Besides, she reminded herself firmly, Farcombe Festival was strictly out of bounds now that Gordon had fired her. She no longer felt quite so hurt, although she still didn’t understand why. Reading the first Ptolemy book had drawn her back into Gordon’s incredible imaginary world, and she felt increasing sympathy for him, the clever old eccentric with his love of privacy. She was surprised how much she missed his messages, especially now that she was back in London. She hoped they were still friends.
She picked up her phone again and emailed,
How are Julie Ocean and Jimmy Jimee getting on?
He didn’t reply.
Legs closed her eyes and tried not to imagine the restraining order landing on her desk.
When she finally made it to the office, Conrad was glowering more than ever from behind his glass wall. He was trapped with the head of foreign rights for another hour, but managed to tap into his computer keyboard without looking at it, like a newsreader, during the meeting to send her an internal email that read.
Hotel lunch
?
It was his shorthand for a quickie in their usual suite.
I’m meeting a friend,
she typed back with relief. Then she sighed, knowing that she had to be grown up and tackle the situation by telling some tough truths, adding.
Tonight?
I’m committed.
Legs knew his diary was empty. She watched at him through the glass partition, but he was still utterly focused on his colleague, that clever mind thinking three lines ahead in the conversation to stay two steps in front of the competition. Conrad could run intellectual and physical rings around men half his age. He could still run intellectual and physical rings around lovely, rock solid Francis. That had been so much of the attraction in the first place.
It’s over, she realised with a jolt as painful as a kosh in the ribs. I don’t love him any more. It’s over.
A colleague beamed at her over her monitor. ‘Are you devil or angel today?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m popping to Starbucks; caramel macchiato or skinny latte?’
‘You know me! Devil all the way.’ She laughed dementedly and her colleague melted swiftly away. She put her head in her hands. It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. It was as simple as that. It wasn’t even very painful. As revelations went, it was effortless.
Fingers shaking, Legs picked up the phone and called her
father’s Kew antique shop, inviting herself around to her childhood home that evening. ‘I’ll bring supper.’
‘Marvellous. I want to hear all about your romantic rapprochement with young Francis.’ He rolled his ‘r’s theatrically.
‘There is no romantic rapprochement, Dad,’ she muttered, eyeing Conrad through the glass, adding determinedly, ‘but I am hoping for a Purple patch.’
Ringing off, she rubbed her searing temples and wearily began to wade through Eric Jones’ many communications. He was now reading a book about product placement, he reported. Could Fellows Howlett amend the contract to enable Olga to mentioned favoured cat food brands in the Cuthbert books for which he could seek remuneration?
No,
she replied deftly and returned to her inbox, scrolling past eight more messages from Eric. She noticed that Delia Meare the redhead-massacring author of
The Girl Who Checked Out
had managed to get past IT with a new Gmail address; she thanked Legs profusely for her letter, promising to help her and ‘the esteemed’ Conrad Knight ‘live and feel’ the book in every way she could.
I will be happy to lay you and Mr Knight a trail …
Hoping this didn’t mean Delia was going to flood the server with messages again, Legs read through other messages. A lot of the Team GL stuff was still filtering through. Then she spotted something amongst her cced emails that made her baulk.
She emailed Conrad immediately, forwarding the message in question.
Does Gordon know he’s expected to sign copies in the warehouse before launch?
He was as brusque as ever:
NYP.
Too late, Legs realised she had accidentally cc-ed all the message’s original recipients when forwarding it, including Gordon’s PA Kelly who now replied brusquely:
Gordon asks me to remind you that you are fired.
‘Old cow,’ Legs fumed.
As soon as the head of foreign rights came out of Conrad’s
office, she stepped in. ‘Isn’t a warehouse signing a potential publicity leak? It would only take one photo sent from a mobile phone to a tabloid to ruin the festival unveiling.’
