on the table. Allie winced and hoped he wasn’t going to have to add ‘get phone fixed’ to his list of things to do.

‘My daughter, causing problems again.’ He sighed and ran his hands through his grizzled hair. It was mainly grey now and his face was much more lined than the author photo Allie remembered seeing years back. Still, she could see that he had once been a handsome man. Probably still was if you were in the market for a (significantly) older man. Allie’s thoughts flicked briefly to her friend Louise who didn’t think a man worth dating unless he was at least two decades older than her. Which was sort of fine now that she was in her thirties but had been incredibly creepy when they were teenagers.

Allie smiled in what she hoped was a supportive manner. ‘You told me you had kids the other night, warned me never to have any!’

‘Did I?’ Martin sounded bemused. ‘Yes, I probably did. But don’t let me put you off. My son is no bother at all, owns his own business, far more successful than I am.’

Allie wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t worry, chances of me becoming a mother anytime soon are slim to none.’ Martin raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘I got dumped recently,’ she confessed, ‘actually, right after I met you at the party and that waiter showed me out.’

Martin looked puzzled. ‘That waiter? Oh right, yes.’ He looked as if he was going to say something else and then paused. ‘You got dumped that night?’ He sounded genuinely upset by this news.

Allie nodded and smiled sadly.

‘Well, I am sorry to hear that. I guess that’s not a storyline which is going to feature in your new book?’

Allie laughed. ‘No, although I had been worried that someone might discover what a disappointment my love life was and out me as a romance writer who knows nothing about love. Dominic, my boyfriend… my ex-boyfriend,’ she corrected herself, ‘was not exactly leading man material.’

‘Right. And the reason you stayed with him was?’

‘Inertia mainly.’ Allie paused and picked her mug up. ‘To be honest, I don’t know,’ she continued. ‘God, why am I telling you this?’

‘Because I’m here and I asked?’ Martin shrugged and Allie found herself warming to him, wanting to tell him about Dominic and about her writing. Because he didn’t really know her and he came to her situation with no prior knowledge, no expectations for how she ought to behave or knowledge of what she had done in the past. She didn’t owe him anything, after this cup of tea she might never see him again, and there was something very freeing in that knowledge.

‘I guess I was attracted to him at the start. I mean, why else does anyone ever date someone. Actually,’ she paused, ‘forget I said that, there are SO many reasons people date other than mutual attraction.’ Martin smiled wryly. ‘But it also seemed like the sort of thing I ought to be doing in my thirties,’ she continued, ‘you know, get boyfriend? Settle down? How old were you when you met your wife?’

‘We met at university. Been together ever since.’

‘Exactly!’ replied Allie enthusiastically. ‘That’s what people are supposed to do, isn’t it? And if you’re in your thirties and writing romance novels and don’t have a boyfriend yourself your readers are going to think you’re weird, aren’t they?’

Martin shrugged. ‘Not being a woman in my thirties and not being so au fait with the genre, I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask. Couldn’t you write a novel about the struggle of finding real love?’ His face suddenly lit up and he looked incredibly thrilled at his own suggestion, which meant that Allie really didn’t have the heart to tell him that this was exactly what most romances were about, but that they also needed to have a happy ever after and that’s where she was failing. She had no problem writing about the trials and tribulations of hunting for love, although she was struggling to put a jocular, light-hearted spin on the storylines – it was getting her characters to their happy ever after that was proving so elusive.

‘Actually, I think Dominic might have inspired me to start writing a completely different genre. The other night, I was sitting in a pub in Soho, waiting to meet a friend and killing time by people-watching. A group of bankers walked past and before I knew it I had concocted half a plot about a serial revenge killer, out to pick off the corrupt bankers one by one.’

Martin smiled and said, ‘That actually sounds rather intriguing, do you have more?’

‘Well, I thought it could start with a pub crawl that gets gradually more and more debauched and over the course of the evening the bankers get picked off one by one. And the killer could be some crusader, out to bring down the corrupt banking system and expose fraud and general bad behaviour.’ Allie waited, thinking that she may have actually lost her mind. She was sitting here sharing some half-baked idea about a serial killer with a writer who had made his name writing some of the bloodiest crime books of the 1990s.

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