Page 18 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage

We reach the end of the road and it’s not dark yet, but the streetlamps are prematurely bright.

‘Shall I get you a cab?’ Clay asks.

I say I’m perfectly happy to call myself an Uber and he insists on getting me a black cab anyway. He hands the driver a handful of £20 notes and waves goodbye. Sitting in the padded back seat, enjoying the warmth after the crispness of the weather outside, I look at my phone.Thank you for today,I type.I had such a nice time.

Is it bad, I wonder, that I’ve had such a nice time that I didn’t think once about missing my husband?

Jack

I had good intentions this morning. I could sort of tell that Jessica wanted me to come out with her, and part of me felt like I should. But it’s the first Saturday of freedom since the book circus started and I’ve been thinking about this bit of time like a kid thinks about the school holidays. A whole blissful uninterrupted day to write. Not Seven Rules stuff, which gets edited and double edited and changed by a sensitivity reader, and then edited again until it bears no resemblance to anything I put on the page. They don’t need me for that. Proper writing. The kind I grew up dreaming of, the kind I studied at university.

Every writer will tell you, when interviewed, that he or she sits down at their desk every morning, like you would for any real job. They make it sound like the sitting down is what makes the books happen. So when I stopped working at the BBC and started working from home, I decided to do the same thing. I can assure you that if you sit at your desk every morning and then spend five hours fucking about on Reddit, you will not produce anything.

Thankfully, there’s an email to help me procrastinate today. I see the name of the sender and my stomach does a little backflip. Edward Nestor. Edward is an agent. Not a manager like Clay, who represents people who have been onBig Brother. I don’t think Edward would know how to negotiate a deal for me to get free veneers in exchange for two stories and a grid post, even if he wanted to. Edward is the kind of agent who represents the people I used to watch on telly as a kid. The funny, clever, tweedy Stephen Fry actor-writer types I idolised. The people I dreamedI’d be friends with when I got into Cambridge and joined Footlights. Of course, then I fucked up my A-Levels so I didn’t get into Cambridge, which made joining Footlights impossible (or at least moderately fraudulent).

I emailed Edward’s office some months ago after a couple of glasses of red wine and another fight with Jessica. I’d sent some self-deprecating demi-essay about how I’d always admired the people he represented, that I had written something totally out of my usual ‘brand’ and that I wondered if he might consider reading it. I sent him something I’d agonised over, claiming I’d dashed it off out of interest, to see whether I might be half decent at writing. And to my immense shock, he replied.

Then, last week, I snuck out of the house while Jessica was meditating, claiming I was going to the pub with university friends. But instead, I went to Soho, wearing a jacket I’d had in the back of the wardrobe since my early twenties, one that Jessica hates. It felt important that I didn’t look fashionable. I’d arrived at Edward’s office with my heart in my mouth, turned down a cup of coffee for fear that I might have some kind of embolism if I added caffeine into the mix, then changed my mind and decided that I wanted to take the meeting while drinking black coffee because it might underpin the sort of image that I was trying to cultivate. Edward was going to think me gauche, I had decided. He was going to look down on everything I’d done so far. That was why I needed the black coffee and the tweed jacket.

Only it turned out that Edward, unlike me, isn’t a pretentious wanker. He ushered me into his office, lined with all the books written by all the people he works with, andsmiled at me across his desk. ‘I have to ask,’ he said. ‘Why on earth do you want to stop doing all this? You’ve done so well?’

I tried to explain, without sounding like an intellectual snob, that I am a massive intellectual snob. That being paid to go to parties filled with people who add ‘d’you know what I mean though?’ after every sentence makes me tired. That my brilliant and intelligent wife finds it challenging and fulfilling, but I don’t. That I want to write something that I’m proud of. That I know I’m not too good to write self-help books but that it feels completely wrong for me. Edward nodded along, either understanding or doing a very good job of pretending to.

‘I liked your manuscript,’ he told me with a smile. It took me a moment to realise that he means the fiction I submitted to him, not the book I’ve written with Jessica.

‘Really?’

He laughed at my surprise. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It needs work – it owes rather more to Evelyn Waugh than I think perhaps it should – but there is something there.’

We talked for a while about what I wanted to do, where I saw myself, what I wanted to write, and then he sent me on my way, telling me that he would be in touch in due course. I walked through Soho beaming at everyone I saw. Edward was the first person – the only person – I had shown the manuscript to. I have been writing it since I was in my early twenties, in stolen periods at work, in gaps between Seven Rules edits. It was a silly story about the least brilliant son in a brilliant family who accidentally ends up at a prestigious American university and gains entrée to the political classes. And while I knew there wasa lot wrong with it, having it as my little secret, as something to work on while Clay told us how to write our captions and the publishers stripped out every vestige of my personality from my chapters of Seven Rules, had been like a little warm glow that no one else could steal.

I hover the mouse over Edward’s message, torn between opening it or enjoying this blissful moment where I know that there is an answer but I’m unaware of what it is. In this moment, the news is good because I won’t allow it to be bad. Schrödinger’s email. Once I open it, I will almost certainly be disappointed. Of course, the stupid, optimistic voice in the back of my head is telling me that it isn’t going to be bad news, that it’s going to be the best news. There is no subject line. I find this endearing because my father also cannot use a computer, and I’ve already started casting Edward as a sort of paternal figure, something which I should unquestionably be working through in therapy.

Jack,it starts.

I wanted to echo what I said last week about your book. It’s not perfect, but there really is something there. I believe with some editing it could be quite brilliant.

Unfortunately, when we met before I had misunderstood the nature of your arrangement with Clay McAvoy Associates, which is why I asked you to send over a copy of the contract. Sadly it transpires that you are an exclusive client of CMA and therefore I would be unable to represent you in any capacity.

If you were looking to leave CMA, I would be delighted to discuss offering you representation, but I understand, given the arrangement you and your wife have, that that may be complex.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – I really did enjoy your book.

All the best,

Edward.

I turn the computer screen off because I can’t bear to look at the email again. When I left his office that day, strolling through Soho feeling smug, pretending I could feel the first stirrings of spring, I had felt so sure that something was going to come of this. I hadn’t even thought about Clay. I hadn’t really thought about Jessica. I suppose I thought they’d publish my book under just my name, and it would be a totally separate thing that I’d have been really proud of. Jesus, I really can be catastrophically thick sometimes.

It has always been made very, very clear to us that we are a package deal, that one of us can’t work without the other. People are always saying that the brand is the two of us, that you can’t be a relationship influencer on your own. And while I try to stay as naïve as possible about these things, I can’t help thinking that the powers that be are probably right. But perhaps it’s worth asking? Worth a try?

I slink into the kitchen, where Jessica is back from the market and about to start a workout on her Peloton. She’s basically done an entire weekend of activities in the time it’s taken me to read a book, have a shower and read my emails. She’s wearing shiny Lycra clothes and her hair scraped back from her face. I find it’s best not to make any comment about it, even one of approval, because we had an almighty row about her spending two grand on an exercise bike with an iPad stuck to it. She’s on it a lot. She read something about endorphins being good for fertility, but I do occasionally consider that she might be asking quite a lot of her body.

‘You’re back,’ I say, in a tone which accidentally makes it sound like I’m not pleased to see her.

‘Sorry, I should have used the sign-in sheet at the door.’

I am pleased to see her, obviously, I’m just second-guessing everything I say in an attempt to find the right thing. Ironically, meaning that I say the wrong thing all the time, which means she’s more annoyed with me, which means I’m even more inclined to say the wrong thing, and round and round it goes, like a really miserable roundabout.

---