He didn’t look up from typing something into his computer. ‘All security staff will be vetted twice. You got my message – Not Your Problem. This is no longer your responsibility, Legs.’
It’s over, it’s over, it’s over her head chanted.
She tried to stay focused on Gordon.
‘He’d be guaranteed privacy at home. He’s always turned around signed copies there before.’
Conrad finally stopped typing and looked up at her. For the first time, she realised how haggard he looked, as though he hadn’t slept all week.
‘It hardly matters. Gordon
isn’t
at home, Legs. He’s AWOL. Nobody knows where he is.’
‘Since when?’
‘Last week some time.’
‘But we – I mean you’ve had contact with him since then. We’ve had emails.’
‘Emails can be exchanged anywhere with a phone signal these days. I’ve not heard from him since the argument about television coverage yesterday. He was very, very jumpy. Now he’s not returning calls.’
She sat down heavily on the chair opposite him. ‘Do you think he’s disappeared because he can’t face the idea of revealing his true identity?’
‘He could be pot-holing in the Lake District for all I care; the end result is the same,’ Conrad rubbed his deeply furrowed forehead with his fingertips. ‘Let’s keep a lid on this in the hope he’ll turn up. Team GL will go into a tailspin panic if they think Farcombe’s in the balance. We
must
keep them focused on the new book. Christ knows, that’s going to be controversial enough when it comes out.’
‘In what way?’ she asked vaguely, still trying to work out where Gordon might be.
‘You know I can’t divulge that information,’ he blocked tersely. ‘Let’s just say we need to make sure he has maximum security around him, and that means knowing where he is.’
Legs was too distracted by Gordon’s disappearance to take in what he was saying. Fellows Howlett’s star author disappearing a week before launch was potentially catastrophic. He might be having a complete breakdown.
‘Oh poor Gordon,’ she said shakily, imagining her Mad Hatter on the run. That long, impassioned email he’d written to her should have rung alarm bells, but she’d just used it like self help.
‘Don’t waste your sympathy on
him
!’ Conrad fumed. ‘This is my neck on the line here too. I have spent all bloody week getting Piers Morgan’s people ready to sign on seven zeros for an exclusive interview straight after Farcombe, and Gordon’s gone fucking walkabouts.’
‘What does Kelly have to say?’
Conrad looked at her curiously. ‘Surely you know? Kelly
is
Gordon. She’s his alter ego.’
‘Gordon’s Kelly?’
‘One and the same.’
Her first thought was that the Mad Hatter was even more eccentric than she imagined. ‘He’s a cross-dresser?’
‘I doubt he dresses up, although I wouldn’t put anything past Gordon. But he uses the fictional PA to back people off, and to flush out the real fakes. It’s a clever tactic.’
‘That’s awful. It’s so duplicitous! I loathe duplicitousness.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s “duplicity” not “duplicitousness”.’ Conrad had an annoying habit of correcting her grammar just when she was at her most passionately heated. His mental red pen was constantly poised over the contents of her conversations. He’d even done it in bed a few times. It inevitably threw her off stroke and made her feel stupid.
It’s over, her aching head screamed. OVER!
‘Well I’m glad Gordon fired me,’ she said hotly. ‘I’d had enough
of his ego, and his alter ego come to that. The man is a monster. No wonder he has to have a pretend PA – no real one worth her salt would go near him. He messes with people’s heads and hearts and expects way too much.’
Conrad narrowed his olive green eyes. ‘Legs,
why
precisely did Gordon sack you?’
‘I have no idea! I guess wasn’t a very good research assistant; I didn’t get in nearly enough life-threatening situations, although the sexual tension was pretty heated at times.’
‘What?’
‘I muddled up an email meant for you and sent it to Kelly when I was in Farcombe,’ she hurried on. ‘Then Gordon sent me a long email I didn’t handle very well because it made me cry and I didn’t know what to say to him. And I’ve stopped wishing him goodnight on live messenger which might have pissed him off.’
