Page 18 of Happily Never After
I’m horrified. ‘Really?’
She laughs. ‘I knew it was that! No, of course not, idiot. They absolutely adore you. Nobody cares about how posh anyone is any more, do they?’
‘Only someone truly posh would say that.’
That’s enough to stop her laughter in its tracks and she looks, if anything, slightly hurt. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nobody has ever looked down on you socially, have they?’
‘I’m sure plenty of people have,’ she tells me earnestly. ‘But it’s bollocks, Laura. There are always people who are posherthan you or richer than you, just like there are people who are less posh or poorer. Who cares? The only person I can think of who got hung up on stuff like that was my grandmother, and she was a terrible old witch. Did you ever meet her?’
‘No.’
‘She’s dead now, thank goodness. She didn’t bat an eyelid when I told her I thought I was a lesbian, but hold your knife the wrong way and she’d positively twitch with disapproval. She’d say, “The Queen won’t invite you to tea if you can’t eat nicely, Olivia.” Mum went for her in the end.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. She pointed out, among a lot of choice words, that none of us were likely to have tea at the palace and, unlike dear Grandmama, the Queen probably wouldn’t give a shit how we held our cutlery because she had better things to worry about.’
‘I can practically hear your mum’s voice saying that.’
‘Grandmama used to drive her nuts. I don’t think there was a lot of love lost between them, if I’m honest. Anyway, the point is that my parents love you. In fact, I think they might wish you were their daughter rather than me.’
‘I’m sure they don’t. They’re really proud of what you’ve achieved with the pâtisserie.’
‘Yes, but I think we can both agree that they’re probably less proud of the journey I took to get there, and they only know the edited highlights. It would probably kill them if they knew it all.’
‘I sometimes wish my parents knew less about me. Everything they know seems to disappoint them.’
‘They’re proud of you too.’
‘You think? They have a bloody funny way of showing it. I mean, even when you tried to convince them that I was making a reasonable living, they couldn’t be pleased. What was it Dad said? “You’re only ever as good as your last book, Laura. Everyone might hate the next one, and then what, hmm?”’
Liv rolls her eyes in exasperation. ‘If your next book is total shit, then your publishers should spot that straight away and get you to fix it. That’s literally their job, isn’t it?’
‘Unfortunately, he’s kind of right though. Every writer lives in fear that their next book will be the one that flops, triggering the doomsday spiral.’
‘Dare I ask what the doomsday spiral is?’
‘The publisher drops you, quickly followed by your agent when they can’t get any other publishers to come within a mile of you. Having enjoyed seeing piles of your bestsellers on the tables at the front of bookstores, you become “special order only” and the only place you stand a chance of stumbling across one of your books in the wild is in a charity shop, which is where you go to buy your clothes now the royalties have dried up.’
‘Wow. You don’t think like that, do you?’
‘Often. You’d need to have a personality disorder not to.’
She ponders for a moment. ‘I guess it’s not that different from the recurring dream I have where I give everyone food poisoning and the council shuts me down.’
We travel for a while in silence, each contemplating our own doomsday scenario. My mood, already low after lunch with my family, is sinking further.
‘I suspect Mum blames me for Angus leaving too,’ I mutter morosely. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if she thought he probably buckled under the pressure of having to support me financially.’
‘Oh, no.’ This is obviously enough to rouse her from her own dark thoughts. ‘We’re not playing that game. Angus left because he’s an arse. Nothing to do with you.’
We lapse back into silence for several miles, each lost in our own thoughts again, before she speaks.
‘How’s Goliath?’
Shit. I hoped we’d closed this topic.
