Always exciting but exhausting, this year’s Book Fair had been no different and it took Tina nearly a week to recover from the long days and increased workload. Leah’s presence on the stand, too, had added an extra degree of tension into the working day, with an unsettling effect on everything. But Tina at least now knew for definite what, precisely, Leah’s agenda was. It was to take Tina’s job.
Kirsty had been delighted with the way Leah managed everything, congratulating her in front of everyone on the smooth running of things. There clearly hadn’t been any hiccups in any of Kirsty’s appointments over the three days – the opposite of Tina’s experience.
At first Tina had put it down to Leah’s not being experienced enough, but the incident with her notes for the ‘Importance of Foreign Rights’ seminar Kirsty had insisted she sat on the panel for had made her question that.
She’d put the notes on the desk on the stand the morning of the discussion, ready to pick up later, only to find they’d vanished.
‘Leah, have you moved my notes?’ she asked crossly.
‘Where were they?’
‘I put them on the desk earlier and now they seem to have vanished.’
‘They’re probably in the bin.’ Leah had shrugged indifferently. ‘I knocked a couple of coffees over on the desk earlier. Everything was sodden. Thank God I managed to move the laptop in time. I just threw everything else in there.’ She gestured at the wastepaper basket.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me what you’d done? Or at the very least organise a new set to be printed out?’
Tina, knowing that screaming at Leah for being an idiot wasn’t an option, glared at her before pulling the coffee-stained papers out of the basket. Illegible. Strangely, though, nothing else in the bin appeared to have any coffee stains on it.
Leah had simply looked at her and shrugged again before turning away. Not even attempting to mumble a ‘sorry’ in her direction.
Tina was convinced Leah had spilt the coffee deliberately. A blatant attempt to try and sabotage her discussion seminar. Well, it hadn’t worked if that had been her plan. Tina smiled as she remembered how well the seminar had gone. All the congratulations heaped on her, with people asking if she could handle their foreign rights for them. Of course, she’d told them to write in to the agency in the usual way if they wanted to become clients.
Tina sighed as she sank down on to the settee and kicked her shoes off. A work-free evening and weekend beckoned. The flat door opened and Maisie appeared. A different, happier Maisie to the one she’d met only a week or so ago. Because of the hours they’d both been working, Tina hadn’t yet had an opportunity to ask Maisie how things were working out.
‘You look shattered,’ Maisie said, joining Tina on the settee.
Tina nodded. ‘Totally. You? How are the jobs going?’
‘Love the coffee shop – Guy’s a great boss. The boutique is OK.’
Tina raised her eyebrows. ‘Just OK?’
‘Oh, it’s fine really. One of the girls is a bit difficult to get along with but, hey, there’s always one, isn’t there?’
‘Tell me about it,’ Tina said. ‘I think we both deserve a treat tonight. Fancy a takeaway pizza and some Prosecco?’
An hour later, sitting on the sofa letting the latest episode of some reality show wash over her, Tina remembered how, earlier in the year, she’d been determined to change her life, get out of the rut she was in. Yet months later nothing had changed. Her life was still following the same old pattern. ‘Start your own agency,’ a little voice niggled in her head. ‘Do things your way.’
She sighed. Was she experienced enough? Eight years in the publishing industry had to count for something. Surely, once it was known she was setting up on her own, authors would approach her and she’d soon build a client list. Maybe a couple of her current authors would follow her, although she knew Kirsty would do her best to stop that happening.
Was she brave enough to go it alone though? It would mean doing literally everything herself in the beginning without the support or backup of colleagues. Her confidence had taken a bit of a bashing in the last few months, thanks in the main to Leah, and the thought of taking sole responsibility was terrifying. Maisie’s remark about there always being one difficult person to work with had touched a nerve. If she ran her own agency she’d make sure everyone worked well together – there wouldn’t be any people like Leah in her team, upsetting things.
Her laptop on the small table in front of her was open on the time-slip manuscript. Being so busy at the Fair, she’d only managed to read half of it so far, but what she had read, she’d loved. She longed to work with Lucinda Penwood, editing and making her debut novel the best it could possibly be. If she left the agency she would be morally bound to leave behind the best story she’d received in ages. There was no way she could poach Lucinda from Kirsty. Leaving her other authors behind would be a wrench too. Tina sighed and Maisie glanced across at her.
‘Problems?’
‘Just working some things out in my head,’ Tina said, thinking that maybe talking about it with Maisie would help her clarify things in her own mind. ‘Basically, I’m wondering if I’m brave enough to leave the agency and start my own.’
‘It’s a big step,’ Maisie said. ‘But you must have lots of contacts in the business.’
Tina nodded. ‘I do. But cashflow would be a problem until I had a decent client list. I’ve got some savings but not enough to last me more than, oh, six months, I suppose, and it would take longer than that to get established.’
‘Can’t help you there,’ Maisie said. ‘Although I can start paying you rent soon if that helps?’
‘We’ll stick to our original arrangement and work out something you can afford at the end of the month, if you decide to stay,’ Tina said. ‘No, what I really need is a business loan and I can’t see the bank giving me that.’ But Jodie would, a little voice in her head said.
Could she ask Jodie, though? What was that old saying about never mixing friends and business?
‘Jodie as in your old flatmate?’
Startled, Tina looked at Maisie, before realising she must have spoken her last thought out loud. She nodded. ‘My best friend as well as flatmate. She’s offered me a loan once or twice before to start my own agency but I’ve never taken her up on it. Only last week she offered again and I turned her down.’
‘Well, there’s your answer then,’ Maisie said. ‘Go for it. Ring her and arrange it. Then you can give Kirsty notice first thing Monday morning.’
Tina laughed. ‘I love your optimism. I’ll think about it a bit more and maybe ring Jodie later and talk to her. See what she thinks.’
When there was no reply from Jodie’s mobile that evening she wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or to take it as a sign not to do anything impetuous.
Over the weekend, in between trying to speak to Jodie, she mapped out a business plan, sketched out a trade announcement, started to design a website and doodled on pages and pages of her notebook, trying to come up with a catchy name for the agency before settling on the simple, obvious one. Tina Matthews Literary Agency All this before she’d taken a definite decision to go it alone – and before she’d asked Jodie about a loan. But she was certain Jodie, having offered it more than once, would lend her the money without question. And the more she sketched out an agency plan, the more convinced she became that it would work.
Which was why, among all the scheming and planning, she’d also written her letter of resignation from Kirsty’s agency. At first she’d kidded herself, pretending she was just writing a draft – practising the phrasing for when she wrote the real thing. But as she rewrote the letter for the umpteenth time, deleting certain words, adding others, she realised she truly didn’t want to continue working with Kirsty and Leah. She wanted out, come what may. After reading her latest draft Tina decided it was word perfect, switched on the printer and pressed print. First thing Monday morning she’d hand it to Kirsty and begin working the month’s notice she’d given her.
If Jodie couldn’t lend her the money to help kick-start her business, she’d be in trouble, but at least she’d have a month to find a stopgap job. Whatever happened, in a month’s time she’d be free of Kirsty and Leah. And starting to climb out of her rut.