Thieving Fear

you'd be afraid to be. Able to fight back.'

'Me, I just want a quiet retirement on all the money I'll have made with books that sell. And by the way, your time ran out a while back.'

'You're supposed to be enthusiastic about her book,' Charlotte said and downed some wine to douse her anger. 'Your turn.'

'Hey, I'm only trying to show you how we'll have to think. I'm your friend, remember. Every book will need to have a concept we can package. Let's find one here.'

Charlotte was distracted by the bookseller, who had lifted a large book of English landscapes off a shelf only for the yellowed photographs of vanished views to sprawl out of the binding. As the man thrust the handful of images between the dilapidated covers and dumped the infirm volume on the shelf she said 'You start.'

'Try Sorcerous Seniors Strike Back. Magic's always going to sell, people need fantasy even if they know it's bullshit, and there's your revenge theme as well.'

'Don't you think it sounds like a comedy?'

'Sure. It should. That's what it needs to be.'

Charlotte had found Ellen's attempts at humour painfully facetious, by no means an unusual reaction to manuscripts she had to read but in this case uncomfortably personal. 'You think she could bring that off,' she said.

'I guess you'll do whatever it takes to show her how. Keep it black. Shock the readers, even the ones that think they can't be shocked. Get them arguing. Make it a book everyone will have heard of and won't want to say they haven't read.'

Charlotte wasn't sure how much of his enthusiasm could be ascribed to the wine, especially when he said 'Take the nurse who ends up incontinent. It's like your cousin doesn't want to admit she's writing about it. I'd want to see him suffer a lot worse. In public would be better too.'

'You don't think that's too basic.'

'The word is don't risk sales by aiming too high.' Glen laid a hand on her wrist while he said 'Listen, you're the editor. Tell me to shove my suggestions if you've got other ideas.'

'I wouldn't be so rude.'

'Hope you don't think I am,' he said before transferring his hand to his glass. 'The guy they turn blind, now. I figured they could do it to him when he's speeding in whatever snazzy car he owns.'

'Won't that seem too vindictive?'

'Depends how much they had to put up with. How about the woman who's in her second childhood gets raped by him? Or even a gang rape. Just so we've enough reason to wish the worst on the bad guys.'

Charlotte felt as if someone were wishing claustrophobia on her. Even if the cramped inadequately lit place that Glen was stuffing with ideas was her mind, the low dim room shrunken by the mass of books had become far too similar. 'Your title makes it sound as if that's them,' she said.

'Bad Old Things?' Having savoured it like another mouthful of wine, he said 'Nothing wrong with them being wicked if they were treated bad enough. The guy that ends up crippled like the woman he keeps tripping up, maybe they should make him get outrageous with his stick.'

She wondered if he would ever propose a change that she might simply agree with. 'That's a bit incorrect, isn't it?'

'Then maybe your cousin should target the public that's sick of correctness. If anyone objects, that's publicity too.'

'I'll have to see what she thinks.'

'Well, sure, and there's another point you need to put to her. I don't believe the story yet. It needs a better gimmick.' Glen emptied the bottle into his glass when Charlotte covered hers. 'Try this,' he said. 'Someone new moves in and sees how they're all being treated, and she turns out to be a witch.'

'Perhaps she could be the thirteenth resident.'

'I love it. Great idea. Now you're on the wavelength.'

Charlotte had been joking if not hoping the proposal would strike him as a step too far. As she strove to hold her expression neutral she felt watched, not just by Glen. The bookseller was kneeling in front of a shelf, and everyone at the bar had their backs to her. Peering about only seemed to bring the book-laden shelves closer, and she could have imagined that the earth around them was pressing them inwards – that the dimness adumbrated a seepage of earth. She could almost have thought that its smell was overtaking the odour of books. She was fending off the impressions as Glen said 'We ought to be writing some of this down. I'll email it to you tomorrow, all I can remember.'

He drained his glass and raised the empty bottle. 'Shall we celebrate?'

'I think I've had enough, thanks, Glen.'

'Better eat, then,' he said and recaptured her wrist. 'Let me buy dinner.'

She felt as if he were shackling her under the earth. 'Can we make it another time?' she murmured. 'I wouldn't mind heading for home.'

'Whatever's good for you. Let's make it soon, though, yes? How's next week?'

'I should think it's fine.'

'Look forward to it,' he said or advised, relinquishing her wrist. As she stood up he said 'Not finishing your drink?'

'It's yours,' Charlotte said and hurried to the stairs, where a musty breath caught in her throat. The open air was less of a relief than she had anticipated; the length of blue sky looked clamped by the roofs, brought low by them. 'See you on Monday,' she said as soon as Glen appeared, 'and thanks for everything.' As he set out for the car park she turned towards Tottenham Court Road, only to remember that the train was underground. She didn't need to understand her yearning to be in the open and closer to the sky. The train was quicker than the bus, and once she was home she could go on the roof.

FOUR

Hugh had just managed to locate the nightwear section on the upper floor of Frugo when his supervisor beckoned him with a pudgy indolent finger towards the beds. 'Is it all right if I leave you now?' Hugh said.

The older woman mopped her brow with a handkerchief, and her daughter gave her a sympathetic glance. 'Thanks for the tour.'

As Justin folded his arms above his prominent stomach, his expensive pale-blue shirt from Frugo Dude puffed out a spicy scent of Conqueror deodorant. His even paler eyes peered at Hugh from beneath a black fringe combed low on his wide smooth forehead. Their earnestness seemed designed to contradict his other features – nose snub enough to be accused of cuteness, inadvertently pouting mouth, face rounded by at least one additional chin. 'What was that supposed to be about,' he said, 'the scenic route?'

'The more they see the more they might buy,' Hugh thought and less distinctly said.

'I don't remember that in our mission manual.'

'Maybe I should put it in the suggestion box.'

'It'll have to wait. You've done enough wandering all over the show when you're meant to be stacking your shelves.' As Hugh felt his face grow patchy with resentment Justin said 'If there's any problem I should know about, I'm here.'

'It's you. It's how you take breaks whenever you think nobody's looking and suck up to management while other people are getting on with their work. And half the time you never finished a job so I had to finish it for you, and then you took all the credit and got the promotion I should have got.' Even if he found the nerve to say any of this, what would it achieve beyond losing him his job? 'I don't know my way around the new floor yet,' he said.

'Then you should have paid attention when we all walked through.' Justin expelled a breath that twitched a spider's leg of hair in its nasal burrow and said 'Better skedaddle back to your wine.'

For a moment Hugh forgot where the escalator was, and then he saw the restless rubber banister between two wardrobes at the far side of the maze of beds. As the lower floor spread into view, he was borne towards a customer leaning on a trolley and a stick in front of the poster for the month's wine promotion. The man wore a