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Chapter One

Carla Hardwicke Literary Management was situated on the top floor of the sort of Georgian townhouse I sometimes imagined I might live in one day, if by some miracle I sold about a million more copies of my books. One could dream, right?

Arriving in reception massively out of breath after navigating four flights of extremely narrow stairs, I greeted Carla’s assistant, Lily, who always wore short, flippy skirts and cute, gigantic black-framed glasses that pretty much covered her entire face.

‘Morning,’ I managed, recognising that I clearly needed to do something to improve my cardio fitness.

‘Oh, hello, Scarlett! Take a seat and I’ll grab Carla for you,’ said Lily chirpily, zipping out from behind her desk and disappearing into the agency’s inner sanctum.

I dutifully made my way over to the slouchy sofas and the coffee table strategically housing my three books, which Lily had no doubt laid out especially for my visit – it was sweet that they’d thought me worthy of such a display, even if it was only for the hour or so I was likely to be in the office. I picked up the shiny, paperback copy of my debut,Little Boy Lost, running my thumb over the embossed title, and our names: Scarlett Green and Theo Winters. It still felt strange to see us linked together like that. My other two books had only my name branded across the front of thembecause Theo and I . . . well, we’d only written the one book together. Much to Carla’s annoyance, I might add. I didn’t know what Theo had told her, but I’d kept it very vague, had said something about our working relationship irreconcilably breaking down, so much so that we couldn’t possibly write a follow-up together, not then, not ever. She’d been gutted, and I didn’t blame her, because our debut novel had soldwaymore than my other two put together. It was a shame on all counts, but then that was what happened when you didn’t keep your emotions fully in check.

As I waited to be summoned into Carla’s office, I couldn’t help but notice a disturbing new office feature: our author headshots mounted on the wall above the reception desk, with each of Carla’s achingly photogenic clients arranged in alphabetical order in symmetrical rows of five. I looked a bit ‘rabbit in the headlights’ in mine. Hardly surprising, I supposed, because it had been taken when all of this first kicked off and the book world had felt like a bit of a headfuck. Not that it didn’t now, mind you. Although surely I could knock something more sophisticated and enigmatic than that out of the park at this point? Perhaps I’d get some new shots done and I’d wear a black turtleneck, like Sally Rooney, because then the industry might take me seriously, too. I could even throw on a sassy Hermès scarf, not that I owned one. And I’d definitely get one of those bouncy blow dries, because lifeless mid-brown hair styled in a too-long bob didn’t exactly make for a knockout headshot, it transpired, although my green eyes – the one facial feature I had that was in any way interesting, in my opinion – were my saving grace.

As I looked from one headshot to the other, feeling worse and worse about my lacklustre image, I willed myself to avoid the right-hand corner, where the authors withsurnames beginning with ‘W’ were loitering. But generally, if something looked like it might be bad for me, I tended to wade right on in there and do it anyway. So yeah, there he was: Theo Winters. Sparkling away like an A-list film star. Seriously, if there was going to be a movie made about a male thriller writer in his thirties, this would be how he would be described on the casting call sheet: glossy chestnut brown hair with just the right amount of volume at the front; a brooding half-smile, a neatly trimmed beard. A sort of:Look how casual I am!meetsCould I BE any more perfect?

Thankfully Carla snapped me out of my melancholy by appearing in the doorway wearing one of her trademark trouser suits paired with her (also trademark) short, slicked-back, blonde hair. I reckoned her wardrobe probably consisted of rows and rows of the same thing, which I had to admit would make it much easier to get dressed in the morning. Less thinking about the mood and more deciding whether to wear a plain white shirt or a plain white shirt with a grey stripe through it. By the time I was fifty, which was what I guessed Carla was, although of course she would never say, this was the organised manner in which I would like to be conducting my life.

‘Scarlett!’ said Carla in her well-spoken drawl.

I flew out of my seat. ‘Good to see you!’

I loved Carla, but was also sort of terrified of her. She was everything I wished I could be, in work and in life. For example, Carla was ballsy and had zero qualms about telling people exactly what she wanted. I, on the other hand, had this strange desire to make everyone like me by giving them the thingtheywanted, even if it wasn’t remotely the thingIwanted.

