‘I’m glad, too,’ said Jennifer, hopefully. ‘And I’m glad most of all to be home with you. Are you glad that I’m home?’
Hall saw the fleeting frown cross Annabelle’s face.
Emily remained serious for what seemed a very long time. Finally she said, ‘I think so. But I wish Daddy was here too.’
Jennifer’s face began to crumple more but she managed to stop it. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she blurted.
Emily didn’t say anything.
‘It’s getting late, darling,’ said Jennifer. ‘While everyone else is having their tea here why don’t we go and have ours in the kitchen? And after that I can give you your bath and then read you a story and you can show me all the letters you know, on the page?’
Emily looked between her mother and the nanny. ‘I want Annabelle to give me my tea and bath. And read to me.’
‘But with Mummy as well,’ said Annabelle.
‘All right,’ agreed the child, uncertainly.
The excuse of grit in her eye had almost gone by the time Jennifer asked Hall and the priest to stay as she followed Annabelle and Emily out of the room.
Hall said, ‘Not at all what she expected, I wouldn’t think.’
‘She said she’d tried not to imagine anything.’
‘It’ll take some getting over,’ suggested Hall.
‘Hardly, with her resilience,’ said the priest. ‘It could have been better, but only just. They’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
‘Are you here to help?’ queried Hall.
Dawson’s shoulders lifted and fell. ‘She asked me to come with her at the last minute. Said she wanted moral support…’ He smiled. ‘I’ve never been in a helicopter before.’
‘Easier than getting here by road.’
‘We saw what it was like when we came in. Incredible.’
‘I think I might get a lift back with you. Come back and get the car later.’ Purely for the immediate convenience, he told himself. It was ridiculous even to think of trying to drive through that melee again.
Dawson made another vague gesture through the lounge window in the direction of the distant road: inside it wasn’t possible to hear the animal roar. ‘They’re not going to be able to live like this. No-one could. Not for long.’
Hall was still trying to think of a reply when Jennifer came back into the room. She didn’t try to hide the fresh tears. ‘She was frightened of me being too close to her in the bathroom so I came away.’ She paused. ‘I saw what I looked like in the bathroom mirrors. A mad woman.’
None of them wanted to eat. Hall and the priest drank whisky. Jennifer didn’t drink anything and neither did Annabelle when she came down to say Emily had gone to sleep. They were all too anxious to reassure Jennifer it was always going to be difficult at the very beginning: each insisted, again too eagerly, that it had in fact gone far better than they’d anticipated. None of it helped.
Jennifer agreed at once to Hall leaving in the clinic’s helicopter and said, There’s something we could discuss in detail when you come back for your car, although I might as well tell you now.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve decided to write the book. And I want you to negotiate the contracts for me.’
‘I’m not a literary agent,’ Hall protested, weakly.
‘Literary agents arrange deals. We’re having deals shovelled at us. I need a lawyer to pick the best and negotiate the best…’ She smiled through the sadness. ‘And you, Jeremy Hall, are the very best lawyer I’ve ever met in my life.’ And by acting for me, she thought, you’re staying in my life.
Jeremy Hall was thinking the same. ‘I’d be pleased to,’ he said.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Jeremy Hall didn’t collect the car on his first return, nor on the second and when he tried on the third the battery was flat and it had to be jump-started from the gardener’s Land-Rover. He learned to enjoy helicopter travel and tolerate the unremitting curiosity and media hounding. Unthinkingly on his part the routine became his spending the week in London before coming down to Hampshire on a Friday, although there were telephone calls in between. It was Emily who said it was what her father did, briefly creating an awkwardness that Jennifer handled better than Hall did.
By then the relationship between Jennifer and Emily had almost completely reverted to what it had been before. Emily stopped bed-wetting the second week and by the fourth she had practically lost any attention-seeking precocity. It was during the fourth week – the week when Hall finally persuaded the parents of the brain-damaged boy to accept the hospital insurer’s newly increased out-of-court offer – that Jennifer suggested he stay for the weekend instead of flying back the same day, which was what he’d always done until then.
‘I might need support,’ she said. ‘And I’ve started to write it. I’d like you to see what I’ve done so far.’
Jennifer recognized the risk on several levels and was nervous of each – nervous one would collapse and destroy the still secret hope of the others – and still wasn’t sure if she would positively force the issue, although she wanted to. Wasn’t sure, even, if she was correctly reading the signs because there’d scarcely been any. He always came laden with papers and faxes and letters from publishers and newspapers and they always spent part of his visit, sometimes the majority, comparing the advantages of one contract against another but she didn’t think he’d needed personally to come so often. Unless he’d wanted to. Her satisfaction that he did went beyond the unspoken hopes. She had figures and percentages and subsidiary profits to think about and calculate and it was like a door opening on to a dusty room in her mind, although the dust quickly blew away. She was far better at the financial assessments than Hall, who said so openly when they’d pared the approaches down to a final three.
‘You don’t really need me,’ he complained.
‘We’re not negotiating yet: we’re necessary together as a team,’ said Jennifer, intentionally ambiguous.
‘Let’s see,’ said Hall, which didn’t help her.
It was the fourth, full weekend visit. As usual he came heavy with briefcases, although by then they both knew the figures from the three favoured publishers, all American.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ she announced, consciously boasting her financial acumen because she wanted him to be impressed. ‘These three are all for world rights. One upfront payment, the highest at the moment $8,000,000. Each contract gives them the right to sell individually to other countries. But we’ve got offers of ?1,500,000 from England and $5,000,000 from Japan and approaches from all those other countries in Europe. Which the Americans will pick up if we sell outright. They’re not spending anything: they’re into profit before they start. Why don’t we sell just the American rights to the Americans and negotiate ourselves and separately with each of the other countries? That way we make the profit.’
Emily had long since been put to bed and Annabelle was in her separate annexe. They’d eaten dinner – duck – in the kitchen and carried the remainder of the wine through into the lounge. He’d shaken his head against brandy, uncomfortably aware of the similarity with the night of Jane Lomax’s death. Jennifer didn’t appear aware of it. He smiled at her and said, ‘I didn’t think you needed the money.’
‘I don’t!’ she said, coming forward in her facing chair. ‘It’s never the money! It’s the deaclass="underline" shaving a point, gaining a percentage.’
‘Like the old days?’ he suggested, seriously.
‘Close enough.’
‘It’ll involve our having to discuss a lot more, after we close the American contract,’ he said, looking directly at her.
‘I know,’ said Jennifer, holding his eyes. Meet me halfway, she thought.
‘I’d like that.’
Far enough! Still room to retreat. ‘I hoped you would. I would, too.’
He was as relieved as she was, almost too eager. ‘We could create a lot of new problems for ourselves.’