Free The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey Page B

his voice firm. “Let me take you into my confidence. Not all members of the society were happy that we were spending our limited funds in this way, but I was convinced that the right book could help people, and help to advance our cause. I very much need the book to be finished soon, and
     
    within the terms we agreed upon. Tell me what I can do to facilitate that.”
    The man’s sudden briskness was even more jolting than Valentine’s perfidy. How naive he had been in assuming that the secretary’s sympathies would transcend his business interests. For a moment Sean felt like fleeing. Then, for some mysterious reason, he found himself picturing Bridget and her husband, standing beside the dark wood as the stars came out. The image was, as she had described the actuality, consoling. “I don’t mean to suggest that things are dire,” he said. “Basically I have drafts of everything except the last section, and the extra one you wanted on mental suffering. I’m sure I can have the manuscript on your desk by the end of the year. Meanwhile you could go ahead and give Valentine’s chapters to a good copy editor. That way everything should be done by mid-January.”
    “Let me have a look at my diary,” said the secretary. He stood up and retrieved it from his desk. “Suppose you bring me the manuscript the Wednesday after Christmas. And let’s forget about the mental suffering. It’s by no means certain that the board members would approve such a section, and we can always add it if we do a second edition. How does that sound?”
    Sean said it sounded fine.
    “Good. I’ll send you an e-mail confirming these new dates. You may not have read your contract closely, but there is a clause that fifty per-cent of the advance is forfeit if the manuscript is late. I would hate to have to invoke that, but given the choice between doing so and losing my job, you’ll understand which I’d choose.”
    “Yes, yes, of course,” said Sean, getting out of his chair.
    “So I’ll see you here on the twenty-eighth,” the secretary said.
    Sean noted the small rudeness of his remaining seated. Somehow that made it easier to reply crisply that he would be here between ten-thirty and eleven that day. He was almost at the door when a thought
     
    stopped him.“I was wondering,” he said, “if I could talk to the balloonist, the man who hoped to see his wife’s soul take flight?”
    The secretary looked up at him calmly. “That was me,” he said.
     
    n the weeks before Christmas Sean anesthetized himself with his chapters. He felt, as he had when working on Keats, a keen desire to make every sentence as good as possible but a greater ease in doing so without the poet’s dazzling example. He sent an e-mail to Valentine announcing that he needed a small extension but that his chapters would require only light editing. Valentine wrote back in his usual cheery fashion: Sounds good. The secy. has asked for some revisions on my pages. That’ll teach me to give them in early. Sean tried not to gloat; some revisions, he hoped, meant hours of strenuous rewriting. How fortunate, he thought, that Valentine had not grasped what he was trying to say during that phone call on the train, about writing another book together. To Abigail he offered the news of the extended deadline
    and asked if she could be very specific about her Christmas present. “And vice versa,” she said.
    The previous year they had spent Christmas with Sean’s parents on the Isle of Wight, but this year neither of them had time to make the journey. Happily Tyler had invited them to spend Christmas at his country house in Wiltshire. The house, like its owner, occupied a special place in Sean and Abigail’s history—they had spent a weekend there right after he finally left Judy—and, as they drove down in their rental car on Christmas Eve, the mood between them lightened. Sean’s chapters, save for the proofreading, were done and the company’s Christmas show