not another happy ending by david solomons - chapter sampler

8/13/2019 Not Another Happy Ending by David Solomons - Chapter Sampler

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N O T A N O T H E R

HAPPY ENDING

DAVIDSOLOMONS


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DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER?If you did, you should be aware it is stolen propertyas it was

reported unsold and destroyed by a retailer.Neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment

for this book.

First Published 2013First Australian Paperback Edition 2014ISBN 978 174356787 6

NOT ANOTHER HAPPY ENDING 2013 by David Solomons

Philippine Copyright 2013Australian Copyright 2013New Zealand Copyright 2013

Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in wholeor in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now knownor hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or inany information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permissionof the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that shall not, by way of trade orotherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the priorconsent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in whichit is published and without a similar condition including this condition beingimposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in anyform. This edition is published in arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A..

This is a work of ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either theproduct of the authors imagination or are used ctitiously, and any resemblanceto actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales isentirely coincidental.

Published byHarlequin Mira

An imprint of Harlequin Enterprises (Aust) Pty Ltd.Level 4, 132 Arthur StreetNORTH SYDNEY NSW 2060

AUSTRALIA

and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its corporateafliates. Trademarks indicated with are registered in Australia, New Zealand,the United States Patent & Trademark Ofce and in other countries.

Printed and bound in Australia by Grifn Press


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chapter 1

Here Comes the Rain Again, Eurythmics, 1984, RCA

Dear Jane,

Thank you for submitting your novel, The Endless

Anguish of My Father.

Ten years ago it would probably have received a

warm reception, but there is quite enough misery to

be found on the non-fiction shelves just now, so, in

fiction, were currently very much into happy stories

with happy endings.

At the moment we are enjoying wonderful suc-

cess with a novel entitledCome to Me, an exotic and

erotic tale of revenge and redemption, with a fabu-

lously feisty female lead and a Hollywood ending.

If you were willing to make some adjustments to

the novels dnouement you might also be happy to

entertain some other minor reshapings: set it in LA or

Bangkok rather than Glasgow, say; make your main


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rather than a shelf-stacker; and tweak the key rela-

tionship so that, rather than one between father

and daughter, its between our cosmopolitan interiordesignerwho is actually, despite her success and

fabulous wardrobe, just a little girl at heartand a

fatherfigure, who happens to be a domineering (but

gorgeous!) film producer. If you were to reposition

the novel in that kind of way, then Id be very happyto reread.

You can certainly write, but these days its so dif-

ficult to launch a new writerhowever talented

whos writing about the wrong things.

I have recycled your manuscript.

Yours sincerely,

Cressida Galsworthy

Assistant Editor

Well, thought Jane, at least Cressida gets points for

sustainability.

She made space on the notice-boardin a moment of

dejection shed referred to it as her Board of Pain, and the

name had stuckand pinned up this latest rejection, then

sat back to admire the varied collection of publishers and

agents rebuffs.

Until she began submitting her novel she hadnt appre-

ciated that there were so many polite ways to say no.

Forty-seven examples, to date. The rejection didnt hurt

8 David Solomons


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never met was of no consequence to Jane. She had sur-

vived far worse in her twenty-five years than anything

Cressidaor Olivia or Sophie (somanySophies)couldthrow at her. But early on in the process she realised that

the letters could be useful. There were writers who stuck

inspirational messages over their desks to spur them on:

you can do itbelieve in yourselfopen that window

of opportunity! But encouraging slogans didnt work forJane; she shrank from their brimming optimism. She was

far more likely to want to jump head first out of that win-

dow of opportunity. Instead, she bought the board at her

favourite vintage store off Great Western Road, nailed it

to the wall by the large bay window of her airy, white flat

and artfully arranged the naysaying letters. She could hear

their honking dismissals as she penned each new query

letter and packaged up the latest hopeful submission. I

didnt love it. I didnt love it enough. I hated it. Their lack

of enthusiasm was grist to her dark Satanic mill.

The printer spewed out another copy of the manuscript,

and as she waited for the four hundred pages of her thus

far ill-starred debut to stack up she hoisted the sash win-

dow, leaned on the sill and took a deep breath.

The air smelled of trees after the rain. Half a dozen

slender poplars lined the quiet West End street, in full

leaf now that what passed for the Scottish summer had

arrived. Beyond them stood a blond sandstone terrace,

a mirror to the building Janes flat occupied. From the

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drifted over the treetops, and suddenly the flats were mis-

erable dolls houses with naked windows through which

Jane glimpsed desperate lives: a raging argument betweenhusband and wife, the tired old lady with no visitors, the

self-harming teenage girl crying in her bedroom. On the

street below a wan-faced young mother slouched behind a

squeaking pushchair, cigarette jammed between chapped

lips, flicking ash over a wailing infant.The cellist took a break from his practice and reality

was instantly restored. The windows revealed no more

heartache than a tired executive mourning a slice of burnt

toast, and in a patch of sunlight beneath the trimmed pop-

lars it was a smart young mother wheeling a silver-framed

pram, talking to her child in a voice as groomed as her

suit.

