Page 4 of Beautiful Ugly
I glance around the beautifully decorated office, anything to avoid Kitty’s stare and the questions I know are coming. It doesn’tlooklike an office. It’s far more stylish, like a mini library or something you might find in a boutique hotel, designed by someone with expensive taste. I take in all the bespoke wooden bookcases crammed full of her clients’ books—including mine. I was Kitty’s biggest client for a while. She has newer, younger, hungrier, frankly better writers on her list these days. Ones who can still write.
My eyes wander until they find the framed picture of Abby on Kitty’s desk. I wondered if it would still be here or if she might have hidden it in a drawer. Some people think hiding their griefwill make it go away, but in my experience it only makes it hurt more. Grief is only ever yours; it’s not something you can share, but at least there is someone else who thinks about Abby as often as I do. Kitty is my wife’s godmother, and I sometimes think I only have an agent because Abby begged her to represent me.
Kitty Goldman is one of the biggest literary agents in the country. She took me on ten years ago when I was still a youngish author. My career was going nowhere except a series of dead ends, but she saw something in my writing that nobody else had and took a chance on me. The result was five bestsellers in the UK and several awards. Kitty sold the translation rights to my books in forty countries, then last year I had my firstNew York Timesbestseller in America. It all feels like it might have been a dream now. Being unable to write for so long, and with all my belongings in storage, it is surreal to see a book with the name Grady Green on the cover again. I wonder if there will ever be another. The problem with reaching the top is that there is only one direction left to go: down.
“How are you?” Kitty asks, snapping me out of my self-pity. It’s a simple question but I’m unsure how to answer.
The police gave up looking for Abby a few weeks after her car was found abandoned, despite finding the red coat she had been wearing. A dog walker discovered it half a mile along the coast the day after she vanished. It was soaking wet and badly torn. My wife has been “missing” for over a year but—according to the law—she cannot be presumed dead until seven years have passed. When other people lose a loved one there is a funeral or a service of some kind. But not for me. And not for Abby. The disappeared are not the same as the departed. People tell me I need to move on, but how can I? Without some form of closure I am trapped inside a sad and lonely limbo, desperate to know the truth but terrified of what it might be.
I’ve never been good with finances—Abby always took care ofthat side of things—and when I checked our joint account after she disappeared there was a large amount of money missing. According to the statements I’d never bothered to look at before, she’d made several big withdrawals in the months before she vanished. We’d overstretched ourselves when we bought the house, and I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage on my own. With no new publishing deals, I was forced to sell it for far less than it was worth at a time when the housing market was crashing. Meaning Istillowed the bank money. I sold most of our furniture too in an attempt to make ends meet, then rented a flat in London for a few months, paying a frankly extortionate amount to a landlord who knew I was desperate. I thought a change of scenery might help, but it didn’t. Instead, it just drained away what little money I had left. Now I’m living in a one-star hotel, surviving on royalties from my previous books, unable to write another. Unable to do anything much at all except obsess over what happened that night. My life has been unraveling ever since.
“I’m okay,” I lie, attempting a weak smile and sparing us both the truth. The smiling version of myself I used to present to the rest of the world is someone I don’t recognize or remember. Pretending is harder than it used to be. “How are you?” I ask.
Kitty raises an eyebrow as though she sees the real me, despite my best efforts to be someone better. She has played the role of parent in my life more than once, especially in the days after what happened. I didn’t have anyone else I could turn to, and as my wife’s godmother, Kitty was just as devastated by Abby’s disappearance. Agenting is a funny business and far more complex than most people imagine. It requires one person to perform many roles: first reader, editor, manager, therapist, surrogate parent, boss, and friend.
My agent is the only person I still trust.
“You don’t look okay,” she says.
I try to see myself through her eyes; it isn’t a pretty picture.
I shrug, partly in apology, partly in despair. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping since—”
“I can see that. The dark circles beneath your eyes and the vacant expression are a bit of a giveaway. And you’ve lost weight. I’m worried about you, Grady.”
I’d be worried about me too if I wasn’t so goddamn tired. Months of insomnia has turned me into my shadow and I exist in a cloud of foggy slow motion. I don’t remember what it feels like not to be exhausted, confused, lost. I’m in urgent need of a haircut, and my clothes all look like they belong in a charity shop. As if on cue, my jacket button falls off and lands on Kitty’s desk with a sadplink. It’s as though my clothes are trying to say what I can’t: I’m broken. Kitty stares at the button, and her face says what she doesn’t. Then her assistant taps on the glass door before bringing in a tray with some tea.
“I invited you in today because we need to talk,” Kitty says when we are alone again.
We need to talkis never a good start to any conversation.
I think she’s going to drop me from her client list.
I don’t blame her. When she thinks about me she must think of her missing goddaughter, and that can’t be easy. Plus, if I’m not making any money, then she isn’t either. Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing. If I were her, I’d want to cut all ties with me too: A writer who can’t write is one of the saddest creatures in the world.
I clear my throat like a nervous schoolboy. “I know I haven’t written anything you can sell for a while but—”
“Your publisher wants their advance back,” Kitty interrupts. “It was a two-book deal and since we’ve never delivered a second novel—”
“I can’t pay them back. I don’t have anything left.”
“I guessed that much, so I told them to fuck off, but I do think we need to come up with a plan,” she says, and I’m relieved tohear she’s still on my side. Still fighting in my corner. The only one who ever has.
“It’s not easy to write in the worst hotel in the city. I’m kept awake most nights by drunk people walking past my window, and during the day all I can hear is traffic and building works. The walls are paper thin, and there are constant interruptions and noise,” I say, feeling as pathetic as I sound. I have never understood authors who choose to write in cafés or anywhere with other people or distractions. I need quiet.
“What happened to the flat?”
I shrug again. “I couldn’t pay the rent anymore.”
Her forehead folds into a worried frown. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’m scared to ask, but howisthe new book coming along?”
I’ve only written one chapter, and I’ve rewritten it at least one hundred times.
“It’s... coming along,” I lie.
“Is there anything you could share with me?”
I only have one thousand words. According to my contract, I need ninety-nine thousand more.