wouldn’t know what to do with them.’
‘What do they use?’
‘Commas. They use nothing but commas.’
‘But what about subjunctive clauses?’
‘Commas again.’
‘Lists?’
‘Still commas.’
‘Do they use full colons?’
‘Never!’ Troy exclaimed gleefully. ‘You’re still too erudite, Isobel. It’s a dead giveaway. You’ll have to re-format these chapters before I can send them out. They have to have nothing but commas and full stops. Nothing else.’
Isobel could hear the laughter in her own voice. ‘But the story?’
‘Perfect,’ Troy said. ‘Perfect in every way. It’s a hit, Isobel. Or rather, I should say, Zelda. We’ve hit the jackpot. You’re going to make a lot of money with this one. I promise.’
She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the sense of relief wash through her, unknot the tightness in her shoulders and the strain around her eyes. ‘A lot of money,’ she repeated softly. She visualised the swimming pool they would build in the barn so that Philip could exercise his muscles daily. The gymnasium they would put next to it. And she would buy some clothes – not in the Zelda Vere league of course, but some well-cut, elegant clothes. And she might get her hair tinted, just to give herself a little more – ‘Presence,’ she whispered. She would get her ears pierced and wear earrings which would show off the length of her neck. And Philip, fitter from swimming, might yet admire her looks.
‘Replace all the semi-colons with commas or full stops. And rough up the text a bit,’ Troy commanded. ‘Your imagery is still too precise, think cliché, darling, not original imagery. More cliché and not so many long words. And then send it to me again and I’ll send it out to all the publishers.’
‘All the publishers?’ she queried. ‘Not just Penshurst?’
‘Absolutely not!’ he declared. ‘We’re going to be fighting them off for this manuscript. They’ll all want to buy it. We’ll have to hold an auction.’
Philip put his head around the study door. ‘Isn’t it time for lunch?’ he asked.
Isobel flinched and moved her head so that she blocked his view of the screen.
Philip saw that she was on the telephone. ‘Who is it?’
She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered: ‘Troy, I’ll only be a moment.’
‘Can’t he phone back?’
Isobel nodded. ‘Just one minute more.’
Philip waited for a moment, and when she did not put down the telephone he made a little irritable tutting noise, pointed to his wrist watch, and went out of the room, closing the door briskly behind him.
‘An auction?’ Isobel whispered into the phone.
‘Is it safe to talk?’
‘Yes, if I’m quick.’
Troy, miles away in London, lowered his voice as if to keep the secret safe. ‘I’ll send the three chapters and a synopsis out to all the big London publishers. They’ll read it, and then they’ll bid. We’ll give them a starting price and we’ll take bids over the telephone. We’ll let it go on for a day – not longer. At the end of the day the highest bid gets the book.’
‘But how will they know what price to pay? How will they know what it’s worth?’
‘That’s the joy of it! They won’t know. Because nobody knows Zelda Vere so they can’t set a price based on her previous sales. She’s a dark horse. They have to gamble. But when they know that all the others are in and making bids they’ll all make bids too. It’s my job to get the buzz going, to get the excitement up.’
Isobel closed her eyes again and saw once more the warm waters of the heated pool and the clean white tiles. ‘And my job to write the novel.’
‘And lose those semi-colons,’ Troy advised. ‘How long before you are finished?’
Isobel looked at the screen. This was only Charity’s second victim, she had to seek revenge on two others and then meet and fall in love with the leader. ‘It’s got to be two months,’ she said. ‘I can’t see how to do it quicker.’
‘Perfect,’ Troy said. ‘I’ll get the buzz going at once.’
Rhett crushed her in his strong grip, his powerful member pressing against her thighs in a forceful reminder of their pleasure of the night before when she had lain whimpering with ecstasy beneath the pounding rush of his thrusts.
‘Do you swear that you love me more than you have ever loved anyone?’ Charity demanded.
‘I swear it,’ he said hoarsely. She could feel him pressing against her more urgently. In a moment, she knew she would succumb –
‘No, melt.’
– melt into his arms
‘No, beneath …’
beneath his desire and her resolve would be lost.
‘I love you more than anyone,’ he promised. ‘If I lost you my life would not be worth living.’
They were the words she had been waiting for.
‘I will be your wife,’ she said. ‘Love me.’
‘Mmm,’ Isobel muttered critically. She sat back for a moment and then typed a new version.
They were the words she had been waiting for. She drew back from him, quickly before the seduction of his body should entrap her.
‘You will never see me again,’ she said icily. ‘You will spend the rest of your life longing for me, longing for another night like last night, aching for my body, crying for my smile. This is the great revenge I have played out upon you. You will never be happy again.’
He would have snatched her to his mouth for a rain of hungry kisses but he was too late. Charity had slipped out of his embrace and was gone.
The last thing she heard was the cry of a man completely destroyed.
‘The end,’ Isobel wrote in quiet triumph. ‘The end.’ She hesitated, looking at the screen. ‘But which end?’
She turned to the bookshelves and pulled out the hidden commercial novels and flicked through to the last pages. They all ended happily. Isobel paused. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said with sudden resolution. ‘Even to work inside the genre, I can’t do it. This is a story about a woman who takes revenge, about a woman taking a decision about the sort of life she wants to live. I won’t have her melting at the last moment. I want her to be free, I want her to leave the man and go.’
She pushed her chair back from the desk and unconsciously unravelled the knot of her hair, ran her fingers through the thick softness of it and then tied it back up. ‘I can’t bear to have her just collapse under a man, after all she’s been through,’ Isobel whispered. ‘This isn’t a story about wanting a man. This is a story about a woman making her own choices. About a woman who has the guts to say that love is not the important thing: the important thing is autonomy.’
She stabbed a grip firmly into the re-made bun, pulled her chair closer to the desk, and with one sweep of the computer mouse, highlighted the tender reconciliation scene and cut it. It disappeared from the screen leaving Charity’s curse on the man she had loved and her disappearance from his life.
‘Quite right too,’ Isobel said with satisfaction. ‘Why should a woman be stuck with