Wishful Thinking by Jemma Harvey Page A

were as towers of mist, and like mist they blew away. She told herself she wasn’t bitter – she swore she would never be bitter, because bitterness eats the soul – but cynicism had entered into her, hardening her mind if not her heart. She would have to leave, and return to London, and the dolce vita was gone for good. In fact, it had been gone for quite a while.
    â€˜Of course you had to leave,’ said Lin. ‘He might have hurt you.’
    â€˜Oh, I wasn’t worried about that,’ Georgie responded. ‘He couldn’t hurt me. Even when he hit me, I didn’t feel it. What worried me was that I would hurt him . If he hit me again I might hit him back, or pick up a kitchen knife – and that would be that. I never wanted to hurt him, so I had to go. There was nothing I could do for him any more.’
    It was a battle she couldn’t win, and Georgie had always been used to winning. She could have stayed in Rome – she had been there nearly ten years, and had many friends – but she felt it was better to make a complete break. She sold her jewellery and put the money in a trust with anything else she could scrape together, and arranged for regular payment of basic bills and a small allowance for Franco. The American writer and a Cavari cousin were trustees. Then she packed her clothes and a few personal items and flew back to England. Everything she had in the world fitted into three suitcases and a flight bag.
    In London, she moved in with the elderly aunt who would subsequently bequeath to Georgie both her house and her mortgage. She knew she wouldn’t be able to pick up where she had left off and she was right: she was pushing forty and had been out of the game too long. But there was an opening at Ransome Harber and an old friend put in a word. The salary was mediocre, the social scene far from glittering, but it was a job. Georgie took it.
    It must sound as if everyone in publishing gets their job through the machinations of a friend. Basically, this is true. But just for the record, I got in through an employment agency – which makes me almost as rare as an author who’s been pulled out of the slush pile.
    Georgie had been with the company about eight months when Lin joined, over a year when I came. She and Lin, though unlikely friends in terms of character and outlook, had enough similarities in their life histories to form an instant rapport; Georgie rapidly became Lin’s chief confidante, mentor, and substitute elder sister (though a far more sympathetic and understanding version than the real thing). Since I was working in Editorial, not Publicity, it took me a little longer to form part of our trio. I was attracted to Georgie – everyone is, of both sexes – but it was only after a particularly disastrous launch at L’Escargot that we became close. The book in question was a classy legal thriller by a blonde barrister called Courtney Pryce (real name Davina). Her literary agent, a battleaxe of uncertain age and even more uncertain temperament, got extremely drunk at the party even by publishing standards and Courtney politely suggested it was time for her to go home. The agent, whom I won’t name for reasons of tact, discretion, and libel laws, went berserk, attempted to sock her client, and had to be forcibly restrained. She was eventually sent home in a taxi, was subsequently dumped by Courtney, and a year or so later produced an inferior novel plagiarising much of her ex-client’s plot which became a brief bestseller at the Walthamstow branch of Safeway. Meanwhile, back at L’Escargot, a furious Georgie repaired her smudged mascara – ‘Thank God my blusher’s okay: I haven’t got it with me’ – and thanked me warmly for leaping into the fray to assist her. We retired to the restaurant for dinner, lingering – with Lin – long after the author had fled, and bonded.
    Most friendships formed