Free Writing Jane Austen by Elizabeth Aston Page A

the way a young woman with a wilful, heart-shaped face came out of the house, closing the green door behind her and tripping down the steps. What extraordinary clothes she was wearing. Off to a party in that long, high-waisted, low-cut dress, but a hat festooned with feathers! Maybe it was fancy dress.
    The light was fading from the sky, the streetlamps were late coming on. A figure came round the corner, a small man in a long coat, He had a light on the end of a pole, and she watched, fascinated and bewildered, as he walked along the pavement, pausing at each lamp to light it with a gentle plopping sound, leaving a soft glow behind to illumine the street. He went round the corner and was gone.
    Georgina shut her eyes and shook her head. When she opened her eyes again, the street was brightly lit, a man on a scooter was revving at the corner, and a girl was hanging out of the window of her tiny town car, manoeuvring into a space just about large enough for a wheelie bin.

Seven
    Dan Vesey was a smooth man, smooth from his shining, mostly bald head to his sleek tailoring to his vowels.
    No one was quite sure where Dan Vesey came from. He was an American who had burst on to the publishing scene in London five years before, taking charge of the ailing list at Cadell & Davies, a publishing house with a history that went back to the eighteenth century. He had staged a management buyout, which meant, as far as Georgina knew, that he owned the whole company. There were other directors, but they were never in evidence. Dan ran a sphincter-tight ship, as he put it, and he had the reputation in the trade of having a nose for bestsellers.
    His sister, Yolanda, was petite, with the same cold and brilliant blue eyes as her brother. And she was even sleeker than Dan was, from her elegant bob through her immaculate little black suit to her patent high heels. Gina, wearing a defiant red jacket, bought at an Oxfam store the previous year, felt the hick Livia had cautioned her not to be.
    The restaurant was the kind Gina most disliked. Not that she often got to eat in such a place—the prices on the menu made
her wince. And the food was strange and came in tiny, exquisitely crafted portions and she wasn’t certain exactly what she was putting in her mouth. Whatever happened to the food that had made the English great? Agincourt would have been a wipe-out for all thoseyeomen archers if they’d been raised on food like this. Chocolate pudding, now there was something the English knew how to make, a comfort dish if ever there was one. Would they have chocolate pudding on the menu here? She doubted it.
    She came to with a start, to find six eyes fixed on her.
    “Well?” said Livia, breaking the silence.
    “Well what? Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
    “We’re discussing the narrative line,” Yolanda said in clipped tones, sounding as though she were talking to a not very bright ten-year-old. “We’d like a structural plan from you. Soon.”
    “By next week,” Dan said. “You’ve had time to read through what I gave you. Time to learn it off by heart. So let’s have that plan Monday. First thing.”
    “You mean a plot.”
    Yolanda winced. “Please! That’s not a word we use.”
    “I do. And by Monday? That just isn’t possible.”
    “Georgina,” said Livia warningly.
    “I don’t work that way. If you want a book inside three months, then you’d better just leave me to get on with it.”
    “Now that isn’t possible,” said Dan, his voice turning gravelly. Georgina had always had a suspicion that his eyes weren’t really that colour—surely no human being could possess such a startlingly blue pair of orbs. Yet there was Yolanda with exactly the same blue gaze, so unless they had matching contact lenses, it was a true Vesey colour.
    Livia’s eyes weren’t blue. They were almost black, to match her clothes: sharp, hooded and distinctly unfriendly.
    “This has to be a cooperative effort,” she said. “You’re going to