Page 58 of Slow Burn Summer

Fiona still had the door open just enough to shout through. “You didn’t want to be involved in the edits, you said so yourself.”

“Because I trusted you not to give it a Disney makeover! Christ, this thing just gets worse and worse.”

Kate pinched the bridge of her nose and stepped into the breach.

“Don’t out yourself. It won’t help either of us,” she said.

“I don’t even know anymore.” He hung his massive head. “That dog has floored me. We never had a dog, my wife was allergic to fur. A costumer’s nightmare, she always used to say.”

Kate let his words, his snapshot recollection, sit between them in the air for a few beats.

“You really don’t want to be connected to that clichéd ending,” she said softly. “Think of your fan base, it just wouldn’t work.”

He grumbled and thrashed about, muffled words she couldn’t quite catch.

“I need a drink,” he said, sudden and loud. “A fucking big one.” He swung around and stomped out into the sunny afternoon toward his low black car, too intent on escape to consider the fact he was still dressed as a T-Rex.

Kate followed him to the step and watched him battle to fold himself into the driver’s seat as a woman with a small child crossed the road to avoid him. He slammed the door on his tail and let out a full-throated roar as he flung the door open again, dragging the tail into the footwell before he shot off down the road.

Back inside the shop, Fiona and Liv had emerged from the storeroom.

“Where’s my T-Rex?” Liv said.

“Heading for the M25,” Kate said.

Fiona gathered herself to her full, still-diminutive height.

“Your job right now is to do precisely nothing,” she said, eyeballing Kate as she gathered up H’s left-behind belongings. “No more wild soliloquies or galivanting around town drawing yet more negative attention.” She stood in the doorway to deliver her parting shot. “It’s time for this ghost author to be exactly what the name suggests. Invisible.”

Liv practically ran to lock the door behind her. “Well, she’s hideous.”

Kate slumped against the nearest wall and slid down onto her bum.

“What an almighty mess,” she said, weary.

Liv dropped onto the floor beside her. “Look on the bright side.”

“Is there one?”

Liv cast around for a second. “Alice is okay.”

Kate sighed, because that truly was the most important thing. “Yes.”

“And you got to meet the author.”

“Dressed as bloody Godzilla,” Kate said. “I couldn’t make this up.”

“Godzilla wasn’t a T-Rex,” Liv said.

Kate shrugged, not willing to argue the toss.

“You missed a call from Charlie,” Liv said, handing Kate her mobile, rescued from the storeroom.

Kate took it back, glancing at the stacked-up messages on the screen with trepidation. Clicking to return Charlie’s call, she sighed when it went to voicemail.

“Will you be okay if I head upstairs for a while?” she said, giving Liv her bangle back. She needed some time to try to make sense of the chaos. She’d been blindsided by the news and jumped straight in to comfort Alice, then Fiona and H had barreled through the door and taken over the afternoon. She’d automatically assumed her customary role supporting everyone else when, actually, she was the person at the center of the story.

“Promise me you won’t go online?” Liv said, hauling her up by both hands. “It’s news today and chip paper tomorrow.”

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