Jane roused herself from her melancholy flight of

fancy. This was the West End of Glasgow, a dear green

place of well-kempt gardens, specialist delicatessens, and

more convertibles per square mile than anywhere else in

Europe.

She still couldnt quite believe she lived here. She had

grown up in the East End of the city. It was four and a half

miles away, but may as well have been a million, her life

until the age of sixteen spent in one of the brutalist tower

blocks more readily associated with the mean city of leg-

end.

Residents never referred to them as tower blocks; they

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of flaws as deep as their rotten foundations: walls thin as

cigarette paper, alien mould choking every corner, a stag-

nant pool of water in the basement referred to with typi-cal humour as the spa, and stairwells daubed with crude

graffiti that always bothered Jane less for its vulgarity

than for its incorrect use of the apostrophe (in retrospect,

a clear sign of bookish leanings to come). She laughed

when she heard people reminisce about growing up on theschemes: Aye, we might have been poor, but we were

happy. What a load of crap. It was a miserable place to

exist.

Shed only got out thanks to her mum. She remembered

the letter arriving on her twenty-first birthday. It was

from her mum, which came as something of a surprise

since shed died fourteen years earlier. Theyd had so lit-

tle time together that now when Jane tried to picture her

face it was like reaching through water. Turned out mum

had squirrelled away most of the wages she made at the

Co-op in some kind of get rich quick scheme invested

in Janes name soon after she was born. The letter duly

arrived with a valuation and a note on how to claim

her inheritancegod, it sounded like something out of

Dickens.

She remembered sitting on the floor by the front door

reading the contents with growing disbelief. The money

was enough for a healthy deposit on her new flat; her new

life. It was surprising enough that the dodgy investment



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mum had contrived to keep the money out of her dads

thieving hands.

A breeze at the open window ruffled the rejection let-ters on the board. Set amongst them was a faded Polaroid

of an older man, face scored with deep lines, eyes sur-

prisingly soft, one pile driver arm wrapped around a ten

year-old girl. In the photograph the late afternoon sun has

caught her hair, turning the hated ginger a deep, sunsetred. Father and daughter are both smiling. But then, that

was the summer before it happened.

Mum had taken the snap on a day out to the beach

at Prestwick. Unusually, the sun had shone all day, just

like it should in a memory. She remembered on the way

home afterwards stopping in Kilmarnock at Varanis for

ice cream. Best in the world, her dad used to say. Not

that to her knowledge her father had ever been outside

Scotland. Of course she couldnt be sure of his travel itin-

erary since then, not after he walked out on them later

that year. He left a few months after the photograph was

taken, on her birthday. She laughed. How much more of a

clich could you get? Her hand brushed the faded photo-

graph. That was the last time shed had ice cream from

Varanis.

Her eye fell on a flourishing umbrella plant on her desk,

its soft, green leaves trailing across the top of her laptop

screen. It had been a present from him a few years ago; the

only evidence in a decade that he was still alive. When it

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the drunken, apologetic phone call in the middle of the

night; the knock at the door with a bunch of petrol station

flowers. Neither of them came; only more silence.The leaves were dry to her touch. She gave the plant a

quick spray from a water bottle she kept close by. They

didnt have a garden in the high flats, but her dad had

installed a window box and she remembered planting it

with him. It was a shady spot, he explained, so they filledit with Busy Lizzies in summer and hardy cyclamen in

winter. The water-spray hissed. Thinking about it, she

wasnt even sure why she kept his plant.

With a whine the printer finished its work. She pack-

aged up the latest submission into a large buff envelope

and wrote out the address of the next publisher on her hit

list. Tristesse Books were based in Glasgow. Tristesse was

French for something she couldnt quite remember. Shed

taken Higher French at school, but only just passed the

exam. Je mappelle Jane. Jhabite Glasgow. That was

about the extent of her conversation. That and, at a push,

she reckoned she could order a saucisson.

Outside, the sky darkened, dampening the earlier prom-

ise of sunshine. The wind swirled around the trees, send-

ing a flurry of rain against the open window. Hurriedly,

she slid it shut and stood for a moment gazing at her

reflection in the rain-soaked pane. Her hair was still long

and straight and red, its neat fringe framing a pair of bright

green eyes held open in what seemed to be a state of



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When the kids at school had taunted her for being a gin-

ger, her dad had pulled her onto his knee and together

theyd watched his (pirated) copy of Disneys The LittleMermaid. The first few times she didnt understand the

message that however tough the journey, even redheads

are allowed a happy ever after. Instead, through a terrible

misreading, Ariel and her singing friends gave her a hor-

ror of losing her voice, and for years the slightest hint ofhoarseness convinced her that the end of her little life was

imminent.