I stood up, brushed non-existent creases out of my brown corduroy pinafore dress, and walked over to join Carla, gladI’d gone for my heeled ankle boots over the flats. Somehow the clip-clopping sound I made as I clattered across Carla’s expensive-looking wooden floor gave me a boost of confidence – I was a powerful, successful author. I was going to have a productive conversation with my kick-ass agent about how to elevate my career to the next level. A place in the Richard and Judy Book Club would be mine again, and it would be even sweeter than the first time round because I would have written the book all by myself and not with the writing partner from hell.

Giving Carla the obligatory kiss on each cheek – because that’s what people in publishing did, I had that down now – I followed her into her huge office, which had funky Perspex furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows and panoramic views of the River Thames in all its glory. Carla flung herself into her Eames chair, swivelling round to face me like a warrior about to go into battle. If this was my office and I had this iconic scene to look at on a daily basis, I would probably feel as though I’d made it, too.

‘I wanted to get you in to talk about early sales figures forThe Mother-in-Law,’ announced Carla unpromisingly.

My latest psychological thriller was tipped to do very well, and I’d already mapped out how I’d spend the money I’d not yet earned in royalties. If my publisher’s predictions came true, I was going to get beautiful bespoke bookshelves so big they’d cover one whole wall of my two-bed flat in Ealing. And I’d buy one of those huge, squishy corner sofas I’d coveted for at least a decade, which naturally would be covered in smooth teal velvet, as per my favourite Instagram shots of rich people’s designer living rooms. I basically wanted the kind of Zoom background that screamed:I am an intelligent, successful, well-read author!instead of my current offering, which was more:Look at the half-decent place I live in thatI’ve tried to big up for this shot.

I took a seat, any confidence I’d rocked up with slowly draining out of me. Fuck. In hindsight, if it was good news, she’d have called me, wouldn’t she? She would have been yelling down the phone, announcing that I’d exceeded my publisher’s expectations, which was no easy feat, since nobody ever told you exactly what these mysterious expectations actually were.

‘Sure. What’s happening?’ I asked, steeling myself internally. How bad could it be? It was a good book, I was certain it was, and what’s more, my entire publishing team had told me they thought so, too.

Carla grimaced.

Christ. This was not looking good, not in the slightest.

‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Scarlett, but it’s sold nowhere near as well as we’d hoped,’ said Carla in a semi-sympathetic voice.

The book had only been on sale a week and I’d religiously avoided stalking my Amazon rankings or sidling into bookshops to see how many copies were left on the shelves. But now I felt blindsided because I’d naively thought Carla had called me in to brainstorm my next book and my career in general. And OK, part of me hoped she was going to tell me I had a US deal –The Mother-in-Lawwas on submission out there and Carla had seemed positive, although to be fair she’d gone very quiet on that lately, too.

‘Do we know why?’ I asked, clearing my throat, trying not to sound completely devastated that my beloved book was clearly about to sink without a trace.

Carla exhaled loudly. ‘It’s a combination of things, I think. The domestic thriller market is a tough one to break at the moment.’

Shit. Really?

‘Since when?’ I asked, daring to query Carla’s sweeping statement about the genre I happened to write in, because if what she was saying was true, why had nobody told me before? Why had they let me spend hundreds of hours writing a thing that they didn’t even know if they wanted? ‘Because apparently last year you only had to write a thriller with the word “woman” in the title and it would fly off the shelves,’ I added, determined to get some answers here.

‘Well, the industry is constantly changing as you know,’ said Carla, not deterred by the fact that I felt like a flower wilting in the heat and probably looked like one, too. ‘Uplit is the big thing this year. Readers want hopeful, optimistic, life-affirming stories, apparently.’

‘Uplit?!’ I said incredulously.

When I’d handed in the first draft of my first solo novel – i.e. the first one I’d written without Theo Winters breathing down my neck – I was told it was too uplit, and that uplit didn’t sell. Now look! Also, why did I have to go and imagine Theo Winters being close enough to breathe down my neck? Now I couldn’t get the image out of my head. I could almost hear him talking softly into my ear, his voice little more than a whisper, his lips brushing against my temple. Shaking my head and attempting to pull myself together, I poured myself a glass of water from the jug on Carla’s desk and drank it thirstily.

‘And I’m sorry to impart yet more bad news . . .’ said Carla.