There was snow on the forecast and ice on the roads. The cold weather didn’t bother Eve; at least in London it didn’t. She ran from her office to the tube to home and repeat. She hardly ever went out as Serena was always making her work late.
Why did she put up with Serena’s bullying? ‘No job is worth that,’ her dad had said and told her to call the book readers’ and writers’ union. Eve had explained that wasn’t a union and then her dad told her to start one.
Why was everything so exhausting at this job? Eve had assumed she would do her job and not have to worry about anything else when she had left university. Serena had made sure that was not the case. All she did was worry and organise Serena’s life, and then became frustrated when Serena would throw her an editing job to assuage her frustration.
Books had always been her escape at school, hiding in the library where the librarian had taken pity on her and had let her eat her cheese and gherkin sandwich in the Encyclopaedia section while reading The Hunger Games trilogy.
As the years went on, the lunchtimes and the sandwich stayed the same but the books changed as fast as Eve could devour them and the faster-paced and more exciting the book, the better. Other people claimed it was Jane Austen who propelled them into publishing or the collected works of Proust, but for Eve it was the paperback books on the spinning stands at the Leeds library that thrilled her. Agatha Christie was always her first love but she read everything she could. James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, even that silly git Jeffrey Archer. She had read many of the classics but she had a soft spot for the best-sellers of their day. Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, Scott, Dickens.
It had never occurred to her she could be a part of the process of getting books onto the spinning stands at libraries and in the bookshops on the high street and in airports, but it was a goal that felt like her calling.
Instead, it seemed travelling to the centre of nowhere to babysit a spoiled author was now her calling.
She found some older images of his wife and daughter on an American website from when they attended the opening of a movie in Los Angeles. His wife, Amber, was very beautiful, like a thinner Jennifer Aniston, if that was even possible.
The child looked like her father. She was about four or five, Eve thought. Pleasant-looking but with a strong bone structure and wide-set eyes. She imagined the girl as a teenager, wondering why she didn’t get her mother’s high cheekbones. Eve still couldn’t forgive her twin brothers for getting their dad’s long eyelashes while she got her mother’s, which resembled iron filings.
It wasn’t easy being in a relationship with a writer, and Eve wondered how Mrs Priest was handling being in the country with a child and with Edward Priest, whose research was extensive and often first-hand. As she clicked on more links with his name she went down a rabbit hole on the web, reading about Edward and his writing routine and research process. Apparently he had travelled the route of the missionaries from Spain to Santo Domingo on the same sort of boat used in the 1800s so he could write about the experiences on the boat of the Augustinian friar who was the hero of one of his books.
Eve had rolled her eyes at that story. Pretty sure there weren’t travel vaccinations and mobile phones when the friar was afloat back in the day. Why did Edward Priest and other writers like him, usually men, decide they needed to experience it before they could write about it? Didn’t they have fully working imaginations? Why couldn’t they research and read and discover instead of throwing themselves into an ‘experience’? It was just such a pretentious and entitled male thing to do.
The train slowed down and Eve closed her laptop and packed it away. She stood as the train stopped and got her balance before making her way to the end of the carriage to get her cases. She had one large and one small, but she hoped she wouldn’t need anything else. The plan was she would stay until before new year, so at least she could get back and see her family for the last weekend before she had to face Serena again.
Eve exited the train with no grace whatsoever as she struggled to get her large pink suitcase off easily.
‘Christ on a bike,’ she said to herself as people pushed past her to get off the train. ‘Some people have no Christmas spirit at all.’
She stopped and adjusted her coat to try and get some control over her situation.
‘Eve Pilkins?’ She heard her name spoken in a deep baritone and looked up and saw a handsome woman, who must be close to six feet tall, of an indeterminate age between forty and sixty, Eve guessed. She was dressed in purple jeans, topped off by a jumper with a Union Jack knitted into it and a brown corduroy trilby hat. She wore a quilted vest in pink and was the most astonishing woman Eve had ever seen.
‘Yes?’ Eve was aware she was staring at the woman, whose hands were on her hips. As she surveyed Eve her eyes narrowed.
‘I’m Hilditch, housekeeper to Mr Priest. I’ve come to pick you up.’
‘Thanks, Hilditch, that’s very kind of you,’ said Eve, feeling like she had failed whatever test Hilditch had set for a first viewing.
Eve tried to drag one of the suitcases and heard a terrible screeching sound.
‘Oh, I’ve lost a wheel,’ she exclaimed and tried to lift the case but failed. Too many coats and scarves preparing for the arctic blast that her mother had warned her would be coming.
Hilditch picked up the case and the overnight bag and walked ahead of Eve while she struggled to keep up with the woman’s long stride.
‘This is us,’ said Hilditch, nodding at a red Mini Cooper. She wasn’t sure how Hilditch would fit in the car but she managed to fold up, like human origami.
Eve nodded, trying to act like she wasn’t a complete dunce.
‘How old are you?’ asked Hilditch as they got into the car.
‘Twenty-seven,’ answered Eve.
Hilditch sniffed as she started the car. ‘And you work with that Serena Whitelaw?’
‘Yes, she’s my boss.’
Simply thinking of Serena made her angry. She was off flying to New York, and Eve was stuck in outer nowhere to edit an overpaid, self-important writer whose next book was probably overwritten and lazy like his last one.
‘She came up here a bit,’ said Hilditch with a sniff.