The superstitions and playground taunts of childhood

were long gone, but now she attracted a different kind

of unwelcome attention, from the Armani-skinned lizards

with large cufflinks who frequented the bars on Byres

Road. And these days there was no dad to tell her it would

all turn out happily in the end.

He was the one whod inadvertently introduced her to

the world of books, dropping her off in the public library

to wait while he took care of a little business at the

bookies across the street and then nipping in for a swift

pintor nineat the pub next door. As he gambled and

drank away their benefit money she immersed herself in

books.

Even after he walked out of her life she continued to

visit the library, just in case he came back. She hated

him for leaving, but more than anything else she wanted

him to come back. And as she waited for him to swing

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read. The library was her playground, her university. Here

she was surrounded by familiar faces. Hello, Cinderella.

Cheer up, Tess. Good day, Mr Darcy. As the years passed,The Brothers Grimm became The Brothers Karamazov

until one day she picked up a pen and began to write her

own stories.

Raindrops streamed down the cheeks of her reflection

in the window. She remembered what tristesse meant.

*

After almost a decade in Scotland, Thomas Duval still

dreamt in French. Four years of university in Glasgow,

followed by a brief internship with Edinburgh publisher

Klinsch & McLeish (ending in a spectacular bust-up

with the notoriously spiky Dr Klinsch) and then five

years building up Tristesse had left him a fluent English

speaker trailing a wisp of a French accent along with the

added charm of a stray Scottish vowel. But at night, in

his dreams, he was once more the golden boy from the

Cte dAzur, raised under hot blue skies, bestride his old

Benelli motorbike racing the rich kids in their Ferraris

and Lambos along the twisting coast road between

Saint-Tropez and Cannes. And always with a different girl

riding pillion.Mais, bien sr.

But somehow despite the sun-soaked childhood, when

hed first arrived in Glasgow something stirred in his soul.

Hed always loved Walter Scott, James Hogg, the gloomy



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walked around the city without an umbrella until he was

wet to the skin. Hed never felt so alive, which was ironic,

since he came down with a bout of flu and missed the restof Freshers Week. But his affair with Scotland had begun.

His family thought he was mad. He ignored them and

bought an umbrella. Soon, the tanned limbs of Brigittes

and Hlnes gave way to the pale, freckled legs of Karens

and Morags.Still asleep, Tom reached an arm around the shape

beside him in the wide bed. He began to mutter in French,

a low, rhythmical sound, languid and masculine, capable

of snapping knicker elastic at twenty paces, then slid one

hand beneath the rumpled sheetsand froze. His smile

slipped, replaced with a glower of cheated surprise.

He sat up and flung the covers from the bed. Beside him

lay a chunky six-hundred pager. Hed just tried to make

sweet love to a manuscript, and not even one worthy of

his moves. A glance at the titleThe Unbearable Sad-

ness of Daalbrought back last nights bedtime reading:

mediocre writing, derivative plot and two hundred pages

too long.

He huffed and turned a bleary eye to the small bedroom.

Manuscripts littered every surface. Uneven stacks of them

sprang from the floor like heroes turned to stone by a

Gorgons stare. He was behind in his reading, as usual.

He had put his romantic life on the back burner in favour

of pursuing a different prizeglittering success as a pub-

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by his strict adherence to one of his few rules: never shag

a writerespecially not one of your own. He was still

looking for The One. Just one critically acclaimedandmore cruciallybest-selling book would take his strug-

gling company to another level.

Once showered and dressed he stood over the espresso

machine as it gurgled and hissed in protest before grudg-

ingly offering up a shot of treacle-black coffee. Tomdrained the cup and immediately poured another. His

broad frame filled the narrow galley kitchen like a Rodin

bronze in an elevator. The living quarters were crammed

into a mezzanine above Tristesses offices and consisted

of two small bedrooms and a holiday camp for bacteria

masquerading as a kitchen, littered with plates growing

more life than the average Petri dish. Less cordon bleu,

more cordoned off.

He juggled a new manuscript and a piece of toast. Con-

centration fixed on the page he failed to notice that the

marmalade he spread thickly over the toast was in fact

mayonnaise. He took a bite. Disgusted, he toed open the

pedal-bin at the end of the counterand discarded the

manuscript. Swiping a finger across his phone he checked

the time.

Roddy! He barked towards the second bedroom.

School! There was a thud from inside like a cadaver

being dropped by a slippery-fingered mortician, the dis-

tinctive chink of many empty beer bottles being inexpertly



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bled a figure in a state of confusion and a brown corduroy

suit.

Have you seen my tie?You mean the brown one, mocked Tom, to match the

chicsuit?

Roddy stuck out his chin defensively. He was a slightly

built man with the sort of boyish face always IDd

when buying a six-pack. He tugged at one of the largelapels. Its not brown, he insisted. It flapped like a Bas-

set hounds ear. Ill have you know this is fine Italian

tailoring and the young lady who sold it to me called it

marrone.

You do know thats just Italian for brown, right?

Roddy ignored him, moving aside manuscripts to con-

tinue his search. So have you seen my tie or not?

Hey, careful with those, said Tom, waving his toast at

the unread scripts. I have a system.

Ah-ha! Roddy produced a red bow tie from behind

one of the stacks and slipped it around his neck.

Youre seriously going to wear that to school?

Its a valid choice.

For Yogi Bear, maybe.

Roddy frowned. That makes no sense. Yogi Bear never

wore a bow tie. It was a necktieand it wasnt even red,

it was green. Wait, are you thinking of the Cat in the Hat?

If I pretend I just arrived from France and dont under-

stand anything youre saying will you stop talking?

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Roddy swiped a bowl off the draining board, wiped a

spoon on his trousers and dived in.

Hmm? Tom looked up from his reading. Were out ofmuesli. Havent bought any in weeks.

Roddy gagged as he spat out the ancient slurry. Aw,

youre kiddin. Thats criminal. Thats unsanitary, that is.

We live in squalor, you know that? He threw down the

bowl. Ill get something in the staff room. He turned togo and paused in the doorway. Oh, dont forget, youve

got Nicola coming in this afternoon.

Tom grunted. A couple of years ago hed discov-

ered Nicola Ball, a writer of novels set in the unprom-

ising world of public transport (one notable sex scene in

her debut had brought whole new meaning to the phrase

double-decker). Recently, shed featured on some influ-

ential lit. crit. blog, hovering near the middle of a list

of Scottish novelists to watch under the age of 30, and

the annoying girl wouldnt stop reminding him about it

at every opportunity. However, her sales didnt match her

bumptiousness.

A buzzer sounded from downstairs.

Get that, will you? Tom strolled off, head buried in the

latest novel plucked from the slush-pile.

No can do, spluttered Roddy. Ive got Wuthering

Heights with my Third Years He checked his watch.

In fifteen minutes. Bollocks.

The buzzer went again and Tom padded resentfully



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you going to hire an actual secretary? The answer was

simple: when he could afford one. Which right now felt a

long way off.The postman might as well have been holding a tick-

ing bomb. He brandished what Tom recognised through

long acquaintance as unwelcome correspondence from

the bank and credit card company.

Lovely morning, the postman said cheerily, thoughtheres a bit of rain forecast for later.

Reluctantly, Tom took the mail, which included half a

dozen fat A4 envelopesmore manuscriptsand closed

the door. With a dissatisfied grunt, he shuffled the official

letters to the bottom of the pile and made his way along

the narrow passage to his office, deftly navigating around

towers of cardboard boxes filled with expensively pro-

duced books fresh from the printer. He shuddered at the

financial risk; each title was a long shot of vomit-inducing

odds, a fragile paper boat set sail on the roughest publish-

ing market since William Caxton thought Hey, what if I

put the ink in here?

Tom threw the mail onto his desk and sat down heavily.

Napoleon glowered up at him. It was a bust of the great

Emperor, a gift from Roddy on the launch of Tristesse

Books, which Tom was in no doubt also conveyed a

pointed comment on his high-handed manner. He looked

round his tiny office with its clutter of contracts, press

releases and inescapable manuscripts; a battered velour

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a couple of low, uncomfortable chairs, perfect to intimi-

date writers. It wasnt exactly the Palace of Fontainebleau.

He turned his frustration to the morning mail, tearingopen the top envelope and removing the bulging manu-

script from within. He scanned the cover and blew out

his cheeks in disbelief. Then held it out in front of him,

squinting at the title to make sure hed read it correctly.

Which he had. There it was, in black and white, Cambriatwenty-four point.Quelle horreur.

The Endless Anguish of My Father, he read aloud,

allowing each word its full weight and bombast. By Jane

Lockhart.

Worst title this year? Certainly it was the worst this

month. Briefly he pondered summoning the author for a

meeting, purely for the satisfaction of telling her just what

a brainless title she had concocted and, he felt confident

asserting this without condemning himself to the unpleas-

ant task of reading one more word, that she was a hope-

less case with no chance of making a career as a novelist.

But he was busy. Taking the manuscript in the tips of his

fingers, he gave a shudder of disgust.

Ms. Lockhartau revoir. And with that he tossed it

into the cavernous wastepaper basket by the side of his

desk.



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