Page 43 of We Chase Shadows

The first-week sales of And the Devil Blinked First are in, and they are disappointing. It has entered the charts at number five, behind, among other things, a saga about a vampire strip club and a novel about two tennis players having sex with each other, and then both reaching the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final. That one is called New Balls Please.

The news has taken Rosie by surprise. She has done the same things as always, but her sales are down. Way down.

‘I mean, it’s good news and bad news,’ says Elspeth.

‘I see,’ says Rosie. And the Devil Blinked First has sold almost exactly half the amount of her previous book. ‘Fill me in on the good news.’

‘Well, there will be fewer books to sign this time,’ says Elspeth. ‘You know how your wrist gets.’

Elspeth has not been Rosie’s manager for long. Rod Chisholm had been her manager for many years, but Elspeth has had to stand in for him from time to time. The first time she stood in was because Rod was ill, the second time was because Rod had been accused of using offensive language in the workplace (‘I called someone a twat, Rosie. I thought we were still allowed to. And, in my defence, he was a twat’), and this time she is standing in for Rod because Rod has died. Death, a cancellation that even Rod can’t get out of.

So, Elspeth is probably permanent now. That’s if there is another book.

Rosie tries to isolate the emotion she is feeling and it suddenly occurs to her that she is frightened. The last time she felt frightened was when she had a fall in South Carolina. It came out of nowhere and, lying on her bathroom floor, she had realized, just for a moment, that she couldn’t get up. She had managed, eventually, to shuffle herself to a chair and crawl into it. She felt frightened then, and has never told a soul. What if, next time, she can’t get up?

Rosie always gets up. Doesn’t she?

‘You could always take some time off?’ says Elspeth. ‘You could travel!’

Presumably there are other managers out there, but Rosie has never felt the need to seek them out. There has never been a problem before now. Perhaps this is Elspeth’s opportunity to prove herself? A crisis is just an opportunity pointing a gun at you.

‘So what do we do?’ Rosie asks. She has had dips in sales before and always come back fighting. ‘Big tour? Have an affair with someone from TV?’

‘There’s a YouTube series,’ says Elspeth, ‘where you go on and eat chicken wings, and the chicken wings get hotter and hotter the longer the interview goes on. It’s very funny. Very popular.’

‘You eat chicken wings, and they get hotter and hotter?’ checks Rosie.

‘Everyone in the office watches it,’ says Elspeth. ‘Beyoncé was on it.’

‘Is there anything less chickeny I could do?’ Rosie asks.

‘There’s a podcast,’ says Elspeth, ‘where they lock you in with the host for twenty-four hours, and if you go to sleep you get woken up by an electric shock. It’s getting a lot of traction.’

‘These are both very interesting ideas,’ says Rosie.

‘I’m not saying we could get you on either of them,’ says Elspeth. ‘But we could put your name forward. There’s also a very good new series about the joys of ageing.’

‘The what, sorry?’ says Rosie.

‘The joys of ageing,’ says Elspeth.

‘And you think that would suit me, why?’

To her credit, Elspeth doesn’t miss a beat. ‘No, not for you, just telling you about it. Giving you an idea of the media market as it stands.’

‘Good,’ says Rosie. After her fall it took nearly a month for the bruises to go away. She hid them from everyone, even herself. The pain of those bruises still remains. Something else she is careful to hide.

‘And Davina McCall does a very good podcast about the menopause,’ says Elspeth.

Rosie shakes her head.

‘Again,’ says Elspeth, ‘that’s just for information.’

‘I still think I should do something outrageous and get in the papers,’ says Rosie. ‘That’s always worked for me in the past.’

‘The trouble is we really need to get the eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds on board,’ says Elspeth. ‘And they’ve never heard of newspapers. Ideally we’d set you up a TikTok account and find some way to make you go viral.’

Rosie nods. ‘How would we do that?’