‘You wish Gordon Lapis goodnight?’
‘He started it!’ Her face flamed. ‘He’s basing a character on me, Julie Ocean.’
Suddenly Conrad slammed his fists on his desk, making his laptop screen flicker.
Is he jealous? She wondered wildly, the drumrolls of ‘it’s over’ starting to fade in her head.
But Conrad was laughing with relief.
‘Legs, you must deal with this!’ he demanded. ‘He trusts you. You “understand” him, so he says. You can track him down, Constable Ocean.’ He indicated the door, his tone adamant.
She hesitated. ‘He fired me. And it’s Detective Sergeant Ocean, actually.’
Conrad was already lifting his phone to make a call. ‘I’m the boss, I’ll fire you if you don’t do as I’m asking. Pretend to be me. Email, text and hire a psychic for all I care. Get the stroppy bastard back to us.’ He dismissed her from his office once more with an impatient wave, already spinning his big leather chair away and dialling out.
Legs stood her ground.
‘It’s over!’ she said through gritted teeth, mortified that it came out as little more than a hiss of hot air.
Conrad didn’t even hear. Thinking that she’d gone, he had his big back turned to her and was already talking into the receiver: ‘Darling, there’s a crisis on at the office. I might not make tonight. Can we reschedule?’
Legs froze. Who was ‘darling’? One of the children, perhaps …
‘Of course I’m committed to these sessions; I want our marriage to work as much as anybody, but one cancelled appointment in six months is surely not bad going?’
Legs caught her breath.
As he swung around in his chair, he saw her still standing in the room and had the grace to look abashed.
She shrank away.
Returning to her desk, feeling absolutely washed out, Legs contemplated her inbox. It was no wonder Gordon hadn’t replied to her message about Julie Ocean. He probably wasn’t in a compatible timezone. She envied him. What she wouldn’t give to run away from life right now.
Then she suddenly remembered Kelly replying within seconds of receiving the accidental cc, reminding her that she was fired.
Feeling like Morse interfering after he’s been laid off a case, she wrote one paltry line:
Where are you?
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard before adding.
P.s. Your agent is a slimeball.
She glanced up to see Conrad was still on the phone. He didn’t look at her, but she sensed he knew that she was watching him because he backed towards his office door and shut it.
She wanted to compose an email full of fury and vitriol telling him it was over, but stupid tears kept welling up.
‘It’s over,’
she began.
A skinny latte landed on her desk.
‘I thought I said devil?’ She looked up to see her colleague reading her screen over her shoulder.
She quickly minimised the window.
‘Oops! Sorry. My mistake.’ The colleague skipped off, saying ‘You’re just too nice to be a devil, Legs.’
Legs rubbed her forehead, knowing that nice girls didn’t dump their lovers by email.
Deleting the half-composed message to Conrad, she clicked into Explorer and looked up the latest press theories on Gordon’s identity. Stephen Fry was the current favourite; Russell Brand’s odds had shortened dramatically since joking in a television interview that it was him. Jeffrey Archer was now a rank outsider, she was relieved to note. All the tabloids were inviting readers to fill in an online suggestions box.
Why couldn’t Gordon be a woman? Legs thought indignantly. She typed ‘Kizzy de la Mere’ and submitted it to the tabloid.
She then Googled Clarissa Delamere, trailing through a few genealogy links before changing to Google Images. A familiar-looking little redhead glared out from a school photograph, with thick glasses and braces. She then Googled Kizzy de la Mere. The same redhead, after a ‘why, Miss Jones’ transformation from geek to chic, pouted in wet chiffon dresses on sea-lashed rocks alongside acres of self-indulgent poetry.
Amongst this year’s new works was a series of poems in homage to Kate Bush. One stood out, a reworking of ‘The Man with the Child in His Eyes’, its bittersweet humour counteracting any mawkishness as it spoke of abandonment and fear of loneliness. Then she spotted a footnote: